The Black Reckoning

by John Stephens

Willy had rammed his head directly into Big Rog’s stomach and momentarily winded him. Then he got his brother-in-law on the ground and was pounding him left and right, left and right. But it was clear from the start that besides being smaller than Big Rog, Willy was by far the less seasoned fighter, and his punches were doing no real harm. And Big Rog, as soon as he had his breath back, delivered a blow to Willy’s ear that knocked him sideways.

  Big Rog lurched to his feet and kicked Willy hard in the stomach.

  “You want this, boy? That’s fine! I’ll give you what I gave your dad!”

  He kicked him again and again. He was red-faced and grinning, spit flying from his mouth. He looked like some great, savage animal. Then, while Willy lay gasping, Big Rog stalked over to a tree at the edge of the clearing, wrapped his arms about it, and yanked it this way and that, and then with a heave, ripped it out of the ground. Willy was just getting to his feet when Big Rog swung the tree and clobbered him over the head. Big Rog went on pounding Willy with the tree while Sall ran around and laughed, sneaking in now and then to kick her moaning brother.

  Emma felt a surge of panic. This wasn’t right! Willy wasn’t supposed to die now! She hadn’t seen it; she would’ve seen it if he was going to die! Wouldn’t she?

  Emma’s cage shook, and she looked up and for a moment couldn’t comprehend what she was seeing. How was Gabriel on top of her cage? Then it all clicked into place. Gabriel was here to rescue them. He must’ve tracked them here, then climbed up the tree and out onto the limb. And that wasn’t all; Michael and Kate were up on the limb above him. He had already rescued them. Emma had been so focused on the giants’ fight that she hadn’t noticed.

  With his knife, Gabriel slashed once, twice, and ripped open the door at the top of her cage. He reached down, hissing, “Come! Take my hand!”

  Emma knew that Kate would use the Atlas to take them to safety. And there was nothing stopping them now. They knew the rest of the prophecy; they knew about King Davey and the stranger. They could find the High City themselves; they didn’t need Willy.

  She glanced toward the fire as Big Rog continued to kick and pound Willy.

  Then she looked up to where Michael and Kate, on the branch above Gabriel, were waving their arms for her to hurry. She said, “I can’t leave Willy!”

  “We cannot help him,” Gabriel said.

  Emma knew that, but she had made this fight happen by telling the story about Willy’s dad; she was responsible.

  “I know! But I can’t leave him.”

  Gabriel, whose scar was throbbing with the blood rushing to his face, stared at her for a moment while the thumps and thuds of Big Rog’s blows and Sall’s laughter mixed with Willy’s grunts of pain.

  “Very well. But come with me, in case…”

  He did not say in case of what, but Emma knew: in case Big Rog killed Willy and they had to escape quickly. Just then a roar made her turn, and she saw that Big Rog had tossed away the tree and jumped astride Willy’s moaning form.

  “Right, boy! Let’s see what happens when I shove my thumb through your eyeball and give your brain a tickle!”

  And he raised his hand high in the air, his great thumb extended—

  Emma screamed—

  Big Rog drove his thumb down—and Willy caught it. Emma couldn’t see what happened next, her view blocked by Big Rog’s body, but she heard Big Rog shrieking and trying to get away, but Willy seemed to be holding on to him. Finally, Big Rog fell backward and there was blood shooting out the side of his hand and Emma saw that where his thumb had been was now a stump.

  “Me thumb! Me beautiful thumb!”

  Then Willy stood and spat something onto the ground as he bent to pick up the tree that Big Rog had dropped.

  “You bit off me thumb!”

  “Aye,” Willy said. And he swung the tree, there was a clud, and Big Rog went down hard. Willy looked at Sall, who ran into the house and slammed the door.

  There was an astonished silence among the giants.

  Then one said, “He’s dead.”

  “He ain’t dead.” Willy prodded Big Rog with his toe. “Unfortunately.”

  “No. Jasper’s dead.” The giant who had spoken pointed to the jowly, round-bodied giant, who lay sprawled upon the ground. “Rog hit him accident-like with the tree, and Jasper fell and bashed his head on a rock. The little girl knew. She said so.”

  It was then the giants turned, en masse, toward the cages. Emma felt like she could see what they must be seeing, two of the cages empty, a new, strange human atop her own cage, their dinner escaping. For an instant, Emma regretted having stayed.

  Then Willy walked calmly across the clearing and held out his hand.

  “Well, little wee folk, will you come with me to the High City?”

  He still had blood all over his mouth from biting off Big Rog’s thumb, but Emma thought he looked noble.

  “Yes,” she said, answering for them all, and she finally let Gabriel pull her out of the cage. Willy settled Michael and Kate on his left shoulder, then extended a hand for Gabriel and Emma.

  “I’m glad to see you’re not dead,” he said to Gabriel. “Sorry about plucking you in the noddle before.”

  Gabriel said nothing, but sheathed his knife.

  Then, having placed Gabriel and Emma on his right shoulder, Willy turned to face the giants.

  “I’m taking the wee folk to the High City and we’re going to find out if that stranger’s still there and they’re going to fulfill this prophecy. Anyone got a problem with that?”

  None of the giants spoke.

  “Right, then.” And Willy strode off into the darkness.

  Emma felt Gabriel’s arm around her, and she let out a trembling breath.

  “I am sorry it took me so long to catch up with you,” Gabriel said.

  “It’s okay. You’re here.”

  “How did you know that giant was going to die?”

  “I saw death hanging over him. Like a shadow. Same as over Big Rog. Gabriel?”

  “Yes?”

  “Can we not talk about it right now?”

  He nodded, and they moved on in silence. Emma kept her eyes straight ahead, not daring to look at Gabriel, or at her brother and sister on the giant’s other shoulder, fearing that she would see again, as she had beside the fire, the shadows that hung over each of them.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The High City

  Willy carried the children and Gabriel through the darkness. Finally, some hours after riding on the rolling swell of the giant’s shoulders—Kate and Michael on one shoulder, Gabriel and Emma on the other—they came to a stop at the edge of the river. They could see past the dark stretch of water to more hills, and what looked like a forest, on the other side. The river was perhaps a quarter of a mile across.

  “No giant’s been over this river in a thousand years,” Willy said. “We’d best camp here and cross when it’s light. I imagine you tiny wee folk could do with a rest. As could I; besting the biggest giant in the land takes something out of a fella; it does at that.”

  He set them down and went off to collect wood for the fire. Soon, he had what he called “a small little mite of a fire going,” which to the children seemed like a raging inferno, and he passed out hunks of sheep kebab that he’d stuffed in his pockets during Big Rog’s feast. Once the children had cleaned off the dirt and sheep fuzz, they found the kebab to be quite delicious.

  “Oh aye,” the giant said, “Sall may be an evil, father-murdering hag, but she knows her way around a sheep, she does that.”

  The children were exhausted but ravenous, and while they ate, Willy practiced with his sword. He’d gone back to retrieve it from his room shortly after they’d left Big Rog and the others, saying it might come in handy where they were headed. The sword was a fearsome instrument, the blade alone perhaps twenty feet long, but it was most notable for the obvious artistry with which it had been made. “It’s a relic from the old world. Me da’ gave it to me,” Willy s
aid, adding, somewhat unnecessarily, “before he was murdered.” But it was clear that Willy’s dad had never taught him to use it, and as the children and Gabriel sat by the fire and ate their kebabs, the giant leapt around, jabbing into the darkness and shouting, “Ahhh-YAAA!” and “GOTCHA!” as if his intention were not so much to wound his opponents as to surprise them to death.

  It was then that Gabriel told the children how he had used his knife to cut his way through Willy’s pouch soon after being captured and had dropped to the ground.

  “Did you go looking for your sword?” Emma said. The weapon lay on the ground beside him. “ ’Cause Willy threw it, like, miles and miles away. I remember.”

  “No. When I escaped, I merely thought of the sword, and there it was in my hand. A similar thing happened in the Dire Magnus’s fortress. Rourke disarmed me, but when I needed my sword, I suddenly had it again.”

  “You mean it’s enchanted?” Michael said, a little awestruck, reaching out to touch the smooth bone of the handle.

  Gabriel told them how Granny Peet had given him the sword to replace the falchion he’d lost in the volcano, how she’d told him that this one he would not lose. “I gave it no thought at the time, but there is more to it than meets the eye.”

  “That’s Granny Peet for you,” Emma said approvingly. “She’s a good one.”

  Gabriel said how he had then spent the rest of the day following the crater-sized footprints to the giant’s home and had arrived just after the feast had gotten under way.

  “Well, I’m glad you caught up with us,” Michael said. “Though I was never really worried. I still had a few moves I hadn’t tried.”

  “That is very reassuring,” Gabriel said.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” Kate asked Emma for the ninth time since they’d escaped from Big Rog.

  “Yes, I’m fine.”

  Emma didn’t glance at her sister as she said this, for she knew if she looked at her, or at Michael, or at Gabriel, she would see again the shadows hanging over them. Not as fearsome and dark and close as the shadow she’d seen hanging over the obese giant Jasper, who’d died after smashing his head on a rock, or even the shadow over Big Rog, but the shadows were there nonetheless, and she knew it meant that death was coming for each of them. What she didn’t know was how much time she had to save them. A day? Two days? Whatever it was, it wasn’t long. And she sensed, on some bone-deep level, that her only hope for saving them lay in finding the Reckoning and killing the Dire Magnus.

  “How was it you knew that giant was going to die?” Michael said as he gnawed on a caveman-sized hunk of meat.

  “I just knew,” Emma said, hoping to end the discussion.

  “But what about Willy’s dad? How’d you know what Big Rog did?”

  “That was different. I could see it in my head. Guess I’m psychic now too.”

  “Odd,” Michael said. “But it seems obvious this ability of yours is related to the Reckoning. You foresee people’s deaths and you’re the Keeper of the Book of Death? You must be somehow connected to the book. Logic would say that’s due to the Bonding ritual the Dire Magnus performed.”

  “But I feel fine!” Emma insisted. “Totally, totally fine! Better than normal!”

  This was not exactly true, but it made the point.

  “So why did you pass out in Willy’s room, then?” Michael asked.

  “In Cambridge Falls,” Kate said, “even after we lost the Atlas, it kept sending me visions and dreams. That was because some of the magic had passed into me. Michael’s right; some of the Reckoning’s power must be in you too.”

  Emma considered the idea that a portion of the Reckoning’s magic was now a part of her. The thought made her uneasy.

  “It is rather curious,” Michael said, “that here we are going to all these lengths to get the book, but we don’t really know anything about it.”

  “Sure we do,” Emma said. “It kills people.”

  “But why’s it called the Reckoning? That has to mean something, right?”

  Emma groaned, sensing that Michael was in one of his let’s-analyze-stuff-so-I-can-show-how-smart-I-am moods and not to be stopped.

  “Think about it. A reckoning can mean a debt or a bill. Maybe that’s important. Or—this is interesting—it can also mean a judgment. Maybe you’re supposed to judge who should live and who should die.”

  “As long as it kills the Dire Magnus,” Emma said, “who cares?”

  She saw Michael throw a look at Kate, and it was a look Emma knew well. It said that Emma was just a kid and they couldn’t expect her to take adult things seriously. She was about to remind him that it had been her, and not him or Kate, that had saved them from Sall’s pie by goading Willy into fighting Big Rog, but she was tired, and anyway Michael was already moving into plan-making mode.

  He said they needed to know all they could before they entered the giant’s city the next day. He brought up the subject of Willy’s dad’s story.

  “It has to be that this dark stranger, whoever he was, had the Reckoning. How else could he have killed all those giants?”

  (They had to pause for a moment to bring Emma up to speed; she’d only heard the end of the story.)

  Michael went on: “So the question I come back to is, Just who is this stranger? It can’t be the Dire Magnus; he’s still looking for the book. It could be one of the Guardians. Bert thought that only a few of them escaped Rhakotis, but maybe he was wrong.

  “If we step back a moment”—Michael had his notebook out and was tapping his pen on the open page—“there were three Books. They were held in the wizard’s tower in Rhakotis. They all disappeared when Alexander the Great, with the help of the then Dire Magnus, sacked the city. We know that Dr. Pym took the Atlas to the dwarves of Cambridge Falls. Bert took the Chronicle to Antarctica. The Reckoning simply disappeared. Willy says that the stranger arrived more than two thousand years ago, which suggests that he was also the one who took the book from Rhakotis during the siege. So it could’ve been one of the Guardians. It could also have been one of the wizards of Dr. Pym’s Council.”

  “Or it could be someone else entirely,” Gabriel said. “Someone we don’t know about.”

  “Exactly,” Michael said. “An unknown. An X factor.”

  Emma could see that he took pleasure in saying X factor. He even repeated it:

  “Yep. A real X factor.”

  “Whoever the stranger is,” Kate said, “do we think they’re still alive? Dr. Pym lived for thousands of years, remember. And this Bert you met was alive.”

  “That was because of the Chronicle,” Michael said. “The Reckoning is the Book of Death.”

  “But if it is one of the wizards,” Gabriel said, “he could have been exposed to the Book of Life the same as Dr. Pym. He might have been in this city all this time, waiting.”

  “That’s a good point, Gabriel,” Michael admitted, in a somewhat patronizing tone. “But how did he know about the three of us? The actual prophecy about us finding the Books wasn’t made till a thousand years after the fall of Rhakotis.”

  “How do you remember all that?” Emma asked.

  Michael held up his notebook. “I made a timeline.”

  Emma groaned. And for a moment, she forgot about the shadows looming over her brother and sister and friend, about what it meant that the book was called the Reckoning or how it worked, and allowed herself to think about what a colossal nerd Michael could be. It made her feel significantly better.

  “Willy,” Kate called up, “do you know if the stranger is still in the city? Still alive, I mean?”

  Willy settled himself down cross-legged by the fire. He was breathing hard and sweating from his practice with the sword. Emma reflected that for all his size, the giant wasn’t in the best shape.

  “Well, Evelina”—Emma saw Gabriel throw her a look and she whispered, “We gave him fake names. My idea”—“that’s a difficult question, as no one’s been inside the city in thousands a’ years.
Few giants have even come this far—”

  “But…” Emma could always tell when someone was winding up for a but.

  “But there’ve been stories, haven’t there?”

  “What kind of stories?” Michael asked.

  “Stories there’s something alive in the city. Could be the stranger. Could be something the stranger brought with ’im. Or could be something else. Dark magic draws other dark creatures, you know.”

  “So there are stories of something alive there,” Kate said.

  “Used to be. Not so much in recent years. The short answer is—maybe.”

  He said this with some satisfaction, as if he’d actually answered their question, rather than simply raise more questions.

  “We should get some sleep,” Gabriel said. “Tomorrow will be a long day.”

  “I’ll stand guard. Or sit guard, if you don’t mind, me legs are kinda tired. It’s dreadful hard work, all this ridding death from the land.”

  The children lay down beside the fire. Michael put his head on his bag, and Kate, without Emma asking her to, wrapped both arms around her. Gabriel settled in a few yards away, drawing his sword and laying it beside him so it would be ready if the need arose. Emma was relieved they were done talking. She was exhausted, and she told herself that whatever was waiting for them, they would deal with it tomorrow.

  —

  Kate woke and found that the fire had burned down from bonfire-sized to something more human in scale. The sky showed the first gray softenings of dawn. Emma and Michael were both still asleep, though Emma’s hands were clenched into fists and now and then she would jerk and whimper. Gabriel—whom Kate realized she’d never seen in any state other than awake and vigilant—was asleep with his right hand upon the handle of his sword. She knew that Gabriel had been searching for Emma nonstop since her abduction, and she was glad he had finally allowed himself to rest. She was not so glad to see Willy asleep. The giant was on his side and snoring loudly, drool from the corner of his mouth turning the ground below into mud.

  So much for our sentry, she thought.

  Kate carefully lifted her arm from Emma and stood. She walked out of the circle of light, stopping a dozen or so yards into the gloom of the surrounding trees. She was still able to see her brother and sister and Gabriel asleep beside the fire.