Brianna heard the bowstring throb a second time, and another arrow bounced off Morten's shield. Searching the treetops for the firbolg's attacker, the princess saw nothing but a lanky shadow lurking among the highest branches, its true shape blurred by flashing aspen leaves.

Morten jerked his sword free and swung again at the white bole. This time, yellow chips flew in all directions, and Brianna saw a wedge-shaped void appear in the wood. The firbolg smashed his shoulder into the trunk. A sharp crack rang through the forest and, as the aspen toppled, the shadowy figure in the high branches dropped out of the tree.

The ogre looked almost as large as Brianna's bodyguard, with long shoots of leafy boughs sticking out from his body at all angles. As the princess screamed a Warning, the dark shape slammed into Morten's shield. The firbolg grunted and collapsed, his attacker still on top. A spindly arm raised a stone mace above Morten's head and brought the weapon down. There was a sick thud, then a barbarous chortle tolled through the forest. The mace rose again.

Brianna hefted her bejewelled axe. Before she could spur Blizzard forward, her bodyguard smashed his steel buckler into his attacker's bony face. A loud crunch shot through the grove, and the ogre pitched over backward. He rolled away, only to spring up as Morten clambered to his own feet.

The princess held her mount steady. The ogre stood with his back to her, ripping boughs of leafy camouflage off his body. His skinny torso was haggard and stooped, with hunched shoulders and gangling arms that ended in huge, gnarl-fingered hands. The brute was a striking contrast to the bloated churls that travelers from the south described when they spoke of ogres. And, judging by tales old earls liked to tell, he would also be much more dangerous. Unlike their oafish cousins of the warm lands, northern ogres were so vicious and cunning that even giants avoided them.

Brianna could have charged the brute from behind, but knew better than to try. Any attempt to help now would only confuse and upset Morten, for her father had given them both very clear instructions regarding combat: under no circumstances was Brianna to join in battle, if the danger looked too great, she was to escape while Morten sacrificed himself, it was an arrangement that seemed perfectly reasonable to the king and the firbolg, but one the princess resented deeply. She was quite capable of holding her own in a battle. Not only had she been trained with axe and sword since childhood, she was also blessed with the supernatural strength of the Hartwick line, a mysterious legacy that made her almost as powerful as firbolgs.

Brianna heard an eerie, low-pitched rattle break from the aspen grove, then the ogre charged, at the same time hurling his weapon at Morten's head. The firbolg raised his shield and sent the mace clanging away harmlessly. In the same instant, the ogre leaped into the air and flew feetfirst at the princess's bodyguard, wrapping his legs around the firbolg's burly thighs. The lanky brute gave a mighty twist, already reaching for a bone dagger hanging from his belt.

Had Morten been smaller or his attacker larger, the tactic might have toppled him. As it was, the bodyguard simply stepped back with one leg, bracing himself and at the same time breaking free of his foe. The ogre dropped to his back. Brianna heard a muffled crack as the firbolg stomped on the brute's chest, then her bodyguard drew his sword across the ambusher's throat and finished him.

Brianna nudged Blizzard forward. "That didn't take long!" she called. "Perhaps my father's guards will reach Stagwick in time to see Tavis off-"

"Stay there!" Morten ordered.

The firbolg scowled at Brianna until she stopped moving, then peered into the grove and sniffed the air. He stepped off the road and trotted deeper into the wood, fading into the white forest like a ghost. The princess sat listening to the irregular cadence of cracking sticks that marked his passage, until the muted popping and snapping grew so distant that she could no longer distinguish the sounds from the rustling of the aspen leaves.

Brianna waited with growing impatience, becoming more convinced with each passing minute that Morten was deliberately wasting her time. Coggin's Rise stood in the center of Hartsvale, far from the dangerous borderlands, where giants and their kin came to raid. It was almost unthinkable that one ogre had snuck so far into the valley: she could not believe a whole party had. Still, she resisted the temptation to go after her bodyguard, reminding herself that Morten knew far more than she about this particular adversary.

Normally that would not have been so. The princess made it her business to know her kingdom's enemies, potential or otherwise, better than she knew her friends. But in this case, it had been impossible to earn her knowledge firsthand. No ogre had entered the kingdom since the War of Harts, a three-year battle of succession in which her father had hired ogre mercenaries to vanquish the power-hungry forces of his evil twin, Dunstan. After the war, the new king had wisely paid his hirelings a generous bonus, in return eliciting a pledge that they would leave Hartsvale undisturbed as long as Camden reigned. Until today, no ogre had violated that promise.

Nor had Brianna had opportunity to study ogres outside the valley. Like most of her father's subjects, she had passed her entire life without leaving Hartsvale. The kingdom sat in an alpine valley located in the heart of the Ice Mountains, known locally as the Ice Spires. The peaks were as huge as they were forbidding, enclosing the vale inside an immense rampart of glaciers and granite that could not be climbed. Even from here, near the center of the kingdom, Brianna could see the distant white crags looming in all directions, rising up to scratch at the sky like the jagged merlons of some vast citadel.

Of course, there were rifts in the wall: narrow passes that snaked their way through winding canyons and over treacherous glaciers before dropping into distant valleys. But, aside from a handful of adventurous traders with more greed than wisdom, few dared to travel such trails. The paths were as dangerous as they were long, crossing and recrossing raging rivers, traversing sheer cliffs a thousand feet above ground, and twining through endless marshes filled with water so cold a man's lips would turn blue from drinking it.

Not the least of these hazards were the giants and their kin. They infested the Ice Spires in all directions, with the nomadic frost giants wandering the Great Glacier to the north and the fire giants plaguing the dwarves of Citadel Adbar to the south. To the west, the furtive voadkyn abided in the frigid depths of the Coldwood, while the ascetic stone giants of the east claimed the high cliffs overlooking the vast wastes of the desert Anauroch. And there were at least a dozen more giant tribes in the region, tilling the earth of the deep fertile valleys, hunting in the conifer forests on the mountain slopes, and lurking in the high desolate passes that were the only paths over sheer-faced ridges of solid granite. From Hartsvale, it was literally impossible to travel in any direction without crossing the territory of at least one giant tribe, and foolish adventurers who tried to do so without the aid of an experienced guide seldom survived the attempt.

Brianna's wait came to an abrupt end when a distant thud sounded in the aspen stand. The noise was so faint that Brianna could hardly hear it, much less tell the exact direction it came from. There was a muffled scream, then another, and finally a chorus of rasping battle cries resembling the one the ogre had made before dying. The sounds were followed by several more thuds, then Morten's deep voice bellowed out of the forest, full of bloodlust and anger.