After a short time she could breathe again, and slowly she sat up, then pushed herself laboriously to her feet, looking at the shore below her. Hornet was gone-utterly gone-and Goldwing had been heaved sideways, tossed down the shore upon sand. None of the two score ogres left to guard the beach were visible.

“O my wrathful god!” she groaned. “How did we fail you?” Though unable to deny the evidence of her eyes, Stariz was unwilling to accept the fantastic scope of the disaster.

She started forward at a jog, her mind whirling, filled with chaotic images and hateful thoughts. Her trunklike legs pumped, carrying her down the hill. She passed the trudging Shield-Breakers who were picking themselves up, plodding dazedly onto the beach. Some distance away, still coming down the hill, Stariz saw a party of ogre warriors bearing a litter and recognized the golden breastplate.

The king! What further disasters could this day bring? Now pure fear choked her throat, apprehension that Grimwar Bane would die and she would become a mere priestess again, would lose the status and power that she had worked so hard to attain. She lumbered along the shore, and she saw the figure on the litter thrashing, rejoiced to think her husband still lived. Perhaps the power of her god might aid her to heal him, as long as he breathed, no matter how grievously injured he might be.

Exhaustion forced her to slow. She looked around, saw a vast gaping hole in the ground and the seawall made by the wasted explosion of the golden orb.

Stariz crossed the beach, meeting the party bearing the fallen king. Already a hundred of the Grenadiers were heaving at the beached hull of the royal galley, dragging it across the sand and into shallow water, from there out to where it could float, while a ramp was lowered for the survivors and the king. Thankfully, the Goldwing, for all that it had experienced, seemed remarkably undamaged.

“My queen!” called Argus Darkand, reliably close by Grimwar’s side. “The king is sorely hurt!”

“Take him onto the deck and into his cabin!” Stariz cried, pointing imperiously. The ogres hastened to obey, and she felt she had recovered some measure of dignity and satisfaction as she stalked up the ramp and onto the galley’s deck.

She had thought of a new plan.

* * * * *

Grimwar Bane sensed walls and a ceiling-a darkened room. He smelled the sea and weathered timbers. It was a cabin. He was in a cabin on his ship, he deduced, and somehow he was still alive-though it still seemed that his chest was all pain and his breathing was torturous. Argus Darkand stood over him, the ogre’s face contorted by worry.

“Take me out of here, onto the deck!” The king’s words were croaked, so great was the fire in his lungs, but he flailed a hand and was able to make himself understood. The helmsman looked reluctant.

“It was the queen’s order, Sire,” Argus Darkand declared, “to place you in the cabin. She will be here in a moment, said she needed to retrieve some unguents and a talisman from her sea-chest….”

“No!” groaned the king. “I want to see the water, the sky.” He felt a stark fear that he might never behold those sights again, and he desperately wanted to feast on their natural glory before he perished.

“I am here, Husband,” Stariz declared, stepping forward to loom over him, her square bulk blocking out the little daylight streaming through the door. “Stand back!” she cried to the gaping helmsman, her voice an almost hysterical screech. “Leave me alone with the king, and I shall bring the power of Gonnas to bear on his wounds!”

Argus fled, joining Broadnose and some of the Grenadiers who had clustered on the deck, nervously peeking through the open door. The ogre monarch was touched when his wife knelt at his feet and bowed her head, wailing great sobs that echoed back and forth in the small cabin. The audience outside the cabin jostled for view, dumbstruck and wide-eyed, as the queen’s grief rose to a crescendo.

Abruptly Stariz lifted her head, her tiny eyes blazing, her mouth twisted by a grimace, more of outrage than mourning. “My Lord King! Who dared to strike you? May Gonnas drag him into an eternity of torment for his impudence!”

Grimwar drew a ragged breath, wincing against the iron grip of pain in his chest. He made no answer, had no voice at the moment and didn’t himself know for certain who had struck him. Still kneeling, his wife reached forward and placed one massive hand across his bandaged chest, gently caressing his wound.

“O Willful One, show us thy mercy!” Grimwar’s wife and queen cried, leaning her head back, squeezing her eyes shut as she aimed her voice upward, a powerful and penetrating bray. It was easy for the king to imagine her plea piercing the sky itself, rising all the way to wherever it was that gods might dwell. “Grant your healing power unto the flesh of your faithful king!”

She looked at him with a penetrating gaze and spoke quietly. “Be strong, Husband, for the flesh-knitting power of the Willful One is not without a cost in pain.”

He was afraid of that-almost as afraid as of death-but never did he have more hope and trust in his priestess wife. Abruptly these thoughts were cut off by a fiery agony that clamped Grimwar’s chest, constricting his ribs, burning through his lungs and throat. He opened his mouth but still no sound emerged, and the effort only doubled, tripled, the level of his pain. Desperation gripped him. Was he dying, slain by his god’s-or his wife’s-displeasure?

Flesh twisted and stretched within his rib cage, organs seethed and churned in his torso, and the vise around his lungs closed even tighter. There seemed no air, none at all to breathe-just a blazing fire which seared through his flesh, slowly drawing a smothering cloak over his awareness. The power of Gonnas had seized him by the entrails, crushing with immortal might, and all the king could do was sit upright, open-mouthed, mute, trembling.

Over what seemed an eternity of time, the agony began to pass. Through his tear-blurred vision Grimwar met his wife’s eyes fixed upon his own. Her mouth was taut, the thin line of her lips marking something between a smile and a grimace. When at last the monarch drew a ragged breath she raised her voice in a joyful shout.

“The Willful One has healed the king!” Stariz cried. “Glory be to Gonnas the Strong!”

Stariz had triumphed. Gonnas had not forsaken him. Grimwar felt the power of the god fuse his torn flesh and restore his fitness. Gradually his strength returned. He was sore and limp with fatigue, wringing wet from the sweat that had soaked his skin, his hair, his garments. Shaking his head, the ogre king reached a trembling hand and wiped the sheen of perspiration from his forehead and jowls.

But when he looked at the triumphant sneer on the queen’s face, he knew there would he a cost for this healing. There was always a cost for her favors-and the good will of Gonnas. Let it be so, he thought grimly.

His brow furrowed, Grimwar thought of the fanatic defenders of Brackenrock. The humans had fought like demons. That slender, golden-haired warrior with the shining sword-that was the elf, Grimwar remembered, the Messenger who had been such a bane to his existence. He was the one who stabbed him, yes. How had that small, almost delicate swordsman, fought with such ferocity? The king remembered his disbelief as the fellow had hurled himself between two monstrous bodyguards, striking out for the king as if that deadly blade had a will of its own.

He pushed himself groggily to his feet. Stariz watched breathlessly. “Is there pain, Sire?” she asked, narrowing her eyes.

“No. Not any more,” he replied, amazed that he felt so whole, so intact. The memory of approaching death, the cold, clammy memory, was still fresh and terrifying.