Goboka's angry eyes paled to lavender, and his heavy jaw fell open. "Stop!" he ordered. "What you do?"
"I swore I'd die before I let you take me again," Brianna said. Her feet touched the boulder she and her companions had placed on the bottom when they moved the raft into position, and she slowly bent her knees so that it would appear she was continuing to sink. "And I meant it."
The princess held her chin above the mire long enough to see the shaman grab a log and come splashing toward her, then she closed her eyes and let her head sink into cold mud. Pinching her nostrils shut with one hand, Brianna kneeled down and ran her hand over the boulder until she found the line they had tied to it, then she followed the rope until she came to the hand axe.
The princess pulled the weapon loose. Her heart began to pound, rebelling against any plan that required her to stop breathing, and within thirty alarmed beats the rest of her body joined the panic. Soon, it seemed to Brianna that she had been submerged forever, though a small corner of her mind knew that no more than a minute had passed. Her lungs began to ache for air, and her mouth longed to open wide. It required a conscious act of will to keep her legs folded beneath her, for every instinct screamed at her to straighten them out and thrust her head up into the cool, crisp air just two feet above. But the princess knew what would happen if she did: Goboka would realize he had been tricked. He would react instantly, dodging or blocking her axe strike, and her chance would be gone.
The princess could not understand what was taking Goboka so long. He was obviously intelligent, at least for an ogre, and this was a simple enough thing to do. Push his log out to her raft and plunge his hand into the mud, then grasp her hair-or whatever he could find-and pull her up.
Perhaps he was casting a spell. They had talked about that possibility, but Basil had convinced them that once Brianna was submerged, the ogre would not have time to prepare a spell capable of saving her. Unfortunately, Goboka had surprised them too many times for the princess to place much faith in the runecaster's reassurances. That she was now crouching in the bog was proof enough of the shaman's prowess, for this was the last hope of victory. All of their other plans and assaults had failed to stop him.
There was nothing for Brianna to do but wait, fighting against her own instincts while her body slowly burned her last whiffs of air. Her temples began to throb, and her chest was about to burst with the urge to expel the stale breath in her lungs. In the back of her mind, a fiendish voice kept saying she would feel better if she exhaled. The princess did not listen. She knew her desperate lungs would try to refill themselves the instant she emptied them, and she still had enough control over her mind to know humans could not breathe mud.
At last, Brianna felt the mire swirling near her face. She pushed her head toward the activity and felt her brow brush a pair of talons. They twitched away, and she lost contact. The princess almost screamed, then felt the coarse pads of five ogre fingers slipping over the crown of her head. They squeezed down, the claws digging into her scalp so deep she feared they would puncture her skull.
Brianna took her fingers away from her nostrils and reached up to claw at the hand, trying to pull Goboka into the mud on top of her. She did not want to succeed, but if she allowed the shaman to pull her from the bog without a struggle, he might sense a trap.
Goboka's talons dug deeper, and he pulled. Brianna was surprised by the force the bog exerted to keep her down. The suction was more powerful than the princess had imagined possible, and she found herself worrying the ogre would not be strong enough to pull her free. She had heard many stories of moose, bears, and even dragons that had become so caught in quagmires that they starved to death within plain sight of solid ground. If such powerful beasts could not free themselves, it seemed unreasonable to think an ogre could pull her out.
Fortunately, Brianna did not have to rely on her foe. Ever so slightly, she began to straighten her legs and push against the solid surface of the boulder. She felt herself slipping slowly upward, until, with a loud whooshing sound, the suction broke and her head came shooting out of the mud.
Brianna found herself looking at the side of Goboka's log, with what appeared to be a bleeding mass of mud piled on top. At first, the princess did not know what to make of the sight, then she understood exactly what she was seeing and braced her feet solidly on the boulder. She pushed herself to her full height, so that she was standing only chest-deep in the mire, and brought the hand axe up from beneath the muck.
