We moved forward, doing the trick with our shirts again so the horses would follow.
Inside the entrance the path widened, with our guide standing to the side. As we moved in, she grunted and rolled a huge stone into the opening, blocking it completely. Total darkness fell again, only this time, I knew there was something horrible here.
“Stay here,” she said, and we heard her heavy footsteps moving away.
There was the sound of rocks being banged together, the whiff of something burning, and then a torch flared into life. The giantess moved around what turned out to be a large cavern, lighting other torches held in sconces on the walls.
The light revealed a huge bed, covered with several thick furry animal pelts. There was what appeared to be a rough stone mantle against one wall, with large logs laid as if for a fire. Above those hung the largest cooking pot I ever saw, with more than enough room for a medium-sized Nuisance Man.
Our host turned to us. She looked over Adrian, then me. She snorted, turned and walked away, leaving us both standing there, holding the horses’ reins and wondering what to do. We didn’t have to wait long.
She came back with a broom, which she thrust out to Adrian. “Give the horse to him, then clean,” she said.
Adrian reluctantly took the broom and handed over his reins to me.
“Come,” the giantess said.
I followed her to other end of the cave, then down a short passage. She stopped and rolled another boulder out of the way, and we exited the cave to a beautiful mountain meadow, full of green grass and flowers. The horses lifted their heads as they sniffed the air.
“Let them go,” she said to me.
I took the saddles, bags and blankets from them, took the shirts off their heads, and they wandered off, heading across the meadow, noses down. There was a whinny, and I saw other horses on the far side. Ours took note and trotted off to join their own kind.
The giant motioned for me to return to the cave, and I lugged the gear back inside, dropping it near the boulder that she rolled back into place. The whole time I was wondering where those other horses came from. While I didn’t know, my Sal seemed pretty smart, and he acted like he knew the other ones.
A cold finger of fear really began to work its way down my spine.
“Come,” she said again, and walked back to the main room. Adrian was busy sweeping the stone floor, and had a good little pile of dust already built up.
“You. Cook.” This was directed at me, then she went to her bed, curled up on it with her back to us and was snoring loudly in seconds.
“Doesn’t seem too worried about leaving us like this,” I whispered.
“She didn’t even take our swords,” Adrian whispered back.
The snoring stopped. “I’m a light sleeper,” the giantess said. “Try if you like, but it won’t work.” We froze in place, then the snoring resumed.
With a last glance at Adrian, I went to the hearth and looked into the pot. It was already filled with water, but nothing else. I had no idea what to put into it. For one, I was a horrible cook, and for two, I didn’t know what giants ate.
But I searched around, discovering a small room behind the mantle. In here were shelves covered with all sorts of vegetables and plants. There were roots and other things like mushrooms. I didn’t know what almost any of it was, but I was gratified to not see any meat. Maybe giants were vegetarians? Or, maybe this was all just seasoning for Nuisance Man Surprise.
Either way, I needed to keep playing the game, so I grabbed an armful of stuff, brought it back around and dumped it into the pot. I took a handful of green, leathery plants and twisted them up so that some of the juice from them dripped into the water. I used my sword to awkwardly slice up a few large, woody roots, and added them. Finally, I discovered a small stone pot with large crystals of salt in it, and sprinkled in a liberal amount. I lit the fire with one of the torches, and then used a huge spoon hung nearby to stir the whole mess.
Soon, it was bubbling along merrily, and the aroma was…. different. It wasn’t necessarily bad, but it wasn’t mouth-watering either. My nose wrinkled as I leaned over the pot for another stir. I guessed it was technically considered cooking.
By the time the giantess woke up, the stew/soup/mess in the pot was boiling away, and Adrian had swept up a good-sized pile of dust. Having nowhere else to put it, he swept it into a far corner and propped the broom in front of it, hiding it from view.
The giantess climbed to her feet with a groan and stumbled over to the fire, her steps heavy enough to make it seem that the whole cave was shaking. She took the spoon from me, dipped it into the broth, blew on it, and then sampled it.
Her brow furrowed.
“What is this?” she growled.
“Umm…I call it, Duke’s Hodgepodge Stew. Old family recipe.”
Her mouth twisted as she regarded me, then she took another spoonful. “It’s good,” she said. She grabbed a large bowl from the hearth and dipped it in, making sure to get floating bits of what appeared to be wood, several of the mushrooms and who knows what else. Then she returned to her bed, sat down, and tipped the bowl up to her mouth, noisily draining it.
When she finished, she regarded the room.
Adrian had done a remarkably good job of sweeping up. The stone floor almost gleamed.
“Good,” she said. Then she rose, handed me the bowl and said, “Clean it. Oh, and eat some if you want. Keep your strength up.”
She walked away, going the same direction that she led me to put the horses outside. We heard the stone roll away from the door, then a moment later there was a new noise, and we were alone.
“Did she leave?” Adrian asked.
“No idea. But let’s go.”
We ran to the door she left by, but there was another boulder, on the far side of the opening, that she had rolled into place. We put our shoulders to it and pushed with all our might, but to no avail. It wouldn’t budge.
Neither did the other one when we went back and tried that one. We were well and truly trapped.
Night fell before the giantess returned, this time with what I was positive was a goat over her shoulder. Its head flopped loosely, a sure sign that the poor thing was no longer among the living. After she rolled the stone back, she dropped the animal to the floor.
"Clean it," she said. "Tomorrow, put it in with the Hodgepodge Stew."
Then she returned to her bed, climbed under the covers and was snoring away again within moments. Adrian stood staring down at the dead goat.
"I don't know how to clean it, do you?" I asked.
"Uh-uh. I guess we need to take the skin off..."
It was a messy job, and one that the less said about the better. Before we were done we were both soaked in the poor things blood and we both stank.
"I wish we had some water to clean up," Adrian said.
I didn't have a response. I was too busy trying to keep my mouth shut so that I wouldn't gag.
In the end, we removed our soiled clothing, changed into fresh ones and left the bloody ones in a wadded-up ball near what we started calling the back door.
But I did add the goat to the Stew, and it started smelling really delicious. The aroma woke me a few times during the night as I slept stretched out on the hard, stone floor, and each time I checked on it. I may not have been happy about our present circumstances, but I was taking pride in my work. Maybe when all this was done, I would have a career in the culinary arts.
The next day broke cold, gray and rainy. The giantess rolled away the stone from the back door and instructed me to take our bloody clothes outside and try to clean them in the rain. I was partially successful, at best, and she made me leave them out there, spread on a rock to dry when the sun returned.
Then, she led me back in and rolled the stone into its place.
"What are you going to do with us?" I asked, once we were back in the cave that she called home.
“With you? Nothing.”
“Then we�
��re free to go?” Adrian asked.
She sat down on her bed and considered us.
“Let’s say I say yes. Where would you go?”
“Back to the cave we came through, and then down the path leading past the waterfall,” I said.
She shook her head. “Doesn’t lead anywhere. It dead-ends behind the waterfall.”
“Do you mean to say that from the time we entered the cave in the forest, our only path has been here to you?”
She shrugged. “At the moment, yep. I’m it. I’m the obstacle in the road.”
I narrowed my eyes. “That doesn’t make sense. Why would you be here like this?”
“Maybe I’m being paid.”
Adrian and I waited, but nothing more was forthcoming. Finally, “Well, are you?” I asked.
“Look around,” she said. “Do you really think I live like this? Of course not! But right now, I have a job to do.”
“And what is that job?” Adrian asked her.
“Ah, finally, you ask. My job is to weed out the weak and stupid before the next segment of your journey. You have to get past me to continue on.”
The questions were swirling around my head so much I hardly knew where to begin. Finally, I settled on the one that seemed the most important at the moment.
“How do we get past you?”
She smiled. “You have three chances. You have to best me at something. And, this is the best part, you get to choose the first two! You get to pick what you can try to best me at. If you win, you go on. If not, then I pick the third contest.”
“I see,” Adrian said. “And if we lose that one?”
She pointed out the front door, where the path ran back to the waterfall along a sheer drop. Then, she changed her point so that it was down and whistled a note in a descending tone.
I didn’t like the implications of that.
“We both try to best you together, or one on one?” I asked.
The giantess shrugged. “Doesn’t matter to me. Some have bested me one on one, others have teamed up.”
“Then the other Nuisance Men have been through here?” Now I was getting excited. If they could do it, surely Adrian and I could.
“Any that wanted to go on, certainly. Some made it.”
“And the rest?” Adrian asked.
Again, the point and the whistle.
A thought occurred to me. “It’s their horses in the meadow back there, isn’t it?”
“I love horses,” she replied. “So cute and cuddly.”
“One more question,” Adrian said. “How much time do we have?”
“Doesn’t matter to me. I’m here until someone tells me the job is done. Whenever you’re ready, let me know.”
“Who put you here? Why are you doing this?” I asked.
She sighed. “Yeah, that I can’t tell you. It doesn’t matter. Although, I have to admit, it has been lonely. Still, if you get past me, you’ll never see me again. If you don’t, you still won’t ever see me again.”
I didn’t like the sound of this. But at the moment, we didn’t have a choice.
“What do you think?” I said to Adrian, as we huddled together near the fire, our hostess snoring away again. “Should we try to fight her?”
“I don’t really like our chances with that,” he replied. “Plus, this doesn’t feel like a lethal swordplay kind of challenge. And plus again, she still hasn’t taken our weapons, even when talking about maybe throwing us over the cliff. I don’t think she’s real worried about that. What else?”
I thought. Even before Adrian, I took down bigger, meaner and stronger characters than myself, and did it by using my head.
“A battle of wits,” I said.
“Riddles?”
“Sure, do you know any good ones?”
He thought for a moment. “Yeah, I know one or two. Are you any good at answering them?”
“Usually. I think it might be our best shot. If not, we get two more.”
He nodded. “Agreed. Riddles it is.”
The next morning, we challenged the giantess to the riddle game while she was eating Goat/Hodgepodge Stew for breakfast.
“Excellent,” she smiled. “You go first. One riddle each, then I’ll ask mine. Any non-answers means you lose. If we both can’t answer, then it’s a tie and we do another round. Fair?”
We agreed that it was, and Adrian took the first turn.
“What has four legs in the morning…” he began.
“Man,” she interrupted, then turned to me.
“Oh, I wasn’t expecting you to get that one so fast,” I muttered. “Wasn’t really ready.”
While I hesitated, I nervously played with a couple of coins in my pocket. It hit me then, an old story I heard where someone got out of a jam by sort-of, kind-of cheating at a riddle game. It was worth a shot.
“What have I got in my pocket?” I asked.
I expected her to rant, maybe demand three guesses, and so on. She did nothing of the sort. Instead, she sighed, reached out and grabbed me by the shirt front. She pulled me to her, and there was no resisting her strength. While she held me up with one hand, she used her other to pull my pockets inside out, spilling the coins I had been playing with onto the floor.
“Looks like 2 silver ingols,” she said, glancing down and releasing me.
“Oh. Yeah. Right. Heh heh. You got it. Guess it’s your turn.”
She began to speak, spinning a long tale of the mountains and the giants that lived there. About how Fimbulsmith, the first of her kind outsmarted the Frost Giant King, Harrowind, and established the lair of the mountain giants. Her tale ranged across the years and the fire died down, was rebuilt, and died down again before she finished.
But when she was done, she stood staring down at the fire, her back to us, and said, “What color are my eyes?”
I was floored. “What? What does that have to do with your story?”
“Nothing,” she replied. “The story wasn’t the riddle. I never said it was. Now, what color are my eyes?”
Honestly, I didn’t have a clue. Dark, they were dark, right? It seemed it, but that could have been a trick of the light in here. I tried to think back to seeing her outside. Yeah, her eyes were dark.
I looked at Adrian. His eyes were brown, I was pretty sure. In here, they were dark brown, but still…
Gray? The rest of her was gray, so her eyes probably were too. Or black, they really were very dark. Ah. Dark blue.
Crap. I had no idea. I looked at Adrian again and he had no clue either, I could see it in his face.
Gray. Had to be gray.
“Gray!” I said, putting it all on the line.
She smiled sadly and shook her head. “A girl can hope,” she said. She turned back to us and no, her eyes were brown. A brown so dark as to be almost black, but definitely brown, even in the light of the fire.
“Try again with something different,” she said. “In the meantime, clean up.”
There wasn’t much to clean, but we grabbed a broom and a rag and set to anyway, my mind working furiously. We needed another challenge, something that we were sure to win.
That night, we sat on the floor eating left-over stew and washing it down with water.
“Getting pretty old,” Adrian said, and he could have been talking about either the meal or the situation.
“So is drinking water,” I said. The next day I was going to have to cook again, but maybe I could convince the giantess to let me outside for. I wasn’t sure for what, but maybe a couple of rabbits would obligingly hop into the stew pot. I thought of the herbs and vegetables behind the mantle and got some ideas for what would go nicely with them.
“Hey,” I said softly, “what about a cooking contest?”
Adrian picked up his spoon and let some of the day-old stew fall back into his bowl. It hit with a wet glopping sound. “No offense, but you’re not that good. Not good enough to stake our lives on, anyway.”
I tried not to be hurt, and ate anothe
r couple of bites in silence, washing it down with more tepid water.
“What I wouldn’t give for an…” I began, and then stopped.
“What?” Adrian asked. “You’ve got that look in your eye.”
“I know,” I said. “I know what to challenge her to!”
He started to speak, but I interrupted him by jumping up. “We challenge you to a drinking contest!”
The giantess looked up from her own massive bowl of stew. She regarded me for a moment, her lips pursed.
“Okay,” she said after a moment. “That’s number two. What shall we drink?”
“Ale, of course,” I replied, confused by her question. What else would we drink?
She nodded. “When?”
“Name your time.”
Now she smiled. “Tomorrow morning.”
Morning? I wasn’t expecting that. Well, no worries. It was unusual, but in this case, I’d make an exception.
I was awakened the next morning by the sound of the back-door boulder being rolled away. There was silence then, and Adrian and I were alone.
“You’re crazy, you know that, right?” he muttered, still lying curled up on the stone floor near the fire.
“Why? All we need to do is keep tipping the mug up. We’ve done that plenty of times.”
“Has it escaped your notice that our host is a giant? How much do you think she can put down?”
“A lot, I’m sure. But there are two of us. Who wants to go first?”
“I’ll do it. That way, I won’t see it when we lose our second round.”
The giantess returned a short-time later, lugging a huge barrel over one shoulder. She set it down gently and then pounded a tap that she took from one pocket into it.
“I’ve been thinking about this,” she said. “In the interest of fairness, we’ll use proportionally sized mugs.” She went back to the pantry area behind the mantle while she spoke and returned with a huge mug, big enough for me to stand in.
“This will be mine,” she said. “See if you can find something that would work for you.”
Duke Grandfather- The Whole Story Page 81
