Tavis could not believe what he heard. Over the years, he had fought all manner of beasts with Runolf, and never had his old friend warned him off. In fact, the sergeant had always recited his motto before each battle-Forget your fear and remember your duty.-and advised each man to keep it close to his heart.
"You were doing your duty, weren't you?" Tavis surmised. "You questioned it because you couldn't betray Brianna!"
"Go back," Runolf warned.
"Who commanded you to be the ogres' guide?" the scout demanded. Even as he asked the question, he realized his mentor would have taken such an order from only one person. Before Runolf could reply, Tavis gasped, "The king!"
"That must remain secret!" Wisps of golden light began to cloud Runolf's eyes. "I'm sorry to do this, but duty demands it."
The misty glow in Runolf's eyes began to spin, forming a pair of tiny yellow cyclones. The two whirlwinds began to lengthen, hissing like dragon's breath as they shot up the couloir.
Tavis turned and threw himself down the other side of the mountain, landing on a broad scree slope. Above him, Runolf's attack struck the notch with a thunderous crash, rocking the mountainside and filling the sky with a yellow flash. The scout began to roll, tumbling head over heels. Before he could stop himself, a muffled growl rumbled down the mountainside, then the entire scree slope broke free and began to slide.
No stranger to avalanches, the firbolg spread his arms and legs to stop his tumble. When he finally managed to stabilize himself, lie was lying on his back with his head pointed downhill, still being carried down the mountain with the sliding scree.
Tavis jerked his knees toward his chest. The action flipped him into the air, with the result that he landed facedown on the avalanche. Although small stones and gravel were now pelting his head, at least he was descending feetfirst in a more controlled position. He began rolling to the side, across the landslide, and soon found himself within reach of a rock outcropping. After a few painful instants of clawing and kicking, he caught hold of a crevice and dragged himself out of the slide.
"What happened?" called a familiar voice.
Tavis looked up and saw Basil clinging to a boulder above. The scout had slid so far that he was more than a dozen paces below the runecaster, who still had a considerable distance to climb before reaching the notch above Runolf's couloir. The verbeeg's breath came in gasps as loud as the wind rasping through the crags above, for the steep climb was rendered even more difficult by the mountain's thin air.
"The ogres left a sentry on the other side of the notch," Tavis explained. A bolt of alarm shot through his breast as he noted that Avner was not clinging to the cliff near the verbeeg. "Where's Avner?"
Basil pointed down the slope. "When the slide started. Avner was about there." he said. "I didn't have time to see what happened to him."
Tavis looked down and saw that the avalanche had scraped the hillside clean, leaving a sheer scarp of dusty schist in its wake. There were several large crags onto which the boy could have scrambled to safety, but the scout did not see Avner clinging to any of them.
"Avner!" he yelled.
The boy's head popped out of a crevice. "Is it safe?"
Tavis breathed a sigh of relief. "It's never safe up this high, but at least the slide's over."
Avner scrambled up the rocky face like a mountain goat, his broad smile suggesting that he preferred the barren rock to the loose fooling of the scree.
As Tavis waited for the boy, he studied the mountain below. The slide had scraped the slope clean, not stopping until it reached a flat at the base of the hill. On the other side of this small plateau, the mountainside once again grew steep, dropping away into one of the many canyons through which the scout and his companions had passed since leaving Hartsvale. It was a deep, gloomy, gorge, made darker by the conifer forest creeping up its walls.
Tavis knew Morten and the earls were somewhere down there, for he had glimpsed them earlier as they passed through a clearing. The earls had abandoned their horses, along with their lances and heavy shields, to stumble along on foot. It had been difficult to tell more from a distance, but the scout had seen several silver glimmers as the sun flashed off polished steel, suggesting that they had kept at least some of their armor.
Although Tavis was not happy to know the king's men were still following, he was far from concerned. Even with Basil and Avner along, the scout knew plenty of tricks to increase his lead-and over the last few days he had employed only a few of them. But sooner or later, he would catch the ogres, and then he would have to slow down to rescue Brianna. It would be then that his own pursuers caught him. He only hoped they would be slow enough to arrive after the task was completed.
