A Plague of Giants (Seven Kennings #1) - Kevin Hearne Page 0,237

run. I’m fast but not invisible. So what do you want to do?”

“I’m not sure.”

“We can run, easy. That’s an option.”

We hadn’t run in the Granite Tunnel, and I didn’t want to run here, either. We had a short time to think because the city gates were more distant than the farmhouse. I felt taxed already to my limits; that searing pain, faded now, was the signal one was aging and should back off. I had pushed the kenning too far. Thinking of that brought up a memory of my temblor in the Colaiste, Temblor Kavich, growling out military history through his beard: “The earth will nourish you until it is time to return and nourish it yourself, and your enemies will either send you back early or press you, like the earth would, into gemstones.”

I thought it unlikely I’d ever be a gem. But maybe this confrontation would harden me from soft soapstone into granite. I wished Temblor Kavich were here to counsel me now.

“Stand next to me,” I said to Tuala, beckoning her to follow me three lengths away from the Bone Giant’s body.

“What are you going to do?”

“What I should have done in the tunnel. Build from the ground up.”

The farmland near the coast was rich and aerated and relatively free of rocks, having been plowed and harvested and fertilized for many years. A modest earthwork should be manageable, especially since I had the luxury of a full minute or so rather than a few seconds in which to do it.

I scrunched my toes in the turf. It was springy soil, watered well by recent rains and ideal for shaping. I reached out with my kenning and pulled it underneath us in a generous circle, and we rose on a thick pillar of earth as the first rattle and clack of bones reached our ears. By the time we could easily count them, our feet were already above their heads, though not by much.

“You know they climb walls, right? Stand on one another’s shoulders?” Tuala asked.

“I heard, yes. Bennelin and others. I have a plan.”

“Glad to hear it. I think there are close to fifty of them coming.”

“Right. I’d get your staves out just in case they decide to jump. How’s the shoulder?”

“Well enough to smash fingers.”

I braced myself for the headache to come but did what prep work I could as the Bone Giants clacked and snapped closer, macabre skull faces promising all that they had to deliver. Through my feet, through my kenning, I could feel the earth all around my tower and urged it to loosen up, especially in the direction from which the Bone Giants were coming. And once they got in range, I commanded the earth to loosen more, become like sand pulling at their feet, reducing their speed. The leaders tripped, and that tripped up some behind them, and then the challenge began. I commanded the earth to hold on to their feet, even draw them down into it up to their knees, a very different process from throwing earth up to their waists. Smarter to allow the earth to give way and then firm up, compact around their ankles and calves, a far more efficient operation that froze them in the ground. Except that I had to do it nearly fifty times while still urging the pillar to rise higher. After the tenth giant had been frozen in such a manner I felt that headache coming back. And the rest of them were at the base of the tower—sinking into the earth mostly but able to steady themselves, and one leapt onto the back of another braced against the pillar and lifted himself up to where he could take a hack at us.

Tuala was ready. She sped herself up and rotated at the hips as she swept her staves left, the left one smacking away the sword as it came for her and the right one busting open the real skull under all that paint. He tumbled away, and Tuala said as she peered down, “They’re surrounding us. I won’t be able to catch them all if they come from all sides. Might need to revise your plan.”

That wasn’t it: I just needed to commit to hurting myself to hurt them more. I pushed hard with my kenning to loosen the softened earth even more around the base of the pillar so that it wouldn’t bear their weight, and they sank up to their knees as I wished. That set