"Servant of Empire" - Ch 8

We had found two more bodies along the way, cast-offs that couldn’t keep up or perhaps had made an escape attempt and didn’t live through it. I was still smouldering from this – a mother and child. Even slaves weren’t to be treated this way.

Nix had re-mounted, and was scouting ahead with Rendo just before nightfall when they finally spotted the attack party. The two of them trotted back to us, waving to quiet us and to dismount.

We did just that – it was a relief to get off that saddle every single time for me. The insides of my thighs ached as though I’d been pounding them with a hammer, and because it had been designed for a human, the ridge at the back of the saddle had been digging into the base of my tail fiercely. You know how your leg tingles when it wakes up after going numb? My tail went bonkers with needle-pains whenever I got off one of those human saddles. When you rely on that tail for balance, it can really make even walking a chore. I did my best and managed not to fall over as we climbed up the side of a hill to get a look.

Giants they were, huge trundling bodies, twice the height of a man and three times as wide, clad in rough animal skins and carrying weapons the size of small trees. There were seven of them, four ahead and three behind the train of humans they were leading. Perhaps it was the sight of them, but as soon as I caught a view over the crest of a hill I could immediately smell them – sour, musky, unwashed.

Between the two groups there were perhaps a hundred humans of all sorts, staggering along in a rough oval. I could barely make out that they were bound together.

We retreated from the hill-crest, out of sight.

“Okay, what’s the plan, Sered?” Wynter asked quickly. His voice was a hoarse whisper, and his eyes had gone grey like slate. A machine, a tool, an instrument that spoke. He didn’t move at all outside of what was needed to speak. Perhaps it was my awareness of his condition that had me imagining things, but I could almost see his cheeks folding rather than stretching, like the leather of a bag when it is opened and closed.

Sered, lightning trapped in the brows of his forehead, surveyed the ground ahead. “We re-mount, move up a league or two around that hill,” he gestured with an outstretched finger. “And hide in that large copse of aspen, there.” His finger finished with an accusatory push at the trees he mentioned.

“Then we wait.” He said.

“Ambush front or back?” Rendo asked.

“Back. Take the three first, and try to be quiet about it. How are you with that bow, Shadrim?”

I thought about it. “If we’re within a hundred yards of those things, I can probably take one in the neck. Maybe the ear or his eye if he holds still. Those are large enough.”

He nodded. “You might get that chance. The prisoners aren’t moving very fast, and those giants have to pause to wait and let them keep up.”

I thought it over, what he was planning. “Should we perhaps take the front ones instead, first?”

He frowned, looking at me. Waiting for the explanation.

“I mean, the back ones are fewer, yes.” I nodded toward the smoke. “But if the front ones see us and bolt, they’re closer to their home than we are, and might come back with more friends.”

Sered considered this for a few moments. “I’d rather have the opportunity to take the rear ones out quietly, then sneak up through the crowd to get them.”

I nodded acknowledgement of his choice. “I don’t think the crowd will remain quiet if they notice us taking those rear ones out, but I’m not in command here.”

“Neither is he, but sometimes he thinks so,” Rendo whispered to me. I saw Wynter grin at this. Nix probably heard as well, but if she did, she gave no outward sign.

Sered scowled a little, but let the jibe pass without retort. “Everyone back to the horses. Drop all the unnecessary gear there, and we ride hard to the intercept.”

We did as he’d said, and got underway. Our horses made good time around the intervening hills, leaving beaten grass in our wake.

Wynter pulled alongside me while we rode. “Bow or sword for you?” He called, his voice rough with the jostling of his horse.

I thought it over. “Bow would be better, but I’m good with the sword if needed.”

He nodded. “You’re with Rendo and Nix then. Nix will lay a trap for them, Sered and I will wade in and down one while you shoot another. We should make quick work of the three of them.”

“Not quick enough to be quiet, I think.”

“Nix has that handled. I’m also not completely without magic here.” His grin was cold.

We reached a small gully a hundred yards or so from the copse we wanted somewhat ahead of where the train would pass, and tied our horses together in it. Running low and fast, we reached the trees without incident, just in time to settle into position as the first of the giants lumbered into view around the edge of the hillside.

I’ve seen bigger creatures before, but something about seeing the form of a humanoid enlarged to that size was distinctly alien, and set off a jarring feel of cognitive dissonance in my mind. Such a frame simply should not be. They ranged from nine to twelve feet or so in height, scruffy with overgrown hair and clothed in furred leather patchwork. They wore some sort of hide shoes, more like wraps made from deer-skins. I had no doubt that the soles of their feet would be thick and hard as leather, too. These were all males, and aside from a few scrapes and bruises – likely inflicted by their own companions – uninjured.

I nocked an arrow as I waited, looking for good places to put a sticker into these things. Their leathers were not tightly fitted, which meant getting a proper hit through them would be very difficult. Exposed skin was generally on their limbs, necks and faces. My best bet would be to shoot for the big arteries in the neck or inner arms, and otherwise go for the natural entrances to the skull – creatures this size, I’d have to be very close to penetrate the bone of their skulls, even with a good shot.

I quietly hummed a tuneless lyric of enchantment over my bow, feeling its own bound magic stir to wakefulness, swirling around the arrow and infusing its tip with the need to pierce, to find soft flesh. To feed. I felt the familiar thrumming of power in the wood, which settled my stomach a little…I’d been slightly afraid that with the dissolution of the Empire, perhaps our common enchantments may have evaporated like so much smoke. I guess that although the society may have fractured, the knowledge we gained, our practices, were still functional.

The first giants walked by, some fifty yards from our hiding place. Their gait spanned a man’s height with a single step, but they took their pace slowly, moving no faster than a man might walk. I figured this was to avoid outpacing their train of captives, who followed thirty or forty feet behind.

The bedraggled citizens of Evilineton were roped by the neck, one after the other, in several long chains of abject humanity. Heads down, some still weeping, they walked with all the certainty of the grave in the footsteps of the behemoths ahead of them. Many were bruised, all of them in a disheveled state. A few still wore tattered night-clothes, having been roused from their sleep with little warning.

Once the lead giants passed by, Sered and Wynter wormed their way forward to close half the distance to the marching column. I worried that they were leaving a trail in the grass that would be easy for a giant to spot from the high vantage of their gaze, but they were too far ahead before I noticed it to be able to call out a warning.

In the end, I needn’t have worried – the rear guard was so inattentive as to be almost comical. They were arguing amongst one another and looking anywhere except at the task at hand. I realized that my own military discipline and that of my accustomed foes had conditioned me to deal with a thinking, prepared enemy.

These monolithic heaps of flesh were anything but prepared. They were done with their fight, they’d won their victory, and had no idea that their war was far from over.

I signaled Nix and Rendo that we should take the furthest of the three, a scarred and warped individual whose left eye had been put out in some battle or fight long ago. It had been dragging behind the other two, looking back over its shoulder to the wood they’d left behind. Rendo nodded while Nix put up a hand to have us wait.

“One moment,” she said. She muttered a few phrases in a language I didn’t recognize, and threw a small handful of dust into the wind. “Okay, now.”

As she lowered her hands from the weave she’d sent towards our enemy, Rendo and I released our arrows. Rendo’s speed was amazing - he had another nocked and loose before the first had even hit. The only sound was the humming rhythm of the bows. A moment later, Nix added a distinct hissing with the release of a glimmering charge from between her hands.

Rendo’s first arrow vanished into the furs that the creature was wearing, and at the same moment mine buried itself in the same brute’s neck. It swatted at the wound as if a mosquito had stung it, driving the arrow further into its vitals. Its mouth was open to roar…

…but no sound came out. None at all. In fact, nothing made noise – it should have made some kind of slapping sound when it hit its neck, but not a whisper came. Nix’s spell had silenced it completely.

We each put another arrow or two into the target before its companions even began to notice something was wrong. The one in the middle pulled up short, holding its throat and trying to speak, apparently thinking it had somehow lost its voice, while the nearest simply plodded along, still staring at its feet.

The middle one looked up at its forward companion, then back, pointing at his throat and trying to speak.

His eyes went wide as dinner-plates when he saw the ruin we’d visited upon his colleague. Blood was smeared across the old creature’s neck, and feathered nocking protruded from several places. Just as realization dawned upon him, one of Nix’s ephemeral bolts vanished through the ruined socket where the wounded one’s missing left eye should have been, and it dropped to its knees, a streamer of blood issuing from the hole in a mockery of tears. The giant settled on his knees, and fell slowly over on his side.

Fear crawling upon his face like so many insects, the alert giant turned to shout his alarm only to see Sered and Wynter rise up from the grass, blades in hand and charging at the lead giant. It swept an arm down and pulled up a big clump of grass and dirt and hefted this bundle at its leading companion, whose downcast eyes hadn’t even noticed yet that they were under attack.

Rendo, Nix and I shifted our targets to the unaware creature, sending a shower of missiles at him. The clump of dirt arrived slightly before our arrows, and the startled giant turned swiftly to face its companions. Expecting mockery, I suppose, his anger was quite obvious. My shot missed, a casualty of the sudden twist in its direction, but Rendo’s landed in its shoulder and Wynter’s blade took it in the upper thigh. Its anger and surprise quickly turned into action as it lifted an arm to protect its face from our fire while hefting a great club to take a swing at the sword-bearers.

Wynter ducked beneath the sweeping blow and brought his blade up across the wrist of the creature, tugging it lightly to free it from the flesh of the giant’s arm. I saw a small spray of blood and as it dropped its club I realized Wynter had neatly severed all the tendons leading into that hand. Sered followed him in, his greatsword cutting an arc that would have been waist-high for a man, cleanly severing the giant’s leg mid-calf. It fell, grabbing at the bleeding stump with both its working and bleeding hands, roaring silently with pain and fury.

That pantomime of a roar was cut short as Sered’s momentum carried his blade around, up, and down in a broad circle that cut into the giant’s neck and buried itself in one of the creature’s vertebrae. Even behind the silence of Nix’s spell, I imagined I heard the chock as the huge sword sank into the giant’s neck. Blood fountained up from the creature, spraying into the wind, a summer fan of gory dandelion fluff. Sered’s face was a rictus of effort as he wedged the big sword up and out of the wound, dodging the giant’s feeble efforts to bat him away.

Wynter continued to race towards the remaining giant, who had gone from surprise to anger to sheer terror in the course of a matter of moments. It saw the tall, grey-skinned and blood-soaked man coming at him, long blade flashing and twirling in the sun, a frenzy of edge and motion. It turned and broke into a strange, cloddy run just as our arrows began to reach out and prick its skin, blood-leaching flies to such a huge thing.

Its run was cut short as Rendo braced his back against a tree and drew a careful bead on it, launching one single shaft that flew with a hum before turning silent as it crossed the intervening distance, burying itself just at the base of its skull, its razor-sharp head piercing the brain stem and scrambling the tissue inside. The giant’s limbs jerked wildly for an instant, then went slack. The creature dropped, a raggedy marionette whose strings were first tangled, then cut.

“Wow, nice,” I said. Rendo grunted affirmation.

As my vision widened out from the fight, I began to hear other noises beyond the veil of silence Wynter had laid down. Cries of fear and pain were coming from the trains of captives, as the rearmost had become aware of the combat and were hustling to get away from the fighting. Roped together as they were, the rearmost began dragging the more forward members by the neck, prompting bursts of exhausted outrage and protest.

The forward giants had not yet noticed the fighting, thankfully, but it wouldn’t be long. Sered and Wynter regrouped and began jogging forward, weapons held low beneath scraps of the clothing of the giant they’d downed. They were motioning to the rows of people, and talking to them, so that almost immediately the swarms of humans began to turn and shuffle back the way they’d come, the urgency in their motions the only indication that they were feeling the first glimmers of hope.

As they moved up through the rapidly-dispersing crowd, the rear-most giant’s head twitched slightly, and it looked back along the lines of people. The few of them who were looking at the huge creature gazed with wide eyes and gaping jaws, the horror on their faces evident.

The giant’s gaze initially was one of tired disinterest, but as it began to notice the lines of prisoners dispersing from the train its stupefaction gave way to comprehension…and then it noticed the bodies of its comrades.

I was about to loose an arrow when I heard a soft, contemplative chuckle from above me.

“Ahhh, heheheh, that’s the ticket, buddy. Suck this down.”

My eyes followed the voice to look directly above me. In the branches of the tree, Nix was half-seated, half kneeling on a heavy branch some twenty feet above me. She reached out with her right hand, palm up and fingers cupped, like a fencer hefting an invisible blade. An orange spark shot from her outstretched fingers.

I hunkered down and re-aimed, my eyes following the spark as it flickered and sped across the intervening distance.

The giant that had noticed was in the act of drawing a breath to shout the alarm when the spark blossomed. In an instant, it expanded into a ball of white flames, a hemisphere expanding across the ground and enveloping him as well as at least one of his comrades. Another might have been caught in the blast, but I couldn’t see.

As fast as it bloomed, the fire evaporated, revealing a circle of char where once grass had been, and the four brobdingnagian enemies who were suddenly aware that something was seriously amiss. The one who had noticed us was doubled over, hands clutching at its throat as it exhaled smoke and gobbets of blood. It must have been in mid-inhale when the fire exploded around it, its lungs were probably seared.

I let loose the shaft on my string and watched it disappear into the creature’s body just behind its collarbone, a perfect heart-lung shot. I shifted my focus to another of the behemoths, one whose clothes were thoroughly charred. It was beating flames out on a few small places while it gripped its enormous club, and as I aimed a shot I saw one of Rendo’s small arrows slip in and bury itself in the meat of his upper arm.

The three remaining foes – my shot, as I had predicted, dropped mine for good – were shouting to each other, bellowing in deep voices and forming up into a rough triangle looking for their attackers. One spotted Sered and Wynter approaching, and pointed to them while shouting to his companions. Their cover blown, the two began charging – Wynter’s blade flashing through the grass, Sered’s greatsword raising above his shoulders to build momentum, still dripping thick red from his previous victim’s neck.

We kept shooting as they closed the distance, Nix adding small arcs of lightning to our barrage of arrows. The three giants sheltered themselves behind their hide clothing, which effectively kept most of our shots from being terribly effective.

I prepared to drop my bow and charge when Sered and Wynter closed to swinging range – I did not want to fire into them, despite the clear differences in height that would provide an easier shot, my training simply denied me that option. I unhitched my quiver and drew the blade, looking back up to the fight.

I saw Sered charging in, his blade just beginning a broad sweeping strike, his robe trailing behind him and stained crimson with the blood of the giant he’d slain.

Something must have caught at his foot, a clump of grass or a gopher-hole, because I saw his right leg jerk tight as he face-planted directly at the feet of his opponent. His greatsword went sailing through the air, twisting end for end as it flew. I vaguely heard something like “Oooph!” come out of him as his horizontal momentum had him smacking into the ground with huge force.

I heard a sigh from beside me. I saw Nix looking at Sered, and without looking at me she shrugged half-heartedly, shaking her head. “He does that.”

Perhaps this was an unexpected provenance, as the giant’s club passed through the air right where his ribs would have been. But still, he was prostate and helpless in front of the enormous creature.

Wynter detoured from his path and charged the giant before Sered, shouting a wordless battlecry as he swung his own weapon. Again he was aiming at the creature’s extended limb, slicing at the tendons and wrist of the giant’s hand and forearm. A few quick cuts landed as he chased the swinging club. The giant raised his hand above his head, getting it away from the pain Wynter was inflicting.

And leaving his belly open and unguarded.

Giants have remarkably tough skin, thicker than most beasts – akin to that of an elephant, and it serves as a natural armor. But even the finest heavy leather can be parted by a determined swing. Or a thrust.

Wynter’s gambit had paid off well, his enemy focused on withdrawing the exposed hand from reach, he was focused only on his hand being the point of conflict between them. As Wynter jumped from the grass and planted a foot on the giant’s leading knee, he drove the full length of his longsword into the right breast of the beast, all the way up to the hilt. It let out a sound like a wounded boar, all whine and whistle, which turned into a gurgling gasp as Wynter then drew a dagger and thrust it into the exposed armpit of its raised hand, also fully sheathing it in the creature’s flesh. I could see him twisting and yanking on the hilt of his sword, twirling the point in a killing pattern that was severing arteries, chopping lung.

The giant brought its arms together to cast him away, but Wynter had already withdrawn both blades, the dagger clean and the sword coated with blood, kicking off with to land on his back next to Sered, who was raising himself up on his hands. Sered whipped his head about to clear it as he stood unsteadily, and I could detect a limp in his right leg.

Quickly getting his bearings, Sered let out a bellow of his own, anger and frustration filling his voice as the behemoth in front of him staggered backward with a river of blood pouring from its belly and shoulder. The Nefilim extended his right hand wide and shouted a few words that I recognized as being of arcane nature, and from the grass nearby his sword flew into his waiting fingers. Ohh, aha, I thought.

As the sword smacked into his hand, a rock perhaps a foot and a half across sailed straight at him and glanced off his left side, knocking him back a pace and ending his shout prematurely. One of the two remaining giants was already hefting a second rock from his sack, while its partner held its tree-trunk sized spear menacingly.

I continued to run towards them, shouting at the crowd of roped humans and waving them away from the fight. If the two remaining enemies noticed me, they gave no sign of it. Nix had begun to pepper the closer one with bolts of magic that hissed overhead from her vantage in the trees, unerringly finding exposed flesh where Rendo’s arrows were confounded.

I put on my fiercest face as I ran, my tail whipping to maintain my stride and the links in my shirt making soft jingling with each pace. Sered and the farther giant were trading swings rapidly, each one countering or dodging the others’ blows, looking for all the world like an enormous man fighting with a terrier dog. Wynter slowly worked his way to one side as the two darted and weaved, each looking for a way to slip in on an unguarded space and sink a telling hit on something vital. Wynter was largely confounded, as the other giant was trying to keep back-to-back with its remaining colleague.

It was this giant that saw me coming first. He registered my approach with only a glance at first, he was so focused on keeping Wynter from getting a clean shot, but after a moment his gaze shifted back to me and his eyes narrowed. Grim determination settled onto his features and his huge spear swiveled in his hands to point at me, the enormous shaft waiting to pinion me upon its spiked point.

I slowed my pace and whispered an incantation to reinforce the morale of a group of soldiers – a legacy of my officer training – cool their emotions and focus them on their fight. I could sense the little wave of magic that left me, and as it washed over Sered and Wynter I saw them both alter their motion, almost imperceptibly. In an instant Wynter had covered the few meters between himself and the giant that had been distracted by me, and his blade flickered behind the thing’s left leg.

It grunted in pain and swung back to him, away from me, a reflexive backhanded blow passing through the empty space Wynter had already evacuated. As it turned, its left knee gave out and the look of pain turned to one of surprise and shock. I saw the spreading red stain already, and I knew in addition to being hamstrung he’d also had his femoral artery severed. It would be dead in mere minutes, if not seconds.

The giant shouted a warning to its comrade, who looked back at him with a frown, then returned to fencing with Sered. I couldn’t understand giantish, but the look on his face was quite clear – he knew the fight was lost.

As I charged towards the two beleaguered monoliths the injured one tried to stand again and failed. He braced both hands on his huge polearm and set its end against his injured knee while the point shakily aimed in my direction. I got the rhythm of his movements down and adjusted my pace, weaving my blade left and right to attract the creature’s attention. The way it had placed its weapon I saw it would have an easy pull to my left, but it wouldn’t react as quickly to the right. I directed my run as if to slip around the left side of the tip, and was rewarded when the giant gave a grunt of effort and pulled the shaft to receive me.

I pinned my run on my left foot and turned it into a leap right, landing and rolling directly under the passing spear-head, which flickered into the ground behind me with a huge impact, the giant reacting too late to catch me.

I may have never been the strongest of the warriors in the Caern Jale, but I certainly was among the quickest.

My momentum brought my roll up to my feet again, and I shot forward with two long steps along the outside length of the giant’s left arm while he struggled to free his weapon from the grip of the field’s soft ground to strike me. His face registered surprise that quickly grew to panic as I closed the distance. A backhand from his enormous arm would have diverted me and possibly stunned me for a few critical moments, but his fear denied his desire to relinquish his grasp on the pike. As he sat there, tugging frantically to get it loose, my charge carried me right up beneath his face, so close I could see the filthy hairs in his nose and ears.

In that moment my strike blended smoothly with my motion, the blade entering just under the left side of his jaw, sliding up and in, pushing into the skull of the enormous humanoid. I never let go of the blade, letting my momentum carry me past his face and yank hard on the weapon, forcing it to lever against his jawbone through the soft tissues deep inside his head. I felt the weapon scrape against the inside of his skull as I withdrew it in passing, a rough, scratchy feeling that transmitted through the metal and into my arm. I almost lost my grip on the sword, but it stayed with me. The shimmering blackened steel was marked with a blotchy red, most of the creature’s blood wiping clear as the sword pulled free.

The wound I left, now open, let loose like a crimson waterfall. Panic and fear gone, the creature stared blankly forward, its hands reflexively covering the wound and causing the spray to shower across the grass around it. It fell almost before I drew myself up to see what the next move should be.

I’d like to spin some grand acrobatic method by which I or we dispatched the final giant, but in the end it was a rather undramatic hail of simple arrows and magical bolts that did him in. Like a bear surrounded by hounds, we worried him to death in short order.

Once he was safely dealt with, I ran over to where I’d seen Sered hit by the giant’s stone. He was there, cradling his chest and breathing raggedly. I could see he had several broken ribs, and from the look of it at least one of those had punctured a lung. Blood – red, as it turns out Neffs bleed red – was trickling from his nose and he was clearing his mouth of it every few moments. His eyes were half-shut and his hand still clutched the hilt of the huge blade.

I didn’t even think, my old training kicking in immediately – I slid to my knees next to him and extended my hands over his form. My own blade fell carelessly into the grass beside me as I began the slow chant. Drawing a powder of mica from my satchel, I sprinkled them over the wounded ribs to facilitate the connection I was building. Mica is very conducive to arcane healing, something in its emotional connection to mortals draws attention away from the wound, and its earthy nature enables the practitioner to more easily feel their way into the subject’s body to repair flesh and particularly bone. At least, that’s what they taught us.

With a soft click I felt the connection take hold, and my vision dimmed. Instead of the sunny meadow around me, I sensed the interior of his body. Three ribs were snapped cleanly, one more in a rough long split down its length. It was one of the clean breaks that had jostled the wrong way and found itself piercing the outside of his right lung, just as I’d suspected. I poured a bit more effort into the enchantment and guided it with my hands, melding the ribs, extracting the intruding end from the lung and knitting the flesh around them. Within a couple of moments I’d sealed the lung tissue up and repaired the bones, though the long split was likely to heal fat. There were still very serious contusions and bruises, but none of these were at all life-threatening, and I didn’t want to exhaust myself while we were still in potentially enemy territory.

I exited the trance and returned to awareness to find him staring at me, hands held poised between us.

“What did you just do?” He asked with a slight slur.

“Probably saved your life,” I replied.

I noticed then that Wynter was standing a few feet behind me. “What manner of magic was that? I did not recognize that language.”

I considered the complicated explanation, abandoned it. I didn’t know enough of trade-speak yet to really completely discuss it, anyway. “Field commanders are taught incantations to address wounds in their teams.”

“From where does that magic come?” Sered still hadn’t lowered his hands. A frown had spread across his features.

“It just is – I channel the strength of earth and the heat of fire into the injury.”

“Yes, but what form of magic is that?”

I got what was worrying him. “Do you feel a strong sense of obligation now? A pull of obligation to me? A desire to serve me and slay my enemies?”

The frown became something else, his eyes widened in surprise. “What have you done?!?”

I grinned. “Nothing, you nump. It’s entirely elemental, nothing divine or infernal at all. Assuming you have one, your soul is safe.”

The frown returned.

“Are you going to lie there all day, or are you going to get up now?” I asked, extending a hand.

He ignored it and raised himself with some measure of grunting, walking slowly over to the bodies and carrying his sword at waist height.

“I had no idea wizards could do that, I thought it was entirely in the purview of the divine priests and magicians.” Wynter was genuinely surprised.

“All of our field commanders get trained this way. Not everyone in the force was Committed, and we were accomplished elementalists long before the Ascension.”

“Ascension?”

“The beginning of…when we allied ourselves with Hell.”

“The way you say that isn’t disturbing at all.” Sarcasm, I noticed, was alive and well in this time.

“Sorry, you asked.”

“Yeah, I guess I did. Let’s see how the others are doing.”

The general panic that had struck the captives seemed to have faded once the last giant was felled, and small clumps of them were slowly returning. One child was even standing on the chest of a giant, silently striking the lifeless corpse repeatedly on its chin with a long stick.

Rendo was rifling through the giants’ belongings. Sered had cleaned and sheathed his weapon, and was speaking to one small group of survivors. I stood there, watching, waiting for the shakes to pass. Every time I get into a fight, afterwards my hands and my knees shake uncontrollably. It is really annoying, but it is what it is.

Nix was approaching at a walk from the copse of trees we’d started in, carrying my bow with her. She handed it to me when she got within reach, and I nodded my thanks. I leaned on it carefully, steadying my hand with the weight of my body.

Wynter nudged her as I went over to the bodies to start retrieving what arrows I could.

“You should see what he can do with your kind of magic,” I heard him mutter. Their conversation continued as I moved out of ear-shot.

I managed to extract five or six arrows, and I still had a dozen in my quiver, another full wrap of twenty with the horses, so I didn’t feel terribly short yet. I cleaned my blade on the grass and wiped the last traces of gore off on one of the pelts on the last giant.

The rest had gathered around where Sered was, as had most of the groups of prisoners. A middle-aged man was leading the conversation with Sered, speaking animatedly through lips swollen with a bruise that occupied the right side of his face like a great crouching toad.

“It’s a grace that you were passing by when we needed it, truly.” His speech was a bit broken, and even from distance I could see he’d lost several teeth.

“You’ll be alright then?” Sered was scanning the crowd, murmuring among themselves and looking one another over. I could hear faint sobbing coming from several of them.

“I think we can make it back without assistance, yes.”

Wynter spoke up from beside Sered. “We can give you some of our supplies, though we haven’t much to feed your entire village.”

The man shook his head. “Whatever you have will be enough. We will see to it that the children are fed, the adults can fast themselves until we return.”

I unstrung my bow and sheathed my blade as I walked back. “Best get them moving soon, Sered. Night will be on us soon, and it won’t take long for the crows and buzzards to notice this. Who knows if there aren’t other giants in the vicinity to notice them.”

Silence draped the field. The warm breeze suddenly took on a suffocating pressure as I felt eyes settle on me.

Sered too noticed the change in the air. “My companion,” the Neff stressed the word “…is correct. Gather your people up and start back at once.”

The man didn’t say anything, but his gaze snapped back to Sered and he nodded quickly, which made his lips jiggle in a way that I would have found humorous if we’d been in a pub.

We weren’t in a pub. And these people weren’t looking at me with the kindness of a pub crowd. I slitted my eyes and smiled slowly to show my somewhat extended canines, panning my gaze across them all. This had the desired effect of cowing the assembled people, mothers pulling their children to them and men dropping their eyes to avoid meeting mine.

I took the hint and moved back aways. I caught Nix’s eye, thumbing my chest and pointing back the way we came. “Horses,” was the only word I said. She nodded and returned to helping Rendo and Wynter free the remaining captives from their rope-lines.

I walked slowly back through the grass, listening to the buzzing of the insects and the chitter of birds. It really was a beautiful day. I noticed small white and yellow flowers as I walked, and even picked a few along the way, tucking them into a pocket on my jacket, a bit of pretty to contrast the blood and grime caked beneath my fingernails.

As I crested the hill to return to our mounts, Rendo caught up to me at a jog. “Hey, good fight back there.”

I smiled. “You too. Now I know why no one ever gives your kind weapons.”

“It’s still a bit mean to hear you say things like that. But that one was funny.”

“Good. It’s going to take some time.”

“No, no – I mean it just feels strange. Hearing you make a joke.”

It took me a moment to realize he was teasing me. “Ha, ha. Maybe you just haven’t recognized classical humor, barbarian.”

“Brush the dust off of it next time, it’ll be easier for us to get,” he said.

“Shame I can’t sell you at the next town.”

“Oh, don’t worry, there are still slaves and people still get sold.”

“That doesn’t surprise me,” I said. “Hell’s gates, it’s weird.”

“What’s weird?”

I thought it over. “Imagine a farm, animals everywhere, yes?”

He nodded, but his scowl remained. “Not liking where this is going.”

“I’m not trying to justify it, I’m trying to get you to understand a feeling. Imagine what it would be like to find a place where all the animals had a seat at the dinner table. After the outrage and disbelief fade, you find out that all of the animals have minds, have feelings, have lives just as the farmer did. And you have to live on the farm.”

He didn’t speak.

“After a while, you get to accept it. But it still feels funny, doesn’t it?”

“I suppose it does. What does that make me, then, a pig?”

I grinned. “More like a duck, given your size, but if you want, a pig will do.”

“Can I tell you another one?”

I shrugged. “One turn deserves another, I suppose.”

He wasn’t smiling when he continued. “Imagine growing up in a dangerous world, your village always concerned about who or what was coming. Could be orc raiders. Could be an outbreak of the pox. Could be any of a number of terrible things.”

I didn’t have to try to hard – I’d seen places like this where we’d taken lands away from the Arrolians, where we’d rescued peoples from being farmed for food by the Arrol; and we’d given them meaningful service.

I looked over at him.

“Okay, behind it all, as our little kids were growing up, there was one fear that moms and dads used to keep us in line. A fear worse than any of those things which might happen to us tomorrow.” He gave a cursory look at my outfit, his gaze finally reaching my eyes. I knew where he was going now.

“You. You were the boogeyman of our people. Of a great many peoples. Shadrim are dangerous, bad. If you cross your parents one too many times, they turn you over to the Shadrim. Not the orcs, not the goblins. The Shadrim.”

My face must have registered something, because his softened a little.

“Look, I didn’t mean it like that. I’m sure you’re not bad like the rest of them. You don’t seem like them.”

“Have you ever met one before me?”

“Shadrim? Not really. Seen one or two in Mirn, but never talked to one before we picked you up.”

“I’m not sure what to say here.”

“Well, when you think of how strange it is to see us walking free, just remember it’s equally strange to have you walking beside us rather than trying to catch, eat, or kill the rest of us. As tough as it is to see me and not think ‘slave,’ try to remember it’s just as tough for me to see you and not think ‘monster’.”

“Point taken.” I nodded, and rather than keep speaking, I just extended my hand. He took it, and we shook before collecting the horses.

(All content here, outside of those elements attributed otherwise, is copyright (2025-) Thomas Theobald. With the exception of AI training, personal use with attribution is granted.)