by Lentz, P. K.
"Where is she?!" I scream. I put both hands on her ax handle, causing me to drop Ayessa's necklace. "Where?!!"
Instead of trying to wrest the weapon from her, I push against it, and her, in a contest which will better utilize my advantage of size and weight.
And so it would have, were my opponent a lesser fighter than she evidently is. She falls to one knee and yanks down on the handle, causing my own weight to send me flying over it, landing hard on my back on the frosty earth. I release the handle, less from the force of the fall than because I realize the fight is over.
Slinging her ax once more over her shoulder, the slayer stands over me, looking down with that infuriating dispassion of hers.
"Where... is she?" I grate.
She gives no answer, of course. Neither does she press the fight. She turns and strides off, halting and bending over briefly to retrieve the necklace, which she tucks into some nook of her armor.
I scramble to my feet and give chase. When I come within reach of her ax, she spins and lashes out with it. The head whistles past my nose.
Even if I could best her, and even if I thought it might work, I have no wish to try to pound answers out of her. I need another course.
Choosing one, I fall to my knees—and beg.
"You must understand, even if my words are meaningless to you," I say. "Please, if you won't speak, then find some other way to tell me if you've seen Ayessa. Is she alive? Can you take me to her?"
My heart and breath halt as I hope for an answer I am not certain I wish to hear.
Cold as the landscape around us, the slayer yields nothing. The pale, pink line of her lips tightens just a touch, whether in pity, contempt, or something else, I do not know.
I exhale in defeat and exhaustion, my breath misting. The slayer gives me her back and resumes walking. Her single blond braid sways as she walks. I have had my fill of that sight these past four days.
The necklace goes with her. Some time ago, Ayessa was parted from it. Did she drop it? Give it freely? Was it stolen from her? By whom—my present company?
I begin to hate this woman. I hate that she almost surely possesses the answers I seek, but will not tell. I hate that I must keep following her no matter how she treats me, and I hate that she knows that. She must know, for otherwise she would have come back to claim her gear before leaving me behind. I hate that she is all I have.
Standing, I hoist her pack and hurry along behind her like a well-trained beast of burden.
We sleep that night, close to one another, sharing the small fur mantle as a blanket, faces wrapped tightly in cloak hoods. When she shares her food with me the next morning, she also tosses me the necklace. I thank her, and as we march I try not to speculate on the chain of events which put it in my hand. I try to see it as a sign of hope that the path which I follow is not far removed from the one Ayessa took before me, and that it will soon lead me to her.
The morning's travel brings us to a man-made stone wall which extends to the horizon in two directions.
No, I realize; it is not man-made, for the blocks from which it is built are enormous, dwarfing the wall-stones of Neolympus. This wall is giant-made.
19. Blue-skin
The slayer halts on a rise where we can look down upon the immense wall from the relative concealment of some rocks. I would like to ask her why, but I know better. The slayer stares at the wall, one hand on her ax, and we sit in cold and silence, two things to which I have grown accustomed in her company. I stare at her profile, my silent questions darting at her like invisible arrows, as if she might bleed the answers into my hands.
Who are you? Why do you hunt giants? Where are you leading me? Is Ayessa safe?
These and other futile questions fall forgotten when the ground under me begins to tremble and the slayer looks to our right. I follow her gaze. At first I see nothing, but as the faint tremble grows into the steady, rhythmic thumping of footfalls, I begin to understand.
A moment later, when a figure appears in the distance, I learn how little I truly understand of this new land. I believe for a moment that my eyes must be playing tricks, for I have judged the great barrier wall to be at least as tall as five men, yet the giant which presently approaches us stands head and shoulders above it.
His stature is not the only aspect of his appearance which sets him apart from the giants I have seen until now: he is his skin is pale white, almost bluish, and his trimmed beard and long hair, which he wears bound, gleam silver. He wears only a huge loincloth, which sways with each booming step, and a belt from which hangs a satchel of a size to hold the carcasses of two or three full-grown harts. His weapon, resting on one shoulder, is a great, long-headed hammer. One blow from its head could crush a man—or woman—into pulp.
Instantly, I know what my companion intends.
"No!" I say to her in a sharp whisper. "Take me to your people first, and get yourself flattened afterward!"
Serenely, she turns her head to look at me. As usual, her mouth is a flat line, brow devoid of creases. But I can detect in her blue eyes a glimmer of something else alongside the determination to do exactly what I fear she will.
I sense that she is not fully confident of coming back alive. Her look bids me prepare for that outcome. Or so I think. How can I know what she means? We are strangers, and her expression barely ever changes, if at all.
Turning from me, the slayer stands, hefting ax over shoulder, and strides down from our perch toward the wall on a course that will intersect with the giant's. She does not hurry and makes no attempt to approach with stealth, as she did in attacking the smaller giants at the stream. Why the difference I cannot know, any more than I can know what brings her out into these wastes to hunt the behemoths in the first place. I am but her pack-bearer.
"Don't!" I call after her.
Whether his gaze is drawn by my cry or the minuscule figure cutting a trail of tiny footprints in the frost toward him, the towering silver-blue colossus looks our way. The booming of his steps stops, the ground ceases trembling, and a deep rumble fills the air: the giant's voice. Thw words are incomprehensible, but they are sharp and insistent and strike me as better-formed than those grunted by his smaller cousins.
Whatever he says, it fails to alter the slayer's speed or course. Drawing up to a point about as far from the giant as he is tall, she stops and plants her ax handle in the frost.
A new, harsh sound splits the air. The giant is chuckling. Glistening white teeth show in a smile. Slowly, his great hammer head rises from his his shoulder, swings down in front of his expansive, bare blue chest and is arrested with a smack in the palm of his free hand.
While I watch, breathless, the fingers of my left hand work at the knot securing my sword hilt to my scabbard. I have witnessed the slayer's skill, but this is madness. Short of some magic yet unseen at her disposal, she cannot face this foe and emerge victorious—or even alive. To him, she can be naught but an insect, a rodent.
To me, now, she is everything. I cannot let her die.
Releasing my sword, I unsheath it and follow her down the slope at speed. Until now the slayer has walked, but now she too breaks into a run, ax in one hand, drawn sword in the other, undaunted. The giant lifts his hammer high, taking careful aim. He waits, and waits, and then, as she comes within range, he brings his hammer down with earth-shattering force. A mighty crack splits the air, and chunks of rock and frozen soil erupt from the point of impact, flying toward me. I stumble and fall upon one knee, crying out. The blow has struck her full on, I am sure.
I do not breathe. When the debris settles, she will be but a red stain on the frost.
Suddenly she darts from behind the hammerhead; the blow has just missed her. Quickly I rise and resume my pursuit.
The giant has no time to deliver another blow, barely enough to raise the hammer off the ground, before the slayer reaches his feet with both weapons poised to strike. She stands not even to the giant's knee, and so below it is where she directs her attack. Her sword digs
deep into the front side of one leg while simultaneously the head of her long ax, swung upward, sinks into the soft hollow behind his knee. As she extracts her weapons, the giant jerks away, whirling, sending the hammerhead sweeping horizontally, low to the ground.
Again I am sure of her doom, but just in time she dives, rolls, springs back up and instantly is running again in a different direction. Towards me, I realize. I slow my pace and experience a moment of relief, thinking that she has come to her senses and opted for retreat.
I do not think that for long. Without slowing, she lifts her ax, and I comprehend that I am a target of attack. I skid to a halt in the frost and raise my blade in a defensive stance.
"You're mad..." I breathe.
A second later, she is on me, and our combat ends before it can start. Sweeping low with her ax, its blade facing backward, she knocks my feet from under me, and I fall. My backside hits the cold earth first, then my head, and in a flash of movement which makes me flinch, her ax blade strikes the soil an inch from my ear.
The giant looses a bellow of rage, and footfalls shake the earth. Surely he is not retreating, but coming for us.
I stare up briefly into the slayer's unfeeling blue eyes, but then my eyes are on the sole of her boot as she raises it and stomps on my face before I can raise hands to ward it off. I barely manage to turn so that the blow strikes my temple, driving the cheek opposite into the frost.
By the time I open my eyes again, she is running off to rejoin the battle with her towering foe, who doubtless would be pleased to bring his own heel down upon us both, grinding our bones to dust. His mood has shifted from amusement to rage. Blue blood runs down his calf—hardly a trickle, so tiny are the slayer's blades to one of his size.
All thought of giving aid to my mad guide driven from my mind by the tang of my own blood on my tongue, I drag myself to my knees and do all I can, which is watch the unequal combat before me and hope that its outcome is not the most obvious one.
As the slayer comes within range of the blue-skin, she suddenly changes course so that his hammer blow catches only the wind in her wake. Then she pivots and changes course again, darting past his already bleeding calf and slicing it again with sword and ax.
Another swipe just misses her, for like the slayer's legs, the giant's hammer does not rest. The upstroke of one attack reverses to become the start of the next. Each swing fails to find its target, yet none fails to still my heart in worry.
For a while, the slayer does not attack but just races around the blue-skin, dodging his hammerhead in what I soon understand is an effort to exhaust him. Finally, when his hammer hits the ground and he is sluggish in raising it, she races past his wounded leg and slices into it yet again, sword in ankle, ax in calf. He cries out and makes a hurried attempt to pulp her, but she recedes from reach.
Perhaps he understands her strategy now, for rather than attacking again straightaway, he faces her and settles into a ready stance. For once, she too ceases her frenzied movement, standing just out of his reach.
Before long, she feints one way, then the other, then bolts along an arc that will take her well within the long reach of the giant's weapon. Turning slowly to track her, he lifts his hammer, then lets loose another sweeping, horizontal blow, the kind which are harder for her to evade. I half expect to see her limp form fly into the air. Instead, she springs up just behind the flying hammerhead, after which I momentarily lose sight of her.
Then my eyes find her golden braid trailing from the giant's silver-haired forearm. She has leaped onto it, having discarded her sword so that her left hand might be free to grab his ample hair. She swings her ax twice, hacking at his arm, doing no visible harm. The giant cuts short his now misdirected attack, and he stumbles, shaking the ground with each step, and sends one hand on a path to remove the nuisance from his limb.
Yet this fly does not sit and wait to be swatted. Impossibly, the slayer scrambles up his moving right arm to stay a few steps ahead of the great clap with which he brings his hand down upon his own skin. From his bicep, she leaps into the giant's beard, disappearing behind the silvery curtain. His hand jerks upward, he grabs the beard and tugs, but his combing fingers emerge empty. They plunge back in and quest underneath the hair as though he seeks to scratch an elusive itch. But the slayer is no mere itch. I know she must be busy hacking at the hollow of his neck or the soft underside of his jaw.
The next time I see the giant's fingers, they are stained with blue blood. Coursing down, it tinges the end of his beard. He drops his hammer, which falls head-down with a resounding crash near his feet. His bloody hands reach up and around for the back of his head, clawing the hair at the base of his neck.
I cannot tell from my vantage whether he catches her or the slayer deliberately jumps. I rather think the latter, for were he to have caught her, even in his frenzied state, he surely would not have thrown her straight down but instead cast her far away, or else dashed her against the wall. However, even the shortest route to the ground from the head of a colossus is long to someone of her size, and the impact of her landing is not lost on the slayer, who struggles to drag herself upright by means of ax handle planted in the frosty ground. The blue-skin extends an empty hand toward her, keeping the other clamped on his bleeding neck.
She takes a few slow, loping steps, and I begin to think she must now finally be caught and crushed in his expansive palm.
And then the giant falls. Down onto one knee he sinks, and the blue-smeared hand that had been reaching for his attacker slaps the ground instead, shaking it. Kneeling, wobbling, he watches the slayer limp away. The ground rumbles again as he crashes onto his side.
Halting in her escape, the slayer turns to face her fallen foe. Leaning heavily on her ax, she sinks to her knees.
The giant reaches out to her with a huge, pale arm, but she is just beyond his reach. His fingers instead claw the ground, scoring dark runnels in the frost. His silver beard is soaked with blue blood. The life is gone from him. My mad, silent companion is victorious.
20. Gaeira
I stare in awe for a further minute more before it dawns upon me that with the battle's end I am free to approach. After recovering our gear, I speed to her side and am not surprised to find my presence ignored. Ax and sword slung, the slayer begins walking, rather wearily, away from the fresh, massive corpse on a path which roughly follows the course of the great wall that towers some thirty feet over our heads. As we walk, she scans the wall's base as if searching for something. Before long, she stops, turns to face it and starts sliding her open palms over the rough surface of the hewn stone.
She cannot mean to scale it—can she? The slayer gives wordless answer to that unspoken question by extracting from the satchel I bear the thick coil of rope we picked up with the cold weather gear and looping it around my waist.
Apparently, she does not intend to scale the wall—she means for me to do it.
Looking up, I feel less than confident of success. Then I look at the slayer, whose eyes of cold blue are not insistent. No, for that would be an expression, something she is expert at not producing. Her look does not urge me on, but there is something in it that even she cannot prevent. Exhaustion. The combat has drained her.
Accepting the charge, I drop all my burdens and run hands along the wall in search of the best grip. Fortunately for me, while larger than Neolympus's walls, the construction is less precise, leaving plenty of gaps and ledges for hand and foot.
Before I even commence the climb, I hear a faint rumbling in the distance and look in the direction from which we have come, where the dead giant is a small, dark lump in the frostfall. The slayer's keen gaze is already cast in the same direction. I need not be told what the distant rumble means, which is fortunate, considering there is no one present who would tell me.
Likewise, I do not need the slayer to tell me to move faster. Pressing close to the chill stone, I pull myself up. It is a much slower climb than I would like, and by the halfway mark my fin
gertips are numb from cold and abrasion, but I push on. The distant thunder of giant footfalls grows steadily louder. When at last I throw my leg over the top and roll onto the flat surface, I sit up and take tight hold of the rope between braced legs to anchor the slayer's ascent. I tug to signal her to start, but find there is already resistance. A slight, rhythmic vibration of the rope and even slighter scrape of her soft boots on the stone herald her ascent.
The stray thought flits through my mind that here is another chance to kill her if I so wished, easily and without risk to myself. But she cannot fail to know that, which means she also knows that I would not dream of killing her. She trusts me. She must.
She makes the ascent in no time, naturally forgoes greeting and immediately starts hauling up the rope, to the bottom of which she has secured our gear. I do not know if she wants my help, but I give it. While I am lowering the packs down the wall's opposite face, the slayer surprises me by untying the rope's other end from my waist and wrapping it around one of her forearms. Then she sits and braces herself, leaving me to make the obvious assumption that I am to descend first with the benefit of the rope.
I would protest, but my every muscle is already thanking her. I would thank her with words, but they would only be wasted.
Now it is my turn to trust her, and I do not hesitate to lower myself over the edge. Though she cannot weigh much, it might as well be a stone anchoring me from above as I quickly make my way down. The slayer then throws down her end of the rope and commences an unassisted descent, coming down like a four-legged spider, and then, without so much as a pause for breath, we are off.
Since my guide gives me no clues, I am left to assume that having crossed whatever boundary is marked by this wall, we are no longer in danger.
***
As we push on, the chill eases, the ground thaws and I begin to sweat under the furs, which I eventually shed. By nightfall we reach a river on the banks of which the slayer does something I fail to understand. Dragging her sword point while she walks, she draws an oblong shape, pointed at both ends, in the soft mud. Wiping and sheathing the blade, she goes to her pack and extracts from it what look to me like nuts, which she proceeds to set down on the edges of the drawn shape: one at either pointed end and three at even intervals on each long side.