shorter, this giant was quicker. Fortunately Amber had a partial shield, and she exploited it. Rising from her crouch, Amber dashed along the wall behind the wounded giant's back. Squirting past, she caught a whiff and almost gagged. The giants stank like a slaughterhouse, an eye-watering reek like green hides, rotting guts, and curdled blood. Holding her breath, Amber almost brained herself on the giant's spear haft. Dodging, her foot slipped on a rock, for it was still dark near the ground, though the sky had lightened enough to show silhouettes. The scrape of stone was loud, but if she was quick enough…
She wasn't. From behind, the shorter giant whisked the long iron spear point between Amber's knees. She felt the curious plumes on the shaft, perhaps horsetails, brush her leg, then flinched as a backward barb pinked her thigh. As Amber bleated, the larger giant half-stepped back. Amber was mashed against the crumbling stone wall, breath crushed from her lungs as if a hogshead barrel had flattened her.
'Amber!' shouted Hakiim.
Pinned, Amber wished her friend would run. Standing there waving his scimitar wouldn't help for long. If the big giant hurled its spear, or simply chucked it sideways, the spear would skewer Hakiim or knock him flat. Squashed, Amber gasped as the big giant backed tighter. The spear shaft tangling Amber's knees rapped her in the rump and crotch. Hoicked higher, the shaft picked Amber's feet off the ground. Teetering, straining to stick one foot on solid earth, Amber felt a huge hand grab her shoulder.
Before she could jump or even yell, Amber was plucked off the ground like a chicken for the pot. Seams in her leather vest popped as she was bashed into the stone wall. The first blow hurt as her legs slapped helplessly. The second blow winded her. The third banged her head so she swooned.
Hakiim saw silhouettes as the shorter giant hoisted Amber in one hand. Amber kicked her legs, helpless as a puppet, until her puppet strings were cut, and she dropped into darkness. Hakiim shouted her name and got no reply.
Panic choked Hakiim as the taller giant rumbled toward him like a mountain avalanche. If he turned and ran, Hakiim was sure, that long spear would lance his back and pin him like a fly. Slowly the dark man crabbed backward to keep his footing. He hated to leave Amber in the giants' clutches, but what else could he do, and where in the name of Seven Devils was Reiver?
As if in answer, something whistled over Hakiim's head. The giant grunted in pain as a rock smacked its jaw. Another rock stung, and the giant sidestepped, albeit slowly.
Hakiim whirled just as Reiver called, 'Hak-now!'
Pointing his scimitar wide lest he fall upon it, the rug merchant's son dashed for the cover of ruined walls. Some stood ankle high, some two stories. Somewhere in this mess Reiver hid with his cat's-eye vision-but where? Shrugging mentally, Hakiim zigzagged around a waist high wall and into a broken alley. He'd hide, try to circle back and rescue Amber, then let Reiver find him.
Ahead he saw a tattered scarecrow in faded clothing. Popping up in a junction of alleys, the thief gestured wildly for Hakiim to duck into a dark crease in a high wall. A slender crack where the giants couldn't fit, Hakiim guessed, and steered for it, a hand in front lest he smack his head. Reiver was already slipping sideways up another alley.
Something flickered in the thief's path. A black, bulky shape materialized out of thin air like a genie. Hakiim gargled a warning, too late.
Reiver plowed right into the monster, yet another giant looming higher than the tumbledown walls. Even with its native slowness, the magical giant had only to close a hand to clamp Reiver's neck and hoist the thief off the ground. Reiver kicked the giant's chest with bare feet and beat uselessly against a hand as big as a watermelon. The giant shook the thief like a puppy, so hard Reiver's tools and coins jingled, and he hung stunned.
Hakiim saw the capture and looked back to see the magical giant barreling after him with Reiver in one hand, and a bigger one tramping down the alley. Torn between fear and loyalty, Hakiim couldn't decide whether to flee or stay.
The giant called, 'Cease or I snap his neck. Stay!'
Hakiim stayed. Within a heartbeat the biggest giant, whose back the man had sliced with his scimitar, arrived. Hakiim flinched, and a hand like a wrecking ball knocked him to the alley floor. He tasted dust on split lips. Too stunned to pick up his head, he groaned as a massive foot stamped him flat. Lame, in pain, lacking air, he inhaled dust that burned his throat, felt his head swim, and sagged into darkness.
Propped against a broken wall, tied with rawhide hand and foot, Amber moved only her eyes. Her thigh stung like hornets from the spear barb. Her shoulder and arm felt wrenched, and she bit her lip against the throbbing. Hakiim was dragged by one foot like a dead fox and dumped at her feet, then trussed. Amber pricked her ears, heard Hakiim breathe, and relaxed a trifle.
Another giant-here were three-trudged from the ruins with Reiver over one shoulder. The giant bent and straightened his arm. The little thief slid down the arm and thumped on dust like a dropped bracelet, hands and ankles tied with a single thong of rawhide. Unlike Hakiim, the thief was alert but lay unmoving, eyes closed. Amber thought Reiver's nimble fingers fiddled at his ankle, but perhaps he simply scratched at fleas.
Dawn blazed along the eastern rim of the valley. As the light increased, Amber studied their captors. With daylight came heat, and the three let their robes hang open. Amber's eyes grew wide.
They were ogres, or rather, half-ogres, for these brutes stood only two heads higher than a man, not tree high like full-blooded ogres. Amber had only seen an ogre once, and it had been dead. A tribe of ogres had one night attacked her parents' slave train along the Trade Way. Two hired guards, ex-cavalry riders, killed one brute with lances and drove the others off. The mercenaries dragged the ogre all the way to Memnon in hopes of collecting a bounty, or at least selling the skeleton, but the carcass stank so badly they abandoned it outside the city walls to vultures and wild dogs.
These part-ogres had mannish features enlarged and grotesque: huge noses, jutting jaws, round ears like an ape's, low foreheads with tiny horn buds, and scruffy gray-white hair like a wolf's mane. Under their desert robes, just ill-stitched gray blankets, the menfolk wore raw horsehides slung over one shoulder and belted. The female wore a luxurious ivory fur with steel-gray spots. Amber identified it as a snow leopard's hide; very valuable, as that wily cat inhabited only the highest mountains. The giants wore little else, going barefoot on soles tough as camel pads, and wearing human swords-no doubt trophies-as long knives. Their mighty spears had fearsome barbed heads of hammered iron and more trophies.
Amber blanched. The bushy tatters that she'd taken for horsetails were human scalps, dried and laced in place. At least thirty were divided amongst the three ogres. Most scalps were black, but a few were red or blond. The young woman groaned, imagining her own wild curls dangling from drying flesh peeled from her skull.
The half-breed ogres argued in guttering tones like rocks rolling down a hillside, voices curiously alike, with the female's hardly higher. From their similar features, Amber concluded they were siblings.
Certainly they quarreled like brothers and a sister. The she-ogre had torn the Memnonites' purses from their belts, and with blunt, black fingernails she laboriously counted their hard-won coins while the others frowned and bitched. The biggest brother reached for Amber's silver tiara, but the sister growled and no one touched it. Perhaps they feared its magic, Amber thought; she was certainly leery of it herself. The sister and biggest brother, who'd only been scratched when Hakiim's scimitar cut wool and leather, obviously wanted to explore the ruins for more loot. The middle-sized brother, seven and a half feet tall, pointed to the valley rim. The oldest, he seemed a natural leader and certainly he was the quickest of mind. The sister only yelped as a small shape rocketed from under their feet.
Amber blinked. Reiver raced like a shaggy greyhound for a jumbled cellar hole. Wide cracks promised escape into the tunnels that honeycombed the city. Reiver must have slipped a small knife from an ankle sheath, Amber guessed. She thrilled to see her friend escape into the long shadows of peeking dawn light and wanted to whoop for happiness to hurry him along.
The elder ogre demonstrated why he led. A craggy hand arched over his head like a crippled bird as he gargled some tortured incantation. Instantly Reiver and the ruins were blotted out by a black fog, a patch of ethereal darkness. In the same moment, the middle ogre brushed aside his bigger brother, caught his nine-foot spear by the butt, and spun it sideways into the inky, enchanted pool. A resounding thwack reported a hit. The giant waggled thick fingers toward heaven, and the blackness faded like a dream. Reiver lay on his side, stunned, the big spear slanted across his skinny frame. Gamely the thief crawled on, but the leader tromped like a charging rhino, caught Reiver by both feet and banged his head against the dirt until the thief hung limp.
