removed all the limbs he could reach, he propped Avner’s lethargic form against the bole. The boy’s skin still had a blue tint, and his pupils remained far too large but at least his breathing seemed regular.
Tavis shook the boy’s shoulders. “Avner! P-Pay at-t-tention!” There it was again, a firbolg stuttering.
The youth’s glassy eyes wandered toward the scout’s face, but remained unfocused. “Tlaaaavis?” His speech was so slurred that the scout could hardly understand it. “Did we ressssscue Bleeeeanna?”
“You’ve g-got to feed the f-fire,” Tavis said. He pointed to the branches he had piled near the campfire. “I’ve left you s-some wood. C–Can you do that?”
Avner’s eyes wandered to the pile. “Wood.” He nodded.
“It’s imp-p-portant. If you forget, you’ll d-die.”
The youth leaned forward and slipped his frozen fingers under a branch, then carefully balanced the stick as he moved it He did not seem to notice the flames licking his hand as he dropped the limb into the fire.
“Good,” Tavis said. “I can’t s-stay, Avner. I’m s-s-sorry.”
The youth nodded. “Queen.”
Tavis clasped Avner’s shoulder, relieved to see that he seemed to be recovering his wits. “That’s right,” he said. “I’m p-proud of you, Avner.”
“T-Tell me late-later.” The boy reached for another stick.
Wondering if that would be possible, Tavis turned to go. He felt something wet roll down his cheek, and the tear made it as far as his jawline before freezing solid. The little den was warming up nicely.
Outside, the scout trudged through the snow to another spruce and cut two dozen long boughs off the tree. He cleared the snow off a fallen log, then sat down to fashion a pair of makeshift snowshoes. He bent the flexible limbs under his boot soles and threaded the ends through the lacing eyelets. It was delicate work for stiff fingers, and the scout had to stop several times to warm his frozen hands in his armpits. Certainly, he could have finished more quickly inside Avner’s cozy den, but then his feet would have thawed. He did not want that. He could walk miles on frozen feet, but after they started to warm, the excruciating pain would make it impossible to take more than a few steps.
Once he had threaded the boughs through the eyelets, the scout secured them in place by slipping the ends under the leather laces. He cinched his boots down on the icy lumps that had been his feet and started walking. The makeshift snowshoes were far from ideal, but they served to keep him from sinking past his knees in the deep powder.
When he reached the edge of the copse, a stinging, blinding wall of snow once more assailed Tavis. He pulled the lodestone from his satchel and waited for it to swing northward, then stepped into the blizzard. Although it was impossible to see any hint of sky through the raging storm, the dim gray light suggested that the hour was slipping past twilight. Once night fell, the basin would change from howling white to roaring black. The firbolg would no longer be able to see the lodestone in his hand. If he was going to find the campfire he smelled, he had to do it before dark.
Within ten steps of leaving the copse, the scout found himself panting for breath. He kept stumbling, and his shivering grew worse. A knot of fear formed in Tavis’s stomach, for he knew what the signs meant. People grew fatigued and clumsy before they froze to death. The safe thing would be to return to the fire with Avner, but he could not warm himself without also thawing his feet, and then he’d still be lying beneath the spruce when the frost giants carried Brianna into the Twilight Vale.
The scout continued forward, thrusting Bear Driller into the snow like a staff. He soon found himself raising his arm each time he planted the tip of his bow and suddenly realized he was traveling uphill. With all of his reference points lost in a white blur and four feet of snow concealing the terrain, he had not perceived it at first, but he was climbing a slope.
The discovery did little to make Tavis feel better. Confusion was also a symptom of freezing, and the firbolg felt nothing if not obtuse. More importantly, so much fresh snow made avalanches a real possibility on any steep grade-and judging by the height he had to raise his knees, the slope beneath him was anything but gentle. At least the fluffy snow would take longer to suffocate him if he got swept away and buried.
Tavis tried not to think about how long he might survive beneath tons of snow-one scout had lasted more than a week before a patrol noticed his boot-and continued to climb.
Sometime after his legs began to tremble and his lungs to ache, the scout smelled burning spruce-not the fleeting, acrid whiffs he had been sniffing up until now, but a steady, mordant stream of smoke. It was rolling down the hill, straight into his face, and now he could smell something else, as well: burned meat Tavis continued his climb, forcing himself to maintain the same soft tread.
Sometime later, the sound of the wind faded to a steady whistle and the scout found himself ascending a steep, narrow gorge flanked by cliffs of blond granite. The chute could have been a couloir high on the side of Split Mountain, or merely a gully cutting through a low hill; with the light fading to black and a torrent of swirling snow choking the passage, Tavis had no way to tell. But he did know two things: the passage was the ideal place for an avalanche, and the smell of roasting meat hung in the wind so thickly that his mouth had begun to water.
Tavis put his lodestone away, then stepped over to a cliff and found two secure handholds. He stomped on the snow several times, ready to transfer his weight to his arms if he dislodged the white mass. When it did not slide, he decided the chute was stable enough to climb and lowered himself back into the gully. He continued up the gulch a long time, stopping every twenty steps to repeat the test, until the last vestiges of light seeped from the storm. The odor of roasted meat-he thought it might be pork-was stronger than ever, and the scout felt warmer just smelling it. He blindly continued up the chute, sweeping Bear Driller back and forth to keep the walls located.
After a time, the scout heard voices-not words, just voices-mingled with the whistling of the wind. Then he saw a flickering orange light gleaming off the walls ahead, and what looked like the crest of the chute. Tavis stopped. He slipped his frozen hands into his armpits and concentrated on breathing in a slow, steady rhythm. Now that he knew where Julien and Arno had made their camp, the firbolg could picture the terrain above. They were probably camped in the shelter of a dry overflow gulch, at the bottom end of an alpine lake. He was climbing up what would be a waterfall when spring melt-water swelled the pond and sent it pouring over its shores. When he attacked, there would be little maneuvering room for his foes. He would kill them both simply and quickly. The most dangerous part of the rescue would be retreating down this avalanche gully with Brianna.
When Tavis’s cold fingers finally felt limber enough to draw a bowstring, he fumbled in his quiver until he found his last two runearrows. He put one shaft between his teeth and the other in his hand, then climbed to the top of the chute. He stopped behind the crest and knelt in the snow.
About thirty paces ahead, the flickering yellow light of a bonfire cut axelike through the blizzard, illuminating the entire width of the gully. On one side of the gulch sat a figure no larger than a hill giant, his back braced against the wall and a haunch of scorched meat in each hand. The scout could see only the profile of the giant’s face, but that was enough to determine that the fellow was a pale-skinned brute with a pug nose and a greasy double chin. The fine ermine cloak over his broad shoulders seemed a strange contrast to his slovenly visage.
In front of the giant, the bonfire’s flames licked at a spit holding the remains of a good-sized animal. Much of the creature was gone, so it took Tavis a moment to identify it-and when he did, he wished he had not. Knowing that his mouth had watered at the smell of roasting human sent a shiver down his spine.
On the other side of the bonfire, just at the edge of the bonfire’s light, sat Hagamil’s large form. One of the frost giant’s wrists ended in a bloody bandage, while his face looked as haggard and weary as the scout felt. The chieftain was gnawing hungrily on a human arm.
Tavis saw no sign of a third giant, Prince Arlien, or Brianna. He felt certain that the giants would not have roasted the queen after all they had gone through to capture her, but that knowledge did not prevent a terrible, cold ache from sinking into his bones. He spent a moment trying to eavesdrop on their conversation, but heard nothing more than a series of deep-throated murmurs. He slipped over the crest of the chute and crept forward, swimming through the snow more than crawling through it. As he moved, the scout kept a watchful eye on Hagamil, who was the most likely of the giants to notice him.
A short distance later, Tavis found he could understand the giants’ words. He stopped and stuck the runearrows in the snow beside him, then slipped his hands into his armpits and listened.
“… came as fast as we could, Arno.” It was Hagamil, sounding both apologetic and exhausted.
“But you haven’t got Tavis Burdun!” Arno shook one of his meat haunches-it was a human thigh-at the frost giant “We said bring him here!”
