If We Were Giants

by Dave Matthews

  The warriors in the first several rows carried long spears or oversize hatchets, cruel silver blades flashing in the morning light. There were so many that it looked like their own forest of death. In addition, they carried round wooden shields half the size of their bodies. Double protection for whatever was coming at them.

  The men in the back of the lines, those without spears, unsheathed the long silver blades at their waists in a collective hiss. Then they beat the handle of those weapons against their shields and the quiet of the morning erupted into what sounded like rolling thunder. And then, in perfect unison, every soldier lifted his weapon in the air and gave a full-throated battle cry.

  Kirra looked at the others in the tree. Everyone was glancing around with panic on their faces. Kirra made eye contact with each of her friends, slowly and deliberately thumping her heart with a fist. Stay strong.

  Across the river, one of the soldiers shouted a command. In the front line, every tenth man stepped forward in unison, dropped his weapon, and lifted his hands in the air. The soldier behind him tied a long rope around his waist.

  From the back of the ranks, large wooden posts were passed from soldier to soldier, and then handed to the roped men in the front.

  Then these men marched into the river, carrying the posts overhead in two hands and trailing the rope behind them, while the other soldiers stayed put, holding on to the other end. As the water crept up to their waists and then their chests, the current threatened to knock them over and sweep them downstream. That’s when Kirra realized what the ropes were for. The men on the opposite riverbank dug their heels into the sand and leaned back, keeping the men in the moving water anchored. In this manner, they were able to trudge forward, upright and secure, and emerge on her side of the river.

  Once they were on the riverbank, the men put down their posts and removed shovels that were belted to their waists. After digging holes, they set the posts in the sand, packing them in tightly, working at a deliberate pace. Then each removed the rope from around his waist and tied it around the pole that was now sticking firmly upright in the ground.

  And just like that, all the other soldiers had a swift and secure way to get across to the land of the Tree Folk.

  The warriors strode into the rushing water one at a time at each rope, carrying their shields and weapons aloft, until so many of them covered the area that she could no longer see the riverbank itself. These trained soldiers were a mere stone’s throw from the tree line and all the people who lived in the woods, all the people Kirra cared about.

  They were close enough that Kirra could see their hard stares. These men had come with a purpose.

  There were no speeches, no requests for negotiation or demands for surrender, no precursor at all. One man standing in front merely lifted his weapon in the air, pointed it straight at the forest, and screamed out a battle cry. Then he charged as fast as he could toward the trees, powerful legs churning beneath him.

  The others followed by the hundreds, the earth shaking with the intensity of their approach.

  TEEHA BLEW HER HORN ONCE and motioned to those in the trees in front of theirs, closer to the river.

  Tree Folk hidden among the branches of four separate trunks leaped into action, jumping out of the limbs and assembling their puppet in an instant. Suddenly four forest giants appeared seemingly out of nowhere and stood in front of the advancing warriors. The people working the mouths screamed into their horns and pumped the levers that moved the jaws, and it looked like a quartet of monsters was bellowing and gnashing their teeth in rage.

  The charge faltered as the soldiers took them in. These giants were enormous, at least twice again as large as the original one, and Kirra could tell by the wide eyes of the warriors that they were looking at more than they had bargained for.

  But to the raiders’ credit, their hesitation only lasted a moment before their battle cries increased in intensity and they resumed charging at double speed.

  The two groups met in an explosion of violence. The giants smashed down with their great wooden fists, knocking soldiers this way and that, sweeping whole groups of them aside like dolls.

  The giants stomped, too, their heavy log legs rising high in the air before crashing down on the warriors’ helmets, knocking many of them senseless.

  But there were just too many soldiers. They swarmed the giants from all sides, and soon the huge puppets were wading in a sea of them.

  Several Takers jumped up as far as they could, grabbed the joints of the giants’ knees and hung on fiercely, then climbed hand over hand toward the control center behind each giant’s face. The people working the giants’ arms had to spend their time and energy brushing these interlopers off their wooden bodies, and could no longer fight the ones on the ground.

  This gave the warriors with hatchets the opening they needed. Rushing right up to the giants, they began hacking away, the hefty blades digging in and sending showers of wood chips spraying into the air.

  Soon the four towering giants were in bad shape. Three of them were missing arms where several invaders had climbed up the body, jumped onto the forearm, and hung there together, letting their combined weight rip the shoulder joint right out of the socket.

  The giants were all stumbling around, their legs hacked up and decimated, threatening to give out altogether and come crashing down.

  Teeha blew three short blasts on her horn: the signal for retreat.

  The giants turned and limp-ran desperately for the trees like scared and wounded animals. They teetered unsteadily on chewed-up legs as they plunged through the underbrush. A roar of laughter erupted from the warriors below. This was going to be too easy! They regrouped into formation and marched resolutely after their prey, into the heart of the forest itself.

  Kirra watched the Takers move directly underneath her tree, line after line of them, washing through like rolling waves.

  When the four battered giants had plunged deep into the woods, the Tree Folk inside abandoned their sections, leaped into the branches of surrounding trees, and disappeared into the leaves. The giants clattered lifelessly to the ground, their parts reduced to debris on the forest floor.

  The warriors stopped in their tracks, perplexed. There was no one left to charge. Standing in the middle of the trees, they looked down at the pieces of the giants, and then around at the still, silent forest. Had they won already?

  That’s when Teeha blew her horn again, one long and steady blast.

  Attack.

  Kirra and her crew leaped into action, and she traded her stationary spot in a solid tree for a perch in a walking giant.

  All around, Tree Folk were doing the same. In a huge circle surrounding the soldiers, giants sprang to life everywhere. Ten, then twenty, thirty, and more. It was as if the entire forest were coming to life to protect this land.

  That’s when the real battle began.

  Kirra lost perspective on the overall picture. Her world narrowed down to what was happening directly in front of her. Teeha’s strong brothers were working the legs in unison, and her giant charged directly into the thick of the mass of warriors. Kirra held on tight with both hands as she was nearly jolted out of her seat, not expecting how violently the giant would stagger and shudder as it crashed against all of those solid, struggling bodies.

  She and Luwan were working the same arm, and they swung it this way and that with all their might. The wood smashed against the enemy, snapping shields in half and sending bodies flying through the air.

  “Look out!” Luwan yelled, and pointed behind her.

  Kirra turned her head. From a crack between the sapling logs that made up the arm, she could see a raider climbing toward her. He had a knife clenched between his teeth and murderous rage in his eyes. As she knew from watching earlier, if enough of his fellow soldiers got up here, the giant’s arm would be ripped off and she and Luwan would go tumbling into the roiling sea of soldiers with nothing to protect them. They would be stomped into oblivion, or pu
lled from the wreckage of the puppet to meet those cruel weapons.

  Kirra grabbed one of a dozen sticks that she’d stashed near her perch for just this reason. The end of each stick had been sharpened to a point. She gripped it in both hands, waiting with bated breath until the warrior climbed right up to where she was seated, and then she jabbed the spike through a crack in the logs with all of her might.

  The point caught the warrior in the face. He screamed and dropped to the forest floor. She turned and realized that Luwan was doing the same thing. Raising her head to look through a viewing portal, Kirra saw that their giant was free of climbing marauders for the moment.

  She also got a broader look at the battle in the forest. It was impossible to tell which way it was going. True, the bodies of many soldiers were strewn about the forest floor. But the giants had taken their losses as well. Some had limbs missing while others had been hacked apart entirely, the jagged pieces of their construction lying in ruins. The Tree Folk operating those giants had made the ultimate sacrifice for their land and their people. An overwhelming sadness threatened to paralyze Kirra, but she pushed that thought aside. They would honor their fallen brothers and sisters later. First there was still a job to be done.

  “Teeha!” Makina screeched from the other side of the puppet, where she and Kharee were working the other arm. “Look! Over there! A group of them is trying to break the circle!”

  Kirra knew this was bad. Their entire battle plan, after luring the Takers into the forest and ambushing them with the entire army of giants, was to corral the soldiers. Keep them contained, and fight them until they were all down or until they surrendered. If they let the circle be broken, the warriors could hide and regroup, and then the elements of surprise and control would be on their side. For the Tree Folk, unskilled in battle, this would spell doom. They had to finish this with the first wave of attacks or else they’d be at a serious disadvantage.

  Teeha responded immediately. She thrust a brightly colored flag from the top of the giant’s head, a signal to the surrounding giant puppets to follow her.

  Her brothers worked the legs with everything they had, and their giant raced toward the breach in the circle, where a mass of Takers had ripped down two puppets and were working on a third, making a hole in the line of defense that they could pour through.

  Kirra’s giant got there just in time with the reinforcements. They rushed into the hole, covering it like a leaky hole in the bottom of a gourd.

  Three soldiers managed to slip through before the reinforcements got there. Teeha directed her brothers and the giant chased them down. Luwan and Kirra worked the arms in a frenzy of activity. Together, they thrust an enormous wooden hand down at the warriors, scooped them all up in a single handful, and then smashed them against the broad trunk of a nearby tree. The warriors fell numbly to the ground.

  Their giant worked with the others to repel the invaders trying to bust through. The soldiers finally gave up, turned, and ran to help in another part of the battle, but it was becoming increasingly difficult for the enemy to find a strategic place to join the fight. Although some of the giants were maimed or had been brought down altogether, most of the army still stood.

  Kirra’s heart soared at the sight. They were winning! They were going to do this!

  “Oh no.” Luwan barely croaked it out, but Kirra was able to hear him since they were so close together. “Oh no.”

  She turned to look at him and found an expression on his face of utter shock and dismay.

  “What?” she screamed at him. “What is it?”

  He merely pointed into the distance. Her gaze followed.

  And there, back toward the river, she saw the one thing that frightened a forest dweller more than anything else in this world.

  Smoke.

  “TEEHA!” LUWAN SHOUTED. “Look! We have to go to the river!”

  The master builder shook her head emphatically. “We will stick to the plan.”

  “But the Takers have plans of their own! So that means that ours has to change. We have to adapt!”

  Teeha just looked straight ahead grimly and continued to shout orders to the rest of the crew, keeping a firm line at the perimeter of the battle and crushing any raiders who tried to break through.

  The clouds of smoke grew darker, billowed up thicker from the direction of the river.

  Luwan turned to face Kirra. “I respect Teeha, but she can be stubborn. Good luck.” He started to work his way out of the seat.

  “But what are you going to—”

  “I have to help. Wish me luck!”

  And with that he wormed his way through the branches that made up the arm, took a running leap into the limbs of a nearby tree, and disappeared.

  Kirra’s heart raced as she continued to work the arm of the giant alone. She never imagined having to fight without Luwan, and the prospect of doing so now was deeply disturbing. As were the increasingly thick clouds of smoke that were creeping into the forest itself, spreading through the battle and the branches. She could smell them.

  A high-pitched horn sounded a series of staccato blasts. The signal for distress, to be used in dire emergencies only. It came from somewhere near the river.

  “We have to get over there!” Kirra shouted.

  Teeha nodded. Responding to the horn was part of the agreed-upon plan. She shouted down to her brothers, and the giant lurched into action, heading back to where it had come from.

  Kirra surveyed the scene as they lumbered through the woods. It seemed like they had won—many of the giants were still in working condition and most of the warriors seemed unable to continue fighting, incapacitated in one way or another.

  So what could be happening with that distress call? And why was the smoke getting worse?

  She saw for herself when their giant burst through the tree line and out onto the wide riverbank.

  A huge bonfire was roaring there, on the Tree Folk’s side. It was circled by warriors, who were dipping long sticks with material wrapped around the ends into the fire. The tips ignited in an instant, blooming with crackling red flames. The soldiers passed the torches down the line. They were going to burn them out!

  Standing in front of the fire, leading this terrible assault, was Red Streak. He waved a torch over his head with an impossibly long gray arm, tracing a ring of fire in the sky as he bellowed at the top of his lungs, exhorting his troops.

  The warriors with torches attacked the advancing giant puppets, swarming them and lighting them up in several places.

  The giants spun around. If they ran back into the safety of the forest, they would bring the flames with them and burn their homeland to the ground. If they stayed and fought, they would be incinerated.

  So they ran for the river and dove in, surrendering themselves to the water. Hissing steam rose from the current. Red Streak threw back his head and roared with laughter as he watched his enemies rendered useless.

  The rest of the giants were paralyzed, caught between forest and river.

  “Should we retreat?” Teeha shouted at Kirra over the noise of the battle. “Form another circle in the woods?”

  Kirra shook her head. “They will follow and burn us all down.”

  “But they will ruin the forest! They will have gained nothing!”

  Kirra saw the crazed look on Red Streak’s face, the wild eyes as he laughed and screamed at his men. “They don’t care,” she yelled back. “If they can’t have victory, they will settle for destruction.”

  A wave of overwhelming despair crashed over Kirra. Not obliteration by fire. Not again.

  But what to do? Red Streak’s plan was turning the puppets into nothing more than kindling. And they couldn’t fight on the ground, hand to hand with the warriors and their vicious weapons. It would be a bloodbath.

  What to do? Oh, dear gods, what could they do?

  That’s when Makina screamed, “Look!” and pointed to the sky.

  Here came Luwan, curved poles in each hand, streami
ng down from the upper branches. Falling as fast as a stone, he was a hawk with fury in his eyes.

  He was followed by Hook Hunters, dozens and dozens of them. They silently dropped out of the trees, from everywhere. It was a summer storm, a rainy season of pure vengeance.

  To Kirra’s mind, what took place next looked as if the torch-wielding warriors were a group of boars and the Hook Hunters hadn’t had a decent meal in a month.

  Each soldier carrying fire was the target of a missile from the sky. The Hook Hunters rained down on them, clubbing the invaders senseless and stamping on the torches until the flames went out.

  Other soldiers rushed to the bonfire, perhaps trying to get enough torches ready to overwhelm their adversaries. But two quick-thinking giant teams came walking up, holding between them the upside-down roof of one of the Tree Folk huts. They had dipped it into the river, and it was spilling over with water.

  The warriors turned in time to see them arrive, but it was too late to react. The giants, working in unison, dumped their makeshift bucket on the bonfire, extinguishing the flames with a great hiss.

  As steam from the dying embers rose to the sky, the steam seemed to seep out of what was left of the Taker army. The remaining warriors looked at the forest, where they’d been soundly beaten, and at the dead fire, which had clearly been their only hope of pulling off a victory.

  One warrior turned and ran for the river, and he was quickly joined by others. In a matter of moments, the current was churning with soldiers clinging to the ropes that had been set up, straining to get to the opposite shore. When the first warriors to retreat hit the tree line on the other side, they disappeared into the brush and kept on running.

  Red Streak screamed at the men—he clearly wanted them to stay and keep fighting, even if it meant the sacrifice of every man’s life. But the rest of the Takers were not listening. They’d had enough.