“Perhaps, if we couldn’t see the giants building rafts.” Arlien pointed to the window. “But it looks to me like they’re too smart to attack across that bridge.”
“I don’t know if you’ve spent much time with hill giants, but I have,” Brianna replied. “They aren’t smart”
“Maybe not, but whoever’s commanding them is,” Arlien countered. “And he’s certainly wise enough to know a competent engineer would trap Cuthbert’s bridge.”
“I suppose that’s true,” Brianna replied. She lifted Arlien’s mug to her lips, but restrained herself to a few sips. It had occurred to her that her sudden show of thirst might seem unladylike to the prince. “What would you do, Prince, and why?”
Arlien rested his elbows on the table and leaned forward, fixing his brown eyes on hers. Brianna’s gaze wandered over the prince’s cleft chin, full lips, and patrician nose, and she was surprised to find herself silently thanking the King of Gilthwit for sending a handsome son to court her.
The prince touched his graceful finger to the tabletop and traced a line that roughly paralleled the ramparts facing the hill giants. “I would place the ballistae here, where they command the water approaches,” he said. “And I would soak the missile heads in oil, so that we can set them afire. That will do more to stop the giants’ rafts than hurling boulders at them.”
“And what of the bridge?” Brianna asked. She sipped some more of the prince’s libation.
“I would use the catapults to cover it,” he said. “If the giants are foolish enough to try that approach, the boulders will keep them in the water after the bridge collapses.”
“If that’s what you think, that’s what we’ll do.” Brianna drained Arlien’s mug, then rose to her feet and started toward the door. “I’ll go tell the earl.”
“Good,” Arlien said. He did not rise. “And you know what else I think, Brianna?”
The queen stopped and turned to look at the prince. He was so handsome-blurry, but handsome. “No, I don’t,” she said. “How could I know that?”
Arlien smiled, revealing a row of pearly white teeth. “I think you should put on my necklace,” he said. “I don’t see how there can be any harm in wearing it while we’re alone, do you?”
Brianna considered this for a moment, searching for the flaw in the prince’s logic. She could sense that there was something wrong in his assertion, but her mind was too clouded-damn wine-to identify what was bothering her. She went over to her trunk and reached inside to open the secret compartment.
The gorge ahead was definitely the entrance to Shepherd’s Nightmare, and even from the distant edge of a spruce copse, Tavis could see that the giants had beaten him to it The small farm at the mouth of the canyon, so carefully detailed on Earl Cuthbert’s map, lay in ruins. All three buildings had been pushed off their stone foundations and smashed beyond recognition. The livestock lay scattered across the trampled fields in bloody heaps of fur and bone, and the small stream that flowed out of the valley above now boiled over the remnants of a smashed dam.
This isn’t war, Tavis thought. It’s mayhem, brutal and vicious.
It was also the end of any hope that the siege against Cuthbert Castle would be quickly relieved. If the giants knew about Shepherd’s Nightmare, and it was apparent they did, they would certainly take pains to guard the pass. Tavis would never be able to bring an army back through, at least not without a difficult battle. Such a delay would give the giants plenty of time to storm the castle and capture Brianna.
Tavis slipped out of the pine copse and went forward to investigate the farm more thoroughly. The scout discovered the first human corpses in the pasture. The farmer and his three helpers had made their stand behind the wall, but stacked stones offered little protection from a giant’s incredible strength. The men had been knocked various distances across the bloody heath, and now lay twisted and broken beneath droning clouds of flies. Still, as the scout kneeled briefly beside each body, he could tell that all four had died bravely. They had fired every arrow in their quivers, and near each man lay a sword or farm axe he had probably been swinging as he had fallen.
In the soft pasture, Tavis also found the giants’ tracks. There were only two sets, both too large for hill giants, with a narrow span and long, graceful toes. The scout thought immediately of stone or fire giants, but ruled out both. Fire giants would have burned the farm, while stone giants took no pleasure in pointless cruelty. The only thing he could say for certain was that the tracks were too small for fog giants or-thankfully-storm and cloud giants.
Tavis took a few minutes to crisscross the pasture, looking for more tracks. He found none. If the raiding party had consisted of more than two giants, they had not approached through this field.
The scout went to the main yard, where he found the grain stores heaped in a pile and stinking of untold gallons of urine. Next to the stores lay the torso of an old woman, the limbs ripped off as a cruel child might tear the legs off an insect The evil brutality made the scout think of an ettin, but that made no more sense than fire or stone giants. The tracks in the pasture were too large. More importantly, there had been two sets, and ettins, the most bestial of all giants, never traveled in pairs. The monsters had two ugly heads that could barely get along with each other, much less the two heads of another ettin.
Whoever the killers were, Tavis hoped he would find them somewhere nearby. For the first time in many years, he truly burned with the desire to kill.
The scout went over to the main house, which had been a large structure of mortar and rock. To his relief, no arms or legs protruded from the rubble, and he saw no vermin to suggest that bodies lay buried out of sight.
Near the corner of the house he found a large obsidian flake that seemed strangely out of place among the granite and diorite stones of the building. One side showed the conchoidal fractures typical of the glassy mineral, but a skilled hand had clearly worked the other side into a rounded edge.
Tavis held the flake between both hands. The shard could only have come off a stone giant’s club, but he could not believe stone giants would be responsible for this carnage. They were rather cold and distant, but hardly evil.
The scout considered the possibility that another giant had been wielding the club, perhaps having acquired it in trade. But that failed to explain the footprints. The tracks did resemble those of stone giants, especially the narrow insteps and long toes. Tavis could see only one reasonable conclusion: stone giants had razed this farm, and they had taken pains to do it brutally. They wanted to anger whoever discovered the carnage, to make him so furious that he became careless.
The murderers had succeeded with part of their plan, at least. Tavis could feel all manner of fiery passions burning in his breast. But the scout would not grow careless. He was too experienced at this sort of thing.
Tavis tossed the flake aside and pulled one of Basil’s runearrows from his quiver. Killing hill giants with regular arrows was one thing, but it would be quite another to down a stone giant with a wooden arrow. Their hides were so tough that even Bear Driller lacked the power to slay one of the brutes with a single shaft. For that, he needed magic.
Keeping the arrow ready to nock, Tavis crept around to the back of the farm, to the mouth of Shepherd’s Nightmare. The gorge was narrow and wet, with sheer walls of granite and a tangled mass of bog spruce rising from its swampy floor. A single goat trail led up the valley. In the soft mud the firbolg found many pairs of fresh footprints. Most were clearly those of humans, probably women and young adults, but the scout also found two sets of stone giant tracks.
The scout started up the canyon at a run. Maybe Brianna’s plan wasn’t lost after all. With a little luck, he could slay both stone giants and prevent them from telling any of their fellows about Shepherd’s Nightmare. Perhaps he could even save the refugees. Tavis just wished that he understood why the stone giants had taken such pains to annihilate this particular farm.