by Billy Wong
She tried to grab the blade, but the edge lacerated her hand as she pushed it to the right. Still, it saved her life; instead of burying its point in her heart, Martin only managed to slice her along the ribs while she turned onto her flank. Grabbing her sword back up no doubt painfully with her injured hand, Loreen rolled away. Martin sneered as he resumed his chase. He chopped down at her face, and she blocked. But then he leaned down, pushing against her weapon with all his weight, and Derrick knew her single arm could not hold out against his strength.
She turned her sword, stopping Martin's blade with her crossguard while flicking her own's tip into his face. It didn't do more than superficial damage, opening a shallow cut under his eye, but he stepped back, freeing Loreen. He lunged at her again, screaming—and gasped as he found his middle impaled by her sword. He stumbled back, pulling himself off, and fell to his knees. Pressing his hand into his gushing wound, he struggled to speak. "Y-you..."
"Killed you," Loreen finished as he fell on his face. "I hope you've learned to respect women and cripples in the afterlife." She collapsed to one knee, breathing heavily. Steadying herself, she looked at her fellows and commanded, "Let him go."
After a moment's pause, the soldiers parted for him, but instead Derrick went to his friend's side. "Loreen, are you alright?"
"I'm fine." She grinned. "I'm Rose's friend, so I'd better not admit to being troubled by a scratched chest and hand. You should go before somebody decides to stop listening to me."
"Wait. Where did Rose and Finn go to fight the frog-men?"
"You think I know the exact location of every obscure village on Coblan's border? Give me a break."
Derrick smiled at that, but said, "Come on, try to remember. Its name was Culn, right?"
"Culn... um, think that's almost straight east of my house, but pretty far. Anything more specific than that, I'm afraid you'll have to ask someone else."
"Okay, thanks. Take care of yourself."
"You too." She gave him Martin's horse and he rode hastily away, hoping that would be the last trouble he had with the Coblan army up here.
Chapter 5
The next tomb of giants turned out to be near no town, but deep within a dense hardwood forest which blanketed gentle hills. Despite it being spring, this far north it was still quite cool. "I'm really glad it isn't winter," Rose said. "I'd be freezing."
Finn slapped her back. "Don't get your hopes up too high—it could still be amazingly cold inside."
If there was magical climate control in place, yes. "Don't remind me. That Archmages' Studio was a pain. I don't know why the ancients would have liked to live or work in such a cold place."
"Maybe they were stronger than us."
Rose grinned. "Stronger than us, the common mage? Yeah right."
Finn chuckled and touched her face. "You're acting cocky. I thought that was my place."
"I'm not being cocky. It's obvious that the average person of any age wouldn't be our match physically."
"I don't know, it was the golden age."
She laughed. "You're just playing devil's advocate. We've met some of the strongest of that time and beaten them. I doubt the average would even be close to those guys."
"Yeah, but you're a wimp when it comes to cold."
"True enough. Hey, I'm a girl. I reserve the right to complain!"
The couple and Mick walked around the forest for a time, Rose not hesitating to gripe about flying insects and whatever else was bugging her at the time. Eventually they laid eyes upon a pair of huge stone columns with humanoid features carved onto them, and Finn said, "Here's something our friends probably made."
Rose stared briefly at the pillars, then groaned. "Oh, no."
"What?"
"Kayla told me that the second resting place would be topped by two columns in the image of men."
"Topped, eh? So this thing is underground."
"Yep. It's not that surprising, considering the last one was underwater already. But I hope we won't have to dig."
They explored for a while, looking for another entrance. But they found nothing, and Rose sighed. "Looks like we're going to have to dig, and we didn't even bring shovels. And to think, they probably didn't even make the place this way..." Eight hundred years was plenty of time for dirt to pile up.
"Dig?" Finn asked, sounding confused. "Don't you have magic?"
"Yeah, but we don't know how far down it is, and moving too much earth might overly tax me. It'll be a safer bet doing it the old fashioned way." They painstakingly used their shields as makeshift shovels, and after hours revealed the roof of the structure several dozen feet down. But even now, there was no door in sight. "I guess the ceiling shouldn't so thick we can't make a way in with magic," Rose said. She had to exert herself considerably to open a deep enough hole in the stone, and leaned on Finn for a moment after.
Mick stared in amazement. "You really are mages. I thought I'd never see such a sight."
"Well, Finn isn't really allowed to use magic. But if he was, he'd be a better mage than me."
Her husband puffed out his chest, soaking in the praise. "I wonder if there'll be any frog-men waiting down there for us?"
"I assume there isn't a big body of water inside, so I'd guess not. Not that there might not be something else to try and give us pain. You wait up here, Mick." Rose tied a rope to a tree and used it to climb down to the floor forty feet below. She took in the contents of the room with a glance around. "Wow, they're right here."
Finn followed her down and frowned at the ice-encased giants around the room. "Okay, but what do we do now, wait?"
She didn't know how to wake the giants, nor if breaking the ice would cause them harm. "Try knocking, like last time."
He rapped the nearest wall of ice. Nothing happened. He hit harder. "Wakey wakey!"
"Guess that's not going to work." Rose sighed. "This is going to be boring, but at least we know the next group of giants won't leave while we wait. I guess one of us can go hunt for food or something if this takes too long."
"Wait a second. I know Kayla said they would wake in order, but what if the time between this group and the next is a lot less than between the previous one and this? We might not have time to get to the third bunch."
He had a point. A possible solution would be for her to go on to the next destination, leaving Finn here to talk this group out of answering Clearsky's call, except he didn't know Old Speech. "That's true, but what can we do?"
"How about you write down what you'd have to say in Old Script and I can show it to these guys?"
"I don't think a bunch of written words are likely to be convincing enough by themselves, and you won't be able to make any argument if they don't agree right away."
"You're probably right, but what if the other group does wake up quickly?"
She shrugged. "We could try to intercept them before they get to Victor."
"They walk really fast."
"Yeah, but I doubt they'll be running, and we can run for a pretty long time."
Finn nodded. "That's the best plan under the circumstances, I suppose."
They hunkered down, trying to keep themselves entertained by playing and poking fun at each other, but Rose was too anxious to enjoy it much. Nonetheless, she felt grateful again for Finn's love. A lesser man wouldn't have stood by her all this time... hell, a lesser man would have died years ago living this life with her! He was the best, and she recalled the time she had cheated on him with shame. As he threw her to the ground in a playful wrestle, she pushed her guilt aside. He'd forgiven her completely, and she needn't dwell on an old mistake. But she still let him win, this time.
A full day passed, and though normally Rose and Finn would never have run out of games, the stress of waiting was brutal on her worried mind. Mick constantly peeked in to check on them, looking bored to death. Rose wondered what Victor was doing, and hoped he hadn't begun his bid for Kayland in earnest. He hadn't gotten all the giant allies he could yet, and she ho
ped he would wait for them. She wanted to be there to fight against him and Clearsky, not sitting here while he tried to take over.
Now, she had to wonder if killing him the last time they'd met as Finn wanted might not have been a bad idea. But his brother Crown Prince Lawrence, who he'd probably murdered, had gotten in the way. Rose felt wrong to blame him, but couldn't help it. Because of his soft heart, Victor was still out there plotting evil deeds, and Kayland would soon know the suffering of civil war.
Rose and Finn spent a night in the giants' resting place, and at dinnertime the next day the first signs of their awakening came. This time it was not an old male who first moved, but a young, well-endowed female whose eye blinked open behind the ice. She broke free and looked down at the humans with a confused expression. "What are you doing here?"
"Are you their leader?" Rose asked. "We came to warn you about your supposed allies."
"Which allies? He is our leader." She pointed to a white-bearded old giant.
This elder was somewhat stooped and thinner than the last, but Rose started to get a sense of the giants' social hierarchy. Apparently, the first to awake did not necessarily lead the clan, but from what she'd seen so far, the oldest male did. She said after he finally emerged from his block, "Don't follow the voice that calls you—it's not who you think. It's not Kayla, but an... evil force trying to force you to serve him for selfish purposes."
"Really, girl? Who told you that? It sounds like Kayla to me. Her power and spirit resonate in her call."
"No, that's because he—the caller—was made from part of her. But he's a mere shadow of her, with none of her good. You don't want to fight for his wrongful cause."
"What cause might that be?"
She wasn't sure where to draw the line between Clearsky and Victor's goal. "He seeks to impose his will upon the world, and the first step will be to plunge my nation into a civil war. It's probably too late to stop the war itself, but if you don't join, we can hopefully end it with less casualties." Of course, it would've been even better if they decided to join the right side, but Rose would take small victories one at a time.
"Do you have proof of this? Otherwise it is the feeling of Kayla's familiar call, against your word that these are the manipulations of an evil being."
"I told you, it's not her, it's something created from her. And you might like to know you weren't serving her at the end before your sleep, either. You 'traitor' friends had the right idea—the ones who rebelled and ended her surrogate's reign, and the rest of you murdered."
"Listen to her!" Mick shouted uselessly from up high, though he didn't even understand what she was saying. "They're great heroes!"
The elder's eyes narrowed, and he clenched a gnarled fist. "You dare praise those traitors?! They are reviled by our people, and you ought to feel fortunate we're not inclined to fight."
Rose tried to make further protest, but the giant waved his hand, and to her surprise a section of wall opened vertically to reveal the forest. Apparently, the chamber ended just behind a hillside. The giants marched through the previously unseen door, and Rose rushed to match the elder's pace. "Wait! Don't go, if you care about doing what's right."
His voice left no room for further debate. "Begone, small nuisance."
In desperation, she begged, "Kayla, help..." But even in her mind, there was no reply.
She watched the giants walk away. It seemed she could do nothing to convince them of the wrongfulness of their path, and she doubted she and Finn would be able to take them all in a fight. Walking up beside her, her husband spat, "Unreasonable ass. Who in their right mind won't consider what you have to say?"
Rose took a deep, calming breath. "It's not too hard to understand, actually. They've been asleep for eight hundred years, and 'Kayla' is their only remaining connection to the world at large. Of course they'd want to hold onto that tie."
"Except it's not really Kayla."
"They don't know that, and what have I shown to make me credible in their eyes?"
Mick appeared at the top of the slope out of whose foot they'd walked. "So they just got away?"
"That's what happened." She looked despondently at Finn. "What are we supposed to do next time?"
"You mean with the next bunch of giants?"
"Yeah." But she already had an idea which she really didn't like.
Finn articulated it for her. "We'll have to kill them before they wake. It stinks, but we have to save whatever we can of human life."
#
They headed east largely in silence, Rose agonizing over the distasteful act looming before them She dreaded the thought of killing helpless beings without malicious intent, especially the children among them. At the same time, Finn was right about human lives. They had to stop the giants, or many more would die. But she hated this way. Mick rode with a downcast expression at their side, and she wondered if he hated it too, or was just uncomfortable around her in such a miserable state.
"Finn, why do we have to make such awful choices?" she asked that night. She remember Sir Jacob, the childhood idol she'd been forced to kill, and Justin, a former friend who begrudged her for his kin's deaths and in the end battled her to the death. And now, she would have a hand in exterminating the last survivors of a fading race.
He took her hand and squeezed lightly, a warm smile on his face. But it didn't comfort her much. "Because of who we are. We're champions, and that's not all fun and games. If we achieve great deeds, maybe the universe needs to balance it by having us suffer just as greatly."
"That doesn't seem fair. I hate having to compromise my morals."
"You don't have to do it, if you don't want. I will."
"That wouldn't make me feel better, to have my husband do my dirty work. I can't—won't—kill sleeping children, human or giant, but I don't want you to, either."
"But what would we do instead?"
She thought about it with her head in her hands. There had to be some way... "Isn't there a town near the next resting place?"
"Not that close. Why?"
"The kids are only man-sized. I'm thinking we could bring them there as prisoners."
Finn looked at her dubiously. "I'm sure they could hold a few babes, but what about when they grow up?"
"I don't know. I don't even know if Prince Wilner will find them and let Victor still try to use them against us, though I'd assume they're less powerful than they will be when grown. But as long as we can preserve their lives a little longer, it'll be preferable to the alternative."
"And if they do join Victor grown or otherwise, what do we do, kill them then? That hardly sounds much better."
She scowled. "Then before that happens, we'll have to stop Victor and Clearsky."
He patted her head, making Mick chuckle behind them. "Now there's the Rose I like! But we'll still have to kill the adults... unless you've got a solution for that too?"
After a pause, Rose said, "I think I do, though it's not one I like. We might be able to stop them from joining Clearsky, if we hold the kids hostage."
#
It wasn't the most morally appealing solution, but one which could keep the giants alive, good enough to let Rose sleep that night. She found herself on the battlefield with Kayla again. "No," the honey-haired dead woman said, "you have to kill the grown sleeping giants. I'm not too keen on saving the young ones either, but I'll let that slide."
Rose glared at her. "How can you be so cold? I thought you said you were a big softie in your time."
"I was. After I made Clearsky, though, he really did change my life. Did you think I would have unlearned everything he taught me—how to be hard, and how to survive? Not that I need the latter anymore."
"Okay... but why shouldn't I try to save your allies?"
Sad tears welled up in Kayla's eyes, though she kept enough control not to let them out. "Because your plan won't work, that's why. They'll not listen to you just because you hold their children's lives in your hand. I know it sounds crazy to yo
u, and does to me too. But they don't see things the way humans do. To them, their young aren't... people... until they're fully grown. So they won't care as much if you threatened to take them away."
Rose had heard of Sevrian drugs that could end a pregnancy by killing the growing babe, and supposed any woman who used those didn't consider their children to be alive until they were born. She didn't agree; losing a fetus after being run through from side to side, she'd certainly felt like a person she loved was gone forever. However, she supposed she could understand thinking differently. But for the giants not to value their children until adulthood was almost unbelievable in her eyes.
Watching her stand there with mouth open, Kayla gave a weak laugh. "I know, crazy isn't it? I thought so too when I heard it the first time, but that makes it no less true. They'd care no more than you about a pet's death if their children die. Maybe less, seeing how some people love pets."
"That's unsettling," Rose finally said. "But why didn't you help me argue my case with the last group?"
"My communication right now is limited to being with you."
"I see. Why wouldn't they believe me?"
"Would you believe some girl you don't know trying to tell you someone you knew wasn't that person?"
Rose shrugged. "I'd consider it, at least. Keeping an open mind has its benefits."
"They're too confident in their elder wisdom to care much for that of younger races. Even as much as they respected me, I rarely changed their minds easily."
"So how do I convince them not to join Clearsky next time?"
Kayla frowned. "I told you, you don't. You kill the adults and, in your case, hope you can keep the kids alive. And you had better think of a way to do it before they wake."
"I don't want to. Come on, Kayla, there's got to be a way." She thought of something. "How did you come to gain their respect?"
Rose hoped Kayla would say something like she'd beaten one in a fight. The answer she got wasn't quite that encouraging. "I got lucky is all. I made friends with a young one during my soft and weak days. So when the war began and I became the warrior you hear of today, he urged his kin with everything he had to join the fight. They still did so with reluctance, and only much later did they truly give me the respect displayed in my tomb."