Rowan backed into view and met her sister’s eyes, making a
complex gesture with her free hand before hauling another arrow to the string.
Maera pelted past her as the rest of the company came into the chamber to find a
guttering torch, a spilled cup of mead, and one very dead giant. Rowan’s arrow
was buried deep in one of the creature’s eyes.
Maera was nowhere in sight, but just then the ceiling groaned
with the weight of another falling body. The ranger came back into sight moments
later. She met Vlandar’s eyes and held up a finger before drawing her hand
across her throat. One giant there. Dead.
The right-hand door opened onto a relatively narrow hall—still so wide that Agya and Nemis, holding hands, could just barely have touched
both walls. The air reeked of sour bodies, ill-washed clothing, and stale beer.
So far, Lhors thought, it resembled the map Vlandar had shown him. A passage
went a few paces west before turning north. A longer passage went east. The
lighting was poor—only a few torches at odd intervals.
Vlandar led the way, putting Lhors behind him and letting the
others follow. Rowan brought up the rear, walking sideways with her bow strung
and ready to shoot should anyone come up on their rear.
Someone was snoring behind them. The wall to their left
seemed to tremble, and they could clearly hear shouting and sounds of battle.
Malowan leaned forward to murmur against Lhors’ ear. “Nemis says it’s the long
room on the map—it must be a sleeping chamber. He says there are at least ten
young male giants wagering on two others who are wrestling, and they’re all very
drunk.” The paladin eased past him long enough to tell Vlandar the same thing.
Both men flinched as something massive slammed into the other side of the wall.
Vlandar was making his way to that long chamber on the west
wall that Malowan had spoken of, the one with the nasty trophy heads. He
sincerely hoped the warrior did not plan to invade the chamber with the cave
bear. At the bend the warrior turned left and moved close to the left wall,
hesitating at the first door there. Lhors eased up against the wall next to him
and tried to loosen his grip on the shaft in his right hand.
This north-facing passage was shorter than the previous one,
the door at its far end ajar. That must be the one that would open into another
corridor and connect with the feasting hall. It did seem he could hear drunken
laughter coming from that direction, though it was hard to tell with so much
noise still coming out of that dorm.
Vlandar edged past the door. The noise began to fade a
little. By the time they reached the next door to the left, Lhors could be
certain the other shouting came from beyond the partly opened door. Vlandar
hesitated, then beckoned Malowan to join him. The paladin listened intently,
nodded, and held up four fingers. He frowned and waggled one—he wasn’t certain
if there were three or four inside, Lhors thought.
Lhors jumped as a high-pitched scream came from inside the
room.
“Serving giantesses, I think,” Malowan whispered. “Someone is
being beaten,” he added grimly and set his hand on the latch.
Agya glanced back the way they’d come and rasped, “Where’s
Khlened?”
Malowan and Vlandar swung around, swords at the ready. Lhors
skin prickled and he clutched the spear close. Beyond the rangers, the hall was
empty. The barbarian was gone.
Vlandar cursed, but before he could pass along more
instructions, Khlened slipped through a door at the south end of the hall and
tugged it closed behind him. Malowan sighed heavily, and Vlandar glared as the
barbarian came up, a rough hide pouch in his hand. “Coin—and plenty of it,” the
man whispered.
Vlandar leveled a finger at his nose and whispered, “Go off
alone like that again and you’ll pay. I gave orders that we all stay together!”
Khlened’s mouth twisted, but he nodded and handed over the
purse. Vlandar shoved it into his pack and turned away. “Mal?”
“Someone is in dire pain in there,” the paladin replied
softly as another agonized scream came from the other side of the door. “I
cannot walk away from this,” he added, but he waited for Vlandar’s nod before he
eased the door latch aside, and threw himself into the room.
Lhors stared in open astonishment at the massive bedchamber
and the four female giants to whom it must belong. All were clad in loose, plain
garments like a villager’s winter sleeping shirt. Three looked youthful to him,
dark-haired, olive-skinned, and rather handsome. The fourth was a creature out
of nightmare. Taller than the other three by at least a head, gaunt and
wrinkled, her eyes were mere slits in pasty white skin. Two old, purple scars
ran down the left side of her face, and she wore a gold ring through the corner
of her mouth. She loomed over the smallest of the maids, a whip upraised to
strike a back bared by ripped fabric. The other two cowered in the corner behind
a bed, one holding another, who was bleeding from an ugly weal across her bare
shoulder.
“You horrid creature,” Malowan said in a deep, stern voice as
he drew his sword. “What have these children done to deserve such scars? If you
will strike someone, dare to battle me instead!”
The matron might not have understood his words, but she
surely caught his meaning. Her eyes narrowed as she took in the armed humans.
She dropped the whip and hauled a long dagger from a sheath strapped to her leg.
It was nearly as long as the paladins sword.
Malowan stepped away from his companions, and the young
giantess scrambled out of the way, trying to hold her ripped garb together. She
really is a child! Lhors thought. She looked no older than Agya, and he was
surprised to feel sorry for her pain. The young giantess cast them a terrified
glance and then crawled into the corner with her companions.
“That’s good, lad, keep an eye on them,” Vlandar said quietly
as the aged horror advanced on Malowan. “Mal may need my help. The young ones
look helpless, but they may choose to aid the old one.”
Lhors nodded and cast a quick look at Malowan. The matron was
an arm’s length taller than her adversary. When Lhors looked back at the corner,
the three young ones were crouched behind the bed, only their hair visible.
“Mal!” Agya sounded afraid.
“Do not distract him,” Vlandar said sharply. “You know he
must let her strike the first blow. His code requires it.”
“I know what you are,” Malowan said flatly.
Lhors risked a glance, but the combatants were motionless—sizing each other up, perhaps.
“You enjoy hurting children. What harm could they do to
deserve your wrath?” He had swung his sword to ready. The aged female sneered
and countered his move but still did not strike. “Your masters have taught you
well, but you shall answer to me!”
Lhors moved to where he could keep an eye on the three
serving maids and see the paladin fight. The matron might have understood some
of what Malowan said after all. She glared at him, teeth clenched and muscles
bunched under her sagging skin as she brought her weapon up two-handed. The aged
giantess snarled, “Enemy of Nosnra! I kill you! Kill all! Scar them as I please!
You do not stop old Jhuka!” She brought the blade down in a slashing overhand.
Malowan sidestepped the move and ducked as she brought the blade around in a
sweeping arc from the other side. The paladin evaded with what looked like ease
to Lhors.
“Gea nukh!”
she swore in Giantish. She clutched the hilt
two-handed, high above her head, and plunged it down.
Malowan finally acted. He sidestepped her attack and stabbed
up into her belly, twisting his sword almost all the way around. The giantess
cried out, but a sudden gush of blood muted her scream into a gurgling choke.
Malowan jumped back, hauling his sword with him. The giantess’ dagger rattled
onto the floorboards. She took one staggering step back, righted herself, and
came back at him, her eyes glittering with hate. Three strides from the paladin,
her gaze went blank, her knees wobbled, and she fell.
Lhors made certain the maids had not moved, then he dared a
glance at the paladin. Agya was already beside Malowan, one of her short daggers
in hand as she tested the giantess’ throat for a pulse. The serving maids
slowly came to their feet, peering at their fallen elder.
Vlandar had moved over to ease the door open a little. After
a quick glance, he pressed it shut and came over to Malowan. “It is still quiet
out there. Rather, there is no one in the corridor except our people. Are you
done here, Mal?”
“Nearly,” he said. “I need Nemis to translate for me.”
Malowan and the mage approached the serving maids. Nemis
asked them something in a low, guttural language. Lhors listened but could not
understand a word. One of the three maids—the only one who looked uninjured—got
to her feet and answered him.
“What’s it about, then?” Agya asked quietly.
Malowan shrugged and said, “I asked Nemis to ask if they
would help us in exchange for me healing their injuries.”
“You’d heal ’em anyhow,” the thief said sourly.
“Of course. It may help cleanse me of that creature’s
death—necessary as it was.”
“What makes them better then?”
“They may not be,” the paladin replied, “but they deserve the
chance, do they not?”
“Huh,” Agya said shortly. “Not if they warn others we’re
here.”
“That will not happen,” Vlandar said mildly. “We can see to
that, if we must. Nemis?”
“The aged one was the matron of all the serving girls,” Nemis
said. “This one is called M’na’vra, which is ‘butterfly’ in their speech, though
among her folk it is not a complimentary tide. She tells me to thank the armored
one who saved them from the rages of Jhuka. She tells me she and her two
companions came here from their own land to the north. They have no family to
protect them, and they swear to keep quiet about our presence here if you will
only let them live. All they want is to leave this place and return to their
homeland where there is always snow, but at least there is sun and blue sky, and
maidens—even the orphaned and impoverished—are treated with some respect.
“They also offer—if you do not trust them—a bribe. Old Jhuka
has a collection of potions in a case in her closet. There are also coins,” he
added. “M’na’vra asks if they might keep the coins in exchange for the bottles
and powders. They are young and pure, but even the young and pure need coin for
dowry if they wish to wed.” The mage was watching Khlened.
Lhors glanced at the barbarian and to his surprise, Khlened
seemed to accept this.
“Some sense in that,” Khlened allowed. “Who’d want a lass
with no coin to bring to the marriage?”
Agya glared at him. “Not
you,
for certain,” she
growled, “but these creatures—why let ’em loose to breed more of their kind?
Kill ’em all, I say!”
The paladin gripped her shoulder and gave it a brisk shake.
“When there is time, I will explain better. For now, accept that they have had
enough of violence. They may well choose mates who are less warlike, and they
may raise offspring who aren’t monsters like that”—his eyes flicked toward the
dead matron—“or like those brutes in the next chamber.”
Agya’s lips twitched, but she said nothing further.
Malowan moved to the mage’s side and smiled at M’na’vra, who
cautiously smiled back. “Tell her,” he told Nemis, “that we agree to this
bargain, and furthermore that I will heal their wounds before we go. Tell them
to show us the potions and keep the coin.”
“And tell
me,
Nemis,” Vlandar said, “that you can use
that spell of forgetfulness on them. Otherwise, we will need to bind them.
Khlened, you and I need to get that body out of sight in case someone looks in
here. Under the nearest bed will be good enough.”
“I have a spell that will serve,” the mage said. He
translated Malowan’s brief acceptance of terms. The maids broke into nervous but
happy laughter. The smallest—Ilowig, which Nemis said meant “swan”—was the only
one daring enough to dig through the matrons pockets for her keys and unlock the
closet where her valuables were hidden. Nemis took possession of the rough-hewn
box and rummaged through it quickly, choosing several bottles and setting the
others aside. Several went back into the box, which he shoved back in the
closet.
Vlandar stayed close to the door as Malowan healed the
giants’ bleeding cuts. Lhors watched, fascinated as the three went blank-eyed.
Their eyes closed, and they fell back on the bed. “They will waken normally, and
they will remember nothing.”
“Take the matron’s blade,” Vlandar said, “so none of them are
blamed when the creature’s body is found.”
Vlandar put Lhors in front of him as he and Khlened got the
door open. He led the way north, stopping just short of the partly open door.
They waited while Nemis and Malowan consulted.
The paladin shook his head and beckoned for them to move away
from the opening. “There are servants and a guard with wolves out in that
hallway. If the feast is ending, we could wait here, but if there are
bedchambers down here for any of the feasters…”
“Yes,” Vlandar said. “The other way might work better.”
“The passage between kitchens and banquet hall will be even
busier once the masters have left the table and the servants are sent to clear,”
Maera said.
Vlandar held up a hand. “Nemis, get back to that door
and—never mind,” he added as the paladin tensed and gestured urgently toward the
opening, then exerted his strength to pull the heavy slab quietly closed.
“There are at least twenty giants coming this way,” he
murmured. “I suggest we go back that way.
Now.”
They moved quickly back around the turn, but Vlandar stopped
there and sent the rangers a few paces back to keep guard while Nemis cast
another of the reveal spells he had memorized for the night. “I would like to
take that map, especially if it shows where future raids may happen. I would
also like to get down those stairs since it
should
lead to a treasury.
Not necessarily gold and jewels,” he added as Khlened grinned, “but other
documents like the one Mal found.”