The Giant Among Us

1

Tavis Burdun, personal scout and bodyguard to Brianna of Hartwick, slipped his bow off his shoulder and stole into the cold mountain fog. He entered the ruined village warily, creeping over the rubble as quietly as a wolf through the night, his senses straining for any sign of a lurking marauder. He discerned nothing: not a whisper of breath, not the odor of unwashed flesh, not even the gentle rumble of a single, stealthy step. There was only the stench of decay, the corpses lying half-buried beneath piles of stone and timber, the fly swarms filling the air with their mad, mad drone.

The scout had felt it before-the cold, sick ache sinking through his belly like a spoon through honey. But there was something different about High Meadow. He sensed it in the echo of his grinding teeth, the hair prickling at the nape of his neck, and the way his heart hammered inside his chest. This time, the giants were still here.

“Tavis, what’s the delay?” Queen Brianna’s question rang out from fifty paces down the trail, where she waited outside the village with her retinue and the royal guard. “Can we make our inspection?”

Before the scout could reply, a distant voice reverberated from somewhere deep in the village. “No, Milady! There are raiders about!” The words had a smooth, euphonious quality suggestive of a human nobleman. “You’d be wise to turn back while you can!”

“Who’s that speaking? Identify yourself.” demanded Tavis. The scout yelled toward the mountainside so his words would echo over the village and make his location more difficult to pinpoint. “Are you one of Earl Cuthbert’s knights?”

“Certainly not!” came the answer.

Before the fellow could say more, a series of thunderous footfalls pealed out of the fog. The stranger screamed an angry war cry. Tavis heard the distant crack of steel against bone, then a booming voice roared in pain. The ground bucked beneath the impact of a felled giant, and a deafening crash rumbled across the village.

As the roar died away, Brianna called, “I’ll bring Selwyn and his men forward!”

“No, Milady!” Tavis yelled, still bouncing his voice off the mountainside. “And perhaps you should be quiet. From what the stranger said, there’s more than one giant about The survivors will be listening.”

“What if they are?” the queen replied. “They’re certainly not going to attack an entire company of my guard.”

“Perhaps not, but why risk it?” the scout countered. “Take your guards and retreat to a safe place.”

“Without you?” Brianna demanded. “I think not”

“I won’t be far behind,” Tavis called. “It wouldn’t be right to abandon the stranger.”

“Quite so. We’ll wait here-in case you need help.” The queen’s tone left no doubt that she was issuing an order. “And keep yourself alive. Good bodyguards are hard to come by.”

“My duty is to keep you alive,” Tavis grumbled. “And that would be much easier if you’d do as I ask.”

“Don’t I always?” Brianna mocked. “Now hurry back. If you keep me waiting, I may lead the Company of the Winter Wolf into High Meadow myself.”

The halfhearted warning was enough to send Tavis clattering down the rubble-filled street. Brianna was impatient enough to do exactly as she had threatened, and that was the last thing the scout wanted. In the thick fog, High Meadow seemed little more than a gray-shrouded tangle of smashed walls and splintered beams. Even the renowned Winter Wolves could not guarantee the queen’s safety under such conditions.

As Tavis neared the center of the village, he saw a black, blurry cloud of crows hovering over what appeared to be a low mound of soft earth. He slowed his pace and cautiously stole forward, once again taking care to step quietly. The silhouette ahead grew more distinct. The scout saw two splayed feet the size of small sheep, and soon he could make out a flabby torso as large as a supply wagon.

This could not be the giant the stranger had just felled. A putrid odor of decay hung thickly about the corpse, and the crows had already reduced the body to a pallid mess of gore and bone. Only the heavy brow, drooping jaw, and gangling arms remained to suggest the carcass belonged to a hill giant.

Without a closer look, Tavis skirted the foul-smelling thing. He had long ago deduced the raiders’ race from clues left behind at other sites: the tracks of dire wolf pets, cudgels made from broken trees, and bits of clothing made from untanned hide. The scout found the corpse’s putrid scent more interesting than anything he was likely to discover on it. The body had been rotting for more than a month, and it was not like hill giants to linger at a massacre.

On the other side of the body, Tavis saw nothing but charred beams and more heaps of broken rocks, the shapes growing hazy with increasing distance. He found no sign of the stranger, or even of the giant the fellow had been battling. Save for the droning flies, High Meadow had fallen as quiet as stone.

The scout continued his search in silence. The razing of the village had left the ground so churned up that signs were difficult to read, but if anyone could find the man’s trail, Tavis could. As Brianna’s bodyguard, he was confined to Castle Hartwick much of the time, but the scout had not allowed his abilities to atrophy. He made a practice of delighting young pages and squires by showing them how to follow the sparrows from one perch to another, and once he had even won a wager for Brianna by tracking a trout for two miles up the Clearwhirl River.

The coppery aroma of fresh blood reached Tavis’s nose. He turned into the breeze and followed the smell to an egg-shaped depression more than a pace long. A pool of dark, steaming liquid sat in the bottom, slowly seeping into the ground. Though he had little doubt that an enormous head had hit here, the hollow seemed quite large for the skull of a hill giant. The scout inspected the area with redoubled caution, for few things were more dangerous than a wounded giant.

It took only a moment to find the marauder’s tracks, a series of oblong depressions with a string of blood puddles alongside. The footprints were spaced roughly every ten feet, the stride of a sprinting hill giant, which puzzled Tavis. The scout had heard no clattering or crashing, and he doubted any hill giant was graceful enough to run quietly across this rubble.

Tavis ignored the giant’s trail and continued to circle the area. About fifteen paces from the crater, he came across a muddy courtyard with a shattered fountain in the center. The area was covered with a human’s boot prints. The scout could see where the man had knelt beside the bubbling water to drink, and also where he had suddenly risen and turned.

Tavis worked his way around the edge of the courtyard until he saw a clump of fresh mud clinging to a rock’s edge. He slipped over the rubble for a short distance. When he came across a muddy boot print streaked across a ridge-timber, he knew he had discovered the stranger’s trail. The scout moved quickly over the debris, following sporadic smears of mud, until he came to another puddle of steaming blood. Here, the stranger’s tracks turned toward the far end of the village, tracing the course taken by the bleeding giant.

Tavis began to suspect the stranger of being a rather reckless fellow. Few warriors had the courage to hunt wounded giants alone, and even fewer could hope to survive the attempt.

The scout continued cautiously onward. As the mud wore off the stranger’s boots, the fellow’s tracks grew increasingly difficult to follow. Soon, Tavis had no choice but to pursue the giant’s bloody trail instead, trusting that the man would continue to pursue his quarry. Occasionally, he came across a tiny pellet of damp mud that confirmed his assumption, but eventually even these rare signs vanished.

The giant’s trail led straight to the edge of town. Here, the rubble gave way to pastures lined by walls of stacked boulders, testimonials to a more peaceful time when giants would trade an honest day’s labor for a dinner of three goats. The scout paused at the first wall, which acted as a boundary between the pastures and the village proper, and took the precaution of studying his back trail. The ruins were as calm as before, with nothing moving in the fog. Even the fly swarms appeared to hang motionless in the haze, their steady buzzing now so familiar that the drone seemed one with the silence.

Moving more cautiously than ever, Tavis followed the giant’s blood trail along the base of the wall. The scout did not see so much as a scuff mark on the soft ground, and he began to think the stranger had changed his mind about pursuing a wounded giant.

Tavis came to the remains of the town gate, a simple oaken door hanging splintered and cockeyed from its leather hinges. Dozens of human footprints covered the ground here, all ringed by crusts of dried mud and therefore old as fossils-at least as far as Tavis was concerned. In the gateway itself stood a puddle of fresh blood, and in the soft ground beyond lay the sharp outline of a fresh giant track. He started through the gate to inspect the print more closely.

Behind Tavis, the fly swarms in the village abruptly raised the pitch of their drone. He spun around to behold a hulking, man-sized blur rushing out of the fog. The scout saw a pair of horns curving up from the silhouette’s head, but the shape was so hazy that it was impossible to say whether the sharp points were part of a helmet or sprouted directly from the fellow’s head. Although the figure’s pumping legs were carrying him across the rubble at top speed, the man moved with such eerie silence that he seemed more apparition than human.

The stranger stopped a dozen paces away, bringing with him an arcane hush that spread over the ground like mist. Gray speckles appeared on his armor, creating a pattern of camouflage so perfect that Tavis nearly lost sight of him. The scout felt his mouth sag in wonder and promptly closed it, then raised his hand to greet the stranger. The warrior responded by cocking an arm to throw his warhammer.

“I come in peace!” the scout yelled.

“As do I.” It was the same euphonious voice Tavis had heard earlier. “Now dive!”

The warrior hurled his weapon high into the air. With a loud whooping trill, the hammer tumbled past, a dozen feet above Tavis’s head. In the same instant, the scout heard the hiss of a huge blade descending from on high. He threw himself toward the nearest rubble heap, barely clearing the top before the unseen instrument crashed down at his heels, spraying splintered timbers and loose stones in every direction. He hit the ground and rolled, spilling his quiver and scattering arrows all around him.

The stranger’s warhammer struck home with a loud crack. A booming voice bellowed in pain, then the ground began to buck as the injured giant stumbled away. Tavis came to his knees in time to glimpse his savior’s weapon sailing back toward its owner, then snatched one of his arrows off the ground. It was thicker than most, with red fletching, a stone tip, and runes carved along the shaft. The scout spun toward the gate, at the same time nocking the arrow in his great hickory bow, Bear Driller.

The giant had already vanished into the foggy pasture. Tavis found himself looking at a huge sword, lodged in the rubble pile over which he had leapt. The weapon was ten feet long, with a leather hilt and a double-edged blade as wide as a human body.

“Tavis?” Brianna’s voice was barely audible across the length of High Meadow. “Report!”

“We’re fine, Milady,” Tavis yelled. He was glad she could not see him, for his cheeks were burning with embarrassment The queen’s personal scout should not allow a giant to surprise him. “We’ll join you shortly.”

The scout eased the tension on his bow and pivoted to find the stranger sitting hunched in the base of a shattered hut, barely discernible from the stones around him. The man was turned half toward the heart of the village, his horned helmet slowly twisting back and forth as though he expected a second giant to appear any moment.

Tavis followed the stranger’s lead and crouched behind the remains of the hut. Although the scout could not sense the cause of the man’s alarm, he had seen enough of the warrior’s mettle to respect his judgment. He kept his arrow nocked and watched for the second giant.

An eddy appeared in the fog, about twenty feet above the stranger’s head. The current resembled an inverted plume of steam, alternately billowing downward and upward, like smoke from the nostrils of a snorting dragon.

“Run, stranger!”

As the scout cried the warning, he drew Bear Driller’s mighty bowstring and loosed the thick arrow toward the eddy. The shaft hissed away into the fog, then ripped into something leathery. A gurgling cry rasped across the village. Red blood came spilling out of the sky and splashed into the rubble behind the stranger, spattering the man’s armor with drops as large as his pauldrons. The astonished warrior sprang up and spun to face the giant.

The scout cursed the man’s bravery. With the fellow standing so close, Tavis did not dare utter the command words that would activate his arrow’s magic runes. “No!” he called. “Run!”

The stranger swung his hammer into the fog. The blow landed with a sonorous thump, and the giant grunted in pain. A huge silhouette limped out of the haze, stooping over to hold his knee with one hand.

Even hunched over, the marauder loomed over his foe like a mountain. He was easily half-again as large as a hill giant, with a wild mane of silvery hair, skin as white as snow, and a trickle of dark blood dripping from his arrow wound. With an air of hateful disdain, the great savage glared down at his attacker, and the stranger wisely froze to avoid triggering an assault.

Tavis no longer felt quite so foolish. The marauder was a fog giant, the sneakiest of all the true giant races. They had thick, puffy pads on the soles of their feet that enabled them to move in near silence. As their name implied, they took full advantage of their stealth by inhabiting foggy areas where their skin and hair coloring served as ideal camouflage.

The fog giant drew himself to his full height, his head vanishing into the hazy sky. Tavis screamed a mighty battle cry and started forward, hoping to draw the giant toward himself. The unknown warrior slammed his hammer into the marauder’s leg. The massive knee buckled sideways.

An angry bellow pealed over the rubble, then a huge, double-bladed axe arced down out of the haze and struck the stranger’s enchanted armor with a sharp clang. The man did not disappear in a spray of blood, as Tavis had expected, but simply sailed into the fog. He crashed down some distance away, without even a groan to suggest he had survived.

The giant grunted, then stepped toward Tavis.

The scout yelled, “Basil is wise!”

A ray of shimmering blue lanced out of the giant’s throat wound. The brute roared in astonishment and started to raise a hand to his neck, then the runearrow detonated. The marauder’s head disappeared in a brilliant burst of sapphire light, leaving the body to teeter on its own. The corpse continued to stand for several moments, until the tension suddenly melted from its joints and it collapsed in a crashing heap.

When the rumbling died away, Tavis heard the distant clamor of clanging armor. The Company of the Winter Wolf was rushing through the fog at top speed, no doubt with Brianna in the lead. The scout did not bother yelling at the queen to turn back. She could not have heard him over all the racket.

Keeping one eye open for more giants, Tavis quickly gathered his spilled arrows, then went to look for the stranger’s body. The scout found the warrior lying in the rubble of a small hut, next to a root cellar containing the mangled remains of several children and their guardian.

Tavis knelt at the stranger’s side. The fog giant’s axe had staved in the warrior’s breastplate, splitting it apart and opening a horrible gash over the fellow’s ribs. The scout reached up and flipped the visor open. Inside was a swarthy, handsome man with curly, dark hair and a cleft chin. His brown eyes were open and alert, focusing on Tavis’s face. His broad mouth twisted into a weak smile.

“Basil is wise?” he groaned.

Tavis nearly leapt away, so astonished was he to hear the man speak. “M-My runecaster’s idea of a joke,” he explained. The scout touched one of the red-fletched shafts in his quiver. “It’s the command to activate these runearrows.”

The stranger’s bleary eyes widened in alarm. “By the Titan!” he cursed, trying to drag himself away. “I didn’t mean-”

“Relax. The arrow has to be nocked before the command works.” Tavis pushed the man back down. “How many more fog giants are skulking around this village?”

The warrior managed a condescending smile. “None, I suspect,” he said. “I was hunting only two. You killed one, and I injured the other. I doubt he’ll come back looking for trouble.”

“Probably not,” Tavis agreed, relieved to hear that Brianna would not be endangered. “But one can never be too careful. I’ll post a guard as soon as the company arrives. In the meantime, I’d better have a look at your injuries.”

The scout started to unbuckle the warrior’s mangled breastplate.

“That’s not necessary,” the stranger said, raising a hand to stop Tavis. “Just help me up.”

“Up?” the scout exclaimed. “If I do that, your insides will spill all over the ground. Take a look at yourself!”

The warrior obediently lowered his gaze. When he saw the rent in his armor and all the gore spilling out of his wound, his swarthy face grew as pale as the fog. “The armor will hold me together.” Despite his brave words, the stranger’s voice was quivering. “That’s why I wear it”

With that, he grabbed the scout’s shoulder and pulled himself to his unsteady feet To Tavis’s enormous relief, the stranger was right about his armor-nothing more than blood spilled from his ghastly wound. With an agonized groan, the fellow leaned over and retrieved his warhammer, then straightened his shoulders and started to lurch toward the pastures.

Tavis stepped to his side. “What are you doing?”

“Hunting down that giant I wounded, of course,” the man replied. “I trust you’ll be good enough to help.”

“No! Absolutely not! The last thing I want is more fighting!” Tavis was thinking of Brianna and the Company of the Winter Wolf, which he could still hear approaching through the fog. “Besides, in your condition, you couldn’t hunt a marmot. Come with me, and we’ll have that wound looked after.”

The scout caught the stranger by a shoulder pauldron and gently pulled him back.

“Unhand me!” the warrior ordered. The fellow grimaced, then stepped forward, clearly expecting the scout to obey his command. “That giant’s about to escape.”

“Good. Let him.” Tavis retained his grip.

The stranger’s feet slipped, and he would have fallen had the scout’s grasp not been so secure. “How dare you!” the man blustered. He regained his balance and slowly turned around. “Do you know who I …?”

The warrior found himself craning his neck to look into Tavis’s eyes, and he let his sentence trail off. He looked the scout up and down, his mouth gaping open.

“No, I don’t know who you are,” Tavis replied. He raised his open hand in the traditional sign of friendship. “But I’m Tavis Burdun.”

The man’s astonished expression did not change, and he showed no sign of recognizing the scout’s name. “You’re a firbolg!” he sputtered.

The scout nodded, surprised it had taken the stranger so long to notice that obvious fact. As giant-kin, firbolgs were larger and more thick-boned than humans. Although Tavis was a runt by his race’s standards-standing only eight feet to the normal ten or twelve-he was still big enough that his ancestry should have been obvious. “Does my race bother you, sir?”

The warrior shook his head. “Of course not. I was merely surprised that I hadn’t noticed before.” Remembering his manners, the stranger raised his hand in greeting, then cringed at the pain this caused him. “You may call me Arlien, my friend. Now, I really must go if I’m going to catch that giant”

He turned to leave, but Tavis caught him by the arm.

“What’s so important about killing that giant?” the firbolg demanded. The Company of the Winter Wolf was now so close that Tavis could hear Selwyn’s men calling through the fog as they struggled to maintain formation. “Is it worth the risk that you’ll be the one who dies?”

Arlien rolled his eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous, Tavis,” he said, “ I won’t get killed.”

“You’re lucky you’re not dead already.” The firbolg pointed to the man’s mangled armor. “And you still haven’t answered my question. What’s so important about killing that giant?”

The warrior regarded Tavis as though he were daft “I should think that’s obvious,” he said. “The churl assaulted me!”

It was Tavis’s turn to roll his eyes. “That’s a reason?”

“It seems sufficient to me,” Arlien retorted.

“Perhaps under different circumstances,” the firbolg allowed. “But as it is, you can’t go.”

“I can’t go?” Arlien fumed. “And just how do you propose to stop me?”

“I’m quite sure Tavis would find a way,” said Brianna. “He’s a most resourceful bodyguard.”

The firbolg turned, then uttered a silent curse as he saw the queen quietly slipping out of the fog-well ahead of the soldiers assigned to protect her. She was extremely tall for a human, with a frame as sturdy as a man’s and a height just a few inches shy of seven feet. From what Tavis gathered, most men did not consider her beautiful, but to him she was the picture of elegance. She had a striking face, with clear skin, a dimpled chin, and sparkling violet eyes. Her long tresses were as fine as spider silk and more yellow than gold, while she had a lithe figure with long, graceful limbs and gentle curves.

Brianna stepped to Tavis’s side and began to look him over. “I heard your runearrow explode,” she said. “Are you all right?”

“Thank you, milady. I’m well.” The firbolg addressed her in his best formal tone. Although Brianna’s attempts to conceal the romance between them were fast becoming a joke among her courtiers and earls, Tavis had learned enough about politics to know he should not flaunt their relationship before a foreigner. The scout reached over and gently turned Arlien so that Brianna could see the gaping wound in his side. “It’s our new friend who needs your services.”

Brianna’s eyes widened at the sight of the injury, and she stepped to Arlien’s side. “You shouldn’t be standing,” she said. “Lie down.”

“That’s not necessary, Lady,” Arlien protested. “I’ll be-”

“Dead, if you don’t let me heal this,” Brianna snapped. She scooped the warrior into her arms and lifted him off the ground, plate armor and all. “Clear a place for him, Tavis.”

As the firbolg began tossing stones aside, he could not help smiling at the dumbfounded expression on Arlien’s face. Lifting a fully armored warrior was ordinarily well beyond a human woman’s capabilities, but Brianna could hardly be considered ordinary. She had inherited the extraordinary strength of her Hartwick ancestors, and could easily have matched any firbolg in a contest of might. Tavis had even seen her father defeat hill giants in such competitions, and some claimed that the first Hartwick king had bested storm giants.

All this was lost on Arlien, who finally recovered his wits and resumed his protests. “Put me down, Lady!”

“Very well, but you will let me heal you!” Brianna replied. “This wound is more serious than you realize.”

A sheepish look came over Arlien’s face as the queen returned him to the ground. “Dear lady, I thank you for your kind offer, but I assure you it isn’t necessary,” he said. “My armor will heal both my body and its rents within a few days’ time, but you mustn’t interfere. The enchantment will vanish.”

Brianna’s cheeks colored. “Enchanted, you say?” She bit her lip, then demanded, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Arlien’s face darkened, but he managed to force a rather insincere smile. “I was trying,” he said in a controlled voice. “However, in your kindly haste to look after my health, you neglected to give me the opportunity.”

Brianna’s smile turned to ice. “Well, I’m glad to see you survived.” She removed a clean bandage from her shoulder satchel and passed it to the warrior. “I hope that a simple dressing will not affect your armor’s magic. I really have very little desire to stare at your gruesome wounds.”

“That is a relief, Milady.” Arlien accepted the cloth, then turned away as he pressed it over the gash in his side. “I was beginning to think you rather enjoyed it”

Captain Selwyn arrived with the first soldiers of his scattered company, bringing the argument to a temporary halt Tavis ordered the commander to have his men surround the area at a distance of fifty paces.

Brianna watched the Winter Wolves clang off to their posts, then fixed her coldest glare on Arlien. “By the way, what brings you to our kingdom? Cuthbert Fief is hardly the route most travelers choose to enter Hartsvale.”

Arlien’s eyes grew as hard as Brianna’s. “My visit is not your concern, dear lady,” he said. “But I will say this much: Your fief is in terrible peril. I’m sorry to report that standing before you is the sole survivor of a large caravan. A hundred of my fellows were massacred not far from here, by a tribe of more than two hundred frost giants.”

“Frost giants!” Tavis exclaimed. “Are you sure?”

Arlien’s only response was a condescending glance.

“Where did this happen?” Brianna demanded.

Arlien pointed toward the fog-shrouded pastures, which the scout knew from past visits lay beneath a craggy wall of ice-sheathed peaks. “On the other side of those mountains,” he said. “Not three days ago.”

“And what of the fog giants?” Tavis inquired. “Where did they come from?”

Arlien shrugged. “I suppose from the cold mists beneath the Endless Ice Sea, like all their kind,” he said. “As to what they’re doing here, I can’t say. They were in the village when I arrived.”

Brianna cocked her brow and looked to Tavis. “What are we to make of this?”

The scout narrowed his eyes. “No good,” he replied. “Three different tribes of giants do not converge on the same fief by accident. I suggest we return to Cuthbert Castle and warn the earl to prepare for a siege.”

Brianna nodded, then looked to the stranger. “You did us a great service,” she said. “I invite you to share the safety of our company as we return to the castle.”

Arlien inclined his head. “Thank you, good lady, but I ask only that you point me in the direction of Castle Hartwick,” he replied. “I have business with your queen.”

A crooked grin crept across Brianna’s mouth. “Tavis, perhaps you should introduce me to your wounded friend.”

“Very well,” the firbolg replied, also grinning. He bowed to Brianna, then gestured to the newcomer. “Milady, may I present Arlien of…” The scout let his sentence trail off, leaving it to the warrior to finish.

“Arlien of Gilthwit,” he said. “ Prince Arlien of Gilthwit.”

Tavis lifted his brow. He had heard rumors of a place called Gilthwit. It was supposed to lie somewhere on the icy plain between Hartsvale’s northern border and the Endless Ice Sea. By all accounts, it was a frozen waste of a kingdom, so overrun by giants that humans had been reduced to mere savagery. Judging by Arlien, at least, the rumors were wrong.

If Brianna was impressed, she did not show it. “I’ve never met anyone from Gilthwit, Prince Arlien,” she said. “In fact, I’ve always heard it was a legend, not a real place.”

The prince gave her a warm smile. “Isn’t it possible to be both, Lady…?”

“Brianna of Hartwick,” Tavis filled in. He bowed to the prince, then finished the introduction, “ Queen of Hartsvale, of course.”

Arlien’s face turned as gray as ash. “Annam help me!” he gasped, looking Brianna over from head to toe-all seven feet of her. “You’re the woman my father sent me to court?”