The Island of Giants
‘There’s nothing about giants in the Bestiary,’ said Christopher.
‘No,’ said Ratwin. She perched on the tiller of the Neverfear, steering the boat across the waves. ‘That is because they do nots travels. They very seldoms chooses to leaves their island.’
‘And because it’s unusual to meet one and live long enough to write it down,’ said Jacques.
‘Which is why you should abandon your quest! Bandits are marauding across Glimouria, wreaking chaos! They have seized Irian Guinne! We have deceived the Berserker, and are being sent we know not where, to take absurd risks, without any certainty we will get her back! She could be dead already.’
‘We’ve already discussed it, Jacques,’ said Christopher. ‘If there’s the slightest chance we can save her, we have to take it.’
‘Oh, I wasn’t aiming for conversation. Think of me, from now on, as the chorus in a Greek tragedy.’
‘Thanks. That sounds great for morale,’ said Christopher.
They had moved fast. Jacques had been left to order food for the journey from the merchants on the quayside while they organised water barrels and maps, and then they had steered out of the dock in Lithia, and were newly at sail on the open sea.
Ratwin, a competent sailor and expert navigator, had taken charge, leaving Christopher and Anya to tighten the mainsail and handle the ropes.
‘The Neverfear is a swiftling boat. If we sails through the nightdark and is lucky with the winds,’ said Ratwin, ‘we’ll be maybies twenty-two hours, or twenties-three. ’
‘So what do we know about giants?’ said Christopher.
‘They’re huge,’ said Anya. ‘The toddlers are twenty feet, the adults are sixty.’
‘Theys have only averages eyesights but an excellent sense of smelling,’ Ratwin said.
‘I thinks, as a first steps, you would needs to covers yourselves in something that doesn’t sniff of humans.
You’ve heard their songs – Fee fi fo fums, I smell the blood of an Englishmans? That would be you, Christophers.’
‘Then we’ll use Nighthand’s cologne,’ said Christopher. ‘It definitely doesn’t smell of anything human. Let’s check the boat for provisions.’
The new Neverfear was very like the old one.
It was, in its rough way, a superb boat.
Below deck, there were three rooms: a kitchen, a bathroom with a copper shower and a wood-panelled cabin with two sets of bunk beds and an entire wall of cupboards, some large, some barely big enough to hold a mouse.
The bunk beds would have been a tight fit for Nighthand, but were luxuriously large for anyone else.
Some boots and clothes were still stowed away in one of the cupboards.
The light sconces were decorated with mermaids, as were the mirrors above the bathroom sink and in the bedroom and kitchen.
Jacques preened himself in the bedroom mirror. ‘When you write my biography, Christopher, I would like it to have at least a dozen portraits of my loveliness. You might call it “The Exceptional Beauty of Jacques the Jaculus, Laid Out in Glorious Technicolor by Christopher Forrester”.’
They were lucky with the wind. The Neverfear sailed sweet and swift under Ratwin’s careful eye through the night. But despite the gentle rocking of the boat, neither Anya nor Christopher could sleep. Christopher could hear her tossing under the blanket.
‘Are you awake?’ she said.
‘Of course.’
She sat up in the dark; he saw her shape in the moonlight. ‘I can’t stop thinking about Irian. And Nighthand. I hate that we had to lie to him.’
‘So do I. Do you think he’ll believe Gallia?’
‘At first, yes. But I don’t know how long it’ll last.’ She bit down on her hair, and tried hard to smile into the dark. ‘I miss my father.’
‘I know,’ said Christopher. He longed, in that moment, for his bed with his own duvet cover, and his father clattering in the kitchen making dinner. He was going to speak when Anya gave a sudden scream.
‘What was that?’
Christopher scrambled up, reaching for his sword. ‘What?’
‘I saw something moving!’
He swung out of bed. ‘Where? Show me.’
She peered through the dark. ‘Sorry! No. It’s just the moonlight in the mirror – see? It looked like a face.’ She gave a short, sharp laugh. ‘Being an idiot. Let’s try to sleep.’
Great Caruta came in sight in the middle of the following day, a great hulk of green in the endless sweep of blue. They dropped the anchor of the Neverfear among a cluster of rocks.
Christopher had been worried they might not be able to find the castle, but it had proved – to put it mildly – not to be a problem. To have missed it would have been a spectacular achievement.
‘I like the deadly spikes on the turrets,’ said Jacques. ‘Jazzy.’
It was, at first glance, more like a mountain than something made by chisel and axe. It looked elemental, set on the edge of a forest, and built to withstand any imaginable version of the world’s oncoming future.
‘Move sleekitly,’ said Ratwin. ‘Keep lows. Theys will certainly kills you if they sees you.’
‘Would they eat us?’ said Christopher.
‘They mights. But they will not means you to take it personally.’
It was more than an hour’s walk to the castle, across wooded country. At first, where they came ashore, the trees were oaks and sycamores, but as they grew closer to the castle, Anya paused.
‘Have my eyes started malfunctioning,’ she said, ‘or are the trees taller?’
Christopher looked up. The trees were gargantuan, five times the size of those at home. They looked, Christopher thought, like some great avenging army. ‘Meri said that they’ve been breeding plants to be larger, over the last three thousand years.’
‘Well, it certainly worked,’ said Anya.
They walked on, staying a little closer to each other.
It was a surreal feeling: the landscape grew as they moved through it. The grass rose to head height and they had to shove their way past it, the sharp edges slicing at their skin. They pushed through a patch of daisies, each flower as large as a hubcap.
‘What’s that noise?’ said Anya. There was a terrible buzzing. Christopher looked round just as a bee the size of a Jack Russell swept down at them.
‘Manticore’s testicles!’ said Ratwin. Christopher drew his sword. He didn’t take his eyes off the bee. Its sting was the size of a darning needle; his own body suddenly felt small and vulnerable in a way it had not before.
Jacques flew up to the bee and blew smoke in its face. ‘Be gone! Run, young ones!’
They ran, through the grass, over acres of green moss into which they sank knee-deep. Finally they scrambled over the top of a rise in the forest. They halted, pressed against a tree, too stunned to move.
The castle rose up in front of them, an immensity of stone. Vast rough-cut steps led up to it, each as tall as Christopher. But his attention passed over the castle’s harsh magnificence. His eyes were on the two figures in the huge square doorway.
Anya jerked her head twice down to the right: the strongest Gaganan swearing. ‘Giants,’ she gasped. There was terror in her voice.