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“Oh,” I said, “he offered me the chance to stay with them without you, and I said no. We’ll be slaves now.”

“Wonderful,” she said.

The door of the cage-cart was shut behind us and locked.

“You’re getting better at sarcasm.”

The true giants found us not two hours later.

17Thunder

You may be forgiven for doubting that one can find comfort even in the herkity-jerkity rhythm of a cart pulled by camels across dry steppes; but so one can, and so was I lulled to sleep soon after we left the camp where our fates had been decided. Oh, it was not the deep river-sleep of a quiet bed beneath a cool window, hush-a-byed with cricket-song and warded by strong, friendly arms in a near room. Rather this sleep came in spits and gurgles, here and there, between knocks and rocks. And it was in one of these drowsy gaps between eyes closed and eyes wide that I saw something that made no sense whatever.

“Camels don’t fly,” I said, just before the flying camel struck our cart a glancing blow that near tipped us sidelong. The noise of it was great, as was the noise of alarm among our captors.

“Gegant!” someone yelled, and it doesn’t take a linguist to translate that. Not, at least, when an eighteen-footer who isn’t even bothered about having a weapon just flung a camel skyward, and two a bit smaller at maybe fifteen feet were bashing Wostrans with tree-tall clubs, sending pillowy red hats and spindly rag-doll limbs flying. Dust billowed, so much dust, that I realized the nature of the ambush—the great karks had half buried themselves along the route and had sprung up of a sudden like hell and devils at close range.

“Merda!” Galva said, and I said, “Shyte!” in agreement. To the credit of our Egalitarian friends, they got their remaining spears and camels moving quickly and lit out away from the bigguns with only three kynd and one camel killed. I saw Bazl with his brass nose winking through the dust, trotting his camel away at speed, and he shouted, in Galtish, “Tell your Spanth good luck!”

“Same to your camel, you cunny-nosed kark!” I shouted back at him, though without anger. Truth was I sort of liked him and couldn’t blame him for thinking ill of me, him being an idealist and me a dogshyte opportunist.

We had been abandoned, along with the four camels pulling us, and the camels pulling the other wagons, with their tents and wine and treasure.

“This is too much to lose, right?” I said to Galva. “They’ll have to come back for us, right?”

She slid her sea-blue eyes toward the giants now grabbing the camels’ reins to calm them. She was counting. I counted as well and came up with seven. Seven huge fucking giants girdled in bone and brass, covered in faded blue tattoos; four males and three females, the weakest of them looking strong enough to juggle full-grown pigs and harder to kill than hope in rich children.

“Would you come back?” she said.

Myself never having been a rich child, I said, “Not for us.”

“Verta,” she said.

Truth.

“Not for me, at least,” I added, “though I hear you’re worth twenty camels.”

She laughed now, a little ha that seemed to catch her by surprise, and she cut a glance at me. It was pure Ispanthia, that laugh and look, and it was pure soldier. It made me love her just that little bit more. She’d seen worse than even this, after all, hadn’t she? Much worse. There’s comfort to be had in companions the wicked world tried hard to kill but couldn’t.

“You always save a laugh against hell,” she said and nodded.

Was it possible she took strength from me as well?

I hoped that was so.

We’d both need all we could get.

Now a face the size of a barrel filled up one side of the cage-cart, all dirty, sun-pinked, and dammish, her eyes sky blue under a thicket of wild, rust-colored hair.

“I’m sorry, sprumlet,” I said in Galtish, “this cart’s full. You’ll have to ride in the next one.”

“I never fit in this wagon for child,” she said now to my surprise, her voice low and thundery, booming behind my breastbone with its nearness, her breath hot and rank with sour beer. She stood to her full sixteen feet, pointed at us, and shouted, “Arvisk! These speak the speech.”

If I hoped sharing the language of long-dead elves would get us some advantage with these karks, I was much misled. All that had changed was who led our camels and which direction they were led in. We now went back toward the Thralls, or east, instead of southwest and farther into the steppes. From what little I heard these wide-shadow bastards say, they intended to take us to some chief or other, and they were also debating the minimum number of camels needed to get us there. This was mentioned soon after I had heard one or two say hungry, so I guessed that camels, too small for riding by these fatty lunks, were very much on the menu.

“Do you suppose they’ll eat us?” I asked Galva.

“Your bony ass is for kicking, not cooking,” she said, and I could tell she was a little proud of herself for the wordplay in Holtish.