“Ain’t nothing like that around here,” he said as he peered up at me, squinting against the sun.
“You have no lord, no mayor, no government whatsoever?” Anna asked from the back of her white mare.
“We get along well enough without any of that,” he told her. His eyes lingered on her fair face and softened a bit.
“Then I would speak with the entire village,” I offered.
“Let the man through,” said someone in the crowd.
“To hell with the fancy buggers!” another shouted.
Others groaned agreement, but the sentiment seemed to be that of intrigue. The knight listened to his fellows for a time, then he regarded me again and nodded.
“Seems like they want to hear you out then,” he said, extending a hand. “The name’s Mick McKinley.”
I unsaddled and shook the man’s hand. “Samson Sullivan.”
We were escorted into the village and met by a hundred suspicious gazes, and just as many angry glares.
“Samson here is from the land of…” Mick leaned in toward me and asked, “Where did you say you was from?”
“Ozara,” I said. “I’m the king of Ozara.”
“Never heard of it!” a woman yelled from the crowd, and dozens grunted the sentiment.
Trinity stepped forward, and her imposing presence shut everyone up pretty damn quick. “Samson is the king of all the land that you see. From the mountains to the forests to the distant seas!”
“He ain’t my gods damned king!” an old man said before falling into a coughing fit.
“Hinckleton’s got no king!” said another man. “Hinckleton don’t need no king!”
“We can offer protection, and the supplies needed to rebuild a new village, one that will outshine Hinckleton forevermore!” I told them.
“Bah!” said the old man dismissively.
“Defense you say?” said Mick.
I turned to the knight and nodded. “That’s right.”
“We don’t need help from the likes of them!” one of the naysayers yelled.
“You forget the mountain giants, Henry!” Mick told the man.
The crowd grew silent, and I glanced at my guild mates and winked.
Mick walked the perimeter of the crowd, who had gathered near the village square to see the newcomers. “One more mountain giant attack and we’re done for,” Mick reminded them.
“He’s right,” said an old woman who looked a hell of a lot like a witch. She walked up to me with a limp and sniffed around me. Then she grabbed my hand and licked it before I could pull it away.
“Hello,” I said pulling back my arm and wiping off the saliva.
She spit on the ground and cocked an eye my way.
“I have dreamed of you, Samson of Ozara,” she said cryptically, then she pointed at the moon, which sat fat in the east. “He has appeared on the day of the lunar eclipse, just as I have predicted.”
The crowd began murmuring eagerly, and I stood a little taller.
“It is said that a great warrior and his whores will save us from the—”
“Hey!” said Kit.
“They aren’t whores, they’re my knights,” I said to the old woman. “If anyone is a whore, it’s him.” I pointed at Tweak.
“Really bro?” he said arms wide.
“As I was saying!” the witch shouted over us. “It is said that a great warrior, and his knights, shall save us on the day of the eclipse from the migrating mountain giants. Let us offer them our bread, our wine, and our beds, and let us see what the night brings.”
“Sounds kinky,” said Nanaya.
“I refuse to share my bread or my wine with these demons. Let alone my bed!” a burly man yelled from the crowd.
“Your kind ain’t welcome here!” another proclaimed, pointing a shaky finger at Nanaya.
The witch turned with agility that I wouldn’t have thought she possessed and thrust an arm toward the angry villager. His mouth suddenly puckered up and his eyed bulged.
“Water!” he cried and ran to the nearest horse troth.
“Anyone else want to taste my hot sauce spell?” she asked the crowd.
I glanced at my guild mates and offered them a smirk. Whoever had programmed the old woman must have been high at the time, or he just had a great sense of humor.
“All in favor of Samson and his Knights staying through the night, say aye!” Mick yelled.
“Aye!” more than half the village called out.
“All opposed?”
“Nay!” said a few, and the rest didn’t seem to have an opinion.
“Then it’s settled,” said Mick. “Samson and his knights are our guests this night, and they are to be treated thusly.”
“Thanks Mick,” I said as the crowd began moving in to get a closer look at my guild mates and ask us questions.
“If what the old woman says is true, then you’re welcome indeed,” he told me.
“Can we speak somewhere quieter?” I asked. “I’d like to get some information about these giants of yours.”
“Ain’t no giants of mine,” said the NPC knight. “But sure, follow me.”
He picked a few men out of the crowd to go with him and led us to the only pub in town, a place called Hop Head Harry’s. The place looked like it hadn’t served a customer in weeks, and when the villagers tried to press into the place, old Mick told them to scram and barred the door.
“Have a seat,” said the knight, indicating a large table in the back.
My guild mates and I sat at the table, all but Trinity and Ember, who opted to stand instead. They positioned themselves so that together they could see everything.
“Care for a drink?” Mick asked as a tall, lanky bartender came striding out of the back eagerly.
“Beer,” I said.
“Beers all around, Harry!” said Mick, and the bartender nodded affably and turned on his heel.
“A round coming up!” he sang, obviously happy to have the business.
“Alright,” said the knight as he leaned forward gingerly, as if he were babying an old wound. “What do you want to know?”
“How many giants usually attack the village?” I asked.
“Three,” he said gravely.
“Three?” said Kit in disbelief. “You all can’t handle three giants?”
“What she means to say,” I said with a glance at Kit, “Is have you tried to kill them?”
“Of course. We’ve tried everything, but fire is the only thing that seems to scare them. That’s why we usually end up having to burn down one or more houses in the village just to scare them away.”
Sweet, I thought to myself. If it was fire that they needed, then I had come to the right place.
“I think that we can help you with that. Do the giants have any other weakness that you know of?”
He thought about it for a moment and glanced at his fellows.
“I ain’t ever seen a spear, sword, or harpoon pierce their flesh,” said a red-haired young man.
“It’s true,” said an older man who wore a patch on his right eye. “Not even you could hurt ‘em Mick.”
Mick nodded solemnly. “It is true, their skin is like stone, and we have never been able to hurt one let alone kill one.”
“How big are they?” Ember asked as she twirled her daggers lazily.
“Tall as a barn!” said the red-head.
“They’re taller than a barn ye nit,” said Mick. “They’re taller than the tallest trees in the forest. The ground shakes beneath their feet when they stomp down from the mountain. Hell, it sounds like a gods damned avalanche.”
“Wait,” said a smallish man that hadn’t yet spoken. He wrung his hands nervously as he stepped around the taller men. “I…I seen something that hurt them giants.”
We all waited, but it looked like the man had changed his mind about speaking. He began to turn around when Mick called to him.
“Well then Bart, spit it out.”
Bart turned
around and nervously eyed my lady friends.
“Cat got your tongue, Barty?” Kit asked coyly.
His cheeks became deep red and he shifted nervously. “No ma’am. What I wanted to say, er what I was going to say…”
“Spit it out dude!” Tweak said with an apish scowl.
“I seen one of the giants get burned by silver!” he blurted.
“Silver?” said Mick, as though he had never heard the word.
“Tell us exactly what happened,” said Cecilia.
“Well, the giant, ye see, he was aiming to flatten my house. And well, well my grandpap was sleeping in there, you know, ‘cause he can’t walk none. Well, I couldn’t let that happen, and all I had on me was my momma’s pendant.” He pulled the silver pendant up by the chain, and Mick leaned in closer to have a look at it. The pendant was shaped like a little dagger, and a snake was coiled around it.
“You say you stabbed through the giant’s skin with this?” said Mick.
“Aye,” said Bart. “I swear on my momma’s grave. I stabbed it, then the skin started to ooze and bubble. Well the thing backhanded me, and I woke up a few minutes later and they was all gone.”
“I found some lore about mountain trolls,” said Cecilia as she scrolled through her interface. She grabbed at the air, and what she was seeing was projected on the table. “It looks like they do indeed hate silver. The sun can kill them too, and they absolutely despise fire, although it won’t kill them.”
“Looks like we need some silver,” I said glancing at Mick.
“Don’t look at me,” he said. “What silver we got’s there on Bart’s neck and in other jewelry.”
“Don’t worry Mick,” I said. “We can get what we need in Aeorock. Tweak, you wanna do the honors? We need some silver tipped spears, arrows, and dragon lances, or else silver bars to melt and make our own weapons.”
“Gotcha brother,” he said and retrieved his Aeorock heart stone from his interface. “You coming Nanaya? I could use a ride back.”
Nanaya nodded and followed Tweak through the portal. When they wanted to come back, she would be able to open a reverse portal. Her new warlock ability was starting to come in pretty handy.
“Alright,” I said to Mick and his men and rose from the table. “Let’s prepare for dark. Show me what we’re working with.”
I followed Mick to the battlements, and Ember groaned when we were given a tour of the shoddy defenses. They had only one ballista, and it was in serious disrepair. Their swords were dull, their spears hadn’t been made well enough to kill a pig let alone a giant, and what bows they did possess would be of no use in their current state.
These were simple farmers, I realized, and they had no real experience in battle, save for Mick and a few of the guards.
“You really think that the giants are going to attack tonight?” I asked Mick.
“If the witch says so, then it will come to pass,” he told me confidently.
“Alright,” I said glancing around at the ragtag villagers. “Let’s get to work.”
Chapter 3
I gathered all the young men and women and left them in the able hands of Trinity, Ember, and Stormy, who gave them a crash course in spear-throwing and archery. The young children and elderly were sent to the church, where there was a large underground chamber that would keep them safe when the giants attacked. Everyone else was put to work making rope for trip lines and setting traps on the northern approach to the village. The giants would be coming down from the mountains to the north, or so the witch had said, so we focused our traps in that area. The giants were too big to effectively trap with snare wires, but trip lines would at least slow them down enough for us to get a jump on them.
I put the most talented carpenters to work on fixing the broken ballista and creating five more, which were to be set up on the northern wall facing the mountains. A three-hundred-foot-long trench was dug out on the northern side as well, one-hundred feet from the village wall. Once it was finished, I ordered that it be filled with straw and doused with lamp oil. The fire wouldn’t hurt them, of course, but it just might deter them. I intended on giving them a hell of a light show, and I thought that I might be able to scare them away with my fire spells, but it was better to be safe then sorry, as they say.
Tweak and Nanaya returned a few hours after noon, and they brought with them a small arsenal of silver-tipped spears, arrows, and dragon lances for the ballista. They brought silver bars as well, which I instructed the lone blacksmith to melt down so that we could dip the tips of the pikes that were going to be erected on the northern face.
By nightfall we had gotten a hell of a lot of work done, but I felt under prepared to face three giants as tall as five-hundred-year-old oaks.
Torches burned all along the northern side of the wall, and the young men and women who had been recruited into our militia stood holding their new weapons in sweaty hands. They looked scared, but they also looked determined. My guild mates and I had buffed them with spells and wards of protection the likes of which they had never seen, and it gave them the boost of confidence that they needed. Those upon the battlements stood pensively with bows and arrows in hand. They were hopelessly short on experience with the weapons, but if the giants were as big as I had been led to believe, then they would be easy targets. The rest of the militia waited on the ground with long pikes that we had fashioned out of small trees and dipped in silver.
“You ready Big Daddy?” Kit asked as she and Anna climbed up to the battlements.
“I am,” I said and nodded toward the villagers. “But are they?”
“It’s just three giants,” said Anna. “Should be a piece of cake.”
They took their places with Cecilia, Nanaya, and Tweak behind the ballista, and we watched the northern hills for the first sign of the giants. The moon was full and red, and hung directly overhead. The witch had said the eclipse would take place a few hours after sunset, and I knew it would happen at any minute.
Mick joined me atop the battlements and patted my shoulder with one of his rough hands. “No matter what happens tonight, I wanted to thank you for your help Samson.”
“You’re welcome Mick. And don’t worry. We’re going to make those giants wish they had never messed with Hinckleton.”
No sooner had the words left my mouth, then a loud rumbling sound began in the distance.
“They’re here,” said Mick in a shaky voice.
“Steady Mick,” I said evenly.
The rumbling continued to grow louder, and it shook the ground like a small earthquake. I scoured the north, but I couldn’t see any sign of the giants, even in the full light of the moon. I glanced up at the celestial orb, and indeed, the eclipse had begun. A crescent shadow was beginning to grow on the bottom of the moon.
The witch had been right.
“Who’s got a visual?” I asked my warriors.
Nobody answered, and my frustration grew. I switched to Fire Sight and searched the north. I could see the heat signatures of small animals out there on the long plateau, but no giants. But the rumbling was getting louder, and I could just imagine those big heavy feet slamming into the ground. The giants sounded like they were close, and I abandoned my search of the north and looked south.
Then my heart sunk to my feet.
My Fire Vision revealed the giants to me as huge red humanoid outlines just beyond the southern fence. They looked to be just as big as the villagers had said, with long, thick arms and muscular shoulders.
“They’re attacking from the south!” I warned my soldiers.
“Son of a bitch,” said Tweak as he leapt down from the ballista and began turning it around.
The archers on the wall began shuffling around nervously, and someone accidentally released an arrow that whizzed by my head.
“Keep your heads!” I warned. Then I turned to my guild mates. “New plan, Nanaya, it’s dragon time, try and keep those fuckers away from that wall with your dragon fire. Kit, take half the arc
hers around the western wall to the south, Anna, take the other half around the eastern wall!”
Then I yelled down to Trinity, Stormy, and Ember, telling them to do the same with their spearmen. When everyone got moving, Mick and I hitched a ride with Nanaya, and she dropped us off at the southern wall before heading toward the approaching giants.
They shook the ground so bad that I was forced to hold onto the wooden rail to keep my balance, but that didn’t stop me from summoning Fire Storm. The giants were about two-hundred yards from the southern wall when I unleashed my spell, and meteors began crashing into the ground around them. A few even hit the lumbering monsters, who swatted at the burning meteors like they were flies and protested with rumbling growls.
But they didn’t seem as afraid of the flames as they were supposed to be.
“I thought you said the giants were deathly afraid of fire, Mick!” I said as I unleashed Scorched Earth on the ground in front of the southern wall.
“I don’t understand it. The last time they ran like cowards from the fires,” he said.
“Well, it looks like they got over it.”
Kit and Anna arrived with their archers and ordered them into formation. The villagers started shooting instantly, and I told them to hold their fire until the giants got closer. Down below I saw Trinity, Ember, and Stormy bring their forces around, and soon a wall of pikes was aiming at the giants.
“Archers at the ready!” I instructed, and I heard the satisfying sound of fifty creaking bowstrings being drawn back.
The giants were now less than a hundred yards away, and their sheer height sent primal fear coursing through me.
“Fire!” I bellowed, and fifty arrows sprang from the battlements.
Given their size, the giants should have been an easy target, but the villagers sure did a hell of a job making it look hard to hit them. The arrows went everywhere, and I wondered what the hell they were aiming at.
“They’re fucking giants!” I screamed. “Aim above their heads like you’ve been trained!”
The second volley was much more accurate, and the silver tipped arrows worked as they should have. The giants reeled back from the tiny missiles, which stuck in flesh that had been thought impenetrable.
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