sight. Through the tower, Prince Arlien would have access to the ramparts of the inner curtain and, eventually, to the keep itself.
Earl Cuthbert reacted more slowly, simply bracing himself against the wall of the gate tower and staring toward the keep as if he couldn’t quite comprehend what was happening. When no more arrows came arcing across the ward, he finally seemed to recover from his shock. He waved a dozen soldiers over and tried to follow Arlien into the gate tower, but the door did not open. The earl spun around, leading his small company across the ward toward the dungeon tower.
“Basil, there’s a secret tunnel in that tower.” Avner pointed toward the earl’s destination. “I think it leads to the keep. Arlien and Cuthbert will trap Tavis between them!”
Basil furrowed his brow. “We can’t know what Cuthbert intends, but I suppose we must assume the worst” The verbeeg pulled his massive head back into the chamber, then thrust the silver chalice into Avner’s hand. “Take this to Arlien’s room. Somewhere, you’ll find a vial or flagon filled with a magic potion. Pour that into this goblet and have Brianna drink it. Then tell her to await Tavis in the temple.”
“And what are you going to do?” Avner asked.
“Catch Tavis and send him to the temple, of course.”
Tavis rushed across the narrow drawbridge toward a small tower on the rear wall of the inner curtain. Each breath brought with it the sickening stench of battle: the coppery fetor of spilled blood, the acrid reek of flaming oil, the charred rankness of burning flesh. The scout seemed to stumble every third step, for he felt as though he were walking on someone else’s mangled feet. Although he was wearing Brianna’s ice diamonds around his neck, the cold stones merely replaced his agony with icy numbness. They did nothing to heal the firbolg.
Tavis worried that the necklace’s enchantment would leave him as befuddled as Brianna, but he suspected the spell worked its magic gradually so as not to be noticed. So far, he seemed to be right, for he hadn’t noticed any ill effects. Besides, the scout had little choice except to wear the jewelry. Without the relief of the frigid gems, his battered body simply would not function well enough for battle.
The scout reached the far end of the bridge and stepped into the fortified tower. He traveled down a short corridor lined by murder holes, then opened a heavy oaken door into the tower’s main room. In the center of the chamber stood two of Selwyn’s Winter Wolves, busily reloading their tripod-mounted crossbows.
A hill giant thrust his enormous fingers through one of the arrow loops that overlooked the castle’s rear bailey. The entire tower trembled as the brute hammered at the exterior wall. One of the Winter Wolves locked his bowstring into place, then slipped a long iron quarrel into his weapon’s firing groove. He dragged the heavy crossbow forward and fired through the arrow loop containing the giant’s hand. The brute bellowed, then the pounding stopped and the enormous fingers vanished from sight.
Tavis slipped his bow, taken from the keep armory, over his shoulder. He replaced it with a shield and battle axe that he borrowed from one of the Winter Wolves. Having watched his arrows bounce harmlessly off Arlien’s armor, the scout now realized the only way to stop the prince was in close-quarters combat.
Fortunately, that would be easy to arrange. The single avenue into the keep was across the drawbridge that Tavis had just crossed. The one path to the bridge was through this bridge tower, and the only route into the tower was along the top of the inner curtain. The scout intended to meet Arlien as far down the ramparts as possible, then fight him every step of the way.
Tavis left the tower and limped along the rear wall toward one of the great corner towers of the inner curtain. The battle din grew more distinct than it had been in the keep, with boulder after boulder pounding the walls, ballista skeins crackling like lightning, and the dirge of dying warriors echoing over the ward.
The scout hardly noticed the clamor. His attention was locked on the inner curtain’s western rampart, where he expected to see Arlien at any moment. Picking out the prince’s armored form would not be easy. A pall of black smoke covered much of the rampart’s length, and the rubble of shattered merlons choked the few visible sections of wall. Bleeding and dazed men were everywhere, lying half-buried under debris, wandering aimlessly along the walkways, sitting in pools of oil that had not yet caught fire.
As Tavis approached the corner tower, he caught a glimpse of Selwyn. The captain was about halfway down the rampart, sprinting alongside a dozen of his Winter Wolves. With tabards singed, helmets missing, and breastplates torn half off, they all looked terribly battered. That did not stop them from hefting their axes and charging into the smoke with a chilling battle howl. The scout caught a glimpse of the red-bearded soldier he had sent to warn Selwyn about Arlien’s identity, then the entire group vanished from sight.
Tavis rushed through the corner tower, which was a larger version of the bridge tower, and threw open the door leading to the western rampart. In the smoke ahead, he heard the harsh clang of steel on steel. Selwyn’s voice cried out in pain.
Tavis limped toward the howl as fast as he could. The scout had lurched forward no more than five steps when he spied the captain and two soldiers backing out of the smoke. All three Winter Wolves were soaked with blood. Arlien followed close behind, his armor and weapons smeared with crimson-none of it from his own wounds. The prince fixed his gaze on Selwyn, then shrieked wildly and charged. The three Winter Wolves spread across the rampart, lifting their own weapons to meet the attack.
Arlien tore into them like a whirlwind, crushing the outside man’s breastplate with a hammer strike so powerful that it flung his disjointed body into a merlon. The prince took the second Winter Wolf on the back swing. The blow easily overpowered the fellow’s guard and smashed his head in the same stroke.
Selwyn countered with a vicious strike to the midsection, but the battle axe merely chimed off Arlien’s enchanted armor. The prince smashed the heft of his hammer into the captain’s head. The steel helmet split in two, Selwyn collapsed at the prince’s feet, and the battle was done in the time it had taken Tavis to travel four steps.
Arlien kicked Selwyn’s body aside, then looked down the rampart toward the firbolg. “Tavis Burdun,” he said. “I thought it would take more than an avalanche to kill you.”
“It will.” Tavis hefted his battle axe. “Much more.”
17
From the keep roof, the battle seemed a thing as murky and frenzied as the queen’s whirling thoughts. To the east, fifty men stood on the ramparts of the inner curtain, hurling boulders and flaming oil down on a long file of cone-shaped helmets, all Brianna could see of the frost giants fighting toward the castle’s rear bailey. To the west, dozens of hill giant rafts were burning out on the lake, pouring so much smoke through the battered remnants of the outer curtain that the outer ward had disappeared beneath an unfathomable sea of gray fume.
The queen hardly had a better view of the ramparts themselves. Pools of burning oil were steadily creeping down the walkways and dribbling into the inner ward, filling the air with clouds of dark, greasy smoke that permitted only intermittent views of the debris-choked ramparts. When Brianna did catch a glimpse of the walls, she saw corpses and wounded lying everywhere, trapped beneath the rubble of shattered merlons or strewn among the splinters of smashed ballistae.
The queen’s shoulders slumped under a guilty weight. She ached to send the keep guard down to help the men on the walls, but she knew that would accomplish nothing. The battle was already lost, and committing her last reserves would make the giants’ final victory only easier. It would be better to wait here and make the enemy attack the keep’s formidable defenses. The small company would never hold, of course, but more giants would fall. Brianna owed her soldiers that much.
A short distance from the rear corner tower, two plumes of smoke temporarily drifted apart, revealing Arlien’s armored form striding along the ramparts. Several paces in front him stood Brianna’s battered bodyguard. The firbolg still wore her ice diamonds, but he was now armed with a shield and battle axe. A cold queasiness filled the queen’s stomach, and she found her hand drifting toward her bare throat.
Brianna heard someone approaching from the center of the roof, then Avner cried, “What’s Tavis doing down there? He’s in no condition to fight!”
