"You're no idle braggart," Tavis said. He kneeled down to clean his bloody sword in the snow. That was fine axe work."

"You helped," Morten grunted. He looked toward the horde of ogres approaching across the glacier, then said. "I wasn't expecting them so soon."

"Me either," Tavis said. "It'll complicate our escape."

"What of Brianna?" the bodyguard asked. "Can she run?"

"The princess is well enough," Tavis said, using snow to numb the painful bile she had left on his hand. "But her ordeal has certainly taken its toll on her manners."

"I'm sure the king will show enough gratitude for both of us," said Brianna's voice. "But I have no intention of growing maudlin just because I'm free from the ogres. I'm hardly fool enough to believe that you-or Earl Dob bin-saved me out of the goodness of your hearts. And why you brought Avner along, I'll never understand. This is no place for a child!"

The scout spun around in time to see the princess crawling out of the nunatak hollow. She had wrapped a foul-smelling bear skin around her shoulders, securing the improvised cloak in place with a small piece of rope. Tucked into this makeshift belt was the dagger Tavis had left beside her on the ledge, and from one hand dangled the rope to which the humans were tied.

Morten rushed to her side. "Milady, are you well?"

"Better than you were when I last saw you," she replied. "But you look fine now. What happened?"

Morten looked away, as though ashamed that he had not died in the battle with the ogres. "Tavis and his thieves took me to the castle," he explained. "Simon healed me."

Brianna glanced toward Tavis. "My gratitude." For the first time, there was a hint of warmth in the princess's voice. "I'll see to it that Father rewards you."

"I doubt that will be as easy as you think," Tavis replied. "But right now, we have more pressing concerns."

The scout pointed across the glacier. Goboka was now so close they could see the moonlight gleaming in his eyes, and his horde was close behind. Most of the ogres seemed to be armed with clubs or spears, but those running closest to the shaman's immense form carried their bows in their hands. Apparently, the shaman hoped to ensure Brianna's safety by allowing only his most trusted marksmen to fire arrows.

When Brianna saw the charging pack, she handed the coil to Morten. "Pull that up," she ordered. "Fast."

"How are the humans?" Tavis asked. "Are they well enough to run?"

Brianna raised her brow, regarding the scout as though he had lost his mind. "It was all I could do to save their lives," she said. "They were practically ice blocks."

"We'll carry them," Morten said.

With an effortless jerk, the bodyguard pulled the two humans onto the glacier. Brianna had swaddled them both in furs, so that Tavis could tell them apart only by the relative size difference between the boy and the man. The princess cut the rope binding them together, then passed Avner to Tavis and Dobbin to Morten.

"What about Basil?" Morten asked, throwing the earl over his shoulder.

"We won't save him by waiting here," Tavis replied, hefting Avner onto his own shoulder. "He can catch us later."

"Who's Basil?" Brianna asked.

Tavis turned away from the ogres and started to run, at the same time explaining, "The verbeeg you saw in my barn."

"He's a part of this?"

The princess had hardly finished her question when a tremendous shudder rumbled up from the heart of the glacier. Tavis's feet slipped from beneath him, and he dropped to his side, his fall cushioned by the soft corn snow on top of the glacier. Brianna and Morten also fell The bodyguard landed atop his burden, drawing a muffled cry of anger from Earl Dobbin.

"Did Goboka do that?" Morten gasped.

Tavis looked back and saw a great crevasse opening across the glacier, more or less above the ice cave through which they had crawled. Dozens of ogre warriors had already disappeared into the rift, and more were spilling into it as the abyss widened.

"It wasn't the shaman," Tavis reported. "My guess is that Basil's rune caused that explosion."

Morten stared at the growing crevasse in awe, then shook his head and picked up the bundle containing Earl Dobbin. "We can't tarry here."

As Tavis considered Basil's absence, a growing knot of concern formed in his stomach. Nevertheless, he gathered Avner's bundle and rose to his feet, then started across the glacier. Whatever the verbeeg's fate, they could not help him anyway.

The scout quickly realized that he and his companions would never escape by trying to outrun the ogres. To survive, they had to make their pursuers slow down-and he knew just the place to do it. He angled up toward the great ice wall that had stopped the ogres in the first place.

"Are you trying to get us killed?" Brianna demanded. Her eyes were fixed on the sheer ice cliff ahead, which loomed like a bank of clouds rolling down from the valley above. "We'll be trapped. We can't scale that wall!"

"I don't intend to. I'm just trying to get us into that ice fall." The scout pointed to the base of the ice wall, where the glacier tumbled down a hundred paces of steep slope in a jumbled heap of mansion-sized blocks and jagged spires. "If we can't escape the ogres in there, we aren't going to."

Tavis continued up the glacier. When he reached the bottom of the ice fall, he pulled Bear Driller off his shoulder and glanced back to check on the ogres. They were still out of range, but wouldn't be for long. The scout turned uphill and began to climb, probing the snow ahead with the tip of his bow.

"Follow my trail exactly," Tavis said, panting from the exertion of running through snow. "Ice falls have lots of crevasses."

The scout was counting on that. Ice, like water, flowed faster on steep slopes, which caused more crevasses to open. These rifts were smaller than those on gentler grades, and therefore were more easily concealed beneath thick layers of snow. With any luck, the scout had more experience than his pursuers at negotiating such mazes of hidden danger, so the ogres would be forced to follow in his footsteps in a snakelike column- at least until he decided it was time for them to scatter.

Within a few steps, Tavis began to see long, faint shadows ahead. He twined his way around each of these areas, for the differences in color marked sagging surfaces where the snowpack hung suspended over the unseen maws of hidden crevasses. Often, the scout stopped running long enough to push Bear Driller into the snow ahead. Usually, the tip struck a solid surface of ice, but every now and then the bow would sink as though he had plunged it into water. When that happened, the scout would retrace his path a few steps down the mountain, then carefully probe his way around the end of the concealed chasm until he could resume the climb.

Soon they reached a thicket of seracs, looming ice spires that had fallen off the ice wall and imbedded themselves among the crevasses. The seracs resembled nothing so much as a city of craggy blue towers, unkempt and jagged, inclining in every direction and at impossible angles. Some minarets lay almost upon their sides, with no more distance than a human's height between their peaks and the glacier surface. Other towers stood bolt upright, as straight and proud as any steeple in Castle Hartwick.

Tavis led his company a few steps into the seracs, then paused to look back down the slope. The ogres had reached the base of the ice fall, and the first warriors were already rushing up the trail he had blazed through the crevasse-field. Although they were easily within Bear Driller's range, the scout did not take Avner off his shoulder to reach for his arrows. Goboka had been wise enough to hang back, with his own archers at his side, and let his warriors lead the charge.