A Plague of Giants

by Kevin Hearne

  Drawing out an empty water skin, I continued to speak to her as I filled it. “I’ll assume you’re female until you tell me otherwise. What’s your name?”

  She didn’t screech this time, merely made a short, high-pitched declaration: “Eep.”

  “Pleasure to meet you, Eep. I’m Abhi.”

  I taught her to nod and shake her head for yes and no, though she didn’t have the same muscles and couldn’t really shake her head. Instead she had to rotate it or twist it, which was disconcerting to watch but a clear difference from a nod.

  “I’m going to a human city a couple of days’ walk to the north. If you’d like to join me, you are welcome. I should warn you that there’s a bloodcat who’s been tagging along. He’s not here right now, but he might show up later. I’ll make sure he doesn’t bother you, though. Want to come along for a while?”

  She nodded, and I grinned. I made friends much faster out here than I did among humans.

  My empty skins filled, I sloshed out of the hidden pond and took my bearings. I’d left the wake of the kherns that had killed my family since they had veered west; I was traveling across trackless grass now, but I couldn’t get too lost. If I simply kept heading north, I would eventually run into the wide Banighel River, and Khul Bashab was situated on its bank.

  Eep sometimes walked through the grass with me and sometimes flew. Murr rejoined me in midafternoon while she happened to be airborne, and she screeched at his appearance.

  “Hello, Murr. I’ve made a new friend. I want you to be friends, too. Murr, meet Eep. Please don’t eat her. Eep, this is Murr. He won’t eat you. Right, Murr?”

  The bloodcat tossed its chin upward. “Excellent. You see, Eep? We can travel together in peace.”

  The stalk hawk screeched once more: She was doubtful. But soon she spiraled down on my left, keeping me between her and Murr, and walked along, her head twisted to watch him. He watched her. And eventually they faced forward and ignored each other. With sunset perhaps an hour away, I mentioned to both of them that I would need to make camp soon. I had water to boil and needed a fire, and for that I needed wood.

  “Eep, would you mind looking for some shrubs or trees that I might use for a campsite and then direct me there if you find some? If we’re lucky we can find something to make a perch for you also. Then you can rest above the grass and see well.”

  She took wing, circled above us once, then flew northeast. I turned that way, and after about ten minutes she returned, calling down to me that she had found something. She banked and flew over my head in a straight line to point the way, and I picked up my pace. The sun was sinking, and our shadows stretched out for lengths on the grass.

  Soon I saw what she had found: a nughobe grove, smaller than the one in which I found Murr but with plenty of dead branches for my fire and a broad, shallow stream that I thought I recognized by the color of the bed; the mud was reddish. We had forded a red muddy streambed near the end of our first day out from Khul Bashab. If this was the same one, then I was getting close. I didn’t remember seeing this nughobe grove, however, so if it was in fact the same stream, I was significantly up- or downstream from where my family had crossed it; the amount of water here attested to that as well. I must have wandered significantly off true north somehow. That meant Khul Bashab was either northwest or northeast of me. When I reached the Banighel River, I would have to decide which way to turn.

  But the stream water was cleaner than the pond water, and Murr sounded pleased that he would have a nughobe tree to sleep in that night. I let him pick a tree and then made my fire nearby, dumping out the pond water, boiling plenty of stream water, and refilling all my skins before getting out my journal and setting some beans and potatoes in the pot.

  My basic needs are met for today. But I still don’t know what I will do when I get to Khul Bashab. I worry about my ability to make plans since my last one wound up getting my family killed and I’m clearly not good at anticipating consequences. I’m afraid that Murr and Eep might suffer for accompanying me. I’m not sure that I’ll ever be as safe again as I am right now.

  “More Abhi tomorrow! And more of everyone’s favorite Nentian viceroy as well.” The bard got some wry chuckles out of that, but he was goading the Nentians. He might have a poorly developed instinct for self-preservation.

  I slept hardly at all because I was so nervous about my first lesson or sparring session or whatever my training was to be called with Mynstad du Möcher. When I had met her the previous day to acquire my requisitioned rapier and mail shirt, I was surprised by her beauty and I think my mouth might have dropped open. One does not expect, in a storehouse of tools for causing violent death, to find a face that makes one want to live.

  She saw my reaction, which inspired a scowl, and then I felt like an idiot. My first thought was that she must have to fight men off, and then I realized immediately that she not only could but had. She would not be personally training Rölly in warfare otherwise.

  She was taller than me. Long arms and fingers. Narrow waist, muscular thighs, a physically intimidating person even without a weapon in her hand. She had grown her hair out and gathered it in back with a tie, confident that no one would ever get close enough to grab it. Her complexion was darker than mine, dark enough to be Kaurian, but if that was her heritage, she clearly did not hold with their pacifist theology.

  She barely spoke to me and avoided eye contact when I presented Pelenaut Röllend’s requisition along with his request that she assess and train me to standard. She must have thought that I would try to flirt with her after my embarrassing display of surprise. She snatched the paper from my hand, read it, and then turned into the armory, expecting me to follow. She pulled out a rapier and a mail shirt from storage, thrust them at me, and then said only, “Be here at 0800 tomorrow for assessment, sir. I have much to do before then. Excuse me.”

  The Mynstad pivoted on her heel and left me there, clutching a mail shirt and awkwardly holding a rapier and its carriage. “Oh,” I said, and then, realizing that was inadequate, added, “I’ll see you then!” She made no answer but kept walking out of sight around a corner of shelved cuirasses, her boots making crisp claps on the stone floor. I sighed and shook my head; I hadn’t felt so inept since my school days. I spent some time in the morning working off my embarrassment with old forms before meeting Fintan at the chowder house, and after arriving home subsequent to Fintan’s evening tales, I spent more time in my bare parlor practicing. I took the forms slowly and thought I remembered the dance at least, but I felt sure my technique was rusty, not to mention my speed. My knee injury would prevent me executing the necessary footwork for some moves.

  After a long time staring into darkness from my bed, I must have caught a bare hour or so of sleep before waking up to the same impenetrable gloom and mincing gingerly across the floor to light a candle by touch alone. I dropped the box of matches and gave them a good cursing. Once I finally got some light going, I practiced again until dawn. A light breakfast of fish and rice and then a limping march to the armory for me, determined to make a decent second impression since the first had been so awful.

  I nodded at Mynstad du Möcher when I arrived, keeping my mouth closed. She waited for me to say something, and when I failed to say or do anything damning, she returned the nod.

  “Welcome, Master du Alöbar. Please follow me to the courtyard in back.”

  I remembered the courtyard from my early days of service. On the other side of it was the training barracks for new recruits, which meant it was nearly always hosting exercises of one kind or another during daylight hours, and one could count on always having an audience of judging eyes.

  “Did you ever serve in the military?” the Mynstad asked once we emerged into sunlight on cobbled stones.

  “I did. Under Pelenaut Hönig.”

  “I see. Did you earn that limp in his service?”

  I winced. “I was hoping you wouldn’t notice that. But yes.”

  She faced m
e and for the first time looked interested in my existence. “Mind telling me how if it’s not painful to recall?”

  “Not at all. Time has weathered away the sharp edge of the pain. I was stationed in Grynek, manning the wall during a night watch. There was a trading wagon approaching the gate on the eastern side—carpet merchants. A pretty safe trade: nobody gets really excited about robbing them because they’re bloody awkward to haul around without the wagon and bandits don’t like wagons; carpets just aren’t products you can turn into easy money.”

  She gestured with her hand to indicate that I should speed forward. I was babbling.

  “Right. Well, it was a family, you see. Young children with adults. But they were happy at seeing the lights on the walls and were singing quite loudly about the good times they’d have in town. It drew the attention of a hungry gravemaw on the other side of the river.”

  “No,” the Mynstad said, already horrified.

  I nodded. “It crossed the river, mostly in a single massive leap across the deep channel, and then it walked out the rest of the way. I called for help, and everyone within hearing rushed down and out the gate to defend the family, pikes in hand. We shouted at them to run, leave the wagon behind, but the distance was too great and the gravemaw too fast. Bryn save me, the teeth—it was … well. It ate them. The kids first. The parents followed. And that’s when we got there with our pikes—only five of us.”

  “It had to be hard to see.”

  “Yes, but it was a full moon that night and cloudless. Torches from the wagon might have helped. The gravemaw was thinking about maybe eating one of the horses and was not truly worried about us. It was attracted to their fear and their neighing while we were simply running toward it. But it was taking its time, snaking that massive tongue across them, tasting them, I suppose. The huge mouth was open, in other words. I was first, and I had a shot at a killing blow—right through the upper palate and into the brain, past all that natural armor, and it wouldn’t be hunting along our riverbanks again. I was focused, I was ready, I envisioned what I wanted, and none of it mattered because one of the horses knocked me over in its fear just as I was about to strike. I tumbled, rolled with the hit, ready to regain my feet and try again, except that the gravemaw had spotted me, a nice delicious human, easier to eat in one go than a horse, and its tongue whipped out and wrapped around my right leg at the knee. It yanked me into the air that way, above its head, where I could fall into its mouth, and I felt the tissues around my knee tear right then. They never healed right, and I’ve limped ever since.”

  Mynstad du Möcher gaped. “But how are you alive?”

  “Oh! My fellows saved me. The gravemaw opened wide for his dessert, and they had been right behind me. They took the opportunity to ram their pikes up into his brain through the upper palate, and I fell to the ground next to it. Broke a bone in my forearm coming down, but that healed properly.”

  “So it’s true what they say about their natural armor? Impenetrable, so you have to kill them from the inside?”

  “Absolutely true. And it’s why they don’t run from anything, since they’re so hard to kill.”

  “That was good service.”

  I snorted. “Hardly. I couldn’t save anyone, didn’t kill the gravemaw, and I got injured. In fact, I got dismissed as soon as I could walk again.”

  “That was a poor decision by your superiors, if I may say so. You saw the danger. You called the alarm. You charged in first. That deserved commendation. Battles rarely work out the way we wish them to, so it is quick thinking and good judgment that matter outside of physical prowess. What was your rank?”

  “I was a Mynstad, like you.”

  Mynstad du Möcher straightened and gave me the veteran’s salute. “Since it seems no one has bothered to thank you for your actions, let me thank you now, years too late and far, far away.”

  I smiled. “That’s very kind.”

  She flashed a grin at me, a brilliant, dazzling thing. “The only kindness you’ll get from me, I’m afraid. Because now I must assess your physical prowess, Mynstad.”

  “I stopped using my military rank long ago. You can call me Dervan.”

  “Very well, Dervan. Let us review the basic forms. Side by side, we will step through them.”

  It was so very fine at first. My fervent practice allowed me to look respectable until it was time to lunge. I couldn’t fake that or go halfway, and my knee buckled under the strain. I collapsed but didn’t cry out.

  “Master Dervan! Are you all right?”

  “Eghh. Embarrassed but not hurt. That’s a resounding no from my knee concerning lunges.”

  “Is there any pain?”

  “Not much. But not much strength, either.” She extended a hand, and I grabbed it, allowing her to pull me upright again.

  “It’s an interesting challenge,” she said. “With that lack of mobility you will be hard pressed. Let us see what we can do.”

  We worked on upper body moves only, quick parries and thrusts or slashes to end the fight as quickly as possible. Mynstad du Möcher dismissed me after a couple of hours, enjoining me to return for additional practice for an hour whenever I had the time. I saluted her and thanked her for her time and pivoted smartly on my good leg to go meet Fintan. I was exhausted and my hand throbbed with forming blisters, but I didn’t care. At least I wasn’t an utter failure.

  Some hours later, our work finished and energized by a mediocre lunch not worth remembering, Fintan took to the wall and greeted his audience with a strum of his harp.

  “Today we’ll hear all about events in the west. But first, at risk of putting you to sleep, a Hathrim lullaby—specifically one from Harthrad, as you will note from the mention of Mount Thayil. I know it’s strange to think of giants cooing their children to sleep, but that’s why I think such songs are fascinating.”

  Another strum of the harp and then:

  Hush now, heart of my hearth,

  Bank your fire for the night,

  I will keep the coals bright

  Until you wake at dawn.

  Hush now, heart of my hearth,

  It is time for us to rest,

  The bellows in our chests

  Are making us both yawn.

  Tomorrow we will be stronger

  While Thayil sleeps a bit longer,

  But now you need to close your eyes

  And dream of summer berry pies.

  There were titters in the audience at the end, and Fintan chuckled with them. “I have no idea where those pies came from,” he said, and the laughter grew louder in response. We’d all been thinking the same thing. “Get ready, everybody; the tales begin soon!” His first seeming transformed him into Gorin Mogen.

  Fire blast the Fornish! We lost six houndsmen and very nearly lost my son to some slithering flesh-eating plant! And because the Fornish lived to report our presence here, we are getting attention earlier than I would have wished, but the essential plan remains the same. We will lie, delay, and build our defenses until we are unshakable, and the city of Baghra Khek will stand long after I am ashes. But we must clearly devise a countermeasure to the Fornish net launchers. That tactic was both unexpected and successful. We have been conducting timber raids on their southern coast for generations now and never saw them. And maybe we should worry more about the greensleeves. A hound on patrol had its legs completely torn off, and its rider disappeared while his partner came to report one of the Fornish in the pines.

  Volund has sailed to Tharsif with our first shipment of timber and should return with food and good news soon. For my ease of mind, he cannot return soon enough.

  Sefir came to me with less pleasing news from the shore. A Nentian transport had arrived with one of the houndsmen whom Volund had left behind in Hashan Khek—Lanner Burgan, a stout red-bearded lad nearly my size.

  “The word is that the viceroy is keeping Korda hostage,” Sefir said, arriving fresh from the new docks.

  “The viceroy used that word?”
/>
  “No, he’s a ‘guest,’ but it’s clear.”

  “How many Nentians are here?”

  “Twenty or so.”

  “Armed?”

  “Yes.”

  “And their ship?”

  Sefir smirked in satisfaction. “Very flammable.”

  “Good. You know it can’t ever leave.”

  “I do. I’ll see to it on your signal. One of the Nentians wishes to talk. He has a message from the viceroy.”

  “Let’s hear it, then, and find out what they know. But before you bring them to me, make sure the Raelechs don’t get to see them or even hear about them. Find some excuse to get them on the far side of the city until it’s over. Oh—and send La Mastik here right away if you can.”

  My hearth frowned. “The flame priestess? Why?”

  “I want her head to be on fire when the Nentians get here.”

  “We could set our own heads on fire.”

  “I know, but her shaved head really makes it look more impressive than it is. Basic intimidation.”

  Sefir nodded, her lips curling up in a smile, and leaned forward to kiss me. “Merciless and a sense of theatre. I married almost as well as you did.” I smiled and agreed.

  A half hour later a Nentian with a dark oiled beard and long straight hair draped over a pale yellow tunic was ushered to my hearth in the company of several small men. I’ve been told that I could learn quite a bit about any given Nentian by examining his boots, but I’ve never cared enough to absorb their status markers. Lanner trailed behind and gave me a nod of respect but kept silent, taking up a position off to the side and behind the Nentians. Like the leader, they were all dressed in light-colored linens or soft cottons; I get them mixed up and cannot tell the difference. No Hathrim would ever wear such materials when there was leather to be had.