Douglas Niles - The Kinslayer Wars

Was there something there, down the path that they had seen when they landed, the one that seemed to lead away from this ledge? Sithas blinked, certain his eyes deceived him, but it had seemed as if something moved!

In the next instant, he gaped in shock as a huge shape lunged out of the blowing snow. It towered twice as high as an elf, though its shape was vaguely human. It had arms and hands—indeed, one of those clutched a club the size of a small tree trunk. This weapon loomed high above Sithas as the creature charged forward.

“Kith! A giant!” He shouted, kicking his brother to awaken him. At the same time, purely by instinct, he picked up the sword he had laid by his side. Arcuballis reacted faster than the elf, springing toward the giant with a powerful shriek. Sithas watched in horror as the monster’s club crashed into the griffon’s skull. Soundlessly Arcuballis went limp, disappearing over the side of the ledge like so much discarded garbage.

“No!” Kith-Kanan was awake now and saw the fate of his beloved steed. At the same time, the twins saw additional shapes, two or three more, materializing from the blizzard behind the first giant. Snarling with hatred, the elven warrior grabbed his blade.

The monster’s face, this close, was more grotesque than Sithas had first thought. Its eyes were small, bloodshot, and very close-set while its nose bulged like an outcrop of rock. Its mouth was garishly wide. The giant’s maw gaped open as the beast fought, revealing blood-red gums and stubs of ivory that looked more like tusks than teeth.

A deep and pervasive terror seized Sithas, freezing him in place. He could only stare in horror at the approaching menace. Some distant part of his mind told him that he should react, should fight, but his muscles refused to budge. His fear paralyzed him.

Kith-Kanan rose into a fighting crouch, menacing the giant with his sword. Tears streaked Kith’s face, but grief only heightened his rage and his deadly competence. His hand remained steady. Seeing him, Sithas shook his head, finally freeing himself from his immobility.

Sithas leaped to his feet and lunged at the monster, but his foot slipped on the icy rocks, and he fell to the rocks at the very lip of the precipice, slamming the wind from his lungs. The giant loomed over him.

But then he saw his brother, darting forward with incredible agility, raising his blade and thrusting at the giant’s belly. The keen steel struck home, and the creature howled, lurching backward. One of its huge boots slipped from the ice-encrusted ledge, and with a scream, the monster vanished into the gray storm below.

Now they saw that the three other giants approached them, one at a time along the narrow ledge. Each of the massive creatures carried a huge club. The first of these lumbered forward, and Kith-Kanan darted at him. Sithas, recovering his breath, climbed to his feet.

The giant stepped back, then swung a heavy blow at the dodging, weaving elf. Kith danced away, and then struck so quickly that Sithas didn’t see the movement. The tip of the sword cut a shallow opening in the giant’s knee before the elf skipped backward.

But that cut was telling. Sithas watched in astonishment as the giant’s leg collapsed beneath it. Thrashing in futility with its hamlike hands, the giant slid slowly over the edge, vanishing with a shriek that was quickly lost in the howling of the storm.

While the other two giants gaped in astonishment, Kith-Kanan remained a dervish of motion. He charged the massive creatures, sending them slipping and sliding backward along the ledge to avoid his keen blade, a blade that now glistened with blood.

“Kith, watch out!” Sithas found his voice and urged his brother on. Kith-Kanan appeared to stumble, and one of the giants crashed his heavy club downward. But again the elf moved too quickly, and the club splintered against bare stone. Kith rolled toward this one, rising into a crouch between its stumplike legs. He stabbed upward with all the strength in his powerful arms and shoulders, and then dove out of the way as the mortally wounded giant bellowed its pain.

Sithas raced toward his brother, recognizing Kith’s danger. He saw his twin slip as he tried to hug the cliff wall between the dying giant and its sole remaining comrade.

The latter swung his club with strength born of desperate terror. The loglike beam, nearly a foot thick at its head, crashed into Kith-Kanan’s chest and crushed his body against the rough stone wall behind him. Sithas saw his brother’s head snap back and blood explode from his skull. Slowly the elf sank to the ledge.

The wounded giant collapsed, and Sithas sent it toppling from the brink. The last of the brutes looked at the charging elf, the twin of the warrior he had just felled, and turned away. He bounded along the narrow ledge, descending across the face of the mountain, away from the niche that had sheltered the twins. In seconds, he disappeared into the distance.

Sithas paid no further attention to the monster. He knelt at Kith’s side, appalled at the blood that gushed from his brother’s mouth and nose, staining and matting his long blond hair.

“Kith, don’t die! Please!” He didn’t realize that he was sobbing. Gingerly he lifted his brother, surprised at Kith’s frailty—or perhaps at his own desperate strength. He carried him to their niche. Every cloak, every blanket and tunic that they carried, he used to cushion and wrap Kith-Kanan. His brother’s eyes were closed. A very faint motion, a rising and falling of his chest, gave the only sign that Kith lived.

Now night fell with abruptness, and the wind seemed to pick up. The snow stung Sithas’s face as sharply as did his own tears. He took Kith’s cold hand in his and sat beside his brother, not expecting either of them to be alive to greet the dawn.

Somehow Sithas must have dozed off, for he suddenly noticed that the wind, the snow—indeed, the entire storm—had vanished. The air, now still, had become icy cold, with an absolute clarity that only comes in the highest mountains during the deepest winter frosts.

The sun hadn’t risen yet, but the Speaker could see that all around him towered summits of unimaginable heights, plumed with great collars of snow. Gray and impassive, like stone-face giants with thick beards of frost, they regarded him from their aloof vantages.

The brothers’ ledge perched along one of the two steep sides of the valley. To the south, on Sithas’s left as he looked outward, the valley stretched and twisted toward the low, forested country from which they had come. To the right, it appeared to end in a cirque of steep-walled peaks. At one place, he saw a saddle that, while still high above him, seemed to offer a lone, treacherous path into the next section of the mountain range. Kith-Kanan lay motionless beside him. His skin had the paleness of death, and Sithas had to struggle against a resurgence of despair. He couldn’t allow himself to abandon hope; he was their only chance for survival. The quest for the griffons, the excitement and adventure of the journey he had known before, were all forgotten now, overwhelmed by the simple and basic wish to continue living.

The valley below him, he saw, was not as deep as they had guessed when the storm struck. Their shelf was a bare hundred feet above level ground. He leaned out to look over the edge, but all he saw was a vast drift of snow piled against the cliff. If the bodies of the giants or of gallant, fallen Arcuballis remained down there somewhere, he had no way to know it. No trees grew in this high valley, nor did he see any signs of animal life. In fact, the only objects that met his eyes, in any direction, were the bedrock of the mountain range and the snowy blanket that covered it.