single large eyebrow across his thick, overhanging forehead. Each giant was more hideous than the last, with fat, fleshy lips and an enormous, long nose shaped like the beak of a malformed bird. Their necks were short and squat, their arms ridiculously long, and their legs thin through the shank and fat at the thigh. They all carried clubs of iron, which any two human men would have found a burden to lift.
Three long tables filled the hall, and on those tables was a feast of roast meat of every kind of creature under heaven, which the giants ate with ravenous abandon. While they ate—rending the carcasses with their hands, stuffing the meat down their stubby necks, spitting out the bones, and then washing it all down with great, greedy draughts of rendered lard and fat drawn from a score of vats around the hall—they laughed and sang in disagreeable voices and raised such a revel that Bran’s head throbbed like a beaten drum with the noise.
The Blesséd Bran stood for a moment, gazing upon the carnage of the feast, and felt an implacable rage rise inside him. Then, across the hall, he spied an enormous kettle of burnished bronze and copper, silver and gold—so large it could easily hold sixteen human men at once; or three teams of oxen; or nine horses; or seven stags, three deer, and a fawn. A fire of oak logs blazed away beneath the prodigious vessel.
Seeing this, Bran thought, The prize is within my grasp, and taking a deep breath, he stepped boldly through the door. “Giants!” he called, “The feast is over! You have eaten your last corpse. I give you fair warning— doom is upon you!”
The giants were startled to hear this loud voice, and they were even more surprised when they saw the tiny man who made such a bold and foolish claim. They laughed in their beards and blew their noses at him. Two of them bared their horrible backsides, and the others mocked him with rude gestures. Up rose the chief of the monstrous clan, and he was the most repulsive brute of them all; taller than seven normal men, he was greasy with the blood of the meat he had been gorging.
Sneering, he opened his gate of a mouth and bellowed, “What you lack in size, you make up for in stupidity. I’ve eaten five of your race already today and will gladly count you amongst them. What is your name, little man?”
“Call me Silidons, for such I am,” said Bran, hiding his true name behind a word that means “nobody.”
“You will have to kill me first, and I have never lost a fight I entered.”
“Then you cannot have entered many. Today we will put you to the test.” So saying, the giant lifted his massive hand and commanded two of his nearest fellows forward. “Seize him! Show this imbecile how we deal with anyone foolish enough to oppose us!”
The two giants rose and lumbered forth, their fleshy lips wide in distorted grins. Bran stepped forward, and as he did so, he grew in size to half again his height; another step doubled his size. Now the crown of his head came up to the giants’ chests.
The giants saw this and were astonished but undaunted. “Is that the best you can do?” they laughed.
Taking up their iron clubs, they swung at Bran, first one way and then the other. Bran leapt over the first and ducked under the second; then, leaping straight up into the air, he lashed out with his foot and caught one of the giants in the middle of the forehead. The great brute dropped his club and grabbed his head. Snatching up the enormous weapon, Bran swung with all his might and crushed the skull of the giant, who gave out a throaty groan and lay still.
Seeing his comrade bested so easily infuriated the second attacker. Roaring with rage, he whirled his heavy club around his head and smashed it down, cracking the flagstones. Bran stepped neatly aside as the club struck the floor, then quickly climbed the broad shaft as if it were an iron mounting block.When the giant lifted the club, Bran leapt into the brute’s face and drove both fists into the giant’s eyes. The ghastly creature screamed and fell to his knees, clutching his eyes with both hands.
Calmly, Bran picked up the club and swung hard. The brute pitched forward onto his face and rose no more.