The Giant-Slayer (23 page)

“You dream about him every night?” asked Peter.

“It’s not dreaming, really. I
am
Khan,” said Dickie. “At night I live in the story. It’s like I’ve always been there, kind of.”

Chip looked across from his pillow. “Are you giving us the business?”

“No way,” said Dickie. “It’s hard to explain, but it’s true.” The coonskin cap dangled in front of his face. “I’m Khan the hunter. And I think James is Jimmy.” The machine took a whirring, wheezing breath. “And Carolyn’s the Swamp Witch.”

“Then who am I?” said Chip.

“I don’t think you’re in it.”

“What about Laurie?” asked Carolyn. “If it’s her story, she oughta be in it.”

Dickie frowned at his mirror. “Maybe she’s the Woman,” he said at last. “That kind of makes sense, ’cause she made the giant-slayer. You know? Like he was born on account of her?”

“But the Woman vanished,” said Carolyn. “Probably the giant got her. So Laurie should be squashed or something. She should disappear.”

“Well, I can’t figure all of it out. Not yet,” said Dickie. “All I know is that I’m the hunter.”

James Miner wheeled himself sideways on the treatment board. He looked up at Dickie. “At night do you travel on the road? The Great North Road?”

“Sometimes,” said Dickie.

“Do you know where it goes?”

“No.”

“I do.” James looked up at all the faces, but nobody asked him where he thought the road went. So he said, “I think it goes to Piper’s Pond.”

Laurie smiled to herself; she liked that idea. But Chip snorted. “Piper’s Pond is a real place, you dummy,” he said. “How can a fake road go to a real place?”

“I don’t know,” said James. “But it’s still what I think. If you go far enough along the road, you get to the pond. First, you hear the piper way in the distance, and that’s how you know you’re getting close, ’cause you hear the bagpipes when there’s no one around to play them.”

“Aw, cut it out, you goof,” said Carolyn.

James ignored her. “And you know what? Not all of us are going to get there. I think one of us is going to die.”

“Cut the gas, will you?” Chip turned away. “Let’s just hear the story.”

Khan was riding the big white horse that Jimmy had seen long ago from the window of the Dragon’s Tooth. A pony trailed behind it, walking with weary steps. On its back was a bundle of furs.

The hunter swayed with his horse. He wore his coat of unicorn hide, while his legs were bundled in wooly wrappings that might have come from a mastodon. He held the reins but let the horse find its own way as it stepped through the snow.

Jimmy was up on the wagon, helping the woodcutters load their timbers. Felix was beside him, and the rest of the gnomes were just standing at their places, leaning on their axes. They and the Hooligan guards, and even the hounds, were watching the hunter ride steadily toward them.

One of the Hooligans waved his bludgeon above his head and shouted Khan’s name. It boomed through the mountains, back and forth between the peaks. “Khan! Khan! Khan!”

As the hunter rode into the woodlot, the hounds tugged madly at their leashes. They snarled and barked, and the horse shied away until Khan spoke to it calmly. “Steady, girl. Steady.”

The Hooligans pulled on the leashes. They bashed at the
hounds with their bludgeons, but nothing would quiet the dogs. High on his horse, Khan looked down at the gnomes and the toppled trees, at Jimmy on the wagon’s bench. If he recognized the boy, there was no sign of it.

The biggest of the Hooligans spoke to the hunter. “You come early,” he said.

“So does spring.” Khan pulled the pony up to his side and started unlashing the bundle. “In the valley, the daffodils grow.”

The Hooligans didn’t care about daffodils. They wanted to buy furs and pelts, and especially the yellow skins of manticores. They crowded round the little horse as Khan spread open the bundle. On the instant, and as though he had loosed a magical power, the hounds suddenly lay flat in the snow, whining like puppies.

Jimmy turned to the grinder, the gnome who sharpened axes. “What happened?” he asked.

“They smell gryphon,” said the gnome.

From his bundle, Khan pulled a clutch of talons and feathers, the remains of seven gryphons. The hounds yelped as though they’d been whipped, and buried their faces deep in the snow.

“You see?” said the grinder. “Just the whiff of a gryphon will cower the hounds.”

The Hooligans took all of the manticore hides, a unicorn pelt, and a long strip of hydra skin that glistened like oily water. They pulled coins from their pockets, but Khan only waved them away. “Give me one of them gnomes,” he said.

The Hooligans looked at each other as though trying not to laugh. It would cost them nothing to give away a gnome.

Khan still sat on his horse; he hadn’t budged from its back. He raised an arm and pointed at Jimmy. “Give me that one there. The funny-looking fella.”

“That’s the boss gnome. He’s a lingo,” said one of the Hooligans. “He’s worth three times the others.”

Khan kept the feathers and talons, and rolled the rest of his bundle onto the snow. It tumbled from the horse’s back, spilling horns and pelts and furs of every kind. There was enough to buy a dozen gnomes, but Khan took only the one. A Hooligan grabbed Jimmy by the arm and pitched him up to the hunter, and the guards fell on the furs like a pack of wolves.

The hunter shoved Jimmy down in front of him. “Don’t talk to me, gnome,” he said. “Just sit and be quiet.” He nudged his heels at the horse and set off at a gallop, straight up the hill the way he had come, plowing along in his own tracks. The gnomes called out with the most pathetic cries, and Jimmy twisted round to look back. He called farewell in their language, and they shouted back, “Goodbye! Good luck! Good living!”

Khan stormed across the ridge on the big white horse, in a cloud of kicked-up snow. The pony ran at his left side, bounding like a deer. Jimmy clung to the horse’s mane and leaned out, looking back behind Khan, watching until the woodlot vanished behind the hill. Some of the gnomes were waving their hats, others reaching out with their little
arms. Then it was only snow behind him, and the voices of the gnomes echoing all around.

Khan let the horse slow to a walk. He looked down at Jimmy and said, “Mistook you for a gnome, did they?”

Jimmy grinned back at the hunter’s red and frosty face. “You knew it was me?”

“Soon as I seen you.” Khan opened his coat and pulled Jimmy into its warm folds. He closed it tight around the two of them. “I’ll take you down to the valley and turn you loose. You can make your way home from there.”

“I don’t want to go home,” said Jimmy. “There’s something I have to do before I ever go to the Dragon’s Tooth again.”

“Now what would that be, Jimmy?”

“I have to kill Collosso. The Swamp Witch told me so.”

Khan grunted. He rode across the slope and came among the trees. Then he let the reins go slack, leaving the horse to find the way downhill. The snow grew thinner, then faded away altogether, and at the bank of a tumbling river, Khan stopped to make camp.

Below a pine, he built a fire. He kept it small and free of smoke, and above the flames he roasted strips of rabbit. There was tea to follow, sweet with honey, before the hunter settled back and looked at Jimmy.

“You haven’t a hope,” he said.

“Of what?” asked Jimmy.

“Of killing that giant.”

Khan kept feeding twigs to the flames. The day turned to twilight and then to darkness, and in the woods below them little specks of light appeared—the lamps and candles of
the mining camp. Jimmy talked and talked, and the hunter didn’t say a word until the story was finished, and he didn’t waste them even then. “Maybe you should look for a Wishman,” he said. “Let the giant be.”

“Why?” asked Jimmy.

“Could be that you are what you are because of a Wishman. A Wishman can give you what you want, if you pay the price. A giant can only get you killed.”

But Jimmy said that he was determined. “If I’m born to kill giants, I have to kill giants,” he said.

“Now you’re plum crazy,” said Khan. “That Swamp Witch is filling your head with sawdust. She’s not a real witch, you know. She’s not much of anything: half woman, half baloney.”

“What do you mean?” asked Jimmy.

“She’s a changeling.”

Jimmy remembered that word. His mother, long ago, had asked if
he
was a changeling. He hadn’t understood it then, and didn’t understand it now, but Khan gave him no chance to ask.

“You listen to me, Jimmy,” he said. Down in the mining camp, a hound was baying. “A Wishman’s fortune doesn’t come from giving wishes. It comes from taking them back. No one was ever satisfied by getting what he wished for, and the Wishman counts on that.”

It took a while for Jimmy to understand. But at last he saw the truth. If a Wishman had made him small, it must have been his father who had wished for it. Fingal had never been satisfied with anything. He wondered if the rage of his father was because of the Wishman and not really because of him.

In silence, Khan was adding more sticks into the fire. Flames leapt along them, crackling. Then the hunter got up and slipped away into the darkness. His horse whinnied, and in a moment Khan was back, carrying a small bundle in his hands.

“Here,” said Khan. He set down for Jimmy the bundle of gryphon talons and feathers. They glowed yellow in the light of the flames. “That’s worth more than enough to pay for a Wishman,” he said. “Come morning I’ll show you where to find one.”

They bedded down near the fire side by side, the hunter and the giant-slayer. They heard an owl hoot, and a large animal clatter its way over the rocks and splash across the river. Then up from the camp came the slow singing of gnomes. The sadness of it kept Jimmy awake. He cried in the darkness, and his tears sparkled in the firelight.

“I got
two
things to do now,” he said, and sniffed. “Before I go home again.”

“What’s that? Besides killing giants,” said Khan.

“I have to free the gnomes.”

Khan laughed. “Reckon you can do what you want,” he said. “Ain’t up to me to save gnomes.”

Jimmy slept for just an hour. When he got up Khan was lying bundled by the fire, eyes closed, breathing softly. Jimmy looked down at him.

“I know you’re awake,” he said. “You don’t like saying goodbye; that’s all right.”

Jimmy turned away and started trudging through the snow, toward the lights of the camp. He called back to Khan: “Thank you for setting me free.”

The night was very cold. A crust had frozen on the snow, just hard enough and thick enough to hold the weight of the giant-slayer. He soon came within sight of the camp, and by the glow of its lights he could see the hounds that guarded the gate, and a Hooligan guard inside. Jimmy went forward on his hands and knees.

The Hounds stood up. They growled, they snarled, and the guard turned around to look. Jimmy lay flat.

“What is it?” said the guard. “What’s out there?” The hounds kept snarling, a sound that made Jimmy’s hair stand up on his neck.

“Go look,” said the guard.

He sent the hounds out into the night. They came across the snow in leaps and bounds, smashing through the crust. Jimmy rolled to his side and pulled out the talons and feathers. The hounds fell instantly silent. They hung their heads, tucked their tails, and crept away toward the trees.