Steel and Stone

Chapter 4

The whining of a thousand mosquitoes couldn't mask the thud of the monster's footsteps or the complaints of the beast's two heads in the darkness.

"Res hot!"

"Lacua hungry."

"Dumb bugs. Want snow. Why hot?"

"Spring. You stupid."

Pause. "Res go home now."

"No!"

In a small prairie south of Haven, the thirteen-foot ettin faced off with itself-no mean feat for a creature with such short, fat necks. The ettin's watery eyes

were tiny, like a pig's, and at the moment, bloodshot with anger. Each hamlike hand, controlled by the head on that side of the body, waved a spiked club. The argument came in a mishmash of orcish, goblin, and giant tongues.

"Quit time," Res, the right head, roared. "Res go home now!"

"Mage say not! Find soldier lady," Lacua, the left head, insisted.

"On trail long. Too much long. No soldier lady. Gone, gone." It might have been the longest speech Res had ever made. He stopped for breath, then, brow furrowing, struggled to remember where he'd started. "What Res say?" he asked Lacua.

The left head thought hard. Lacua's piglike snout curved in concentration. "Think, think," he mused. The heads of the carnivore were balding at the top, but each sported a ponytail of stringy hair, which swung greasily now as Lacua searched his brain. No use. Res-Lacua shrugged and continued walking. Neither Res nor Lacua could keep the subject of a new discussion in mind long enough to get into a major battle.

Janusz had taken the precaution of equipping Lacua with a magical device that allowed the spell-caster to keep tabs on the beast from Janusz's new home in the Icereach, half a continent south of Haven. The ettin had been successful in the past for the mage-proof more of his loyalty and stubbornness than his thinking ability. The ettin's left head, Lacua, while barely beyond a rabbit in raw intelligence, was leagues ahead of the right head, Res. Thus Janusz, anticipating frequent ettin tiffs on a mission so far from home, had appointed Lacua the leader of the expedition and the final arbiter of all disputes.

This would have annoyed Res, had he been able to concentrate on it.

Suddenly a skunk darted from a hollow log, and the ettin's right hand flashed through the darkness and slammed the animal senseless with its club. Ignoring the cloud of stinging spray, the right head devoured the skunk in three bites while Lacua watched, salivating.

Skunk musk, added to the coat of filth that clung to the hide of the ettin, did little to change the intensity of Res-Lacua's stench. "Cleanliness," like most words of more than two syllables, was not in the ettin vocabulary. An ice bear skin, untanned, covered the creature's ample midsection. A constellation of fleas inhabited the fur.

Between the heat and the bugs, the ettin scratched a lot. The spiked clubs came in handy for that.

"Hot," Res muttered again. "No snow."

"Spring, stupid," Lacua repeated.

"Snow," Res moaned. Lacua looked over irritably. Mosquito bites peppered both heads like pox. Res had scratched his until they bled.

"Snow?" Lacua repeated. "Where?"

"Want snow."

"No snow here. Nope."

"Go home?"

"Soon."

"Now?"

"No. Later. Maybe."

Res-Lacua shoved north through the purple hestaflowers and other prairie plants. Weed seeds clung to the beast like lint. Before the ettin, plant stalks stood up from the ground like exclamation points. Behind the creature, vegetation lay flattened in a swath as wide as a human man was tall.

Infravision helped the ettin see up to ninety feet in the dark, but Res-Lacua's nightvision had done little so far to help ease the creature's prodigious appetite. The two-headed troll had managed a small snack of two goats and a cow at sunset, but that had been hours ago.

Lacua suddenly stopped, dropped his club, and thrust his left hand into his tunic.

"Flea?" asked Res, face creased with sympathy.

Lacua didn't reply. He pulled two items from a pocket that Janusz had had sewn into the ice bear hide-a jewel that cast an amethyst glow on the twin faces above it, and a second stone, which looked like an ordinary flat, gray pebble. But Lacua handled them both with the ettin version of reverence.

"Not lose talk stone," he chanted. "Not lose purple rock."

"Not, not, not," Res chimed in.

"Dead ettin, if."

Both heads nodded sagely.

The sound of sheep came now to the ettin, who shoved both stones back into his tunic. He scanned the darkness. Then, from behind a rise in the terrain, his four ears caught the sounds of barking and a shouted command. And more sheep sounds.

"Baaa?" asked Res. "Baaaaaa?"

"Baa food," Lacua answered knowingly.

"Ah."

The ettin eagerly moved toward shepherd and flock.