They had just crossed the crest of the Curridgians, discernable by the fact that all streams now flowed westward instead of to the east, when they heard the first roll of thunder.
“Hunkapa no see clouds, no see storm.” The hirsute hulk had his head tilted back while he squinted at the sky.
“It does not sound like that kind of thunder.” Holding fast to his spear, Ehomba strode along in front, maintaining the same steady pace as always.
Simna ibn Sind cocked his head sideways as he regarded his tall companion. “There’s more than one kind?”
The herdsman smiled down at him. “Many kinds. I myself have been trained to identify dozens of different varieties.”
“Hoy then, if it’s not a far-off storm clearing its throat that we’re hearing, then what is it?”
“I do not know.” A brilliant black-and-green spotted beetle landed on the herdsman’s shirt, hitching a ride. Ehomba admired its glossy carapace and let it be.
“I thought you said you knew dozens of kinds of thunder?”
“I do.” Ehomba’s smile thinned. “But this one I do not recognize.”
Whatever its source, it grew louder as they began to start downward. Its measured, treading rhythm was abnormal, suggesting an origin that was anything but natural. Yet the percussive volume was too loud to originate with anything man-made.
Only when they came around a cliff and entered a small alpine valley did they see that both of their assumptions were correct.
It had not been much of a village to begin with, and now it was in the process of being reduced to nothing at all. The stately thunder they had been hearing was caused by the concussion of hammer against stone. The stones ranged in size from small boulders to chinkers light enough for a child to move from place to place. The head of the hammer, on the very much larger other hand, was bigger than Ehomba.
It was being wielded by a giant—the first giant the herdsman had ever seen. The village elders knew many tales of giants, with which they often regaled their attentive, wide-eyed children. While growing up, Ehomba and his friends had listened to fanciful fables of one-eyed giants and hunchbacked giants, of giants with teeth like barracuda and giants lacking any teeth at all who sucked up their victims through straws made of hollow tree trunks. There were giants that swam in the deep green sea (but none that flew), and giants who lived in the densest jungles and never showed themselves (but some that were too big to hide).
There were ugly giants and uglier giants, giants who cooked their victims in a casserole of palm oil and sago pastry, and giants who simply swallowed them whole. Oura had once told of a vegetarian giant, and of another who was shunned by all others of his kind for washing his hair. Sometimes there seemed to be as many different kinds of giants as there were storytellers among the Naumkib, and that meant there were a great many varieties of giant indeed.
The one that stood before them using its great hammer to demolish the village was neither as horrific in appearance as he might have been nor as good-natured. Shoulder-length red hair tumbled in tangled tresses down his back and the sides of his head. Long hairs sprouted from pointed ears that stuck through the raggedy locks, and he had orange eyes. From his splotchety, crooked nose hung a booger the size of a boulder. His teeth were surprisingly white, glaring out from the rest of a baggy visage that as a face was mostly a failure. Dark and dirty treelike arms protruded from the sleeves of a vest comprised of many sewn-together skins, not all of them overtly animal. His furry lower garments were similarly fashioned, and his sandals with their knee-high laces bespoke the crudest attempts at cobblery.
He was three times the size of Hunkapa Aub, and when he swung the heavy hammer with its leather-clad head, the peal of disintegrating rock reverberated down every one of the surrounding canyons and gorges. Sweat poured from his coarse countenance in great rivulets, and even at a distance his stink was profound.
“Hoy, now we know what happened to the village of Khorixas.” Simna’s expression was grim. Another reverberant boooom echoed as the back wall of what had once been a fine two-story house came crashing down. “We also know why those hard-up folk we met a while back were migrating across the crest with their kids and all their possessions.”
“We do not know anything.” Ehomba was keeping one eye on the giant while assessing possible alternate routes with the other. The village lay directly athwart the most direct and easiest route westward and downslope. “We will go around,” he announced resignedly. He started to turn away.
Hand on sword hilt, Simna all but jumped in front of him. “Hoy, long bruther, we have a chance to right a wrong here!” He nodded sharply in the direction of the crumbling village. “Whatever transpired between those poor wretches and this brute couldn’t possibly justify the total ruination of their homes.” He grinned knowingly. “Why, this great blundering ogre is nothing compared to the dangers you and I have dealt with these past months! Watch him work. See how slow he is, how ungainly his movements? We should teach him a lesson about picking on those smaller and weaker than himself and send him on his way. It will also earn us the undying gratitude of those simple mountain folk.” His expression was eager. “What say you?”
Ehomba replied in his usual unshakable, even tone. “I do not need their gratitude, undying or otherwise.” He nodded leftward, to where the giant was maintaining his steady rate of destruction. “Nor am I in the business of teaching lessons to rampaging giants or anyone else. My obligation draws me westward, to a destination that is, at long last, within reach if not sight.” Supporting himself partially with his spear, he took a step to his right. “We will go around.”
A disbelieving Simna’s expression darkened. “I wouldn’t have thought you a coward, Etjole.”
The herdsman was not moved. “Or a fool either, I hope.” Walking past the swordsman, Ehomba started up a narrow side canyon that led, if not due west, at only a modest inclination northward. Without a word between them, Hunkapa Aub and Ahlitah followed.
With his eyes Simna implored the others as they trooped past. When he found himself contemplating the last of the big cat’s tail, he abruptly drew his sword. Waving it over his head and howling a defiant war cry, he spun and charged directly down toward the village and its ponderous, methodical enemy.
“Simna, no!” Ehomba’s entreaties were ignored. Gritting his teeth, he started after his friend, hurdling grass and small rocks with long, lithe strides, holding his spear parallel to the ground beside him. Exchanging a glance, Hunkapa Aub and the black litah followed—at a sensible and leisurely pace.
Simna had already dashed in behind the giant to take a swipe at his ankles. The blow missed the main tendon but left a significant gash in the side of the left foot. Letting out a howl, the giant turned and brought his enormous hammer around in a sweeping, descending arc that would have smashed every bone in the swordsman’s body—if he had remained standing where it was aimed. Quick as a jerboa, he’d darted out of its way. The wind of its passing ruffled his hair.
“Hoy, you great towheaded sack of pig piss! It’s a little different when we fight back, isn’t it? Come on, come on!” He proceeded to taunt the giant with gestures as well as words. “Surely you can handle one tiny fella like me!”
Grimacing, the giant brought an enormous foot up and stamped down, only to find that once again Simna ibn Sind had skipped nimbly out of the way. Not by the margin the swordsman had intended, however. The giant was clumsy, it was true, but he was not as slow as Simna had first supposed. His defiant smirk began to develop a nervous twitch.
Ehomba arrived with sword in hand. He was furious, but not at the giant.
“What do you think you are doing?” he snapped at his imprudently energetic friend.
“Saving what’s left of a village for the good of its innocent inhabitants.” Panting, Simna stood close to the herdsman. “You pick your noble causes, I’ll pick mine.”
“There is nothing noble in a senseless death.” Ehomba noted that the giant was watchi
ng them warily, trying to determine the orientation of its next blow.
“I don’t plan on dying.”
“No one does, but it happens just the same.” Taking a deep breath, Ehomba addressed the giant. No matter who, or what, his adversary, he firmly believed in trying reason before the sword. “Greetings, imposing one! Why are you destroying the village Khorixas?”
Red eyebrows dense and tangled as berry thickets drew together. “What ‘village’ Khorixas? There is no village by that name.” Callused and scored, a free hand indicated the ruins among which the oversized speaker was standing. “This miserable blot on the earth is Feo-Nottoa.” The hand rose to smack sonorously against the broad chest. “I am the Berserker Khorixas!” The great hammer started to rise threateningly. “You should know the name of the one who is about to kill you.”
“Why kill us?” Ehomba wondered aloud. “Why destroy this simple town?”
The head of the hammer lowered slightly, hovering. “I am a Berserker, and this is what Berserkers do. White teeth showed unpleasantly. “I am happy to be a Berserker. I like to destroy, and mangle, and exterminate. If I am fortunate, before I expire I will be able to eradicate every town and village in the southern part of the Curridgians.” With his free hand he wiped his massive brow. “Annihilation, it is hard work.”
“Hoy, it stops here!” Sneering, Simna gestured at his tall, laconic companion. “This is Etjole Ehomba of the Naumkib. Master of magic and all the necromantic arts, conjurer supreme, wizard of wizards, defender of the enfeebled and all who are preyed upon by bullies and ruffians!”
“I am not a bully,” the Berserker Khorixas countered stiffly. “I am a professional.” He squinted down at the two men. “And he doesn’t look like much to me.”
“Leave now.” Simna took a challenging step forward. “Depart, flee, run away, before you are reduced to oblivion or slaughtered where you stand!”
“I’ll take my chances,” the Berserker Khorixas declared confidently, “but first I will make a paste of your bones to spread upon my bread for tomorrow morning’s breakfast.”
Simna stood his ground—making certain it was proximate to Ehomba’s. As the stern-faced herdsman unsheathed the sky-metal sword and prepared to defend the two of them, the Berserker could be seen fumbling with the head of the majestic mallet. The coarse cord that secured the protective leather cover was untied and the tough brown casing removed. Exposed to the clear mountain air, the silver-gray hammerhead gleamed metallically. Extensive crystalline striations caught the sunlight and held it. The swordsman’s jaw dropped.
The colossal hammer of the Berserker Khorixas was forged of the same sky metal as Etjole Ehomba’s ensorcelled sword. And there was a lot more of it.
Without preamble or warning from its owner, it was promptly brought around in a vast, sweeping arc, its passage through the clear mountain air generating a deep, reverberant humming. Simna leaped one way and Ehomba the other. The hammerhead struck the ground between them, ringing all the way to the center of the Earth and setting up subtle vibrations in the lush mudcress fields of Pridon on the opposite side. It was a blow that would have crushed lesser men to a damp pulp—or men less attuned to the behavior of creatures such as giants.
Despite the fact that his heart had sunk somewhere to the vicinity of his ankles at the sight of the unveiled hammer, Simna did not flee. Having precipitated the confrontation, against Ehomba’s wishes, he was honor-bound to stay and fight. But not to stand and fight. That way lay rapid demise. Instead, he darted and dodged, making sure first of the location and direction of that deadly maul before dashing in close to strike at the giant’s legs with his own sword. His exceptional agility and skill allowed him to deliver several stabs and cuts, but the wounds were shallow and only succeeded in further enraging the already incensed Berserker.
From a nearby slope, the black litah and Hunkapa Aub observed the battle. “Hunkapa not want Etjole to die,” the shaggy hulk commented mournfully. “Hunkapa go and help!”
“You’ll only get in the way.” Ahlitah moved to intercept his ineloquent companion. “Leave it to the herdsman. Many’s the time I’ve seen him extract himself from desperate situations.” Fiery yellow eyes surveyed the arena of conflict. “He’ll do the same here.”
“And if he not?” Hunkapa Aub observed the flow of battle dubiously.
“Then he will die, and that prattling monkey with him. And I will try to find my way back to the veldt, and you to your mountains, and the sun will set tonight and rise tomorrow and the world take not the slightest notice of his strivings or ours. That is how it has always been and that is how it will always be.” A muted snarl sent every small rodent within hearing scurrying for their burrows.
“Ehomba will find a way to win, or he will not. If he cannot defeat the giant, it’s certain you can’t.”
“You could help too,” Hunkapa Aub pointed out guilelessly.
“I have sworn to support him.” The majestic ebony cat hesitated. “But I’d be in the way as well. There is a time to stalk, a time to pounce—and a time to wait. I think this is a time to wait. If you’re sensible, you’ll do the same.”
So Ahlitah and Hunkapa held back and watched. Hammer blow after hammer blow descended, cleaving the air with monstrous streaks of its etched metal head. Each time, its intended targets jumped or twisted out of the way. But avoidance, too, demands effort, and both men were growing tired.
“Do something, Etjole!” Breathing harder and faster than was reassuring, Simna ibn Sind wielded his sword as he yelled to his companion. “Blow him into a mountain, bring down a piece of sky on his head!” Even as he shouted this advice, the increasingly desperate swordsman knew he was suggesting the impractical. With he and Ehomba forced to dodge as often as they were, any wind the herdsman called up was as likely to blow them off the mountain as it was the giant, while anything falling from the heavens would smash into the ruins of the village with an unearthly indifference to whoever happened to be standing there.
Astoundingly, instead of striking at the Berserker, instead of cutting at his legs and feet and trying to bring him down, Ehomba was doing his utmost to taunt him further.
“Bruther, what are you doing?” Simna was badly confused. “The one thing we don’t need to do is make him any madder!”
But the herdsman seemed not to hear his friend as again and again he darted dangerously close to the giant before skipping spryly out of his way.
“Ai, you doddering dolt, you clumsy buffoon! Is this the best you can do? I am smaller, but too quick for you. No wonder you beat up on houses. Buildings cannot run away, or they too would make you look silly and laugh at you!”
Infuriated, the Berserker swung the great hammer in swifter and swifter arcs, until the air howled and shrieked in the grip of the artificial storm created by its wake. Unlike the tiny humans who were tormenting him, he did not tire, but appeared to grow stronger and more determined with each swing. The hammerhead hummed, whistling through the air like the piece of burning sky Ehomba’s sword had called down to annihilate the imperious Chlengguu. Soon it was a terrible silver-gray streak, a blur that obscured everything behind it. Not even a swordsman as skilled as the redoubtable Simna ibn Sind could avoid it forever.
There was nowhere to hide. The stone structures of doomed Feo-Nottoa were as cardboard beneath that irresistible chunk of sky metal. Even a cave, had one been close at hand, would have been an insufficient refuge, for in the hands of the Berserker Khorixas even a mountain could be pounded to rubble.
An exhausted, tiring Simna, lungs heaving and legs aching, was bemoaning his likely fate even as he cursed his rash impetuousness, when Ehomba suddenly darted forward at what appeared to be the absolutely worst possible moment. The swordsman screamed a hoarse warning, but his tall friend did not hear. Or he heard, and chose to ignore it. Simna froze as the hammer descended, describing an arc that looked certain to impact the charging herdsman fully.
At the last instant, Ehomba dodged. Not back
, away from the falling hammerhead, nor forward as a wrestler might have done in an attempt to slip beneath his adversary’s guard, but sideways. As he did so he ducked just enough, brought around his own weapon, and with both hands swung it as hard as he could, forward and up. To Simna’s experienced eyes it looked like a futile gesture. The sword was bound to shatter against the much larger, infinitely heavier hammerhead.
It did not. Too fast even for the swordsman to see, the edge of the herdsman’s blade struck the backside of the swooping hammer. In so doing it imparted to that tremendous swing all the additional momentum of which its master was capable. Impelled forward and upward by the force of its own rising on the backside of the swing and boosted by Ehomba’s unexpected strike, instead of slowing down, the immense hammer continued to rise. Instinctively maintaining his grip, the startled Berserker Khorixas rose with it.
When he realized what was happening he contemplated letting go, even if it meant abandoning forever the incomparable tool. But by the time understanding penetrated that thick, unkempt skull, it was too late. The hammer had carried him too high. If he released his grip now he would fall long and far enough to break his neck, for even the spines of giants are made of flesh and bone.
So not only was he forced to maintain his grip, but he was compelled to strengthen it with the addition of his free hand. Berserker and hammer together, the one whistling and the other howling imprecations, rose into the cloud-free sky. Ehomba watched until giant and giant’s weapon were a blot, then a dot, and finally a speck of indeterminate dust soaring over the southern horizon. Then he took a deep breath and started to shake.