A Plague of Giants (Seven Kennings #1) - Kevin Hearne Page 0,270

after Mogen’s corpse had rotted and fed the scavengers of the plains.

“When he finally subsided, chest heaving and tracks of tears streaking his dusty cheeks, the fire was snuffed and what remained was only a vaguely human-looking mound of dirt. A shout caused him to look up. One of the Invisible Owls of Nel’s crew was pointing to the city. There, waving above the walls, a ragged white tent canvas affixed to a narrow pine trunk signaled surrender.

“ ‘Good,’ Nef said, nodding once. He had forgotten that there were still plenty of giants hiding behind those walls, and just as quickly as he’d been reminded, he forgot them again. He knelt next to Nel’s body and waited for something to move. When it did, he leaned over and gently blew dirt away, brushing off small clumps of it with the tips of his fingers so that the leaves of the rapidly growing silverbark sapling could drink in the morning sun. Nef made a strangled sound halfway between a laugh and a sob, then smiled as fresh tears spilled down his face. ‘There you are, Nel,’ he said, his voice almost a whisper. ‘There you are.’ ”

Fintan sighed and said nothing for a few moments, and some sniffles could be heard. Maybe one or two of those were mine. I thought perhaps he would end there, but instead he withdrew a new black sphere and held it aloft between his fingers. “The Mogens defeated, most of the lavaborn slain, and surrender indicated, the Battle of the Godsteeth was over. But for the aftermath, we’ll hear from that young Nentian man who trampled over the lavaborn with a boil of kherns.” He dropped the sphere, and a plume of black smoke rose around him.

For both the hunter and the hunted, there is always terror right before death. The hunter terrified he won’t eat, the hunted terrified of being eaten. There is defiance and desperation and even bloodlust. But those kills are quick. A torn throat, a snapped spine, or a spear to the heart, and the suffering is over. There is no reveling in pain and grinning at screams the way the Hathrim do when they set people on fire.

The smell of those poor burned Fornish people is in my nose, and I may be sick. And the khern that died in the charge—I was so involved in directing it to trample the lavaborn that I felt its agony and its confusion at what was happening as it burned and then took an axe to the head. That was my fault. I was responsible. I would add it to my toll.

And the Hathrim, too, of course. Though I supposed that my efforts, together with those of the Fornish, had prevented the Nentian army from suffering much in the way of casualties. By taking twenty or so lives I had perhaps saved thousands. I still wished it hadn’t been necessary.

We drove the houndsmen to the sea, where I commanded the hounds to sit down in the shallows while the kherns formed a wall, an intimidating front in case any of the Hathrim had ideas about charging on foot. Most of them, unable to stay comfortably in the saddle when their mounts were sitting and refused to stand, dismounted and stood next to them in the shallows.

Thornhands joined us, standing in front of the kherns, daring the Hathrim to try anything. If any of them were lavaborn, they didn’t reveal it. They didn’t surrender, but neither did they fight. We just stared at one another, promising violence if the other made any advances, and I was content to let that stand until someone thought of a way to defuse tensions. The white flag that waved over the walls of the city, signaling surrender, caused a ripple of dismay to run through the houndsmen, but they made no comment. I asked them politely to drop their weapons into the surf or the thornhands might have to take it as a given that they would attack, and after one of them with silver thread in his mustaches translated, they complied. We did nothing else, though, since none of the Fornish thornhands were in a position to accept surrender and neither was I as a contracted mercenary. We had to wait for the Nentian army to arrive.

Viceroy Melishev Lohmet rode up eventually, along with a senior tactician he called Hennedigha and a somewhat short Raelech man carrying nothing but a harp. He looked at me sitting on top of