I searched around and finally settled on one of the bowls we used for the stew. “This should work,” I said. “It’s about the same size as a mug, I think.”
“Good enough,” she replied. “Should we begin?”
Adrian took the bowl from me without a word. I was a little jealous. It was early and the contest we were in was deadly serious, but I was really in the mood for an ale.
The giantess poured herself a mug, then indicated that Adrian should help himself. He did, and the two commenced.
It….didn’t go well.
Adrian tried his best, and got through several bowls of ale before I saw his eyes go first unfocused, then roll up into his head, and then he was snoring on the floor. But he did the damage that he needed to. While he drank a lot, so did she, even for someone her size.
It was my turn, and although Adrian and I were well-matched in a lot of things, this was my forte.
“I’m up,” I said.
She drew her next mug, let go of a massive belch, and returned to her seat on her bed. I pulled my own bowl and took my first sip.
Wow. I’d had strong ale before. Many times, and have loved it. But this, this was a whole new level. It almost burned going down, even through the strong taste. My host didn’t flinch, nor did she when she was drinking against Adrian.
I settled down with my back against the cask. I was showing her that I was confident in my ability to drink it dry if need be, plus why travel further than I needed to for a refill. I stared her right in her eyes, tipped the bowl to my lips and drank it down. I tried to ignore the tears in my eyes. In return, she looked at me with some amusement, and drained her own.
“It’s going to be like that, huh?” she said. This time when she refilled her mug, she sat cross-legged on the floor. When I had my bowl, she saluted me with her mug and drained it. I could only follow suit.
Minutes later, when she repeated this for the third time, I was really regretting my actions.
I woke up sometime in the afternoon, my head feeling as if were going to burst. “Any help?” I asked quietly, but the voice was still missing. I groaned as I sat up, only to find the giantess nursing yet another mug of ale and watching me with a grin on her face.
“Love my ale,” she said. “Now, what’s for dinner?”
Her laugh followed me to the pantry where I tried to focus enough to put something together. I called it, “last chance before going over a cliff surprise”.
My hangover was mostly gone the next morning, although fragments of it still remained whenever I moved too quickly. We ate left over surprise for breakfast, silently staring into our bowls.
“Today is it,” the giantess said. “Today you move on, one way or the other. You had two chances, both valiant efforts, but both failures. Now, you have to face my challenge.”
“And what is that?” Adrian asked glumly. Neither of us felt good about it.
“Wrestling,” she said, a huge smile splitting her face. “One at a time, or both at once, it doesn’t matter to me. If you can pin me for even a second, you win. If I pin you, you’re out, and when I pin the other one, it’s over. Fair enough?”
Fair? I already felt a small sample of her strength during the riddle game, to say nothing of the fact that she easily rolled boulders that both Adrian and I together couldn’t budge. There was nothing fair about this.
Strangely, Adrian seemed almost happy.
“When,” he asked, “and where?”
“Right here, of course,” the giantess answered. “And how about this afternoon? That will give you time to prepare.”
“Did any of the others get to this point?” I asked.
“A few,” she admitted, “but those that went on bested me in other tasks.”
“And those that wrestled you?”
Point, whistle.
We skipped lunch. I didn’t want a full stomach if she socked me in it. While I didn’t think it would matter much, it probably was going to be a lot easier to pin me if I was vomiting my guts out.
“Distract her,” Adrian whispered to me as we took our places.
The giantess stood across from us, slightly crouched, arms spread wide, her face alight with the joy of battle, or maybe of crushing.
“What?” I hissed. “Distract her how?”
“Think of something! Just for a few seconds, then be ready to move!”
“Ready, go!” the giantess said, and sprang toward us.
I leaped to meet her, sliding under her grip and between her legs. All of Adrian’s sweeping made the floor clean and smooth. Popping up behind her, I grabbed hold of one leg and lifted.
Well, I tried to lift. I even got her heel up a bit, but then she lifted her leg on her own accord, taking me into the air also, then stomped down. I hit the floor hard, sparks shooting into my vision. She laughed and turned toward me, her long arms reaching down.
I rolled out of the way before she could pin me down, and scrambled to my feet. There was no sign of Adrian anywhere. She reached for me, but I slapped her hand away and moved again, trying to get around her.
She was having a great time. You could see it in her eyes, which were brown, dammit! And hear it in her laughter. She kept moving toward me, forcing me back. I was going to run out of room soon, and then she’d have me.
“Hey!” Adrian’s voice came from behind her.
She spun around, only to be met with a face-full of thrown stone dust. It was from the pile in the corner that Adrian had been adding to every time he swept. He climbed up onto her bed to be closer to her height when he threw it, but even with that, it was a close call.
The giantess drew in her breath in surprise when he threw the dust at her, which was a huge mistake. For a moment, she choked and spluttered, then she let go with a huge sneeze.
“Duke! Down!” Adrian yelled, and I dropped to all fours, right behind her legs.
Adrian leapt from the bed, throwing his body against hers. Normally, she probably would have simply caught him, slammed him down and ended the fight, but half-blind with tears and unable to breath, she never saw him coming. He caught her flat-footed and unprepared, and she stumbled back, only to trip over me.
With a crash that shook the whole cave she went down. I wasted no time in scrambling out from under her legs and threw myself on top of Adrian who laid across her upper body.
“One!” I yelled. “You’re pinned!”
There was a strange noise from below us and Adrian and I rolled off her. She sat up, tears streaming down her cheeks, but no longer coughing. Instead, she was laughing. She pulled her knees up, put her hands over them and rocked back and forth, overcome by peals of merriment.
“Nicely done!” she said, when she took a breath. “I never saw it coming!”
“So, we won?” I said.
“Oh, yeah. I could claim you cheated, but let’s be honest, you had no chance otherwise.” She chuckled again and rose to her feet.
“Come on,” she said, and walked to the back door, still laughing quietly, and occasionally spitting out a little gray dust. We grabbed our packs and followed, standing by as she rolled the stone away.
“Your horses are out there,” she said, indicating the meadow. “On the far side is a gate, your size. Open it up, and head down the path. I have no idea what waits for you, but I wish you luck. Both of you.”
I glanced up at the sky. It was starting to get late. Well, not so much late as mid-afternoon, a terrible time to start a journey.
She noticed my hesitation and raised an eyebrow.
“You know,” I said slowly. “I could probably doctor up that last stew I made a little better.”
“One more meal?” she asked.
“Not a bad idea,” Adrian agreed. “Better to start off in the morning.”
The giantess smiled. “I’ll leave the stone open, in case you get up early.”
“Great!” I said. “Now, do you have any more of that ale?”
A QUICK BREAK
Duke held his empty mug out to his gr
andson, who knew the routine by now. Moments later he was back, mug filled to the brim. Duke took a swallow, smacked his lips together with relish, and said, “Ready?”
Both Lilly and the young man leaned forward eagerly, and Duke continued.
AT LAST
We stayed with the giantess for the night, and true to her word she left the doorway open. The ale was good, the food passable, and we left right after breakfast. The horses came to us easy enough and a mere half-hour later we found the gate on the other side of the meadow, connected to stout timber fencing on either side.
Beyond, there was no easily discernable path. The mountains still soared into the sky around us, but directly in front was a wide valley, with a stream running the length of it. We saw deer, birds and butterflies and it all seemed very idyllic. Which meant that something horrible was hiding there, I was sure.
“She wasn’t a bad sort,” Adrian said.
“No, she really wasn’t.” I replied.
“Do you think she would have thrown us over the cliff if we didn’t win?”
“Without a doubt.”
We descended into the valley, each lost in our own thoughts.
Nothing disturbed us. The horses never shied away, the temperature stayed pleasant, rain didn’t suddenly appear in a deluge. It was as nice a day as one could ask for while riding through the unpredictableness that was nature.
When we reached the stream, we dismounted to take a drink. The horses sniffed at the water for a moment, pulled back, but then moved in. That didn’t seem right, so we stopped them before they could drink much and examined it for ourselves.
Everything looked fine, or at least as near as I could tell. It was water, clear and clean, and I could see the stones on the bottom. There was no odor coming from it or any sign of dead fish or animals.
“Strange,” I said, but knelt down and scooped some up into my hand, expecting it to be icy cold, as I always heard mountain streams were wont to be.
The water was warm. Actually, more than a little, it bordered on being warm enough to be bath water. But other than that, there didn’t seem to be anything wrong with it. I took a tentative sip, and yes, it was like taking a drink of warm water. Not great, but nothing that would harm you either.
We let the horses drink while we considered.
“Why is it warm?” I asked.
“I’ve no idea,” Adrian said. “But maybe we could use it.”
That was a great idea. We still never got truly clean after the goat in the giantess’s cave, so we stripped down and bathed in the warm water, washing away the grime of our journey for the first time in days. Then, we pulled our soiled clothes from our packs, washed them well, and laid them out to dry in the warm sun.
Before I knew it, I fell asleep, lying on my back, basking in the rays and listening to the gentle sound of the stream.
Nothing bad happened then, either. I woke, refreshed and ready to go, to claim our prize and get back to the city. The valley was nice enough, but it wasn’t home.
Adrian had fallen asleep as well, so I woke him and we rounded up the horses that strayed off.
“That was stupid,” Adrian said. “They could have gone a long way.”
“Not Sal,” I replied. “He loves me.”
“You’re a weird guy, you know that?”
“Don’t listen,” I told Sal, “he doesn’t understand.”
We remounted and followed the stream, heading deeper into the valley.
The mountains can be deceptive. They’re so large that they make things seem closer than they are. If you asked me when we stood outside the gate, I would have said that we could ride the length of the valley in a couple of hours. Instead, we rode until the sun was ducking down behind the peaks, and the other end still seemed as far away as when we started.
“We should stop for the night,” Adrian said.
I agreed, and we set-up camp. Well, Adrian set-up camp while I did what he told me, which mostly involved staying out of the way and fetching water. I also gathered up enough dried grass and hard, round patties of some sort that burned well enough to have a fire.
“You know what those are, right?” Adrian asked me.
I prodded one of the ones I stacked up to feed the fire. It broke apart easily under my finger, revealing what looked like a bunch of old grass and dirt.
“No. What are they?”
He laughed and settled back. “It’s not important. Good find.”
I re-examined them. I picked one up, broke it in half, sniffed it. There was nothing wrong with it that I could tell. Adrian was putting me on again, I decided, and tossed another onto the fire, happily watching it flare up.
The next morning, we washed in the stream again before moving on.
“Is it warmer?” he asked me.
“Feels it. Time of day, maybe.”
He stood and looked off into the distance, his hand shielding his eyes. “Maybe. Or maybe we’re getting closer to whatever is making it that way.”
I’ve mentioned that Adrian was smarter than me. He certainly was about life outside of the city walls, and his words would be proven right once again.
The mountains towered around us as we rode, narrowing the valley, and the grass and plants became less plentiful. By late afternoon, we reached the end. No birds swooped through the air, and no insects hummed. Soon, the stream led into a sharp defile with barely room enough to ride next to it.
More than that, the water was now so hot that it was actually steaming.
We rode through the narrow pass, easing the horses around some jumbled boulder, but it soon became too steep for the horses, so we stopped and dismounted.
“I think we need to let them go for now,” Adrian said.
“What? Just turn them loose? We can’t do that.”
“Why not? Where are they going to go?”
I looked back the way we came. He had a point. Back that way lay the valley, and above that the meadow leading to the giantess’s cave. There was plenty of grass for them to graze on and water to drink.
Still, it made me sad to say goodbye to Sal. I never had a horse before.
“We’ll be back,” I told him as I took the gear off him. “Then we’ll take you home.”
The look he gave me told me all I needed to know. Sal understood me perfectly fine.
We stored the saddles where they wouldn’t get lost and led the horses back out of the defile and to the valley, where they slowly moved away, grazing contentedly.
After a few minutes, we walked back to our packs, shouldered them, and continued our journey up through the tumbled rocks, following the stream as best we could.
I had my head down, minding where I set my feet, when I heard Adrian give a low whistle. I stopped and looked up, immediately seeing what caused such a reaction.
We found where the stream originated. Or at least where it came out from underground. Carved into the mountain in front of us were immense stone pillars, supporting a lintel. The opening framed by these was easily thirty feet high and as many wide. The stream came out from between fitted stone walkways on each side of it. Walkways that were reached by stairs starting a few feet from where we stood and rising to the darkened entrance.
“Why would someone build stairs that go nowhere but here?” I asked.
“I bet at one time, this was a road. Who knows where it went? But look at that place. It looks like it’s as old as the mountain.”
It did look that old, once you examined it a little more closely. The stones of the walkways had weeds growing between them, and the edges that bordered the stream were slightly jagged from where little pieces had cracked off and fallen. The pillars themselves showed pitting and stains, although they still appeared sound enough.
From the cavern mouth itself, more steam issued in vast clouds that rose and vanished into the air. Whatever was heating the stream was inside.
“Dwarven?” I asked.
Adrian shrugged. “Probably. But I don’t think they’ve us
ed it in a long time.”
“What’s the steam then?”
“Best case is that it’s some piece of dwarven machinery they used to heat water, still going.”
I nodded. Made sense, considering dwarves and all. But, “Worst case?” I asked.
“Dragon.”
We both laughed. Dragons are remarkably rare, and I had my doubts that they even existed. Gigantic lizards with teeth the length of sword blades, armored with impenetrable scales, and a fiery breath, hot enough to cook a knight like an egg. And able to fly, mind you, never mind how something that big and heavy was supposed to get into the air. If there were dragons, one hadn’t been seen in a long, long time.
Still, something was heating the water.
“Well, guess we should go in,” I said.
“Yep.”
Neither of us moved.
“What if it is a dragon?” Adrian asked.
“It’s not a dragon.”
“How do we know?”
“Because dragons aren’t real. Or if they are, they aren’t around here. We’d know.”
He nodded at that. “Right. We’d know. Because?”
“Because they’re too big! There’d be stories of it flapping around, frying virgins and carrying off villages or something.”
“I think you’ve got that backwards.”
“Well, either way,” I said, “we’d have heard about it. It’s something else.”
“Okay. Guess we should go in then.”
“Yep.”
Still neither of us moved.
“We could camp here for the night,” I finally said. “Get a fresh start in the morning.”
“It’s only morning now.”
“Right. Do we have torches?”
Adrian nodded, still watching the opening.
“I got them from the giant. So, do we just march in through there?” he asked.
“Unless you see another door.”
We looked at each other. Another door. There had to be one. There was always another door.
We spent the next several hours searching. We examined the defile leading to the cave to see if we missed any narrow gaps that would turn into a side path. We even went back to the valley and looked for a different route. Finally, we climbed the stairs, but moved off the walkways, scanning for any sign of a door in the rock cliff on either side of the large opening.
Duke Grandfather- The Whole Story Page 82