A Plague of Giants

by Kevin Hearne

  I had a glass knife. They had swords and spears and arms that were half again as long as mine, plus bodies that weren’t slowing and breaking down. Combat wasn’t an option, even at one-to-one odds, much less one-to-hundreds or thousands. But the Lord of the Deep had given me a kenning and now an opportunity not only to avenge my people but perhaps learn something that would help rid us of this scourge.

  I sleeved myself quietly through the water, keeping only my eyes above the surface. They weren’t even looking my way, their eyes on the path or on the giants in front of them. They thought themselves safe from attack. Any other day they’d be justified in thinking that.

  To secure the papers I’d have to go ashore. I’d be vulnerable there, so to avoid being surrounded, I began my work at the back while I was still largely submerged. I targeted ten giants, all I could easily keep in view, and used my kenning to pull the water in their heads toward me by the width of a thumb. No screaming, no pain, just a fatal hemorrhage in the brain. Not fair, not sporting, just war, like they waged against us, using every advantage they had in size, reach, and numbers. And definitely not murder: no, just my duty.

  The bones they wore rattled as they collapsed, causing the giants in front of them to turn around and see their bodies just before I scrambled their brains as well. And when they fell, that drew the attention of the leader. He was in the next group of ten, but I paused before continuing. I wanted him, at least, to see who was responsible, to see that a Brynt woman would be the end of him. So I dropped my feet, found the sand of the bay, and stood up, calling out to him. He didn’t hear me at first over the tide, but someone else did and got his attention, pointing to me as I emerged from the ocean. And as soon as his eyes lighted on me, I shot out my hand toward him, an unnecessary gesture except to communicate that I was doing something, and then I pulled the water from his head much more forcefully so that his eyeballs exploded and blood and brains gouted out of the sockets.

  His surrounding soldiers gasped once, and then they fell, too, ten at a time, as I rushed the shore and cleared a space for me to secure those documents. I opened my waterproof satchel as I left the surf and saw that the army was a truly huge one. There were not hundreds but thousands. My mouth dried up as I absorbed the odds of survival and instinct screamed at me to turn back now, take the death of a field commander, and call it victory. The only thing I had in my favor was surprise and perhaps, bizarrely, my comparatively small stature. None of the giants more than a rank or two back could see me over the heads and shoulders of their brothers. And in the time that it took them to turn, see that the people behind them had fallen, and look around for danger, it was already upon them, and they fell, too.

  But cries of alarm spread up the column faster than I could work, and as I reached the leader and knelt down beside him, long, bony fingers were pointing in my direction and conclusions were being reached: The short woman who came from the sea must somehow be responsible for sixty—no, seventy!—dead giants! Kill her! At least that’s what my imagination supplied to match their foreign words.

  A rank of them took two steps, raising weapons, before I exploded their brains. A stab of pain shot between my eyes after that; I was pushing myself too hard now, aging with each new effort.

  The fallen bearded officer or whatever he was smelled horrible already; it was too soon to be decay, so he must have polluted the air as part of his daily existence. Did these savages never bathe?

  I had to push him over onto his back since he had fallen on top of the papers. Grunting with the effort, I looked up as I worked and put down two more groups of ten giants charging in my direction. That gave the rest of them pause, and there was some discussion on how to proceed. I took advantage and scooped up all the papers I could, cramming them into my satchel. I even reached into his tattered cloth bag and pulled out more, shoving them into my satchel and sealing it as the Bone Giants decided that spears might work and hurled a bunch in my direction.

  Scrambling away from the body in a panicked crab walk on all fours, I avoided most of them. One sheared through the skin on the inside of my right calf, and another sank through the top of my left foot, pinning me to the beach. The rest thudded into the body of their leader or around it. I screamed and yanked out the spear, closing my eyes as I did so, and when I opened them, I saw a group of giants behind the foremost preparing to send another volley my way, since the first had enjoyed some success. Gritting my teeth, I pushed the water in their heads hard, disrupting their throws as they fell backward, already dead. My skull throbbed every bit as much as my foot after that, but I pushed myself up onto my right leg, testing the calf, and though it stung, it still functioned well enough. I purposely did not look at my left foot, fearing I’d faint if I saw the wound. I hopped on my right foot experimentally, holding my left foot off the ground with a bent knee, and when I didn’t crash to the ground, I lunged toward the sea.

  The mob of giants rippled and flowed in my direction, a roar building among them as it sank in that a single woman had killed more than a hundred of them, had stolen their leader’s writings, and was both wounded and trying to escape.

  In furtive glances over my shoulder, I looked for the ones with spears and pushed the water in their skulls away and let the ones with swords come on. They had some ground to cover and they would cover it pretty quickly, but not as quickly as a thrown spear. Once they closed the distance, I figured the spears wouldn’t keep coming for fear of hitting their own men—and their stature would hide me from the view of others, perhaps.

  Whooshing sounds, gritty impacts, and blurs in my vision told me that I didn’t get all the spear throwers, but the distance and my convulsive movements made me a difficult target. The distance to the ocean would not seem so long had I two working legs, but it yawned like the abyss when I could only hop and the giants could take huge, ground-eating strides at full speed.

  When I looked over my shoulder again, having made the beach, I could not see any more giants with spears; presumably they could not see me either, because my entire vision was filled with a phalanx of the skeletal figures with their swords raised, ready to cut me down. The shoulder of the nearest one bunched, his skull face snarled, and I dropped to the ground on my right side as he swung, realizing that I was already within his inhuman reach, and a line of searing pain scorched my left side as the blade sliced down my ribs. But I rolled and shoved the water of their bodies away from me, and they collapsed. Rather than try to get up, I just kept rolling into the surf, as it allowed me to get a view of my pursuers and take a few out with each revolution.

  Once I hit the water and the salt stung my wounds, I sleeved myself out to sea with all speed, hearing spears plunk into the surf behind me. As soon as I felt safe enough to do so, I surfaced and checked the seal on my satchel. It was sound, and the papers within were protected. Now all I had to do was survive my trip back. Leaking blood into the water would draw predators before long. And if I passed out from blood loss, well, it wouldn’t matter that I couldn’t drown. Something would eat me before I woke up.

  I sleeved myself to the west, past the cold dead walls of Hillegöm and heading toward the Raelech city of Bennelin, which also had been lost to the Bone Giants. I figured it would be a safe place to see to my wounds, since the Bone Giants were heading in the opposite direction. I simply needed to give myself some space.

  Crawling out onto the beach but not far from the tide, I faced the east in case any Bone Giants came running along in search of me. Then I took several deep breaths and forced myself to look at my foot, which was beginning to hurt unbearably now that the shock had worn off somewhat. There was definitely a hole there; I could see the sand through the top of my foot. I wouldn’t be able to walk without a cane or crutch for a while and might never walk normally again. Blood was pumping out of it still, and I was beginning to feel light-headed. Concentrating, I used my kenning to stop the flow and trusted that my system would catch up soon enough and close the blood vessels without magical aid.
I did the same for the vessels along my side and my calf. That would prevent death by blood loss, at least, but infection was still a real possibility. I’d need a hygienist to do that, and the nearest reliable one was in Setyrön.

  Unready to begin the journey and desperate to find a distraction from the pain, I pulled out the papers from my satchel and took a look at what I had stolen.

  It was all gibberish. Completely unreadable. It looked like the Bone Giants used letters in their writing system that we never used. I doubted anyone could read it at all; I might have risked everything and permanently injured myself for nothing.

  Well, not for nothing. At least that army lacked a leader now. And more than a hundred of them would never strike at a Brynt again.

  Sealing the papers away, I rolled back into the sea and began the journey back to Setyrön, keeping to the shallows to avoid large predators but remaining underwater as I passed the Bone Giant army. I didn’t reach Setyrön until well after dark, and the hygienist gave me some Fornish tea as she set to work purging my blood of impurities and doing what she could to set the bones back in place.

  I sent a report to the quartermaster saying that the enemy was returning to Möllerud and he shouldn’t let that expedition depart, but he showed up in person at the barracks to question me about it.

  “Are you positive they’re heading for Möllerud?” he said, frowning at me.

  “Absolutely certain. The hole in my foot bears witness.”

  “Bryn preserve us.”

  “What’s the problem? Just keep that expedition you approved … here.” I blinked, feeling incredibly tired.

  “No, you misunderstood what I said,” the quartermaster growled. “That expedition already left. Two days ago.”

  “What? You have to get them back here!”

  “I’ll send out riders, of course. But they’ll be two days behind.”

  “Well then, shend out shome rapids!” I said, wondering why my speech sounded so strange. “Or I’ll go myshelf!”

  “You’re not going anywhere,” the hygienist said. “That Fornish tea I gave you was a sedative, and you’ll be sleeping for a while.”

  “Don’t worry,” the quartermaster said. “We’ll take care of it. Rest.”

  And so, having no other choice, I rested.

  Fintan bade everyone a good evening after that and reminded them that the Second Könstad was fine except for a limp now. “And no gift baskets!” he chided them. “The pelenaut already took care of that!”

  May Bryn drown the next person who interrupts my morning toast.

  I should make a habit of checking the door before I try to eat, because once again a loud knock at my door sent my breakfast facedown to the tile. Beyond annoyed, I shouted, “Who is it now?”

  An accented and aggrieved voice replied, “Jasindur Torghala, Nentian ambassador to Brynlön. I must speak with you.”

  After our recent troubles there was no way I’d open my door to a Nentian. “I think you must be mistaken. I have no business with Ghurana Nent.”

  “I assure you that you do, so long as you be Scholar Dervan du Alöbar. Are you not he?”

  “I am, but this isn’t a good time. I’ll contact you later at my convenience.”

  “My business is urgent, sir. I need to speak to you right away.”

  “Apologies, Ambassador, but I am not obligated to share your sense of urgency. Good day.”

  Someone—either the ambassador or someone with him—abandoned the brisk knock the ambassador had employed earlier and switched to an angry pounding of my door, a clear signal that they had not come on pleasant business. “We must speak with you immediately!”

  If they could break through that door with all the locks on it, then I’d speak to them, all right. I went to fetch my rapier and put on my mail shirt while they continued to hammer at my home and demand that I speak with them. Armed and protected, I returned to the living area and wondered how long it would take them to tire of knocking.

  It stopped abruptly when a new voice called to them, faintly heard but plainly angry. I drew closer to the door and cocked my ear to hear the exchange better. The surly voice of the ambassador was saying, “We must speak with him regarding the representation of Ghurana Nent in his records.”

  “What records?” came the reply. It was the voice of Föstyr du Bertrum, the pelenaut’s Lung. “You can’t go around bothering private citizens like this.”

  “He is hardly a private citizen! He is in your government’s employ, and as such we may speak with him. He kept records for the pelenaut and is now keeping a record of the bard’s tales.”

  “So what if he is?”

  “So it is bad enough that the bard is allowed to spread these lies every day about our country to your people, but it is an insult of the highest order to allow them to be written down as if they were history! As if they were factual!”

  I supposed my involvement in the project was no secret. The pelenaut had, after all, proclaimed it to the court on the day the bard arrived. I thought it strange that it took the Nentians so long to figure it out, though, or anyway that they would get incensed enough about it now to accost me at home rather than complain through the proper channels. Obviously Föstyr had expected something of the kind and had been keeping a close eye on them if he happened to be near enough to intervene.

  “An insult of the highest order?” the Lung said. “The bard’s performance and its recording are by the order of Pelenaut Röllend. So your position is that the pelenaut has ordered an official insult to Ghurana Nent?”

  “It is! This has gone too far!”

  “Hmm. We will see precisely how far it has gone. Would you like to repeat these sentiments to the pelenaut himself?”

  There was the briefest of pauses, but the ambassador must have decided that backing down would be poor form and label him as a blustery gasbag. “I would, yes.”

  “Very well. He shall be fetched to this very spot. Please wait here.”

  “Here? In the street?”

  “You saw fit to start this in the street, so it will be finished here as well.”

  “No, that’s not necessary.”

  “The ‘highest order,’ you said. Your complaint therefore trumps all other concerns, and we must not quibble about keeping the pelenaut’s appointments.”

  Föstyr sent someone away to the palace, and then the Nentian ambassador began to speak to him in more hushed tones that I couldn’t make out. Already regretting his decision, I bet. There wasn’t a leader in the world who would appreciate being summoned away from his throne to deal with the tantrum of a foreign ambassador. Besides, Rölly was legendary for winning street fights of any kind, and Föstyr had cast the situation so that the ambassador was essentially calling out the pelenaut for a brawl, albeit a verbal one. Oh, this was going to be good. I put on a kettle to boil for another pot of tea while we waited for Rölly to arrive, cleaned up my fallen toast, and made myself a new piece. Tea and toast in hand, I crept to the window and peered through it to see if I could spy them.

  The Lung was there in the street but pointedly not looking at any of the Nentians standing next to him. One of them, who I assumed must be Ambassador Jasindur Torghala, was talking to him earnestly, but the ambassador might as well have been a stump for all the Lung cared. They had moved across the street to stand in front of Dame du Marröd’s house, an idea I would wager was Föstyr’s. I’d have to go outside if I wanted to hear anything more. Happily, they were all so focused on the Lung that I could probably sneak out without them seeing me.

  Nentian fashion was a little bolder than Brynt tastes; I liked it but doubted I could pull it off. Supposedly a Nentian’s boots were analogous to a Raelech’s Jereh band, in that they conveyed quite a bit of information about who was wearing them. Ambassador Torghala wore boots made of soft, supple khernhide with a stripe of kholesharhide inlaid along the top of the foot. Simple but wildly expensive and pretentious. Don’t mess with me, his boots said, for I am wearing the skin
of the world’s deadliest serpent. Or maybe they said, Behold, I’m an arrogant ass. Or both.

  But he still quaked in those boots when he saw Pelenaut Röllend approaching in a phalanx of mariners. That was my cue to step outside with my tea and toast. I didn’t want to miss a word.

  No one saw me walk right out and cross the street. The Lung and the Nentians had their eyes locked on the pelenaut’s party and vice versa. I was the only one grinning. I casually took up a position behind the Nentians and sipped at my tea.

  The mariners spread out a bit to give the pelenaut some room while protecting him, though in truth he wasn’t in much danger. The water of all their bodies belonged to him if he wanted to call it forth. Ranged weapons could take him down, however, so his bodyguards had large shields and scanned the area for snipers.

  “Ambassador Torghala,” the pelenaut said. “I’m told that I’ve given your country an insult of the highest order.”

  “Yes, sir. This recording of the bard’s tale must be destroyed. He continues to lie and defame our nation almost daily, and to have such a performance preserved and written down as if it were history is offensive and irresponsible.”