“Then you know who I am?” As he spoke, Tavis crouched behind the boulder the giant had just thrown at him. He stretched a hand toward his bow. “I don’t see how you could. There are thousands of firbolgs in the Ice Spires.”
“But few runts.” The giant stepped on the boulder, pressing it into the ground. “And only one who serves the queen of Hartsvale.”
“Then you have me at a disadvantage,” Tavis said. Although he could feel his heart pounding, he remained poised to roll away. “Who are you?”
“I am known as Odion,” the giant answered.
“Well, Odion, what now?” Tavis cast a longing glance toward his beloved bow.
“We will have no more of your tricks.” Odion positioned the boulder in his hand over Tavis. “That will only prolong matters.”
The scout sprang forward and smashed an elbow into the soft spot below Odion’s kneecap. The joint popped and straightened, drawing a deep grunt from above. The giant dropped his stone, but Tavis had slipped between the brute’s legs and was already darting toward the bluff.
“Come Tavis! This isn’t worthy of you.”
Tavis scrambled over the stony ridge without responding. A loud clatter sounded from the other side as Odion gathered up an armful of throwing boulders.
“Only through the grace of acceptance does one triumph over death,” admonished the giant. “In every other aspect your life has been recorded with great esteem. I pray you, do not sully that account with a graceless end.”
Tavis drew his sword. “You may write that I have no intention of ending my story here,” he called, crouching behind the bluff. “Let that decision reflect on my annals as it will.”
The scout crept silently forward, hunched over and staying close to the ridge. After a dozen paces, he judged it safe to glance at Wyvern’s Eyrie. A great starburst of scorched granite now marred the cliff’s silvery face. Nothing remained of the bridge except the ends of splintered logs, with Odion’s partner dangling from one of the stubs by a single hand. The stone giant’s feet scraped madly along the cliff, while his free hand slapped blindly at the ledge above, where the shepherd youth was dodging back and forth, smashing the brute’s fingers with a large stone. The four women had sent the young girls ahead and stopped at the next bridge. Two of them kneeled at each end, working furiously to cut the heavy logs free.
Tavis heard a loud thump behind him and looked over his shoulder. Odion was leaning over the bluff, staring at a boulder he had just dropped where the scout had been earlier. Realizing the quickest way to defeat the giant would be to give him a false sense of confidence, the firbolg jumped to his feet and zigzagged across the tundra as though terrified.
“This is not worthy of you, Tavis!” A boulder sailed past the scout and thudded into the tundra. “It is your time. Face death as bravely as you faced life!”
Tavis changed directions, narrowly dodging a second stone. He hazarded a glance back and saw Odion bracing for another throw, with three more boulders cradled in his arm. The scout darted to one side and slowed his pace. The next ridge was less than fifty paces away, and he wanted the giant close behind when he reached it.
A frightened cry rang out from Wyvern’s Eyrie. Still darting and weaving, the scout looked up to see the giant’s free hand close around the shepherd boy. In the same instant, the four women came charging down the trail with a heavy log under their arms. They rammed it into the stone giant’s head, and the brute fell away, still holding the shepherd youth in his hand. He disappeared behind the ridge ahead, then a terrible crash shook the meadow.
Odion hurled two more stones. One passed so close to the scout’s sword that the steel blade tinkled like a wind chime. Tavis changed directions and heard one more boulder thump down behind him. He glanced back and saw that his pursuer had no more rocks in his arms.
“Surely, now you will concede to the inevitable,” Odion called. Despite a pronounced limp, the giant’s long strides were quickly closing the distance between him and Tavis. “Even you cannot hope to escape two of us.”
Tavis could only guess what his looming foe saw on the other side of the ridge, at the base of Wyvern’s Eyrie. Odion’s partner was probably shaking off the effects of his long fall. It would take more than a hundred-foot drop to kill a stone giant.
The scout headed directly for the bluff. Odion caught up in three strides and stooped over to grab his quarry. Tavis threw himself into a forward roll and returned to his feet five paces shy of the ridge. He pumped his legs hard, bounding toward the bluff as swiftly as a stag.
“There is nowhere to go,” Odion said. “Accept your fate.”
The shadow of the stone giant’s hand crept over Tavis. The scout leaped into the air and braced his feet against the side of the bluff, then sprang back toward Odion.
Tavis landed almost exactly where he had intended, requiring only one quick step to place himself beside his foe’s leg. He swung his sword hard, then felt a sharp snap as his blade sliced through the delicate tendons behind the giant’s knee. Odion bellowed, and his leg buckled. He pitched forward, his huge body folding over the bluff like a corpse over a saddle.
The firbolg grabbed a handful of bloody flesh and pulled himself up Odion’s leg. The pain-stricken giant did not react until Tavis started to climb his back, and by then it was too late. When the brute tried to turn over, the scout placed the tip of his sword between two ribs.
“Go ahead and roll,” Tavis said. “You’ll drive the blade in for me.”
Odion wisely returned to his stomach. The firbolg’s blade was hardly more than a dirk to him, but a dirk was long enough to puncture a lung. “What is your intention?”
“I hope it isn’t to kill you,” boomed the second stone giant “I have not prepared myself to lose a son.”
Tavis instantly recognized the sonorous voice. “Gavorial!” The scout pressed the tip of his sword into the back of Odion’s neck, then looked up to see a familiar, grimly lined face. “I had thought never to see you again.”
“Nor I to see you-and both our lives would have been the better for it,” Gavorial answered. The stone giant opened his hand to display the shepherd youth he had snatched from the side of Wyvern’s Eyrie. The boy was battered and trembling with fear, but he was alive. “Yet here we stand, and now you must surrender-or burden your spirit with the weight of this boy’s death.”
Avner dived into the moldering grain, burrowing deep and fast. The oats and barley were damp and rank, but he tried not to think about what he smelled. The foul odor would keep anyone from poking around the heap, and that made it an ideal hiding place. He continued digging until he neared the other side, then cleared an eyehole so he could see the wrecked farmhouse and most of the rubble-strewn yard.
The giants had been little more than sticks on the horizon when Avner had stepped out of the spruce copse, but already they were close enough for the youth to see that they were frost giants. They had milky skin and bushy beards that ranged in color from dirty ivory to ice blue, and most were dressed in sleeveless jerkins and kilts made from some long-furred hide. They all carried double-bladed axes large enough to fell a mature spruce in a single swipe, and the leader wore a skullcap with two ivory horns.
When the giants reached the farm boundary, the leader thrust the heel of his hobnailed boot into the rock wall and stepped through the resulting breach. He stopped just inside the main yard, sending the other giants to inspect all corners of the farm. As they spread out, Avner counted fifteen of the milky-skinned brutes. The leader stomped up to the main house and began poking through the ruins, grunting angrily and kicking the stones in disgust.
One of the warriors called to him from the other side of the grain pile. Avner could not understand the words of the icy voice, since the fellow was speaking a racial dialect. This surprised the youth. The tribes of the Ice Spires had long ago embraced Common as their primary language, but he had heard that some giants still used their own tongues as a matter of pride.