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Chapter Forty



When the giantess reappeared over the lip of the footpath, she waved away solicitous inquiries. She staggered into her alcove and collapsed facedown on the bed.

Where she slept for five hours, snoring so loudly that all animal noises in the region were stilled. However, when the snoring stopped abruptly, she called out to the group and invited them to return.

She was sitting up this time, the bearskins in a rough pile beside her bedding: cowhides over dried bushes. Her face was less drawn and her body less bloated. “Be seated,” she invited, speaking Commerce quite competently, but slowly, as if reacquainting herself with its sounds and structures. She turned toward Umkhira. “Why did you address me in Undercant?”

Druadaen answered. “That was my doing, mistress. The books of our learned scholars presumed it was the language you were most likely to know.”

“Do they think we have no tongue of our own, or would settle for so limited a language?”

“I cannot say what they thought.”

“Well, it appears they thought we were stupid. And that would make them stupid for thinking so.”

“Well,” Ahearn said carefully, “it’s hard to be sure about such things in advance. And truth be told, you sounded a bit like a drunken sailor when you awoke.”

“Yes? And just how articulate are you when you first rise?”

“Articulate? You know that word?”

“You are surprised? Well, I’m equally surprised that one of you learned it.” She considered them. “Although I must admit, you have far, far better manners than any other littlings I have known in…oh, a very long time, now.”

“How long?” Druadaen asked quietly.

She looked at him quickly. “So you did come to talk. I hear that searching tone. What is your name?”

And so they went through the introductions, with more politesse than many human gatherings Druadaen had attended. The giantess’s name was Heela and she ended by apologizing for her sprint down the hill. “As you gathered, I have not been well.”

“Something you ate?” Ahearn wondered aloud. Every eye gored him. “What?” he asked. “Wasn’t that the complaint?”

Druadaen did his best not to notice the swordsman nor the rest of their fellowship’s reactions to his explicit and tone-deaf frankness. “Perhaps you were injured recently?” The giantess’s blank stare compelled him to become more direct. “Perhaps during a recent…trip to the human farms?”

She frowned. “No.”

Druadaen heard the evasive tone. “Perhaps during your return here?”

“So you followed me,” she sighed. “I cannot deny it. I was there.”

“And was there any…eh, violence that—?”

She jumped to her feet; the rock under their feet shook slightly. “Whoever told you there was violence lies!” she shouted, her voice booming back at them from the stony sides of the alcove.

“Tell that to the dead farmers,” Padrajisse pronounced darkly.

“Dead—?” Heela closed her eyes but not in time to keep two gill-sized tears from squeezing out and then rolling down her still-hollow cheeks.

“You had no hand in the attack?” Druadaen asked.

She shook her head. “I went at night. Just so that I would not be seen, not meet the humans.”

“So you could steal,” Padrajisse amended in a stony voice.

“Yes,” Heela sniffled. “So I could steal.”

Her frank admission and regret even silenced the moralistic sacrista.

“Why do you steal?” Druadaen asked softly.

Heela waved a massive palm at the sky beyond the overhang. “The usual reason: to get enough to eat. But this season—it was different.”

“Different in what way?”

Tears flowed freely; they made sounds like shot glasses being emptied upon stone. “I lost my child.”

Umkhira started forward, hand outstretched. “To disease? To enemies? To—?”

“To the fate that has us lose so many children. To the curse of our own bodies.”

The group was suddenly very silent.

Druadaen rose and sat closer to her. “We do not understand. How is it that your bodies cause you to lose so many children?”

“Truly, you cannot reason it out?”

Druadaen shook his head, offered a rueful smile. “You said it yourself: our scholars can be stupid. I suppose I am no smarter than they are.”

She sighed out a few last tears, nodded. “If you are stupid, at least you are honest.” She wiped her eyes. “I suspect your scholars think us stupid because the only time we encounter littlings is when we are first awake and ravenous. Or after, when we are torpid from overeating.”

“Wait,” Elweyr said, “you hibernate? Like bears?”

She laughed sadly. “Like bears? How I wish that was true. A bear sleeps through a few months of winter, but we are only fully awake for a few months out of the year.”

Druadaen nodded. “So when you awake from your long sleep, you are half-starved.”

“And only half-aware,” Heela finished. “Yet if we do not find food quickly, we are finished. We have a quick rush of vitality, but once it fades, we are too weak to move. So we must get food quickly. And a great deal of it.”

“So that’s why you kill all the farmers’ livestock,” Padrajisse supplied.

Heela shook her head. “We only take a few of their animals. Just enough to keep going long enough to get back to our homes.”

“So, you are not primarily meat-eaters?”

Even as Heela shook her head, Druadaen felt pieces of a puzzle begin to fall together, as if of their own accord. “That’s why you took so much of the corn,” he said aloud. “Because it fills you quickly and is rich in sugar.”

She nodded. “But it is difficult to digest when uncooked.” She glanced at the downhill slope with shamed furtiveness. “But when I woke this year, I had less time than usual. So I had to eat as much as I could as fast as I could.”

“Because of your child?” S’ythreni asked uncertainly.

“Apologies. My words were not clear. I did not lose a child; I lost an infant.” When the others did not understand the distinction, she added, “My unborn infant.”

In the silence that followed, the story of her loss unfolded before Druadaen as if Heela was telling it herself. She had come to term before hibernating. Which had been dangerous: whereas a human could keep eating right up until birth without interruption, the giant had only a few months every year to eat enough to maintain a healthy weight. “So you were extremely weak this year because you miscarried just before hibernating?”

“Yes. And because winter was about to set in, there were no crops in the fields. So I could not get food without breaking into your buildings. And that leads to a fight, which is neither right nor wise.”

“And none of your kin could hunt for you?”

“Hunting is slow. We have little luck ambushing game. Besides, what few kin I have were already gone when I lost my infant-to-be.”

Umkhira’s eyes were wide, her voice angry. “Your kin departed before you gave birth?”

“Yes; they had to, or we would all have perished.” She saw the confusion on Umkhira’s face. “We giants must live alone. Because if a group of us were to awaken—ravenous and desperate—in the same land, we would strip it bare. You littlings would have no choice but to kill us all, despite your fears.”

Ahearn had rested his sword on his shoulder. “It’s a wonder you ever have babes at all.”

Heela nodded. “It is not something we do lightly, because it requires so many to help. Great amounts of food must be put aside for when the mother can no longer feed herself. The mother and father must be of different clans, so they must meet and then make sure that they are awake for the same few months in the following year.” She shrugged. “It is rarely successful unless one or both clans come together to make it possible.”

Druadaen nodded. “Another thing the scholars did not understand.”

Elweyr looked sideways at him. “What do you mean?”

“Many of the accounts indicated that when more than one giant is reported raiding in an area, it means that more show up.” He glanced at Heela. “They thought it meant you were waging war against us, trying to drive off humans or any other races that had settled on your lands. But in fact, it was a clan gathering to help prepare for a pregnancy. But that means…” He stopped, reflected. “It means that a clan adds a new child only every ten years. Or longer.”

“Much longer,” Heela added. “We are lucky if a clan adds one to its number every thirty years.”

Umkhira’s eyes looked unusually shiny. “You must want to be parents very much. Twins must be a cause for great celebration.”

Heela’s eyes closed tightly. “No. They are a death sentence. No mother among us has ever survived a double-birth. And very few of the infants do.” She sighed and opened her eyes. “Fortunately, they are very rare.”

“It seems there is an obvious answer to your dilemmas,” Padrajisse announced. “You must start your own farms. You could gather as clans and hibernate in shifts. How would that not answer your woes?” It was significant that even Ahearn, for all his over-hasty suggestions and deductions, looked away in sympathetic embarrassment as the sacrist offered her solution.

Heela looked at her almost pityingly. “That would be a fine idea, if the world was sized to us. But it is not. Where is corn and wheat that is sized as we are? And even if such plants existed, where is the soil deep enough to grow them? And how do we learn the skills and ways of farming, and fashion the needed tools, when we are alert only three or four months out of every year?”

She shook her head. “It is the same problem with every craft we observe among littlings and yearn to possess for ourselves: it takes so much of our time to find game—or take small measures of your crops or livestock from widely separated farms—that it is all we can do to sustain ourselves.”

“And your Bent vassals bring you nothing?” Padrajisse wondered.

Heela stared at her. “Vassals? You think they serve us? Or that we would accept them as allies?”

“Well, it is widely known that they raid with you!”

Heela frowned. “Really? Is that what you know? It is certainly true of some of us, but after all, every race has individuals who are an embarrassment to the rest.”

“So the Bent that set upon the farms on the near reaches of Aswyth Plain are not your allies?”

Heela’s laugh was so loud and bitter that the whole fellowship flinched. “Allies? They are parasites and carrion-pickers. They follow in our wake to fall upon already-terrified farmers and then scavenge from our leavings. The one way they are useful is all the noise they make when fleeing from attackers. They warn us that littling soldiers have arrived, much as your watchdogs tell you when we approach.” Her look was wry. “Apparently the underkin never got the chance to do so, this time.”

S’ythreni’s smile was small but sly. “We were careful to make sure they didn’t disturb you.”

Heela glanced at her, then shrugged. “I am well rid of them. Sometimes, they purposely lured small patrols up here.”

“Why?” S’ythreni asked.

“Because when littling soldiers find me, they try to kill me. Some always die before the rest run. The Bent strip the corpses. The equipment is always better than what they craft for themselves.”

Padrajisse nodded solemnly. “Urzhen—present company excepted—would always rather risk their lives than learn a productive craft. Even weapon-making.”

The giantess cocked her head; Druadaen could hear tendons stretching like crossbow strings. “It is peculiar how you know so much about them yet understand so little. Their every contact with human weapons is a moment of glee.”

“Of course,” Padrajisse agreed in a stubborn tone. “Because they are more effective.”

“Yes, but also because wielding them is delicious revenge. Every time they hold even a mediocre human sword, they are reminded of the most frustrating truth of their existence: that no Bent has ever created such a fine tool. Only a few of them have the patience and the fine, clever fingers required to craft one. And since cursing the universe for their lot is pointless, they curse you instead. They curse your skills, your learning, your craft.”

She leaned back. “If you do not understand this, you do not understand the urzh and those like them.” She looked at Umkhira. “Ur zhog are different, but they still feel some of the same impatience.”

Umkhira stared. “You know my kind?”

“I do, Lightstrider.”

“But how?”

“Giants live a very long time.”

“So my kind were once here?”

Heela nodded.

“And what became of them?”

“They were destroyed.”

“By…?” Umkhira’s voice faded, but her glance around the group made her intended question clear: Had the Lightstriders been exterminated by humans?

But the giantess shook her head. “No. Not by them. By the other urzhen.”

Umkhira’s eyes were wide. “Were we competing with them?”

“No.”

“Then why—?”

“Because you Lightstriders are too much like them.” Heela pointed an immense finger at the rest of the group. “And yet when the urzhen of the Under look in your face, they see so many of their own features staring back. They envy you. And so they resent you.” Heela shrugged. “We understand this envy because we experience it ourselves. But with us, it happens when we look at you.” Her gaze moved from one human face to the next. “We see faces and bodies that are almost exactly like ours. And yet, all that you have, we are denied. All the skills that our size prevents us from learning, you command with ease.”

Ahearn’s tone was reflective. “Now that’s a strange thing to hear, since no small number of us wish for the size and strength of giants.”

Heela shook her head. “That is because you have no idea of what you would lose.”

“Such as?”

“You wish a list of our envies?” She sighed, looked up at the rough, primordial roof of her cave. “That you keep useful animals the year around and train them to do your work and follow your commands. That you dig in the ground, wrest metal from it, and then fashion the ore into cunning tools and weapons. That you learn to record and share your thoughts as marks upon parchment. That you make art of so many shapes and kinds. That you sail upon the seas and see every part of this world. But above all, that you fill your doll houses with comforts and devices that allow you to not merely survive, but to enjoy your lives in the company of your own families. All year long.”

She shook her head. “Many giants brood upon these things. Many come to hate you for possessing them. Some of those go mad with jealousy. So they destroy what they cannot have. They take more than they need. They inflict the pain that they feel upon littlings…and come to hate themselves for doing so.” She looked up. “We are not a savage race. We are not hateful. But we are trapped in bodies that do not belong in this world, for clearly, your gods are the ones that shaped it.”

Padrajisse straightened stiffly. “You may be without deities, but you clearly know and walk in the Great Tract. So you also know that creation unfolds at the behest and inspiration of both powers. Giants are not—”

“Are not what, Priest?” Heela rose, her hair grazing the rock overhead. “Will you now tell me that giants are not made so large and so loud that we terrify all other creatures? Or that our needs for so much sleep and food do not prevent us from knowing the wider world? Or that we do not lack animals and plants large enough to meet our needs as most do yours? Or that therefore, theft is not our only means of survival? And so, makes us hateful to every thinking species—including our own?”

Padrajisse rose. She bowed to Heela. “I did not mean to give offense. Clearly, I have. Accept my apologies. I shall wait without.” She turned and left the alcove. The sound of her hobnail boots was audible until she had gone beyond the overhang.

Druadaen sighed. “I regret that our first meeting has been so contentious.”

Heela shrugged. “Actually, this is the longest conversation I have ever had with littlings. And the most pleasant. Far more so than the last one.”

Ahearn’s eyes were wide. “Gods save us, how much less pleasant did that get?”

Heela considered. “Well, by this point, half of them were dead. Now, you said you came to talk to me.”

“We have.”

“‘We’?”

Druadaen felt he might have blushed. “Well, me.”

“And what has made us objects of such interest to you?”

“I have read every account of giants that I could find, and although many describe how you fight and how you may be killed and where you might—might—be found, almost none describe how you live or what manner of being you really are.”

“And what would you do with such knowledge?”

“It is part of a greater inquiry.”

“Which is?”

“To better understand the many impossibilities of this world, of which your anatomy is one of the most puzzling.”

“And what would your king do with such information, do you think?”

“My country has no king or autocrat. But I cannot say the ends to which my knowledge might be put. If not now, then later.

She nodded. “You are honest and curious. That makes you more dangerous than a hundred littling blades. But come, I shall tell you what you wish.”

“I thank you.” Druadaen knew he should leave it at that, but…“If I am so dangerous, then why have you agreed to help me?”

She smiled. “Because”—her eyes twinkled—“you are honest and curious.”


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