“Avner, you’ll only make things worse by trying to protect Tavis.”
“Tavis loves you!” Avner hissed. “He could never violate the oath he swore!”
The young scout’s boots scraped against the floorboards as he scrambled up to the fireplace, and Brianna realized that the icy hand grasping her heart had finally squeezed too hard. She felt more than despair; she felt alone and utterly without hope. Avner was right: Tavis did love her, had always loved her and always would-and that was the very thing that made him so dangerous. Tears began to stream down her face, leaving freezing trails of stinging water on her cheeks.
“Avner, why do you think I’m so scared?” Brianna called. “I know Tavis loves me-but that won’t stop him from keeping his oath. If he believes Galgadayle’s prophecy-and he must, or he’d recognize his own child-then I know he’ll kill Kaedlaw. His oath requires it.”
The scraping of Avner’s boots stopped, and Brianna heard his heavy breath up near the fireplace. “What if you saw the ettin’s face when you looked at Kaedlaw?” he asked. “Wouldn’t the oath you swore as queen of Hartsvale demand the same thing?”
“But I don’t see the ettin,” Brianna countered. “I see Kaedlaw’s father. I see Tavis!”
Avner fell silent for a moment, then he asked, “Do you really believe Tavis Burdun would kill your son on sight?” The youth’s voice was brusque and scornful. “Give him time. Eventually, Tavis will see what you see.” “And if he doesn’t?”
“Trust that he will,” Avner replied. “It’s your only hope, because I doubt anyone else can save you-or Kaedlaw.”
Brianna heard the young scout’s clothes rustling as he climbed into the chimney. If she let him go now, she would have nothing left but a hollow, achy feeling as empty and cold as the dark chamber in which she sat.
“Avner, wait!” Brianna ordered. “I know how to delay the titan-but you’d better be right about Tavis!”
An occasional tremor shook the ravaged castle, as though deep in its foundations the citadel still felt the distant strides of its debaucher. A haze of moonlit steam rose from the crater where once had stood the queen’s tower, and a cold wind moaned through the rents in the northern curtains, where Lanaxis had kicked his way through the castle walls. Packs of verbeegs and fomorians rummaged through the ruins of the inner ward, searching for treasure and food, while the Meadowhome firbolgs stood by with scowls of uneasy disdain on their bearded faces.
Tavis studied the scene with growing anger. He sat in the shadow of the dilapidated flag tower, listening to Galgadayle and Raeyadfourne argue with the chieftains of the verbeeg and fomorian tribes about the conduct of their warriors. In the meantime, the looting continued unabated while the cries of the human wounded-as scattered and weak as they were-went unanswered. The high scout had already tried to aid the men himself, but each time his captors reminded him that he was a prisoner of honor and forbade him to leave his seat.
From around the corner of the flag tower came a grinding, crunching sound, like a wolf gnawing on the bones of a felled moose. Tavis stood. His head reeled as the blood rushed toward his feet. His vision narrowed, and he would have fallen had Basil not steadied him.
“Sit down,” ordered Munairoe, the firbolg shaman. He had packed a layer of mud around Tavis’s broken arm and cast a healing spell on the limb. The bone felt as if it were cooking from the marrow outward. “The spirits have not finished mending your arm, and there is still the matter of your honor.”
“I have no intention of breaking my word,” Tavis retorted. “But I have seen enough of your allies’ debauchery!”
Tavis stepped past the shaman and hobbled around the flag tower, clenching his teeth at his pain. He felt bloated and hot inside, as though someone had gorged him with boiling oil, while every breath of the chill air filled his lungs with a keen, biting numbness. He found a fomorian hunter standing in the corner where the tower abutted the battered keep.
The brute had thrust his head and arms through a breach in the second-story wall, so that only his hairy, pear-shaped back was visible. The gnawing sound came from inside the building. At the fomorian’s feet lay a suit of mangled armor splashed with blood so fresh it was still steaming in the cold night air.
A fiery, seething rage boiled up within Tavis, filling him with a fury almost too great for his battered body to withstand. The color drained from his vision, his ears started to ring, and a sour, acrid taste burned the tip of his tongue. He pulled a broken length of floor joist from a nearby rubble pile and stepped over to the fomorian, raising the board in his good hand.
“What are you doing?” gasped Munairoe, coming around the flag tower. “Need I remind you-”
Tavis swung the timber as hard as he could, smashing it into the back of the fomorian’s legs. A strangled shriek reverberated inside the gallery. The hunter’s knees buckled, then dropped to the rubble-strewn ground with a tremendous clatter. His head popped out of the breach in the wall, his loose jowls shaking and the mangled thigh of a human warrior dangling over his blubbery lip. He spit the leg against the keep and roared in pain, then turned toward his assailant. When he saw who had assaulted him, the look of astonishment and hurt in his eye changed to resentment.
“Why hit Awn, you?” The fomorian raised his fist. “Awn smash, yes him should!”
Tavis could barely hear the words over the ringing in his ears, and the marrow in his bones had changed into something like molten lava. He stepped forward and smashed his club into Awn’s ribs, then slipped away to avoid a counterblow. The astonished hunter doubled over, holding his ribs and grunting for breath.
“Maybe this… will… teach Awn not to… eat the dead!” The acrid taste in Tavis’s mouth had so dried his tongue that the words seemed to stick to his teeth.
The high scout raised his club again. Before he could strike, Raeyadfourne came pounding around the flag tower and jerked it from his hand. Awn spun toward Tavis, his own hand raised.
“Now Awn mad!”
Raeyadfourne reached over Tavis’s head and pushed Awn into the wall, then quickly interposed himself between the two combatants.
“This is a firbolg prisoner,” the chieftain warned. “He’s under my protection.”
“Not when him hurt Awn, no.” The fomorian pointed to a red welt where Tavis had smashed the floor joist across his knees. “That hurt plenty-and him do it for fun!”
Raeyadfourne glared at Tavis. “You promised to behave as a prisoner of honor.”
“I am.” Tavis pointed at the mutilated remains in the corner. His vision faded, and the bloody scene appeared to him in shades of gray and black. “He was eating the dead.”
“So, what that matter?” The fomorian chieftain, Ror, stepped around the tower. He was nearly twice Tavis’s height, with slender, sticklike legs that hardly look capable of supporting the huge belly above them. “Awn gots to feed.”
“It’s cannibalism!” Tavis objected.
“To you, perhaps-but then, you are a traitor to your own race.” Orisino, the horse-faced chieftain of the verbeegs, followed Ror around the tower. His gray lips were curled into a sneer that showed two rows of vile yellow teeth filed to sharp points. “Who are you to say fomorians shouldn’t eat humans? The gods have seen fit to let wolves eat foxes.”
“It’s not the same thing.” Tavis kept his attention fixed on Raeyadfourne.
The chieftain did not meet Tavis’s gaze. “We have discussed the matter at length,” he sighed. “It’s not cannibalism, and there’s no law against foraging for food during time of war-however disgusting that food may be.”
“The spoils go to the victor,” added Orisino.
“You’re hardly victors,” Tavis snarled. “I opened the gate!”
“ After we hit it with our ram,” the verbeeg countered. “As I understand firbolg law, that means you surrendered the castle.”
Tavis stepped toward Orisino, his hands knotted into balls. “I surrendered noth-”
The high scout’s jaw clamped shut, preventing him from finishing, and the taste in his mouth grew so bitter he wanted to spit out his tongue. The ringing in his ears became a clanging, then his eyes rolled back in their sockets and he fell. When the back of his skull smashed into the ground, every muscle in his body clamped on his bones. He began not just to tremble, but to quake and buck as though he had been struck by lightning.
Tavis had no way to tell how long his paroxysm continued. His entire body ached from terrible exertion as
