Brianna shook her head. “No, not today.”
The queen finally realized why she wasn’t afraid. Even from across the lake, she could see heads tipping back as the giants yawned, or bodies swaying from side to side as they shifted their weight back and forth. They were bored. Brianna knew enough about battle to realize that any number of emotions might run through a warrior’s heart in the moments before combat, but lethargy wasn’t one of them.
“You can tell your men to get some rest,” Brianna said. “They’re putting on a show for us.”
“A show? Why don’t they just attack?” Cuthbert’s voice sounded as brittle as ice. “All this waiting… it’s very wearing on the men, I can tell you that”
For the first time since the earl had entered the room, Brianna glanced down at him and saw the dark bags under his eyes. He was already dressed for battle, with his breastplate, vambraces, and greaves cinched down tightly. He carried his helmet under one arm, and his heavy axe was leaning against the doorjamb.
“I don’t mind the wait,” Brianna said. “Our reinforcements should be arriving within two days. The longer the wait, the better-don’t you think, Earl?”
“Yes, of course,” Cuthbert replied, his face reddening. “I don’t mean to imply I’m anxious to lose my castle. But the waiting makes no sense. I hope the hill giants don’t know more than we do.”
“That’s certainly possible,” Brianna allowed. “We have no idea whether T-Ta-, er… whether my bodyguard actually reached Wendel Manor. They would know if he failed.”
Cuthbert nodded. “That’s what worries me. They’re acting too confident, like they know everything we might do.” He fell silent, then shook his head. “Maybe I shouldn’t have let Arlien go, after all. But on the chance that he is a spy, I thought it’d be better to have him outside the castle. Even if he returns, I don’t think I’ll let-”
“I miss him.”
Cuthbert furrowed his brow. “Milady?”
Brianna did not answer immediately. The words had slipped from her lips before she realized she had uttered them, and she was trying to figure out why. The queen wasn’t aware of any longing for Arlien, or of any other feeling except the vague suspicion that it was wiser not to be alone with the prince.
“Majesty, did you say you missed Prince Arlien?”
“I believe I did.” She said it quietly, as though admitting something rather distasteful.
The earl scowled. “Does that mean you want me to admit him into the castle if he returns?”
Brianna tried to consider the question, but when she pondered the possibility that Arlien might be a spy, her thoughts began to wander in a hundred different directions. She found herself lost in her clouded minded.
“Milady?” Cuthbert asked. “Should I-”
“Do what you think is best, Earl!” Brianna was surprised at the tone of her voice, for she had not intended the reply to be a sharp one. “Now, please excuse me. I don’t think I’m feeling well, after all.”
The avalanche had hit the spruce copse with the power of Stronmaus. The edge of the stand had been reduced to an impassable tangle of snapped and splintered trees packed in a powdery wall of snow. Avner had walked Graytusk the length of the barrier several times, looking for a way to cross. The combination of soft snow and tangled logs made it impossible for the mammoth to climb. They would have to find another way out onto the avalanche.
Avner stretched forward and tugged his mount’s ear, intending to go around the wall. Graytusk had other ideas. The mammoth pulled his ear from the youth’s hand, then walked up to the wall and dug his tusks into the snow. He twisted his head about for a short time and wrapped his long trunk around a broken spruce. With a loud snort, the beast slowly backed away, filling the copse with sharp bangs and cracks as he tore a hole in the snowy barrier. Avner cringed at the loud sounds, fearing the frost giants might hear it, but allowed his mount to finish the job. If Hagamil’s warriors were still within earshot, the damage was already done.
Graytusk repeated the procedure a dozen more times before the painful radiance of sunlight on snow came pouring through the breach. Avner and his mount both turned their heads aside, allowing their eyes to adjust to the brilliance. The boy took the opportunity to rub the bony dome atop the mammoth’s head. Even that gentle contact sent waves of searing pain hissing up the youth’s arm. Last night’s blizzard had left his hand, as well as his face and other extremities, badly frostbitten. When Tavis’s fire had warmed him enough for the circulation to return, the pain had been so bad that he had nearly left his shelter and crawled back into the storm.
Avner pulled his aching hand away. “Good job, Graytusk,” he said. “I hope you figure out the rest of my plan that easily.”
The mammoth snorted impatiently, then turned and climbed into the gorgelike breach. On the slope above Avner could see a huge triangle of rocky outcroppings and grass exposed by last night’s avalanche. The apex was located directly beneath a narrow chute cutting through a high cliff of blond granite.
The youth knew Tavis had started the avalanche. He had heard the muffled booms of two exploding runearrows. The entire copse had begun to tremble, then there had been a tremendous crashing and banging as tons of snow slammed into the spruce stand. Avner had gone outside to see what was happening, but a scouring torrent of snow had driven him back into his den. Now, with the sun hanging in a cloudless blue sky and the temperature hovering a little below freezing, he found it difficult to remember how terrible last night’s blizzard had been.
Once they reached the other side of the gorge Graytusk had opened, the mammoth had little trouble climbing onto the avalanche fan. The snow here was well packed. Five frost giants had spent the early part of the morning trampling it down, haphazardly thrusting long spears into the snow in an attempt to locate Tavis’s buried body. Finally, as the sun climbed toward its zenith, they had given up and left, complaining bitterly about all the time they had wasted when they were supposed to be on their way to catch Brianna.
Because Avner had been watching them the entire time, he knew that a random search was unlikely to uncover the scout. Nor could he hope to make a methodic search of the avalanche. It was too large and too deep for him to succeed, especially considering the condition of his feet and hands. If the youth intended to find Tavis, he would need a better method.
That was where Graytusk’s sensitive nose would prove useful.
Avner guided the mammoth toward the center of the avalanche fan, more or less directly beneath the chute. Tavis had taught him that it was important to work quickly when searching for people buried in snow, since most victims suffocated within an hour of being buried. Thankfully, that applied more to wet, heavy snow than this fluffy stuff. A firbolg could probably last longer in this powder-exactly how much longer, the youth could not say-and there were things a victim could do to help himself, like crossing his arms in front of his face. Avner remembered Tavis drilling that into him time after time, saying it would double or even triple the amount of time before the air ran out So, if he assumed the scout would last twice as long in light snow as the heavy wet stuff, that would be two hours, and tripling that for knowing what to do would give him six hours.
By the youth’s best guess, Tavis had now been buried for twelve hours.
Avner shoved the thought aside. The boy intended to keep looking until he found his friend, and it wouldn’t matter if a week had passed. The youth turned his mount toward the chute. The frost giants had been in enough of a hurry that they hadn’t wasted time searching near the top of the avalanche, which was the least likely place for a victim to be buried.
Nevertheless, after watching the warriors search all morning, Avner had come to the conclusion that the top of the fan was the best place to start looking. If Tavis had been swept into the tangled mess at the copse’s edge, his body would hardly be worth finding, and the giants had already explored all the obvious accumulation zones in the middle part of the avalanche.
Besides, Avner thought it most likely that Tavis lay buried high up the slope. In last night’s blizzard, visibility on the open hillside would have been a mere foot or two, rendering a bow and arrows useless. But the scout would have been able to see much farther in the shelter of the gully, so he had almost certainly been in the chute when he fired the arrows. And if he had been at the top of the avalanche when it started, it seemed likely that he lay near the top now.
Graytusk left the trampled snow that the giants had already searched and waded into the deep powder higher up the slope. Avner stopped the beast here. From his satchel the youth withdrew one of the thistle roots Tavis had given him to eat earlier. He tossed it into the snow a few feet in front of the mammoth’s trunk.
The root sank out of sight. Graytusk plunged his nose into the snow and sniffed the root out, then slipped the morsel into his mouth. Avner dropped a rock he had collected in the spruce copse. Again, the mammoth dipped his
