their pursuer would be fooled. She tightened her grip until she felt her palm pressing into Kaedlaw’s jaw bone, then pinched his nostrils shut and started to count. If the firbolg was still here when she reached a hundred, she would order Thatcher to attack.
A firbolg’s deep voice rang down the corridor outside their hiding place. “It’s no use hiding, Queen,” he called. “We’re going to find you.”
Brianna felt her men tense and heard hand axes swishing from their sheaths.
“Not yet,” she whispered.
The firbolg was trying to draw them out. If he really knew they were here, he would be calling his fellows back, not yelling threats into the dark-that was what Brianna hoped.
The queen’s count reached twenty-five. Kaedlaw finally ran out of breath and fell silent, but he continued to struggle against the smothering hand. Outside the drift, the thunder of the main troop suddenly grew quieter, as though they had rounded a corner in some distant tunnel, and Brianna heard the rustle of heavy boots scuffing across the stone floor outside.
“What’s that bitter scent?” the firbolg called. “Is that giant spawn I smell?”
Brianna counted fifty, and she bit her tongue to keep from answering the insult with an attack order. The affront was the worst a firbolg could offer, for the enmity between ’kin and their true giant brethren dated back to the birth of their races.
The rumble of the firbolgs’ main troop had grown so muted that Brianna heard other voices in nearby passages. Like the pursuer in the drift outside, they were attempting to lure her from hiding by hurling taunts into the darkness. The queen counted seventy-five, and Kaedlaw stopped struggling in her arms.
An icy fist closed around Brianna’s heart, but she did not dare remove her hand from the child’s face. She could see her men’s heads silhouetted against the light of the firbolg’s flickering torch. The warrior would certainly hear the slightest gurgle. She already feared that her own throbbing pulse was loud enough to give the party away, and she smelled her own sweat growing heavy beneath the sulfurous stench of the drift. It would not be much longer, she knew, before the odor grew thick enough to reach the warrior outside.
“Think about what you’re doing, Queen,” the firbolg called. “The wicked twin will slay his brother to assure ascension to your throne. A strong queen-a good mother-would protect both her kingdom and her worthy child. She would give the giant spawn to us.”
Brianna counted eighty-five. She slipped her fingertips under Kaedlaw’s jaw and searched for a pulse. She could not find one, and the infant remained as still as death. The queen silently called upon Hiatea to protect her child. In reply, she heard the dark, angry voice of another god, one who promised that if the firbolgs forced her to smother her own child, her vengeance would be as terrible as her grief.
Brianna shuddered. She did not want vengeance; she wanted to escape with her child.
At ninety-five, the queen heard Raeyadfourne’s weak, raspy voice call out from the fork. “Let’s go, Claegborne,” he said. “We’ll have trouble enough catching the others.”
The warrior did not reply. The tunnel fell so quiet that Brianna could hear Claegborne’s torch hissing and sputtering. The firbolg had to be within two or three paces of her hiding place. A strange, muted rumble sounded inside her skull, and the queen realized she was grinding her teeth. She stopped, fearing her pursuer had already heard the noise.
The count reached a hundred.
“Stop wasting my time,” Raeyadfourne ordered. “If you’ve found something, say so.”
A pair of heavy steps sounded from the fork as Raeyadfourne started down the passage. Brianna opened her mouth to order the attack, then the torchlight outside suddenly dimmed.
“Don’t trouble yourself.” Claegborne started back toward Raeyadfourne. “I smelled something, but it was just brimstone blowing up the passage. This tunnel must connect to the bottom of the mine.”
The icy fist inside Brianna’s chest clamped down, squeezing so hard that she feared her heart would burst. Kaedlaw had already been without air for nearly two minutes, but she forced herself to keep her palm over his face as she listened to the firbolg withdraw. The thought that she might be smothering her own child left the queen shivering and queasy, but she would feel no better if the firbolgs returned to murder him before her eyes.
Finally, the heavy steps of the two firbolgs abruptly faded to muted thumps as they reached the fork and started up the opposite tunnel. Brianna pulled her hand from Kaedlaw’s face, ready to slap it back at the slightest hint of a grumble. When the child made no sound, she wet her fingers and held them before his nostrils, alert for the faintest stir of breath.
The queen felt nothing but the drift’s sulfurous breeze.
“Someone strike me a light,” Brianna commanded. “Thatcher, go to the fork and keep a watch for our enemies.”
A noisy rustling filled the cramped darkness as the front riders scurried to obey. Brianna placed her lips over Kaedlaw’s nose and mouth and blew a slow, gentle breath into his lungs. When he did not cry out, she pressed lightly on his abdomen to push the air back out, then repeated the process. As she worked, she heard the sharp crack of someone breaking a lance, then the shrill rip of cloth. A cork popped as it was pulled from a flask, then the pungent reek of torch oil filled the passage. Brianna silently begged her son to breathe, but he did not cry out or gasp.
A front rider scratched a flint across a striking steel, filling the tunnel outside with brief sparkles of white light. Forgetting about her own wound, the queen used both hands to raise her son’s chest to her ear. She heard a single, feeble thump, then nothing. “I need that light!”
The queen cradled her son in the crook of her elbow, then blew another gentle breath into his lungs. A tiny orange light flickered at the end of the passage. It gradually grew bright enough to reveal the form of a man squatting in the tunnel outside, blowing gently on a small pile of burning tinder. It took only a moment for the flame to grow steady enough for a second man to light the head of a makeshift torch. He passed the brand into the cockeyed drift, handing it to the front rider at Brianna’s feet.
As the torchlight fell over her son, the queen cried out in alarm. Kaedlaw’s handsome face was gone. In its place was an ugly round visage with brown eyes, a pug nose, and puffy cheeks. The infant’s lips had suddenly become meaty and bluish. He had a mouthful of snaggleteeth and a rolling double chin, and he looked as cold as a statue.
“What is it, Majesty?” asked Gryffitt. “He isn’t dead?” “I don’t know yet.”
The queen looked up and realized that she was the only one who could see her son’s new face. Gryffitt was standing on the low ground behind her, and the man at her feet had to reach across his chest to hold the torch for her. He could not look in her direction without staring directly into the flame.
Brianna placed her thumbs over her son’s sternum and began to press down in the rhythm of her own heart. Kaedlaw opened his mouth, unleashing a belch as deep and foul as an ogre’s growl. A blue sparkle appeared in his brown eyes, his meaty lips pursed out to suck a lungful of air, then, all at once, his heavy jowls disappeared, his teeth straightened, his nose lengthened, and once more he was her handsome young son.
The change puzzled Brianna only briefly, for she quickly decided what she had seen was an illusion. Those who lost too much blood often became disoriented and confused. The transformation had been no more than a hallucination of her blood-starved brain. The queen was sure of that.
“Majesty, what of the child?” Gryffitt asked. “Is he well?”
“He’s going to be fine,” Brianna answered.
All the front riders sighed in relief.
“Then perhaps we should see to you, Majesty,” Gryffitt suggested. “Unless we finish Avner’s work, I fear…”
The front rider let his sentence trail off, apparently thinking better of what he had almost said.
“It’s okay, Gryffitt. I’m no more anxious to make an orphan of Kaedlaw than you are. Take me into the tunnel.” Brianna clutched her son more tightly to her breast, then added, “And Hiatea have mercy on the firbolg that makes me cover my son’s mouth again.”
Tavis stood at the tunnel wall, peering into the black throat of a crooked, craggy-sided chimney that yawned overhead like the serpentine gullet of a famished wyvern. Mountain Crusher’s recurved tip pointed up the gloomy shaft at a slight angle. Only the high scout’s firm grip kept the weapon, still glowing with magical blue light, from flying up the hole of its own accord. Brianna was up there somewhere, at least if the bow’s seeking rune was to be
