Troy Denning - The Titan of Twilight

“Dry out? This whole place is one… big…” Orisino let his sentence trail off, then his voice grew sly. “What are you looking for? It’s no shortcut.”

The high scout did not reply. He continued forward, finally stopping at the head of a steep chute where one boulder stood against another. The corner between their two faces formed a long, angular ravine that descended into inky darkness beyond Tavis’s light. Some ancient giant had cut a series of huge, zigzagging stairs down the trough, but the frost-rimed treads were spaced at eight-foot intervals. Anyone as small as Tavis or Orisino would have to jump from one icy platform to the next. The only alternative was to climb down the center, using the seam between the monoliths for fingerholds. If either of the ’kin slipped, there was no telling how far they would fall.

“We’d better get our rope,” Orisino suggested.

Tavis did not bother to remind the chieftain of the line’s true ownership. Verbeegs considered private property an uncivilized and archaic concept, claiming instead that all things belonged to all people.

“If you want my rope, you fetch it,” Tavis said.

“And I suppose you’ll wait here until I return?” the verbeeg scoffed. “You go down first. I’ll watch how you do it.”

The wily chieftain was proving more difficult to scare off than Tavis had expected. The high scout sighed in exasperation. “If I don’t want you falling on me, I’d better teach you how to do this.”

Tavis passed his glowing dagger to the verbeeg, then removed his gloves and demonstrated how a person could support himself by jamming his fist into a narrow crack, such as that between the two boulders. Though the concept was simple, the art itself was full of nuances. Depending upon the width of the seam and the climber’s position, the fingers had to be folded into all manner of different configurations to lock the hand securely in place. Orisino paid careful attention, and was quickly able to run through the standard positions.

“You can twist your boots against the sides of the seam to wedge them in place, but don’t trust any footholds on the walls themselves,” Tavis cautioned. “The stone is too slick. Stay in the crack and you won’t have trouble.”

The high scout retrieved his glowing dagger and slipped the handle between his teeth, then lay on his belly and swung his legs over the chute. He wedged a foot into the crack and climbed down a short distance to wait for Orisino. The verbeeg reluctantly dangled his toes over the edge, kicking blindly at the crevice and grunting in frustration. For a time, Tavis thought his unwelcome companion would turn back, but the chieftain finally locked a boot into the crack and started to creep downward. After that, it did not take long for the verbeeg to gain his confidence, and soon the two ’kin were moving at a steady pace.

The stones grew colder as they descended. After a few minutes, Tavis’s bare hands felt so numb that he had difficulty feeling his handholds. It was impossible to tell how far they had come, or how far they still had to go. There was nothing but darkness below, with shadowy boulders and jagged, murk-filled passages advancing on them from all sides. In the bewildering array of gray corners and gloomy hollows, only the faithful tug of gravity prevented Tavis from losing his bearings and becoming completely disoriented.

A startled shriek broke from Orisino’s mouth and skipped through the crooked labyrinth in all directions, nearly concealing the clatter of the chieftain’s boots slipping free of their holds. Tavis pulled himself tight against the rock and twisted his hands and feet into the crack, locking himself in place. He gritted his teeth against the coming impact and silently cursed his companion’s clumsiness. Despite the frosty walls, the chute was no more difficult to descend than a ladder; as long as a climber kept a hand and foot lodged in the crevice at all times, falling was next to impossible.

Orisino did not land on him.

“Tavis, did you feel that?” The verbeeg’s voice was shrill with panic.

Tavis looked up and saw his companion dangling by a single arm, the soles of his hobnailed boots scant inches away. The chieftain was looking over his shoulder into a lopsided triangle of empty air.

The high scout freed one hand to take the dagger from his mouth. “The only thing I felt was you-almost knocking us both to our deaths. What’s wrong?”

Orisino gestured at the dark triangle. “Something pushed me! I felt a gust of warm air-a giant’s breath, maybe-then something big reached out of there and tried to push me off!”

Tavis raised his glowing dagger, illuminating the mouth of the dark passage Orisino had indicated. The high scout could not see far, but it was readily apparent that while a giant’s arm might squeeze through the hole, not even a verbeeg could actually crawl into it.

“I don’t see anything now,” the high scout said. “Maybe it was a bat.”

“It pushed me, like a hand!” Orisino insisted. “I’m not imagining this.”

“I didn’t say you were,” Tavis replied. “But we can’t do much about it now.”

The high scout returned his dagger handle to his mouth and continued downward. Orisino kicked his feet back into the crevice, then drew his own knife and followed. Their descent slowed significantly. Not only did the verbeeg insist upon keeping one hand free to hold his weapon, he spent more time peering into dark crannies than he did searching for handholds. Even then, he continued to cry out at random intervals, claiming that he smelled a foul odor or felt a gust of hot breath. Tavis never shared any of these sensations, nor did he hear the slightest clatter or flutter to suggest something was stalking them.

The high scout had finally decided his companion was imagining things when a sharp crack sounded above. A loud, clattering rumble reverberated down the chute, and the walls shuddered beneath the power of a tumbling boulder. Tavis pulled the dagger from his mouth and held it out over the trough, illuminating a pair of frost-rimed steps on the walls below.

“Jump!”

Knowing Orisino would leap for the closest step, the high scout jumped toward the one on the opposite wall. With the rumble reverberating ever louder in his ears, he dropped through eight feet of darkness and hit above the stair he wanted to reach. He turned his face toward the stone, scratching at the cold granite with his dagger and numb fingers.

A crack sounded from the center of the chute. The gray blur of a boulder bounced past his shoulder, with Orisino’s shrieking figure sliding down the trough close behind.

The stone vanished beneath the high scout’s face and chest, then he slammed onto the front half of the stair he had tried to reach. He flailed at the icy shelf with both hands.

A tremendous crash reverberated in the bottom of the chute.

Tavis’s glowing dagger caught in a crack and brought his fall to an abrupt halt. He glimpsed the blade bending under the sudden strain, then a sharp ping echoed through the cavern. Basil’s light rune abruptly faded, and the scout slipped.

Tavis released the hilt and grabbed for the broken blade. He felt a strange, painless sensation as the edge sliced into his numb palm, but he stopped sliding. He slipped the fingers of his free hand into the same crack where the blade had caught, then pulled himself onto the step.

A booming voice, deep but wavering with age, echoed down the chute. “You ’live, stupid thieves?”

Tavis did not respond, nor did Orisino-whether due to wisdom or injury, the high scout did not know.

“Answer Snad, stupid thieves!” quavered the giant. “You dead, or what?”

The dull-witted questions and low, booming voice left little doubt that Snad was a hill giant-but he was hardly an ordinary one. Though hill giants were clumsy and no more able to see in the dark than firbolgs, there had not been so much as a rustle or a glimmer of torchlight as this one slipped into place for his ambush.