"We're running out of room," Morten growled. "Shoot!"

"Not yet," Tavis said. "It's better to wait until there are more of them behind us."

The scout turned and began to thread his way through the seracs. When the small company reached the base of the ice wall, Tavis and Morten deposited their burdens behind a fallen serac, then the two firbolgs and Brianna retraced their steps to a small clearing that afforded a relatively unobstructed view down the glacier. The first ogre was just entering the serac thicket, and behind him came a long winding file of his fellows. They were all following Tavis's trail, which, now that it could be seen from above, often seemed to pass unnecessarily close to dozens of crevasses, both hidden and open to plain sight. Only Goboka and his archers had not yet entered the ice fall. They still stood well out of range, watching the others climb until they saw what was going to happen.

Tavis took a handful of arrows from his quiver and stuck them in the snow at his side. "Now it's time to shoot," he said.

The scout let his first shaft fly, then began firing as fast as he could nock arrows. First the lead warrior fell, then the second and third. Suddenly the ogres at the front of the line were scrambling for cover. As they scurried off Tavis's trail, they began to drop into crevasses in groups of three and four, leaving nothing behind but the empty air where they had been standing only a moment earlier.

Tavis shifted his aim farther down the trail, to where the ogres were not yet scattering. He began to pepper the entire line, sometimes putting a single arrow through the bodies of two warriors. The brutes stampeded away from the attacks, scattering in every direction. They vanished into the crevasses a dozen at a time, as often as not forced over the edge by the press of their panicked fellows. Many of those who did not perish simply threw themselves to the ground and cowered in the snow. The scout aimed a few more arrows at these targets, and soon they were up again, rushing about with the rest of their peers.

Goboka's angry voice echoed up the ice fall, yelling commands at his warriors in their own guttural language. A few of the brutes heeded his words and began trying to calm their comrades. Tavis concentrated his fire on these would-be leaders and prevented the ogres from regrouping. The survivors began to take shelter in shallow depressions and behind blocks of ice, but showed no inclination to resume the journey up the dangerous icefall-at least not while Bear Driller was showering them with arrows.

When it became apparent that the scout had stopped the ogre warriors, Goboka spoke a few words to his archers. They arranged themselves in a three-abreast column. The shaman stepped into the middle of the group and ducked down to prevent himself from becoming an easy target. The entire line started up the trail Tavis had blazed, those in front using their bows to probe for crevasses along the edges of the path.

The scout did not bother firing at the column. He did not have enough arrows left to kill even half of them, and he would only empty his quiver in vain if he tried to frighten them off the path as he had the first group.

"This makes no sense," Morten growled. "Why doesn't the shaman use his archers, or cast a spell at us?"

"Because of Brianna. He won't risk killing her by accident," Tavis explained. "He wants her alive as much as we do."

"Then let's count ourselves lucky and run for it," the bodyguard urged.

Tavis shook his head. "Not yet," he said. "If we run now, the others will regain their courage and prevent us from climbing off the glacier."

"They're doing that now," Brianna said. She cast an angry glance at the ice cliff behind them. "Or hadn't you noticed?"

"You're looking the wrong way," Tavis said. He pointed along the base of the icy cliff, to where a jagged rib of granite rose from beneath the glacier to ascend the canyon wall. "All we need is time enough to get up that ridge."

"That's no simple climb," Morten said. The ogres will catch up and pull us off before we're ten feet up."

"Not without their shaman, they won't," Tavis said.

The scout motioned for his two companions to follow, then dodged a short distance down the steep slope to a huge serac. The block was tipped almost horizontally across the slope, directly above the route Tavis had blazed up the crevasse-field. Morten instantly understood the plan. Without being asked, he braced his hands against the side and began to push.

Goboka also realized the scout's intentions. As Tavis laid his hands on the ice, the shaman shouted a harsh command. Dozens of bowstrings snapped. A volley of arrows sailed up the hill to clatter harmlessly off the spire's far side.

Tavis pushed. A loud crack sounded from the serac's base.

A deep, rumbling voice echoed through the night air: the shaman casting a spell. The scout pushed harder, drawing an involuntary scream of exertion from his lungs. Another crack sounded from the bottom of the tower-then Tavis heard Brianna utter a spell. A sharp sizzle filled the night air as the princess called Hiatea's name and a bolt of red flame shot down the slope toward Goboka's head.

The shaman's voice fell silent in the middle of a word and he kicked at the snow. A white spray erupted from beneath his feet, coalescing into an icy shield just as Brianna's spell streaked down from above. The fiery bolt crashed into the frosty circle with a deafening blast, then both spells sizzled away in a cloud of steam.

"Now, push!" Morten yelled.

Tavis braced his boots against the snowy slope and, placing his shoulder against the serac, drove forward with all the strength in his legs. With a thunderous boom, the icy tower broke free. As it tumbled away, both firbolgs pitched forward and slid down the glacier on their faces.

Tavis thrust his hands deep into the snow, arresting his fall before it had the chance to build momentum. He looked up and peered over Morten's huge back as the serac tumbled down the slope. The scout couldn't see on the other side of the spire, but the rumbling of the block of ice couldn't overpower the shrieks of the terrified ogres, and Goboka's angry scream was the loudest of all.

Tavis rose to his feet, then reached down to help Morten do the same. "Now we can run." * 10* The High Forest

A series of clumsy, flat-footed steps pulsed through the open ground of the montane forest. The footfalls were as enigmatic as they were fleeting, bouncing from the bole of one tree to another, until the palpitations seemed to come from many directions at once and no place in particular. They were also distant, so feeble that Tavis barely heard them drumming above the incessant lisp of the wind. Still, the ungainly rhythm was unmistakable. Basil was out there somewhere, running across an outcropping of bedrock.

Slipping his fletcher's tools and a handful of osprey feathers into his belt pouch, Tavis laid aside the arrow he had been crafting. Gathering his bow and the handful of arrows he had already made, he stood, trying to guess from the maddening echoes where he would find Basil.

Beside the scout, Brianna was tending to the festering wound on Morten's neck. She had already washed the yellow ichor away and purified the gash with blessed water, and was now placing her goddess's talisman on the gash.

"I don't know what good this will do." Morten kept his voice to a soft whisper, for the wind had been carrying faint whiffs of ogre to them all morning long. "Simon already healed it once."

"It's not uncommon for bite wounds to fester," Brianna replied, equally softly. "We may have to do this many times."

The princess uttered her incantation, drawing a sharp hiss from the bodyguard as Hiatea's fiery magic poured from the talisman into the ulcerous sore.

On the other side of Brianna, Avner and Earl Dobbin were dozing in the midmorning light, sitting with their backs against a sun-baked crag of black basalt. Between them lay the remains of that morning's meal, a pile of raw squawrat that Tavis had dug up as they crossed a meadow.