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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