A Plague of Giants (Seven Kennings #1) - Kevin Hearne Page 0,140

home in the western ocean before we saw a single houndsman emerge from the walls with three small figures walking before him. It was our stonecutters.

“They’re keeping us out of it for now,” Tarrech said, a note of regret in his voice.

“Yes. They’ve made a huge mistake coming here, but they’re playing it about as well as they can,” Numa said. “We’re going to get intelligence on their layout and defenses from our people, but it might not matter. It looks like they’ve made decent plans. Tarrech, can you tell from this distance whether they’ve salted everything?”

“A moment,” he said, closing his eyes and visibly sinking into the earth. He was rooted up to his calves in it. While he probed at the earthen defenses of the Hathrim through his kenning, Numa and I kept our eyes on the approaching houndsman. Both rider and hound were fully armored. Tarrech raised himself back up to the surface and opened his eyes while they were still out of earshot.

“They’ve been blasted through,” he said. “Even this trench is salted. Filling it in will require moving a lot of earth from outside the ruined area, and I’ll need the stonecutters’ help to do it to avoid strain. But here’s a surprise: they have crops on the far side.”

“Inside the trench circumference or out of it?” Numa asked.

“Inside.”

“So that’s obviously not salted earth. Can you do something to it from here?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Wait until tonight,” Numa said, “when they won’t see any sign of it in progress. Then ruin those crops from underneath.”

“You mean try to leave the rows intact?”

“Yes, so they’ll never even know it was done. I’d prefer them to be counting on that harvest coming in so they won’t make other plans for a few weeks.”

When our stonecutters reached the trench and we could see their faces, they were uniformly tragic. By this time they knew how badly they’d been fooled and that they had taken money to help the Hathrim establish a city in the borders of Ghurana Nent. And there was no way for them to refund the payment and undo their work; the salting of the city ensured that any blessed Raelech would have to tear down those walls in person, and for that to happen we’d have to expose ourselves to attack.

One of them saw my Jereh band and cried out, “Oh, triple damn, they’ve sent a bard here! Now everyone will know about this!”

“They’ll know about the incident,” I admitted, “but I swear to Kaelin I’ll never reveal your names.”

The houndsman, a younger giant who nevertheless sported an impressive black beard, dismounted and removed several interlocking sections of wooden planks that had been slung from either side of his hound in something akin to saddlebags. When he had affixed them all together and then bound them on the sides at intervals with metal spring clamps, he hauled the whole thing over and stretched it across the trench. It was a portable bridge, eight feet long and three feet wide, easy for a giant to assemble. He waved to it and stepped back, and I wondered if they had made that here out of Nentian timber or if it was something they had brought with them.

“Go in peace,” he said, though he nearly choked on the words. They floated down to us like dead leaves. “The people of Baghra Khek are grateful for your aid.” That was the third time I’d heard them use a Nentian name for their walled encampment. Perhaps the Hathrim thought if they repeated it enough, we’d think of it as legitimate. The stonecutters made no answer but wasted no time crossing the trench, and afterward the giant promptly lifted the bridge away and disassembled it. We said nothing until he had mounted his hound and ridden out of earshot.

“I will need to debrief the three of you and then report to the Triune Council,” Numa said, breaking the silence. “And after that you will be sent back to finish the work you were originally contracted for in Hashan Khek. You must do everything the viceroy asks to make up for this colossal blunder. If he asks you to complete work outside the scope of the original contract, you are hereby directly ordered by the Triune Council to complete it without charge.”

They fairly trembled and began to apologize. Numa cut them off.

“Everyone understands that you were duped into thinking you were building in Hathrir. Apologies won’t fix the problem. Only action will. When we