"But Morten and the earls-"

"Will have to climb the mountainside just like we did-and they're wearing armor," he said. "It will take them at least an hour. If you two help, we can sort through this mess by then."

"And if we discover this is Brianna?" Basil asked.

"What will you do?"

"I'll lead you and Avner to safety before I give myself over to Camden," Tavis replied. "After involving you in my trouble with the king. I owe you that much."

Avner scowled at this, but Basil quickly stepped over to the heap and began to pick up bones. "Then by all means, let's begin work." said the verbeeg. "An hour isn't much time."

The trio soon had the pile scattered across the ledge, gathering the bones into three separate groups: human, ogre, and those they weren't sure of. Tavis reduced the size of this last category by adding some of the unscorched bones to the human pile, since many of those that were obviously human also showed little sign of heat damage. Still, their skeleton lacked critical portions of the legs and back. Even the skull was missing, making it impossible for the scout to say whether the dead person had been as tall as Brianna.

"Well?" asked Basil, impatient.

Tavis shook his head. "I can't tell," he said. He picked up the human pelvis. "The hips look narrow for a woman's, but I can't be sure," he said. "I've never tried to identify someone from a pile of bones before."

"Don't waste too much lime puzzling it over." Avner said. "I can't see Morten and his friends anymore."

"They're probably circling around to come up behind us," Tavis said absentmindedly. "Armor's heavy, so they'll stay mounted and try to traverse their horses up the slope. And the forest back there will offer cover from my arrows."

"You'd actually shoot them?" Basil asked.

"He fired on Camden, didn't he?" Avner's voice was proud.

"I fired past his ear." Tavis pointed out. "But even if the earls realize my miss was deliberate, they won't be sure I'd show them the same courtesy. They'll approach with caution. We have plenty of time."

Returning his attention to the human's bones, the scout pulled the shattered sternum from the pile and began fitting broken ribs to it. "These ribs were broken off like someone pulled them off one by one," he observed. "And they all have tooth marks."

Avner's jaw fell agape. "The ogres ate her?"

"The shaman ate someone." Though Tavis's voice sounded calm, his mind was spinning with dreadful thoughts, all of them racing toward the same opinion Avner had just voiced. Doing his best to hold back the terrible conclusion, he continued, "But it doesn't make sense that it was Brianna. Why bring her all the way up here to eat her? He could have done that anywhere along the way."

"I may have an answer," Basil said. He had stepped over to the pile of ogre bones and pulled their skulls from the heap. There are fourteen heads, but we decided earlier that only eight died on Coggin's Rise. Someone killed six more here."

Avner stared at the human remains in obvious awe. "Brianna did that?" he gasped.

Basil nodded. "It would explain why the shaman devoured her here. If she didn't die during the fight, he decided she was too dangerous to keep alive." The verbeeg gestured at the human bones. "Either way, there she lies."

Tavis shook his head, struggling against his panic. "No," he said. "There are no signs of a fight, and I don't see how Brianna could have killed so many ogres without help."

"You're ignoring the evidence," insisted Basil. "What happened is plain enough. Now do as you promised and take us to safety-before our pursuers arrive to make that impossible."

"If you're so worried, stop wasting time by arguing," Travis replied, unaccustomed to having his conclusions challenged by those he was guiding. "Even if it means letting Morten catch us, I intend to find out whose bones those are. Now come on. Let's see if we can locate the battleground."

With that, the scout turned and led the way up the mountainside, following the ogre trail. The brutes' footprints ran in both directions, as though they had gone up and down the slope several times. This puzzled Tavis for a time, but when they passed a hedge of gnarled, cold-stunted spruces and stepped into the stark barrenness above timberline, he realized what had happened. The six unexplained ogre deaths had occurred somewhere above the tree line, where there was no wood to make a funeral pyre. The surviving warriors had been forced to carry their dead back down the slope to burn them. That did not tell him much about the human skeleton, but the scout felt confident he would learn more when he found the place they had actually died.

"Where are you taking us?" Basil demanded, puffing mightily as he struggled to catch up with the scout. "We'll be trapped up there!"

"Our quarry must have known a route through," Tavis replied. Although the slope above ended at the base of a thousand-foot cliff with no visible breaks, the scout was not concerned. Runolf had taught him long ago never to place his faith in how a mountain looked from below. "Or do you think the ogres came up here by accident?"

This quieted the verbeeg, and Tavis continued his climb. Behind him, the two horses began to nicker and snort, for the terrain had grown treacherous as well as steep, with shaky rocks and loose ground that their hooves were ill equipped to travel over. The scout told Avner to release his gelding, and the beast promptly started back down the slope, but Blizzard continued to follow the small company toward the stony wall above.

Tavis soon saw a steep ravine cutting down through the cliff face. A short distance from the bottom of the rocky gulch were nine dead mountains lions. Most of the beasts lay bunched together on the hillside, and all had been terribly mutilated during the course of a desperate fight. Dried blood had stained brown much of the rocky ground between them and the gorge mouth, while the deadly struggle had left small furrows of dark soil churned up and dozens of stones overturned.

"Brianna is a priestess of Hiatea, is she not?" asked Basil.

Tavis nodded.

"Well then," the verbeeg added, "if this doesn't convince you she's dead, nothing will."

Avner frowned. "What are you talking about? I'm as anxious as you to put some distance between us and Morten, but I don't see any proof that the princess is dead."

"Basil's talking about the mountain lions." Tavis explained. "They're solitary creatures. They never run in packs."

"So?"

It was Basil who explained. "Brianna summoned them. That's how she killed six ogres." The verbeeg cast a nervous glance down the mountain, then said. "Perhaps now we can leave."

"We still have plenty of time," Tavis said. "And those bones could be the spy's."

Basil snorted his derision. "Why would the shaman eat his own spy?" he demanded. "That has to be Brianna back there."

"What you say makes sense," Tavis allowed. He had a lump in his throat that felt like it might choke him, and he wasn't sure that he cared if it did. "But I must be sure. You go on ahead while I look around."

"Go ahead where?" Basil demanded.

Tavis gestured up the ravine.

"I stand a better chance against Morten than trying to climb that mountain-especially alone," Basil hissed.

"Don't you have a rune that could help?"

"Of course. I have runes that will transform me into mountain goats, birds, even snow apes-but that cliff is a high one. What happens when I change back to a clumsy verbeeg in the middle of the ascent?" Basil asked. "I'm better off staying here to help you look."

The verbeeg turned his eyes to the ground and wandered away to search the hillside. Tavis went to the largest group of dead lions and kneeled down. The area was littered with bone shards and scraps of cloth, while the rocky ground beneath the beasts was coated with stale blood-some of it forming pools so deep that it still had not dried. The scout rubbed his fingertips in the sticky mess and raised the digits to his nose. The syrup smelled vaguely of iron and spoiling meat, and from that he concluded it had probably come from a human. It didn't slink enough to be ogre, and the amount of it on the claws and feet of the mountain lions suggested it had come from their prey and not themselves.