CH 10
“John and Errol Emolere!” Sal threw his arms open as the twins entered the tavern. “As I live and breathe! What brings you two magnificent devils to the fine s**thill of Pickettsville?”
Both men smiled grimly and stood at the bar as Sal pulled out three shot glasses and poured them full to overflowing. He was exuberant to have a pair of proper villains in his pub, their presence made him feel comfortable, even warm.
“A toast!” Sal beamed as he lifted his glass. The twins followed suit. “To our better f**king angels that they may be our guides!” The twins bowed their heads and took their whiskey down.
“Tell me, what can I do for the two of you.” Sal refilled the glasses and took another shot for himself.
“We’re looking for a bard.” Errol said. “A luthier, actually.”
“That doesn’t narrow the field much.” Sal refilled the twins’ shots. “Pickettstown is lousy with minstrels.”
“This particular minstrel has something that doesn’t belong to him. He’s a skinny fellow, tall, looks as menacing as a schoolgirl.” John told Sal as he drank his whiskey.
“Ah. Now there’s something.” Sal’s eyes lit up. “Would this fellow have a broken nose?”
“That’s him.” They said in unison.
“Right... This minstrel of yours is traveling with a wizard, a pretty good one from my reckoning. The two of them went north to Gynneth Mawr.” Sal mulled over his circumstances and thought it best to take a stab at honesty with the brothers. He was so accustomed to lying that it nagged at him to tell the truth. “And they do have what I believe to be an unbelievable quantity of narcotics on their ragged persons.”
“We wouldn’t know anything about any drugs.” Errol was puzzled.
“Or a wizard.” John was equally puzzled. It crossed their minds that it made sense that their quarry had a more adept partner to keep him alive. “We’re just after the lute. He has got a lute with him?”
“A lute? Yes the man has a lute, and judging by the way he cradles the damn thing like a baby I now realize that I should have done more to keep those two here...” Sal was a bit shaken by his failure to see the obvious. “But I do have two of my men on the case. They’re not geniuses, but they do have a well practiced routine.”
“Your lute and my fortune should be back with the returning wagons in a few hours.” Sal finished his glass and poured the three of them another round. “Gentlemen, it seems our interests our aligned. Cheers.”
***
The giant grinned a mouthful of teeth like a rotting pier as it reached into the battered inn. Tommy screamed like a small child and John let his sword drop to his side of its own accord. Max and Nigel watched from their low vantage as the gaping face of the giant was suddenly plowed out of their view by a massive fist. They heard a series of blows that sounded to them like it was raining boulders. It only lasted long enough for Tommy to go hoarse with his squalling. Max stood up over Nigel and closed his eyes in order to draw as much of his strength as he could muster.
Another tremendous hand pulled away the side of the inn. The four men saw that the giant’s knuckles were calloused like the bark of an ancient tree. As the larger, more hideous giant who had bested the first leered at the men, Max brought the image of the standing rock into his mind. He brought his staff up with one hand and touched Nigel on the crown of his head with the other. The light and air around the two men wavered for a moment before the world pinched in on itself where they had been standing just a moment before.
Max fell on top of Nigel, scraping his forehead on the sharp surface of the rock beneath them.
Nigel’s bottom hit the ground as the two of them re-instantiated about three feet in the air above the peak of Coxcomb Rock. They were bruised and terrified, but safely perched high above the shattered structures of Gynneth Mawr. The town was built right up to the foot of their pinnacle, and from their vantage they could see about ten giants standing in a loose group around the inn.
“That was terrible...” Was all Nigel managed before he vomited the remainder of his oats and rabbit. “I feel as though I was turned inside out and licked all over...”
“That’s because you were...” Max forced the words out in gasps as he spat and tried to simultaneously recover his breath and keep his breakfast in place. He was barely able to push himself into a sitting position, the teleport was as great a working as he’d ever managed. He knew how hard it was to get twenty or so stones weight through the aether and back into the world in one piece and in the right spot. Usually, that grand a move would be facilitated with enchanted devices designed to hold a massive charge. Stone circles were the standard battery structures used for the teleportation of multi person parties.
“Oh, well that it explains it then...” Nigel’s words trailed off as he got his first real look at their location. Below them the town was stomped to shards and ash. An enormous firepit claimed the majority of the expanse of the town square where Longbridge met his end. A handful of giants were just waking up here and there, scattered among the broken buildings like misshapen children nestled in a heap of building blocks. “Oh, oh my... I don’t think we found the best spot to park, Max.”
The two of them crawled to the edge and lay on their stomachs to peek over and try to see what was directly below them. Nigel had been right, they were not in the safest place. At the base of the standing rock two houses of nearly identical shape had been built. The intrepid pair did not realize at the time that those were the former homes of the Vicar of Gynneth Mawr and the Mayor of Gynneth Mawr. Each home was a sprawling affair that backed up against the living rock of the spire, and each home bore an unfinished tower opposite the other where the owners had engaged in an unspoken contest to see who would have a taller turret once the last brick was in place. This pair of boastful mansions had been thrashed and filled with the roofing and straw from most of the thatched homes in the surrounding area to create a tremendous, crude throne. The rock Max had chosen as a landing site for his spell acted as the back of the chieftain’s high seat. They were, luckily (if that term applies to situations so dire as that) at least sixty feet above the greasy pate of the reigning monarch, who had just returned from his morning constitution off the cliffs opposite them.
Max and Nigel squinted in the morning light and watched the giant that had torn away the side of the inn stride back up the hill with Bastard John and Tommy gin gripped by the feet in each of his hands like chickens. The lead giant below them made an abrupt series of flatulent grunts at the approaching titan.
“Nigel, there isn’t any chance you learned a bit of the giant’s tongue in your time at the university?” Max looked pleadingly at Nigel.
“No Max, nobody understands giant.” Nigel shook his head and watched as the pair of still writhing men were handed over to the head of the clan. “It’s even said that they don’t really understand one another, which could explain why they appear to communicate through brawling.”
The leader stood up, a head taller than any of his kin, and took the men who had double crossed Max and Nigel. He held them up high and nodded to a sputtering chorus of belching howls and wet grunts.
“Ye gods, they look like kittens in his hands, don’t they?” Max frowned to his friend.
“They surely do.” Nigel agreed. He felt no sense of compassion for the men about to die. But he hadn’t quite made up his mind if he hated them enough to watch how they would be killed. A second after wondering about the state of his conscience, Nigel decided that he’d already thrown up and that he was due a good show.
The largest of the giants glanced about at his kin as they scratched and started passing around the casks of beer. He looked from one man to the other and decided to bring the larger of the two in for a closer look. Giants, it is known, have very poor eyesight. It compounds their inability to understand one another as the use of gesture in place of speech is often misinterpreted due to their myopia.
Bastard John, true to his nature, waited until the giant’s eyes crossed and focused on him before he unsheathed his mighty sword and dealt a blow across the bulbous nose of his captor. Blood sprayed over John’s frame and the giant flinched away. Enraged, he whipped his hand backward and flung Bastard John against the spire Max and Nigel were pressed flat on top of. After a second or two, most of the large warrior unpeeled from the wall of stone and fell into the filthy throne below.
“Ouf.” Max chuckled. “I enjoyed that.”
“As did I, Max.” Nigel looked over at his friend and shared a laugh as Tommy Gin began another round of ear splitting screams. “I think Patches there might get a bit of fun before His Highness eats little Tommy.” Max pointed to the large giant that brought the men up. The breadth of the giant’s naked chest was matted in a rough checkerboard of missing hair.
The clan leader pinched his bleeding nose with his free hand and gestured with a thrust of his chin to Patches. A few more of the huge brutes collected in a circle as Tommy continued to scream like he’d been set on fire. They were all smiling and ducking their heads in obvious anticipation.
The chief nodded once more and tossed Tommy into the air above their heads, and for one brief moment, Max and Nigel made eye contact with Tommy Gin as he flew up in the air in front of them. The confused terror on his face almost made the men feel guilty watching him meet his fate. Almost.
Tommy fell screaming in a practiced arc toward the ground. His noise stopped abruptly as his fall was interrupted by a knee kick from Patches that sent him back up into the air, sailing as high as he had a moment before.
“Ouch.” Max smiled. “I don’t think he’s quite dead yet...”
As he fell back to earth, the king popped Tommy on his own knee three times, which aroused his onlookers to a series of approving grunts. He passed Tommy’s limp form over to another of the giants who caught the little rag doll of a man carefully on the instep of his great foot. He held the broken shape for a second before he did a small hop that shook the town and tapped Tommy back up into the air in an arc that a fourth giant stopped by pushing his chest out to meet the small man in flight. This giant rolled his shoulders forward and cupped Tommy’s pulpy shape in the hollow between his collarbones before dropping him onto his knee and sending him back into the air.
“Oh he’s dead now, I imagine.” Nigel mused. The giants only got one more pass out of Tommy before his stuffing came out. “Oh, yeah, he’s dead.”
***
“Those stupid c**ksuckers.” Sal roared as the wagons returned to Pickettstown one cart short. “If they got greedy and ran off with my goods, after I put them onto those two city boys, I will personally hunt them down cut their f**king throats!”
“Well, if they did run, they didn’t run north.” John gestured at the Follower in Errol’s hand. Sal looked at the handsome device and then at his old acquaintances as John finished this thought. “Or they didn’t take that lute with them.”
“Would they know to steal this lute of yours if they were to look at it?” Sal asked, still bright red with anger. “And remember, I’m talking about a pair f**king morons. You can’t assume they have a grain of sense between them.”
“You must not have seen it.” John smiled slightly.
“No. Can it play itself and suck my c**k at the same time or some such bulls**t?” Sal was smart enough to know how dangerous the twins were. He also knew that they held the same respect for him. “I f**king told you that if I had known it was worth taking I’d have had it done already.”
“I don’t think they took anything. Do you John?” Errol asked.
“No Errol, I don’t believe they did. In fact, I believe your employees are most likely deceased.” John raised an eyebrow at Sal’s loss of two henchmen. “Errol and I have found ourselves perplexed boy this boy’s resourcefulness.”
“Really? I’d never have guessed it to look at him.” Sal shook his head. “Alright, gents, I think we can strike a deal, since you’re headed to Gynneth Mawr anyway, I’ll help you fence your half of what you take off of those dead idiots. And I’ll never even ask to see your precious f**king lute. Agreed?”
***
“So, I meant to ask, what exactly happened to all of that greyvesdust we labored to bring this far north?” Nigel asked Max as he watched the giants continue drinking. It was late in the afternoon and half the casks and most of the herd had been consumed. Nigel was wondering, again, if the plan Max had come up with was going to work.
“Well...” Max was harried by the same question. He had regained some of his strength as they lay up on the rocks enjoying the sun. But now he was curious if the quantity of dust he’d spiked the barrels with had been sufficient. If anything, the giants seemed more lively than ever. they were pounding each other frequently, in fact two more had been killed while they had looked on from their perch. “I put it all in those casks. They’ve been at it for hours now.”
A group of them were playing a very energetic game like the one they had taken up with Tommy, only instead of a dead adventurer, they had an empty cask one of them had stuffed with cowhides. It held up considerably better than the small wizard had. The cask was pinging back and forth violently, all of the giants playing were in a frenzy. One of them grew a bit overzealous and accidentally kicked Patches in the head. Patches, the second largest of the giants and apparently only subservient to his chief, had already killed one of his own that day, and this insult was not any more tolerable than the last two. He was recovering from the kick when the giant who had put him down realized that it was now or never if he wanted to rise in rank.
“Oh - look at that now!” Nigel winced as the giant with the dreadlocks as long as his arms leapt on top of Patches and drove his knee into the larger giant’s face. “Are you sure that you got greyvesdust from that devious Blightelf in the sewers?”
“Quite sure, I tasted it myself when I measured out some to bribe the tavern keeper with.” Max offered. “It’s the genuine article, completely pure. What I dumped into that beer was worth hundreds of thousands of crownes.”
The dreadlocked giant was fighting harder than either of the men thought possible. He was pummeling Patches over and over again, landing blows so fast that his fists were a blur of blood and thunder. He finally stood up, breathing heavily, his tanned belly heaving in and out like he might fall over himself. His eyes were wide and his pupils swallowed the reddish gold of his irises even in the light of the late afternoon. Dreadlocks flying, he leapt into the air onto the sturdy gatehouse at the north end of the town wall and bellowed. The chieftain stood up and joined in the roar, and the rest followed so loudly that Max and Nigel were certain the people of Pickettstown heard their deafening call.
“Max.” Nigel closed his eyes as he recalled some of his medical lessons from his time at the university. “I believe what we’re seeing here is a paradoxical reaction.”
The giants finished their barbaric yawp in a tattered series of belches and guttural burbling that led directly into a free for all dancing melee. It seemed to be a spontaneous and joyful engagement of every giant in a connected but random series of traded blows. They beat upon one another merrily for the better part of an hour before one more fell dead and they decided to drink some more.
“Oh that’s right.” Nigel stepped back up to the peak and sat down. “ I forgot, they’ve only drunk half their ale yet.”
“Well, at least there’s only twenty six of them left.” Max cringed.
***
“That...” Errol shivered. “Is not a pleasant sound.” The roaring wail of the giants’s festivities washed past he and John as they continued north. Neither of them could recall the last time they had felt real fear. They were unaccustomed to it.
“I agree Errol, that was unpleasant.” John shook his head. “And I’d bet our boy has something to do with it.”
***
As night fell, the giants were completely mad with drink and dust. All of them were naked, bloody and thrashing with one another. Even their chief had fallen in among them as they pounded and stomped one another. The men knew that at some point they were going to either be found by the crazed beasts or forced to climb down into however many of them were left after their pugilistic orgy. There would be no chance of killing them in their sleep like lazy chickens.
“I guess this is pretty much it for us, Max.” Nigel sighed as he straightened himself on the rock he was using for a seat. He took the lute from his shoulder and set the case in his lap. “I was wondering how you knew those two were going to cross us like that?”
“I grew up with those sorts.” Max lounged with his back to the deafening fracas below. “My uncle was a blaggard, and he taught me every trick he knew.”
“I thought as much.” Nigel blew on his fingers nervously before he popped the latches on the case. The emerald glow of the lute seeped out. “You were raised to be a noble arse, and I spent my youth dreaming of becoming a famous bard.” He took the demon instrument from its case and cradled it in his lap.
“I don’t know if it’s time for tune Nigel.” The sight of the jade lute made Max’s guts wiggle. “That thing is a nasty piece of business.”
“Yeah, well, how much more f**ked can we get?” Nigel shrugged at Max as he set the case on the ground and balanced the wicked lute on his thigh. “You’ve done an amazing thing, getting us this far, and if all of it is only going to lead to our death, which we all knew it would the night you proposed it, then I’m going to get my turn at this beauty before I go.”
“I suppose few thins are more inspiring than one’s immanent demise.” Max grinned and thought for a moment about how long he would remain conscious were he to be chewed by a giant. “Do your worst.”
“Thanks Max.” Nigel smiled and strummed a simple chord across the angry strings.
A perfect note drifted through the air. A tone so pure and lovely called forth from the instrument that the noise of the fighting giants fell to a shocked rustle. Both men stared at the silent beasts, all of them standing mute and open mouthed. Every huge, bruised eye lay upon the two men.
Nigel felt his hand shake as the demon trapped in the jade took hold of him and brought his hand down again. The second note rang off key, and the fury of the lute pierced Max’s brain as he felt the sound pass through him. As that second tone met the giants Nigel grit his teeth in horror as he began to violently strum the instrument like he was driving a nail with a hammer. A series of chords ratcheted down on the tendons in Nigel’s wrist as he banged through a progression of notes so fast that one bled into the next in a hammering wall of sound louder than either man could believe. The effect of being so close to Nigel and the lute was like being held in the current of a pounding surf. max struggled against the crashing noise and managed to pull himself off to the side. The demonic music had just begun, however, and Nigel was firmly in the grip of the angry, mis tuned instrument.
The giants, fueled by greyvesdust, ale and murder began to spring up and down, slamming into one another with even greater ferocity than before. Nigel, to his horror felt great ripping belches of grunts and squeals fly from his mouth. Max was certain that Nigel was starting to holler out some kind of song in the tongue of the giants, and it was driving them completely insane.
Eyes were gouged, ears torn off fingers bitten and groins ruined as the monsters tore at one another. In minutes, their gleeful bloodlust had claimed five more, and they kept on killing one another. Dreadlocks ripped the arm out of another’s socket and beat a third to death with it. He continued bashing the others with that gruesome club for another hour. The town was literally awash in blood. It ran and pooled deeply enough in places that a man might sink to his knees in it. The giants continued, unabated by their wounds. The foul music from the lute was breaking Nigel down into a sweating mass of blistered fingers and a ragged howling. All but the largest of the strings was broken. The enraged demon the lute was carved from had made its mind up to destroy the fool who had decided to play it without properly tuning or caring for it. Nigel was forced to bang the single string over and over again. Waves of growling notes punched off the top of the rock as a showdown between Dreadlocks and the chief began.
Only the two of them remained. Max was curled into a ball near the edge of the cliff, he had secreted himself in an alcove that offered him a line of sight on the town while shielding him from the swells of evil music blasting past. He kept his hands over his ears and watched the remaining giants fight one another to the death. Both of them were so tired that they were swinging wide and tripping on buildings. The arm Dreadlocks had been wielding was gone, bashed to splinters on the skulls of giants who lay dead. The two of them tangled and kicked at each other. The chief was missing an eye and Dreadlocks both ears. Most of his matted hair had been pulled out and his front teeth were totally gone. As the two tangled again, Dreadlocks slid down the chief’s arm. The single chord drove him to cling to the sweaty sinew of his leader, pawing in time to the rhythm. The chief was pounding a tattoo of sloppy punches on the side of his opponent’s head to the beat as Dreadlocks shoved the hand he was clinging to into his bloody maw. He bit down with his molars and kicked against the chief’s belly. They tumbled together into the ashes of the square and Dreadlocks spit the fingers he’d just bitten off at his chief. The last string frayed and pounded faster and faster, the demon knew that it would be unable to play once that last string broke, and if it didn’t kill Nigel by that time, it might wait forever up on this rock until another fool found it and tried to play it.
The chief found the stone he had flattened Longbridge with under his good hand and bashed Dreadlock’s head in with it. He struggled to his feet and roared as he faced the infernal lute at the top of the stone spire. He gripped the sides and began to scramble up the granite outcrop in a desperate attempt to shut the vile noise off. He was pawing at the surface with the stone still held in his remaining fingers. As he managed to mount the outcrop, Max watched as the great ruined face of the beast appeared in front of him. It reared back its good arm with the stone and the string on the lute snapped in a final peal of tormented thunder.
The giant shuddered for a moment, inhaled painfully and fell backwards off of the spire, crashing into the town. His head hit the broken blocks of the keep and opened all over the already gory contents of the square. In the echoing quiet Max paused and noticed that he had peed a little in the last moment before the giant had died. He uncoiled from his hiding spot and ran to his friend’s side.
Nigel was a shaking, retching mass pile of a man, his already thin frame had been rendered like a fatted hog so that he was practically emaciated. Max took his staff and pushed as much of his own life through the Heartspar and into his classmate. Exhausted, he collapsed, gasping, next to Nigel and felt for a pulse.
“I don’t want to be a rock star anymore.” Nigel sat up blearily and mouthed the words without making any sound.
“I think that worry is well behind you.” Max smiled weakly.
They spent another three hours making their way down what was a fairly well kept path around the rock down into the horror of the town. Nigel sat carefully on a broken block that had been knocked free of the keep at some point in the last month. He still had the diabolical lute in his hands. He knew he needed to be properly rid of it, as the dragon had told him, before his quest was done. Max stumbled over to the thinly spread remains of his old classmate and kicked free the Enobled Hand from the remnants of it’s scabbard.
“I think this should be sharp enough to take a few forelocks... don’t you think Nigel?” Max turned to his friend and felt his face fall entirely.
“It’ll do.” Errol looked past Nigel’s weak shape on the ground. “Don’t you think John?”
“Aye. It’ll do.” John and Errol unsheathed their long bladed cleavers at the same time.
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