they wouldn’t leave me to die somewhere.
We moved out of the mess that we’d made of the Goblin tribe, and I tried not to think about what might be waiting for us. Ever since CERN day it could be literally anything. I’d even heard stories of dragons. I didn’t want to face down a dragon with just an axe and a shotgun. That was a job for a full division backed up with attack helicopters and magicked anti-aircraft equipment.
We stopped at an intersection when Baran put up his hand. He pointed to his eyes and then up at an outcropping that had once been part of a skyscraper. We looked. A sphere floated above it. I couldn’t see anything but white. Raine grabbed my arm and dragged me to a car, forcing me down below the edge of the door until I couldn’t see the sphere. “Sauron’s eye,” he whispered.
I stared at him for a moment, trying to figure out what the hell he was talking about. “What?”
“That globe up there. We were just lucky enough to see it before it saw us. Baran’s gonna take care of it.”
I looked around the side of the car and saw that the rest of the team taking shelter behind other chunks of the landscape. Baran had an arrow nocked to his bow and appeared to be counting to himself. I wanted to look at the eye but I didn’t move. I’d screwed up enough for one day.
Baran suddenly stood and loosed his arrow, then another. He dropped to the ground and we all waited for the space of a heartbeat or two. Then there was a sudden burst of greenish light from the direction of the eye, bright enough to make us all squint.
The rest of the Breakers stood, so I figured it was safe for me to do so as well. I looked toward the outcropping and saw the sphere. It wasn’t floating anymore; it was stuck to the wall with two arrows.
“Okay, move fast, people,” said Ethan. “They can’t see us now, but they’re gonna come out here and find out why.”
“Who’s they?” I asked Raine as we moved out, walking quickly.
“Hags, probably,” said Raine. “They’re the ones that use the eyes.”
“So not Sauron.”
He rolled his eyes and I snickered slightly.
My snickering died down when we felt the ground shudder. “Fuck,” said Birgitte. “They’ve got a Cyclopes.” The five of them immediately started scanning the area, two of them looking at the skyline while the others looked at the buildings nearby. I wasn’t sure what to do, so I stood there holding my axe.
“Put that thing away,” said Gunner, speaking softly. “Ain’t gonna do any more than piss a giant off with that.”
I slung my axe behind my shoulder without a word. I’d never even seen a living giant before; what did I know about fighting them? Raine pointed down the road to our right. “There,” he said. We looked where he was pointing and saw the remnants of a pair of buildings that had collapsed together across a shared alleyway. They had left a small cave between them, barely large enough to see.
The others took off, running toward the entrance. I followed, not wanting to be left alone to meet whatever was making the ground shake.
Gunner went in last, barely able to squeeze his bulk through the entrance to our hidey-hole. He and Baran looked nervous, glancing at the walls and ceilings as if they wanted to be anywhere else in the world, but I found the little cave to be nice and cozy despite the circumstances. Part of it was having Birgitte pressed against my left flank, but honestly it just felt a little like coming home. I had always felt at-home in confined spots, another part of my mixed heritage. The others didn’t appear to share my ease. I could have told them that it was an incredibly stable configuration but I found that I enjoyed their discomfort a little bit.
The ground-shaking footsteps came closer and closer, heralding the stench of a thousand bodies long unwashed and turned rancid. A few bricks shifted above us, bringing mutters from Gunner and glares for quiet from Ethan.
A foot the size of a fire truck slammed down into the street in front of our cave. Screw you and your square-cube law; I’m telling you how big it was. Magic can mess with physics like that sometimes. We held our breath both as a means to keep quiet and a way to keep from breathing the giant’s rank scent. There was a terrible silence and then another enormous footfall further down the street. The foot by our doorway picked up and moved off, but not too far; the giant came to a halt at the same intersection we’d just used.
After a moment the creature let out a deep groan that echoed through the broken buildings and vibrated a few more bricks loose.
“WHERE ARE YOU, BLINDERS?” it said, the voice even louder. I was surprised to hear a touch of anguish in its mighty roar. There was anger there, even rage, but there was a note of desolate sadness as well. Ethan put his finger over his lips in a totally unnecessary gesture toward us.
“COME OUT AND GET WHAT’S COMING TO YOU!” A few loose bricks fell.
We didn’t come out. We huddled, hoping that it would leave.
Instead the giant threw a tantrum. He raged and roared, stomping and swinging fists at nearby buildings. It was like standing near a really angry tornado, and by the time he was done I was surprised that we hadn’t been buried. Finally he was done and he headed back down the street the way he’d come. Gunner waited for the footsteps to fade away and then headed for the mouth of the cave, but Ethan grabbed his arm.
We waited in there for almost an hour before we felt the ground shaking again. The footsteps were heading away from us. When they faded the second time Ethan said, “It waited to see if we’d come out. They’re smarter than they sound.”
This time he allowed Gunner to lead us, into the afternoon light. The giant’s tantrum had rearranged quite a bit of the surrounding skyline, knocking holes in some buildings and simply collapsing others. A car was embedded in the third floor of an office building across the street. There was no sign of the floating eye.
“Probably works for the Hags,” said Baran. “When I shot out its eye, she sent him to find out what had gone wrong.”
“He was a scout?” I said, incredulous.
Baran’s expression said that it was a stupid question, but he answered anyway. “More like cleanup. Still better than fighting a Hag.”
I blinked and Ethan turned to look at me. “We get into fight with a giant, best thing is to hide. They’re smarter and faster than they look but they’re not very maneuverable. If you get a chance with that axe, cut the tendon on the back of its heel. Once they’re on the ground it’s a lot easier.”
I nodded nervously. I told myself that my discomfort was the result of seeing a giant and not just from the fact that Ethan was telling me how to kill one. It implied that we might see more of them.
“Let’s get the hell out of here before it comes back with its friends, huh?” said Raine, grinning. I could see the nervousness lurking behind the grin and didn’t blame him even a little bit.
“Just glad we’re not going the same way as that thing,” said Birgitte. She checked her loads and followed Baran when he started off. I followed after, settling back into my role.
The ambush came ten minutes later. We’d been so busy checking the skyline for giants that we hadn’t been paying close enough attention to the ground and the buildings around us. The initial volley of arrows was hard to see but it felt like I’d walked into a swarm of bees. I growled something in warning but it wasn’t necessary; the others had all been stung by the same things.
I had enough time to pull one of the stingers out of the back of my hand before things turned to shit. It wasn’t a stinger, not exactly; it was a tiny arrow, the shaft perhaps three inches long. The wound, and the others around my arm, hand, and right side of my face, started to tingle and feel numb.
“Fuck! Tinks!” Birgitte cried, and then we were engulfed in a swarm of fluttering creatures about six inches high. There were all kinds of things that size, pixies and fairies and nixies and brownies and other things in all colors of the rainbow, but we didn’t have time to identify our attackers so precisely. They were Tinks, and they were pissed at us.
&nb
sp; It wasn’t my favorite kind of fight, since it was more like killing a swarm of bees than battling something that could hit back, but my axe would do well enough if I swung precisely. I felt myself slipping into the Rage as I drew the weapon but I fought it off. Flipping out wouldn’t be a good thing in a tight formation like this one.
I soon found that sweeping the flat of my axe through the swarm was a lot more effective than using the blade. I heard gunfire, the more swearing over the buzzing wings. I didn’t know where anyone else was or what they were doing, so I fought on.
The problem was that they didn’t fight fair. The Tinks tended to stay away from my axe and swoop in from behind,stabbing for tender spots in the chinks of my armor and still firing those tiny arrows anywhere that they could get to.
Whatever they’d coated the arrows with, it was good stuff. I fought it off for a minute, maybe two, before I stumbled over something on the ground. It was Gunner, fast asleep with his face bristling with the arrows. I kept swinging, barely even fighting now but determined to kill as many of the little bastards as I could.
It took me a little while to realize that I was hanging upside down when I woke up. It was dark, and wherever I was smelled absolutely foul. It was worse than the giant’s stench.
Then a light flared and brightened until I could see the rest of the room, and I realized that I was wrong. It