Hunt of the Bandham (The Bowl of Souls: Book Three) (16 page)

“What is so special about this hammer again?” Qyxal asked as they walked.

“Buster’s a magic hammer, you durn elf!” Lenny said. “Every hit with Buster does double the smashin’. That’s a hard magic to come by. My great granddaddy made him and he’s been passed down from Firegobbler to Firegobbler ever since.” The dwarf paused for a moment. “‘Sides, I might wanna pass it down to a little varmint of my own some day.”

“You have plans for ‘little varmints’?” Qyxal laughed.

“He is also the only hammer Lenny will make weapons with,” Justan remarked.

Lenny ignored the elf. “I can work harder stuff with Buster than with a reg’lar hammer and I don’t gots to keep the metal as hot.”

“Alright, fine,” Qyxal said, repressing his mirth. “This I can understand. As long as it’s not about revenge, I am willing to help.”

“Dag-blast it! You don’t have to help if’n you don’t want to! I can do it myself. The only reason I’m lettin’ y’all help is ‘cause the boy’s makin’ me.”

“Lenny, we are all going to do this together,” Justan said.

Fist snorted. “Giants not too hard to fight. They is slow.”

“‘Are’ slow, Fist,” Justan reminded. “You say, Giant’s ‘are’ not too hard to fight. They ‘are’ slow. When there are more than one, you use ‘are’. When there is only one, you use ‘is’.”

“Oh.” Fist nodded. “I forgot. Giants ‘are’ slow . . . A giant ‘is’ slow.”

“Good. You got it.” Justan said.

“Now listen here, dag-nab it!” Lenny said. “Y’all are actin’ like this is going to be some easy fight, but it ain’t. This giant ain’t slow! It’s more’n a foot taller than Fist and he’s faster too!”

“Alright, Lenny, we get it,” Justan said.

“Giants are slow,” Fist said again.

“We are taking this seriously,” Justan said. “We just need to have a plan. Tell us everything you know about the giant and we’ll figure out what to do.”

“First of all you gotta know that it ain’t called a rock giant just fer nothin’. The durn thing’s skin is covered with rock. Yer swords ain’t gonna cut the thing and I don’t know what Gwyrtha’ll be able to do.”

“Okay,” Justan said. “That means that our best weapons are going to be Bertha, Fist’s mace, and Ma’am.”

“What was that?” Qyxal asked.

“Oh!” Justan grinned. “I didn’t tell you. That’s the new name of my Jharro Bow. Ma’am.”

The elf laughed. “I like it!”

“I know!” Justan said. “It fits, doesn’t it?”

“What is Ma’am mean?” Fist asked.

“What ‘does’ Ma’am mean,” Justan corrected. “When you are speaking in the past tense-.”

“Dag-blast it!” Lenny snapped. “We gotta stay on target, here! Look, we’re at the edge of its territory right now. See this here?” The dwarf pointed to the tree in front of them. There was a large “x” cut into its bark. All of the trees in the vicinity had a similar mark. “The local’s done the same thing to all the trees along the border.”

“How is the giant’s territory so well defined?” Justan asked. “I mean, there’s no fence or anything. Why are we safe if we stay on this side of the trees? What’s to keep it from just coming out and ransacking the town?”

“Don’t know, son,” Lenny said. “All’s I know is that they say it stays inside its territory.”

“I don’t know,” Qyxal said. “The more I hear, the more there is something familiar about this thing. I just can’t place it . . .”

“Lenny, is this thing completely made of rock?” Justan asked. “I mean, can it be broken?”

“It ain’t all rock, I know that much. When I hit him with Buster, his skin cracked open and he started bleedin’.” He paused for a moment. “It healed up real quick, though.”

“Alright, so at least we know it can be hurt. We’ll just have to play it by ear,” Justan said. “But first, let me talk to it. If I can get it to listen to reason, maybe we can work out a deal to get Buster back.”

Lenny snorted. “Don’t think so, son. I tried when I come back the last time. I brought gold and other weapons to trade and all the dag-burned dirt-farmer wanted to do was fight fer it. At least he let me go after he beat my arse.”

“Nevertheless, let me talk to him before we do anything, okay?” Justan asked. There were grunts of agreement all around. “Let’s go in, then.”

They decided to leave Albert and Stanza tethered at the edge of the forest. The forest area was thick and if they had to leave in a hurry, there were places the large horses wouldn’t be able to navigate through. Besides, Lenny explained to them, the giant liked horse meat.

As they walked through the trees, Justan saw the first signs of the giant’s presence. There were sets of deep footprints set into the damp leaves and every so often there were skeletons lying about. Either the giant looted his victims or someone was taking advantage of its thirst for battle, because every skeleton was stripped clean.

“Bloodthirsty, isn’t he?” Qyxal remarked.

As they continued to walk deeper into the giant’s territory, the footprints became more common and so did the dead enemies. Soon, sounds of battle reached their ears. It started with shouts and curses. Then they heard the giant’s laughter. It was deep and throaty, a not altogether unpleasant sound if it hadn’t been accompanied by screams. Justan motioned for silence and they approached the sounds carefully.

The woods ended abruptly into a wide open space several hundred feet wide. The ground was littered with rocks of all shapes and sizes from pebbles to ten-foot-tall boulders. At one end of the huge clearing was a rocky hill with a wide-mouthed cave piercing its side. A battle was taking place about a hundred feet from where they stood.

The giant looked every bit as formidable as Lenny had described. At least nine-feet-tall and bulging with muscles, its skin looked to be made entirely of granite. Despite its large size, it moved at the speed of a regular man, which was something Justan found hard to wrap his mind around. For clothing it wore only a bedraggled pair of cut-off leather breeches.

From the looks of things there had been five men fighting the giant to start out with. Three of them were now motionless forms on the ground. One man, an archer, stood a ways back from the giant futilely shooting arrows that bounced off its rocky skin. The other remaining combatant had an axe and as they watched, he took a chop at the giant’s knee. The blade sparked as it bounced off of the rocky skin.

The giant countered with a kick that knocked the weapon out of the man’s grip and most likely broke his arm. He then bent and grabbed the man by the leg. With a laugh, the giant pulled the man up off the ground, dangling him upside down and laughed in his face. Justan watched in astonishment as the giant spun a few times, swinging the man around by his leg. He picked up speed, gathering momentum as he went and with a mighty heave, released. The man screamed as he cart-wheeled through the air, clearing the top of the first tree before crashing into the forest beyond.

“He can’t have survived that,” Qyxal observed.

“You aren’t getting away that easily!” the giant shouted at the archer who was now running for the trees.

The giant picked up a boulder about the size of a man’s head and hurled it. The archer made it just past the treeline when the boulder struck. They couldn’t see the impact, but by the way the giant raised his arms in the air and shouted in triumph, it was evident that he had struck his target.

“This giant is not slow.” Fist said. No one bothered to congratulate him on getting it right.

 “They must’a done somethin’ to make him angry,” Lenny explained. “He usually let’s you run away. That way you can tell yer tale and get more folks to come fight him.”

“Okay, this is what we are going to do . . .” Justan had to stop for a moment and gather his thoughts. His heart was beating madly in his chest and he wasn’t sure if it was from fear or excitement. “Lenny and I are going to go out and try to talk to him. Fist, Gwyrtha and Qyxal stay in the trees unless we need you.”

“Are you sure that’s wise?” Qyxal asked.

“No,” Justan admitted. “But I’m afraid that if we all step out together, he will be too distracted to listen. So wait here. But if he charges us, don’t wait for me to call you. Just come out and help, alright?”

There were nods all around. Fist whistled and Squirrel jumped from his shoulder to the nearest tree, scampering up to watch.

Justan slipped Ma’am off of his shoulder and held an arrow at the ready. “Okay, Lenny. Let’s go.”

He and the dwarf stepped out from the cover of the trees and approached the giant. It was looking at the three men laying on the ground. Though they looked to be mangled pretty badly, two of them were still breathing. It nudged one of them with its foot. The man cried out in pain.

Justan cleared his throat and the giant turned in surprise.

“Oh, so there are more of you! I was just trying to decide whether to put your friends out of their misery.” The giant sounded remarkably intelligent. Justan was encouraged that they might be able to reason with it.

“We ain’t with them,” Lenny said.

The giant’s eyes widened in recognition and he pointed at the dwarf.

“Hey, I know you . . . You’re that dwarf that keeps coming back for his hammer! I remember you because of the mustache.” The giant laughed. “You brought a friend to help this time? Hah! That’s just great. I love a new challenge.”

“We don’t want to fight you if we don’t have to,” Justan said.

The giant looked at Justan as if for the first time. He frowned. “So the human speaks for you now, dwarf?”

“He wants to try talkin’ with you first,” Lenny said.

“May I introduce myself?” Justan pressed.

“Don’t bother telling me your name,” the giant said. “I’ll just forget it once I’ve beaten you.”

Justan realized that getting the giant to listen wasn’t going to be easy after all. With a sigh, he slid the glove off of his right hand. He made a fist and raised it so that the Giant could see the rune.

“My name is Edge.”

“A named warrior, eh?" A sparkle came into the giant’s eye. He laughed again and bowed. “A pleasure to meet you, Sir Edge. You will not be the first named warrior I have beaten.”

“And I have beaten things bigger than you,” Justan replied. It was true to a certain extent. The Golem had been about twelve feet tall and he had delivered the killing blow. “I hope it doesn’t have to come to that, though. Can I have your name?”

“Huh, persistent aren’t you? Fine, my name is Charz.”

“Nice to meet you, Charz,” Justan said. “All we want is to negotiate for the hammer. Can we make some kind of a deal?”

“A deal? What are you going to do, pay me? I don’t need your money. I’ve got nowhere to spend it. Besides, if I wanted anything you have, I could just take it off of your corpses. I’ve got all the trinkets I need back in my cave.”

“I wasn’t talking about a trade of goods, but if you have everything you need, why is it so important to keep that particular hammer?”

“Hmph, a shrewd one. The thing is, I like my trophies and by keeping it, I have been able to beat the dwarf twice. Now he brings even more fun with him.”

“Surely there is something else that you need,” Justan said. As long as the giant was willing to keep talking, there was a chance that they could get out without fighting. “Is there anything that we could do to help you in exchange for the hammer?”

The giant looked taken aback by this suggestion. He thought for a moment, then shook his head and laughed.

“Nah, you can’t help me. There’s only one person who can help me and he ain’t coming. Nope, there is only one deal that we can make and it is the same deal I give everyone. If you beat me, you can take anything you want from my cave. I’ve been collecting trophies for nearly a century now and there’s some pretty nice things in there.”

“As you wish, Charz,” Justan said and sent a message to Fist and Gwyrtha through the bond. They immediately left the treeline and approached with Qyxal a few steps behind them.

“What’s this?” The giant’s grin grew even larger. “An ogre and an elf and a . . . what is that, a lizard mount? No, wait. It’s a rogue horse! What do you know? I ain’t seen one of those in years! What an interesting group this is. How exciting!”