Troy Denning - The Titan of Twilight

Avner was only half finished when Raeyadfourne spoke again. “Running will do you no good,” the firbolg said. “Even if you escape us, the fomorians and verbeegs will be waiting at the other exits.”

“I never thought to see the day when firbolgs consorted with the likes of those scum,” commented Gryffitt. He and the other front riders had already slipped back into their parkas and gathered their weapons. “Have you taken a sudden liking to thieves and murderers?”

Raeyadfourne shrugged, and it seemed to Avner that the firbolg had changed somehow. The chieftain’s silhouette appeared somehow more feral and threatening.

“The verbeegs and fomorians are our brothers,” Raeyadfourne explained. “If you surrender the ugly child, you have nothing to fear from them.”

“Let me heal the queen, and give us the second child,” boomed a second firbolg, Munairoe. “He will not suffer at our hands.”

Avner saw a pair of green eyes peering around Raeyadfourne and realized what had changed. The chieftain’s beard now hung clear down to his belly. His hair had become a long, wild mane, and, most importantly, his huge shoulders no longer covered the tunnel mouth completely.

“He’s shrinking!” Avner gasped.

A guttural curse erupted from deep within Raeyadfourne’s throat. He threw off his bearskin cloak and pulled a four-foot hand axe from his belt, then scuttled into the tunnel. Although the chieftain still had to squat on his haunches, he was now small enough that his hands remained free to fight.

Blizzard went wild, filling the passage with ear-splitting shrieks. She whipped her head violently against her reins, drawing an ominous creak from the thick mining timber to which she was tied, and her hooves hammered the stone floor. The front riders ignored the angry mare and leveled their lances, moving forward to attack the chieftain.

“You men, wait!” Avner yelled. If the front riders attacked Raeyadfourne now, they would still be fighting when the rest of the firbolgs reached the portal. “Come back here!”

Avner pulled his hand axe from its sheath and hurled it at the post to which the Queen’s Beast was tied. The weapon tumbled straight to the timber and sliced cleanly through Blizzard’s leather reins. The angry mare hardly paused to gather her feet before springing up the passage. She bounded over Brianna and knocked the front riders aside as she barreled past to attack Raeyadfourne.

The firbolg’s hand axe rose and came down, burying itself deep into the mare’s flank. The wet snap of shattering bone echoed through the tunnel. Blizzard continued forward, bowling Raeyadfourne over and burying her teeth into his neck. She landed astride the chieftain, as a wolf might a man, and ripped a mouthful of flesh from his throat. Raeyadfourne bellowed in pain, a spray of blood erupting from the wound. He pulled his axe free and raised it to strike again. Blizzard lowered her muzzle to bite, and the vicious fight erupted into a bloody melee from which neither beast nor firbolg would emerge whole.

Gryffitt and the rest of the front riders returned to the queen’s side. Avner motioned for them to lift Brianna, then pinched together the unsewn edges of her incision.

“Let’s go.” The young scout used his chin to point deeper into the mine. “And someone grab my axe.”

The torch holder led the way, his light casting a flickering yellow glow over the craggy walls. The rest of the front riders followed close behind, carrying Brianna and Kaedlaw upon her cloak. Avner brought up the rear, with the queen’s knees locked around his waist and the edges of her incision squeezed between his fingers. His view of the tunnel floor was blocked by his patient’s makeshift litter, and he kept stumbling over loose stones and jagged knobs of rock.

The awkward procession had barely gone ten steps before a panicked whinny sounded from the portal. Avner glanced over his shoulder. Two firbolg warriors were dragging the queen’s mangled horse out of the mine. The beards of both warriors were extremely long, hanging almost to their waists, and neither of them looked much larger than Tavis. They passed Blizzard to someone outside, and the mare let out a shriek that sounded almost human.

The two firbolgs reached into the mine and grabbed their groaning chieftain beneath the armpits. Raeyadfourne was covered in blood from his jawline to his belly, and his body remained limp as the warriors pulled him through the portal. The pair passed their injured fellow to the green-eyed shaman, then entered the tunnel themselves. To fit into the passage, they only had to stoop over. “Faster!” Avner said. “Run!”

The torch holder broke into a trot, as did the men carrying Brianna. Their feet moved almost in unison, filling the tunnel with the martial cadence of tramping boots. Several times, Avner tripped and nearly fell into Brianna’s lap, and she soon volunteered to hold her own wound closed. For the first time, little murmuring sounds came from Kaedlaw’s mouth. He did not seem to be crying or groaning so much as calling the count.

The passage followed the crooked, winding course of a silver vein, and Avner quickly lost his bearings. They seemed to be traveling ever deeper into the mountain, but the young scout knew better than to trust his surface dweller’s instincts. For all he knew, the tunnel could be less than a dozen feet underground.

Avner soon found himself thinking in terms only of the area illuminated by the flickering torchlight; there was the murk ahead, warm and still and thick with the smell of musty stone and moidering wood; there was the floor beneath his feet, sometimes sloping up and sometimes down, often slick with mud and always strewn with loose debris and potholes; there were the walls around him, craggy and colorless, supported at regular intervals by crudely shaped arches of mud-crusted mining timbers; and most of all, there were the firbolgs coming up behind, clattering and cursing through the darkness, stumbling along without a torch, yet slowly and steadily closing the distance to their prey.

Avner waited until they rounded a sharp curve, then stopped and pulled his sling from inside his cloak. “Keep going,” he said. “I’ll buy us some time.”

“Avner, no!” Brianna sounded as exhausted as she did pained. “You’re all I have… left.”

“I’ll be along,” he promised. “Nothing’s going to happen.”

The young scout slipped behind one of the thick posts that supported the ceiling, then fit his last runebullet into the pocket of his sling. As the queen’s party moved off, he took advantage of the fading torchlight to eye the decaying timbers above his head. Although his runebullet was hardly as powerful as one of Tavis’s runearrows, he suspected it could still bring the roof down on their enemies. Unfortunately, the heavy bracing suggested that the rock above was very unstable. The rumble of even a small cave-in could start a chain reaction that would bury him-and perhaps the queen-along with their pursuers.

Avner looked down the tunnel toward the fleeing front riders. He could still see Brianna and her bearers, illuminated in the torch glow. If he stepped into the passage too early, the firbolgs would see his silhouette against the light.

The young scout waited, simultaneously keeping his eyes fixed on the receding torch and listening to his enemies’ approach. Their gaits were sporadic and heavy, punctuated by dull thuds, resonant clatters, and a constant rumble of angry curses. By the time the flickering torch had vanished from sight, the firbolgs were so close that Avner could hear their parkas rubbing against the walls and smell their sweat in the damp air. He stepped from behind his post, whirling his sling over his head. An eerie whistle echoed through the mine.