A Plague of Giants

by Kevin Hearne

  I set the next crew on fire as Sefir barked a warning that another thornhand attack was incoming. We were ready and deflected them all this time, the thorns unable to penetrate our shields and then unable to quest beyond or around them as our protective flames blackened them to char.

  My awareness of fire registered the conscious snuffing of the flames behind us at the southern gate. Halsten and the houndsmen were ready to ride, and I heard them yip in excitement as he gave the order. We were not the only ones who heard that: movement in the trees revealed the next pod of thornhands, who were moving to intercept and let us pass by—not a bad decision strategically. The hounds would be more vulnerable, with significant gaps in their armor and no shields or axes. But the houndsman who had escaped in the first sally and disappeared uphill returned, plowing into the pod, with the hound snapping up a thornhand in its jaws; the rider’s long poleaxe cut two more in half with a single sweep of steel and sprayed blood, leaving only one who had ducked with an opportunity to exact revenge. She screamed as the change shook her, and her hands and arms first lengthened and then shot into the backs of both the hound and the rider, in the hound’s case entering directly underneath the tail. They convulsed but kept going because of their momentum as the thorns grew and spread inside them, and it was only a bare second longer until they passed the limit of the thornhand’s accelerated growth. Their immense combined mass pulled her roots out of the ground, but the thorns also pulled out of the hound and rider, yanking steaming entrails with them into the dawn and toppling them both; all three died together.

  It was a grisly and distracting reminder of what a thornhand can do if one is not vigilant. And two full pods chose that moment to attack us simultaneously—eight suicidal tree fanatics willing to die to take just one of us down because we might need firewood someday. Except that this time more than one of us fell. There were so many thorned spears coming at once, creaking and popping the way wood does, that it was overwhelming. Sefir and I were scratched, and deeply, but nothing hooked and held on because we crouched behind our shields, took the impact of the spears, swept the edges with our axes, and flared up until the thorns lost their animation. Sefir glanced at me, dressed in flame and steel, blood sheeting down one cheek, a small grin on her face.

  “Burn them all,” I said.

  “For Jerin,” she replied, “and for us. For our people.”

  She will always be my love.

  We rose together, our formation tightened behind us again, and we continued east along the southern wall. Sefir and I sparked the next catapult and its crew together just as it launched, which was delightful overkill. The music of their screams drowned for a moment a building thunder in the ground. We felt it before we heard it, and we heard it before we saw it. Out past the dark-haired Fornish man who’d sent the blond greensleeve out of sight, tall shapes loomed above the grasses, gray-skinned things difficult to see in the gray twilight. They were singular in that they appeared to be my height—twelve feet, easily. And they were coming straight at us.

  Massive beasts, wicked horns and tapered snouts, moving at speed, and we had no cover—

  “Sefir, run! We must make the corner!” I said, and lengthened my stride. The Fornish man turned around, saw them coming—saw the kherns coming; that’s what they were called—and scrambled out of sight the same way the greensleeve had gone. “Hug the wall!” I said, and shuffled a few strides to the left, thinking that perhaps the kherns would pass by us. But they altered course to match us—this was no natural stampede! It was a calculated attack, just like the attack on Jerin. The Fornish must have found the Sixth Kenning and gained control over animals—confirmed, almost as I thought it, by Halsten’s swearing behind me. I looked over my shoulder and saw that the houndsmen, who had been charging right behind us, were now fighting their hounds as they turned around and ran directly west, toward the ocean.

  No matter. There was another way to control animals. “Burn them, Sefir!” I said, and we sent gouts of flame toward the vanguard, lighting up the fine hairs on their heads and setting their skin to bubbling. They bellowed and keened but kept coming, shaking the ground as they churned through the remnants of the burned catapults, smashing them to splinters, grinding the bodies of the Fornish crews into paste. I drew a line of fire in the grass ahead, and Sefir added hers to it until it rose to our height, a wall of flame to dissuade the kherns from continuing. But they plowed through it, snuffed it as they came, and we had not yet reached the corner.

  Panic gripped me as I realized that I could not stop them after all, and I did not know if I could make the corner. Gorge rose in my throat at the thought of a collision. I doubted I’d survive it, and even if I did, there were more of them behind the leaders; if I went down, I’d be trampled by the boil, and even my armor might not protect me against such weight and force. A better death than moss hornets, to be sure, but I did not want it to be mine. “Come on!” I roared to Sefir, and sped up without a care for protecting myself against thornhands, having no other choice. If I played it cautious now, I would be bowled over and churned into the earth.

  Thunder and fire, horns and steel, sprinting to outrun a crushing death: I had never felt so alive. I saw the small black eyes of the kherns focused on me and felt their desire to ram their horns through my guts. The ground shook, my lungs heaved, and my legs strained, the corner only a couple of lengths away, the leading fire-mad khern a couple of lengths beyond that.

  He wanted the collision because he knew he would win, and I wanted desperately to deny him.

  “Gorin!” Sefir cried, fear in her voice. “We won’t make it!”

  I couldn’t look around, couldn’t lose an inch of momentum. “We will! Just … jump!”

  My muscles convulsed as I reached the corner and leapt out of the path of the oncoming khern, to my left and its right, its bellow deafening me as it realized it was going to miss. One of the horns knocked against the wall with a hollow thunk, and then there was the crash, scrape, and shudder of flesh and bone against stone and steel. When I hit the ground, I kept rolling out of the path in case any of the kherns following chose to pursue me, but they kept going straight on. By the time I stopped and rose to one knee, they were past. There were pods of thornhands emerging from their cover in the foothills and following the boil, presumably to make sure the houndsmen were contained. They ignored me, which I thought strange: Weren’t the lavaborn their primary concern? There were four more catapults here, unprotected except by their greensleeves, and they were highly flammable.

  “Sefir!” I called. “They’re past. Where are you?”

  No answer. I didn’t see her either. I clambered to my feet to get a better view, since she was probably lying prone in the grass. But I didn’t see her at all. “Sefir?” She had been right next to me, perhaps a step behind on my right shoulder. She should have made it. “No, no …”

  Returning to the corner, I peered around it and beheld ruin. The leading khern we had set on fire was sprawled on the ground, gouges in the wall and in the earth, its corpse smoking, its end hastened by Sefir’s axe in its skull. The rest of the boil had trampled through and was still moving to the ocean, thornhands jogging behind them. My lavaborn littered the ground in their wake, including Sefir. She was not merely unconscious—she was broken, her bones caved in, vital organs punctured by crushed ribs, the once beautiful face inside the helmet a shapeless pulp, a smashed fruit.

  My love—all I had left to live for—was a bloody ruin.

  “Sefir … I am so sorry.” Had anyone attacked me then, I would not have fought. Tears welled, spilled into my beard. “I was wrong to bring us here.” I set her body aflame to set her free of the flesh. “I won’t be far behind.” I set all the lavaborn alight, apologizing to them as well, and realized that was why the thornhands had written me off. Only I had escaped the boil of kherns, and weighed against a pack of houndsmen, how much damage could one giant do?

  I would show them.

  Shrouding myself in fire,
shield shifted to my left arm and axe in my right hand, I roared and turned on the four remaining catapults.

  Fintan threw down a black sphere, shrinking down directly once more from Gorin Mogen to Nel Kit ben Sah.

  The thornhands made a mistake that might have killed us all—an understandable mistake, but no less dire. A boil of stampeding kherns thundered past, slamming into the lavaborn and presumably on to a pack of houndsmen that I heard baying, and they chose to pursue them rather than make sure all the lavaborn were dead. Perhaps they were drawn by the fact that the kherns appeared to be under the control of a single Nentian man riding on the back of the rearmost khern, black straight hair streaming behind him, a hawk of some kind cruising in the air just above him and a single bloodcat, of all things, trailing behind the boil. It made my jaw drop open at the implications: Had the Nentians finally discovered, at long last, the fabled Sixth Kenning? Did they have control over animals and not really require our help to defend their lands?

  But Gorin Mogen missed all this when he got to his feet. He glanced briefly in our direction, then went to discover what had happened to the rest of the lavaborn. When he found out, he would come for us, and our siege crews had no thornhands to fight him: only four greensleeves and the lesser blessed, such as grassgliders and culturists, who had few fighting skills.

  I followed branches of strategy to their ends, and none would support any weight except for the most desperate one, though why should it give me pause when thornhands had to confront the reality of it as soon as they were blessed by the First Tree?

  Mogen set the bodies of the fallen lavaborn aflame, or at least I think he did, since I could see only him and not their bodies. But the flame shooting from his axe pointed down, and his body wilted like a water-starved violet, so I doubted he was attacking anyone. When he was finished, though, his giant form blossomed into orange flame and he turned our way with a roar audible even over the distance and the din. Nef Tam ben Wat was directly east of him, and Mogen’s eyes found him for a single fearful moment and then slid past, dismissing the grassglider as a threat because several members of the closest siege crew had the brilliant idea of lobbing some gourds his way. Mogen destroyed them in midair with fireballs, but the effort visibly tired him; it was too much energy to expend at once, unlike sparking something small and spreading it. He did that next, setting the catapult aflame and then spreading it to the crew, as he’d done with the others. Three catapults remained, but their crews hadn’t seen Mogen coming yet, so intent were they on fulfilling their mission and forcing the Hathrim out into the open. My head turned to the north, where the first sun’s rays revealed a smudge of the approaching Nentian army on the horizon. We needed to flush the giants outside their walls to make them easy targets for the Nentian archers; the Hearthfire needed his people to stay in there if he wanted a chance to prevail, so he needed those catapults destroyed, and he was justified in thinking he could do it all by himself.

  The Hearthfire charged with his teeth bared, hefting his axe and keeping his shield in front of him. He took huge strides, building up speed, passing by the writhing figures of the crew he’d just set aflame and forgoing his kenning altogether to attack the next crew with an axe he probably had forged himself. And running on a course that was not exactly parallel but still coming my way, shouting and waving his hands, was Nef Tam ben Wat, trying to warn the next crew that they were in mortal peril. Over the din of the field I couldn’t hear him as his mouth moved silently, speaking doom like distant lightning whose thunder never reaches your ears.

  The greensleeve in charge of the crew, a member of the Green Beetle Clan, finally heard Nef’s shouted warning in time to witness but not avoid the blow coming from his blind side, a scything sweep that cut the greensleeve in half and smashed the light wood of the catapult to kindling. The surviving members of the crew bunched together around the catapult attempted to scatter, but Mogen killed four at once by leaping horizontally and landing on his six-foot shield, flattening them underneath it with an audible crunch and then an awful silence. Nef flinched at the horror of it as Mogen rolled and rose like a grinning avatar of death with the gore of our countrymen sliming his shield. But then Nef resumed his run to warn the next crew that Mogen was coming, and he did so with utter unconcern for his own safety, since the Hearthfire could see him and set him aflame whenever he wished. Nef didn’t care; he was putting others first. And in that moment, completely out of its proper season, the small sprouts of springtime affection I had nurtured for him bloomed into summertime love. He was a truly good man. Together as Nef and Nel we would be almost sickeningly cute. But there were only two catapults left. And only two Fornish truly capable of stopping Gorin Mogen.

  Vin Tai ben Dar, the greensleeve from Nef’s clan who had taken him to his Seeking years ago, saw Mogen coming and ordered his crew to scatter with a gourd each, leaving the catapult unguarded. “Surround him and throw your spores!” he shouted, and they spread out to encircle him. Mogen came to a halt, stood in place, and peered down at them, apparently unconcerned, maybe even slightly amused. Trying to take him out with the spores wasn’t a terrible stratagem except that Mogen was clearly ready for it. He waited and watched Vin, his eyes daring the greensleeve to proceed. And Nef, seeing that I was watching this unfold, came to a halt himself. My siege crew still had no idea and continued to work on launching gourds over the walls.

  Vin called out for his crew to throw their gourds, and Gorin Mogen took a deep breath, crouched, and expelled a wave of fire from him in all directions as the gourds came his way. They melted or exploded, and any spores that escaped were singed in the air, never reaching him. A few members of the crew, including Vin, were caught in the fire blast and fell away, rolling in the grass and trying to smother the flames.

  After that effort, however, Mogen’s face was a mask of pain and he was slow to get to his feet. The exertion of that kenning exacted a heavier toll, perhaps, than he had expected, and it did nothing to improve his mood despite saving him from a likely defeat. When he did rise from his crouch, he took his anger out on the catapult with his axe, reducing it to splinters with repeated blows and ignoring the Fornish, who presented no threat to him. I surged forward and told my crew to abort the mission and run for cover in the forest, taking any surviving member of Vin’s crew with them if they could. Then I backed away from the catapult, fading as much as I could back into tall grasses. There was only one way to stop him, and none of the others had thought to do it because greensleeves are taught to think of preservation above all, including self-preservation. But while I had much to lose, Gorin Mogen no longer had anything to lose: I assumed he lost his hearth to the boil of kherns, because she was lavaborn, too. So he would kill and kill until the plains were scourged clean of his enemies or one of them found the courage to do what needed to be done.

  Vin Tai ben Dar was in no shape to do it, and his actions already had demonstrated that he did not see the only branch leading to victory. If I did not do it, no one would. Mogen would destroy our catapults, retreat inside his walls, burn the Nentian army, and wait for reinforcement from Hathrir. The Canopy would be forever in danger from Hathrim predation if I did not stop him. How could I refuse such a clear duty? I sent out silverbark shoots from both my shins and my forearms to plunge into the earth. I sent out all of them.

  “What are you doing?” a tiny voice broke through the noise. It was Nef, suddenly running toward me again, one hand outstretched, pleading. “Nel, don’t try it!”

  My mouth twisted in regret. He and I would have been such a winsome couple. The garden we would have grown together would have been lush and fragrant and nurturing, and I truly should have kissed him when I’d had the chance. I longed to kiss him now. But I could not possibly place my happiness above the safety of the Canopy. “I’m sorry, Nef,” I said softly, doubting he would hear me, but I imagined he could read my lips well enough, and that would have to be our farewell.

  I tore my eyes away and heard him shout “No
!” but he didn’t matter anymore. All that mattered was defeating Gorin Mogen. The roots, at least, were already there, coaxed from the trees on the hills to lash the catapults in place by each crew’s greensleeve. But now they must do more, take on girth and strength, for Mogen was not inanimate timber; he was a giant firelord. Making that happen, channeling that energy and forcing that rapid growth so far from the Canopy, required will and strength I might not actually possess.

  My fingernails dug into my palms as I concentrated and let my consciousness meld with the trees, forcing pulp and sap to move and grow by my command. The buildup began as Mogen finished dismantling Vin’s catapult. The roots bulged and stirred underneath it, the earth bubbled, and then the first thick rope whipped out toward the Hearthfire even as he lifted his gaze to seek his final target. The pine root twined around Mogen’s left leg, and he immediately kindled it, setting his body and armor aglow with new fire. He raised his axe to hack at it, an awkward proposition because it was in his right hand and he could not easily target the root behind him on the left. He tried to pivot to get a better angle, but I had never stopped building and growing: more roots erupted from the earth to encircle his right leg and hold him in place. I was sweating, my entire body ached, and my nails had opened up cuts in my palms, but that was fine. Mogen wrenched his left leg free with a roar and took a step before fresh roots shot out of the ground to entangle him anew.

  The eye sockets of his helmet were fireballs, nothing human in them anymore, only rage, and they scoured the area for the source of this attack—it had to be a greensleeve. He remembered seeing Vin Tai ben Dar, searched for him, and found his body smoking in the grass yet still moving. He sent a fresh blanket of fire out from his axe to alight on him, making sure he would perish, and then he sparked my catapult, the last one, which was a useless hulk without a crew to operate it anyway. The roots still held him and indeed kept thickening in spite of his efforts to burn them away, so he let his gaze roam farther afield. That was when he saw me and perhaps recognized me. Our eyes had met briefly after he’d destroyed the first catapult, then Nef had come to tell me my crew needed me to lash the catapult down with roots. Yes, he recognized me, perhaps even understood that I was the Fornish Champion. He certainly understood that the shoots leading from my silverbark into the earth meant I was the one wrapping him up in pine.