by Shae Ford
“It’s ole Scalybones!” Brend said, chuckling.
They were supposed to be planting the cabbage. But since the mages were nowhere in sight, they were moving much slower than usual. Brend placed his seeds one at a time, with a good amount of back-straightening and joking in between, while Declan moved distractedly — his planting separated by long moments of staring at the Fields and muttering to himself.
For once, Kael was actually ahead of them. He thought it might be a good idea to keep his head lowered as much as possible. Declan might very well be able to read the whole story on his face, if he thought to look. But fortunately, the giant’s eyes seemed to rove nearly everywhere else.
“You know Scalybones is just a tale —”
“But they don’t!”
Declan made a frustrated sound. “Well, if Scaly is a tale and the mages are still disappearing, then it’s got to be something real. And if that’s the case, how long before whatever’s out there,” he thrust his scythe at the Fields, “comes after one of us?”
Brend made a face. “It’ll have to climb through spells and locked doors before it can do that. It’s probably only the lions, anyhow — they’re thick this time of year. Any man who wanders out after dark deserves to be eaten. And what are you so grumped about?” He used his scythe to flick a clod of dirt at Declan. “Anything that’s munching on the spellmongers is a friend of mine!”
When a few hours passed and they still hadn’t found any sign of Bobbin, the guards marched back into the castle. One by one, the mages returned to their duties — and it wasn’t long before Finks wandered up to them.
Kael thought they might all be in for a beating. Finks’s skin was red and he had his long teeth clamped tightly on his lower lip. He threw a few halfhearted lashes at them, but mostly spent the day pacing around, scratching worriedly at the top of his head.
Brend couldn’t contain himself. Sparks flickered behind his eyes as he planted, and Kael knew he must’ve been thinking up another wild tale. Sure enough, it wasn’t long before Brend began to talk loudly about how Scalybones had it out for the mages.
“Don’t you see? It makes perfect sense!” he argued with Declan. “Ole Scaly must’ve found some holes in his cloak after that last big rain —”
“Why would he care about the rain?”
“Because fresh rainfall burns his bones, you clodder! Everybody knows that,” Brend said impatiently. He caught sight of Finks hovering nearby and lowered his voice. Kael nearly grinned when Finks wandered closer. “The skin of magefolk is extra oily, on account of all the magic in them. So it’d be perfect to keep out the rain.”
“How many do you think he’ll get?” Declan whispered.
Brend shrugged. “Who knows? He’s had naught but giant skin for these last many years, and our hide is far more suited for breeches than anything. He might be weaving himself a whole new cloak, now that he’s got so many nice, oily mages about.” He spun to Kael. “And when the ground starts to harden, you’d better watch yourself: the skin of mountain rat makes for a fine pair of boots, on account of them being so particularly stubborn.”
Kael did his best to look appalled.
Brend’s wild tales grew faster than any weed, sprouting such a terrible fear amongst the mages that they actually began to go mad — and the next week passed by with hardly a dull moment.
It all started on a particularly hot and dusty day, when Churl screamed at the top of his lungs that he’d seen Scalybones hiding in the grass. He whipped his wagon into an all-out sprint for the barns, saw the cloud of dust rising up behind him, and thought the wraith was giving chase.
He leapt from the front of the wagon in a panic — and was promptly crushed to death beneath the wheels.
Without a whip to stop them, the Fallows tore straight through the courtyard and into the cornfields, nearly trampling the poor giants who were trying to weed them. They might’ve gone clear to the Spine, had the pond not gotten in their way.
The Fallows drove straight into the middle of it, and the weight of the barrels sank the wagon, burying it beneath the greenish waters. They managed to escape their harnesses, but made no effort to swim for the shore. For some reason, they didn’t seem to be very fond of the water: they perched atop the sunken cart and flatly refused to budge — swatting angrily at anybody who tried to swim out to them.
Hob finally had to use a spell to pluck them from the pond one at a time. The Fallows grunted and flailed their limbs as he carried them through midair, but the second their feet touched the ground, they went back to drooling contentedly.
Churl’s death finally seemed to convince Gilderick that something needed to be done. He sent the guards to drag the wagon out of the pond, and ordered that a patrol watch the Fields day and night. They set up braziers on either side of the road and hovered constantly around the barns. There were so many torches lit that it was difficult to tell when the sun actually went down.
But for all of their caution, the attacks kept happening — and this time, the mages weren’t the target.
After their first night on patrol, the guards seemed flustered. Kael managed to listen in and learned that a couple of men hadn’t returned after their watch. Then they started patrolling in pairs — and began disappearing in pairs.
Kael’s first thought was that Eveningwing might’ve been responsible. He often left during the night, and hadn’t come out of his hawk form in days. Kael thought he might be hiding something.
“I only ask because I don’t want you to get hurt,” he’d said after dinner one night, while the giants were still eating.
Eveningwing cut his beak abruptly to the side — a gesture Kael figured was as good as a shake of the head.
But he still wasn’t convinced. “I think it’s noble of you to try and help, but we’ve been lucky not to be discovered so far. If guards keep disappearing like this, there’s no telling what Gilderick will do. He might go mad and start killing the slaves off. You don’t want that to happen, do you?”
Eveningwing’s head dipped low, and the feathers on the tops of his wings bunched up miserably. Later that night, Kael heard the soft click of his talons as he hopped out onto the roof.
Though he’d adamantly denied that he’d had anything to do with it, after Kael’s talk with Eveningwing, the guards stopped disappearing so rapidly. One or two would go missing every once in awhile, but it was a small enough number that it could be blamed on the lions.
*******
With the mages’ power weakening every day, Kael left his plan to simmer. The rains were coming more often, now. They drifted in from the seas and filled the afternoons with a soft, steady drizzle.
As the clouds swooped in, Kael watched them from a distance. Their gray, feathery tails would flirt with the Red Spine, fluttering halfway to its peaks before stopping suddenly — as if some invisible wall kept them from crossing into the desert. It was strange to think that the Endless Plains might’ve easily shared the barren fate of its neighbor: the Spine seemed to be the only thing keeping this land of plenty from becoming a land of waste.
When the rains began to fall, the giants had no choice but to return to their barns. There were so many eyes watching the Fields now that the giants knew better than to try to drag it out. The guards began closing in with the clouds, waiting for the first drops to fall — and then they’d chase the giants away with the points of their pikes.
Though Kael knew a rainy afternoon would give him more time to think, a large part of him felt as if he ought to be doing something — anything. Every moment he sat idle felt like a moment wasted. So while the giants lounged about and chatted, Kael began to pace.
“You won’t get it off that way,” Declan said. He sat with his back against the stall door and Brend sat across from him. They were playing a game that looked a bit like chess — a strategy game that Uncle Martin had taught him over the winter. Though the giants used a circle drawn into the dirt as a board, and pebbles for pieces.
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�What are you talking about?” Kael grumbled. He was more frustrated with himself than anything. Gilderick’s castle loomed in the back of his mind like a grinning vulture — circling him, waiting for him to make a mistake.
“Your beard,” Declan said, nodding to him. “You aren’t going to be able to scratch the hair off, so you might as well let it be.”
Kael hadn’t even realized that he’d been picking at his beard. But now that he thought about it, the hair was itching him. A thin dusting covered his upper lip, and he knew that bit wouldn’t get any longer. It never did. The hair on his chin and cheeks was what worried him the most: it sprouted in determined patches — growing very thickly where it wanted to, and fading back whenever it pleased.
The result left him looking like a half-plucked chicken.
“Hmm,” Brend said, peering over his shoulder at Kael’s face. “I’ve not seen many, but that’s the worst beard I’ve ever seen.”
“Well, how do you keep yours from growing?”
Kael had noticed right away that none of the giants had a beard. There wasn’t a hair on their faces, even though he never saw them shaving.
“Giant men don’t grow much hair. We’re born with all we’ll ever have — and some of us have less than others.” Brend reached across and tussled the top of Declan’s head. “Look at that! Thin as a summer dew.”
Declan knocked his hand away.
“Our women though, they’ve got mightily long hair. They weave it in thick braids down their backs.” Brend stared at the game for a moment, and a ridiculous smile crossed his face. “The rest of the realm can all keep their frail little lassies — you’ve not seen true beauty until you’ve laid eyes on a giantess!”
A rumble of agreement followed his claim, and Kael suddenly realized that the other giants had begun crowding in around them, their separate tasks forgotten. Kael didn’t like the way Brend’s story was headed. He’d sat through his fair share of tales about women: from Jonathan’s bawdy ballads, to the stories Uncle Martin told over dinner.
Try as he might to hide it, they always made him blush uncontrollably — which apparently gave the other men the right to heckle him for hours on end. He was convinced that Jonathan made his tales a little more colorful each time, just to see if he could get Kael to turn a deeper shade of crimson.
So as the story began, he’d prepared himself to be humiliated. But it turned out that that he worried over nothing. In fact, he tried not to laugh as Brend fumbled his way through a tale about a particularly busty giantess:
“And her hair was like — well, it was hair! And it was all clean and shiny, too. Not a touch filthy. Eh … and she didn’t have any warts to speak of. Her smile was nice — but not in the friendly sort of way. It was more like … like … eh …”
“Sultry?” Kael supplied. He had to fight off his grin when Brend hurriedly jabbed a finger at him.
“Oh, yes — that sounds about right. So her smile was sultry, her hair was clean, and … what was the other thing?”
“No warts,” Kael said out the side of his mouth.
“Ah, right! She didn’t have any warts. She might’ve had a mole or two, I don’t know. We’ll figure that out later. So, anyways …”
Brend tried hard to tell a convincing story, but Kael had to clamp a hand over his mouth to keep his laughter back. At least he understood the giants’ floundering: they’d been locked up for so long that they were probably the only men in the Kingdom who had less experience than he did.
*******
A few days later, Kael’s simmering plan boiled over.
Things didn’t turn out the way he’d expected them to. Though the mages seemed to grow greener and more fearful with every passing moment, they still didn’t retreat to the castle — which didn’t make any sense.
If magic was the only thing keeping his slaves in check, why wouldn’t Gilderick protect his mages? Why wouldn’t he lock them up in his castle at night and keep them safe behind the reddened walls? It made no sense to leave them out in the open, to risk having them picked off one at a time. But that’s exactly what he did.
And to make matters worse, Gilderick began to send his guards out into the Fields during the day, ordering that they watch the slaves. The guards swarmed about them thickly, pikes clutched in their hands. Kael thought the giants ought to have been worried. There were too few mages to go around, and if the guards decided to beat them senseless, it was likely that Finks and Hob wouldn’t be able to reach them in time.
But instead of hunkering down and behaving themselves, the giants grew restless.
Hardly a day went by when threats and insults didn’t spill over into a fight. The giants would gather in clumps on the edge of a field, taunting one guard or another by name. They’d remind him of the life he took to buy his way into Gilderick’s army, bring his mother and sisters into it, and it wasn’t long before he’d charge at them with his pike raised.
The slaves had no trouble beating the guards. Though their scythes were humble tools, they were also very effective weapons: they cut easily under the guards’ pikes and popped them deftly from their hands. Then once their opponents were disarmed, the slaves pummeled them soundly with their fists.
Kael was convinced that the only thing that kept them from starting an all-out war was fear for their women — that, and killing a guard might just be the last grain that tipped Gilderick’s scale from mad to raving. And nobody wanted that to happen.
Still, the giants didn’t seem to be able to keep themselves from fighting. By the time Finks and Hob arrived to put an end to one scuffle, another would pop up in its place. After a long day of chasing the slaves, the mages would have to spend the night with their powers stretched between four barns. They were so green by morning that Kael thought every day might very well be their last.
For Doyle and Gaff, that day came at week’s end.
An explosion rocked them out of their sleep one night, breaking so loudly over the empty plains that Kael thought the whole roof had fallen down upon them. The giants sat up on their pallets and waited. Every ear strained against the haunting silence of the night, trying to figure out what had happened. But they heard no answer.
In the morning, the mages were tight-lipped. They lashed the giants out of the barn and ordered them to go about their chores as usual. Kael knew something must’ve happened, but he likely wasn’t going to hear it from the mages. So as he worked, he hung close to a patch of guards. He was able to stitch most of the story together by listening in on their chatter:
Supposedly, Doyle woke in the middle of the night and swore that he’d heard something scratching at his window. So he’d fled to Gaff’s cottage in a panic.
When Gaff heard his door slam open, he thought Scalybones was coming to rip his skin off. He hit Doyle in the chest with a spell that exploded so violently, it blew the front part of his cottage off.
No sooner did Doyle’s body land on the other side of the courtyard than the guards charged in. They saw Gaff, tangled in his sheets and tumbling down the stairs, and thought he was a ghost. It was only after they’d already skewered him that they realized their mistake.
Now that all of the mages at the Pens had been killed, Kael thought for certain that Gilderick would call Hob and Finks inside the castle. But he didn’t.
Instead, he seemed to think his army could do a slavemaster’s work just as well. One day, they saw Dred and a whole company of lightly armed guards marching towards the Pens — each with a wench-tongue at his hip.
“Gilderick won’t beat them for nothing,” Brend said, when several of the giants expressed their worry over dinner. “So as long as they keep their hands to their tasks, they’ll be all right.”
Kael couldn’t help but think that he sounded uncertain, and the others must’ve felt the same way: the giants still glared daggers at the guards as they worked, but stopped trying to taunt them into fights.
*******
The days turned sullen quickly. Not long after
Dred had taken over the Pens, they heard the guards laughing about how he’d had beaten two slaves from the seas to death. The giants feared other killings would follow.
“No, that’ll be the end of it,” Brend tried to assure them, on one particularly soggy afternoon. “Gilderick’s made his point, and he won’t risk wasting another man.”
As much as Kael wanted that to be true, he didn’t dare believe it. He’d already made the mistake of believing he could handle the mages, and his meddling had only made things worse: Finks went to the Pens, and more guards were sent out to watch the Fields in his place. Hob’s spell covered all four barns at night, and though the threads of his power were so thin they were practically invisible, Kael knew they would still serve their purpose well enough.
He couldn’t get through the spells without setting off the alarm, and there were so many guards on patrol at night that he wouldn’t risk trying to sneak out again. He was stuck, then — caught up in a problem he’d created. And the giants were stuck with him.
There was only one tiny crack in the miserable, worrisome clouds, only one small beam of light that could brighten their dark days, and it came from a most surprising source.
Kael never told Jonathan of their plight, and so his letters kept pouring in. His maps were much improved. When the giants fell asleep, Kael snuck them from under his pallet and read them by the moonlight, locking their every detail into his memory.
But useful as the maps were, it was actually Jonathan’s rambling letters that Kael found the most helpful: the tales of his exploits in the kitchen tower turned out to be the best salve for the giants’ wounds.
Kael took to reading them over dinner, when the giants’ spirits were all but crushed from the long day of lashings. The fiddler’s merry accounts teased smiles onto their faces, prodding them with ridiculousness until he had them stoked into rowdy bouts of laughter:
