“We also must go to Uurz,” said Vantha. She kneeled next to Dahrima and studied Vireon’s bloodless face. How similar the peaceful look of dying was to the look of sleeping. “The general retreat began when we left the valley. Any survivors will come to the City of Sacred Waters. The Sword King will have physicians and wizards there to aid Vireon.”
“The Sword King is dead,” Atha said. “I saw him devoured by shadows.”
“Yet the Warlord of Uurz commands his legions still,” said Yasha the Flamehair. “He blew the horn that called the retreat.”
“Let us await the Warlord here then,” said Atha.
“No,” said Dahrima. “We must run and bring news of the defeat to Uurz. It will take the survivors at least three days to reach the city gates, perhaps longer if there are many wounded among them. Every second we delay could mean Vireon’s death.” She stood once more with the Giant-King cradled in her arms. His breathing was faint, his heart barely beating.
There were sighs of weariness and moans of pain as the spear-maidens arose about her. The rain had paused momentarily, but the wind brought it back stronger. It blew cold upon their faces.
“We are Uduri,” said Vantha. “Let us run!”
All that day and the following night they sprinted, crossing the very heart of the Stormlands. They waded across the Eastern Flow rather than wasting time to locate one of its five bridges. Always the passing of the Uduri was an unspoken warning to the villages in their path. The plantations sprouted thicker and closer together as the Giantesses neared the walls of Uurz. Sight of the sprinting Uduri convinced even the most stubborn doubters that invasion was nigh. A line of plainsmen with carts, wagons, and herds of livestock lined up before the city’s great gate.
Vantha ran ahead, shouting the crowds off the road, clearing the way for Dahrima and her burden. When the gatekeepers saw the Giant-King’s limp body, they formed an escort to accompany Dahrima’s band directly to the palace. There a nervous steward showed Dahrima to the Giant Quarters and summoned the royal physician to tend Vireon.
“There is little more that I can do,” the bearded codger told Dahrima. He had cleansed the wound, wrapped Vireon with white bandages, and poured a foul-smelling elixir down the Giant-King’s throat. He told her the medicine was brewed by a clever alchemist who was also a known wizard, and that it would revive Vireon if his spirit had not already fled the body. Yet the potion had done nothing. The next morning Vireon still lay barely breathing, pale as a corpse, and a fever had set his brow to burning.
Dahrima and her sisters had not left Vireon’s chamber. Servants brought them wine, food, and the physician treated their wounds as best he could. The more seriously wounded of the spear maidens arrived with the Warlord Mendices and his retreating forces. The Uduri respectfully ignored Dahrima’s tears. They said nothing of the way she cradled his head in the crook of her arm, or the soft words she spoke into his ear. They stood by her as she sat with him hour after hour. At times they rested on the lush carpets, only to rise and stand at attention once again.
Vireon looked so small in the bed sized for a Giant. Yet he was still the Giant-King, and while in Uurz he belonged in this chamber. Dahrima dozed for a while, her head resting on the side of his bed. When she awoke, she examined his face and saw that nothing had changed.
Come back, Son of Vod. She whispered the words so that none in the chamber would hear them but Vireon. You have a judgment to pass upon me. Cast me in chains, throw me into the dungeons of Udurum, banish me to the furthest reaches of the Icelands, but come back and sit upon your throne again.
She fell asleep a second time, dreaming that Vireon awakened, met her eyes with his own, and whispered his love for her. He kissed her while the Uduri knelt about them and hid their faces. Then she awoke gasping and fell into despair once again.
I love you, Vireon Vodson, she whispered. If this is a crime, then add it to my list.
She no longer cared if her sisters heard. Surely they must know her feelings, watching her linger by his side. A memory rushed into her head as she held his limp hand, hot as fire. She had been a girl, no more than ten or twelve seasons old, when her mother Khorima had sat beside her dying father in this exact posture. Ingthr the Steelheart had also been pale and fevered in his sickbed. The tusks of a great Udhog had pierced her father’s flesh deep in two places. He had lived long enough to be carried on a litter back to Old Udurum. This was seven hundred and fifty years before the Return of Omagh and the destruction of the Giants’ ancestral home.
Dahrima had offered her dying father a horn of bittermead, the favored drink of hunters, hoping it would revive him. Her mother had taken the flask and helped Ingthr drink a little, but it only threw him into a fit of coughing. Dahrima had recalled for decades the bloody flecks that flew from his lips during those coughs, and she was sure her well-intentioned act had caused her father’s death. Ingthr had lasted until the next morning, and Dahrima had wept for days.