The Giant Among Us

Prologue

Crosley and his five young charges peered between the slats of the storm shutters, watching in silence as a pair of slavering dire wolves trotted down the alley. The beaste were as large as ponies, with matted fur and long red tongues wagging between their fangs. They moved along opposite sides of the narrow street, pawing at loose foundation stones and sniffing at windowsills.

Behind the beasts came their hill-giant handler. He was as tall as a house, with a stooped posture and a huge, barrel-shaped chest. He carried a knobby tree bole over his shoulder and wore a filthy tunic of untanned fur. When he tried to follow his wolves into the narrow alley, his hunched shoulders became lodged between the fieldstone walls. He merely grunted, then casually smashed his club into one dwelling’s foundation. The structure crumbled, and the giant turned to smash the building on the other side of the lane.

“Hey, that’s my house!” protested Thorley, the eldest of Crosley’s charges. He was a freckled child of ten years, with red hair and flashing green eyes. The boy stretched his hand toward the storm shutter’s latch. “Stop, you ugly-”

Crosley clasped a liver-spotted hand over the boy’s mouth. “Be quiet, child!” he hissed, his old heart hammering with panic. “The giants are on a war march!”

“So they’re going to kill us?” gasped a little blond girl. “Their dogs are going to smell us out, and then they’re going to grind us up like pine grubs and put us in their porridge and eat us?”

This drew murmurs of alarm from the other children, and three of the youngest began to cry.

The old man released Thorley and took the little girl’s hand. She would be the key to keeping the other children calm, for her imagination was as contagious as a storyteller’s. She could make other children see dragons in pine boughs and diamonds in raindrops.

“No, Dena, they’re not going to do anything of the sort.” Crosley forced a reassuring smile to his crinkled lips, then said, “We’re not going to let them.”

“What d’you mean we’re not going to let them?” demanded Thorley. “How can a bunch of kids and a toothless old man stop a hill giant?”

“You’ll see,” Crosley answered. He took Thorley’s hand, then led the way into the pantry of his small hut The other children followed close behind. “We’re going to outsmart them-just like Tavis Burdun outsmarted the stone giant to save Queen Brianna.”

“How did he do that?” asked Thorley.

Crosley released the hands of Dena and Thorley. “You mean I haven’t told you that story?” he asked. He pulled a string of tiny black peppers off a hook in the window, then looked at the children and winked. “Well, I suppose it’s time I do.”

Outside, the rumble of collapsing buildings was growing louder. The children paid the noise no attention and kept their gazes fixed on the old man. Crosley would have liked to send Thorley to the window to watch the dire wolves, but he did not dare. The boy’s reports would no doubt be made with unnecessary frequency and urgency, alarming the other children. And if his charges were to survive, Crosley needed them calm and quiet.

The old man pulled his knife from its sheath, then began to slice the peppers and remove the seeds. “Do you know who Tavis Burdun is?”

The smallest boy shook his head, pouting.

“That’s okay, Birk,” the old man said. “Tavis Burdun is the best scout in the kingdom. He’s a firbolg-”

“What’s a firbolg?” Birk interrupted.

Crosley smiled patiently. Birk always asked questions.

“Firbolgs are one of the giant-kin races-sort of cousins to true giants,” the old man explained. His eyes were burning and watering, for the peppers he was slicing came from the Anauroch desert, and they were the hottest he had ever tasted. “Firbolgs are the most honest of the giant-kin. They can’t lie, and they always obey the law. They’re also the most handsome, because they look like us humans-though, of course, they’re much taller.”

“How tall?” demanded Birk.

“Most are about ten feet, but not Tavis Burdun,” explained Crosley, gathering the pepper seeds in the palm of his hand. “You see, Tavis’s mother died in childbirth, so a trapper brought him to an orphanage in Hartwick village-not far from the king’s castle. There wasn’t enough to feed a firbolg, so Tavis grew up to be a runt He’s only eight feet tall.”

Crosley paused as if waiting for Birk to ask more questions, but he was really listening to the hill giant’s approach. The crashing was so close now that he felt the floor tremble each time the giant’s club smashed into a house. It wouldn’t be long, the old man knew, before the dire wolves arrived and began sniffing around his little hut He sprinkled the pepper seeds over the floor, then went to his root cellar and opened the trapdoor.

“Come along, children.” He motioned his charges down the ladder. “We’ll finish this story where it’s quieter.”

Thorley frowned. “In the cellar?” he demanded. “You’re just trying to-”

“Yes, Thorley, I am,” Crosley interrupted. He pushed the child toward the cellar, then resumed his story before the boy could object. “When Tavis was old enough, he joined the Border Patrol. He worked very hard, and he became the best scout to ever lead a company into the mountains. But one day the lady who ran the orphanage where he grew up died, and he had to go back to care for the children who still lived there. That’s when he met the king’s daughter and fell in love with her.”

A window shutter clattered as something pressed against it, and Crosley heard sniffing on the other side. He climbed onto the ladder behind the last child, then pulled the trapdoor shut above him.

“And then what?” demanded Birk. “Tavis Burdun fell in love with the king’s daughter, and then what?”

Crosley descended the ladder. He had to feel his way carefully, for he had not lit a candle and the cellar was as black as soot. “And then the ogres kidnapped her,” he said, hardly daring to speak above a whisper. “Tavis found out about it and went to tell Brianna’s father. But the king was afraid of starting a war and ordered his men not to go after his daughter.”

“What a coward!” Thorley commented.

“But I’ll bet Tavis loved the princess too much to let the ogres have her,” surmised Dena. “He went after her anyway.”

“Yes, that’s right, with his good friends Basil and Avner, and also with the princess’s bodyguard, Morten,” Crosley said. “And do you know what Tavis found out on the way?”

“No,” said Birk. “You haven’t told us yet”

“Tavis found out that a long time ago, the king had asked the ogre shaman to help him win a war,” Crosley said. “In return, he promised to give the ogres his first daughter. That’s why he wouldn’t send anyone to rescue Brianna after she was kidnapped.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” said Dena. “What would an ogre want with a human princess?”

The muffled crash of splintering wood reverberated through the trapdoor, followed by the heavy thumps of two dire wolves landing inside the hut The animals’ toenails began to clatter on the wood floor as they searched the premises.

The children abruptly fell silent, and two of them started to weep. Crosley crouched on the cellar’s dirt floor and felt his way to the crying children, then pulled them close to smother their sobs against his breast.

First one, then two pained howls rang out from the hut above. The wolves began to tear around the room, growling, snapping at each other, and madly hurling themselves against the walls. The two children cradled against Crosley’s chest wailed in fear, and Dena’s imagination began to work again.

“They’re trying to find us!” she cried. “They’ve smelled us, and now they’re going to dig us up like rabbits!”

“They didn’t smell us,” Crosley said. “They can’t smell anything with a snootful of hot pepper seeds. Be quiet, and we’ll be fine.”

The children obediently fell as quiet as the dead. They listened to the wolves scramble around for a few moments longer. Finally, the beasts hurled themselves out a window, and the hut fell silent again-save for the approaching rumble of the hill giant’s club smashing into houses.

A small hand tugged at Crosley’s sleeve. “Well?” asked Birk. “Why did the ogres want a princess?”

“I suppose we must finish the story,” chuckled Crosley. “The ogres kidnapped Brianna because the Twilight Spirit wanted her.”

“Who’s the Twilight-”

“I’m coming to that,” Crosley said. “The Twilight Spirit is the guardian spirit of giants, and nobody knows what he wanted with Brianna. Some say he wanted to marry her to the chief of a giant tribe, so a giant would become king of Hartsvale. Some say he loved her himself-but those are really just guesses.”

“So, how did Tavis rescue her?” demanded Thorley.

“The ogres thought they’d be safe if they slept on a glacier,” Crosley explained. “But Tavis and his companions sneaked through an ice cave and carried the princess off. The ogres chased them into the valley of the hill giants. Tavis tricked the ogres and giants into fighting each other so he and his friends could escape.”

“Then they returned to Castle Hartwick and killed the king, and lived happily ever after!” suggested Dena.

“Not quite,” the old man replied. “They returned to Castle Hartwick-but not to live happily ever after.”

Crosley paused here. He no longer heard the hill giant smashing houses, and he regarded the silence as an ominous thing. The giant had not yet knocked his hut down, and the old man saw no good reason for the brute to leave it standing when he had demolished every other building on the lane.

“What did they do when they reached the castle?” asked Dena. “Is that when Tavis outsmarted the stone giant?”

“It is indeed,” Crosley answered, with more patience than he felt. “You see, when they returned to the castle, Brianna told everyone what her father had done. The earls were so outraged that the king realized he could no longer rule Hartsvale, and he abdicated his throne. But there were two sentries from the Giant Guard with him, the stone giant Gavorial and the frost giant Hrodmar. They insisted on fulfilling the king’s bargain and taking Brianna to the Twilight Spirit

“But when Hrodmar leaned over to grab the princess, Tavis shot an arrow into his ear and killed him. Then the scout nocked another shaft and pointed it at Brianna’s heart, and he swore he would kill his beloved before allowing her to be taken. Gavorial had no choice except to leave, for the giants had no wish to present a dead princess to the Twilight Spirit”

“And then Brianna became queen and married Tavis, and they lived happily ever after,” Dena submitted.

“Then Brianna became queen,” Crosley allowed. “But this is a true story, and no queen can marry a commoner-especially not a firbolg orphan. So Tavis has become her bodyguard, sworn to stand chastely at his beloved’s side, and in his quiver he carries a golden arrow-”

A tremendous crash shook the cellar, followed by the rumble of collapsing walls. The children shrieked. Crocks fell from the shelves, and the hut’s wooden floor crunched and cracked as it splintered beneath the weight of the hill giant’s heavy foot Crosley slapped his hands over two wailing mouths, but somewhere in the darkness a third child was sobbing and screaming for her mother. A deafening bang erupted from the trapdoor as the giant’s club smashed it apart. Pale rays of light streamed into the dusty hole.

The hill giant’s churlish face appeared above the ladder. He had wiry black hair cropped short and ragged, with a sloped forehead and vapid gray eyes.

“Hey, stupids!” The giant’s breath filled the cellar with an odor as foul as rotting swamp grass. “You pay for hurting Pammy and Cece-all of you!”

Thorley grabbed a crock of pickled mallows and hurled it at their tormenter. The vessel shattered, spilling vinegar and sour buds all over the giant’s chin. The brute wrinkled his nose, then pulled his head away and hefted his club.

“Leave us alone!” Thorley yelled. “Leave us alone, or Tavis Burdun’ll come shoot an arrow into your ear!”

“Good!” The hill giant brought his club down. “Tavis Burdun don’t scare nobody no more.”