by Shae Ford
Now as he looked out at the Pens, he couldn’t help but wonder the same thing. There were so many of them, and their fences were so small, that Kael couldn’t believe that the animals hadn’t tried to flee into the wilds. But they didn’t so much as raise their furry heads to look at the lands beyond their fences: they were far too concerned with their grazing.
Herds of sheep wandered through the plots, their meaty sides covered in snow-white wool. They grazed contently on early shoots of grass while their lambs scampered about them on gangly legs — sparing with the tops of their hornless heads.
Kael held his nose when they passed by the pigpen. The stench rising up from the black mud was so potent that he could taste it in the back of his throat. He watched as several giants high-stepped through the filth, trying to corner some of the pigs.
Despite their enormous size, the pigs moved surely on their stubby legs. The mud coating their backs must’ve made them extra slippery: a number of the filthy creatures simply squeezed through the giants’ arms and shot off in the opposite direction. After a considerable amount of chasing, one of the giants finally managed to grab a pig.
It was the size of a small bathtub. Kael watched in amazement as the giant snatched it up, hauling the whole squealing, wriggling thing over his massive shoulders. Though the pig fought desperately, it couldn’t escape. It squealed all the more loudly as the giant carried it up the path, towards a second tower.
This tower was made of the same red brick as the castle, so Kael figured it must’ve been fairly new. There wasn’t any smoke coming out of its top, but a large cloud of carrion birds circled it constantly.
He immediately felt sorry for the pig.
“We call it the Grinder,” Declan said when Kael pointed it out.
His stomach twisted in a knot. “What does it grind, exactly?”
“Anything they toss into it — including nosy little mountain rats,” Brend said. The wagon bumped to a stop next to another large shed, and he leapt out. “Now stand aside and leave us to our work.”
Since Kael was next to useless with a pitchfork, he had no problem standing out of the giants’ way. While they unloaded the wagon, he busied himself with trying to fish the straw from the back of his trousers. He wasn’t very successful.
“That ought to do it,” Brend said cheerily, slamming the doors shut.
Kael thought it seemed a bit pointless to drag a wagon-full of straw out of one barn, only to haul it across the whole region to have it stuffed inside another. “Why don’t the Pens grow their own hay?” he grumbled, as he tried to coax a particularly stubborn piece of straw out from between his shoulder blades.
Brend sighed up at the clouds. “Spare me from the clod-headedness of manfolk. They don’t grow hay in the Pens, because the Pens are for growing animals,” he said, with over-exaggerated patience. “It’s no small wonder you mountain rats have to scavenge for your food — you couldn’t grow a weed in a pot!”
Kael glared at him. “You don’t know anything about life in the mountains. You giants keep your food stored under the earth and tucked behind fences. You have no idea what it’s like to track down a meal with tusks and teeth — to wake up every day knowing you might very well be eaten by your dinner. We don’t scavenge for our food. We hunt for it. And I’ve killed bears bigger than you,” he added, with what he hoped was a scathing look.
The giants glanced at each other — then they burst out laughing.
“Where’s that wee fiery spark been hiding?” Brend said. “Had I known you were such a funny little fellow, I might’ve — oops.”
His playful shove sent Kael rolling end over end, and Declan had to pluck him off the ground. “Steady, wee rat.”
Kael jerked himself out of his hold and spun. He was entirely fed up with the giants: he was sick of being thrown about, laughed at, and called a rat. And he was about to tell them as much.
But when he turned, the look on Declan’s face made him forget his words. He couldn’t believe it: Declan was actually smiling. No, not just smiling — he wore a grin so ridiculously wide that it would’ve looked like a fool on anybody else. But on Declan … well, it made him look like a completely different person. A much happier person.
No sooner did his grin appear than it vanished. Declan tossed his pitchfork into the wagon and walked off in the opposite direction, his fists planted firmly inside his pockets.
“I thought you rats were naught but slouch-shouldered clodders,” Brend said, tossing his fork in next to Declan’s. “But I have to say — I hate you less.”
Kael frowned at him. “Less?”
“Oh, sure … a tiny bit less,” he said with a wink. “Now, you hang by the cart — and don’t spook Churl. If you don’t bother him, he’ll just sit there and stare at the chickens. It’ll give us a few minutes to ourselves.” Brend slid around the front of the wagon, glancing up at the driver’s seat as he went.
Churl didn’t seem to notice. Instead, he sat limply on his perch, staring open-mouthed at the feathery inhabitants of the chicken coup.
They clucked and skipped about on spindly legs, deftly avoiding the men who tried to scoop them up. Kael noticed that they were men from the seas. And after having been trapped among giants for so long, he thought they looked ridiculously small.
He wondered if any of the seas men knew Lysander. At any rate, they might be nicer to him than the giants had been. He was about to walk over and talk to them when a familiar-looking shadow crossed his path.
He’d begged Eveningwing to leave him, to go out into the world and enjoy his freedom. But so far he’d insisted on staying put. He’d spent the night roosting in the rafters over Kael’s head, and had left early that morning to go on a hunt. Now it looked as if he might be eyeing the chickens.
Roland had said once that hawks had remarkably sharp vision: “If you can see them, they’re close enough to count your teeth.”
So Kael looked up at Eveningwing and gave him a very pointed glare, shaking his head firmly. The hawk’s gray wings tilted downward in disappointment before he glided back towards the Fields — as if he preferred not to be tempted.
Kael walked for a ways, just to make sure that Eveningwing wasn’t going to try to circle back around. When he finally took his gaze from the skies, he spotted Declan.
He stood near a pen that was quite a bit larger than the rest, leaning against the fence with his arms crossed over the rails. He watched the creatures roaming on the other side of it with a look of longing on his face.
When Kael approached, he’d expected to see cows or sheep — something edible, at the very least. He was surprised when a group of young horses galloped by. They tossed their manes and snorted in delight, running in a line around the pen. Their legs thundered across the flat ground in a chorus of hooves.
The only horses Kael had ever seen had been either saddled, or tied to the fronts of carts. It was amazing to watch the horses move in a herd, free to gallop with no one to rein them in; free to buck and toss their necks without fear of throwing their masters. He’d never thought of them as wild creatures. But now it was hard to see them as anything else.
“Do you want to pet one?” Declan asked, when he saw Kael staring. Before he could reply, Declan stuck his fingers in his mouth and let out a sharp whistle.
A mare’s head shot up immediately, her ears twitched for Declan. She shouldered her way through the crowd of her grazing fellows and trotted straight to the fence.
“This is Crispina,” he said, reaching out to stroke her graceful neck. “Isn’t she beautiful? She’s got royal blood, you know. Her father was King Banagher’s war-horse.”
Kael didn’t doubt it. With the height of her legs and her glossy black coat, Crispina looked every inch the royal horse. At Declan’s urging, he reached out to touch her neck. He was surprised when her nose nuzzled the top of his head.
“She likes you,” Declan said approvingly. “A horse can read a man’s spirit better than any Seer. So if Crispina lik
es you, then I know you’re decent.”
Kael ran his hand along the white stripe between Crispina’s eyes, and she snorted contentedly. “I didn’t know the giants raised horses.”
Declan’s thick shoulders rose and fell. “Yeh, we’ve raised some of the best bloodlines in the realm. They’re more like dogs to us, though — our arses are far too large to ride them.”
“You can’t even ride?”
He shook his head. “I may not be as tall as the others, but my bones are still made of stone. I’d squish their little hides flat, if I tried. And you wouldn’t like that too much, would you?” he added to Crispina — who swished her tail in reply.
They stood in silence for a moment, petting Crispina while she nibbled playfully at their fingers. The young horses scampered around the pen behind her, chasing each other’s tails. As Kael followed their merry game across the pasture, he spotted something odd.
An enormous stone stood out in the middle of the grass. It was easily the height of three men, and he bet it would’ve taken a ring of six giants to wrap their arms around it. The stone itself was pale red in color, with tiny flecks of black chipped into it. As the sun crossed overhead, the black flecks glittered under its light.
When he pointed it out to Declan, he sighed. “Yeh, that’s the Scepter Stone.”
“Is it magic?”
“No, there’s no magic in the plains. Unless you count the skill of a giantess in her kitchens, that is,” he amended with a small smile — a smile that quickly faded. “Come on, I’ll take you to get a closer look.”
They hopped the fence and walked out to the Stone. Declan said they couldn’t stay for long: if one of the Pens’ mages caught them among the horses, they’d probably earn themselves a flogging.
While Declan watched for the mages, Kael pressed his hands against the Scepter Stone. Its surface was smooth, as if the waters of some great river had shaped it. Warmth seemed to radiate from its middle. The little black flecks were warmer than the rest. Though he felt as high up as he could reach, Kael didn’t find a single crack.
“What was it used for?” he said as they hiked back to the fence.
Declan hoisted himself over the railings, while Kael slid in between them. “It didn’t really have a use, not in the way you’d think. The Scepter Stone was more a symbol than anything.”
“A symbol of what?”
Declan grunted and rolled his shoulders back, as if he wasn’t all that comfortable talking. But Kael wanted to learn. So he waited patiently for a few moments, letting his question hang in the air. At last, Declan gave in:
“No doubt you’ve heard tales of the giants, and of our warring ways. The Kingdom is full of the stories. They like to paint us as bloodthirsty, club-wielding savages. Or stupid oafs.” He glared out the side of his eye at Kael, as if he were expecting him to chime in with other offensive names.
But he only shrugged. “I actually don’t know much about the giants. I’ve spent most of my life trapped on a mountain.”
“Huh.” Declan’s face betrayed nothing as he went on. “Well, we did go to war more often than the other regions. The family clans used to get into all sorts of scuffles. They’d start out as small things, just an argument between two neighbors. But it wouldn’t be long before we’d have ourselves a mightily thick battle.”
“Why’s that?” Kael wondered. “Why didn’t the clans just settle things amongst themselves and be done with it?”
“We’re not some region full of strangers — we’re family. Every clan is tied together by some manner of blood,” Declan said, picking at the rough top of the fence post. “If you got into a fight with a neighboring clan, there was a fair chance that you’d have a cousin or a grandpa fighting on the other side.” He ducked his head a bit, and Kael saw that he was trying to hide a smile.
“That’s why things would get so far out of hand. You’d ask to marry my sister, so I’d knock out a few of your teeth. Then your cousin would let his goats into my brother’s crops. Next thing you know, somebody’s plow blade would wind up at the bottom of the pond — it just wouldn’t take long for things to go to clods.” His head shot up, and he fixed Kael with a serious look. “But just because we fought all the time doesn’t mean that there weren’t any rules.”
He waved his hand at the horse pen. “Anyone who stood in the shadow of the Scepter Stone couldn’t be harmed. That’s where the women and children would gather to wait out the fights. I traveled there with my mother once, as a wee thing.” His eyes seemed to dull at the memory. “We waited there for many long days, picnicking and roaming through the Prince’s lands. He let the clans fight for a while, but when it came time for the harvest and our fathers still hadn’t returned, the Prince set out to bring them home. He rode from the castle gates with his mighty army at his back … and he dragged my father and all my kinsmen home by their ears.”
A floodgate must’ve opened over Declan’s mouth: Kael had never heard him string so many sentences together, and he realized that he might never hear it again. So even though the questions pressed against his lips, he tried to sit quietly — just to see if Declan would say anything else.
“They tried to break it, you know,” he murmured after a moment. Declan’s eyes traveled to the Scepter Stone, and a hard smirk bent his lips. “When Titus captured the plains, he ordered the mages to cast a spell to crack it. They covered it in fire and ice, they tried to blast it down the middle — they even summoned great, snaking cords and tried to topple it over on its side. But the Stone stood firm.” His lips tightened. “And we giants took it as a sign.”
He said no more. And Kael couldn’t think of anything to say in reply, so he kept his mouth shut. They stood in companionable silence for several moments before Brend found them.
“Oh no,” he said, grinning, when he caught sight of them. “Declan hasn’t been off on his tales about horses, has he? Talking about their shiny flanks and what-have-you? If he starts to bore you, wee rat, you can always just wander off — I know for a fact that he’ll keep on talking to the wind.”
Declan smiled and shook his head, but said nothing to defend himself. Brend went on:
“He can’t help it, though. That’s what happens when a fellow is born into clan Horseman. They’ll chatter on about their prancing little pets till the earth goes blue. Whole armies have turned and fled, rather than be trapped in one of their tales — I swear it by the plains mother.”
Kael turned to Declan and said: “Declan Horseman, is it?”
He nodded. “That it is, Kael of the Unforgivable Mountains.”
*******
With Churl content to watch the chickens, they were able to waste the whole day just walking around the Pens and looking at the animals. Brend knew many of the giants by name, and spent several minutes talking with each of them, asking about how they were getting on.
When the sun started to dip low, they hopped back into the wagon. As Churl hurtled them down the bumpy road, Kael began to think.
Declan’s story burned in the front of his mind. He was determined now more than ever to find someway to free the plains. But he knew whatever plan he came up with wouldn’t work — not unless he had the giants on his side. And it was obvious that they didn’t trust him.
How could he possibly convince them to listen?
He was shocked when he suddenly found himself wishing for Lysander. Annoying though he was, the pirate captain would’ve known exactly what to do with the giants. He’d blind them with flashes of his white teeth and have them spun around so quickly that they’d lose track of their backsides. The giants would’ve followed him without even realizing it — and Lysander would’ve been long gone before they figured out that he’d swindled them senseless.
For some reason, this thought put a smile on Kael’s face.
At dinner, he hardly ate. The thought of Lysander’s particular brand of trickery was a loose thread — a path that led him straight to a tangled mass of ideas. There might be a plan in th
ere somewhere, but it was too jumbled to tell. After a while, Kael was entirely fed up with thinking: he knew he had to stop agonizing over everything and put just one of those things into motion. He had to give that thread a tug, and see what other sorts of ideas might pop free.
So as they sat at dinner, he did just that.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about your Prince,” Kael said to Brend. He said it quietly enough that the other giants couldn’t hear him. Though the noise at dinner was so loud that he probably didn’t even have to lower his voice. “I think I might be able to help him with his plan.”
Brend’s head shot up from the trough. “What you have in mind?” he said, around a rather large mouthful of porridge.
Kael told him about Jonathan, and how they’d been captured together — though he conveniently left out the bit about the caravan of pirates. “So if I can find a way to reach my friend —”
Brend snorted loudly, spraying bits of porridge back into the trough. “How do you plan to do that, eh? Tie your message to a string and throw it through the castle windows?”
Kael gave him what he hoped was a disarming smile. “I could do that … or, I could use the shapechanger.”
It took a moment, but Brend finally seemed to catch on. He ducked his head down even with Kael’s, and the mocking glint left his eyes. “You’re going to have the wee hawk carry a message to the fiddler?”
Kael nodded.
“And what do you plan to tell him? You’d better not be plotting an escape.”
“I’d have to be pretty stupid to try that — especially since you’ve promised to make a quick end of me.” Kael’s heart pounded in his throat, but he forced himself to smile when Brend nodded. He chose his next words carefully: “It seems to me that whatever the Prince has planned won’t work, unless you find someway to free your women. You don’t even know where they’re being held. So if Jonathan could poke around a bit, perhaps even draw us a few maps … do you think that might be helpful?”
