by Ross Lawhead
The Night was behind him. Its arms reached for him and its jaws strained for him.
Daniel’s feet desperately pounded the ground. He had looked back once and almost burst into tears; he didn’t know exactly why, but the hard, bank of blackness was terrifying, bristling with unknown horrors that he somehow, instinctively, knew would destroy him.
He felt the chill on his back as darkness creeped in around him. He thought the fear entered into him then, but it didn’t; it merely quickened the panic already in Daniel’s breast, like a sympathetic note vibrating on the fear string of his heart.
And then the Night reached out and grabbed him, physically, reaching an inconceivably cold hand into his chest and yanking backward. Unable to breathe, Daniel flung his arms out into the darkness.
He only had a second to acknowledge the terror before pain became his world. He felt his skin tear, like it was being stripped, torn off of him one thread at a time, layer by layer, leaving the raw flesh beneath exposed. The pain was so excruciating he wished he would dissipate, like earlier. He cursed his body, his useless, pointless body that now only seemed to exist in order to house the pain.
He was screaming-at least, he thought he was screaming. He could hear nothing. The Night and its pain blocked out all noise.
He tumbled in torment for countless hours. Days? How could he stop the pain? How could he manage it? Could it be avoided? Transcended? If he could only think clearly for a moment. .
And then, it stopped. The pain left him-but left him raw, aching, and brutally cold. It was too dark to see. He feared moving, so he just drifted. The blood in his ears thumped with the echoes of pain and the sounds of his sobs.
A grey blur floated before his eyes. He blinked to clear them and found the Elfin moneylender standing before him.
“Are you sure I’m not dead?” Daniel asked Agrid-more croaked-and he realised that he asked it in English, not Elvish. But that didn’t seem to matter.
“Fairly certain.”
Daniel sighed. “Really? How do I know I can trust you?”
Agrid Fiall smiled. “If you can’t trust the dead, whom can you trust?”
Daniel hazarded a movement and brought his hand to his face. Contrary to what every nerve ending told him, his skin was still attached to the rest of his body, as well as somehow illuminated in the dark.
“What happens now?” Daniel asked. “You said punishment. Is this what it’s going to be? Torture? You just keep going until I break? Is there more to come?” Or is it over? he hoped, but couldn’t ask.
“My friend,” said the moneylender with a leer. “You haven’t begun yet.”
“More pain?” Daniel asked, and felt tears in his eyes.
“Perhaps. Is pain the worst that can happen to you?”
“I don’t know. It feels like it.”
“If you do not fear anything more than pain, then you are blessed.”
“Right now I can’t think of anything worse than what just happened to me. What was it?”
“You don’t fear solitude?”
The moneylender disappeared.
“Silence?”
And Daniel heard nothing more.
He tried to call out, but no sound came. He shouted, clapped, hummed, even whistled, but nothing registered in his ears. He felt for them, and they were still there. He clicked his fingers, clapped-there wasn’t even the ring of silence.
Time, interminable, passed. Touch, physical sensation, was a comfort, and then it was a torment. All other senses lost, except for the one that was sensitive to pain, to cold, to fear.
In despair, no sight or sound to console him, he floated in a sea of nothing.
IV
Alex stood in the centre of a ring of nearly two hundred heavily armed warriors. Behind him were the thirty-some knights with whom he’d been travelling the forgotten paths of England and Europe. The hundred and fifty or so before him were the knights they had found sleeping under what he thought was Blanik Mountain in the Czech Republic.
Alex conducted the negotiations in Latin, which he had thought would be fairly standard, but had almost immediately uncovered a wealth of small differences in pronunciation and formulation. In any case, they were communicating. Mostly.
“We require you to fight with us,” Alex said to a slight, dark-complexioned knight in ornate, Slavic armour. “In Britain. We are under attack. Many of our warriors are killed, dead where they slept undisturbed for almost a thousand years, murdered by the great evil that is growing there. We need our brothers in arms to avenge them, to help us plug a great spring of darkness that if left unchecked now will flood all of Europe-all the world. It is by joining us now that we have a chance to stop this tide of destruction.”
The Slavic knight related some or all of Alex’s impassioned speech to the knights behind him, who were peering attentively at the new knights who’d invaded their hidden chamber.
A discussion broke out among them when the knight had finished his translation. It grew into a clamour, and then the leader waved his hands for quiet.
“We cannot come with you,” he said sternly. “We wait for Wenceslaus.”
“Who’s he?”
“Our commander and king. When the great conflict comes, and when all Czech people argue and two cannot be found who agree on any one matter-when Blanik Forest burns and blood fills Pusty Lake-then will Wenceslaus rise from where he sleeps, claim the sword of Bruncvik, and crack open this mountainside. We will ride out, with him commanding us, and chase our nation’s enemies into the farthest ocean. But not before then will we leave this place.”
“Tell them this,” Ecgbryt said to Alex, and Alex began translating: “Let me assure you of the danger that will surely come to this world. There are gaps in the walls between the worlds, where those who keep the gates have no authority.”
“We have no knowledge of these things,” the knight said, this time without relaying Alex’s words to his comrades. “We shall stay here.”
“I don’t understand,” Alex said, turning to Ecgbryt. “I was under the impression that Ealdstan was responsible for all of these knights. But either his breadth of interest was much wider than I had credited him, or there are more players at work here than I originally conceived.”
“I would not know,” Ecgbryt answered. “I was asleep most of the last thousand years.”
“It’s something to bear in mind, I think,” Alex concluded. He gave the Czech chief one more questioning glance, then turned to tell the rest of the company what the man had said, and the information trickled down the line as it was translated and retranslated into the three archaic languages that the men spoke.
“Leave them,” Berwin said, stepping forward. He was starting to assume the position of a sort of deputy commander or captain to Alex and Ecgbryt’s dual leadership. He seemed to speak most of the languages that actually mattered on this jaunt and took it upon himself to organise practical aspects, like where and how to set up camps when they bedded for the night. Not that they did that, much. None of the awakened knights, Ecgbryt included, seemed to need much sleep; it made sense, Alex acknowledged; however, he was getting far less than his necessary seven hours a night, and fatigue was starting to overtake him.
“Their ways are not ours,” Berwin said. “We would not journey from our realm to help them; what reason have we for asking them to leave theirs?”
Alex frowned. Berwin had a point, but still. . a hundred and fifty knights-that was more than he had ever heard of in one place before. More than was probably still left in Britain, in total.
“Please,” Alex beseeched. “There are trolls, dragons, giants, and all manner of malicious spirits infesting our country. With your help, they would be eradicated swiftly, and you would be back here soon and none would be the wiser. What say you? For honour’s sake?”
The last request was relayed with a smirk by the dark complexioned knight. There were grunts and scoffs.
“That was the wrong tack,” Berwin intimated to
Alex and Ecgbryt. “Slovak knights have always viewed the signposts of honour askew. Their ways are not ours.”
“We owe no debts to your island race,” the Slavic knight responded. “If your small outpost were to disappear overnight, who would notice? We here are the keystone of the arch of civilisation. Were we to falter, the whole would tumble away into oblivion.”
“In an arch,” Alex replied, “each stone is as vital as the other. Send just a small band of your men to join with ours.”
An argument seemed to break out when this request was translated. Knights on both sides of the translator shouted and made wild gesticulations. He raised his hands for quiet once more.
“Them, take them,” he said, and pointed to a corner of the massive cavern. Eight knights were standing quite apart from the rest of them, incongruously clad in medieval plate armour. “They call themselves the Hussites. We can hardly understand them, and we don’t know why they were sent to us. They have strange opinions and are always causing arguments with us about topics that we know nothing about and care for even less. If we convince them to go with you, will you take them?”
Alex shrugged. “If that’s the best offer we can get, then yes-of course.”
There then followed a very long period of bartering and explaining to the eight rather baffled knights.
“So,” said the dark knight after the awkward Hussites had been, to all appearances, completely bullied into joining Alex and Ecgbryt’s ragtag band of warriors. “All has been explained to them. They will follow you and take part in your battles. They are good warriors-they are of the Boiohaemum, after all. When you have done with them. . keep them, send them home, do whatever. But remember always that you owe a debt to the Knights of Blanik Mountain, Alex Son-of-Simp.”
Alex bowed, and with a grudging amicability restored, they left the enormous cavern under the mountain and continued their northward course.
CHAPTER TEN
The Giants of Man
I
Isle of Man
Kieran and Fergus were walking home from school. Kieran was ahead, going very slowly, and Fergus was some thirty feet behind him, going even slower than his brother. Kieran was angry and annoyed. This was exactly the sort of thing Fergus was always pulling. He was late and making him even later. Why did he put up with it?
“Because I say so. You come home with your brother. End of story,” Kieran’s mother had commanded him a couple days after school had recommenced.
“But what if he makes me miss the bus again?”
“Especially if he makes you miss the bus again. You come home with your brother.”
“But he’s always so slow.”
“I’m talking to him about that, but never you mind. You come home with your brother.”
“But-”
“Come home with your brother. Or don’t come home at all.”
Today was the first day that Kieran seriously considered not coming home at all. He stopped, turned, and studied his brother.
Fergus saw Kieran standing in the road, waiting for him to catch up, and slowed down even more.
Kieran sighed. He got out of the road and leaned against the low, stone cow-wall that ran along it, striking a pose. What was it with Fergus lately? He used to listen to him. They used to do stuff together. Now all that Fergus seemed to want to do was be contrary. And what was up with being late? He got a watch for his birthday, and even though it had taken awhile for him to start wearing it, for their parents to train him to wear it, he still turned up late for everything-breakfast, the bus queue, his classes, lunch, dinner, football-a good five minutes behind everyone else. What part of his brain was missing?
Kieran sighed as Fergus, unwilling to get any closer to his stationary sibling, stopped as well. They stood, looking at each other from about twenty feet away. They were at a standoff. Fergus knew he could get Kieran into trouble if he was so much as thirty seconds later than he in coming through their front door, and Kieran could think of no way through reason, bribery, or force to make Fergus walk with him.
“You know I’ll get in trouble if I come home without you,” Kieran called with what he hoped was the right mixture of authority and reason.
Fergus just stared back at him blankly. Of course he knew.
“You’ll get in trouble also.”
Fergus did not even blink.
Kieran put a hand to his forehead and rubbed. He hadn’t been sleeping well lately; none of them had been on the island. There was some sort of disease going around, some people thought. It made them all wake up at night from bad dreams. He’d heard someone say that perhaps some anti-malaria drugs had gotten into the water supply somehow. Or maybe they were all worried about the disappearances. And the suicides. But then what kicked those off?
No doubt that’s what was making Fergus act like he was. But Kieran was too tired to take it anymore.
He lifted his legs, swivelled around, and jumped off the other side of the wall. He started walking across the field, away from Fergus, away from home, away from everything, toward the darkening blue sky and the grey sea.
He was halfway across the field when he heard Fergus’s foot-stomps running to catch up with him. He stopped and turned.
“Where are you going?” Fergus asked, stopping beside him.
“Why do you care?”
“Aren’t we go-?”
He was interrupted by an enormous. . explosion was the only way to describe it. It was the sound of a bolt of thunder, or of a lorry hitting the ground after being dropped by a crane. It was an impact boom, and it made the soft ground beneath them swell like an ocean wave.
“What was that?” Kieran asked, eyes wide.
“I saw something. It came from over there,” Fergus said, pointing toward the sea.
“Stay here,” Kieran said, and ran in the direction Fergus had pointed.
But of course his brother ignored him.
They made it to the edge of the field, which was bordered by a wooden fence that ran atop a cliff face. Below them was a sandy strip of beach that the waning tide had revealed. Standing on the beach were two figures.
It took Kieran and Fergus a little while to process what they were seeing. The two figures-men-were absolutely enormous, and it was throwing off their depth perception.
“They’re huge!” Fergus whispered.
“Shh!” Kieran looked down at them. They were twisting and bending over and spinning their arms, like they were warming up for a race. They were almost completely naked, all except for some tight and badly stitched-together bits of animal skin around their bottoms that looked like the most uncomfortable, smelliest pairs of underwear in the world. Their hair fell in long dreadlocks the size of bolsters of fabric down their backs. One of them had a thick, bushy beard and no moustache; the other had a moustache and no beard. The rest of their bodies were completely hairless.
Then one of them squatted down and leapt up in the air. He sailed above their heads, dwindled in the sky above them, and then came crashing back again, whistling past them, and landed on the beach with another earth shattering thump.
“Wow!” Fergus exclaimed loudly.
“Shh!” Kieran hissed, just as the two giants turned toward them.
“Uh-oh. Run.”
Kieran and Fergus took off across the field. Kieran looked back and saw a massive hand-the size of a bulldozer scoop-grip the side of the cliff where they had crouched, and an enormous head rose behind it, like an absurd sun.
“Quick! Quick!” Kieran shouted as he heard the sound of massive limbs scrambling up the cliff face.
They hadn’t even made it halfway across the field before two gigantic hands swept them off their feet and into the air, and then swung them back and forth like action figures.
For a while they both struggled, until they each saw how high above the ground they were.
“I’ve got them, Nuncle, I’ve got them!” boomed a voice above their heads as they watched, gape-mouthed, as they came back to the
cliff face and, instead of stopping, the giant simply bounded down the thirty-foot drop. He landed with a jarring thud and placed them both upright upon a tall rock that jutted along the tideline, slippery with water and sea slime.
The two giants leaned over Kieran and Fergus, so close they could see each enormous pore of their faces.
“What a truly wonderful world we live in, Nephew,” the hairy giant said. “Look at how tiny and minuscule such marvels of creation are. See their arms, their legs-” The giant lifted a massive finger and started running it up and down Kieran’s side. Kieran clung to his younger brother for stability.
“And look here,” said the giant, hooking his fingernail under Kieran’s arm, forcing him to splay it out. “Little tiny hands with fingers.”
“Kieran,” whispered Fergus. “What are we going to do?”
“I don’t know. Wait for a chance when they’re not looking, maybe.”
“How remarkable!” the younger giant said. “But how loose their skin looks.”
“Yes, but see the colours and patterns. It is how they attract their mates, you see. Nature gives them such skin to compensate for their small stature, crude behaviour, and puny strength.”
“Where do they come from, Nuncle? I’ve always believed such stories of the little people to be fantastical imaginings.”
“Yes, it has been many a hundred year since I have even heard report of one. Perhaps the barrier between their world and ours is weakening.”
“Pish, Nuncle! You do not believe in such superstitions, surely.”
“You are young, Humphreybodie, and live in a doubtful age. Even when the evidence for such wonderment is before you, yet you doubt.”
“Oh, laws, Nuncle. You nearly had me there,” the nephew said, chuckling. He punched the other giant on the arm. “But don’t they look funny. They’re standing on their hind legs, just like they was trying to be like us. I could almost imagine they were as smart as we. I might keep one of them, as a pet.”
“We’re no pets! We’re people!” Fergus yelled at the top of his lungs.
