A Plague of Giants (Seven Kennings #1) - Kevin Hearne Page 0,111

relish. Pulling on my black shitsnake boots—if ever there was a day to wear them, it’s this one—I stomp over to the barracks and rouse my senior tactician, Moshenoh Ghuyedai.

He’s a tough old piece of leather with salt in his queued hair and two missing teeth in the front, the result of a bar fight in which he killed three men with his bare hands. He’s losing some of his muscle to fat as he ages, but there’s still plenty there, and his ruthlessness is at peak.

His office is strewn with maps and empty bottles and little chapbooks of erotic poetry, half-eaten sausages, and volumes of military history written by Raelech and Nentian scholars.

“Moshenoh. That possible Hathrim invasion is confirmed. Time to round up some disposable meat.”

“You mean my regulars or some fresh blood?”

“Mostly the latter. I’m going to throw open the coffers for a one-time march. Go recruit every sponging, no-good, borchatta-smelling dock rat you can. Promise them meals, prestige, and a steady income every month. Then take them down to the Godsteeth and make damn sure the giants kill them all. We’ll clean up the city and trigger the Sovereignty Accords at the same time.”

My killer tactician actually flinches. “That’s…”

“An efficient use of funds, I believe, and a move that doesn’t cost you any of your trained regulars. Are you the man for the job?”

His eyebrows jump briefly but settle down, and then his shoulders lift. “I guess I am.”

“Good. The treasurer is expecting you. See him and follow his instructions precisely. Recruit today and tomorrow, march the day after tomorrow.”

“Very well, Viceroy.”

“Right now I need two dozen crossbowmen and some horses. I have to take a trip outside the walls.”

I leave Ghuyedai to his work and brief the crossbowmen on what needs to happen. Twelve of the men remain at the stables to get horses ready for the rest of us, and the other twelve accompany me to the quarters of Korda, my Hathrim guest. The giant is in the middle of inhaling a box of Fornish candied figs when I enter, and I sling a winning smile at him.

“I trust everything is to your satisfaction?”

“Mmf. Yes. I cannot complain about the accommodations, Viceroy. Though I’d like to get out more.”

“Perfect! That’s just what I was about to suggest. I’ve been told that there’s a rare skulk of khek foxes near our walls right now, attracted by an unusually large company of harrow moles, and thought you might enjoy seeing them. What say you to a walk on the famed Nentian plains? It’s a beautiful day to be outside.”

“Isn’t it dangerous to walk out there? I’ve been told everything on the plains is meat for something bigger and hungrier.”

“We’ll have plenty of protection. I go out there all the time. Besides, you’re lavaborn, aren’t you?”

“No, I’m not.”

“Ah! Well, no matter. As I said, we’ll be perfectly safe.”

“All right. Thank you for the invitation.”

“Not at all!” I point at the half-empty box in Korda’s hand. “Friendly warning: eat too many of those figs and you won’t stop shitting for a week. Though maybe Hathrim can handle more of them than Nentians can. For me, it’s one and I’m done.”

Korda looks down at the box, counts, and realizes he’s eaten ten. “I may be in trouble.”

“We’ll have to wait and see. In the meantime, let’s go see the skulk before they’re gone.” We walk to the stables, chatting amiably as people like to do about other people being killed by wild animals. He tells me about a friend he lost to sand badgers back home, an uncle who lost an eye to an angry scold of knife jays, and how his sister lost her foot to the bite of a Narvikian acid roach.

At the stables, the crossbowmen all mount up and so do I, and once we get to the gates, they load up and prepare to shoot anything hungry enough to attack. They form a protective circle around the two of us, he walking and I riding. Korda has no trouble keeping pace.

We strike directly for Kalaad’s Posts, eight tall lodgepoles placed in the ground with rawhide strips dangling from them. They’re only four hundred lengths or so from the gates, spaced two lengths apart from one another.

Korda notices them early on, but we are so involved in trading stories about the wild beasts of Hathrir and Ghurana Nent that he says nothing until we draw close to them. “What are those, if I may ask?”

“They’re boundary markers.