by JD Moyer
So, Katja had not been telling tales after all. She had indeed seen giants. Trond made a mental note to apologize to his sister, should he be so lucky as to see her again. With a quick prayer to the Red Brother, he awkwardly drew his sword.
Trond hacked at the snare. The crudely woven plant fibers yielded easily to the sharpened steel. For a moment he was weightless, but then the snare caught again. He swung in the breeze. His blade had not passed all the way through the bundle of vines. It was difficult to land a strong blow from his inverted position.
As Trond pulled back to swing again, the giant’s maul crashed into his shoulder. His sword flew out of his hand and stuck in the dirt below. The giant roared and struck again, smashing Trond’s face with the charred end of the club. As his vision darkened, Trond heard a whistling sound, a quick thud, and a guttural cry of pain. Could it be the sound of an arrow biting through hide and into giant flesh? His last thought was one of gratitude toward his brother, who perhaps had not deserted him after all.
* * *
Trond’s shoulder throbbed painfully. He was naked and trussed with dried vines, lying in the dirt. A stone wall obstructed his vision. Behind him he could hear and feel a crackling bonfire.
With some difficultly, he rolled over. He was tied to something, a long, straight branch, but the branch itself was not secured to anything. The bonfire was framed by sturdy supports for a roasting spit. Crumbling stone walls surrounded the area on all sides. He recognized the castle ruins he had explored long ago with Esper. Looking up, he could see the stars and gibbous moon shining brightly – a splendid view under better circumstances. Trond strained against his bonds but succeeded only in intensifying his pain.
A bulky form shambled from the darkness. It was not the same creature as before. This one was smaller (though still much larger than Trond), and female. Her large, pendulous breasts were smeared with dirt. A ragged animal hide was wrapped around her waist. She carried something heavy, a pail, and before Trond could brace himself she splashed him with icy water.
“Curse you, you immense hag!” shouted Trond from the ground. “May the Red Brother smash your head with his hammer! May you fall in your own fire and roast alive! And save some of that water to wash your own filthy flesh!”
The great hag ignored him and shambled off. Well, at least he was cleaner now, and wide awake. Where in the Red Brother’s name was Esper? He shivered. The front of his body was warm but the back was freezing, each gust of breeze like icicles against his wet, naked skin. He clenched his jaw to silence his chattering teeth.
A few minutes later the giantess returned, this time carrying a cracked ceramic pot. She dipped two fingers inside, scraped out a large glob of brown, filthy grease, and generously smeared the fat on Trond’s thighs. Trond writhed against his bonds and cursed. His insults fell on deaf ears; his cook and captor methodically prepared him for the roast. She spared no inch of his flesh from the rancid animal fat (he hoped it was animal fat, and not the drippings of some poor villager). As she roughly smeared the foul-smelling grease on his cock and balls, Trond was horrified to find himself partially aroused. “Curse you! Off of me! Off!” The giantess finished her preparations by sprinkling his body with a handful of coarse gray salt. She stood back, sniffing the air, and with a final self-satisfied grunt, wandered off.
“Esper! Brother!” he yelled. “If you can hear me, I could use some help! I’m sorry for passing you on the trail, earlier today.” Then more quietly, to himself, “I wish I had not.”
Now, dimly, he could see three forms on the far side of the fire. The big dirty she-beast, the one-handed brute who had clubbed him, and a smaller, man-sized form. Had they captured Esper as well? No, the third creature was much wider than his slight brother. It was coming around the fire, staring at him hungrily: a child-giant, buck-toothed and drooling, with matted black hair, and the same bulging eyes as its father. It spoke in a low, guttural voice.
“What was that?” asked Trond. He had little hope of talking his way out of captivity, but it would not hurt to try. What did the huge child have to say for itself?
The same guttural sound, but this time the creature came close. It tapped Trond’s greasy leg and made a questioning noise. The father grunted in assent.
Ah, the choice bits. The young one wanted a thighbone. Trond tried to spit at the creature’s face but managed only to wet his own cheek. The child-thing laughed and kicked his ribs.
The parents joined their offspring, flanking Trond at either end. They squatted, each grabbing an end of the spit (the father, closer to Trond’s head, using his one remaining hand). With a few guttural words, maybe a three-count, they hoisted him into the air. As they carried him toward the fire, Trond noticed a gaping arrow wound in the big one’s belly. Perhaps the iron leaf was still lodged in the creature’s guts. Try to digest that, thought Trond as they placed the spit on the frame. He swung facedown over the flames. He felt an instant of intense heat, then pure, searing pain. So this is what it feels like. Trond was having his Burning a bit early. Instead of screaming, Trond decided to laugh. Life had been good! He squeezed his eyes shut, inhaled the stench of his own burning beard, and cackled like a madman.
Chapter Twelve
After retrieving her hidden rifle and pack, Car-En hiked back to her old camp. It was the closest thing she had to home. Now she was high in a birch tree, fully cloaked, rifle at the ready, waiting for something edible to come along. She was desperate to eat something besides nutrient bars (of which there were only three left) and wild berries (the black ones were sweet and edible, but the red ones, despite registering as non-toxic in the biosampler, had given her stomach cramps and a bad case of the shits).
She hadn’t seen any game yet, but it was something to do while she waited for the drones. She’d sent out the majority of the swarm to search for Trond, Esper, and Katja. She didn’t have enough to cover a wide area, but if any of them were within five kilometers the drones would soon tell her.
Elke had clearly stated her terms. She would try to find the woman’s children. She was going to help the people of Happdal, despite Elke’s suspicion and resistance. Katja’s condition worried her. She’d continuously replayed the sequence of the white-haired man transferring the black, oblong-shaped object into Katja’s mouth. She’d even image-searched for a match on the black egg-thing in the Stanford’s databases, but nothing relevant had come up. Whatever it was, it hadn’t killed the young woman, at least not immediately. That much of what she’d told Elke was true; Katja had been whole the last time Car-En had seen her.
A nearby drone – one of the rearguard – directed her attention to a tree, fifteen meters to her left. Car-En turned, zoomed in with her m’eye, and spotted a red squirrel, bushy-tailed and elfin-eared. It was the third one she’d seen within the hour. She relaxed her grip on the rifle. She’d told herself she wouldn’t bother with the squirrels because of their diminutive size. Skinning the creatures would be too much work for a few morsels of meat. But really, who was she kidding? She could never kill something so adorable.
She’d never killed an animal, either accidentally or purposefully. There were fishponds on the Stanford, and a few rustic farms with chickens and goats and sheep that were used for historical education and children’s petting zoos. But the meat they ate was vat-grown, isolated muscle tissue grown and exercised in nutrient broth solutions, not connected to any sort of brain or consciousness. Not once had she eaten the actual flesh of a once-living, breathing, feeling animal. At first the idea had nauseated her, but the hungrier she got, the less revulsive the notion became. Now, she relished the thought of bringing down a hairy, grunting wild boar with a sedative dart, slitting its throat, gutting and skinning it, roasting and eating it. The last part of the daydream made her mouth water.
Her m’eye blinked – Adrian was trying to contact her. She ignored the alert and deactivated the connection to the Stanford entirely. She hadn�
��t yet decided what to say to Adrian. Yes, she was Intervening. Or attempting to, if she could get through to Elke. Maybe she should have insisted on seeing Arik, the village chieftain, instead. Farrel had probably taken her to Elke either because Arik was busy, or possibly because he thought Elke was level-headed and would not freak out at the sight of a brown-skinned woman in a silver suit. In any case, Car-En had not gotten very far in her Intervention attempt. If she was going to come clean with Adrian about what she was trying to do, she at least wanted to make some progress first.
Another alert flashed in her m’eye, this one from a drone 4.8 kilometers east by south. A possible match for Esper, the younger brother. It wasn’t much to go on, just a moving silhouette. Car-En instructed the drones to follow from a safe distance. She’d lost more of the swarm to dragonflies and mechanical wear and tear; the drones were down to half their original number. She wished she’d brought more of the insectile robots.
She slung the rifle over her shoulder and gingerly climbed down the tree. The wound on her hip was healing clean, but it still hurt, and her malnourished state made her prone to dizziness. She unmasked her pack, shouldered it, and began a slow trudge in an easterly direction.
After an hour of walking, the drones confirmed it was Esper she was tracking. He was about one kilometer away, sitting on a fallen tree trunk, sharpening the end of a long stick. Though his long brown hair partially covered his face, Car-En still recognized him. He looked up and made direct eye contact. Car-En’s heart skipped a beat. But of course he couldn’t see her; he was looking at a fly on a tree. Examining the fly, suspiciously. This one had sharp vision, if he could see an insect from ten meters. Or maybe he was just looking at the tree? After a few seconds he returned to his whittling. Heart still pounding, Car-En picked up her pace. She wondered where Trond and Katja might be. The drones were still searching but so far had found no sign of Esper’s siblings.
Closing the distance, she tried to come up with a strategy. She didn’t want to repeat the experience with Elke, tripping over her own words and making a mess of things. What would be the best way to approach Esper? What did she know about him? He was looking for his sister. He seemed to get along with his brother. She wished she had managed to obtain a viable biosample; it would be helpful to have a few genetic insights into his personality. Really, she knew very little about this young man. He was handsome, that much she was sure of. She grinned. She was getting loopy from hunger.
She stepped on a fallen branch, breaking it. Watching via the drones, she saw Esper stand, drop his spear-in-progress, and retrieve his bow. Within seconds he had an arrow nocked and was advancing toward her. She was about to become prey.
“Frændi!” she yelled. She was learning a little of the Happdal dialect, especially the words that were similar to English. “I mean you no harm!” She slung her rifle over her shoulder, threw back her hood, decamouflaged her cloak, and waved her hands in the air.
Esper kept the arrow nocked but didn’t draw. He moved through the trees almost silently. Without the drones he would have easily surprised her, shooting her dead if he’d wished. “Frændi!” she shouted again. They were close enough that he should hear her.
He came into view, looking taller and stronger than she remembered. It was only next to Trond that Esper looked small; in fact he was just under two meters tall, and broad-shouldered. His ash-blond beard, though sparser than his brother’s, had grown since she’d seen him last. His face was smudged with dirt and his eyes looked wild and sleepless.
He swiftly pulled back his bowstring and released. The arrow swished past her head, sunk into a nearby tree. She could hear the shaft vibrate. “Haltr,” he said. Stop.
She raised her hands, palms forward. “Elke,” she said. Esper would not murder his mother’s envoy.
He spoke rapidly in his dialect, and her kit fed the translation into her earbud. “You. You were the one I saw, in the trees near the village, on the day of Burning. Was it you?”
Car-En nodded. She thought she’d gone unseen. He was watching her closely, taking in her clothes, her pack, the rifle.
“You carry Builder things, but new,” he said. “Do the Builders still live? Is that what you are?”
“In a way,” she answered, after listening to her translator. He was quick. If she told him the complete truth – that human beings lived in the sky – would he be able to absorb and accept it? She made a snap decision. “I come from one of the rings above. We call them ringstations.” She repeated the phrase in the Happdal dialect, following the prompts from her m’eye. Unable to find a match for ‘ringstations,’ her translation module offered ‘ring-ships’ instead. Hringr-kjóll. Would he know what a ship was? It struck her how little she knew of these people, of their culture and knowledge. How much had been lost? It was surprising he had identified her as a ‘Builder.’ What was their lore concerning the fall of civilization? It occurred to her that she could learn more from a single conversation than she could from months of observations. Perhaps that reason alone could justify her Intervention.
“Hringr-kjóll,” he repeated. “The rings are vessels? How many do they carry? How do they stay in the sky?”
“The ringships are home to tens of thousands,” she said haltingly, positive she was mangling the Happdal-dialect pronunciation. “Some of the rings orbit Earth, others travel through space. My own home, the Stanford, is in synchronous equatorial orbit.” She knew that most of what she said was gibberish to him, but he listened intently. “On a clear night, if you look to the south, you can see my home.”
“You said my mother’s name. What business do you have with Elke? What has she tasked you with?”
“I went to Happdal and spoke with her. I discovered something…something that is affecting…. I know what is making your people sick. I explained this to Elke and told her that you have to move the village. Or find a new source of water.”
Esper laughed. “Move the village? You suggested this to my mother?”
“I wasn’t able to convince her. Maybe I can explain the situation to you. Perhaps you can persuade her.” Car-En knew she sounded overly earnest, and probably too direct, but she sensed that Esper might be more open-minded than his mother.
He glanced over his shoulder, then circled her, keeping his distance. “If you live in the sky, why have you come down? Why are you here?”
At least he was not accusing her directly of being a spy, as Elke had. Though she’d been right – Car-En was a spy. But Esper seemed willing to give her the benefit of the doubt.
“To learn about your people. To help you.” At least she was trying to help, if not Adrian.
“You say you have discovered the cause of the Affliction. Tell me.”
“I found a cave,” said Car-En. “Deep underground, there is an ancient Builder device, a powerful machine that was once used to produce energy. This machine also produced waste. For many years it has poisoned your water. You can’t see or smell the poison, and it doesn’t make everyone sick, or kill anyone right away. But over time it causes the illness. The Affliction.” The speech took a long time, as Car-En had to repeat each phrase in the Happdal dialect after first saying it in Orbital English. She had little faith in the translations her m’eye provided for ‘machine’ and ‘device’ and ‘energy,’ but she hoped he was getting the gist of it.
“Do Builders still live in this cave?” he asked.
“No, they left long ago. I think they knew they would be poisoned if they stayed.”
“You can show me this place? And this machine you speak of?” he asked. Car-En nodded. Esper looked away, considering the situation. Car-En waiting patiently. When he met her gaze again, his jaw was set, his eyes wide. She willed herself to stand still and not look away. “I do, in fact, need help,” he finally said. “My brother has been captured by a giant. The brute is too strong for me to fight alone.” He pointed at her rifle. “Is that a wea
pon?”
A giant? “Yes. It can kill, or induce sleep.”
“If you help me, I will go to this cave with you, and see what the Builders have made with my own eyes. If I am convinced, we will return to Happdal and make our case to my mother. She is stubborn, but she will hear me out.” He took a moment to scan their surroundings. “But first, you will help me find my brother, and also my sister. I swore to the Red Brother I would not return to Happdal until I found Katja.” He leaned his bow against a tree and extended his hand. “If you help me, and we succeed, you will forever have an ally.” She took his forearm in the way she had seen the villagers greet. His skin was warm, his forearm thick with muscle. “I am Esper,” he said.
“Car-En.” A lump formed in her throat as she said her own name. She had not introduced herself to anyone in a long time.
“Are you hungry?” he asked. “You look as if you have not eaten for weeks.”
“I’m starving.”
They returned to the small clearing where Esper had been whittling. He gestured to the fallen tree trunk and they sat. From a cloth sack he removed a block of hard cheese, a half-loaf of dark bread, tiny dried fishes, some kind of jerky, fresh green apples, and a lidded ceramic jar bound closed with twine. “These,” he said, holding up the jar, “I have been saving for a special occasion. I hoped to share them with my sister, when we found her. But you are hungry, and maybe I am lucky to find you, so we’ll eat them now. Nobody makes better pickles than my mother.”
