lost in the battle din, but he suddenly hunched over to slap at the wound. He said something to the brute with the runearrow lodged near the collarbone, and they both turned to face Tavis. In the same instant, the enormous, bearded face of a third fire giant appeared behind the scout.
Brianna’s hand slipped into her satchel. Before she could withdraw the spell component, her husband abruptly rushed across the slope toward a nearby crag. Behind him, sapphire lights flashed beneath the armor of his foes, and a trio of loud, sharp booms shook the canyon. All three giants collapsed, one with nothing below his loin apron, one with nothing above his breastplate, and the third with nothing between his chin and his belt. With the impact of their crashing bodies, Brianna’s swollen stomach reverberated like a drum.
The baby noticed the rumble, too. The queen’s belly suddenly began to jump and dance above the child’s kicking feet. A tiny fist pressed against her kidney, sending a fiery pang of anguish through her lower back. Almost instantly, the pain faded to a dull ache, but it also slid forward and encircled her abdomen. The coil slowly tightened, and the crushing agony of a labor pain gripped her.
The queen gritted her teeth and kept her gaze fixed up the canyon. One of the giants had fallen onto the road, but the other two were still tumbling down the slope, descending upon the road in a fiery avalanche of blood, bone, and steel. They came to rest atop the third giant, forming a hillock of black armor and flesh.
The death of the three fire giants caused no eerie silences or temporary lulls in the battle; the fighting continued. The Royal Snow Bears pressed their attack with renewed vigor. One giant fell when he looked over his shoulder at his dead comrades, the next when he slipped and dropped to a knee. Brianna’s pikemen swarmed up the gorge, leaving the road behind them strewn with bodies large and small. The roar of combat faded to a drone, and the rancid battle-smell grew so thick the howling wind could not sweep it from the canyon.
The Snow Bears’ advance came to a rumbling halt thirty paces later, when they crashed into a long line of charging fire giants. As the battle din returned to its former roar, four giants at the rear of the column climbed the hillside into Brianna’s view. Unlike their comrades on the road below, they had no bucklers strapped to their arms. They carried their swords, dark and cold, in their scabbards. The four spread out and cautiously started across the barren slope toward Tavis, bobbing and dodging to make themselves difficult targets.
Doing her best to ignore her growing pain, Brianna reached into her satchel, considering which of her spells would best aid her husband.
As her fingers closed around a small glass rod, Avner cried, “Majesty, look!”
The young scout was standing on his bench, pointing up Wyrm River. Brianna looked over the top of her sleigh and saw several fire giants near the bend in the canyon, belly-crawling down the river’s icy surface. They were not hiding-even the thought was absurd-but trying to distribute their weight across the ice so they did not fall through. They would soon outflank the Royal Snow Bears, for the company no longer had enough men to spread their lines across the frozen river.
Brianna glanced back toward Tavis. When she saw him standing beneath his crag with another runearrow in hand, the queen took a pinch of powdered brimstone from her satchel and turned her attention to Wyrm River. She removed her goddess’s golden talisman from her neck and pointed it up the canyon.
“Valorous Hiatea,” she said, “I call upon you to aid these brave and noble warriors in their just cause, that they may prevail against our enemies and ever serve your will.”
The amulet, shaped like a blazing spear, began to glow, the golden fire dancing as though the metal had truly burst into flame. Brianna tossed her brimstone into the air, at the same time uttering her spell. A river of acrid amber fumes shot from the talisman and streaked up the canyon. When the yellow smoke reached its targets, it coalesced into a huge, roiling cloud that hung in the wind like a boulder in a cataract. The fire giants craned their necks at the billowing vapors, and the queen hissed the mystical word that would unleash the spell’s fury.
With a thunderous crack, the yellow cloud burst, spilling a shower of sizzling, popping fire pellets onto the frozen river. The giants bellowed in surprise and leapt to their feet, the tiny balls of flame bouncing like hailstones off their black plate armor. Although Brianna could see that her blazing storm was hardly incinerating the fire giants, the brutes were nevertheless frightened-and with good reason. They had taken no more than three steps before a series of long, sharp crackles rang through the canyon. A hissing, impenetrable steam cloud rose about their legs. Almost as one, the entire group dropped through the thawing ice, filling the canyon with an eerie chorus of chattering and gurgling as their heavy armor dragged them beneath Wyrm River’s frigid waters.
The agony in Brianna’s abdomen had grown worse. She felt as if someone were standing on her stomach, grinding hobnailed boots into her womb. Her knees were trembling, and the pain deepened with every breath. The queen grabbed a handful of Blizzard’s mane and cursed Radborne for taking so long to return with her midwife, then looked toward her husband.
Tavis’s four attackers had discovered they could not dodge the firbolg’s deadly aim. Now they were rushing across the slope, pulling boulders out of the ground as they ran. Brianna could see stripes of blood streaking the armor of two giants, and the high scout was just drawing his bowstring to fire another runearrow. He would have plenty of time to plant his deadly shafts in the remaining foes long before they reached him.
But even Tavis Burdun was not infallible. As he loosed Mountain Crusher’s bowstring, his target suddenly pulled a boulder out of the ground and stood upright. The shaft bounced off the giant’s armor and ricocheted down the mountain, disappearing into the midst of the melee. The high scout’s shoulders slumped. He could not detonate any of his runearrows without obliterating what remained of the Royal Snow Bears.
The fire giants hurled their boulders. Tavis threw himself down the mountain to escape the barrage, and his foes sprinted forward.
Brianna pulled a small stick of purple glass from her satchel. Her hands were trembling-whether from crushing pain or naked terror, she did not know. She pointed the glass rod at the giants and, squeezing the words up from deep within her pain-racked body, beseeched Hiatea’s blessing.
As Brianna spoke, Tavis rolled to his feet holding the long, thin shaft of a normal arrow. He nocked and fired in one smooth motion. The queen did not even see the missile streak through the air. Her husband simply released Mountain Crusher’s bowstring, then a giant slapped a hand over his eye and dropped to a knee.
The flames on Brianna’s golden amulet began to dance. The queen summoned the spell to mind, then groaned aloud as her anguish deepened. It felt as if the inexorable power of her abdominal muscles were grinding her pelvis bone to powder. She forced herself to exhale, twice, trying to breathe away her agony. The pain only grew worse.
Brianna fixed her eyes on her husband. He was racing down the hillside, reaching for his quiver with stones and stumps flying past his head, dodging fire giant boots as they kicked the ground around him into a froth. The queen opened her mouth, forcing her tongue to curl and trill as she shaped the arcane syllables that would save her husband’s life.
An unbearable surge of pain gripped her. She heard herself scream and felt her knees buckle, and her half- finished spell misfired. The glass rod dissolved in her hand, becoming a twinkling beam of purple luminescence that shot out of the canyon and hung high in the sky, fluttering and hissing and popping like the boreal lights gone mad.
A fire giant’s boot slammed into her husband and sent his limp body tumbling across the mountainside. Then Brianna felt the stinging bite of ice beneath her body and realized she had collapsed. A moment later, she heard the cold thunder of boulders raining down on the frozen road, and the voices of her loyal footmen rising together in a long, mournful wail: the death shriek of the Royal Snow Bear Company.
3
Brianna lay doubled over in an icy rut-for minutes, it seemed-her ears ringing with the screams of the Royal Snow Bear Company. She felt the road shuddering beneath her body, the wind rasping across her cheek, even her own voice burning like bile as her screams boiled up from her womb. But she heard nothing-nothing save the cries of her loyal soldiers, perishing beneath the thundering torrent of granite.
The seeping mists of despair filled the queen’s mind, and through this darkening haze swarmed a bevy of somber thoughts. The giants had won, and more than the battle. They had captured the gorge, and with it the silver
