A Plague of Giants

by Kevin Hearne

  The bard hopped up onto the stage after taking a few long draughts of ale and said, “Let’s travel back to the west, where several decisions altered the course of our history, beginning with our hunter who no longer wished to hunt, Abhinava Khose.”

  We finally found the kherns, and close behind them followed the moment when I had to inform my family that I wouldn’t be hunting with them. It was not merely unpleasant: it was the end of my world.

  Uncle Navir spotted them coming. They were only a plume of dust above the plains at first, a small cloud on the horizon to the southeast, where the headwaters of the Khek River began their long journey to the ocean. It was the mark of their passage, earth and grass churned up by the pillars of their legs and thrown into the air by their tapered snouts. We were skirting an island of broad-trunked nughobe trees in the sea of grass because you never go into that darkness: you make the animals inside come out if they want to eat you, where you can see them before their teeth sink into your flesh. But we had circled around it from the north side and traversed its western border with not so much as a howl from a wheat dog. It was once we began to swing around to the south that my uncle shouted and pointed to the khern cloud in the distance. Father climbed up on top of our wagon and shielded his eyes from the sun, and when he was satisfied that he really was looking at a boil of kherns, he unpacked his smile and spread it out for us to see.

  “Great Kalaad blesses us! It is a mighty boil at last! The Khose will get to be hunters after all!” My mother was driving the wagon, and he bent down to kiss the top of her head. “Move us away from the trees. We don’t want anything coming at us while we are busy with the kherns.”

  And so the wart yaks were turned due south and goaded to increase their speed by a step or two, and my aunt and my cousins did a little dance in the grass while Uncle Navir for some reason thrust his hips repeatedly in the direction of the khern cloud. He stopped when his daughter asked him what he was doing.

  My sister, Inasa, laughed at him and then turned to me. “Come on, Abhi. Let’s get ready.” I joined her at the back of the slow-moving wagon, but not to get ready for the hunt. My preparations looked similar but were intended for something much different. We had field bags for hunts like this when we would be away from the wagon for extended periods. Usually they were filled with twine and snares and implements for simple meals. I loaded up on the simple meals.

  I packed many water skins, so many that Inasa said I would spend all my time draining my bladder and miss out on the hunt. I also carried a very small cooking pot filled with a bag of dry beans, along with a separate bag of root vegetables and a few onions, a box of salt, a blanket, and a firestone enchanted by a Hathrim sparker. She picked up her bow and quiver, but I left my spear alone. I had a hunting knife on my belt for defense; the spear would be useful against larger beasts should I be attacked by one, but it had become a symbol in my head and I didn’t want to touch it again.

  When I left it behind, Inasa pointed it out. “You forgot your spear, Abhi!”

  “No, I didn’t. I won’t need it.”

  “We’re hunting kherns! Of course you’ll need it.”

  “No. You will see. But thank you, Inasa. You are the best of all possible sisters. I love you.”

  She flinched as if expecting an attack, and when none came and she saw I was being serious, she cocked her head and narrowed her eyes. “What is wrong with you? What have you eaten recently?”

  I grinned at her. “I love you regardless of what I eat.”

  “Yeah, but you don’t usually say it.”

  I sighed and said, “It’s a truth and a fault. One I’m trying to remedy. I should remind you more often.”

  Inasa stared at me, her mouth hanging open, so rather than shock her any more I strode to the front of the wagon to remind my mother. She trailed after me, calling my name, while I called Mother’s.

  But Father’s voice cut through both of ours, assuming it was an unimportant sibling squabble. “Everybody gather over here for your duties!” he yelled from the other side of the wagon, so I reversed course to jog around the back—it’s unwise to step in front of wart yaks. Inasa tried to grab me, but I dodged around her and continued on, joining Father and Uncle Navir and all my cousins to the right of the wagon, keeping pace with it so that Mother could hear.

  “This looks good. It’s a big enough boil that we might get two, maybe even three. Two would give us a handsome profit, and three would be astounding riches. As always, we need to flank to either side and pick off the ones in the back. Navir, take your family around the near side, and I’ll go with Abhi and Inasa on the far side.”

  “No,” I said.

  “Shut up, Abhi,” Father said.

  “I’m not going.”

  My uncle told me to shut up next. “It’s not the time for jokes.”

  “I’m not joking. I’m staying with the wagon.”

  Everyone’s eyes traveled up and down my body, looking for injuries. “What’s wrong with you?” Father growled. “Stub your toe?”

  “No, I simply don’t want to hunt anymore. I’ll stay and watch the wagon and protect the yaks. But I won’t seek out another creature’s death.”

  My family physically recoiled from me as if I had announced I was diseased, and then their expressions hardened, taking their cue from Father. But he was the only one who spoke.

  “Tell me you’re joking, son,” he said, crossing his arms in front of him.

  “I’m not.”

  “You’re a Khose. That means you’re a hunter. That’s it.”

  “I think it’s time that Khose meant more than that.”

  “Like what, Abhi?”

  It was the question I’d dreaded and still didn’t have an answer for. “That’s what I plan to figure out.”

  “There’s no need. I’ve figured it out for you. You either come with us and help this family of hunters prosper or you leave the family.”

  Inasa gasped. I think my cousin Pandhi did, too. But it was no less than I expected. Father can be stark and uncompromising at times, and I assumed that this would be one of those times. And I also knew from experience that there would be no arguing with him. There was only submission or walking away.

  “I want you to know that I love you all,” I said, looking around at the faces of my family. “But I will not hunt. And I can do both of those things: love you and hunt no more.” I returned my eyes to Father and finished, “If you will let me.”

  Father’s lip curled in a sneer. “Contribute nothing but say you love us? Your actions don’t match your words. If you want to contribute nothing, then contribute it elsewhere. We will not support you.”

  I nodded once, carefully keeping my emotions packed away in my field bag; I planned to open it later. “Farewell,” I said. “Good hunting.”

  Pivoting on my heel, I faced north and began to jog toward the island of nughobe trees, the water skins heavy and sloshing around as I moved. Mother cried out in confusion, unable to believe what had just happened; Inasa called after me and took a few steps, but Father barked at her to let me go and her footsteps halted. Mother pleaded with him, Uncle Navir said something and so did my aunt, but he said they had a hunt to finish and they could worry about me later.

  All of that went as expected, and painful as it was, I had prepared for it. I had prepared to walk all the way back to Khul Bashab by myself and start a new life in peace with other creatures and hope that one day, after they had some time to recover from the shock I had given them, my family would talk to me again.

  But then the ground began to shake and thunder and the shouts of my family changed their tenor, and when I turned to look, the distant dust plume of the kherns was closer—too close—and the largest boil of them I have ever seen was not merely traveling but stampeding directly at our wagon. We had taken our eyes off them during my selfish drama and thus had little warning.

  There could only be one reason why: something was pursuing the kherns from behind. The Khose
were not the only hunters on the plains. Though in fact the hunt was off now; there is no stopping a khern stampede except the will of the kherns themselves. The only thing my family could do was run. It was the only thing I could do, too.

  I turned ninety degrees and headed straight east, hoping to get out of the path of the kherns and let them pass me by. Outrunning them would be impossible.

  There were dozens of the gray-skinned behemoths—perhaps more than a hundred beasts spread out and churning the earth, snorting and trumpeting and running full speed, heads lowered, their great black curved horns thrust forward and ready to ram anything, including our wagon and the wart yaks tied up to them.

  Wart yaks stand six feet tall at the shoulder, and their horns are dangerous. But though they’re strong and sturdy, they’re not particularly fast. And they’re half as tall as a khern, less than half the weight, and far less than half as fast. I didn’t think they stood a chance of surviving the charge of the kherns. What chance, then, did my family have?

  They ran to the sides, as I did, to try to beat the edge before it overwhelmed them. But they had been on the other side of the wagon—my uncle’s family ran in the opposite direction from me. But Mother jumped down to run in my direction, perhaps to warn me, because I saw her waving her arms over my shoulder as I ran. Father came after her, climbing over the wagon and doing his best to catch up, but they were far closer to the boil than I was. I saw the wart yaks begin to panic, saw the twelve-foot-high wall of horn and meat thunder closer, saw my mother open her mouth in a scream I never heard over the rumble of the kherns, saw her see me looking back at her as I ran, and she reached out to me, mouthing my name and something more as she realized she would never make it, my father behind her, shouting as well, and then my parents disappeared under the boil of kherns, the wart yaks were plowed under, the wagon splintered into pieces and got chewed up by the stampede, and it came for me, growing larger, quaking the earth beneath my feet. I hardly had breath to make noise, but I did, limbs pumping as fast as I could make them, my field bag flapping madly in my wake and tears leaking out of my eyes as I ran for my life. And I wasn’t alone: other creatures in the path of the boil were flying if they could or running to get out of the way—a stalk hawk, a covey of gharel hens, a saw-beaked owl taking wing in the daylight, plus rodents and serpents and lizards scrambling through the grass.

  I cleared the edge of the boil by no more than a couple of lengths, the turbulence of the last khern’s passage knocking me off my feet. For a moment I expected to be trampled anyway, but the beasts kept going, and I struggled upright on shaky legs to get my bearings.

  The boil was far broader than it was deep. It had flattened out in response to the pursuit of a sedge of grass pumas, perhaps ten of them anxious to make one of the kherns go down and then prevent it from ever gaining its feet again. Most of them stopped and converged on the wart yaks; that was the way they operated sometimes, never bringing down a khern but taking advantage of whatever the kherns brought down in their stampede. But of course the wart yaks weren’t the only victims. The grass was flattened where the kherns had passed, and so I could see them, broken and crushed and smeared on the plains because of me, when not five minutes ago I had told them that I loved them all—

  I don’t think I ever made noises like I made right then. Whimpers at first and then a long, sustained cry of denial when I could catch breath enough to voice it. That cry drew attention, however. One of the pumas was having trouble getting its fair share of yak meat with all the others crowding around, and it looked up with interest while all the others were feeding. It decided I looked delicious and easy to catch and arrowed through the grass in my direction.

  There was no outrunning it. It was coming specifically for me, and for a moment I thought, why not? Why not die with the rest of my family? Since I had been the one to distract them from the danger and take their eyes off the boil, should I not pay the same price in blood?

  But then I supposed I didn’t want this sedge of pumas to be the end of all the Khose. They are not bright creatures, only savage and unafraid of anything. I have had more than one jump at me in the past and die on my spear. I missed my spear now.

  I pulled out my hunting knife and shifted my field bag to the front, holding it up just below my chin with my left hand and gripping the knife with my right. The grass puma leapt at me, mouth open, going for my throat, and I raised the bag and fed it to him as he came, going down to the ground so that he would land on top of me. That was what he wanted and what I wanted, too. He tore into the bag instead of my throat, his teeth bursting through a water skin instead of my skin, and I stabbed him repeatedly with my knife as he got a mouthful of water and nothing else. I wasn’t trying to kill him, just make him decide to eat something else. After five or six stabs I must have hit something that really hurt. It jumped up and back from me, ripping the knife out of my hand and bounding away with it still lodged between its ribs. It left me alive but deeply scratched, weaponless and with a lot less water to drink when I was days away from home.

  There was no going after it because it staggered back to the other grass pumas, making a noise between a wail and a roar. I was making similar sounds, but more from grief than from physical pain. The other pumas had enough to occupy them, so they ignored both me and my attacker. Still, I needed to get out of there; more predators and scavengers would be coming this way, following the scent of blood. I didn’t have a goal in mind except to live long enough to mourn them properly, to release them to the sky, and then, perhaps, Kalaad would take me or show me what to do next. The pumas wouldn’t go into the island of nughobes—even the kherns wouldn’t go in there. They were already swerving around to the west to avoid them.

  The canopy held its own dangers for me but nothing as immediate as the pumas; soon there would be packs of scavenging wheat dogs and then a cloud of blackwings descending to pick over the bones. And once they had all gone, maybe then I could return and pay them the honor they deserved and beg their spirits for forgiveness.

  I ran in an awkward crouch away from the pumas, half in staggering grief and half in hope that my back didn’t crest above the grass and give me away to any other predators nearby. My breath heaved raggedly out of my lungs and my eyes streamed and my nose, too, if I am honest, and I felt trickles of blood down my arms and sides from where the puma scratched me.

  Nothing chased me into the canopy, and the temperature cooled noticeably as soon as I entered the shade. The broad trunks spread out with long, heavy branches that drooped all the way to the ground, allowing almost any creature to climb up into the trees with ease. The branches of the nughobes always hid more dangers than the ground, which was carpeted with the leaves of many seasons, which smothered almost all undergrowth aside from a few low-light ferns.

  I didn’t stop once I made the border of the island but kept going inside; the truly dangerous creatures inhabited the periphery so that they could hunt in the plains or the interior. The fact that none of them had attacked our wagon didn’t mean they weren’t there; it simply meant they were more likely nocturnal.

  I ran until I could run no more, when all I could hear was the rasp of my breath and the plodding of my tired feet, heavy with loss. I stopped in the middle of a triangle of trees, scanning the branches quickly to make sure I was not about to rest in the middle of a howler colony. I should have taken more care, but I was too exhausted to be careful.

  Collapsing to the ground and folding my legs beneath me, I inspected the contents of my field bag, which had been ripped and chewed but not ruined by the puma. Two skins still had water in them; the rest had been punctured. That alone made my survival doubtful past a day or two. I didn’t know where to find fresh water between here and Khul Bashab. Unless I returned to the wagon and found more unbroken skins, surviving until the city was as likely as a kraken grazing on dry land. The jerky and all the beans remained, but with little water to cook the beans they were almost worthless. And even if I had water, without
a weapon for defense my death was almost certain. The chances of crossing the plains without running into something with sharp teeth and an appetite were extremely small.

  But the journal my aunt had given me remained along with my quills, and my ink pot was still intact because it was made of thick Hathrim glass.

  I began writing what had happened while I was still breathing hard, sorrow springing fresh in my eyes. I will never forgive myself should I live to return to civilization. My family had died because of my selfishness.

  The sun is sinking to the horizon, shadows darkening in the forest.

  A flicker of movement in the trees. Is that—?

  Kalaad’s judgment is upon me. I am in the middle of a nest of bloodcats, their fur camouflaged against the bark of the nughobes. They were asleep when I arrived, but now they stir and I can see them moving where I didn’t before. They will smell me soon if they haven’t already. They will certainly see me when I move. There is no escape; they are too fast and too many. They will hunt me down together, and I have nothing to keep them at bay.

  So be it. It is only fair that I be food for them when I have made food of so many other creatures on the plains. It is natural, and it may even be justice.

  Teldwen will prosper without me, I am sure. Farewell.

  A cry of dismay rose on the wind when the bard returned to himself. “Don’t worry,” he reassured his audience. “That is not the end of Abhinava’s story. It is only the end for today. Meanwhile, near the Godsteeth, Gorin Mogen’s plans took shape while most of the rest of the world wondered if he was still alive.” When he took the seeming of the Hearthfire, more than doubling his size, the giant looked pleased with himself.