Chapter 9 #2
‘The Issen won’t hurt me,’ I insist. ‘I’m their princess, which also means that they are my people.
My people, Kyor. Mine.’ I stretch my hand out towards the fight just as a jotunn’s fist swings perilously close to Toren’s head.
‘I can do this. I can help them, and I don’t need you to baby me.
To smother me. Don’t be a Jonas,’ I tell him.
His lips press together, but the movement is minuscule and the action swift. He knows we don’t have time to argue about this, especially not when I’m going to win.
He hands me his dagger. ‘Kill him, but don’t take unnecessary risks.’
‘Sure, because running into a battle with the jotnar is known for being an utterly safe pastime,’ Benny mutters.
Without responding to my friends, I peck Kyor on the lips before turning on the ball of my foot, leaping onto Fen’s back, and racing towards the lone jotunn. We quickly overtake the two guards who are running on foot.
‘We’ve got this!’ I shout over my shoulder.
I assume you have a plan, Little Raven? Does it involve me ripping out the beast’s trachea? Fen asks eagerly. I really am quite hungry.
No dining on the giant until the Issen say so. I don’t need you getting distracted by your stomach and leaving me exposed.
As if I would! Fen sniffs. Fine, he relents a moment later. No eating the giant while we’re fighting. So what’s the plan?
Bring him down, I say grimly. I need you to go for the ankles first.
You got it.
The last time I fought one of these, I survived by climbing the brute and plunging my daggers into its throat. But with it so close to the city, time is of the essence, and I need to bring it down fast. Hence, the ankles.
It’s terribly hard to walk with a snapped Achilles tendon, even for a giant. I roll from Fen’s back and drop to the ground behind the lumbering beast.
Here we go! Fen says as he launches whip-fast into the air.
With a throaty snarl, Fen plunges his teeth into the thin strip of muscle above the giant’s heel, while I raise Kyor’s dagger to shoulder height, my elbow bent, poised and ready.
A scream rips from the jotunn’s lungs as Fen’s teeth pierce his flesh.
A deep bellow of putrid-smelling air wafts around us, but I don’t give myself a chance to even flinch at the stench.
Instead, I snap my arm straight and hurl the blade directly into the back of its left knee, striking the same leg Fen has just attacked.
The weakened left leg buckles, but the monster manages to hold its balance for a moment longer.
Fen switches his attention to the other foot, and this time, he doesn’t just bite down.
He snaps his jaws, then yanks his head sideways, pulling sinewy tendons and flesh away from the bone.
Blood soaks his muzzle as the jotunn screams in pain, somehow still on its feet.
But I intend to change that.
This time it’s Benny’s dagger I throw into the back of its right knee. With an almighty wail, it drops to its knees, lessening the journey to my intended destination by a good fifteen feet.
But even wounded on the ground, it’s far from giving up, and its spine remains vertical, although its torso is swaying slightly, as if it might topple forward. But I’m not going to rely on probabilities. This thing is going down. Now.
Little Raven, what are you doing? Fen asks as I run towards the giant and leap upwards, propelling myself off its calf and partway up its back.
I’ve got two daggers left now – mine and Ruben’s – and I need them both.
With a tried-and-tested method, I plunge one of the blades into a patch of flesh at the bottom of the creature’s ribs, then use it as a handhold to swing myself up, where I find a foothold between its vertebrae.
As the giant shrieks and arches its spine, the bones protrude from its back in a manner that could imply malnourishment, but considering it came here to rampage and kill the Issen, I’m not going to feel bad for it.
Besides, the jutting spine provides great handholds and footholds, like a ladder up the creature’s back.
With each step and stab, the jotunn slumps more and more, but it’s still a good thirty feet to the ground, and it hasn’t given up, twisting, turning, and snarling as it tries to wrench me off.
It’s still breathing, so my job’s not yet done.
Any feelings of cold are forgotten as I continue my ascent up its calloused and sweat-covered skin. It’s swaying from side to side, and the higher I get, the more perilous the movements become. I need to act now. End this.
With my feet secure in the divot of a vertebra, I clench a dagger in either hand, though this time I have no intention of sending them flying.
Instead, I’m the one who leaps.
My heels push off the bumps of its spine, and with my arms stretched as wide as I can, I throw myself upwards. Then, when the tips of my blades are level with the sides of its neck, I plunge them in deep.
The wail that tears from the jotunn’s throat is enough to blur my vision, and my blades carve through the tendons in its neck as I cling to them, pulling them tight like reins.
It throws back its head, but somehow I hold on, and a moment later it’s dropping. Not just its head, but its entire torso plummets towards the ground.
I plant my feet deep against its spine, bracing myself in the ridges of protruding bone and preparing myself for impact.
When it happens, the force shoots through me, the creature’s body jerking upward with such velocity that my blades tear clean through the neck, freeing them.
Not that it matters to the jotunn anymore.
It is dead on the ground, blood glistening black under the pale light of the moon.
Breathless and panting, I straighten. The smell of blood and putrid breath fills my lungs as my feet remain planted on the gnarly flesh of the beast’s back.
My heart is thundering, blood pulsing so hard it drowns out every other sound beyond my own wheezing breaths. That’s what I think until I look up.
There are no other sounds because the other jotnar are dead, and every single person, Issen or otherwise, is looking solely at one place.
Me.
Whether it is with amazement or outrage, I can’t tell, but acutely aware of the gazes that are locked on me, I slide myself off the giant. My feet have barely hit the ground when, still stained with blood, Fen comes over to nuzzle himself against my side.
And there I was thinking you were going to keep the trachea for me, he complains.
Next time, Buddy, I reply. Next time.