Before the giants removed the final boulder, Grazim made them sit down and eat.
The six heroes gathered beside the blocked passage with the six strongest warriors Fendor’s new tribe could offer. The giants had brought axes, clubs, hide shields and several stone jars filled with oil. None appeared pleased to wait while cold air breathed through the widening gaps in the wall.
Grazim ignored their impatience.
He planted his warhammer beside him and began the prayer.
The bare stone changed.
A long table appeared where no table had stood. Platters crowded its surface: roasted meat, dark bread, fruit untouched by mountain frost, bowls of steaming roots, wheels of cheese and pitchers that filled themselves whenever emptied.
The feast had been shaped for twelve diners.
Six of them were considerably larger than the prayer usually expected.
One hill giant lifted an entire platter and poured its contents into his mouth.
Isamu watched him swallow.
“There was a spoon.”
The giant looked at the spoon.
Then ate that as well.
“Never mind.”
The heroes ate with more restraint.
Warmth spread through them as the meal disappeared. The aches left by the king’s cavern faded. Poison and sickness were driven from blood and bone. A steadiness settled over every mind, the kind of courage that did not require anyone to pretend there was nothing ahead worth fearing.
The same blessing entered the giants.
Shoulders straightened. Wounds closed. One warrior who had limped since entering the chamber stood and tested his leg against the stone.
Grazim looked along the table.
“Until this blessing ends, fear will not master you. Poison will not weaken you.”
The second-in-command translated for the warriors who needed it.
One giant slapped both hands against his chest and roared.
The others joined him.
Dust fell from the ceiling.
Grazim waited for the sound to end.
“The blessing does not prevent falling rock.”
The giants quieted.
Nethnarel leaned toward Isamu.
“He has adapted quickly to being the smallest person in every room.”
Grazim heard her.
“Authority has never depended upon height.”
Isamu looked toward Fendor.
“That appears to be true.”
Fendor stood apart from the table, examining the six warriors chosen to accompany them.
The rest of the tribe remained behind. The old, the injured and the children would not enter the hunting grounds until the path was safe. Messengers had already gone to Oxland to recall every giant still stripping the city.
If the heroes failed, the tribe would lose its new king and its strongest defenders in the same morning.
If they succeeded, the raids could end without another battle in Oxland’s streets.
Fendor looked at the largest of the six warriors.
“You.”
The giant pointed at himself.
“Yes. Kneel.”
Kaylor turned.
“Why?”
“I intend to shoot from higher ground.”
The giant lowered himself until Fendor could climb onto his back and settle behind one massive shoulder.
Isamu regarded the arrangement.
“You have accepted the throne quickly.”
“This is not a throne.”
“It is carrying the king.”
“It is mobile elevation.”
The giant rose.
Fendor’s head nearly reached the cavern roof.
He tested the Oathbow from the new position and found that he could see over every warrior in the expedition.
“Acceptable.”
The giant seemed pleased.
Kaylor looked toward the boulder wall.
“Open it.”
The hill giants returned to their work.
Boulders that would have required teams of horses rolled aside beneath their hands. The gaps widened into a passage. Cold air rushed into the cavern, carrying the scents of wet stone, pine and old water.
The final boulder moved.
Darkness waited beyond.
The second-in-command entered first.
The five remaining giants followed.
Kaylor went with them, shield forward. Isamu stayed close enough to cross the space between any two warriors in a heartbeat. Nethnarel and Grazim took the center. Hexen carried the Staff of the Woodlands and watched the ground, the walls and every root pushing through the rock.
Fendor rode above them all.
The passage descended.
No torch had burned there since the tribe fled. Moisture shone on the walls. Pale roots hung from cracks in the ceiling. The oil jars knocked softly against the giants carrying them.
Nothing attacked.
The silence lasted long enough to become suspicious.
Isamu stopped.
The line behind him halted.
Kaylor looked back.
“What?”
Isamu did not answer immediately.
He had seen no movement.
He had heard no footstep.
But years of discipline had taught his body to recognize danger before thought supplied a reason. The skin along his arms tightened. The air behind Nethnarel felt occupied.
“We are surrounded.”
A hill giant grunted a question.
Shapes appeared inside the stone.
They did not step from hiding.
They condensed.
Pale limbs formed from drifting shadow. Long arms reached out. Faces emerged last: broad, hungry and wrong, resembling trolls remembered through a fever dream.
The things were not entirely flesh.
One rose beside the lead giant and drove a spectral claw through his hide armor.
The giant screamed.
No blood appeared.
The wound opened somewhere deeper.
His eyes lost focus as pain tore through his mind instead of his body.
The other shapes closed upon the expedition.
One appeared behind Nethnarel.
Its arm passed through her shoulder.
Cold entered first.
Then agony.
The claw left no mark, but the sorcerer felt it drag across thoughts she had never given anyone permission to touch. Her vision flashed white. For one instant she saw the Dark Voice, the mirror realm and a thousand reflections of herself screaming without sound.
Fire answered.
Nethnarel turned and released the pain back upon the creature.
Flame erupted across its translucent body.
The spirit-troll recoiled.
Its outline became solid within the fire.
Wild magic followed.
Nethnarel grew.
Her boots struck the stone as her body doubled in size. Horns rose nearly level with the giants’ shoulders. Clothing and armor changed with her, wrapped in the same unstable power.
She looked down at Isamu.
“Do not say it.”
He looked up at her.
“I had not decided which thing to say.”
“Choose none of them.”
Grazim charged the creature behind her.
The halfling hit it with his shield.
The impact should not have moved something half made of mist.
It did.
The spirit-troll struck the ground.
Grazim’s warhammer followed, divine force driving the head through the creature’s wavering chest.
It convulsed beneath the blow.
“Halfling power,” Isamu said.
Grazim looked toward him.
“That was the thing you chose?”
“It seemed accurate.”
Another spirit-troll lunged for Nethnarel.
Isamu stepped between them.
The blade in his hand ignited.
Fire ran from guard to point.
He cut across the creature’s arm, turned inside its reaching claws and struck its chest with his free hand. Focused power entered the blow.
The spirit-troll froze.
Isamu hit it again.
The burning blade opened a line through its torso.
The fire remained inside the wound.
Kaylor sent the Dancing Sword ahead of him.
The independent blade crossed behind the stunned creature and cut through its back. Kaylor’s Sword of Sharpness struck from the front.
The spirit-troll collapsed.
Its body came apart into gray vapor.
For a moment, nothing remained.
Then the vapor began drawing together.
A hand formed upon the stone.
The creature tried to rise.
Nethnarel’s first attacker did not.
The fire consuming it had turned the spectral flesh black. Its outline collapsed and remained still.
Hexen saw the difference.
“They return unless they burn.”
The second-in-command understood before the words were translated.
The old king’s flaming maul had not killed the one creature because it was stronger than every other weapon.
It had killed because it carried fire.
The giants had fought the spirit-trolls with stone, wood and iron.
They had never understood why victory refused to remain victory.
Now the creatures rose around them again.
The battle spread through the tunnel.
A giant swung his club through one apparition and broke enough of its body to throw it backward. Another hill giant drove an axe into a spirit-troll’s shoulder. The wound closed around the blade before he could pull it free.
Fendor fired from his giant’s back.
The first arrow entered the creature attacking the lead warrior. The second crossed beneath a raised club and struck another spirit-troll through the throat. A third curved around Nethnarel’s enlarged body and found a target that had believed her shadow concealed it.
The Oathbow tore the creatures apart.
It did not keep them down.
“Fire every fallen one,” Fendor called.
The giants heard only the urgency.
The heroes understood.
Nethnarel raised both hands.
Small spheres of flame appeared around her.
One by one, they began to circle.
Then the first volley flew.
Miniature meteors crossed the tunnel and struck a spirit-troll advancing upon Grazim. The explosions arrived too quickly to separate. Fire swallowed the creature, the stone beneath it and part of the wall behind it.
When the flames cleared, the spirit-troll did not move.
Nethnarel smiled from nearly twice her ordinary height.
“That works.”
More apparitions emerged.
They came through cracks too small for bodies. They descended from the ceiling. They formed among the giants, dividing the expedition into smaller battles.
Isamu moved wherever the line threatened to break.
His burning sword gave him what the hill giants lacked. Each cut left flame behind. Each focused strike held a creature still long enough for the weapon to finish what fist and foot began.
One spirit-troll bent toward him.
Isamu leapt.
His hand struck beneath its jaw with enough force to snap the head backward. The neck nearly separated.
The creature fell.
Its ruined throat immediately began drawing together.
Isamu landed beside it and placed the flaming blade across the wound.
“Unreasonable,” he said.
The creature burned.
Kaylor fought a different problem.
The Sword of Sharpness and Dancing Sword could destroy the spirit-trolls faster than most weapons in the tunnel. Neither carried fire.
He cut one down.
It rose behind him.
The Cloak of Displacement pulled his image away as the creature struck. Its spectral claw passed through the false Kaylor and found empty air.
He turned, hit it again and watched the wound close.
“Stay dead.”
The creature refused.
Kaylor called power into the sword.
This time flame came with it.
Heat rolled along the blade. The next strike opened the spirit-troll from shoulder to hip and filled the cut with searing fire.
The apparition collapsed.
Smoke rose from the place where its body had been.
It did not return.
“Better,” Kaylor said.
Grazim fought beneath the reach of giants and spirit-trolls alike.
His smaller body allowed him to move through gaps no one else could use. He drove his shield into knees, struck fallen creatures with his warhammer and called a second weapon into being above the battle.
A hammer of divine force appeared in the tunnel.
It was large enough for a hill giant.
Isamu looked at it.
“Compensating?”
Grazim directed the enormous spiritual hammer into a spirit-troll.
The blow flattened it against the wall.
“Demonstrating.”
The creature began reforming.
Hexen burned it before it could stand.
Flame gathered in the druid’s hand and crossed the tunnel. The spirit-troll blackened and dissolved.
Hexen immediately turned toward another fallen body.
The battle became a race between destruction and return.
The giants could knock the creatures down.
The heroes had to make every fall permanent.
A hill giant smashed one apparition beneath both hands. Nethnarel’s next meteor burned the remains.
Another giant drove a troll-shaped spirit against the ground with his club. Isamu reached it before the broken body could rise and touched flame to its chest.
Fendor’s mount carried him through the center of the fighting.
From that height, the elf could see the pattern no one on the ground could follow. He directed giants toward threats appearing behind them and sent arrows wherever a warrior stood alone.
Then a spirit-troll rose upon the giant’s back.
Its claw passed through Fendor’s side.
Pain entered without blood.
The elf’s fingers tightened around the Oathbow.
His mount roared and twisted, unable to reach the creature clinging between its shoulders.
Kaylor’s Dancing Sword crossed the tunnel.
The blade cut through the spirit-troll and threw it from the giant’s back.
It struck the floor below.
Fendor did not wait for it to rise.
He returned the Oathbow to his shoulder and drew the Vorpal Longsword.
The giant lowered one shoulder as if it understood.
Fendor stepped from its back into open air.
He landed beside the fallen creature.
The spirit-troll’s head lifted.
The vorpal blade descended.
Its head separated cleanly.
The body jerked once.
No vapor gathered between the pieces.
No wound closed.
The spirit-troll remained dead.
Fendor looked at the sword.
“Fire is not the only answer.”
Grazim struck another creature with his shield.
“That sword continues to offend me.”
“From a safe distance.”
“For now.”
The warriors pushed deeper.
Oil splashed across the stone where the giants dropped one of the jars. Hexen ignited the spreading trail. A sheet of flame divided the passage and caught two spirit-trolls trying to reform within it.
The remaining jars became more useful after that.
The giants learned quickly when survival provided the lesson.
They poured oil over fallen enemies and waited for Nethnarel, Hexen or Isamu to ignite it. Clubs and axes still did most of the work. Fire made the work matter.
But the spirit-trolls had hunted the tribe for years.
They knew how to kill giants.
One apparition passed through a warrior’s guard and drove both spectral hands into his chest.
The giant stiffened.
His club fell.
He collapsed beside the oil jar he had been carrying.
Fendor’s arrow struck the creature an instant later.
The spirit-troll staggered but did not fall.
The giant did not move.
Another cry came from farther ahead.
A second hill giant went down beneath two apparitions.
The second-in-command roared and charged toward them.
Kaylor intercepted one spirit-troll before it could turn upon him. The Sword of Sharpness cut through its body. Fire followed the edge and left the apparition burning from within.
Isamu reached the other.
The creature struck him.
Its claw passed through cloak, armor and skin without opening any of them. Pain flashed through every nerve at once.
Isamu endured it.
He answered with the flaming blade.
The spirit-troll fell.
A third giant died near the rear of the line.
The creature that killed him rose from the stone itself, tore through his mind and vanished beneath a descending club before anyone could stop it.
Three warriors lay dead.
The feast had protected them from terror.
It had not made them immortal.
Fendor saw the bodies from across the tunnel.
The giants were his responsibility because their custom had made them so.
He had not asked for the responsibility.
That did not reduce it.
He climbed onto a fallen shelf of stone and fired.
The first arrow entered the spirit-troll attacking Kaylor.
The second crossed the entire battlefield and struck the creature standing over the third dead giant.
The third divided in flight, force exploding through the apparition’s body and scattering it across the passage.
“Burn that one!”
Nethnarel turned.
Her remaining meteors flew.
The spirit-troll vanished inside the fire.
The wild magic enlarging her began to fade. Her body returned gradually to its ordinary height while flame continued circling her hands.
Isamu glanced toward her.
“I preferred the larger target.”
“You were warned.”
“I said preferred, not improved.”
The battle moved beyond the tunnel and into a broad cavern before the hidden valley.
Here the spirit-trolls had room to gather.
They appeared in greater numbers among broken stalagmites and abandoned giant hunting tools. Some carried the shapes of wounds received years earlier. Others flickered between solid flesh and pale spirit.
The giants charged.
For a moment, the cavern became too large for any one hero to understand.
Clubs rose and fell.
Spectral claws passed through armor.
Fendor’s arrows crossed above the fighting.
Kaylor’s displaced image drew attacks away from the real dragonborn.
Grazim’s spiritual hammer moved like a second giant among the tribe.
Hexen carried fire from fallen creature to fallen creature.
Isamu’s burning blade marked a path through the center.
Nethnarel looked at the scattered enemies.
She had complained before that no one ever gave her enough targets in one place.
The spirit-trolls had finally corrected that failure.
She raised one hand.
A wall of fire erupted across the cavern.
Nethnarel shaped it between Kaylor and the advancing apparitions with only feet to spare. Flame rose higher than a hill giant’s head and stretched from one stone wall to the other.
Several spirit-trolls vanished inside it.
Others tried to pass through.
The fire made them solid.
The giants struck them as they emerged.
Bodies fell back into the flames.
This time they did not rise.
Kaylor stood close enough to feel the heat through armor built to endure it.
He looked toward Nethnarel.
“Closer than necessary.”
“You remained unburned.”
“That was not the measure I used.”
“It was mine.”
The final spirit-troll broke away from the wall and attacked Hexen.
Its claw entered the druid’s chest.
Hexen staggered as psychic pain crossed him.
Fendor fired from beside the body of his fallen mount.
The giant that had carried him had been the second warrior killed.
The arrow struck the spirit-troll and drove it to the ground.
Hexen placed one hand over it.
Flame appeared beneath his palm.
The creature burned.
Silence reached the cavern in pieces.
The Wall of Fire remained.
Oil burned in the tunnel behind them.
The surviving giants stood among blackened remains and looked for enemies that might rise again.
None did.
Nethnarel dismissed the wall.
The sudden absence of flame left red shapes floating across everyone’s vision.
Kaylor counted the living.
Six heroes.
Three hill giants.
Three bodies.
Fendor reached the giant who had carried him.
The warrior lay on his side, one arm stretched toward the Oathbow’s king. No physical wound explained the stillness. The spirit-troll had killed something inside him.
Grazim knelt beside the giant’s head.
At his new height, the fallen warrior seemed less like a body than a collapsed building.
“How long?” Kaylor asked.
Grazim placed one hand against the giant’s skin.
“Not too long.”
He looked toward the other two bodies.
The narrow mercy available to him would close quickly.
“Bring them together.”
The surviving giants moved.
They carried their companions into a line while Grazim prepared. The second-in-command watched with an expression that contained no expectation. Hill giants understood strength, hunger and fear. They did not expect the dead to be returned by someone small enough to stand within one of their hands.
Grazim began with Fendor’s mount.
Divine light entered the giant.
The body convulsed.
Air returned to lungs large enough to fill the cavern with the sound.
The giant opened his eyes.
Fendor stepped back as one enormous hand reached toward him.
It stopped short.
The warrior touched two fingers to his own chest, then lowered his head.
Grazim had already moved to the next body.
He restored the second giant.
Then the third.
Each prayer took more from him.
Each answer came before the final distance between death and life became too great to cross.
When the third warrior inhaled, Grazim remained kneeling with both hands upon his warhammer.
Isamu looked down at him.
“You have acquired three very large admirers.”
Grazim stood.
“They may begin by remembering who saved them.”
The second-in-command struck one fist against his chest.
The other giants followed.
This time the sound was not meant for Fendor.
It was for Grazim Von.
He accepted it without smiling.
Then smiled after turning away.
The passage beyond the cavern opened into daylight.
The hidden valley lay between walls of mountain stone.
Pine forest covered the lower slopes. A river ran through open grass before disappearing beneath the far cliffs. Herd animals moved at the edge of the trees, startled by the first giant voices the valley had heard in years.
Hunting lodges stood in ruins near the river. Old stone pens had collapsed beneath vines. Paths once worn broad by giant feet had narrowed under moss and saplings.
But the land lived.
It had not been poisoned.
It had not been emptied.
The spirit-trolls had taken it because the giants could not kill them, not because the valley could no longer sustain the tribe.
Hexen stepped into the grass.
He closed his eyes.
The Staff of the Woodlands rested against one shoulder.
Life answered from every direction.
Roots beneath the soil.
Fish beneath the river.
Deer among the pines.
Birds lifting from branches disturbed by the returning giants.
“The valley can feed them,” he said.
Kaylor looked toward the second-in-command.
“Then there is no reason to remain in Oxland.”
The giant listened to the translation.
He looked toward Fendor.
Every surviving warrior did the same.
Fendor had been carried into the valley by a giant he had watched die and seen restored. He had killed the old king. He had led the tribe through the enemy that king had feared. Whatever uncertainty remained in the cavern behind them did not follow into the hunting grounds.
The giants waited for their king.
Fendor disliked the silence.
“Send word to every one of your people,” he said. “Leave Oxland. Return everything that can still be returned. Bring the tribe here.”
The second-in-command translated.
The warriors answered with a roar that crossed the valley and returned from the mountains.
Fendor continued before they could begin another chant.
“You will hunt here. You will trade for what the valley cannot provide. You will not take prisoners from Oxland. You will not harvest the city again.”
That part produced less enthusiasm.
Kaylor stepped beside him.
“Your old king taught you that strength meant taking from anyone weaker. That path cost you your home, your warriors and your king.”
He pointed toward the black tunnel from which they had emerged.
“Strength brought you back through that darkness. Use it to defend what is yours, not to steal what belongs to others.”
The giants did not become gentler creatures because Kaylor spoke.
They did not become good because Grazim restored their dead.
They remained hill giants, raised beneath a law in which the strongest voice decided what was permitted.
For now, the strongest voice belonged to Fendor.
And Fendor had ordered the raids to end.
That was enough.
The second-in-command knelt.
The other warriors followed.
Fendor looked toward Isamu.
“Do not.”
“I have said nothing.”
“You are going to.”
“I was considering whether a king with an army and a hidden valley now possesses a kingdom.”
“He does not.”
Nethnarel looked over the valley.
“It would make an excellent base of operations.”
Fendor turned toward her.
“No.”
“An army, secure mountain passages, abundant game and a tribe that believes you own everything they possess.”
“No.”
Grazim joined them.
“There are worse allies.”
Fendor looked at the giants.
One was trying to lift Isamu high enough to place him upon a shoulder.
Isamu allowed it.
“There are more dignified allies,” Fendor said.
The restored giant who had carried him lowered one hand.
Fendor stared at the offered palm.
The giant waited.
“We are leaving.”
The hand remained.
Fendor stepped onto it.
The giant lifted him to its shoulder.
Isamu, already riding another warrior, looked across at him.
“Mobile elevation.”
Fendor faced forward.
“Silence.”
Messengers left the valley before the heroes did.
One returned toward the tribe’s cavern. Another took the passage leading toward Oxland, carrying Fendor’s command that every raiding giant abandon the city and come home.
The six heroes remained long enough to watch the first families enter the hunting grounds.
Children ran into the grass.
Warriors who had survived the spirit-trolls spread out along the old paths. The restored dead were greeted by blows to the shoulder, shouted disbelief and embraces strong enough to injure smaller creatures.
The valley filled with giant voices.
The occupation of Oxland ended not with the destruction of the tribe, but with its return home.
By evening, the heroes were traveling back toward the city.
The mountains lay behind them.
Fendor no longer rode a giant.
Nethnarel had returned to her ordinary size.
Grazim’s stride remained short and determined.
Kaylor looked toward the valley road below.
They had entered the lair intending to kill the giants before the army returned.
Instead, they had killed a king, inherited his tribe, destroyed the creatures that had driven them to raid and sent the entire people away from Oxland.
Isamu walked beside him.
“That was efficient.”
Kaylor considered the dead king, the spirit-trolls, the wall of fire and three giants restored from death.
“Your definition of efficient concerns me.”
“We did not have to fight the army.”
That was true.
Oxland appeared before sunset.
The gates stood open.
No hill giant guarded them.
No mammoth waited beside the road.
The last of the raiders had already begun the journey back toward the hidden valley.
For the first time since the heroes had seen the city, Oxland belonged to its people again.