Slight and Shadow Read online

  The giant stalked over to an object stuck into the ground — a weapon with a shaft as thick as a sapling. With one grunting tug, he wrenched it free. Dirt sprayed out in all directions as the weapon’s blade came loose. It had a head shaped like a spear, winged on one side by a deadly axe blade. Kael recognized it as a pike.

  For a man, a pike was an unwieldy weapon — better suited to defending bridges than close combat. But the giant spun the pike around as if it was no more burdensome than a sword, checking the blade for dents. Then, with a satisfied grunt, he turned to leave. And Kael breathed a sigh of relief.

  Perhaps he breathed a little too soon.

  He heard the stocky branches creak above him as a gust of wind blew through the camp — the first he’d felt all night. It whipped across the remnants of their fires, stirring up the scent of ash. Kael could only watch as a handful of little embers danced gleefully over the wall.

  The giant froze as the breeze rattled against his armor. His shoulders stiffened, and he turned. His eyes were hidden beneath the shadow of his helmet, but his mouth had a suspecting, downwards bend. His thumping steps grew louder as he headed back towards the bramble wall.

  Kael turned around so quickly that he nearly butted heads with Aerilyn, who watched intently from over his shoulder.

  “Does he see us?” she whispered. Her voice was light enough that she could speak and not be heard, but Kael didn’t trust his own voice. So he just shook his head.

  He was about to signal for her to wake the others when he saw that the whole host of pirates was already awake. Most knelt in silent clumps, their hands resting on their cutlasses. Others were quietly packing their bedrolls, preparing to run like mad. Kael thought that might be a good plan.

  “Is he gone?” Aerilyn hissed after a moment. “I don’t hear him anymore.”

  Kael wasn’t sure. He motioned for her to stay still and crept along the wall. He heard Lysander following at his back. The good captain’s boots scuffed loudly through the dried grass and crunched every possible branch in their path. Kael was about to tell him to stop when an odd feeling struck him.

  His hair stood up on end and his breath caught in his throat. The animal in him whispered to be still: danger lurked nearby. He pulled his arrow back on its string until he felt the fletching touch his chin. Then he turned slowly to his right.

  There was a gap in the wall, here — a crack that the grasping thorns had carved out of the moonlight. Kael knelt to squint through it. He turned his head far to the left, and then to the right, but he saw nothing amiss. Perhaps the giant had turned back for the road. He had been worried about the lions, after all.

  Kael was straining to see into the distance when something large blocked his vision. A giant’s face met his, a gray eye rolled around in the crack. And in his surprise, Kael’s finger slipped from the string.

  There was a grunt and a loud clang as the giant’s body hit the ground.

  “What was that?” Lysander hissed. His stormy eyes flicked down to Kael’s empty bowstring, and he groaned. “Please tell me that wasn’t what I think it was.”

  “It was an accident — maybe he isn’t dead,” Kael said hopefully. But when he saw the giant lying on his back, motionless, with an arrow standing straight up from his head, he knew it was no good.

  “We ought to start running, then.”

  Aerilyn, in spite of having been told to stay put, had materialized behind Lysander. “Start running for what?”

  “For the seas, my love,” Lysander said. He slipped past her and hastily whispered orders to the pirates. Bedrolls, cookware, and rucksacks went flying into the cart.

  “But,” Aerilyn split her glance between the packing and Kael, “what about the plan? I thought we were supposed to camp here while you —”

  “The plan’s finished,” Kael murmured. He went for his own pack at a jog, with Aerilyn following close behind. “That giant wasn’t alone — there are others camped near the road. I’m not sure how many, and I certainly don’t want to find out.”

  “So? Maybe they won’t come looking for him. You heard what they said about the lions.”

  “A man attacked by lions would’ve had time to scream. The giant I killed didn’t make a sound. They’ll come looking for him out of curiosity, and we haven’t got the numbers to face them. I won’t risk it.” Kael shoved his bow into his pack. He’d begun to unbuckle his wallet, but a sudden realization stayed his hand.

  “We still have the advantage of surprise,” Aerilyn reminded him. When he didn’t respond, she tugged impatiently on his sleeve. “Kael — we could take them. Their skin isn’t made of stone, after all. And once we’ve killed them, we can bury their bodies out in the wilderness, or something equally clever. Granted, it would take a fair bit of digging. They are rather large —”

  “If killing one man will draw out a patrol,” Kael whispered, his mind made up, “then killing a patrol will draw out a swarm. No, if these giants disappear without any explanation, then Gilderick’s men will come pouring out of the castle. They’ll comb over every blade of grass and under every boulder — and it’ll be midsummer before we have a chance to sneak back in.”

  “What?” Aerilyn eyed him suspiciously. “Kael, you aren’t making any —”

  He clamped a hand over her mouth and drew the Atlas out of his pocket. “I want you to keep this for me. Guard it with your life.”

  She took the book in surprise, turning its worn, leather-bound cover in her hands. “Your book? But it’s your very favorite …” Her shock wore off and her eyes snapped up to him suddenly. “No. No — I won’t let you!”

  She made to grab the front of his shirt when two stocky arms lunged out of the darkness and wrapped her up tightly. “Start screaming, lass,” Morris warned when she struggled, “and you’ll call the whole company down to slaughter us.”

  Aerilyn bit her lip tightly — but the look she gave Kael was every bit as painful as a slap across the face. He thought he might’ve preferred the beating.

  “Do whatever it is you’ve got planned,” Morris said with a stout nod. “We’ll come back for you once things have cleared up.”

  For not the first time, Morris seemed to have guessed his intentions. But Kael shook his head. “I’ll come to you. If I’m captured, it’ll be much easier for one man to sneak out than for a dozen to sneak in.”

  “One Wright,” Morris corrected him with a wink. “And don’t you forget it.”

  Kael clapped him on the arm and turned to Aerilyn — who’d begun to tear up at the word captured.

  “Please,” she whispered. When Kael shook his head, tears slid unchecked down her cheeks.

  He brushed them away and took her under the chin. “I owe you an apology — for the way I behaved at dinner,” he added, when she looked confused. “You’re a good friend to me, and you know how much I hate having an unsettled debt. So I’ll definitely be coming back,” he smiled at her, “to give you a proper apology. And don’t worry about me, all right? My heart’s going to be fine.”

  That last bit was an outright lie, but he needed Aerilyn to believe it. He didn’t want her crying over him anymore. She returned his smile weakly, and nodded.

  When Kael glanced up at Morris, he caught the old seadog giving him a strange look. He blinked his droopy eyes and bent his neck, as if he was trying to drain water out of his ears. Then he shook his head roughly, and the look vanished. “Gravy guard your path,” he whispered.

  As Kael slipped away, all he could think about was that Gravy couldn’t save him — not this time. There was a darkness in his heart that had been growing up in the place of his hope, a black beast that kept trying to strangle him with its wings. He’d been fighting it back all winter, shoving it aside as he focused on his plan.

  But now that plan was broken, and the beast fed upon its ruins — growing stronger with every step: Perhaps it wouldn’t be such a bad thing, it whispered, if you didn’t come back at all.

  Kael shoved the beast away. For
all his many wounds, he still clung to a shred of hope. It was a ragged, miserable little thing — one glowing coal lying in a bed of dead ash. But he wouldn’t let it go. He would hold it tightly to his heart, no matter how it burned him.

  And the black beast would lie in wait.

  *******

  Kael crept towards the giants’ camp, stitching a plan together as he went.

  The moonlight was proving itself to be his greatest enemy. He already felt like a black dot on a blank sheet of parchment before the moon dropped its infuriating beams on his head. Now he might as well be a beetle in a jar, for all he was hidden. Still, he did what he could to move quietly — even if that meant crawling along on his belly a good portion of the way.

  The giants were camped closer to the trees than he realized. So close, in fact, that he was surprised they hadn’t heard their companion’s body strike the ground. There were a half dozen of them — their hulking forms cast shadows out from their fire, stretching across the ground like blackened rays from the sun.

  Kael was within throwing distance when he heard them speak:

  “I’m sick of quail,” one of the giants grumbled. “Sorry excuse for a mouthful, they are. I can hardly pick the meat off their wee little bones!”

  “Try the rabbit,” another one replied thickly, as if he already had a mouthful of hare rolling between his jaws. “You can always get a few bites off of them.”

  The first snorted in disgust. “Rabbits — there’s hardly an ounce of fat on them! And you’d think, with those meaty little legs, that there’d be something worth chewing on. But oh, no.” The fire hissed as he flung a clean-picked quail carcass among the embers. “I’ll be glad to see the castle walls again, I can tell you that.” His head swung to the left. “When are we setting out, Dred? I want a plate piled high with sausages and eggs for breakfast.”

  “We’ll leave as soon as Grout comes back,” a shadow replied — a shadow, Kael noticed, that sat taller than the rest.

  “I haven’t heard him squawk for a while,” another voice chimed in. “The clodder probably got himself lost.”

  The others guffawed heartily at this for a moment. Then Dred cut back in. “Somebody ought to go look for him. His Lordship won’t like it if we come back a man short.”

  The giant who’d been grumbling about the quail snorted. “Then it ought to be you — you’re the one who tossed his weapon out in the empty, after all.”

  “You forget,” Dred said slowly, a dangerous edge in his voice, “that I am Lord Gilderick’s general — even while on patrol. So if I want to rip your head off and fling it out after that pike, all I have to do is say the lions got you. And not a man here will out me. Right, blisters?”

  The shadowy heads stopped their gnawing for a moment and bobbed vigorously in agreement.

  “See there?” Dred said smugly. “Now, I think you ought to be the one to check up on Grout. Think of it this way: the sooner you find him, the sooner you’ll have your sausages.”

  The others laughed as the giant got to his feet. He snatched his pike off the ground and made a few idle threats to those laughing loudest. Then he turned — and nearly ran straight into Kael.

  He aimed between the two crossed sickles on the giant’s breastplate and heard a satisfying thunk as the knife struck true. Then Kael threw himself into the middle of the giants’ ring.

  It took him less than ten seconds to stir up chaos. He flung two more blades in opposite directions, yelling wildly as he went. Even the giants who weren’t struck cried out in surprise and toppled over themselves just trying to get away. Then with a loud whoop, Kael bounded over the fire and dashed for the road — hoping that the giants would follow.

  He allowed himself a triumphant grin when he heard them rumbling behind him. They roared at the tops of their lungs and flung their pikes at his heels, trying to pin him to the earth. But Kael was far too quick.

  He wove a pattern any rabbit would have been proud of, cutting back and forth at such sharp angles that the pikes flew off course. When he chanced a look behind him, he saw that his patched-together plan had worked: the pirates’ cart had burst from camp and was moving for the highway at full-tilt. A few moments later, and a cloud of pale dust billowed up as the wheels struck the road.

  Yes, if he could lead the giants another quarter mile away, the pirates would be safe —

  “Got you!”

  Kael had been so focused on his run that he hadn’t heard the great, loping steps of the giant behind him. He’d broken away from the pack and thrust the butt of his pike between Kael’s shoulders — sending him straight to the ground.

  Little rocks tore at his chin and the pads of his hands as he went sliding. Before he even rolled to a stop, his knees were beneath him. He was nearly to his feet when a boot heel slammed between his shoulders, crushing him back to the earth.

  The thundering steps halted beside him. Kael grimaced as torchlight crossed his face. “What is it, Dred?” the giant who wielded the torch asked.

  “Hmm.” The boot dug uncomfortably against Kael’s spine as Dred inspected him. “Looks like a mountain rat. Well,” the pike’s butt nudged through his reddish-brown hair, “half a mountain rat.”

  “Whatever it is, I want to be the one to kill it!”

  Kael recognized the voice immediately and could hardly believe it when the giant he’d struck in the chest lumbered forward. He pulled Kael’s throwing knife out from his breastplate with a grunt, then held it aloft. “Look at the size of this thorn! That’s going to leave an ugly little scar, that is.”

  A second giant snatched it out of his hand and held it to the torch. “That’s no thorn — it’s a wee knife!”

  Kael could see why the giants had mistaken it for a thorn: clutched between their thick fingers, he could hardly see the tip of the blade.

  “It doesn’t matter what it is,” the first giant stormed. “That little rat meant to kill me, and so I mean to kill him —!”

  “Stop your fussing,” the torch-wielding giant growled. He switched the light to his other hand, and Kael saw the hilt of a knife sticking out from his shoulder. “I got bloodied, too. And poor Dingy — he took one straight in the rump.” He gestured to the giant at his side — whose tight lips and sweat-beaded brow indeed reminded Kael of someone who’d taken an unfortunate wound. “Didn’t you, Dingy?”

  He nodded stiffly. “Somebody’s going to have to help me pull it out. I’m afraid to reach back there.”

  “Oh, rumps and shoulders — I took one in the chest! So of any of you, I ought to — oof!”

  His sentence got cut short by what sounded like the blunt end of a pike to the gut. “Shut it, you idiots,” Dred growled. His boot left Kael’s back and went under his stomach — flipping him over like a maid fluffing the pillows. “What are you doing in my plains, mountain rat?”

  When Kael’s eyes adjusted to the light, he got his first, horrifying look at General Dred.

  He was a giant among giants, towering head and shoulders above the rest. His arms were crossed over his breastplate, twisted together like the knotted, bulging roots of an ancient tree. The shoulders that topped his barrel chest could’ve served for a bench in any respectable tavern. And all over, Dred’s skin seemed to be struggling to contain him: stretching and straining over his muscles, thinned to the point that his veins popped out. But that wasn’t the worst part.

  Not even the shadows could hide the horrible scar that marred his features. It started at his upper lip — a crevice that ran along his cheekbone and stopped just short of his left eye. The depth of the scar warped his mouth, giving him the look of a man who had something rather unpleasant growing under his nose.

  “You tried to kill us,” Dred said, when Kael didn’t reply. His eyes roved down to Kael’s wallet of knives. “Did you kill Grout? Answer me, rat!”

  Kael flinched as Dred kicked a large clump of dust into his face.

  “Of course he killed him!” the giant with the chest wound piped in. He l
eaned forward and spat in the dirt near Kael’s head. “He’s a little monster.”

  “Someone ought to check in those trees over there,” Dred mused. His eyes lighted on Dingy — who quickly shook his head.

  “My rump’s too sore, General.”

  “That’s not my problem, now is it?”

  “But there could be more of them! What if I wind up like Grout?” Dingy pleaded. When that didn’t work, he changed tactics. “We don’t have time to walk all the way back there. We’ve got precious few hours before dawn, after all. And if we show up late, His Lordship’ll flay our hides.”

  He glanced at the others for support, and they quickly nodded. Grout’s fate came second to a flogging.

  “He’s going to flay us anyways,” Dred snapped at them. “We’re going to turn up one man short —”

  “Not if we bring him,” Dingy said, thrusting a finger at Kael. “His Lordship always needs fresh beasts. And with the Duke’s shipment running late —”

  “Shut it.” Dred fingered the scar at his lip, thinking. And Kael held his breath.

  He could see the road from the gap between Dred’s legs, and the cart hadn’t quite made it over the horizon. A cloud of dust still hovered very clearly where the wheels had rolled by. If the giants turned back towards camp, they would see it.

  Please don’t turn, Kael thought furiously, trying to force his will through the iron plates of Dred’s helmet. Forget about Grout — head for the castle.

  After a long moment of thought, Dred took his hand away. He seemed about to speak when a strange noise cut over the top of him. It came from further up the road, away from the cart’s path.

  And Kael recognized the familiar, ear-grating sound immediately.