Vaughn Heppner: Giants

“Do I have to pitch you over?” Balak asked ominously.

Joash’s head snapped up, and they stared at one another.

“That’s right,” Balak whispered, his ugly face twisting into evil delight. “Come at me, if you dare.”

Hating his fear and daunted by Balak’s size, and that the beastmaster had the better position, Joash slid his feet over the edge. He began to tremble.

I don’t have a rope. I’ll fall to my death .

Joash almost begged for mercy, but he bit his lips instead. There was no mercy in Balak. Carefully, Joash felt with his toes, seeking purchase on the sheer cliff-face. Then he began to ease over, pretending he was a human fly.

While clinging to the cliff, Joash heard Balak’s shouts drifting down. With infinite slowness, Joash twisted his neck. Winds howled around him. Rock poked his belly, and his fingers and toes grasped the slightest protrusions of stone. He spied an angry pterodactyl. It had leathery skin, fearsomely long wings, and a foul hyena-like odor from its scavenging habits. Joash stared into a beady eye that had evil intent. The pterodactyl knew he was vulnerable, and maybe it was emboldened by his friend’s recent death.

Hissing like a steam-kettle, the creature swooped at Joash, making the long gash of a scar on his back throb in memory.

Joash might have moaned, but long weeks under Balak’s tender care had beaten the softer emotions out of him. Joash had survived a pirate raid, although he’d seen his brother butchered on the merchant vessel and kicked overboard to sharks. Along with others, he’d stepped onto a Shamgar auction block a week afterward and had been sold to Balak.

Balak roared, “To your left, you fool!”

Joash licked his lips, and pressed himself against the cliff as the pterodactyl swept past. It was over a thousand feet down to the ground. The creature’s cold claws touched his head, enough to press his cheek harder against stone, but thankfully not enough to dislodge him.

“Left! Left!” came Balak’s drifting bellow.

That meant there was a nest to the left that Joash should rob.

Joash filled his lungs even as he tightened his hold. The minute thrust of his filling lungs pushing against the cliff terrified him. “I’m going to trick them, Master! I’m headed to the lower nests first.”

Joash waited, as a howling gust tried to pluck him off. When the other slaves had lived, they had hurled rocks and stones at the circling pterodactyls to help the robber. Now Joash had to rely solely on Balak’s bow.

Another pterodactyl screeched and swooped. There was a hiss, however, one quite different from a pterodactyl’s attacking cry. The swooping creature screamed in pain, with a long black arrow sprouting from its wing. The creature tumbled end over end before righting itself. Then it hit the cliff head-first, bounced, crumpled, and began the thousand-foot drop to its death.

The other circling pterodactyls screeched with rage, but they flapped away from Joash and out of range of Balak’s bow.

After a tremor washed through him, Joash slowly continued working lower, desperately feeling with his toes, and clinging with his fingertips. He had no intention of climbing back up with stolen eggs. To return to Balak meant eventual death. To rob nests meant these enraged creatures would kill him as they had his last friend. The trick was to climb down far enough so he was out of Balak’s deadly range. Then he had to beat Balak down to the valley floor.

A scream almost tore out of Joash’s throat as brittle rock crumbled under his toes. To the sound of granite flakes striking rock, Joash slipped. His bleeding hand fell away, and he dangled by one hand by his fingertips. With preternatural calm, Joash sought a new purchase with his toes. Once found, he carefully wiped the bleeding palm against his breeches.

“Hurry,” drifted Balak’s voice. “It’s past lunchtime and I’m hungry.”

“Eat stone,” Joash whispered. Then he blinked furiously as sweat stung his eyes. He didn’t dare wipe them. Slowly, he resumed his treacherous descent.

A hissing arrow told Joash that Balak had divined his plan. Three more arrows flashed by in quick succession. The nearest chipped rock just above his head, and sent a flake bouncing off of his sweaty hair. Soon thereafter, rocks dropped past Joash. One clipped his shoulder, gashing skin and nearly tearing him off the cliff-face. Grimly, Joash hung on.

Now that Balak knew of his intent to escape, Joash craned his head, looking up. Panting, he moved sideways on the mountainside. He wanted to move faster but didn’t dare. He tried for an outcropping to shield him from Balak’s vengeance.

Balak must have understood, for more rocks rained. Two struck Joash, and one did the task.

Joash cried out, and he dropped sickeningly. Before he could think, before the screams began, he thudded with a jolting crash onto a pterodactyl’s nest. Sticks and eggs cracked. Joash lay gasping on his back on a miniscule ledge, his feet overhanging one end and his head the other like a tiny bed. A crazed pterodactyl swooped, screeching at him, and it might have killed Joash. But one of Balak’s rocks caught the creature smack on the head, sending it tumbling down to its death.

Those precious seconds saved Joash’s life. Despite throbbing pains—it hurt his ribs every time he breathed—Joash flipped onto his belly, slipped over the tiny ledge, and renewed his descent. Now he had a ledge shielding him. All he had to do was climb down another nine hundred harrowing feet and he would live.

The fact that no more rocks rained down told him that Balak must have come to the same conclusion. The beastmaster had likely started down, vowing that no slave would escape him. During these past weeks Balak had boasted about it endlessly. Worse, the beastmaster would use his dire wolves to help him track. But Joash couldn’t worry about that, at least not now. Just getting down was the problem.

After a grim descent, Joash finally reached the ground. Now he stumbled between lichen-covered boulders as he breathed heavily. The muscles in his thighs trembled, almost forcing him to his knees. A stitch in his side had turned into knotted agony. His curled, nearly crippled fingers were impossible to move.

In the distance, a dire wolf howled.

With bleeding fingers and toes, Joash had made it off the cliff-face and collapsed onto the flinty soil. Knowing that time had become a bitter enemy, Joash had tried to will himself up. Instead he’d quivered, worse than exhausted from the torturous descent. For brutal seconds he’d simply lain, breathed, poured sweat, and trembled. Maybe a hidden sense had tricked him to roll over and open his eyes. The mangled corpse of his dead friend had stared him in the eye. In sick horror, Joash had scrambled to his feet and lurched away.

Now, he stumbled between these boulders, his bloody feet leaving red prints. After several tries, he clutched a hand-sized rock, determined to fight at the end. If he could scratch Balak, chip a tooth, anything in payment for the man’s murderous wretchedness, Joash would feel vindicated.

Joash no longer knew how long he’d been running. His brother… no, no, his brother was dead, slain by Shamgar pirates. The summer before his parents—

A sharp howl caused Joash to twist back. A dire wolf raced low to the stony ground after him. The squat beast had shaggy hair, with a spot of white hair in the middle of its broad head. Behind it came others, with bared fangs and red lolling tongues. To Joash’s shocked dismay, Balak pounded after him in a rhinoceros-like charge not far behind the last wolf. The brute grinned fiercely.

Joash ran, tripped, crashed to his knees, skinning the left, and scrambled back up. All he heard now was the sound of his breathing, and the occasional grunt as he thumped against a boulder. He wished he could turn and slay his enemies. He’d heard stories about heroes, about courageous warriors who fought against insane odds. He wanted to be a hero. He hated being a lanky slave, hunted, dead-tired and frightened of—