Troy Denning: The Giant Among Us

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.”