Galgadayle and his bunch at the titan,” he said. “If we’re lucky, we’ll be the ones who survive to pick up the pieces.”
From the front of the keep rang the clamorous din of chains rattling off their spools, a sure sign that someone had knocked out the gate’s winch stops. A loud, shrill squeal echoed through the inner ward as the drawbridge, slowed by the friction of the immense chains, began its fall. The titan, who was kneeling over the long gallery that ran from the demolished red tower to the flag tower, stood and turned toward the sound.
Brianna cursed, for she had finally reached the tiny glass rod with which she hoped to escape. It had been a difficult process, and not only because her captor’s grip was like steel. It had required both patience and tenacity not to alarm him as she worked her hand over to the strap of her spell satchel, then pulled the sack around to where she could reach inside. Now, when she finally had the component in her grasp, Lanaxis was once again holding her three stories off the ground. There was a time when she would have taken the plunge gladly to escape him, but no longer. The titan wanted Kaedlaw, and she would not save her son by dying.
No sooner had the keep’s drawbridge boomed into place than a rumbling clatter erupted inside the entry-way. The titan limped over to the flag tower, and Brianna saw a small, mule-drawn cart racing across the ward. An armored guard sat in the driver’s seat, madly lashing the terrified beast in the harness. In the bed of the small wagon sat Avner, so tightly wrapped inside his heavy scout’s cloak that Brianna could see little more than his sandy beard. In his arms, he held her squirming son, snugly bundled inside a cocoon of furs. Kaedlaw clearly did not appreciate the rough ride, for he was struggling so hard that the young scout could barely hold him.
Ahead of the cart, the path was unobstructed clear into the outer bailey. Tavis and Basil had departed just a few minutes earlier, pausing at the inner curtain to open the ironclad gates. At the time, the act had puzzled Brianna as much as the withdrawal itself, but now she suspected her husband had been trying to create an escape route for Avner. Border scouts were trained to anticipate each other’s needs, and no pair had ever worked together better than Tavis and Avner.
Lanaxis limped around the flag tower, closing a quarter of the distance to the cart in two lurching strides. The queen silently beseeched her goddess’s blessing, at the same time pulling the glass rod from her spell satchel. Avner and her child were less than thirty paces from the gate. Lanaxis took another step and began to stoop over; in another stride he would have them. Brianna pushed her arms over the titan’s index finger. She pointed both hands at his face and uttered the mystic syllables of her spell.
The glass rod evaporated in a flash of silver light. A crackling thunderbolt shot from Brianna’s fingertips and struck the side of Lanaxis’s face. The air filled with musty blue smoke. The titan dropped to a knee, raising his hands to cover his eyes.
Brianna slipped from his grasp and plummeted a dozen feet to his lap. She heard herself grunt as the breath left her lungs, then a dull ache filled her chest. She slid down an enormous thigh and dropped onto the ward’s icy cobblestones.
“Foolish girl!” Lanaxis’s hissing voice was as loud as a blustering wind. “There’s no need to fear me!”
The titan pulled his hands from his face. A milky blue haze now covered one eye. The lightning had burned the purple murk from one side of his head, exposing a pale layer of raw, wrinkled skin. Even his robe had been affected by the brilliant flash, for it was now streaked by long stripes of gray and tattered linen. “The gods have such plans for your son!”
“They should’ve… told me.” The queen could barely choke the words out, but she was leaping to her feet as she said them. “I have plans… of my own.”
Brianna ran for the gate. The mule cart was less than twenty paces ahead, just entering the vaulted passage beneath the gatehouse.
The heft of a huge axe suddenly fell across the far end, blocking the tunnel’s exit. The mule smashed headlong into the handle and came to an instant halt, braying loudly as its legs buckled beneath its body. The cart rocked forward on its harness rods. One of the shafts snapped and the small wagon toppled onto its side, spilling the passengers out. Kaedlaw flew from Avner’s arms.
The child shed his swaddling rags in midair, revealing a long wrinkled snout at one end and a tiny curled tail at the other. He hit the ground on all four hooves and ran, squealing wildly. The young scout came down a few paces behind the piglet, his armor clanging like an alarm bell, and Brianna realized Avner had not been in the cart at all.
In the next instant, a line of screaming firbolgs erupted from the tunnel. The warriors, or at least those in the lead, carried rune-scribed blades with gleaming edges of cobalt. Brianna suddenly knew where Basil and her husband had gone after leaving the ward, and why they had paused to open the gate.
“Traitors!”
The queen spun and ran toward the keep, her gaze fixed on the citadel’s rear corner. There, the queen’s tower stood more or less intact, missing only its roof and small portions of the third-story walls. Brianna could not see the back side of the spire, but she suspected Avner and her child would be there, climbing down a ladder from a hidden sally port on the second floor. The secret door had been designed for just such urgent departures, and, aside from the drawbridge, it was the keep’s only exit.
Lanaxis stepped over Brianna, covering half the distance to the keep in a single stride. Her heart sank. It would take Avner more than fifty paces to carry her child across the inner ward; the titan would be upon him in five. The queen could only pray that Avner would hear his pursuer’s booming footfalls in time to return to the tower.
A loud grunt sounded behind Brianna. A rune-scribed axe tumbled over her head and arced down into Lanaxis’s calf. The titan stopped at the front corner of the keep and braced himself on the battered temple tower, then glared at the long column of firbolgs charging toward him. He uttered a syllable in some arcane language, then stepped forward and smashed his purple boot onto the ground.
A resounding bang shook the entire castle, then a fan of dark rifts sprang from under the titan’s heel. A fissure shot beneath Brianna’s feet, and she barely leapt over before it widened into a chasm thirty feet across. She crashed down on the far side and rolled several times, then came up on her knees, looking back toward the inner curtain. A web of abyssal crevices separated her from the main body of the firbolg troop, but she could see three huge warriors clinging to the rims of a nearby chasm.
Brianna rose to her feet and resumed her sprint toward the keep gate. Lanaxis was already upon the queen’s tower. He did not step past to pluck Avner off the open ward, nor did he start tearing the spire apart as he had the others. Instead, he squatted down and wrapped his arms around the entire tower.
The queen reached the drawbridge. The keep’s battered walls obscured her view of Lanaxis, but she could feel the entire building shaking. She rushed into the foyer, where she found a dozen frightened soldiers blocking the corridor. They immediately swarmed toward Brianna, hurling questions at her like ballista arrows. Firbolg boots began to boom across the drawbridge behind her, and a loud crack sounded from the queen’s tower.
“Out of my way!” Brianna grabbed two men and shoved them toward the drawbridge. “Stop those firbolgs!”
The rest of the guards leapt aside to let her pass, then rushed forward to meet the firbolgs. Brianna turned down a smoke-filled gallery that led to the queen’s tower. A tremendous clamor echoed through the passage behind her, followed by the agonized screams of both men and firbolgs.
The queen raced blindly through the corridor, coughing and choking on the acrid smoke that seemed to flow from every opening. A sharp crack reverberated through the keep, and the gallery floor bucked beneath her feet. She reached the stair turret of the queen’s tower and threw open the oaken door.
It was dark inside, and she heard no echoes to suggest Avner was descending the cramped stairwell. She could not be sure he was trapped inside the tower, but she suspected Lanaxis would not be uprooting the spire if there was any chance the young scout had escaped with her son.
A deep-throated cough rumbled down the gallery. The queen looked back and saw a firbolg’s hulking silhouette in the smoky corridor. She stepped into the stair turret, then slammed the door, dropped the crossbar, and rushed up the spiraling stairs. Like all well-fortified towers, this one could not be accessed from the first floor. Brianna would have to reach the second story landing before she could enter the building.
A tremendous rumble sounded from the tower foundations. The stair turret shuddered so violently that she lost her footing and fell. A crash sounded from the barred door below, then the wooden stairs groaned beneath her pursuer’s weight. The smell of firbolg sweat filled the passage.
