A Plague of Giants (Seven Kennings #1) - Kevin Hearne Page 0,175

next charge, but it was a line only two deep and not wide enough to matter. The houndsmen in the front rank were lavaborn, and they pulled up short and attacked with their kenning while the other ranks of hounds split out to the flanks, got behind the pikemen, and tore them to bloody shreds, grasping their whole bodies in their mouths and biting down, shaking their heads a few times, and then tossing their carcasses aside to land among their comrades. They were utterly destroyed, but they did get the houndsmen to stay still and broke the charge. That allowed the Nentians to charge in on their own from the flanks with pikes, not in any organized fashion but with mad abandon and desperation. And some of them were successful: they sank their pikes into the vulnerable sides of the hounds or even into their hindquarters; there were yipes and whirling hounds to attest to it.

Realizing that they were in an exposed position, one of the giants sounded a retreat to the north; they had to get out of the middle of the mob. Though one hound went down, the rest broke free to the north of the encampment where the charge had begun.

The rider of the hound that went down leapt free before it fell. It was a giantess, judging by the lack of beard, and I soon recognized her as Sefir, their hearth. She kept her hound’s body to her back and then swung her axe in long, wide swaths, keeping the Nentians at bay until she could set them on fire one by one.

Once clear of the camp, the houndsmen with wounded animals dismounted and left them there while those with untouched mounts formed up anew and charged back in. The giants on foot followed in their wake, laying about with their axes, with the lavaborn continuing to spread flames. Nobody fights well while on fire except for the lavaborn themselves.

The infantry from the city approached, taking long strides across the field toward the trench, stepping over their own siege breaker walls, and soon they joined in the massacre. The whole of the Nentian army, surprised out of bed, was slaughtered before the sun was entirely above the horizon, and all I could do was watch. Another two thousand or more added to the toll of two thousand from a few days ago.

Bards are not renowned warriors, and I had no weapons apart from a belt knife and a fighting stave. In my youth I had done my martial arts training like every other kid in the Colaiste, but none of it was designed to take on mounted Hathrim houndsmen. That’s what juggernauts and temblors were for. And if the Nentians, who were armed with weapons designed to take out houndsmen, could not do it without surrounding them and taking huge losses, then there was nothing I could do. I was waiting for one of the lavaborn to see me and casually set my head afire. There would be no hiding in the bunker because there was no way to secure the door. Tarrech had made it invulnerable to fire from a distance but hadn’t counted on Hathrim arriving in person to say hello.

For that was what they did. The screams from the camp lessened and then were cut off altogether as the last of the Nentians died, including Ghuyedai. After that there was only the sound of cooking meat and giants laughing and blackwings calling out to one another as they circled above, eyeing the feast below. I didn’t try to hide, and I fully expected to die. It was the least I could do to help things along; though I would miss Numa and regretted that I would never get to tell this story, I thought my death would at least spur the Triune Council to order something more forceful against Gorin Mogen than the rescue of the stonecutters he’d duped. I said my prayers to the Triple Goddess and consigned myself to death when one of the Hathrim pointed to me through the smoke and shouted to Hearth Sefir. He strode through the carnage in my direction, and Sefir joined him. I expected to be set aflame any moment, but instead they stopped in front of me and squatted down, removing their helmets. Thanks to this and my position on the slightly elevated roof of the bunker, we were eye to eye. Sefir nodded once to me, and smirked, her armor splattered in