A Plague of Giants (Seven Kennings #1) - Kevin Hearne Page 0,186

but simply strolling—along the coastal road from Hillegöm to Möllerud. I had come upon them as they were leaving the city. No one was watching on the walls. They had left the gates open, and they had scuttled all the Brynt ships in the harbor, their masts only peeking above the surface of the water.

There were…I don’t know how many. More than I could count. All tall, pale, and dressed in clacking bones. Some with swords, some with spears—the tools they had used to slay the people of Möllerud and Hillegöm. Looking at them from the shallows, below their actual feet, all I could see was the first rank or so. There could be untold ranks behind them. Brynt cargo carts heaped high with plundered grain and other goods rolled in the middle of the column. But near the back, there was one pale giant who was unarmed and adorned in a different fashion. The skin of his torso bore swirled patterns of dark ink, and he wore no bones except for thin hollow ones strung in three levels around his neck. Unlike all the others, he had a beard, the sort one might see only on the most eccentric Hathrim. He had twirled, waxed, or somehow shaped tufts of it into pointed spikes that radiated from his face, as if his jaw were the bottom half of a child’s drawing of the sun. Instead of basic strips of cloth around his groin and flimsy sandals on his feet, he had cloth pants and boots. And most important, he was reading something. Not a book or a single piece of paper but a sheaf of them, and there were more sticking out of a cloth bag he had slung over his shoulder. Plans? Messages? Whatever it was, it was unlikely to be poetry. It was much more likely to be information we could use. And even if we couldn’t read their language, denying them their information was a sound strategy, and this particular giant was most likely one of their leaders. Everything about his appearance spoke of status even if the markers were strange to my eyes.

I had a glass knife. They had swords and spears and arms that were half again as long as mine, plus bodies that weren’t slowing and breaking down. Combat wasn’t an option, even at one-to-one odds, much less one-to-hundreds or thousands. But the Lord of the Deep had given me a kenning and now an opportunity not only to avenge my people but perhaps learn something that would help rid us of this scourge.

I sleeved myself quietly through the water, keeping only my eyes above the surface. They weren’t even looking my way, their eyes on the path or on the giants in front of them. They thought themselves safe from attack. Any other day they’d be justified in thinking that.

To secure the papers I’d have to go ashore. I’d be vulnerable there, so to avoid being surrounded, I began my work at the back while I was still largely submerged. I targeted ten giants, all I could easily keep in view, and used my kenning to pull the water in their heads toward me by the width of a thumb. No screaming, no pain, just a fatal hemorrhage in the brain. Not fair, not sporting, just war, like they waged against us, using every advantage they had in size, reach, and numbers. And definitely not murder: no, just my duty.

The bones they wore rattled as they collapsed, causing the giants in front of them to turn around and see their bodies just before I scrambled their brains as well. And when they fell, that drew the attention of the leader. He was in the next group of ten, but I paused before continuing. I wanted him, at least, to see who was responsible, to see that a Brynt woman would be the end of him. So I dropped my feet, found the sand of the bay, and stood up, calling out to him. He didn’t hear me at first over the tide, but someone else did and got his attention, pointing to me as I emerged from the ocean. And as soon as his eyes lighted on me, I shot out my hand toward him, an unnecessary gesture except to communicate that I was doing something, and then I pulled the water from his head much more forcefully so that his eyeballs exploded and blood and brains gouted out of the sockets.

His surrounding