“Majesty?” asked one of the front riders. “The trail is our only chance of outrunning-”
“Do as the queen says.” It was Avner’s voice. In spite of the loose ground, the young scout had approached them as quietly as always. “She knows what she’s doing.”
Avner laid Brianna’s satchel next to her, then stepped to the front of the litter and grabbed hold. The party had barely gone fifteen yards before three fire giants reached the bottom of the plume, their coppery eyes sparkling with bloodlust and their swarthy lips twisted into green-toothed snarls. Each time the brutes exhaled, wisps of yellow vapor poured from their nostrils, and Brianna smelled the bitter stench of brimstone.
The leader leveled his sword at the queen’s litter-bearers and opened his mouth to speak-then a roaring clamor rose at his back. A wall of hairy firbolgs poured over the crest of the slide, their long beards streaming in the wind and their huge axes whirling above their heads. The eyes of the giants turned as yellow as their flaming swords, and they spun around to find a tide of fur-clad warriors swirling about their hips.
The battle did not begin so much as erupt. The fire giants lashed out wildly with their swords, slicing off burly arms and slashing into thick chests, filling the air with the charnel-house stench of spilled entrails and scorched flesh. The firbolgs countered with a flurry of axes, and soon the knelling of their weapons against the giants’ black armor overwhelmed even the thunderous bellows of the wounded and the dying.
Avner led the queen’s party to the edge of the slide, then released his hold on her litter and pulled his sling from inside his cloak. Brianna did not have to ask what he was doing, for a single fire giant had escaped the battle and was angling up the canyon wall to cut them off. Nevertheless, she caught the young scout’s sleeve before he could go.
“Avner…”
Brianna could barely hear her own voice above the battle clamor, but she did not have the strength to speak louder. She was shaking uncontrollably-from the pain, not the cold-and her body felt entirely too weak and achy for the strenuous business of delivering a baby. She pulled Avner close to her mouth.
“Avner… thank you, for believing me… not Galgadayle.”
Avner gently pulled his sleeve from her grasp. “I’m just keeping my promise to Tavis,” he said. “I’m not really sure what to believe.”
As Avner spoke, the baby shifted and slowly began to drop toward Brianna’s pelvis. The horrible pain in her stomach subsided almost instantly, and everything below her waist suddenly felt loose and open.
“You’d better go kill that giant,” the queen said. “And find someplace for us to hide-we’ll know soon enough who to believe.”
4
The queen’s cry broke from the tunnel, as shrill and piercing as the shriek of a striking wyvern. Avner cringed and prayed that the keening wind would swallow the sound before it reached the ears of their enemies. He crawled on his belly to the edge of the rock dump and peered into the darkening canyon, where he saw a swarm of firbolgs on the trails far below. The entire troop had stopped climbing and tipped their heads back. They were too distant to tell if any of the warriors were looking toward the Silver Duchess, the mine where the queen’s party had taken refuge, but the young scout was careful to keep his chin close to the ground.
Avner counted thirty burly silhouettes spread across the bottom of the slope. That was many fewer firbolgs than before the battle with the fire giants, but it was far more than the queen’s small party could hope to turn back. After killing the last fire giant, Avner had only one magic runebullet left for his sling. The front riders had no missile weapons at all.
The young scout cast a longing glance over his shoulder. Less than a hundred yards above, the gorge’s crooked lip hung silhouetted against the purple twilight sky. He had hoped to make it over that crest and join the border scouts patrolling the canyon rims, but the party had been forced to hide in the Silver Duchess so Brianna could deliver her baby. The birth was taking much longer than Avner had expected. He tried to stay calm, telling himself that the battle’s thunderous clamor had certainly alerted the patrols to the trouble in the canyon. He did not understand why a company of his fellows wasn’t running down the slope now.
“Tavisssss, you baaaarrggh!”
Brianna’s curse became an incoherent, grating wail that made Avner’s teeth ache. He looked back into the canyon and saw firbolgs pointing up the slope every which way. A few fingers were aimed in the direction of the Silver Duchess. The young scout pushed himself back across the rock dump into the shelter of the tunnel mouth, then stood up. A faint draft wafted out of the dark hole, so gentle it was almost imperceptible, save for the stale heat and dank granite smell on its musty breath. Five front riders sat just inside the portal, looking out over the canyon and self-consciously trying not to seem too interested in what was happening deeper in the mine.
Fifteen paces beyond them, at the creeping black edge of the mine’s gloom-cloaked throat, the queen was squatting over her fur cloak. She was naked, save for the flaming spear talisman hanging around her neck. There were baggy, dark circles beneath her violet eyes, which had themselves grown almost black with pain. Her skin was as pale as snow, her mouth twisted into a hideous, gaping grimace by the anguish racking her body. Runnels of tears and sweat streamed off her face to dribble on her blue-veined breasts, while her swollen belly throbbed with spasms so rapid and severe they made Avner wince and swear he would never be so cruel as to father a child.
The sixth front rider was kneeling in front of Brianna, holding his outstretched hands beneath the queen’s trembling hips. Although Gryffitt was an old married man, his face had a green tint visible even in the dim light. He kept averting his gaze, as though he could not quite bear what he was seeing. Only Blizzard, who stood nearly invisible in the murk beyond the queen, seemed at all easy with what was happening. The mare kept up a reassuring nicker, and once in while her snout appeared out of the darkness to give Brianna a comforting nuzzle.
Avner envied the horse’s unquestioning loyalty and compassion. He kept hearing Galgadayle’s warning about the twins and could not help feeling angry with Brianna. Love potion or not, if she had remained true to Tavis and sent the imposter away in the first place, there would be no question now of whose baby it was.
Brianna’s belly stopped throbbing, then several bands of muscle tightened around it like a belt. The queen’s eyes rolled back in her head and her mouth yawned open. Avner rushed to her side, at the same time pulling his frozen mitten off his hand.
“Majesty, don’t yell!” He slipped the edge of his mitten between her teeth, then said, “Bite down on this.”
Brianna turned her head and looked at him with a wild, bug-eyed glare. The mitten flew from her mouth, then a deafening shriek filled the dark passage. Avner had heard such a cry only once before, as a frost giant’s axe cleaved a warrior through at the hips, but that man had been fortunate enough to die a moment later. There was no telling when the queen’s agony would end.
Avner slipped one arm around Brianna’s shoulders and clamped his free hand over her mouth. The sound vibrated through his fingers and continued to reverberate off the dank walls, only slightly muted by his grasp.
“Milady, the firbolgs are coming!” Avner hissed.
Brianna glared into the young scout’s eyes. She clutched his wrist and used it to support herself. She felt as though she were slowly exploding from the inside out; her lower back ached with such a fiery, crushing pain that she wondered if her kidneys had been smashed. Her intestines had turned into writhing, searing snakes of anguish. The worst agony of all was her pelvis. She could feel her womb pushing the baby against the inner edge of the cavity, trying to force the infant out and managing only to drive barbed spikes of pain deep into her bones.
It would have been easier to squeeze a boulder through a keyhole. For several minutes now, Brianna had not felt the baby descend any farther, and she was growing weak. Her midwife had said that would not happen. Gerda had told her that Hiatea gave every mother the strength she needed to deliver her child, but the queen could feel her vigor fleeing her body on the wail she was breathing into Avner’s hand. Her infant was stuck.
“Majesty, the firbolgs will hear you,” Avner pleaded. “Please, you must be quiet!”
Brianna ripped Avner’s hand from her face. “Surtr… take the firbolgs!” she said, half groaning and half growling. She was surprised to find she could talk at all; a moment ago, she could force nothing out but wails of
