‘I won’t bother to detail the various skills of Hlessi.’ The leader nodded towards the Grell. ‘I’m sure you’ve all heard enough stories about his kind, and let me just say that at two weeks he holds the current record for keeping a torture victim alive . . .’
(‘Only because I get paid by the hour,’ Hlessi demurred, in his own tongue.)
Others still were introduced, one by one. Dolen Catscaul, the Dhracus, a knife in each hand. Raedgifu from Rhelma-Find, a vainglorious young man with a taste for fine silks, baggy leather trousers and flesh-ripping flails. Also Eggledawc Clagfast, the Hrefna-dwelling ex-Peladane with the huge war-hammer. (Bolldhe’s knees involuntarily recoiled.)
And finally . . .
‘Meet Klijjver!’ Eorcenwold announced with relish.
Everyone turned to look at the colossal, armoured figure of the Tusse herd-giant. He did not speak, snarl, glare or even move, come to that. He did not have to.
Bolldhe wavered, unsure of the translation. ‘Meat Cleaver?’ he asked, interrupting Eorcenwold’s flow. ‘You mean the bhuj?’
‘Klijjver is his name,’ Eorcenwold snarled, not pleased at the interruption, ‘Meet him.’
‘. . . Right, I see,’ Bolldhe replied, and finished the translation.
‘All in all,’ the thief-sergeant summed up, ‘you have about thirty weapons – some of them missiles, some poisonous, some magical, and some just bloody big – all pointing at your worthless hides, all wielded by fourteen of the most savage and lethal thieves in the whole of Tyvenborg. And if you don’t hand over your stuff right now, then don’t bother drawing another breath, because you won’t be needing it.’
He returned to his own weapons, picked them up as calmly as a gardener might collect his tools, and waited.
So there it was, Nibulus’s choice. They could risk almost certain death by trying to fight it out, or they could risk almost certain death by laying down their arms. All eyes were on the Peladane.
Surprisingly, Nibulus appeared calm. Yes, there was a slight sheen of sweat on his face, but that was nothing new. His eyes, however, were rock-steady, and they never left those of Eorcenwold, studying, appraising the man.
Then he made his decision.
‘He doesn’t want to attack us,’ Nibulus announced in Aescalandian. ‘I’ve read it in his eyes.’
Bolldhe’s hopes vanished. Great! he thought. Now try reading his followers’ eyes . . .
‘He says that sounds reasonable,’ Bolldhe quickly translated for Eorcenwold, loud enough for all the thieves to hear, ‘and could he have just a moment to put it to his men.’
‘Finwald!’ Nibulus called out at the same time. ‘What kind of magic do you have against them?’
‘Remember the last time we were outnumbered?’ Finwald said by way of reply. ‘The wolves? That kind of magic.’
‘No,’ Appa stuttered, trying to keep his voice as neutral as possible whilst leaving out none of the urgency. ‘I have a sleep spell, you have a friendship spell; if we both act togeth—’
‘Don’t. Be. A. Cretin,’ Finwald replied to his brother-in-faith, smiling and nodding amicably at the increasingly impatient thieves. ‘We need strength, pure and simple. Wodeman? You with us? When in the Wild, follow the Law of the Wild, yes?’
‘Actually,’ Wodeman responded, making a show of laying down his staff, ‘in the Wild, the weak always run from the strong. I say we break out at the weakest point in the circle and make a run for it.’
My giddy aunt! Bolldhe gaped, realizing that the words of the three magic-users were intended for his ears just as much as for each other’s. They’re doing it again! Even here! Don’t they ever stop trying to lecture me?
Finwald moved closer to the Peladane. ‘These bitch-born scum only respect what they fear,’ he said, sheathing his sword into its cane, but surreptitiously feeling for a pouch of special powder inside his cloak, ‘and like all dogs, what they fear is strength. We have more magic than they.’
Despite Bolldhe’s lack of faith in all things Cuna, he had to admit that he was impressed by the mage-priest’s confidence. And if it was only an act, then it was an act that was worthy of praise from Luttra’s greatest stage-histrios. Few could have appeared so cool with the weapons of fourteen Tyvenborgers pointed directly at them.
But he was also fuming with a sudden rage at the continuing attempts of his would-be mentors to manipulate him, even here at the point of death. It was a rage that welled up from some deep, deep reservoir, and its intensity caught him quite off his guard. But it also channelled his thoughts in the only way they could go. If he was not going to employ Power, Peace or Escape, there was only one alternative.
‘Eorcenwold!’ he called out all of a sudden. ‘How do you fancy taking on a new recruit?’
A brief scatter of laughter was shared amongst the thieves. Also, much to Bolldhe’s regret, both Nibulus and Paulus snapped their heads around to stare him straight in the eye.
He cursed. Had they actually understood what he had just said? Both of them had spent time amongst the armies of Pendonium, he knew, so was their word for ‘recruit’ known to them? Bolldhe had little care for conscience in his life, loyalty being a disposable commodity to him, but now, with the glare of the two veterans fixed upon him, his proposed treachery burned hotly in his face.
But the tip of Brother Oswiu’s Kh’is was now again touching his eyeball, and he was held fast. ‘I hardly know them!’ he cried, in Cant of Tyven. ‘I’m just a sword-for-hire . . . and the horse is mine!’
Oswiu held up a hand sharply. While the others paused, he purred into Bolldhe’s ear: ‘Just how loyal are you likely to be? We keep together fairly tight in this team.’
A few sniggers played around the assembled thieves, and Bolldhe could smell the rank breath of Oswiu’s sudden laugh in his face.
There is no honour amongst thieves, he reasoned, then said: ‘As loyal as each of you; I side with the strongest.’
‘Not good enough!’ Eorcenwold exclaimed, but was interrupted by his brother.
‘“Through the blood of his kin will the Infidel be cleansed”,’ he quoted, ‘Let him prove his loyalty by slaying one of his own.’
Whoops of exultation arose from the thieves; the party had begun! Hlessi’s long, purple tongue flicked out in anticipation, and Grini strained at his leash, eyes bulging.
Eorcenwold, however, looked slyly at his brother. ‘You just made that up, didn’t you?’ he asked in his native Venna tongue.
But Oswiu was undeterred. ‘Better they attack one another than us,’ he replied, smiling at Bolldhe’s uncomprehending face.
Eorcenwold hesitated. It was clear to all that he was reluctant to let this continue.
‘What are you waiting for?’ his brother number one challenged. ‘Are we not Tyvenborgers? Let the blood flow, I say!’
His words were taken up as a chant by the increasingly excitable thieves: ‘Let the blood flow! Let the blood flow! Let the blood flow!’
Nibulus and Paulus were also shouting; this war-chant was known to them.
Then, without warning, Bolldhe was shoved into the midst of his companions. ‘Choose your sacrifice,’ Oswiu commanded. Eorcenwold stepped forward to intervene, and Appa, clueless as ever to what was going on around him, approached Bolldhe to offer comfort.
It was for Bolldhe one of those panic-fuelled moments of self-preservation. He grabbed the priest by his amulet and yanked him back towards the waiting thieves.
‘Bolldhe!?’ cried Nibulus, and started forward, but was immediately checked by the blunderbuss that was swung up into his face again. In the same instant Oswiu whistled to his brother Cuthwulf, who tossed over his voulge, which Oswiu caught in one hand and pushed into Bolldhe’s grip.
Appa was suddenly punched in the stomach by the vicious Khurghan so that he doubled over in pain and surprise, then dropped retching to his knees. Hlessi grabbed the priest’s arms and wrenched them painfully behind his back till he was forced to kneel helplessly before Bo
lldhe with his neck extended.
Pech! Bolldhe thought, his head spinning at their sheer speed. They don’t mess about, do they?
‘Bolldhe . . .’ Nibulus warned darkly, but Bolldhe did not hear. His quest companions, the thieves, the strange land around him, everything in fact faded until he was in a tiny world all of his own. Time ground to a shuddering halt. The only sounds that he could hear were the wheezing sobs of the old man and the pounding of his own heart. All he could see was the scrawny, turkey-like neck beneath him, appearing in a focus of incredible detail: the fine grey hairs, the dirt-encrusted creases of the aged skin, the brown leather thong of the amulet, rubbed glass-smooth and darkened by the sweat of decades. While the only things he could feel were the weight of the hefty, poison-coated voulge in his slick palms, and the almost unbreathable closeness of the air.
A vague part of his mind briefly thought: How the hell did I get myself into this? Then there were no thoughts in his mind at all. No strategies, no debates, no conscience. Nothing except the sight of that bare, outstretched neck, and the question: Could he truly sever it?
And then the world suddenly came crashing back into his mind, as everything around him exploded in thunder and pandemonium. The ground shook under a series of deafening quakes that almost bowled him off his feet. It was like the approach of some gargantuan beast. A sudden gale howled like a host of furies out of a sky turned black with piling stormclouds and filled with screeching birds. Everyone was wailing in terror, swept up in a tide of uncontrollable panic, trying to run in half a dozen different directions at once. Zhang reared up screaming and flailed the air with his forelegs. And then something huge filled the entire sky.
One of the true inhabitants of Eotunlandt had finally arrived.
Bolldhe stared uncomprehendingly at the vision before him. His gaze went up, and up and up, until his head craned so far back he almost toppled over.
It was, of course, a Giant. What else could one expect to find in a place with a name like ‘Eotunlandt’? But this was neither a Jotun – those fifteen-foot ice giants that haunted the remote mountains of the Far North – nor even one of the eighteen-foot, two-headed Ettins. This was a True Giant, a two-hundred-foot behemoth that stepped right out of Lindormyn’s most ancient myths into a world that no longer even believed in them.
It was now, however, as real as the mountains. Over the canopy of oaks it towered, the treetops barely reaching up to its knees. A long, simple, one-piece tunic of earth-brown it wore, that billowed and snapped in the gale like the sails of a great ship. Arms bedecked with primitive bronze bracelets, each big enough to house a sentry tower, hung at its sides. And way, way up there, partly hidden by clouds, was a monstrous head. All that could be dimly seen of it were two yellow eyes that glared down at them like the beams of two lighthouses in a sea-fog, framed by a forest of shaggy hair undulating in the sudden wild wind and mantled by forks of lightning that smote the ground about them.
The bottom dropped out of Bolldhe’s world. He stood there gaping, unable to move, to cry out, to even close his eyes to avoid the leaves that whipped around in the air. All he could do was whimper – then empty his bladder down his legs. It was a being from another world, or from the Beginning of Time; like an Elder Spirit from the primal chaos before the world was made; like a god come down to earth to stand before them, to judge them, to damn them all into hell. It filled Bolldhe’s whole world and, though all around him seethed in a maelstrom of noise and terror, he could do nothing. He was nothing.
Then vaguely into his overwhelmed mind he began to hear something different: a shrill sound like the wind, but with the order and form of music, so that it cut through the chaos and cacophony that was tearing his mind apart. It sounded familiar somehow, and his fleeing wits desperately clutched onto it like a drowning man. It was a sharp whistle, a call, an urgent signal from someone nearby. Somehow Bolldhe managed to wrench his eyes away from the colossus before him and flail his gaze this way and that, trying to locate its source.
Over there in the trees! Someone was frantically waving at him, and there were other figures stumbling madly towards whoever it was. Without thinking, Bolldhe tore after them. Plunging into the wind as though into powerful breakers pounding on the shore, he forced his wobbling legs to propel himself onwards. Up the slope he hared, almost blinded by the snowstorm of white seeds flying around from the tall, wind-whipped summer grasses. As he neared the tree line, he managed to make out, through tear-fogged eyes, the face of Kuthy Tivor shouting unheard words and waving him on. Then he was plunging on through the trees.
Seconds later, an earth-wrecking explosion tore the air apart, and the ground beneath them lurched. He and several others nearby were tossed from their feet only to come crashing to the ground.
The Giant’s foot had landed and, even as they sprang back to their own feet, earth showered down around them. All that was left of the place where they had confronted the Tyvenborgers was one large, foot-shaped crater.
No one paused to locate, or even to shout out to, each other. Bolldhe, Kuthy and whoever else was with them leapt off through the woods. There was no plan, no direction, no thoughts of anything save running as fast as possible away from that foot.
And for the next hour, under the cover of the trees, this was exactly what they did.
It is not every day that you come face-to-face with a god. Not while you are still alive, that is. And sane. And sober, come to that. So when a two-hundred-foot-tall Giant steps out into your daylight, waking world, bringing with it the stormclouds of hell, you have to question your sanity. Quite possibly for a long time thereafter. It did not help any of the company that they had all witnessed the very same thing. It was all, simply, too big.
Their flight did not in fact consist entirely of running. That first hour was mainly spent hiding, darting out to move on, then hiding again, and all the time staring upwards and listening. At first there were just Bolldhe, Kuthy and Wodeman. But gradually, and purely by chance as they scampered about like fieldmice running from a kestrel, they bumped into others. First Nibulus and Appa, the Peladane almost dragging the spent form of the priest behind him like a lame old Boggart; and then later Paulus suddenly appeared among them. Finally Finwald came running up, wild-eyed and clasping his hat to his head. But, soon after, the shaman disappeared, and they were six again. At no time was there ever any sign of Zhang.
Driven by terror and instinct alone, they continued to dart through the cover of the trees. None knew, cared or even thought about the direction they might be taking. The gods had come down to earth, or risen from its depths, and were trying to destroy them. All they could do was keep fleeing.
It was a terrible flight, one that none of them would ever forget. None of their previous encounters had been even a fraction as awful. Above them, around them, behind and sometimes before them was the Giant: unrelenting, omnipresent. At every roar they expected its foot to come crashing down through the treetops to stamp them into the mire of their own blood. Yet this never happened. Sometimes they would see that awesome, terrible face peering at them through the forest canopy, and occasionally a huge hand would pull the upper boughs aside to try to get at them. But in spite of the ease with which it could have rubbed out their lives, it seemed reluctant to push too far. Almost as if something unseen were hindering it.
At other times they heard it move off, drawn by something they could not see. On one or two of these occasions, they heard a distant scream of terror, but whether it was human or horse they could not tell.
Eventually, as they ploughed deeper and deeper into the woods, the stamping and roaring receded. It seemed that, for the present, they had miraculously escaped certain death.
‘It was the forest that saved us,’ Kuthy stated. ‘They cannot pick their way through the thicker reaches of the woods without harming their sacred trees.’
They sat huddled beneath the cover of a large rowan. It was late evening, and the sun would have gone behind the mountains by now.
But no sunset could be seen here: in these dense woods it was almost pitch black. A few furtive noises could be heard around them, sometimes a snuffling and a scraping, and as a kind of background hum there was also an almost continuous low moan from Bolldhe as he nursed his burnt face. The fragrances of scented wood and summer flowers were almost overpowering, but still not strong enough to completely mask the smell of his crisped and suppurating skin.
Nibulus, though, had other things on his mind. He leant closer to Kuthy and, with his face mere inches from the other’s, suddenly yelled: ‘And how the hell would you know that? You’ve never even seen any of these things before – have you?’
Kuthy stared back at the younger, bigger man. His grey eyes gleamed in the near darkness, but his expression could not be judged.
Then Finwald’s weary voice was heard. ‘There’s no point in denying it, Kuthy. You’ve led us up the pixie path ever since we met you – first the tunnel, now this. You knew what dwelt in this land all along, didn’t you?’
There was a pause, then Kuthy admitted with what sounded like genuine repentance: ‘Alas, I cannot pretend otherwise. I have been through Eotunlandt before, and yes, I have seen the Giants. I’ve never seen them quite so close up, but I did know about them, yes.’
‘Then why in the gods’ own surnames didn’t you tell us?’ Nibulus asked in exasperation. ‘Did you want us to get killed?’
‘Now, you know that’s not true,’ Kuthy responded levelly. ‘If it hadn’t been for me you’d all probably be nothing more than a stain on the sole of a Giant’s foot by now.’
They thought about this for a moment, and had to admit the truth of it. Had Kuthy not returned to them and cut through their terror with his whistle, they would have run witless in circles or sat paralysed with fear, and would now be very much ‘at one with the earth’.
‘Yes, for that I will be eternally grateful, my friend,’ Appa wheezed. ‘By Cuna, never before in all my seventy years have I known terror like that . . . I still cannot believe it. Just what sort of world do we exist in? All these . . . things! Had I known what the world was like north of our borders, I’d never have ventured further than the Blue Mountains, quest or no.’
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