arrow. It flashed through the whirling birds and lodged itself deep in the giant’s breast.
Sebastion did not even wince. He simply squinted at Tavis and started to bring his sword down.
“esiwsilisaB!” Tavis cried.
A ray of sapphire light lanced from the wound. Sebastion’s chin dropped, and the strength left his swing. The giant’s chest opened across its entire width. His arms flew out to the sides and sent his great sword spinning through the sky, and his body folded around his mangled torso. He pitched over backward and disappeared into the blowing snow at the bottom of the scarp. A tremendous boom rolled across the meadow, and the hill bucked so hard that it bounced Tavis into the air.
The high scout came down on his side and felt the air rush from his lungs. Blowing snow blocked his view of everything around him, save for the whirling birds above and Patma’s head rising over the crest of the knoll. Tavis did not wait for his breath to return, or even for the pain of his fall to register. He pushed off with all fours and leapt to his feet, facing the back of the hill.
Raeyadfourne’s tribe was rushing up the gentle slope, concealed from the waist down by a blustering white curtain. Bolts of lightning skipped through their midst like dancers, hurling firbolgs and shattered stone in all directions. The air smelled of charred earth, seared flesh, and rain, and not even the howling wind could cover the cries of the wounded.
Tavis spun around to find Patma’s face glaring at him. The giant’s thin lips twisted into an angry snarl, his silver eyes flashed like lightning, and his sword came arcing down out of the sky. The high scout dived away.
A terrible screech sounded behind him; then the entire hill shuddered beneath the impact of the giant’s huge weapon. Tavis hit the cold ground rolling and came up on his feet. In his freezing fingers he held a runearrow he did not remember drawing. He turned around and found himself standing beside an enormous steel blade buried deep in the knoll’s stony summit. The birds were as thick as fog around him, and their angry cries drowned out even the rumbling of the thunder.
Patma jerked his sword free, leaving a smoking crevice where the blade had struck. Tavis fumbled his runearrow onto his bowstring and pointed it at his attacker.
The piercing shriek of a tarn hawk stabbed Tavis’s ear. Something sharp slammed into his shoulder and dug in. His bowstring slipped from his fingers, and the runearrow arced harmlessly over the hill crest. He toppled onto his side, then slid across the icy ground, wings beating madly about his head, talons tearing at his shoulder.
Tavis twisted onto his back and brought Mountain Crusher up, hooking the end around the bird’s neck. Its head came down instantly, the beak darting at his eyes. The high scout turned aside, then cried out as the raptor’s powerful mandibles tore into his cheek. He reached up blindly and, when he felt the creature’s nape in his cold grasp, gave a sharp twist. The hawk squawked briefly and fell limp, shrouding the scout’s face beneath its feathery wings.
“Damn birds!” Tavis pushed the creature off his head. “Surtr’s flames t-take you all!”
Tavis leapt up and faced the hill crest, expecting to feel a huge sword biting through his shivering midriff at any moment. Instead, he saw Patma’s rust-flecked blade sweeping along the ridge, spraying a cone of hail at the charging firbolgs. So fierce was the icy stream that it swept the burly warriors off their feet and hurled them, bloody and groaning, back down the slope. Even those who eluded the hail were not spared. A fan of silvery sleet trailed from the back edge of the weapon, coating everything it touched beneath a suffocating mantle of blue ice.
Knowing better than to waste another runearrow, Tavis nocked a normal shaft and fired at the giant’s eyes. A swarm of birds streaked to intercept the missile, startling Patma and temporarily blocking his view. A gray harrier caught the shaft in its breast and careened out of the bevy, and the hail stream veered from its targets.
That instant was all Munairoe needed. The shaman’s voice rang out from the rear of the firbolg ranks, and a crackling tongue of flame arced up the slope to strike Patma’s sword. The crimson streak sizzled up the weapon’s length. The hail and sleet gave way to a hissing geyser of white steam, then the blade shattered, spraying jagged shards of hot steel in all directions.
A pattern of bloody stains blossomed across Patma’s white shift, and a dozen firbolgs clutched at their faces and went down. Something hissed past Tavis’s head. He reached up and discovered blood trickling down his neck. His ear had been sliced open by a steel shard he had not even seen.
Several of Raeyadfourne’s warriors thundered past Tavis, hurling themselves off the hill crest at Patma. Their axes struck his chest with a series of wet-sounding thuds. The storm giant blasted the ridge with a ferocious bellow of pain. He toppled out of sight with three firbolg axes lodged in his chest, the warriors still dangling from the handles. All four combatants tumbled down the rocky scarp in a clamorous maelstrom of crashing bodies and shouting voices.
Raeyadfourne rushed past with the rest of the Meadowhome firbolgs, and Basil stopped at Tavis’s side.
“Look at you! You’re covered in blood again,” the runecaster panted. “You can’t take much of this. Munairoe said-”
“I know what M-Munairoe sssaid,” the high scout stuttered. “But Brianna’s d-down there.”
Tavis charged over the summit in time to see the Meadowhome firbolgs swarming Patma. Only the storm giant’s wildly flailing limbs were visible, for he had fallen beneath the veil of wind-driven snow at the base of the scarp. The high scout bounded down the rocky face, stealing glances at the rest of the battlefield as he bounced between outcroppings.
At the eastern end of the meadow, the furtive fomorians were nowhere in sight. But the giant Eusebius was swinging his blade back and forth through the ground blizzard, flinging gore in all directions. At the western end of the field, the battle looked to be bloody on both sides. One of the storm giants had fallen to his knees with several verbeeg spears in his midriff, but the other was standing his ground against Orisino’s orderly ranks, cleaving through his foes’ waists two and three at a time.
By the time Tavis reached the bottom of the scarp, Patma’s limbs had disappeared beneath the ground blizzard. A thick cloud of birds wheeled over the body, crying mournful songs and raking at the firbolgs’ heads. The high scout skirted the fringe of the crowd. He was just tall enough to see over the curtain of blowing snow. Directly ahead, Anastes remained at his station in front of the queen’s tower. The storm giant’s eyes were melancholy and resigned, but he held his rust-flecked sword in one hand and a crackling ball of lightning in the other.
As Tavis started toward the center of the meadow, the snow suddenly avalanched from the flanks of the little drumlin behind the queen’s tower. A long aquiline nose emerged from beneath the white blanket, followed by a wiry, square-cropped beard and the rest of Lanaxis’s head. His crown sat upon his pate, cocked forward and lopsided, with a few wisps of coarse white hair poking out from beneath the band. His face was shriveled and white with age. A crossbow bolt had pinned shut one of his haggard eyes, which was now inflamed and oozing infection.
The titan gathered his feet beneath him and stood, voicing a deep, soul-drained groan that made him seem as old and weary as the mountains.
Raeyadfourne caught up to Tavis. “Wait! We need to regroup!” he yelled. “We cannot-”
“ I can! Take your tribe and go!” Tavis shoved Raeyadfourne toward the eastern side of the tower. “Circle around there-and if you reach Brianna first, remember your promise!”
Tavis circled in the opposite direction, plowing through waist-deep snow at his best sprint. He happened upon Sebastion’s corpse and scrambled onto the body, startling hundreds of birds from their roosts. Seven quick paces took him the cadaver’s length. When he jumped back into the deep snow, the birds followed, assailing him with angry screeches and raking talons.
A deafening volley of thunder rolled across the field. Tavis glanced eastward. Anastes stood no more fifty paces away, looming above the ground blizzard like Stronmaus himself. The storm giant was hurling lightning bolts down upon the firbolgs’ heads and shoulders, the only parts of the Meadowhome warriors that showed above the whistling curtain of snow.
Tavis turned directly toward the queen’s tower. Lanaxis stood beside the battered structure, peering over the top to survey the battlefield. The high scout continued to rush forward, unconcerned about being seen. The titan’s good eye was looking the other direction.
Tavis had closed to within twenty paces of the tower when a black spire eagle swooped low over his head and turned toward the titan. The bird voiced its shrill cry, drawing Lanaxis’s attention at once. The titan’s gaze lingered a moment on the reeling birds above the high scout’s head, then seemed to pierce the feathery cloud and fall directly on Tavis’s face.
He stopped and drew a runearrow from his quiver. The titan simply looked away, then knelt in the snow and
