by Adams, David
The giant’s initial charge scattered his new foes, and he pulled up, unsure who to chase. Darius answered for him, hacking at one of the giant’s hamstrings from behind.
The giant roared in pain and rage, wheeling about and swinging the club wildly. It missed Darius by several feet, but did send a tent and a cooking pot flying.
Luke and Barlow struck next, each at a different leg. Luke’s sword didn’t penetrate the leather bindings over the giant’s ankle, but Gabriel managed to cut a deep gash just above the back of the right knee.
The giant whirled around three times, the club clearing an area about him. The move gave him space and time, but disoriented him as well. As soon as he stopped Darius got in another blow, and Adrianna sent a crackling ball of energy into his ribs. The higher blow was completely unexpected, stealing the giant’s breath and throwing off his balance.
Seeing the opening, Silas rushed in, using his staff to create a fulcrum around which the giant’s own weight and momentum pivoted, sending him crashing to the ground. Barlow was quick to take advantage of the giant’s exposed neck, Gabriel biting deep.
The giant grabbed at his own throat, all thought of fighting gone as his lifeblood flowed warm and swift through his fingers. His eyes went glassy and he made one small gurgling noise—Gabriel had taken his voice as well—then he fell still.
Even with the sounds of battle still raging about them, the long slow exclamation—“Whoa”—was clear. The young boy soldier had watched the fight from the tent’s opening, and the giant had died less than ten feet away.
“Stay here,” Silas ordered.
The boy nodded, having no intention of crossing this particular group of strangers.
The companions moved forward and managed to break clear of the camp before another giant came at them, the second giant they had spotted earlier having wandered off in another direction. Once in the open, the spectacle of a fully joined battle was before them.
The giants were easily outnumbered, but that didn’t mean they were outmatched. Members of at least three tribes were present, distinguishable by their dress and skin color, and that in itself was troubling. The tribes were not known to work together. The hill giants, like the one the companions had fought, were the most numerous, but beside them were pale white frost giants as well as gray-skinned stone giants. While the former preferred clubs, many of the frost giants used great dual-bladed axes, while the latter, true to their name, often hurled large stones at their enemies. As gruesome as the damage the giants could deal out with these weapons was, far more sickening to human observers was the way they occasionally grabbed a foe by the arm or leg and used him as a weapon against his fellows, a brutal attack that usually stopped when the limb the victim was being held by became detached from the rest of the body. The stone giants in particular seemed fond of this sort of attack when they had no rocks to toss. Both male and female giants were present, the males larger but the females just as deadly a foe.
The Dalusians utilized what advantages they could. While badly outclassed in any one-on-one battle, they used their superior numbers, their horses, and their ranged weapons to good effect. Most arrows were no more than a nuisance to the thick-hided giants, but many volleys were set ablaze before being launched, and these troubled the giants to distraction. Mounted riders preferred passing behind the behemoths, slashing with swords or tossing spears and then getting clear before the giants could react, then wheeling about and repeating the process. If the Dalusians had machines of war they were not visible, and now that the fight was joined they would have been of little value; a catapult-tossed stone was more likely to injure Dalusians than to score a clean strike on one of the giants. For the most part, when a giant fell it was due to a swarm of warriors bringing it down by working together, and then finishing the foe before it could rise again. The hard part was to bring the great monsters down, and this was rarely done without a large number of Dalusian casualties.
It was difficult to tell who was winning, but the giants had the initiative and were pressing forward, driving toward the camp. Whether that was their goal or not was impossible to tell, but they were making steady progress in that direction.
The companions joined the battle, not to aid the Dalusians as such, but because these beasts from the north were a common threat. The main battle itself was chaos, no lines or flanks or group maneuvers, simply a deadly brawl. Even though the five waded in together they soon, like the Dalusians, were tossed about randomly by the ebb and flow of the fighting, and each had to look to their own safety rather than looking after one another. This was hardest on Darius, who called to Luke as a press of bodies separated them, and who nearly took a club to the head while trying to find his younger brother in the mob. He respected Luke’s courage, but with his wounded shoulder and lack of experience in such a large battle, Darius was naturally fearful for him. The near miss with the giant’s club did not lessen his concern over Luke, but it did force him to focus on matters more close at hand.
Luke was well aware of his unhealed injury as well, not that it would keep him from the fight. His arm had been out of the sling since the giant roared into the camp, and even though the shoulder was stiff and sore, he was able to block out the pain due to the adrenaline coursing through him. Even so, he found himself wincing whenever his left hand joined his right on the hilt of his sword, and without realizing it he often fought with one hand. Luckily the giants required hit and run tactics rather than thrust and parry, so Luke was able to make due. The quickness of his young legs helped him more than the shoulder injury hindered him, and he found he contributed as well as the next man against the powerful but slow giants.
Barlow had no youthful legs to help him, only his training and Gabriel. It was enough. Such was the damage he could mete out that the Dalusians nearest him rallied to him, and followed any order he might give without question.
Silas’ staff could do little direct damage to a standing giant, but he employed it again and again as he had against their first foe, finding leverage points to send enemies tumbling to the ground, where they were far more vulnerable to the weapons of the smaller humans.
Like the mounted riders, Adrianna worked at the fringes of the battle, substituting her magic for the cavalry charge of a single rider. Like Silas, she looked for opportunities to knock the giants off balance, and at other times shielded groups of soldiers from an incoming rock or flailing club. Her one attempt to actually kill a giant she regretted. She launched a massive fireball, which set one of the hill giants ablaze. But rather than collapsing the giant raced about in a mad fury, laying waste to all in his path. Whether the flames eventually brought him down Adrianna never knew. She was so mortified by the number of soldiers that had fallen before the crazed beast that she lost track of the monster as he fled into the further reaches of the battle.
The sun neared its zenith in the sky, the day’s heat adding to the suffering of the living and the wounded, the latter’s pitiful cries for water often going unheeded. The dead were scattered everywhere, both human and giant, and the bodies were already giving the battlefield a foul reek.
Of the five companions the tumult of battle had moved Darius the furthest west. He and a dozen soldiers had just finished off a frost giant—but not before the frost giant’s axe had felled more than thirty soldiers—when he noted he was not the only non-Dalusian in the fight. The man next to him wore the red-and-green of Westphalia. He blinked a few times, surprised to find him here, then looked west and noticed the banners of Westphalia. The two armies that had gathered to fight one another had joined together to fight a common foe. A pit formed in Darius’ stomach as he considered how even the battle appeared to be, and therefore what the end result would have certainly been had the giants been facing the Dalusians alone.
His mind started to wrap around what might happen if the two armies were successful against the giants. Would they then turn on one another? Would they make peace, and perhaps fight together against Longvale? A b
oulder flew overhead, reminding him there was work to do before such questions could be addressed.
As the afternoon hours dragged on the battle slowed, the dead littering the field and the living weary beyond description but willing themselves to fight on. From the western edge of the field a group of horns blared, another call to action. Luke turned at the sound, hope filling his heart. The horns were those of humankind. As soon as they ceased a shout went up, then a great thundering noise echoed across the plains.
Reinforcements from Westphalia had arrived, a large force of cavalry. Their red-and-green flags rippled as they charged, their numbers more than enough to tip the scales of what had been an even contest. At the sight of these mounted soldiers the men of Westphalia already engaged in battle roared and fought on with renewed vigor, and even the Dalusians voiced their approval.
At first, the giants tried to hold out, to absorb the shock of the initial charge and then see if victory might yet be theirs, but as the first groups of giants were overwhelmed by the sheer force of the mounted charge, some of those further back turned and fled north. What began as a trickle was soon a steady flow and then a flood—the giants were routed.
Even in retreat the giants were a grave danger, their growing panic added to their size and strength meant anything in their path was liable to be harmed or killed, and many soldiers met their end even as they could see that victory was inevitably theirs. One of those caught in the path of the fleeing monsters was Luke, who, slashing at one of the running giants, did not have time to react to another coming up behind him. He was hit by a sweeping forearm and thrown head over heels through the air, coming to rest against a dead horse and its equally deceased rider. He tried to rise, was surprised at the pain it caused, then was forced to hug the ground as another giant fled past him. He decided others were better suited to pursue the vanquished foe, and that he had better remain where he was until things settled down.
Once the giants were clear of the battle proper, only those on horseback could keep pace. The riders hoped to keep hacking away, to bring a few more giants down, weakening them further so that they’d think twice about resuming their assault on some other day. But even for the newcomers from Westphalia there was not much spirit in the pursuit, and when a few stone giants rallied and started hurling rocks at the riders, the chase was called off. The combined human forces had won the day, but victory came at a terrible cost to both armies.
In the direct aftermath of such a battle, there is a brief time before any organized attempts to treat the wounded and bury the dead, a time when friends seek out one another, to be reassured that those one has grown to love are well, or if the worst has come to pass, a time to grieve a personal loss. So it was that the companions, separated by the fight, looked for each other across the gruesome battlefield.
Silas found Luke first, and after Luke admitted he had been injured, the cleric looked under his shirt. The side of his chest was already turning an ugly shade of purple. “This is from a forearm?” Silas asked.
Luke nodded, gently so as to not jostle his aching ribs.
“Lucky it wasn’t a club, or we wouldn’t be talking to one another.” He went about his work, praying for healing and wrapping Luke’s chest to add some small amount of physical support for the injury. “If I can find the right things later I’ll apply a salve that’ll help with the pain.”
“Better already,” Luke said, although Silas could see in the youngster’s eyes that the pain was still intense.
Adrianna found them next, then Barlow, and finally Darius, who had a momentary scare seeing the others gathered around his brother, who at that moment was resting with his eyes closed. Seeing this and the blood—none of which was Luke’s—made Darius go pale. Adrianna quickly assured him that Luke would be all right, to which Luke added, without bothering to open his eyes, “They’ll have to hit me a lot harder than that for you to get rid of me, big brother.”
Darius saw the hint of a smile on the corner of Luke’s lips and relaxed. “Don’t tempt fate,” he replied.
“And try to be still,” Silas added. “Rest while you can.”
“Rest for his body he might allow,” Darius put in, “but rest his mouth? Never.”
“Ha, ha,” Luke said.
“See what I mean?”
Luke moved as if to reply but Silas stilled him. “Let your brother win one.”
“Okay. Not like he gets many chances to have the last word.”
Darius laughed. “And I still haven’t.”
“True,” Luke said, to which both brothers smiled.
*
They took Luke back to one of the larger tents and got him settled, after which Silas was able to find the ingredients to make a brew that put him deeply asleep, as well as a salve that would help with healing. Once this was done he joined Barlow and Adrianna in lending a hand where they could, while Darius stood vigil over his brother. Late that evening they were together again, each exhausted, but before they tried to sleep Captain Faine paid them a visit.
“Mind if I come in?” he asked. His head was wrapped in a blood-soaked bandage, but otherwise he seemed to have come through the battle in relatively good health.
“Please,” Adrianna said with a welcoming wave of her hand.
The Captain entered, then motioned at Luke. “I had heard one of your group was injured. How does he fare?”
“He will be fine, with time and rest,” Silas answered.
“Good,” said Faine. “I’m told you all fought with us today, and fought well. You have my gratitude.”
“We did what we could,” Silas said. “Those giants would have killed soldier and farmer alike. We owe our lives to the troops you command as well.”
“Well spoken. The same can be said of the Westphalians, at least for today. Alone we would not have been able to stand against the giants.”
“Why do you say ‘for today’?” Darius asked.
Captain Faine wore a wan smile. “The Westphalians saw a danger in the giants, so they fought with us. But their army is far into our lands, and they are not here to fight the behemoths from the north. If the giants had struck tomorrow, they likely would have found our two armies engaged with one another. If they had enough sense, they could have simply waited while we did most of their work, then attacked the victor. Today we were lucky, tomorrow…”
“You think the Westphalians will attack?” Darius asked, taken aback.
“With the dawn, no. We’ve fought together, and both armies have been hurt. We’ll see to our dead and wounded, and perhaps hold for a few days to see if the giants try again. But this truce is informal and uneasy. I cannot allow the Westphalians free passage in our lands, and I doubt they would leave if asked. I believe they have the advantage over us in numbers, but they must be concerned that delays will allow more of our troops to reinforce us.”
“The look on your face tells me no reinforcements are coming,” said Barlow.
The Captain smiled again, and shook his head. “This brings me to my dilemma. If I truly believed you were Dalusian farmers, I might be willing to share that information with you. But it was clear to me earlier that your story was not true, although I don’t take you for spies. You could have slipped away easily enough during the battle if you were Westphalians, or run off once the fight was joined if you were Longvalers. So I expect the truth lies somewhere else. I also suspect you’ll be no more inclined to tell me what you’re about than you were earlier today.”
Captain Faine’s words were too close to the mark for any to try to gainsay him. Each simply remained silent.
“You are going north, I assume? That much is true?”
“Yes,” Silas answered.
“To the Far North?”
“If we can.”
“Then you likely go to your doom. You would be following those giants into their own lands.”
“We will do what we must.”
Faine shook his head again. “I would like to know what would drive someo
ne to such a step. There seems to be enough death and suffering in the south to go around.” Faine’s own words struck a chord within him. “Surely you do not flee the war by going north? You fought bravely today.”
“No,” said Silas. “But perhaps we might understand better what’s behind it, and maybe someday such knowledge could help end it.”
“A great hope, and one difficult to see realized. Our world seems to grow darker each year. The land dies and now much of the fighting is only to gain or hold enough resources to survive. Was that why the giants came, I wonder? Did they seek food or healthier land, so they might simply go on living? I doubt we’ll ever know.”
Faine cleared his throat and went on. “You are free to go, so long as you leave these lands. I’ll have your things brought to you, and you may depart when you wish, with my blessing and hope for a safe journey, but also with my doom. You have been brought to me as strangers in a time of war, and lied as to your intentions. For that I could have you killed, although if you truly go to the Far North I fear your end will be no better. Our scouts will grant you passage, but if you turn aside or prove false… Suffice to say, if you are brought before me again, there will be no mercy shown.”
“Thank you, Captain,” Silas said. “You needn’t worry about us. We’ll not trouble you again.”
“Good,” Faine said as he turned to go. “I have enough troubles as it is.”
*
They held off further discussion until morning, giving in to exhaustion and taking rest while they could. Luke’s sleep, aided by Silas’ remedies, was a very deep one, and they let him continue on undisturbed as they gathered in Adrianna’s tent to talk.
“I think we should depart as soon as we can,” Barlow stated. “Captain Faine’s assessment about the Westpahlian army is correct—the truce is likely to be a short one, and we don’t want to be caught here when the fighting breaks out anew. The question is, how soon can Luke be ready to travel?”