Land of the Giants, page 26
Isaac could see the curved, silvery bridge form and smiled at the Falian’s potential. He had been waiting for centuries to meet one such as this.
Corbin directed his mind over the bridge. It burst forth faster than he intended, zipping across the projection and startling the mage, who clapped him on the back of the head, knocking him out of the trance.
“Owww! What in the crystal are you doing?” Corbin complained, gingerly rubbing the tender spot on his head while making sure to keep up his pace.
“Not like that. You have to go slower,” Isaac reprimanded.
Kyra frowned at the magic user. “You don’t need to hit Corbin to make your point, mage.”
“And if I hadn’t knocked him out of that trance, he would have just alerted the guards to our presence,” Isaac huffed haughtily, unhappy having to explain his actions to the unenlightened.
Kyra looked alarmed at the prospect and gave Corbin a shrug, jogging back over to Stur. He was on his own with the mage. They were rapidly closing in on the city, with only another mile and a half left to go.
“Hurry now, lad. We are running out of time. Try it again…but don’t rush it this time,” Isaac commanded, waving his hand for Corbin to continue.
Again he channeled the psychic aether and funneled it to the top of the wall as a conduit between his mind and the guards. This time, however, he only gave himself the slightest nudge to move across that bridge, which was difficult since he also had to remain focused on running half-blind without tripping over rocks. Once his psychic form made it to the wall, he swirled around one of the patrolman’s minds, gently pushing against it to enter without being detected. Immediately upon entering, he was overwhelmed with the jotun’s thoughts and conversation.
“I don’t see how she expects me to do that and still be calm in the morning,” the guard said to his colleague. His thoughts were filled with visions of a dark blue-skinned woman scolding him around a dinner table while simultaneously rolling naked across a red satin bed, rocking her head back and moaning.
Corbin blocked out the ice giant’s filthy thoughts and focused on the matter at hand. He whispered in the back of the jotun’s mind that all he saw were coyotes running below. With the task complete, he quietly drifted out and wrapped himself around the other patrolman’s mind.
“Look, I’m telling you, if you don’t put these courtesans in their place, they will take you for everything,” the second jotun urged his partner. His mind was filled with whipping a naked, blue-skinned courtesan while she sat on all fours, begging for more.
Corbin’s physical body gagged at the sight of the strips of flesh hanging off her whipped skin. Stur had to grab his arm to keep him from falling over. The guard was counseling his friend on what he would do with one of the city’s prostitutes, but his thoughts were so ghastly and perverted, Corbin was having a hard time staying focused. Instead of whispering his psychic command, it came out as a shout, ricocheting around in the giant’s mind and setting off alarm bells.
“Eh…what, dogs, is it?” the patrolman asked his friend, who looked downright puzzled.
“What are you talking about? I didn’t call her a dog!” he replied indignantly, anxiously looking around as if he feared the courtesan would somehow hear their conversation.
“Shhh…shut up for a second.” He stopped, carefully looking out at the desert plain below.
Corbin rocketed back to his body, snapping his head up toward the clouds with such force he was lucky not to bite off his own tongue. Stur felt the jerking and grew deeply concerned, steadying him and urging him to keep moving.
“What did you do?” Isaac asked, suspiciously gazing up at the wall, where one of the guards was pointing at them.
“I think I may have pushed a bit too hard…” Corbin answered meekly. He threw himself into a sidelong dodge as a bullet whizzed by, ricocheting off the dry ground at his feet.
“Ha ha, did you see that?” the patrolman cackled sadistically from the wall. “I almost had the mangy little mutt!”
“Would you leave the coyotes alone? What are they doing to us?” his partner asked, pushing the barrel of his partner’s rifle down and taking the wild pack of coyotes out of the eager jotun’s view.
“Damned amateur!” Isaac howled. “Get a move on before we get clipped!” Without another word the mage propelled forward. No one needed to be convinced. It was another mile to the wall, and they were completely exposed.
“Well, at least they think we’re wild dogs, huh, mage?” Stur huffed sarcastically, extremely annoyed at being forced to run even faster. Another bullet clipped the cracked soil.
“Come on, seriously, you better stop before you rouse up Commander Erruza,” the patrolman pleaded.
Without lowering his rifle, his partner cackled. “All we do all day long is walk around this wall, talking to each other. You can’t seriously tell me you don’t want to blow off a little steam and play target practice with these hounds?” he asked, letting off another round that narrowly missed the darkest mutt’s head.
With a shrug, the patrolman conceded to his partner, chuckling at his own hesitation and deciding to join in. Pulling his musket off the shoulder strap, the jotun steadied the barrel against the wall as he took aim. “Five pence says I get one before you do.”
His devious friend smiled at him. “Oh, you’re on.”
“Now they’re both shooting. I think they saw through your little ruse!” Kyra shouted in alarm as a volley of bullets rained down at them.
“Nah, the sick fiends are just playing target practice!” Isaac replied, impressively twirling his staff just in time to deflect a bullet that would have lodged in his crown. “If we can make it to the wall, I’ll throw them off our scent!”
“Darn, I thought I had that one for sure!” the brash guard brooded, wondering how the dark mutt had avoided the bullet.
“If we make it?” Corbin repeated, lunging over a large crack in the ground. They were still at least a quarter of a mile out from their destination. Close enough to hear the jotnar’s laughs carried on the strange wind but still far from safety. “Isaac get ready!” he called out, recklessly stopping to snatch a rock and throw it as hard as he could away from their group.
“Watch out!” Kyra shouted, tugging him forward before a shot could take him out, lodging into the soil at his feet. Isaac did not follow his lead until Corbin reached out his arm, channeling energy into a telekinetic wave that he used to carry the stone away from them. Not wasting any time, the mage cast an illusion of a coyote over the rock.
The patrolman who had just missed the wild dog stopped to rub his eyes, swearing he had just seen the hound split in two, each half heading in opposite directions.
“Double to the jotun who gets that one that headed out by itself!” his normally laidback partner exclaimed. It was good to see his friend blowing off some steam for once, biting his thumb to the system a bit.
Below on the plains, the companions took full advantage of their reprieve as the two guards aimed round after round at their diversion. Corbin had to let go of his telekinetic hold as the rock came to the end of his limitations, looking almost as if it were hanging in the air on a leash that began moving backwards.
“What in the fires of Asgard is that mutt doing?” the brasher jotun guard exclaimed, steadying his aim at the mangy, backwards-running coyote. He fired, and the mutt stopped and fell dead on the ground. He howled with excitement, proclaiming himself the victor.
His partner grunted. He quickly aimed his crosshairs at the original pack, his scope settling on the smallest coyote’s muzzle. It would be a nice and neat kill. He steadied his breathing, focusing on the target, and squeezed the trigger.
“What in Ymir’s name do you bilge rats think you’re doing up here?!” the wall commander Erruza shouted behind them, startling the guard so hard that the butt of his rifle jerked hard into his jaw and fired, the bullet whizzing just past Kyra’s exposed head below.
“Oh, um...uh…” his partner tried to explain.
“Did I ask you to speak, maggot?” The commander was fired up, still wearing his sleeping attire and bare-chested, followed by two other armed men. “Is there an attack on the city?” he asked the patrolman’s partner.
“No, Commander, there is not,” the brash patrolman dutifully replied, standing at attention and setting his rifle tightly against his side.
“Sir, we were just shooting at some coyotes, sir,” the unwise jotun added, finally finding his voice.
The commander gave him a look that could rot milk then motioned for one of his men. The newly arrived patrolman smashed the butt of a rifle into the jotun’s face, dropping the man to the ground with a bloody nose. Moving over to the parapet, the commander looked out at the desert. There were no coyotes to be seen. The commander motioned for his man to lift the bloodied patrolman back to his feet. Moving right up to the jotun’s face, he said, “Do you see any dogs? I don’t see any dogs.”
Trembling, the guard looked out at the desert, where the lone pup lay dead and the pack huddled next to the base of the wall. “Y-yes sir, j-just a co-couple,” he replied, pinching his leaking nose.
The commander furrowed his brow, looking over the edge of the wall and straight down at its base, where the jotun had pointed. What the commander could not know was that before he had a chance to spy them, Isaac had already switched his illusion to match that of the ground. So the commander saw nothing.
“Come here, you half-wit,” the commander ordered, pulling the guard to look down to the base of the wall. “Where are these dogs you idiots were shooting at?” he asked, pointing out at the empty desert.
“Uh, ummm, I…” the patrolman fumbled.
The commander grabbed him by the throat and heaved him straight over the edge. The patrolman screamed through the air until his body met the ground and broke at weird angles only twenty paces from the hidden party.
The commander sneered at the other patrolman standing at attention. “Next time I’m trying to sleep, keep it quiet up here, maggot!” he howled, adding, “Constantine, take this hapless twit to the marquess for a good whipping.”
Below, Corbin sighed, loosening his muscles and strapping the voulge back in place across his back. No one needed to give voice to how close death had just been. Instead they focused on the task at hand, following Isaac to a nearby culvert covered with a rusty grate. The wide tunnel was used to drain excess water from the city’s lower level and reeked of foul waste left to rot for years in the unclean pipes.
“This is our way in,” Isaac instructed, motioning for Stur to lift the loose grate aside so they could enter. Ducking under the heavy, rusted thing, the mage made his way inside and motioned for them to follow.
Kyra stopped to take one last look at the eastern horizon. “I hope your fool of a brother knows what he is doing out there,” she said before ducking under Stur’s arm.
Corbin followed her lead, moving to brace the opening from the inside so that Stur could squeeze in after them. “Don’t you worry about Logan. He may seem reckless, but he’s really become much more responsible over the last few months. Those guys will be fine out there with him in the lead,” he replied, though by the pitch of his voice, Kyra thought perhaps even Corbin did not truly believe the statement.
The daystar was beginning to set in the east, painting a wave of hazy violet dancing with rivers of pale pink across the rapidly darkening sky. They had been traveling hard without any rest and had made it to a break in the jungle. The companions were greatful for the reprieve from the tangled undergrowth. The rocky area overlooked a wide range of mountains, and they were surprised to see how high up they had come. The jungle surely felt as if they had been climbing upward but not to the dizzying height they now found themselves. Tiko advised that they skirt the treeline for a while, sticking to the rocky cliffs, which made for easier travel.
The Agma had gone ahead to scout out the land some time ago, and Nero found himself waiting dutifully for his other two companions, standing among the wide fig leaves that covered the ground at the edge of the tree line.
He could hear Logan returning from his foolhardy errand but could not quite determine the exact distance until, suddenly, the young swashbuckler burst from the brush, looking like a madman.
“Run, you idiot, run!” Logan cried, barreling through the thick brush and almost tripping over a vine in his path while clutching a purple, speckled egg the size of his upper body. Nero almost twirled in a perfect three-hundred-and-sixty-degree turn as Logan barreled into him, running right past to put distance between himself and the jungle.
“Outta the way, robot!” Bipp warned, hot on his friend’s heels.
“Logan, I assume that you experienced complications in your plan?” Nero asked, raising the volume of his voice to project farther as he ran to catch up with the pair.
As if in answer, a bone-rattling squawk came from the dense jungle behind them. The sound of it encouraged Logan and Bipp to run faster.
“You might say that!” Logan called back over his shoulder, shifting his attention to something behind Nero as a noisy rustling came from the tree line.
Nero chanced a glance back at the jungle and saw a great black-feathered bird burst from the trees in a spray of leaves. The bird was easily Logan’s height, running swiftly on two long legs that ended in elongated talons which looked like they could do some serious damage. The cassowary snapped its long neck forward, trying to stab at the back of Nero’s head with a sharp gray beak. The feathers around the bird’s anger–filled, black eyes were a shock of white that ran all the way back over its head.
“Told you both this was a bad idea!” Bipp reprimanded them, insisting he had been against Logan’s plan to steal the oversized egg for supper.
Logan picked up speed when he heard another of the feathered beasts exit the jungle in pursuit. “What are you talking about? This was all your plan!” he yelled at the complaining gnome, hopping over a break in the narrowing path and motioning for his companions to follow him into the brush.
“That’s what I meant, isn’t it!” Bipp howled back as the second cassowary closed in on them, easily picking its way over the rocky ground on long legs made for this type of travel.
“Watch your step!” Logan warned, stopping for only an instant before shifting left. The ground fell away to their right, straight down the sheer edge of a cliff. Bipp and Nero had no time to see just how far down it descended as they blindly followed Logan in their mad scramble to keep away from the snapping beaks of the enraged birds. Nero deftly pivoted at such a tight angle and with such half-crazed speed that the bird hot on his heels almost went tumbling right over the edge of the cliff. Flapping its small wings to catch its balance again and swinging long legs back toward the ground, the bird barely avoided the plummet.
The larger cassowary darted diagonally, not wishing to knock its partner off the ledge, and hopped over a large rock jutting up through a patch of tall grass. Instead of sliding through the bird’s legs like he normally would in such a predicament, Bipp hopped onto its back, straddling the monstrous bird’s thick neck and clinging for his life.
The cassowary tried snatching him off its back with one of its legs, but it could not reach him and began hopping around in a circle, violently shaking its head, trying to dislodge the hitchhiker.
“Stop messing about!” Logan yelled, seeing his friend in trouble and doubling back to save him. Nero beat him to the punch, diving to the ground in a roll that took the monstrous bird’s legs out from under it.
The gnome flew through the air, landing on his feet already running to escape the other cassowary, who was squawking incessantly as if spitting a stream of curses at the egg bandits. Thankfully the bird stopped to help its companion up, licking its feathers back in place and making sure it was okay.
Spying his opportunity, Logan directed them to dash through a copse of wide trees. They moved through them quickly, and he skidded to a halt, suddenly realizing it was a dead end. He tossed the egg without warning to Nero, who caught it with ease. “Get over to the other side. I’ll slow them down!” he ordered, pointing across the narrow ravine in front of them.
Bipp’s eye followed the cliff down—it was so steep the bottom became nothing more than shadows—and then to the fat, moss-covered tree that Logan meant to use as a bridge across the gap. The gnome felt a rolling sensation in his tummy. “You sure that’s the right way?” he asked, trying to buy some time. Nero was already halfway across the makeshift bridge.
Logan crouched with his boomerang ready to fly toward the copse of trees, which he expected the cassowaries to emerge from at any moment. “C’mon, you’re not going to let a machine make you look bad, are you?” He smirked over his shoulder at the gnome.
Bipp whistled. “Damn thing’s probably programmed not to fall or something like that,” he grumbled, testing his weight on the old trunk. When he heard the dual squawking again, it gave the gnome a little more incentive to cross, and he scurried to the other side without so much as a thought of slipping.
When the giant birds rushed out of the tall grass, Logan was ready for them. He cocked his arm far back behind his head then snapped it forward, twirling the bladed boomerang over the birds’ heads.
“Oh bloody Hel, he missed,” Bipp groaned.
“Bipp, I believe our somewhat reckless leader has a different plan,” Nero pointed out just as the weapon reversed course, spinning to return to its owner. But not before knocking the bough of a tree off with a loud crack. The limb crashed down on top of the cassowaries, burying them under a rainfall of bark, branches, and leaves. Logan was already almost all the way across the narrow gap when he caught Gandiva and gave it a kiss in delight. The pile of debris was already shifting when he hopped off the tree on the other side.
“Logan, I do not believe they are going to stay trapped for very long,” Nero said as the tip of a sharp beak smashed through one of the thick branches.
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