The Path of Ravens (Asgard vs. Aliens Book 1) (11 page)

She is not Ayessa. That I know instantly, for
this woman's hair is long and blond and bound in a thick braid that
trails behind her head with each of her swift, darting moves. She
never stops moving, using the giant's size against him, making him
seem a lumbering statue by comparison. Her weapon is a long-handled
ax with a small enough, light enough head that she can wield it
one-handed if she chooses. She has landed several blows, judging by
the gashes on her opponent's arms and legs, any one of which would be
fatal to smaller folk. To this behemoth, they are but deep scratches.

After initial surprise has passed, I remain
frozen for some seconds, uncertain. Do I sit and watch the fight
unfold or rush to her aid? I have no wish to put the success of my
search at risk for a stranger's sake—but what if she can help
me in return?

When the fallen giant rises, reclaims his own
huge ax and makes to rejoin the fray, instinct makes the choice for
me. Leaping from my perch, I land a few paces from the injured giant
and draw my sword. It  hears my landing, turns and sees me. Its
heavy, bristling brow furrows, and it roars, hefting its ax in my
direction. I feint and lunge toward it, thinking I have a good chance
of slipping under its defense, for all that my sword is capable of
inflicting damage to its thick hide.

I never find out, for a sudden force from my
right side drives the point of my sword into the ground. A second
impact strikes my body just below the ribs, sending me onto one knee.
Looking up, I comprehend that my attacker is none other than she whom
I sought to help.

Before I can regret my choice, her attention
turns to the giant I had been about to engage. Ducking a sweep of its
ax, she catches it under the chin with her more graceful weapon, and
it falls forward, wide-eyed in death, landing with a resounding thud.

The slayer turns her back on the corpse to face
me. In a move as swift as her every one thus far, she hooks the hilt
of my sword with her ax-head and flicks the long handle. Wrenched
from my hand, the blade flies away, landing with a clatter on some
nearby rocks. The look on the woman's face, for the few seconds it is
aimed at me, is impassive, but I know it to be a warning. Then she
spins and races back, ax raised in two hands, to meet the last
remaining giant.

Defeated and forgotten, I begin to comprehend my
error. This woman is no victim of a giant attack, fighting to escape
them. No, she is the aggressor. Her sole purpose is to kill them, and
if I understand correctly, it is a purpose in which she will brook no
aid. And so I sit and watch as she resumes combat with a creature
whose leg is thicker around than her whole body.

Next to her, the giant is slow and clumsy. She
evades his every swipe and answers most with blows of her own, which
do not miss. Most of her strikes only harry, however, causing the
giant pain but little changing the battle's blazing tempo.

Until, at last, as if she has had enough of
toying with it, the slayer sinks her ax into the center of giant's 
chest. It staggers back, its steps shaking the earth under me, and
then it falls with a crash against a fir tree, one arm shearing off
the branches it futilely grabs for support. Groaning, hairy face
twisted in an expression of bitter anger, the felled behemoth looks
up at the small, approaching figure of she who has bested it. She
stands regarding her foe for a moment in the same silence in which
she fought, then lifts her weapon two-handed, takes two great strides
forward—and buries the ax deep in the side  of the giant's
neck, finishing it.

Taking time neither to rest nor to savor the
victory, the slayer braces her foot on the great corpse's hip 
and tugs her ax free, wipes the bloodied head on its vest of matted
fur and turns to face me. Rising, I realize that the time I passed
watching the battle might have been better spent retrieving my sword.
For the same reason I did not do that, I make no move to remedy the
lapse now. I sense she bears me no ill intent. Standing by the dead
giant's foot, she stares at me with an unreadable expression, almost
no expression at all. I gather that she is curious... but evidently
not curious enough to ask who I am, for her mouth stays firmly
clamped.

After a few moments, she evidently has her fill
of looking. Resting the long handle of her ax over one shoulder, she
turns to leave.

"Wait," I call out.

She twists to look back, but only briefly, as if
I am but some woodland creature that has chittered at her.

"Can you understand me?" I ask as she
starts to walk away.

She spares no further look and seems ready to
let us go our separate ways. I am not so willing to let this be the
end of our acquaintance.

"Wait!" I call again, fetching my
sword. She casts an even more cursory look but does not stop, leaving
me only one choice. Racing back up to the ridge via a more circuitous
route than the sheer drop by which I descended, I grab my pack and
make the same leap again. I land hard and recover quickly.

My scrambling wins me another glance. Like those
looks which preceded it, it is all but expressionless,  neither
aggrieved nor particularly interested. The impression I receive is of
one who simply does not care whether I follow her or not. That being
the case, I shall. Since the slayer has not yet spoken a word, or
even made a sound for that matter, I cannot know whether or not she
understands me. Clearly she hears, but either my words sound to her
like so much babble or she comprehends them but deems them unworthy
of reply.

Either way, I realize as I chase after her, this
encounter is significant not only to me personally. Unless Ares
secretly knows of the existence of non-giant others in these
mountains—which is not unthinkable—then I am the first of
our city to make contact with this woman's kind. She may lead me to
others like her. Perhaps not all of them will be as... detached. They
may prove friends or fresh enemies. They may be the ravens' masters.
For that reason, for the sake of Neolympus, I realize I must  be
cautious in what information I reveal to this woman—if she even
understands me, and if I can keep her attention for more than an
instant.

The slayer dresses differently than we do, in
form-fitting leathers which cover her legs, a long-sleeved tunic, and
hide boots reaching to the knees. Plates of thin, rather battered
armor are strapped to key points on her person, including a plain
breastplate bearing no insignia.

After a short walk, she stops and stoops down at
the base of a tree. I see that she has more equipment  waiting
there: a canvas pack, larger than mine, water-skin, and sheathed
sword. Leaning her ax against the trunk, she picks up the skin,
unstoppers it and drinks.

I halt a dozen paces from her and wait. Seeing
her drink makes me acknowledge my own thirst, and I consider taking
my own almost empty skin from my pack. But that can wait.

When she has taken a long draft, she spares me
another look. It is not blank, not entirely devoid of expression.
There is something in it. Less than interest, certainly not worry,
but she must have a reason for not ignoring me completely.

After a second, she steals back her scrap of
attention, seals the skin, and then surprises me by throwing it in my
direction. It lands heavily in the needles a few feet away.

I pick it up and say, "Thank you."

But the giant-slayer is already otherwise
occupied. Drawing a short-bladed knife from the small of her 
back, she sets its blade against the long handle of her ax and carves
two notches into the wood of the handle, which already bears a great
many such notches. They can only represent the giants she has slain,
I realize with astonishment. They number in the dozens.

I see now what a laughable notion it was that I,
with but half a giant-slaying notch to my credit, could have helped
her.

By the time she has stood, affixed sword to
belt, slung her pack and ax over her shoulders, and extended her free
hand for the return of her water skin, I realize that I have
forgotten to drink. Quickly,  I take a swallow and replace the
stopper. Instead of throwing the skin back, I close the distance
between us on foot to set the strap in her hand.

The slayer's eyes are of the brightest blue, as
I vaguely believe an unclouded sky ought to be. They watch me with
that same nonchalant uncuriosity she has shown from the start.

"Thamoth," I say, setting palm to
chest. "Who are you?"

Her look does not change; much less does she
answer. She merely turns to resume her descent of the pass. I allow
her a short lead before I commence walking behind her. It feels
strange to travel thus, in utter silence with someone I have just
met, instead of learning all we can about one another. But that is
her choice, and this is her world more than it is mine. I can still
hope that she will lead me to someone else more willing to converse.

We have hardly begun our journey together when
the slayer suddenly stops and unslings her pack and water skin.
Dangling them briefly by their straps, she drops them. Then, burdened
only by ax and sword, she resumes walking.

Without speaking so much as a syllable, she has
made her meaning clear: if I am to insist on following her, then I
must make myself useful.

The decision requires no thought. I do as
requested and pick up her gear. I also decide that, although I 
could pepper her with questions in the hope she might eventually
begrudge me an answer or two, I will not so risk ending the
indulgence she has shown me. If she favors silence—or lacks a
tongue, for that matter—then I will grant her wish.

For hours, I act as the giant-slayer's
unspeaking beast of burden. Yet my mind is far from silent; it runs 
rampant with conjecture on who she is and where she will lead me, a
dozen questions I wish I could ask, but must be content to save for
another audience.

We are following the track of a babbling stream
when suddenly the slayer whirls, halts, and falls into a 
crouch. She does not signal me to do likewise; she need not.
Instinctively, I mimic her, and presently hear the voices which
surely prompted her action. I recognize the voices as those of giants
speaking in  their guttural tongue. I can tell too that the
speakers are unaware of us, for their tones are jovial and they make
no effort not to be heard. My untrained ear puts their number at a
minimum of three.

The slayer quietly moves nearer to me, but that
is only coincidence. I am part of the landscape and have nothing to
with her plans from this point. I can see in her bright blue eyes
that she is focused on a task, which can mean only that these
unsuspecting giants are soon to become more notches on her ax handle.
I am not pleased with the development, having no desire to lose my
guide, but I am reasonably certain that any counsel of caution I
might give her would be wasted. My assistance would  be likewise
rejected. All I may do is wait and hope.

Reaching into her pack, which sits beside me on
the ground, she pulls out a thin strip of rawhide. In mild surprise,
I watch her proceed to wrap the strip several times around the
crossbar of my sword, pass it twice through the thong which holds my
scabbard to my belt, and tie the ends tightly in a knot.    The
result is that my sword is fastened such that it now would require
considerable effort before I could think of drawing it.

I get the message: I am not to try to help her,
no matter what. To drive the point home, she fixes me with a stern
glare. It gives me a chill, but not of the fearful kind—no, if
anything, I fear for the giants—but so stingy has the slayer
been with her attention that I find myself savoring it when it comes,
even in this form.

Having thus dealt with me, she moves off in a
crouch in the direction of the giants. One hand holds her notched ax
close to its head, the other resting on sword hilt. I have been
warned to stay silent and lend no aid, but not to stay put. When the
slayer is a small figure ahead of me among the trees, I begin 
to creep after her, leaving our packs behind. Before long, I lose
sight of her, but peering between needled boughs, I catch a glimpse
of the giants. They are on the far side of the stream, which here
measures about ten feet from bank to bank and looks shallow enough
for someone my size to ford on foot. A giant would barely get its
knees wet.

There are three of them. The largest looks
rather like every other giant I have seen: dressed in hides and furs,
jaw and arms bristling with hair, but the other two are different.
The second largest has facial hair that grows in mere wispy tufts,
less pronounced bulges in the forearms, hips wider in span than
shoulders, and clothing of plain linen. A female, I surmise. The
third, much smaller and wearing only a loincloth, must be a child.

The grown male stands in the water, filling
large clay vessels. The female squats upon the bank scrubbing the
youth, who sits in the shallows at the water's edge. It has never
occurred to me to wonder about the seemingly solitary brutes' social
and biological functions, but here is proof that they reproduce by
means familiar to us (even if my new body has yet to put theory to
practice) and live in some semblance of a family unit.

The sight makes me wonder whether I had a child
in Atlantis. The thought fails to resonate, so my presumption is no.
But a wife... perhaps.

If so, I know her name.

I locate my guide again. The first thing I see
is her long blond braid, afloat as she creeps fully submerged
downstream toward the three unsuspecting prey. As they lack my
advantage of looking down from several feet above the water, their
chances of seeing their attacker are slim unless something should
prompt them to turn their eyes in her direction for a careful look. I
wonder, does she mean to slay the whole family?