The Giant Among Us

by Troy Denning

  Avner’s stomach somersaulted.

  Working frantically, the youth cleared the snow away so he could inspect Tavis’s injuries. A weblike tangle of jagged, ugly gashes covered the scout’s back and limbs, while a fiery blast had scorched the front of his body from his head to his knees. Both arms and one leg had nasty-looking lumps that might indicate cracked bones, but there were no unusual bends or kinks to suggest a severe break. A large, egg-shaped lump had risen on the side of his head.

  Satisfied that Tavis would suffer no further injury by being moved, Avner went back to Graytusk. The youth turned the mammoth so that the beast was standing on the scout’s downhill side, then forced him to kneel. The creature sank so deeply that he almost disappeared in the snow.

  Avner dragged his patient to the mammoth and mounted, pulling the heavy firbolg up in front of him. Graytusk stood without command. As the beast started to turn away, Avner caught a glimpse of familiar brown leather lying in the bottom of the hole.

  “Not so fast, Graytusk!”

  The youth stretched over Tavis’s inert form to grab his mount’s ears and stop the beast. He cut four short lengths of line off Graytusk’s trunk rope and tied the scout’s limbs into the mammoth’s shaggy fur. Avner turned the creature back toward the hole. Still holding the trunk rope, he slipped down Graytusk’s flank, then waded over to the familiar brown leather. He brushed the snow away and pulled Tavis’s quiver from where it had lain half-buried. The case still contained thirteen arrows, twelve of wood and one of gold.

  15

  Lake Monster

  Before each embrasure swarmed a band of soldiers, standing on their toes and shoving each other aside to see what was coming down the lake. Brianna did not even try to push through the throng. She stepped over to a merlon and put her height to good use by peering over the top. The queen saw a small flotilla of hill giant rafts angling past the far corner of Cuthbert Castle’s outer curtain. By the tiny, toylike appearance of the crude vessels, she estimated their distance to be five hundred yards, just beyond catapult range.

  At first, Brianna did not understand where the giants were going. Then, a little beyond the raft flotilla, she spied the arrow-shaped wake of something swimming toward the castle. At the tip of the rippling triangle appeared to be a tangled mass of brown lake weeds, about half as large as the hill giant rafts. It was coming straight toward the castle at a steady rate. The queen watched for several moments, until she thought she could make out the form of a needlelike snout, the crown of a pear-shaped head, and the broad oval of a back. The rest of the creature’s body remained submerged.

  From a short distance down the rampart resounded the clack of a catapult spoon slamming its crossbar. The dark blotch of a small boulder arced over the lake and seemed to hang in the sky forever, then finally splashed down short of the creature.

  The beast’s slender snout rose out of the water, dancing like a snake about to strike. An uncanny trill trumpeted across the lake, at once as shrill as a wyvern’s cry and as full as a dragon’s roar.

  “They’ve got the lake monster on their side!” cried a warrior.

  “Cover your ears!” yelled another. “His voice kills!”

  A murmur of fear filled the air, and soldiers began cupping their hands over their ears. Other men, wise enough to realize they’d already be dead if the beast’s voice was fatal, assailed anyone who would listen with frightening anecdotes about the lake monster, many of them undoubtedly made up on the spot.

  Above it all rang the voice of Blane, Sergeant of the Engines. “Crank her down again, boys! By the time you’re ready, that monster’ll be close enough to hit!”

  A second catapult crew arrived, wheeling their weapon along the back of the rampart, and tried to push their way to an embrasure near Brianna. The queen stepped over to help, pulling panicked soldiers away from the wall.

  “Stand aside!” she commanded. “Give these men room to work!”

  The crowd’s attention remained on the lake monster, the men moving aside only when she shoved them away. She shook her head in dismay, knowing such confusion boded ill for the coming battle.

  “Return to your posts!” she yelled. “This could be why the giants have been waiting!”

  A few soldiers scowled and slipped off to another embrasure, but most simply ignored their queen. Brianna restrained the impulse to start hurling men over the wall and contented herself with keeping the area clear for the catapult crew. Although it had been nearly three days since the incident in the temple, her thoughts remained cloudy enough that she did not trust herself to chastise the troops. When Selwyn and Cuthbert arrived, they could restore order, and she would make it clear that she expected better discipline than this.

  Blane’s catapult clacked again. Brianna stepped over to a merlon and watched the boulder splash down alongside the monster. It took several moments for the first ring of waves to ripple over the beast’s back.

  “Don’t worry boys,” counseled Blane. “There’s plenty of time to sink that thing. Just pull your spoon down and load up.”

  The beast let out another bugle. The tips of two white fangs broke the surface below its upraised snout. This sent another wave of hysterical speculation along the ramparts, and the confusion grew even worse as some men tried to retreat while others pressed forward to get a better look.

  Selwyn and Cuthbert finally arrived, shoving through the crowd to join the queen at her merlon. They stood side by side, holding their helmets beneath their arms and craning their necks to peer through the embrasure Brianna had cleared for the catapult crew.

  “Stronmaus save us!” gasped the earl. “Karontor’s sent one of his warped beasts to aid our enemies!”

  “What is that thing?” asked Selwyn, his tone more curious than frightened.

  “No creature of Hiatea’s, I fear,” answered Brianna. A pair of short antennae appeared behind the beast’s massive head and began fluttering. “Its too hideous to be a thing of nature.”

  “How can we fight something like that? We have no wizards!” gasped Cuthbert. “What are we going to do?”

  Brianna grabbed the earl’s shoulder and pulled him away from the embrasure. She wheeled him around to face her. “First, you’re going to get hold of yourself!” she snapped. “Then you’re going to restore order to this mob. If the giants attack now, this castle won’t last five minutes.”

  “Quite right, Majesty,” agreed Selwyn. He turned and started down the rampart, yelling, “To your posts! Return to your stations at once!”

  At first, the captain had little more luck than Brianna had. That changed when he started cuffing disobedient soldiers, even going so far as to shove one stubborn slacker off the ramparts. The queen winced, but made no move to reprove Selwyn.

  Cuthbert watched the display in gape-mouthed horror. “You’re going to allow that, Milady?”

  “We may not have much time before the battle begins, Earl Cuthbert,” she said. “I suggest you restore order in the best way you know how, or the men will suffer worse than that”

  The earl paled, but nodded and set his helmet on his head. Brianna returned her attention to the lake. The creature was angling away from the rafts, and the queen could see that its fluttering antennae rose from a small bald spot on its neck. Since the wind was no longer to the benefit of the hill giants, they were frantically pulling down their sails and using their clubs to paddle after the monster.

  Brianna heard Blane’s catapult resonate again, then saw a boulder, a little larger than the first two, arc over the lake. This time, the stone struck a glancing blow off the monster’s rear quarters. The beast whistled in pain. It plunged its head into the water and dived. A skinny tail with a bushy end and two round feet followed a fat, hairy posterior beneath the surface.

  “Hiatea forgive me!” Brianna gasped. “It’s a mammoth!”

  No sooner had the queen grasped this than she also realized the beast had a rider. Mammoths don’t have antennae, so the fluttering tendrils had to
be waving arms.

  Brianna turned to the catapult crew beside her. “Don’t aim at the monster,” she commanded. “It’s a mammoth, and it’s trying to reach us. Sink the hill giant rafts instead.”

  The old man in charge of the engine looked doubtful. “That’s not what Blane’s orders—”

  Brianna stretched across the catapult and grabbed the man by the collar, then dragged him over the spoon to her side. The fellow went limp in her grasp, too astonished by the queen’s unexpected strength to react

  “I am your queen!” she growled. “You’ll do what I command, or suffer the punishment for treason. Is that clear?”

  “Y-Yes, Majesty.”

  Brianna put the man on the ground. “Good,” she said. “Aim carefully.”

  The queen stepped to the next embrasure, where Selwyn’s efforts to restore order had already brought some results. The area was empty, save for two soldiers setting up a crossbow so large that it rested on a wooden tripod. She pointed at the taller of the two men.

  “You, run down to Sergeant Blane and tell him to leave the lake monster alone,” she said. “He’s to sink the rafts only.”

  “Yes, Majesty,” the tall soldier said. “The rafts only.”

  The man started to leave, but Brianna caught his shoulder.

  “And in case the sergeant has any thoughts about second-guessing me, inform him that I’ve seen a rider’s arms waving from the beast’s back,” Brianna said. She remembered how disrespectful Blane had been during their first meeting. “I’ll hold him responsible if any harm comes to that rider.”

  The mammoth was still too distant to tell who was riding the beast, but the queen knew of only one person imprudent enough to dare such a thing. She intended to give him a stern lecture once she got him back into the castle.

  The soldier waited a moment to see if Brianna wished to add anything else, then bowed and rushed down the rampart. The queen turned her attention to the fellow’s shorter partner.

  “You, go and find a long rope to lower over the wall,” she commanded. “And tell the sentries to send word if more hill giants launch their rafts. I don’t know what’s happening out there, but we’d better be on our alert.”

  “Yes, Majesty.” The soldier bowed, then ran toward the corner tower.

  Brianna looked onto the lake again and saw that the mammoth had surfaced. It was now swimming parallel to the castle ramparts, reluctant to approach any closer. The queen could barely make out the figure of the tiny rider stretching forward to tug on its ear. To her astonishment, he seemed to be leaning over someone draped across the beast’s neck.

  The four giants on the first raft hurled a volley of stones at the beast. The rocks all fell short, but not by much, and the mammoth dived again.

  Both catapults fired. Two boulders arced away from the castle, splashing down on each side of the giants’ raft.

  “We’ve got the range now,” said the commander of the catapult next to Brianna. “Crank her down.”

  The queen glanced over and saw two soldiers laboriously working the tension levers to bring the spoon down. She went to the closest man and took his place.

  “You help your partner.” She pointed to the other side of the catapult. “I’ll work this side.”

  The two soldiers looked doubtful, but they had seen the queen reprimand their commander and knew better than to disobey. Brianna pushed her lever down as though there were no tension at all on it. The mouths of both soldiers fell open and they looked at each other in surprise.

  “I am a Hartwick, you know.”

  Although the queen had always been too ladylike to make a point of exhibiting her power, like all of her kingly ancestors, she was blessed with supernatural strength. She worked the lever so fast that, even together, the two soldiers could do no more than hold the skein’s tension while she ratcheted her pole back. It took less than a minute to lock the catapult arm in firing position.

  The burly loader placed a medium-sized boulder into the spoon, and the commander peered through the embrasure. The old man told his crew to turn the catapult a little to the right, then pulled the release cord. The spoon slammed into the crossbar. Brianna heard the boulder splash into the lake, but by then she was already levering the spoon back down. Like most siege engines, catapults were poorly suited to firing at moving objects, and the queen knew it would take many attempts to hit their target.

  They had to repeat the process six more times, loading slightly heavier boulders into the spoon for each shot, before Brianna heard the bang of a stone crashing through timber. Several hill giants bellowed in alarm and began to slap the water with flailing arms.

  The old man looked back, beaming at the queen with a gap-toothed grin. “You’re a fine artilleryman, Majesty,” he said. “Even Blane’s crew fired only twice.”

  As he spoke, a chorus of deep-throated grunts rumbled across the lake, then Brianna heard a number of boulders splash into the water near the castle wall. The hill giants were returning fire.

  “How’s the mammoth doing?” Brianna asked, levering the spoon down again.

  “No more than fifty paces out,” said the old man. “We sank the first raft, but there are two others close behind. It’ll be a close thing.”

  As Brianna finished levering the spoon down, the short soldier she had sent for a rope returned with a large coil slung over his shoulder. The queen waited until the loader had locked the arm into place, then stepped away from the catapult.

  “Keep firing,” she said. “I’m afraid I must attend to some other things.”

  The queen took the rope and went to an open embrasure. The mammoth was so close now that she could see its frightened eyes peering up from the surface of the lake. As she had surmised earlier, it was young Avner sitting on the beast’s neck, one hand buried deep in the creature’s long hair and the other holding his fellow rider’s head above water. To Brianna’s astonishment, she recognized the rugged face of this second passenger as that of her firbolg bodyguard. She could not even begin to guess how the boy had come by his unconscious body, but she suspected that the scout’s return meant he had failed to summon reinforcements.

  There were half a dozen hill giant rafts behind the mammoth, at distances varying between thirty and a hundred paces. Fortunately, the clumsy vessels made awkward platforms for stone hurling, and only the giants on the two nearest craft stood any chance of hitting their targets.

  “Avner, rope!” Brianna called.

  The queen passed several loops to one hand, then used the other to throw the rope. The coils unfurled perfectly, spinning out to fall just short of the mammoth’s trunk.

  The hill giants hurled another volley of boulders at the beast. The stones splashed down in a tight circle, swamping Avner’s mount beneath a mantle of white spume. A shrill, ear-piercing screech echoed off the castle wall. When the froth spattered back into the lake, one side of the mammoth’s rear quarters had slipped beneath the water. His speed had slowed considerably.

  The catapults slammed another pair of boulders into the air. Both stones, now the heaviest the engines could launch, came down on the same raft. The vessel disintegrated in a wet, crunching roar, leaving three battered hill giants in the bloodied water. The brutes slapped at the splinters of their raft, desperately trying to grab something buoyant enough to keep their heavy bodies from sinking.

  The mammoth gave a joyful trumpet and continued swimming. Avner grabbed the end of Brianna’s rope and tied it around the chest of Brianna’s bodyguard. The queen was glad to see that the boy had thought to place the knot between the scout’s shoulder blades, so that he would be dragged backwards, with his head still above water, when she pulled him to the castle.

  “Haul away!” the youth yelled.

  “You come, too,” Brianna called. “I can bring you both up.”

  “It’ll be faster one at a time.” As the youth spoke, he was dragging himself over the mammoth’s head. “Besides, I’ve got to do something.”

  Briann
a pulled. Even the hill giants on the farthest rafts redoubled their boulder-casting, hurling a constant storm of rocks that fell far short of the mammoth. The four warriors on the closest vessel gave up throwing in favor of paddling and rapidly began to gain on Avner’s injured mount.

  Brianna continued to pull, at the same time casting anxious glances down the ramparts in both directions. Selwyn and Cuthbert had restored enough order so that soldiers armed with heavy crossbows now stood in most embrasures. The spoon on Blane’s catapult was cranked about halfway down. The engine close to her was not even that close to firing. She looked back at the lake and saw Avner treading water beside the mammoth’s head, tugging at a rope tied to the beast’s trunk.

  “Damn it, Avner!” she hissed. “The next time I tell you to grab the rope, do it!”

  The giants on the closest raft stopped paddling and laid their clubs aside to reach for boulders. The first warrior launched his stone just as Brianna’s bodyguard reached the base of the castle wall. The rock arced not toward Avner or the mammoth, but at the unconscious firbolg at the end of the queen’s rope. The missile splashed into the water less than two paces from its target, sending a plume of water so high that droplets hit the queen’s face.

  “Fire on those giants!” Brianna yelled.

  The cords of several heavy crossbows popped simultaneously, sending javelin-sized bolts sizzling down at the raft. One of the giants bellowed in pain and dropped to the deck, clutching his thigh. Two more reached for boulders, while the third grabbed two shields and positioned himself in front of his companions.

  Brianna started pulling her bodyguard up the wall. She saw Avner slip the rope off the mammoth’s snout, then push on the side of the beast’s head to direct it toward the open lake.

  “Avner, come on!”

  The boy looked up and nodded, then swam away. The mammoth bugled its good riddance and dived.

  The giants on the raft hurled their boulders. The stones hit on each side of her bodyguard and shattered against the castle wall. Brianna pulled harder, yanking the rope up so fast that it grew hot in her hands. The hill giants turned to reach for more rocks.