melded so completely with his own skin that he could not grasp the edge. He flailed about blindly and found his sword belt, then drew his dagger from its scabbard. He had trouble holding the handle, for he did not seem able to close his fingers around the hilt. He took it between his thumb and forefinger like a needle, then pressed the tip behind his ear.
That was when the scout heard a whistling wind and felt the air being drawn into his lungs. His Adam’s apple remained painfully swollen, but it no longer prevented him from breathing. As his foggy vision began to clear, he rolled his dagger between his fingers. It felt more like a thorn than a dirk. The weapon had shrunk-or rather, he had grown larger.
Avner pushed the end of a sturdy tree limb under the enormous stone, then laid the middle of his makeshift lever on a fir trunk fulcrum. Holding the setup in place with one foot, he peered around the boulder into the gorge below. He was standing on the canyon rim directly above the beaver dam, just high enough so he could see over the waterfall to where the frost giants were fording the stream. The first two had already waded across and started climbing the steep slope on the other side. The leader and most of the others remained out of sight, hidden behind a bulge in the canyon wall.
Avner sighed in disappointment. He had hoped all the giants would cross the ford at the same time, but they had grown too wary to make such mistakes. The youth had been pushing boulders down on them all morning, and once he had even sent a log jam down the stream, nearly catching them as they waded across a stretch of churning rapids. His exertions were taking a heavy toll on his strength, and he feared this might be the last ambush he had the energy to prepare.
Avner slipped behind his boulder and peered over the top, checking the details of his plan one last time. On the other side of the stone, a steep slope descended twenty paces to the gorge rim. Forty feet below that, no more than ten paces from the canyon wall, lay the beaver dam. If everything went as intended, the rock would smash the stick barricade apart. He had hoped the resulting flood would sweep the entire giant party away, but he would be happy enough if it delayed them for a few minutes.
The youth was about to put his plan into action when he noticed the gray figure of a stone giant slipping out of the trees. The fellow was on the other side of the pond, coming down the canyon toward the frost giants. Avner could not make out the face, but after hearing Gavorial’s name at the farm, he knew who he was seeing.
The youth decided to delay his ambush and see what came of the meeting. Besides, if he attacked before Gavorial passed the beaver dam, it would be a simple matter for the stone giant to cross the stream and capture him.
Soon Avner could see the giant well enough to recognize Gavorial’s arrow-shaped nose and slender jaw. The youth continued to watch as the giant passed the beaver pond. Instead of descending the steep gully to meet the frost giants, Gavorial climbed into the narrow channel below the dam and crossed the stream. He walked to the edge of the waterfall and braced himself on the gorge wall, then leaned over to peer down at the frost giants below, where a third warrior was crossing the ford.
“Go back!” Gavorial yelled, speaking in Common. The stone giant’s rough voice easily overwhelmed the rumbling waterfall. “I have no need of you here!”
“That is not for you to say, Sharpnose!” The frost giant’s throaty words were less distinct than Gavorial’s, but still understandable. “Julien and Arno bade you wait in the pass. Why have you defied them?”
“I have done battle,” Gavorial answered. “And now Tavis Burdun will not cross Shepherd’s Nightmare.”
“You killed him?”
“All that he owned is mine,” the stone giant confirmed.
Gavorial’s words struck Avner like a warhammer, filling his breast with a dull, crushing pain. He stumbled back and barely noticed as he tripped over his fulcrum.
“No!” Avner gasped. “Nobody can kill Tavis Burdun-not even Gavorial!”
The youth remained where he was, trying to understand the impossible things he was hearing.
“Tavis was to be ours!” The frost giant’s words echoed up from the gorge. “You robbed us!”
“You were too slow,” Gavorial replied. “The battle started before you arrived.”
“Through no fault of our own, Sharpnose!” the leader growled. “You left a traell on the farm. He slowed us.”
“A human?” Gavorial’s voice sound doubtful. “A single human stopped so many frost giants?”
“A single human you could not kill,” the frost giant countered. “Perhaps because you wanted him to slow us down, so you could present the body of Tavis Burdun to Julien and Arno!”
Noting that this was the second time the giant had referred to Julien and Arno, Avner repeated the names so he would not forget them before he saw Tavis. In spite of Gavorial’s words, he could not bring himself to believe the scout was dead.
“There is no corpse,” the stone giant called.
“No corpse?” the frost giant stormed. “Why not?”
“The battle was fierce,” Gavorial explained. “When it was over, a few drops of Tavis’s blood were all that lay on the tundra.”
“Hagamil will not believe that, and neither will I!” The frost giant sounded almost happy. “Without a body, how do we know you really killed him?”
“Perhaps this will persuade you.”
Avner peered over the boulder and saw Gavorial holding a hickory bow. Though the weapon looked almost tiny compared to the enormous stone giant, the youth instantly recognized it as Tavis’s Bear Driller.
A fiery red light blossomed inside Avner’s head, then a churning storm of rage and pain boiled up inside him. Tavis was the only father the orphan had ever known.
“Liar!” Avner yelled. “You could never kill Tavis!”
Gavorial twisted around, his mouth hanging agape. The frost giant leader reacted more forcefully, shouting a string of orders in his tribal language. The three warriors that had already crossed the stream glanced up to see where Avner’s voice had come from, then resumed climbing at double speed.
“This is for Tavis!” Avner yelled.
The youth scrambled up the slope and pushed down on his lever. The stone tipped forward and hung there. Avner yelled in frustration and threw all his weight onto the limb. The rock broke free with a soft grating, then rumbled down the slope.
Tavis was still wondering why Avner was in the canyon when the boulder came bouncing down the slope. The scout watched the stone sail off the cliff top and arc toward the beaver dam, and then he understood at least one thing: the youth was the traell who had been harassing the frost giants-and he was far from finished.
Tavis slipped Bear Driller into Gavorial’s mouth-the firbolg found it difficult to think of the enormous gray body as his own-and reached for a handhold on the canyon wall. Avner’s boulder smashed into the beaver dam with an ear-splitting crash. Shards of wet, broken stick flew down the canyon as far as the waterfall. Tavis dug his fingers into a small ledge and scraped his feet along the rocky face, searching in vain for knob or shelf on which to step.
A loud, gurgling roar rumbled down the gorge. Tavis looked upstream and saw a frothing wall of water and sticks boiling toward him. The pond was draining fast, ripping the dam apart in great hunks.
Tavis stopped searching for a foothold and pulled with his hands alone. Gavorial’s body rose off the ground, but the effort of lifting such an immense bulk was even more exhausting than Basil had warned. The scout’s fingers felt like they would rip from his hands, while his shoulders and forearms already burned with fatigue. He continued to drag himself up the cliff, knowing his pain would be worse if he allowed the flood to sweep him over the waterfall.
The scout’s chin had barely risen as far as the tiny ledge when the waters caught his feet Gavorial’s massive body slipped sideways. Tavis jerked his legs out of the water and pressed his bent knees against the wall, trembling from the strain of holding the awkward position.
The firbolg peered down. It seemed an immense distance from his head to the churning flood below. The raging waters were continuing to rise, scraping at his toes with sharp sticks torn loose from the dam. A snort of exhaustion shot from Tavis’s large nostrils, and his breath began to come in short, panicked spurts. He had to fight his own instincts to keep Bear Driller between his lips, for Gavorial’s oxygen-starved body demanded that he open
