The unsuccessful search for Dari launched a whole inquiry into whom Laura had killed during her Mibeltube-induced murder spree. Janna approved while watching her friend fret and bite her fingernails. It was just the right kind of penance, and Janna didn’t need to lift a finger for it to strike home. Perhaps this way it might actually achieve something.

The investigation, chiefly entrusted to the Abilachter Riders, yielded many results that trickled in all through the evening. It were mostly names that neither Janna nor Laura had ever heard before, so in the beginning they had to ask for stations and occupations until the reporting officer caught on and included such information with the names. Still, Laura didn’t really seem to care about people she didn’t personally know, and even Janna found it hard after a while. There were just so many, going in one ear and out the other.

“No one really important so far, fingers crossed,” Laura said at one point.

That wasn’t true, strictly speaking. A surprising number of leaders were among the dead, guild masters or officials and the like, renowned craftsmen, their kin and other citizens. There were much fewer people who had worked for the city directly, Janna noted, perhaps because they had kept their heads low during the incredibly short-lived rebellion or because they had gotten out during the turmoil and stuck with their cynical countess. The female city magistrate Belisa Tibradan for instance had not even returned to the city after the riot had broken out at the tourney grounds. On the other hand, perhaps Dari had been killed by some other means such as did not relate directly to Laura. Such deaths weren't even being reported yet.

“Cathal Ardwain,” Captain Arvo Lovgold read from his newest list. “Squire to the Lord of Feyrenwall. Not from Honingen, but I believe a relative to the Feyrenwall master at arms and an associate of the renowned rebel singer Garvin Blaithin.”

“Shit,” Laura screwed up her face with misery and fear.

It was righteous and sad at the same time.

“Do we know how he died, Arvo?”

The officer looked up: “Uh, we can find out. My men are still asking around, I will let them know to report the manner of death from now on, too. The scribes are struggling to eliminate multiply reported names. Would you like to know the circumstances for the names you have already heard as well?”

Laura shook her head: “Please don’t.”

She put her chin on her chest and stared at the ground. The names and descriptions were putting faces to her sins and it was finally starting to get to her. Janna liked it.

The next time Arvo Lovgold showed up he had yet a new list of names, and the causes of death this time too.

One of them was: “Garvin Blaithin, commoner, husband of Lady Elia Talvinyr. Renowned singer turned traitorous rebel. He made that dreadful Vulture song, I believe. Crushed to death.”

The captain read it with the chesty tone of splendid news, thereby twisting the knife he had unknowingly stuck into Laura's belly. That was now truly a bit too much.

“Fuck!” Laura cringed on her knees. “Oh no!”

The captain was aghast to see her react this way, not knowing what he had done wrong. She bent forwards until her face was almost buried in the ground, and cried. She bawled like a little girl, her shoulders bobbing up and down with her sobs.

Janna put a hand on her back and looked at that tone-deaf idiot of captain: “That’s enough with the blasted names, I think! And could you perhaps make an effort not to sound so damned happy!”

She shooed him away with her eyes to which he gracefully obliged.

“Shhh.” She made at Laura, stroking up and down. “It’s okay. Did…did you know that man?”

Laura looked up, her face dirty and wet: “Not really, no.”

Janna was surprised.

Laura shrugged and wiped at her eyes: “I liked his singing, is all. He was a nice little dude, very talented. I didn’t mean to kill him!”

She sat up and snuggled her face against Janna’s shoulder, drenching the green cotton with her tears. Janna put an arm around her and reflected.

‘What a fucked-up situation we’re still in.’

It was all so wrong that it didn’t bare thinking about. Not for long anyway.

“We need wine and beer and whatever else you have!” Janna called out to the city. “The stronger, the better!”

To her renewed surprise, a tiny female voice answered her from within earshot: “We’ve got something pretty strong right here!”

Dari wasn’t dead but very much alive, it turned out. And she had company.

For a weird moment, Janna had interpreted the words as some catchy one-liner before a well-coordinated attack that would end with their final undoing. But it was just Mibeltube. They looked like thugs, the men who brought it forth. Twice as much as last time, perhaps, although they had pretentiously laden it onto a little two-wheeled cart as though to make it look heavier.

Laura inhaled like a diver: “Dari!”

Janna had trouble deciding whether or not she liked this reaction. The fact that the tiny assassin was alive was probably alright. Laura had just brought forth that idea of sending her to the ogres. But she seemed also so over-the-top excited to see her…

Janna had no idea there was such a thick bond between the two, although that might just as well have been Laura’s state of mind. She had overreacted about that singer too, albeit in the other direction.

“Oh!” Laura stretched out her hand. “I thought I squished you!”

“I dodged,” Dari replied with an undertone that Janna felt was unbecomingly dry.

The tiny woman looked at Laura’s hand for a moment before jumping on. The jump itself was quite impressive, though. It was a level of fitness Janna had never achieved at any point in her life. It made her only more resentful.

Dari even remained in perfect balance when Laura’s hand shakingly lifted off. Furio, by comparison, looked like he might collapse at the slightest breeze. The young woman seemed very cool, as well. She put her arm in front of her chest and pointed vaguely at her ear, indicating that she had secret information. Janna leaned in to listen.

“These men think you’re about to buy the Mibeltube from them at a hefty price.” Dari reported softly and hastily. “I have used them to pull together as much of it as I could, and so that you may have them. They are violent scum and doing nothing good in your city. But I have found you pretty girls as well. They await your pleasure in the dungeons. Best use them while they are still, um...fresh.”

Janna was repulsed by what she heard. She pulled away and looked at Laura in disgust. She could feel it in her chest and in her stomach, making her physically sick even to think about it. Her mind was racing, but her conscience suppressed her temper in order to give Laura a chance to redeem herself.

Laura laughed awkwardly: “Uh-huh, I completely forgot I asked that of you. I’m so sorry, but I fear it was a mistake. Please go immediately and release them, the girls, I mean. I…I’ve done enough harm. Oh, and pay them some compensation!”

She gave Dari a quick hug, which basically meant closing the girl into her fist which she pressed against her bosom before lowering and setting Dari down. The evil little assassin looked rather perplexed, even angry, but turned and went running a moment later.

Janna gave Laura a long look to see whether or not she had meant what she had just said. It was hard to tell. Laura kept her gaze resolutely pointed downwards where one of the thugs had climbed the cart with Mibeltube in the meantime and not very much liked what he had witnessed. Nevertheless, his position left him few options.

“Two hundred ducats!” He bellowed. “It’s a fine price for a fine product! Take you beyond the clouds this here, it does! As though you could fly!”

He bent, reached into the sack and pulled out a fistful of tubes that he held high for Laura’s and Janna’s inspection.

“I don’t wanna kill them.” Laura said in English. “But the ogress said something about eating human flesh, right?”

Janna almost approved instinctively before she could stop herself.

“We don’t know the first thing about these men, Laura. Have they stood trial? They could be perfectly innocent, and your little bitch is lying.”

She gave Laura a glance to see her reaction, which now was perfectly genuine, albeit visibly sarcastic at the same time.

“Yeah, Janna, they look like perfectly clean-cut young men to me. I wouldn’t even mind meeting them in the park at night.”

Janna didn’t need to look down again to see that it was true. They looked like absolute, disgusting rapists. Looks could be deceiving, but this lot gave off a vibe almost as though they went out of their way to appear repulsive and threatening. They were dirty, pockmarked and vile creatures who wore dark clothing in ill repair and hoods to cover their faces. Their hair, far as evident, was unkempt, their beards disgusting, their teeth rotten and their eyes bloodshot and glassy. There was not a thing to like about them, Janna found.

“Yep,” she nodded. “Ogre food.”

And so it was settled. Not just on their looks, Janna told herself. It was the accusation, too. Society ought to believe women, plus they really needed something to feed the ogres.

“Get them,” Laura husked and so they started to snatch the vile thugs off the ground.

Janna ended up with three, Laura with four in her hand, a gang of seven who screamed and complained. But Janna didn’t feel bad when she closed her fist and muffled them. Laura called out for Mara and the ogress soon came stomping by with a look on her face that could have curdled milk.

“We have food for you, Mara.” Laura chirped and selected a man from her hand that she pinched and gave to the ogress who dropped the wood she was carrying.

Mara regarded the man first as a tasty treat, but then even she recoiled. Faced with Laura’s gleaming expectations, however, she knew better than to refuse. Almost gingerly, she bit the man’s head off and spat it out on the ground, like uncorking a bottle. Then she went to town on the rest of him, tearing him apart with her teeth like a bear devouring a salmon. He appeared to be quite stringy.

Janna disapproved of Laura opening her hand enough to allow the others watch the spectacle, but then again, perhaps it was only her hate for evil men.

“How many do you need to get full?” Laura asked after Mara had sucked the meat off the man’s legs and crunched his bones to get at the marrow.

One was more or less sufficient, it turned out, or else Mara didn’t want to eat another one from this subprime lot. In any event, Laura made the obvious observation that they did not have enough to feed all their ogresses.

“Do you eat other food as well, like bread, eggs, bacon and such?” Laura asked.

Janna tried to recall if she had ever seen Nagash from Laura's village eat anything.

“We eat humans,” Mara replied. “But we eat what humans eat too. It makes no difference, but humans taste better…usually.”

“Yikes,” Laura gave Janna a knowing look and chuckled.

It was just then that Dari was back from the dungeons, which was perfect timing because Laura sent her right back to get all cells emptied and have the regular prisoners brought over under guard. It seemed the right thing to do at first, but once she started thinking, it made Janna a tad uneasy.

“I plan on pardoning some people.” Laura said, yet again to Janna’s big surprise. “I know the laws are probably too strict and they hit…marginalized people hardest and often unjustly, so there’s work to be done. But if there are people in there like these fucks,” she raised her fist with the thugs, “they go to the ogres.”

It couldn’t be argued with, Janna found, but was once again completely counteracted by the circumstances. The grand number of guarded prisoners Dari came back with for the third time was two. Moreover, these two didn’t look like scum at all. Their clothing wasn’t very neat and they might have profited from some grooming, but they were both slender, young, pretty, golden of hair and female. More than that, they were holding hands like lovers.

“What the fuck?” Laura said, expressing very much how Janna felt.

The captain from before was leading the guard. He was now on horseback but still in his green and blue surcoat and shifted his moustache left and right as he assessed the situation. He looked somewhat like a walrus, albeit more tall than fat and with a gilded nose guard on his helm.

“Er, we do not oft have women in our dungeons, Your Grace.” He bowed carefully in the saddle. “But this lot, well…they are unmarried, so we cannot get their husbands to answer for them. And they have been caught stealing now for the fourth time already, the bailiff told me. They have also borrowed coin and failed to make good on their dues.”

Laura seemed disappointed.

She had a bit of additional information which she shared in English only for Janna’s ears: “I saved these two. Ordhan Herlogan gave them to me for you-know-what. He had imprisoned them because they are lesbians. I set them free here and told them to live out their love openly. I didn’t think they would let me down like that.”

Janna chewed her lip. It was a difficult case although Laura’s mind seemed made up.

“You can’t seriously mean to kill them for stealing, though, right?” Janna reasoned after a moment.

No, that was wrong. The death penalty itself was wrong, albeit somewhat excusable under the circumstances. But that wasn’t even the point. Laura wanted to execute the girls for disappointing her.

“They would just keep stealing, apparently.” Laura argued.

Janna remained adamant: “That’s why you need social safety nets!”

She did not give in and prevailed. Laura eventually sent the girls on their way and even instructed the captain to find them housing, work and give them some money with which to start over.

Janna was duly impressed.

“I thought the dungeons were fuller.” Laura scratched her eyelids and yawned. “I forgot there was a rebellion and they just freed all the fucking criminals. Besides, you know, in medieval Europe, dungeons were mostly used to keep prisoners until trial. The accused were usually tortured until they confessed and then some physical punishment to fit the crime was enacted. But it was still not as bad as it sounds.”

Janna had to scoff in disbelief: “How could it be any worse, exactly?”

“You don’t know anthropology, Janna.” Laura said, unaware of the thin ice she was venturing out on. “Primitive cultures often inflict death for even the slightest infractions, either through outright killing or through banishment into the woods, which is almost even worse, if you think about it!”

“That’s pretty racist,” Janna observed and pondered whether or not she had misjudged Laura all her life. “Besides, these girls? You’ve thrust them into an environment they don’t know, with little to no means to integrate. What did you think was going to happen?”

She suddenly remembered the people of colour she had saved from Franka Salva Galahan’s clutches, and hoped that they had fared better. To expect that any of them had ended up in trouble with the law was racist too, although statistically likely. The fact that they hadn’t, gave Janna considerable relief. Much smarter than Laura, of course, she had ensured that the people she freed were financially secured from the getgo.

It was very unfortunate that with such issues as gender there were simple biological facts that were unavoidable. Even with regards to race. Yes, the arguments of the self-styled race realists who cropped up every now and again were complete baloney. But then again, there were certain, well-established facts that their opponents couldn’t explain away either. That was another debate that had laid stale for hundreds of years and never yielded conclusions, nor any measurable benefits.

It wouldn’t pay off to dwell on it either way.

Laura had her eyes closed and was breathing softly through her nose, looking unbecomingly cute. Something in Janna still longed for her, even while her dreams were consumed by Steve. Steve was a really stupid name, she had decided. And he was such a stupid boy, too. But that was exactly why she liked him. He was tall, stupid, muscular and manly. More importantly, he was manly because he was all those other things. Perhaps she was stupid as well for fancying him for those reasons.

Food and drink came eventually, and they both did their best to get full and drunk.

It struck Janna how Laura’s village, back in the day, had been able to feed both of them with only a fraction of the manpower, livestock or inventory.

“It comes down to efficiency.” Laura presumed to explain. “It’s that…effect. The something-something effect, or law or whatever, I forgot the name.”

“Dunning-Kruger?” Janna asked, knowing full well that they weren't it.

Laura didn't get the hint, though.

“No!” She screwed up her pretty face, already a little tipsy. “Something else. It says that…the square root of any…urgh…basically it says that the larger any given operation is, the more slack there is, but with like a number.”

“Pfff.” Janna had to scoff again. “High intellectual class, Laura. Really academic.”

“It’s true, though.” Laura shrugged. “Or observable, if you wanna be a nerd. Anyway, I’m fucking off to bed.”

It was the end of a long, hard day for them. And the morrow didn’t promise to be any easier. Somehow, that made Janna less enthusiastic about sleeping. They ended up sharing blankets again and cuddled closely. Janna allowed it to happen.

She was thinking back on how they had tossed the thugs into the newly made und entirely inadequate ogre pit. Ogresses ate humans like bigger apes tended to eat smaller apes in nature, raw too. Janna even observed primal sharing behaviour when ogresses ripped a human being apart and shared it with another. In terms of other food items, Laura and Janna gave them the refuse, the stuff they themselves didn’t like or hadn’t even tried. Seeing them like that, the ogresses were very much like livestock.

But they were demanding as well. Initially, they refused to eat until their little female Ironman was showed to them once more. Janna was lazy and let Laura take care of it, which was bad because Laura naturally couldn't do without being cruel to the tiny girl. Janna resolved to come up with a better solution in the future, and for the pit as well. Right now it was but a shallow, dirty hole with some uprooted trees for a barrier. It trapped cold and wet, but not the ogres. And it was truly ghastly wet and cold.

For now, the creatures seemed to stay put, huddling together around the small fire they had been allowed.

“What are you thinking about?” Laura asked while her left index finger circled Janna's nipple.

“Ogres,” Janna replied.

Laura grinned and got up again, looking for her shoes. It was a misunderstanding but Janna made no attempt to stop it.

“I got only one for now, hope that's okay,” Laura whispered when she returned and slipped back between the sheets after kicking her shoes off.

The ogress she had taken did not make so much as a sound although she was visibly shaking.

Janna felt like it had been ages since her last good orgasm, even though she had practically just masturbated poor Signor Hatchet to pulp. It had been the drugs. She wasn't sober now but at least neither fully drunk nor high. They were keeping the Mibeltube for another time. For now, the little ogress Laura had brought would do nicely.

She had curly brown hair, a young, smooth face that was somewhat plump and she was small and squat for an ogress overall. The feeling Janna felt while observing her was nearly indescribable, albeit very familiar. She was looking at something she would enjoy destroying thoroughly through nothing but her lust. For a moment she almost forgot Laura was there with her.

The barbie-sized, though not quite barbie-groomed doll was standing on the blanket between them. Her knees were shaking with fear and her face glistened wet in the firelight. She was mumbling something in that throaty ogre tongue even while Janna could hardly hear it over her own breathing.

“Are you okay?” Laura asked after what felt like an eternity.

The ogress seemed more afraid of Janna the entire time, even while Laura undressed her.

It was such a wonderful moment. Janna nodded and licked her lips that had gone dry while she she had knealt there, legs apart, soaring through spiralling fantasies in her head.

“It's a shame she can't understand us.” She noted softly, just to say anything at all.

Laura shrugged and grinned: “Not our words. Guess we'll need to teach her some other way.”

The living hell they put the tiny thing through before killing it was something Janna would be slightly ashamed of in the morning. At the time, there were no such inhibitions. It wasn't the alcohol, really, it was something else, deep and dark, repressed and free at last if only for a short while.

“You think they do the same with tiny humans?” Janna asked while Laura had the ogress eat her out, a thing the living doll understood how to do surprisingly quickly.

Janna didn't really believe that, although, going back to her observations about primates, it was definitely possible.

Laura was on her back with her legs apart which wasn't exactly what Janna had in mind, finding it unimaginative and pedestrian. She came up behind the ogress and bit her, right in that tiny, naked bum. The doll squeaked while Janna did it again, catching a leg with her teeth and threatening to crunch it.

“Hey!” Laura, laughed. “Wait your turn, I'm in the middle of something here!”

Janna didn't care. The ogress turned to face her in utter terror while Janna started chasing her with her mouth, biting, mauling and picking her up before letting her go like a hungry lioness playing with her prey. Red marks could be seen on the ogress' skin when the light fell upon it, the imprints of Janna's teeth.

The ogress had tiny, relatively flat and drop-shaped breasts. Janna contemplated biting one off and eating it. When the tortured ogress saw her coming back for more, desperation took hold of her and she took the only way that seemed to bring shelter, which was right up Laura's cunt.

“Woa!” Laura gasped when she felt the barbie-sized thing attempt to claw its way inside her.

It was grotesque but good and with some help from both of them the tiny toy was soon waist deep in Laura's love tunnel.

“Oh, fuck...yes...mh...god...fuck!” Laura started mumbling and gasping, wreathing in the blankets while the ogress struggled.

Probably realizing that she was suffocating, the tiny thing attempted to get back out, but Janna didn't let her. She grabbed the girl by the legs and jammed as much of her as deeply into Laura as she would go. Before she knew it, the tiny ogress had become a living dildo that was driving Laura to ecstasy.

She was already half dead when Janna pulled her out, and only because Laura begged her to stop with it. Laura could hardly breathe at that point herself, but Janna was far from done.

It wasn't a proper threesome without all three of them having their fun, she decided, and so she took one of the ogress' thighs in each hand and dangled her limp toy upside down. The tiny ogress' cunt was unshaven, but the hairs were tiny and short and Janna and Laura weren't exactly smooth down below at this time either.

The ogress came back to consciousness with Janna's tongue going to work between her legs while Laura watched with a sweaty, love-drunk face. It was hard to tell if the ogress got we, because nigh every inch of her was covered in Laura's juices, slowly being replaced by Janna's spit. She fought, however. In hysterical fashion she tried to ward off Janna's violations of her body, which for Janna constituted the best part of it.

Before long, it was back to biting, starting with the Barbie doll's sex which elicited an ear-splitting scream that must have woken half of Honingen. That they were awake in Galahan Palace and witness to these steamy, morally reprehensible act, Janna had no doubt.

She bit down on the ogress' forearm until she cut feel it snap and tasted blood. Then she made due on her unspoken threat from earlier and pinched one tiny, drop-shaped tit in between her incisors. It tore off almost too easily when she pulled, a little, soft, wiggly thing on her tongue that tasted distantly like butter but mostly of flesh and blood. She swallowed and made sure the ogress could see it before bringing her screaming toy down and bulldozing it into the ground with her sex.

That put an end to the screaming and a finishing touch to Janna's ambitions. Quickly, violently, mercilessly she fucked her tiny plaything into submission, deriving pleasure from her sex grinding over its hapless little body and squashing the very life out with every time. Janna still had her panties on but didn't care. She came hard and wonderfully after a short time and wanted nothing more in the world than sleep.

The tiny body made a strange sound when she dropped it on the ground next to the blankets, like a wet sack, as though every bone in it was broken. And she already thought about doing it again, tomorrow, and again. At some point, she would even get to fuck Mara to death, which would be a special occasion, she already knew.

“She dead?” Laura asked from the other side of the blankets.

It seemed almost like an understatement for what Janna had done, but she nodded anyway.

Laura asked: “Can we cuddle?”

The next morning, Janna had to clean her panties all over again, but resolved to do so every morning from now on. This time for real. She usually had some time before Laura got up anyway.

Not on that morning, however, because Laura had caught the building bug good and proper. When Janna woke up, she was already hard at work in the city, with food being prepared all around her she was carrying arms full of trees, tearing branches off by the hundreds and dealing with individual problems her builders had.

Much like early American settlers, she was going mostly for log cabins just now, eventually to be roofed with boards, the gaps in between the logs filled with clay, dung, grass and whatever else they could find. These buildings required hearths to be made of clay, if not outright masonry, but she had convinced herself that keeping fires lit in them was sufficient to ward of the frost for now and let them dry out. It reduced Honingen's visual appeal of whitewash, red brick and sandstone quite significantly, but the aesthetic of it was not her primary concern.

She had her dead dragon finally skinned and the leather treated by the stinking men and women who were called tanners. Their work smelled so utterly repulsive that they needed to work outside the city, and since they needed lots of water as well, Laura had left them Aran up north by the river at their disposal. The village was nearly empty anyway, and there was no trade on the river, even though a navigable river like the Tommel should have been the medieval equivalent to a railroad track or highway in terms of carrying freight.

Laura employed all remaining ogresses in Honingen now too. They had not run away during night, although they hadn’t stayed in their hole either. To be fair, ground water had filled the pit they had dug and formed a little lake, so staying in there would have meant death by drowning or hypothermia, so they opted to camp up against the walls for now. They were none too happy about their new circumstances however, as was written plainly on their faces.

“So,” Janna finally put Laura on the spot, “have you talked to Dari about sending her to Andergast?”

The facial expression she received was not exactly promising and Laura grudgingly told her why. Dari was dangerous. Even Laura was smart enough to know that. And giving her access to Steve and Christina was probably an even dumber idea than entrusting it to Mara. At least they had something to threaten the ogresses, which was proving to work surprisingly well. With Dari, they had no such thing, no ultimate leverage that extended past physically being able to kill her.

“Even if she doesn’t lay low and vanish or straight up runs away she wouldn’t have any incentive to give Steve and Christina to us.” Laura argued. “And if she wants to get revenge, you know, she might just kill our friends to get back at us for all the shit we probably did to her. Don’t forget, she’s from my village.”

It made Janna frustrated and angry despite knowing that it was absolutely true. She liked to think that she had changed her ways, but that did little to wash away the sins of her recent past. She and Laura had behaved like monsters and could expect to be treated like monsters in turn. The only way to receive help, it occurred to Janna thereupon, was to treat the tiny people nicely. That made it all the more important that Laura finally understood and got on the side of good instead of evil.

When Janna told her as much in no uncertain terms, Laura referred to her new building projects to give herself credence.

“This is going to be one school,” she pointed out, “here’s the second and here the third. I haven’t found teachers yet, but I bet I can get some scribes and tradesmen to do it. Maths and literacy is most important, right? Hesinde Priests can cover the rest, I suppose. They’re pretty learned, but I have to establish that they aren’t paedophiles first, before I’m letting them loose on children. I’m also building two small infirmaries. One big-ass hospital would probably be cooler but you can’t do that with these architectural limitations.”

“And how many people did you flatten already today?” Janna asked firmly.

“Nobody.” Laura replied but evaded Janna’s eyes for moment. “One of the ogresses, though…she dropped a pile of wood without looking and one of the guys got killed.”

Janna weighed it in her mind, the pros and cons.

“And is she still alive?” She asked after a moment.

Laura nodded hesitantly: “But I’ve given her an ass whooping she won’t forget and I’ve ripped one of her ears off so she’s, you know…earmarked for when we need her.”

She fluttered her eyelashes at Janna, hinting at the night before. It was probably best not to make compromises, however, for the love of the people’s sake.

“Give her to me.”

The ogress was limping, green and blue and truly missing her left ear which was still bleeding. Janna shook off her blanket and took off her shirt before taking her from Laura. She wanted to make a statement.

“Hey, Mara!” She said loudly. “Tell the other cunts this is what happens if you don’t treat our little friends with respect!”

It would have done to tear the limbs off of the ogress, crumple her into a ball or just crush her. But Janna was curious about something. She wrapped her free arm around her bosom to keep her breasts in place and shoved the ogress in between so that the head was where she thought she could exert the most pressure. Then she put one hand on the side of either breast and pressed them together.

The whole city was staring at her tits, she knew, but that was fine. If some little man somewhere got something more out of this that the satisfaction of seeing a wrong set right then that was even better.

The ogress screamed and fought and tried to get out but she was already firmly stuck where Janna wanted her. She looked down from above and grinned at her victim as she squeezed harder and harder. Breasts were naturally soft, though, and Janna had not yet put on her bra, so she needed to exert a lot of force.

It took a while to get the right angle with her hands so that the mass of her breasts bunched up in a way to form some sort of hard surface with which she could crush the offending ogress’ head. A tiny human being would have smushed much easier of course, but their weak little bodies weren’t really a comparison. The ogress’ screeches reached their highest point before going abruptly silent with a sharp crack, and Janna could feel something wet and viscous run down her chest.

“Heh, heh, heh!” She laughed as she twisted and kneaded her breasts together.

With the skull broken, the rest was now much easier, and soon not only blood was running down between her tits, but also brains. The other ogresses looked on in shock.

“God, I love killing these things.”

If truth be told, the ogresses were a godsent for Janna. They allowed her to be mean and violent, vent her frustration and get herself off in the bargain. She could feel herself becoming aroused despite the early hour and despite feeling wholly satiated when she had woken up. She wanted to dig her fingernails into an ogress’ skin and make her scream. She wanted to sit on one of those little stupid faces and be eaten out, as Laura would put it.

When she pulled out the ogress from between her tits she could see that she had crushed this one pretty well. The face was squashed, narrow, blood was running from nose, mouth and bulging eyes and the roof of the skull had popped open to release the brains. She tossed her victim into the city, careful not to hit any of the tiny workers that had momentarily laid down their labour as well.

“You’ve got a lot of anger,” Laura noted. “Is something bothering you?”

Janna didn’t know how to reply and found it to be a monumentally stupid question, so she ignored it.

After washing and drying she had to eat, and it became clear that what had been threatened before was definitely starting to show now. The variety of food they received from Honingen was becoming smaller and smaller, and the quality was suffering even more. It was time to find a solution for this, and she was happy to discover that Laura was in agreement.

It so happened that Furio came over around that time, carried in a litter that looked like it belonged to Franka Salva Galahan and with a small retinue of servants as well as bodyguards and more yoghurt. He reported to have received a message from Havena, addressed to Queen Laura, which was surprising because they hadn’t had any word from that big, fabled city thus far, at least to Janna’s knowledge.

“It is from the Council of Elders,” The wizard said while looking at the scroll that was much too large for a bird to have carried it, “though Magistrate Ardach Herlogan and the Council of Captains send their regards as well. They are wondering when you will visit their city.”

“Oh look, another Herlogan!” Laura chuckled.

She was visibly giddy to have received any kind of correspondence, even though Janna doubted the importance of it.

“Uh, aye,” Furio agreed. “The Council wishes to know whether you intend to melt down Garethian coinage and remint it into Horasian coins. The doubloon seems to be a particular matter of interest to them, as well as the Horasdor.”

“Of all the messages that could have come through, this is the one we get?” Janna asked in English.

It just didn’t seem right.

Laura replied with a shrug: “I let Turon Taladan deal with the important stuff.”

To do so seemed perilously negligent but Janna wasn’t sure whether interfering was wise at this point. Albernia was still Laura’s kingdom and having her deal with actual problems might turn out a disaster in more ways than one. Janna didn't understand monetary policy at all but knew that it could make and break empires in the modern age. Probably not in the hard-currency medieval world, though.

When it came to coinage, Furio laid out, the Garethians used a very simple but effective system: ducats, silverlings, hellers and crossers. Ducats were gold coins, silverlings silver, hellers and crossers copper. Each coin type was alloyed with other metals to adjust for changes in value so that hellers and even crossers - the term for clipped coppers whereby each copper could be fairly divided to make five crossers, four pizza-slice-shaped pieces and one cross - had a little silver in them. Ducats likewise contained a certain amount of silver and silverlings gold, copper, or both.

The problem they were having in Havena, which seemed so trivial that it made Janna groan, was whether they should mint doubloons, a coin twice the size and therefor twice the value of a ducat, and the Horasdor which possessed the staggering value of twenty ducats.

“Can I have my own face on the coins?” Laura asked like the little child she sometimes was, completely ignoring Furio’s question.

The answer, of course, was yes. Janna really had to wonder if Laura really had forgotten that technically she could do whatever she wanted, just by sheer physical might alone. If it was the case that she truly started to play by the rules, Janna was still unsure of.

“Then they can mint whatever size they like!” The child queen determined. “So long as it has my face on it!”

She switched to English and bragged: “Can you imagine that?! My face on money!”

They needed a stamp for it, or coiner’s die as it was called, for which a picture of Laura needed to be commissioned. Graham could have drawn it, Janna recalled, but Laura had gotten him killed. That seemed ages ago, already.

“No one really ever looks at the money.” Janna tried to curb Laura’s enthusiasm. “Do you even know what’s on what bill of our money on Earth?”

“Furio.” Laura turned to the local tongue instead of answering the question. “Have a picture of Janna commissioned as well. Or draw one yourself, makes no matter. Tell them in Havena that I want her face to be minted on the crossers from now on.”

It was intended as a jab but failed to rouse Janna’s anger. Instead, she suddenly got a queer, fluttery feeling in her belly.

It was like Laura had said: ‘My face on money.’

She found it hard to fathom, but somehow it felt…good.

What Furio’s interjection really did was give Laura the obvious solution for solving the food shortage. They would be going to Havena and bodily carry a bunch of it back to Honingen. It could be done in one day, according to Laura, although it might turn out to become a two-day trip as well.

“First things first, though.” The likely most infantile queen in history proclaimed. “Red Curse, Abilacht and then Havena.”

It aligned well enough with Janna’s newest goal of winning the people’s trust and perhaps eventually even their love. If they could deal with the Red Curse, if Janna could turn Abilacht into a modern, promising paradise, and if Laura could solve the beginning famine in Honingen then the tiny people might see that the two giant girls that had wandered into their lands were capable of more than only destruction.

The problem they now encountered was obvious. They didn’t want to split up again, but someone would have to stick around and watch the ogres. At this point, Janna wasn’t sold on killing them off anymore. They were far too much fun for that, plus she considered them important for her mental wellbeing. Taking them along wasn’t looking very promising either, because even though they were considerably faster than humans, there was simply no way they could keep up with Janna’s and Laura’s strides for any meaningful amount of time. And they were still too numerous to carry.

“If we go away for more than a day, I bet you Mara will try something.” Laura said and Janna felt quite the same.

Janna suggested taking the Ironman girl with them. Laura liked the idea but said that she wanted to try something else before making that decision.

-

Linbirg looked around in her room while the maid brushed out her curly, golden hair. It was a small chamber, though larger than the ones guests could inhabit at Lionstone. Remembering her home made her cry again and the tears blurred her vision.

Galahan Palace looked like something from another world to her. Everything was so different from the castles she knew. It was less defensible, to be sure. But so nice. The rooms were warm and well-lit due to the windows which were made of pure glass, some of which was even painted. Things were kept neat and clean. The servants were busy and didn’t dawdle, although the frightening headsman positioned at Linbirg’s door seemed to do little more than sleep and scratch his fat belly.

“Oh, stop it!” The maid cursed under her breath when she saw Linbirg crying.

After a knock on the door another female servant had entered, carrying bread, bacon and a pitcher of milk.

“What, is she still crying?” The new woman asked with little regard for Linbirg being right there and not deaf.

“She cries always,” the headsman complained from the door. “Cry, cry, cry, it’s hard to get some sleep around here! And what am I breaking my fast on?”

“I’ll bring you some, oaf, but first her ladyship must eat. Ingrimo says to jam it down her throat if she doesn’t. If she dies, the Queen will crush us all!”

Linbirg hadn’t had any appetite before and she didn’t feel like she could eat now, in spite of what the gargantuan monsters might do. They slept next to the palace and evidently did gruesome things at night that kept everyone awake only to drift off into fits of night terrors, one worse than the next. Worse still, they were killing the ogresses and it was all Linbirg’s fault for coming here. Every time she had been taken out and shown to Mara, there had been fewer of Marag’s Children left alive.

This had happened two times so far, but she knew it wouldn’t be the last.

Much as she detested the servants, she still did not dare speak. The bigger giantess had threatened to eat her and showed her the humid, horrible inside of her cavernous, gigantic mouth. Linbirg had wet herself then and there, which was the reason they had put her into this ill-fitting dress she was wearing, made for a woman much taller and more elegant than herself. Could she have spoken, she would have liked to complain that the bacon she saw was raw and uncooked, making her tummy turn at the sight of pink meat and white fat as it lay there on the platter.

The bread came as little white buns, however, golden on the outside and looking as soft as pillows. She knew that wheat made such bread but it wasn’t a very sturdy crop so it didn’t grow well in the Bordermark.

Again, thinking of her home made her cry only more. It always came back to this with her thoughts.

“Stop crying, milady!” The serving woman with the food all but begged. “Here, try this wonderfully sweet thing.”

She pinched one of the bacon slices which was so thick that it hardly bent under its own weight, making it only more disagreeable.

“Shouldn’t that be cooked?” The maid observed while brushing.

The other one returned a look that was somewhat puzzling. It seemed to speak of contempt and envy, which Linbirg did not understand.

“Eat this, milady, hm?”

She held the bacon under Linbirg’s nose, but Linbirg turned away in disgust, already remembering the strange, pungent smell uncooked bacon had. She didn’t like it.

“Oh, dear.” The serving woman sighed. “Where in the Netherhells are you from, that you have such lavish tastes?!”

“Wait!” The other woman suddenly stopped brushing. “Is that what I think it is?!”

Linbirg could hear her stand and felt her lean closer to the food to get a better look at it.

“Yes, and you and I can’t have any!” Replied the other. “I mean it, Aeb, keep your hands to yourself or we’ll both get the whip for it!”

Linbirg didn’t want to but some curiosity took hold of her nose. It wasn’t bacon at all she smelled but something sweeter, distantly like honey perhaps or very sweet beets, but less sour.

She turned and took the bacon with her hands. It felt strange, leathery somehow. And she was famished. She had eaten too little even while on the road to Honingen, always and ever concerned about Mara and the others, both with regards to their wellbeing and her own longevity.

“The old woman is throwing pearls to the pigs!” The maid complained sourly.

She sounded on the verge of wheeping.

“Try and starve yourself to death, perhaps then you can have some too, although most likely they'll clap you in the pillory and feed you horse dung instead, you and your stupid mouth!”

The headsman at the door scratched his belly, adjusted his hood and sniffed his runny nose to get a whiff of the food: “Way too sweet is what I heard.”

The serving woman snapped: “You haven’t heard a pig’s fart, Gaw, so shut up about it!”

Gawain Rudewine, that was the name of the headsman though the servants here all called each other by abbreviations, much as Linbirg was often called Lin. Linbirg lived in terror of Gaw, well aware that the axe leaning against the wall next to him was sharp and meant to chop her head off in case Mara and the ogresses attempted to escape from their horrid predicament. And they would try to escape, eventually, if Linbirg did not get out of here and do her disgusting duty by them, thereby breaking the bargain.

She cried again and tossed the bacon away, clean in the face of the serving woman.

Strangely, however, the woman looked mad only for an instant. Then she licked her lips and closed her eyes.

“It’s so sweet!” She almost sang and a tear of joy was running down her cheek. “Oh, why did I have to be sired by some paper layer instead of a noble lord!”

The other woman cooed with her, coming around and looking at the food with such longing that it seemed she would have given her left foot for a bite. Linbirg’s left foot was sticking in an iron shackle, attached to a chain. The giantesses erroneously believed that they could keep Marag’s Children subdued forever if only they could hold on to Linbirg. She would have loved to explain it to somebody, but the big giantess had forbidden her to speak on pain of becoming food.

“Can I hit her over the head?” Gawain Rudewine suggested. “My brother wouldn’t eat when he was little, and my mother always hit him until he did. Before he died, that was, that time she hit him too hard. That's how it was the headsmen adopted me after they hanged her.”

“Ingrimo did say to jam it down her throat, no?” The maid asked, looking at Linbirg. “Perhaps there’s some stuck to our fingers afterwards. The old lady can't whip us for that, surely? We need to jam it in nice and tight, so what if we crush a bit of it and it sticks and we lick it off. And who would tell? She certainly isn't going to.”

It was an insane suggestion, but the headsman was on his feet at once.

Linbirg lunched forward and took one of the bread rolls from the platter, biting it before any of them could get their hands on her.

“Ah, just my luck.” Gaw complained and sat back down.

The bread was soft and fluffy in Linbirg’s mouth. It was most definitely bread, but only by the faintest of notions. It was sweet too and tasted of milk and butter even though it was neither soaked nor buttered. A sound of approval came out of her throat involuntarily, which she immediately disguised as a cough lest it be mistaken for speaking.

“At least she eats now.” The maid pouted, awkwardly watching full of envy as Linbirg chewed.

Linbirg took a bite that was so big that it overwhelmed her little mouth and all her spit was soaked up by the bread in an instant. The serving woman saw and gave her some milk to wash it down. The milk was just milk. Fresh, creamy and nice and everything, but still just milk. But what it did to the bread…it was a transformation of sorts, bringing out the sweetness in the dough while also breaking it down and doing away with its dryness, which was the only aspect that Linbirg could have disliked about it if she tried.

“Try this now!” The serving woman was smiling, coming at her with the queer, pink bacon again.

Linbirg didn’t think she needed anything besides bread and milk but curiosity got the better of her. She took it again, finding it as hard and strange to the touch as the first time. In truth, she had never handled anything like it. She tried biting into it but tasted nothing for a moment and it felt as though she was sinking her teeth into a hard piece of shoe leather.

When she took it back out of her mouth, however, a most strange taste was spreading on her tongue. It was lingering there, impenetrably sweet and definitely nothing like bacon. It didn’t even taste anything like meat was supposed to. Her senses were in mayhem as her eyes and fingers told her to hate that stupid thing, whatever it was. But her tongue demanded more and more and more.

She took another bite, in earnest this time and hard, finding that her teeth could penetrate despite what it felt like. She received a lump in her mouth as a reward, emitting its wonderful flavour only on those edges where she had bitten into it. The warmth of her mouth seemed to melt it in the queerest of ways, and her spit was dissolving it like snow that was somehow not cold. Then, the taste was everywhere. She could feel her eyes widen so much that the light blinded her.

She folded the melting lump over itself with her tongue and drank its sweetness. Finally, she couldn’t take it anymore and just chewed until all of it was dissolved and she could take another bite and then another. She could feel a tingling in the jaw and a buzzing in the back of her head like a thousand bees had decided to nest there. And she was suddenly so full of strength and the will to do things. It was like magic, really, a rush, but not of anger.

“They call it sugar.” The serving woman explained sourly. “From the south some place, is all I know. Heh, looks like salt but as a white cone that the cooks have to break apart with a chisel. Then they…do things with it. Is it good?”

Linbirg nodded fiercely at the woman before realizing that even while being allowed to serve this precious and doubtlessly expensive substance, she would never get to taste more than a few crumbs of it in her life. That was sad. Truth be told, if chance met on the road Linbirg would have Mara and the others eat this woman. But now it was different. Everything was.

It was a grave injustice. There should be mountains of this sugar, enough for every man, woman and child so they could eat from it every day for all their lives. It was strange that anyone bothered with anything else, even this wonderful bread. Linbirg didn’t even need milk if she had the sugar.

She reached for the platter and held it out for the woman to take one of the other slabs that looked like bacon. Now knowing what it was, it didn’t really look that way anymore, Linbirg had to admit. But it was a good imitation.

The serving woman shook her head resolutely.

“’tis not for the likes of us, child,” she said. “You eat your fill. Our Lady must either like you or want something from you to give you this. I didn’t even know we still had any.”

Before Linbirg could reply anything, the door was suddenly pushed open, violently and in haste.

A guard of the Palace entered, identifiable by the fine surcoat over his chest and back, displaying a golden jar over red on the right and three silvery-white weasels over green on the opposite side.

Linbirg wanted to cry again, knowing what it meant. It had been like this before when it was time to be presented for a viewing, presumably so that Mara knew she was still alive. She also noted that she had almost spoken. The sugar had made her forget. Almost had she given the huge, great monsters a reason to eat her.

“The queen wants!” The man shouted, utterly out of breath. “Now!”

“Hush now, don’t cry again!” The serving woman rushed into action at once. “Here, take this with you! You'll need your strength!”

The bread roll and false bacon Linbirg had started on were swiftly wrapped up in cloth and put in a leather satchel that was pressed firmly into her hands. Once the shackle was off she was pulled to her feet and the whole stupid ordeal unwound all over again. She was getting sick to the stomach already.

This time was a little bit different, though. Once Linbirg had been rushed out of the the palace and over the drawbridge in a nice warm cloak that was still too long for her, it wasn’t the Queen that awaited her outside but two horses and a rider.

“Can ye ride, girl?” The man asked.

His surcoat was halved too, half blue and half green. The blue half was Albernian with the three silver crowns and the green half showed again the weasels of Galahan.

Linbirg nodded, unsure what the meaning of this was. Allowing captives to ride was surely a dangerous idea, seeing as horses were quicker than men and she might just try and dash away. The steed he was offering for her wasn’t a scrawny little pony either, but a thoroughly bred mare appearing in spotless condition. Her fur was yellowish, bordering on brown, but her mane was more on the blond side. It was a wonderful animal.

“Don’t try and run.” The rider told her after pulling Linbirg into the saddle with one hand. “These are fast horses but the Queen outwalks any of ‘em. And you don’t want to make her angry.”

Linbirg nodded again before pressing her chin to her chest, hiding her tears. It was all so horrible. She couldn’t see the queen yet, however. Some part of her hoped that the old lady who owned this palace had somehow decided to send her away. But that was a vain dream.

The rider held her reins firmly in his grip and guided her horse, kicking them both into a brutal charge. As soon as they could see Honingen before them they could also see the giantesses, sitting there inside the city walls. They were so large that they dwarfed the home to thousands beneath them. And they appeared to be feeding.

They became even larger the closer Linbirg came before suddenly being swallowed by tall trees that grew on either side of the road. Once, that road had been a beautiful alley connecting the palace to the city, the trees providing shade from Praios’ Disk and breaking Efferd’s wind and rain as well as Firun’s snow so that they could not inconvenience the countess on her way to the city. But most trees around the palace had been ripped out by the giantesses and consumed in those massive, frightful fires they lit at night. Some of the trees had to have been more than a hundred years old.

Linbirg had never been to Honingen before her current situation. The largest town she knew was probably Willowfield, a little north of Lionstone but already outside the Bordermark in an adjacent barony. Willowfield, so she had heard, housed three quarters of a thousand souls, which was a lot but paled in comparison to Honingen. She had known of the city in the far north east but never fantasized about it much, seeing as it was so far away. Havena had been bigger and closer, so she had imagined going there instead. But it had never been.

This was certainly not how she had imagined her first visit to a proper city. But then again, nothing was how she had ever imagined it. The city seemed to smell mostly of smoke. It was definitely different than the smells of fields, forests and bogs that she was used to. It also smelled much stronger than a village. Then there were scents of shit and piss as well, more pungent than that of animals.

With cobbles under their hooves the horses made great speed, entering through a mighty, red-brick gate that had two round towers. It seemed defensible enough, but through the trees Linbirg had seen a large breach in those mighty walls, suggesting devastation inside. And once they had been waved through by the guardsmen, never challenging them to stop, this proved true.

A swath of destruction started from where the wall had been breached and extended way past the city centre, while seemingly growing arms here and there as though a river had flooded in. Much as it was shocking did it provide Linbirg with a nice initial view into the city, enabling her to see what was going on. The inside of the walls also wasn’t settled very densely, allowing for glimpses much farther than she had expected.

The giantesses perched on the ground surrounded by activity. Men, women and Marag’s Children were constructing wooden houses by the dozens and all at once. Some seemed already complete but for their roofing and hearths. The new structures were being put up where old ones must have been devastated as the rubble that was still being removed seemed to indicate.

Also, there was the source of all that smoke. Many fires burned all around with boiling kettles some of absurd sizes steaming upon them, cooking food for the gargantuan monsters that had summoned Linbirg.

“This way!” The rider shouted suddenly, pulling hard on the reins.

He took Linbirg away from the obvious, direct way forward and rode around a couple of city houses that were whitewashed beautifully and inviting. Little gardens were there, patches of grass and earth for vegetables, little stockades for house pigs, chickens, geese, ducks and rabbits. A dog gave a waul and scurried frightenedly underneath a set of wooden stairs as they rode by. The rider gave little regard to anything in the way and mercilessly rode down fences, trampled gardens and frightened the other animals.

A giant footprint came into view then, half a pace deep and atop a crushed and flattened chicken coop. Some thick, grey rats were rootling through the remains. A haggard, sickly-looking woman with blood on her skirts looked at them, but she soon scurried away just as fast as the vermin.

Between the houses it was really more like a village, this city. Linbirg wondered why the rider chose this peculiar path.

The emptiness struck her, but that couldn’t be the point. In winter everything was emptier, fewer people, bare, cropped and harvested vegetable gardens and most definitely less livestock. But it was still a bit less than there probably should have been.

The reason it was emptier became clear when they could see the giantesses again, pouring food into their mouths by the wagonload, seemingly insatiable. They were large and they needed a lot of fodder. Linbirg hoped that Mara and the others were being fed too.

“Ha!” The soldier suddenly shouted and kicked his horse so hard that it screamed and reared.

Almost did he lose the reins of Linbirg’s horse which elected to storm straight ahead instead rearing.

“Make way!”

They pounded past and almost over some workers at a most reckless pace and Linbirg did not understand why. She should have, though, in retrospect. When the two horses were spotted, bolting at breakneck speed and with the rider shouting continuously, heads all about were turning toward them, including those of the ogres.

One ogress shouted  “Isenmann!” when recognizing Linbirg.

She must have seen a chance to save Linbirg too, and she unleashed her actions without consideration for what would happen after. The ogress was coming on quick and the rider saw her which propelled him only to kick the horses more. But as it happened, the giantesses noticed them as well and they put a swift end to Linbirg’s prospective rescue.

Fingers as thick as horses' bellies wrapped around the ogress’ midriff and lifted her into the air, her feet kicking, as though she did not weigh anything at all. Then another hand came directly for Linbirg.

She screamed and shouted. She was going too fast and would surely be hurt, thrown out of the saddle or worse, but before she knew it all she could see was skin and she was hoisted off her horse between two giant digits threatening to crush her like a mite.

Once more, it felt like flying. Her stomach felt strange and her head spun and then the world as well. She shrieked when she suddenly fell, only to land on a bouncy, leathery surface that replaced the ground. It felt almost like that bacon, albeit warm.

“Gotcha.” She heard a giant, booming voice say.

The face she saw was that of the smaller giantess, the Queen as she know knew, with her deep, sprinkled eyes and button nose. Large, white boulders were smiling at Lin, gleaming with a thin coating of spittle.

“Don’t be afraid.”

The lift was putting pressure on Linbirg’s ears as she rushed towards that horrible, giant mouth and a gust of air hit her in the face that smelled and even tasted like death itself. It was enough to make her gag.

The Queen said something. The larger giantess replied.

Linbirg was shifted again, the world rushed and turned with a frightful speed before the surface beneath her tilted and she slid off, screaming. There was no holding on that thick, leathery skin. And so she plummeted, again, and again she hit a similar surface just a moment later.

Now the round face of the even larger giantess loomed down on her. This one had a strong jawline that made it look as though she could have chewed even rocks and stones with ease. The mouth beyond those pale lips, Linbirg had already seen. She prayed that she was only to be shown to Mara again and nothing more sinister.

“Are you well?”

It was a trick, Linbirg decided at once. The giantess wanted her to speak and then eat her as punishment. Tears blurred her vision.

“Shhh.”

This breath was nothing better than that of the other monster. Linbirg gagged again, unable to control it.

The giant Queen once more spoke in that tongue Linbirg could not understand. And laughed terribly. But when Linbirg looked up, blinking away her tears, she found that the taller giantess seemed to be concerned.

“You don’t need to be afraid of me.” She cooed with more foul-rotten breath intermingled with the smells of freshly eaten food.

Linbirg shifted her gaze downward. She was dizzy and did not know where to look. Then she looked up again, finding no change, no malice there. But evil did not always wear a scowl, as Linbirg’s father had well taught her.

“I’m Janna.” The giantess said, almost softly. “What is your name?”

Linbirg pressed her teeth and lips together lest some chance sound escape her and she was doomed. The large giantess was still looking for a reason to devour her, and it could only be explained by abject cruelty that she still bothered with that game.

“It’s Lin-something, isn’t it?” The giant Queen chimed in happily from the side, no doubt wanting to participate in the vile pastime.

But they would not get a single sound out of Linbirg.

“Mara?” The large giantess suddenly turned. “Your Ironman speaks the common tongue, doesn’t she?”

Linbirg couldn’t hear a reply and couldn’t see anything from the palm of the hand on which she was seated. She would have liked to face her tormenters standing but the jolts and jitters that went through the giantess’ body made it hard, and they were making Linbirg even sicker.

Somehow, she remembered the sugar she had, stuffed into a little leather satchel. Her fingers fumbled for it eagerly. If she was to die then at least with that wonderful taste on her lips.

“Oh, what do you have there?” The large giantess asked. “Are you hungry?”

It was all meant to make her speak, Linbirg knew, but with the sugary bacon gluing her teeth together she couldn’t have said anything even if she wanted to.

Again, the giant Queen spoke in that queer alien tongue, most evilly.

The larger giantess pressed her lips together: “I’m sorry I frightened you. I thought a mean, evil wizard had sent you. You can speak now, I’m not going to eat you.”

‘Still a trick,’ Linbirg determined and proceeded to shove all the sugar into her mouth at once as well as groping for the bread roll. The giantess had to watch helplessly as her evil plan was foiled for the time being, Linbirg’s mouth full of muffling food. That would run out, of course, but at least while it was there did she not have to resist the temptation.

Again, the Queen spoke. This time, her tone was suggestive. The larger one seemed unsure while looking back down at Linbirg, like she would not like what she was about to do.

‘She will eat me anyway,’ Linbirg solemnly understood.

She could refuse to participate in the game, but at the end of the day she was just a bug to this godly, gargantuan being. Much as she wanted to resign herself to her fate, she started shaking with fear and had to fight pleas for mercy that wanted to bubble from the spit on her lips. The bread caught in her throat and she had to spit it back into the satchel or else she would have choked to death.

“You will talk now,” the giantess said heavily while closing her eyes, “or I will hurt you.”

It felt unfair. There were plentiful ways in which those giant, impossibly strong fingers could cause her pain, Linbirg imagined, but not in a way that wouldn’t ultimately kill her anyway, so there really wasn’t a good choice here. Part of her wished for the giantess to get on with it, stop talking and just do what she was going to do in the first place.

The Queen moved close to Linbirg and spoke down to her: “You know, bug, you are really starting to piss me off, do you know that?!”

“Laura!” The larger giantess snapped and Linbirg’s world was yanked violently aside.

She was jolted away from the Queen so hard and fast and suddenly that it hurt her neck and made her tumble over.

“Oh, no!” The big giantess whispered. “Shhh, it’s alright!”

She was torturing Lin with that deathly breath again, even closer this time. It was almost unbearable.

“See here.” The smaller giantess proclaimed next, speaking loudly to capture Linbirg’s attention.

Linbirg didn’t want to look but when she heard Mara’s voice calling out in pain she couldn’t help it. The Queen had Mara in her hand and was treating the ogress roughly, squeezing too hard and taking a comparatively tiny little arm and threatening to twist it.

For comparison, Mara's arm was more or less three times as long as Linbirg was tall. But a single one of the giantess' fingers was almost as long as that, and easily twice as thick.

“How about this.” The evil Queen said. “You start talking right bloody now, or I’ll hurt her instead. Mh, something you want to-”

Linbirg didn’t know how many ogresses were left, only that some were dead. Mara was the closest of them, though. She had only known her for a couple of days but after all that had transpired it felt like the fearsome ogress was her only real friend left alive.

“I am Linbirg Madahild Farnwart!” She screamed in tears, startling both giantesses at once. It made her feel mighty, somehow, if only for one single moment. “And now kill me! I don’t care!”

She did care, but there was nothing she could do. There were no options. She was already dead.

“Ugly voice,” the Queen sneered. “Eat her.”

Strangely, the Queen’s voice sounded different, like someone else. She looked on full of expectation, but it was Linbirg she was looking at, not the other giant monster. And she put Mara down, making her vanish from Linbirg's sight.

“I said,” the Queen repeated irritably after a moment, “where do you come from?”

Instead of answering, Linbirg looked at the huge round face overshadowing her, frozen in worry. Something was wrong.

“Well met, Linbirg Madahild Farnwart,” the bigger giantess almost whispered. “My name is Janna. Her name is Laura. You have nothing to fear, just tell her what she wants to know.”

Linbirg had already heard those names. They fell then and again outside the palace and the giant voices who uttered them hammered like thunder through rock and wood and windows.

Nothing was happening to Linbirg for the moment. She wasn’t being eaten for now, and even if such a fate might still await her later.

“I come from the Bordermark.” She said, telling it to Janna, the greater and just now decidedly friendlier one of the two. “My family’s castle is Lionstone, where I was born.”

“Are you a baroness then?” The Queen asked.

She was very much to the point, provided there was any point to all this.

The question made tears well up in Linbirg's eyes again, or else they had never truly stopped. She shook her head in reply. She was the heir apparent. The Queen first had to declare her a woman grown, which had been well past time but would likely never happen now.

“So, your father then?” The Queen asked. “Or your mother? An uncle, perhaps?”

Linbirg shook her head, crying: “Dead!”

The giantess sighed: “Your brother, sister, someone else? Come now, don’t make me squeeze it out of you.”

Before Lin could reply, the other giant monster gave a scoff, followed by some words in that alien tongue which sounded very derisive. But when she turned to Linbirg in the common tongue her tone changed dramatically.

“Don’t mind her, she is stupid and forgetful. She doesn’t even listen when her minions tell her things. You are the heir of that barony, is that not true?”

Massive green eyes looked at her full of expectation, though whether they were interested in the answer or contemplating a morsel of food was rather hard to tell. Linbirg had to swallow hard to get the words out.

“It is true!” She said, sounding like a squeak. “I am the heir apparent. I can only inherit my father’s lands and titles after…”

The tears caught in her throat and she had to break off. It hurt too much to say it, for it would never happen now.

“After…?” The big giantess urged her on.

Linbirg’s strength left her. She wanted nothing more than to collapse right then and there, and die if possible.

“Please,” she whispered. “Please declare me a woman grown before you eat me. I want…just once I want to hold Lionstone before my death.”

There was a silence but Linbirg couldn’t see what was going on. Then the Queen spoke harshly.

“Histrionic, isn’t she?” She declared. “But it might serve. Listen here, you little shit. I’m going to ask you a number of questions. Answer truthfully. If you lie to me, I’m going to kill you and all your ogres, but I’ll kill your ogres first and make you watch. Then you and I are going to that home castle of yours and you are going to watch me sit on it. I’m going to kill all your people before your very eyes and then I’m going to kill you very, very slowly. You’ll wish your father stuck his cock into a cow instead of your mother.”

“Laura!” The larger giantess hissed angrily.

Linbirg had started shaking while the Queen spoke. This was an evil creature, no doubt about it, and immensely powerful as well, a horrifying scourge upon the world.

“Please!” She cried out. “Please do not destroy my Lionstone! Please do not make me watch!”

Forlorn and afraid, she closed her eyes and prayed. She beseeched Praios to have mercy on her and Boron to take her into his realm despite everything she had done. The realization that her deeds would put her plainly in the forever freezing Netherhells made her regret having wished for death. She regretted so much in that moment that she almost forgot to breathe. She started to gag then, yapping for air like a drowning dog.

“Oh, shut up!” The cruel Queen admonished her. “Do what I want you to do and I will crush neither you or your home. You'll have everything you want, and more, and now stop bawling like a baby!”

“Anything!” Linbirg half screamed and half retched the word. “Anything you want!”

She had to stay alive.

“Would you tell her then, before you frighten the poor thing to death?” Janna scolded Laura.

Linbirg trained her eyes upon the Queen’s lips, hanging on for dear life, awaiting the words of her salvation and undoing.

“It’s simple,” the Queen smiled. “Can you keep your ogres from running away, killing people or doing any other such mischief while Laura and I are gone for a day or two?”

Linbirg nodded so hard that her neck hurt and she wanted to reply but Janna let out a fearsome grunt that startled her. The large giantess then spoke in that queer foreign tongue again, voicing displeasure to which the Queen gave a brief and unconcerned shrug.

When Lin thought her time to speak had come, her entire world shifted drastically once more as the giant hand moved suddenly and swiftly. She was presented with a view of the city now, particularly the unfinished log cabins.

“We are building, or rather rebuilding, houses,” Janna said without any concern. “You must make sure that your ogres help like you can see them doing already. Just make sure they do what the builders need them to do, and most importantly don’t let them run away and don’t get anyone killed. Can you do that?”

Linbirg had to hold her nose and mouth because the giantess was literally breathing down her neck.

This time when she tried to speak the Queen added: “There’s nowhere to hide. If you run away, I’ll find you. And you know what I’m going to do then.”

She waited and prepared herself in her mind. What she had thought may have been her end turned out to be a great opportunity and she couldn’t miss it just to be stuck back at the palace with the headsman at the door and those insufferable servants.

When she looked up to speak this time she was being made witness of a horse, her horse, the one she had ridden to the city, vanishing kicking and screaming in Janna's mouth. The giantess did not seem to think much of it while she placed the beautiful animal atop a lower row of molars. When the upper row came down to do its grizzly work the horse started shitting big yellow balls of dung and straw. It was practically squeezed out of the beast while its body was crushed between those merciless, pearly-white boulders.

Then the lips closed suddenly and one could hear the gnashing sound of the animal carcass as Janna's jaw ground it into a pulp. The giantess didn't even care.

Lin could taste the sweetness in her mouth even before she knew what was happening. She lurched forward and bent over the edge of Janna’s hand, staring down from the terrifying height as her breakfast left her in a yellow rain of vomit that caught in the wind.

“Oh, my,” Janna said through the pulpified horse in her mouth. “You must be seasick! I am so sorry, little one, why didn’t you say anything?”

The Queen laughed and Linbirg retched and Janna put a giant finger on her back as if poised to crush her, though it was probably meant to comfort. There was no simple coexistence possible with these beasts, Lin was sure. Not for anyone.

It took a long while and was an exhausting and miserable affair. She just couldn't get the picture out of her head, that pure-bred, fine, innocent mare shitting on Janna's tongue. Then there was the sweetness of her vomit as well, from all the sugar she had eaten. When finally there was nothing left in her stomach and she hung over the edge of Janna's palm like a limp sack she was finally let down.

“So, you uphold your end of the bargain, and I will declare you a woman grown, whatever that means,” said the massive Queen. “Consider this day a test. There are places we must go. If things here are to our liking when we come back, you get to keep your life and are one step closer to your father's lands and titles.”

Being put upon the ground settled Linbirg's now empty tummy somewhat but came with its own host of disadvatages. She felt like a particularly tiny bug on an especially busy floor, and the giantesses' size was even more intimidating from this vantage point.

Milkcows were being herded into the city at the time as well, perhaps half a hundred heads. These weren't old, barren animals, but fresh, productive, beautiful ones full of blood and milk too, if they calved.

Calves had to be butchered so one could collect the milk. Rennet was won from the calves' stomachs, which was necessary for making cheese whereby to preserve and store the milk without it spoiling.

Old cows, past their bearing age, were butchered for meat, hide, bones, sinew, bladder, instestines and horn. But never cows like this. Milk cattle was a Bordermarkers most prized possession, and the same had to be true here. It was a colossal waste. These two giant monsters were eating away the source of life and wealth of the people beneath them.

They weren't eating people, at least, for the moment. The question was what they would do when they ran out of cows.

“Out of the bloody way!” A woman running with a loaded wheelbarrow shouted angrily at Linbirg.

The cattle made the already perilously congested building sites even worse, too frightened and unruly just to stay still. But the giantesses reached into the herd and reduced its cumbersome size quickly. Linbirg saw three screaming cows with rolling eyes vanish in Janna's maw never to be seen again, just like the horse before them. If only Marag's Children were this large, Lin could have conquered the entire kingdom, named herself Queen and declare herself of age. But then again, conquering Albernia was what Janna and Laura had done on their own as well. And now they were eating it.

There was a dangerous moment early on after Linbirg was returned to the ground. An ogress saw and grunted at Mara, and the foremost ogress came storming to snatch Linbirg off the ground in hopes of making off with her. Janna and Laura saw it happening and got into position to retaliate immediately, a thing Mara missed. But when Linbirg made no attempts to offer herself, Mara hesitated and the sudden glee in her eyes died.

Then she stood there, dumbfounded, mumbling some apology. The entire city had been witness to the giantesses’ words, so there was no need for drawn-out explanations. The Queen only required a little show of Marag’s Children’s obedience, so Linbirg had to tell Mara to sit down, stand up, sit down and stand up again,  as well as spin in a circle like a little child. This all went to Laura’s and Janna’s satisfaction.

When all the cows were gone and the vessels of food emptied, the wine and ale drunk and the cooks sufficiently praised, the giantesses rose to their feet and left with staggering speed.

Lin had no idea what they had talked about during the rest of their meal, for they had used that queer tongue of theirs. She didn’t know when they were going to be back either, which at their speed could strike as sudden as lightning. There was no doubt that they could make due on all their threats and Linbirg had no ambitions to test them, especially not the Queen.

“Get back to work!” She shouted at Mara after Janna and Laura were gone and all ogresses had dropped their work and came to her. “We must do as they say or they will kill us!”

“They are killing us, Ironman!” Mara pointed out in anguish. “One by one! They crush us as though we were…we were…”

‘People,’ Linbirg finished in her head.

“I know,” she said. “But there is nothing we can do!”

The builders were listening and would surely report any sense of conspiracy. In truth, though, Linbirg wasn’t entirely sure if she believed her own words. Laura and Janna were huge but Marag’s Children were still many. If they could arm themselves somehow, perhaps they might stand a chance. Agylwart would have known, to be sure. Perhaps Haldan of Ashspring or any of the other knights. Unhelpfully, all of them were dead, thanks in no small part to Linbirg. Johril of Dragonspite had battled an ogress alone and not seemed without chance while doing so. And an ogress was roughly as tall to Laura and Janna as a man was to Marag’s Children.

For now, however, they had to obey, obey, obey and help building, which was a thing of which Linbirg understood absolutely nothing, plus she would certainly not do anything to vex the giantesses before being declared an adult.

“Could ye give us two o’ yer beast for carryin’?” A sandy man with wool cap in hand approached Linbirg when she had sent Mara and the others back to their work. “We’re needin’ to fix what's them feet did to our pavement.”

He pointed out the extensive damage the giantesses’ feet had caused. There were two streets ripped open in several places with cobbles strewn about and trenches in need of being levelled. Whenever Janna and Laura stretched their legs their heels worked like giant ploughs upon the ground.

“Is not much, it isn’t, but if ye could give us two for carryin’ sand and tramplin’ it down we’d done it quicker. Then we can go back to buildin’ hearth. House aren't no good without hearth this time a year and Her Grace wants ‘em done quick as lime.”

Linbirg nodded but apparently the man believed she could speak the ogre tongue and expected her to instruct two ogresses on how to help him. It was notable that the language Marag's Children used was more brutish and gutteral than that of the true giants, and they sounded very different from each other, which she found strange.

“Talk to Mara,” she told the man and pointed at the ogress' back. “Tell her the Ironman sent you.”

From then on, when workers needed Mara, they came to Linbirg first. Outside of this authority, however, she was entirely useless. She had no knowledge of building houses or cobbling streets or any of it.

She tried to comply nonetheless, but if there had been any problems with unruly behaviour on side of Marag's Children then they had already been sorted out ahead of time. She saw ogresses lift log upon log after human workers had hacked ready the notches into the logs beneath. Communicating involved more hands and feet than tongue, and individual building sites had developed differing schemes of hand signals and short-vowel commands.

“Up! Low! Me! You!”

It worked astoundingly well but failed immediately as soon as the task at hand changed.

“Shave the bark off,” was a command that made neither lingual nor logical sense to an ogress.

Mara as the only translator was the busiest of all and not very happy about it, especially since she insisted on sharing in the same menial work as the others at the same time.

Linbirg on the other hand enjoyed the respect that the workers paid her. And without the two titanic giantesses looming overhead it was generally easier to breathe.

All the leftovers from the giants’ feast were poured together and Linbirg informed that she could call her ogres at her earliest convenience to feed them.

“If it please milady,” that was how the people ended their addresses to her.

While Mara and the others took to their food Linbirg had a tankard of thin ale and some hard heel of bread that tasted very strange. It was a stark contrast to the luxuriously sweet sugar but retching it out had momentarily robbed her of the appetite for the substance.

“Is it true, are you truly a lady?” A young lad approached her while she ate.

He might have been sixteen or seventeen, a deal younger than her but not uncomely. He had hair the colour of rust and freckles on his nose but wake green eyes and a very cocky smile that showed a prominent front tooth missing.

King Finnian had called the banners, Linbirg knew, but apparently he hadn't gotten this young man, much as many others.

“What do you need?” She asked him without any ill will, even though the way he had talked to her made her think about what he might look like with Mara’s foot crushing him.

“Oh, not much.” He grinned. “Ale, something to eat, your smile, perhaps?”

He showed her his again while giving her a glance with his eyes that reminded her of a puppy. It did something strange to her, the way his eyes seemed to pierce into hers. She was unable to disentangle herself from it and despite everything, her heart was beating quicker.

“M…” She began haltingly, sounding like a stutterer for a moment. “My ogres, I mean, do you need my ogres, something from my ogres?”

“Them?” He turned his head and scoffed at Mara and the others who were stuffing their mouths with Laura's and Janna’s leavings. “Pfff, who needs them? My father’s a butcher, we make sausages not building houses. Want a taste of mine?”

She was very appalled at him but did not say anything which was all very well because when it looked as though he was about to grab his crotch, he produced a little pouch and pulled out two sausages instead.

“Honinger Crackers,” he grinned. “Try them, they’re almost as sweet as our honey! I have mead for you as well, if you’d like. I know mead is not worthy of a lady but a swig or two every now and again makes the day so much sweeter, I find.”

Despite her better instincts, she took a sausage and thanked him for it.

“Hear that?” He forcefully bit off one end of his own sausage, making it crack noisily. “That’s why they call them crackers. Loudest sausages in all the world, my father says!”

It made her laugh and try the one he had given her, finding it truly quite loud but surprisingly juicy as well. There wasn’t so much pork in the Bordermark because pigs weren’t very resilient animals and there wasn’t much feed for them in the hills. But she knew it well enough to tell it apart from beef.

“Do you have any cheese?” She asked. “I’ve seen many cows. You must have good cheese here.”

The lad looked at her and his cocksure way wavered for a considerable moment.

“We have lots of cheese, usually,” he said. “But the Queen, she um…well, she and her friend took a gigantic liking to it and ate it all!”

He laughed, but there was something wrong about it, like he didn’t really mean it. There was something deeply sad in his eyes like it made him remember something. Linbirg didn’t laugh either, to the further detriment of his resolve.

“Sorry, milady, I shouldn’t have…” He looked at his own feet. “I should go.”

He turned and stormed away, leaving Linbirg entirely confused.

“Wait!” She called after him. “Why did you want to speak to me?”

His eyes had made her forget, those damn green eyes, like the little ponds in between the grassy hills after it rained.

He stopped and turned, looking at the ground below her in embarrassment.

Then he shrugged: “I just thought you were pretty, is all. I'm sorry.”

And so he went again, Linbirg looking after him so forlorn that she did not notice when another man approached her.

“Has he been bothering you?” A rough, older male voice said, full of strength. “He should never have talked to you, I reckon. Would you like him whipped? We can stick him in the pillory if you’d like.”

A bushy, salt and pepper moustache under the gilded nose guard of a nasal helm. Deep, dark eyes under bushy brows and the same surcoat as the rider who had escorted Linbirg from Galahan Palace. Something about this man Linbirg found unsettling, but she couldn’t tell what it was.

“I was thinking of having my ogresses make a meal of him,” she told him as a warning. “They can eat a man as quickly as this.”

She held the half-eaten sausage up to give him pause but he only eyed it with a hint of confusion.

“Unwise, if you'll forgive a soldier his bluntness. We all must obey our Queen’s commands. But if you want him dead we can put him in the dungeons. The Queen empties them from time to time when she has a particular craving.”

His speech was stiff and he was too well-mannered not to be gently born, she thought. But if truth be told, she had enjoyed the company of that young lad considerably more. He was probably a skirt chaser come to gage his chances with a young noble lady while no one was looking. Chasing the wrong skirts had probably lost him that tooth as well. What this old soldier wanted of her, she did not know, which meant it could be something vastly more sinister.

“I think that will not be necessary, good Sir,” she decided. “He did me no harm. Only wanted me to have a taste of his sausage, is all.”

The man gave a sudden bark of laughter that made Linbirg redden when she realized the implications of her words.

“Hah! That he would, I have no doubt! A young lady such as you has to keep her wits about her lest she be robbed of her virtue.”

He looked very different, laughing, much less dangerous, like a friendly old uncle.

“You should not call me, Sir, My Lady.” He went on. “I am merely a humble captain of riders. Arvo Lovgold, if it please you. One of my men has taken you over from the palace. I trust he has not mistreated you?”

Professional soldiers, Linbirg understood. These were men at arms all year round with steady pay, as opposed to free men and serfs under arms, knights who fought under very different pretences and sellswords who fought for the highest bidder.

“He rode like he meant to kill us both,” she said. “But other than that, no.”

The captain was trying to engraciate himself, she sensed, which was probably fine, if a little uncomfortable.

“Aye, he's always been a bit reckless with the reins, that one.” Arvo Lovgold conceded. “Very well, I shall pick a gentler rider for you next time.”

“Could I...” She started but stopped, had to grimace and start all over again. “Could I sleep with my ogresses and not in the palace? I won't run away, I promise.”

‘Though if there is any way, I might kill the Queen.’

It would be best to do it in the night, she decided. Lying down and sleeping the giantesses would be vulnerable. Perhaps it would be a good idea to make a few inquiries first. As of the moment she did not even know if giants were mortal in the first place, which wasn't an innocent or uncomplicated question such as one could ask in open conversation.

Arvo Lovgold gave her an apologetic bow: “That is not for me to decide, My Lady. Besides, I have seen the way they sleep. Are you certain you want to endure the cold?”

Linbirg chewed her tongue for a moment before telling him the truth: “I feel safer with them. You all are strangers to me, and I had n…I had not seen the Queen and…the other, is she her sister?”

She had to force her mind clean and empty so as not to recall the horrors and weep again. Honingen provided many distractions but when she thought for too long it all came back.

He pursed his lips: “That, I do not know, My Lady. I am but a soldier, doing what I am told. I came to tell you that you can rely on me and my men for your protection. And stay away from the Bloody Diffar. It’s spreading in the city like fire.”

Linbirg remembered the woman with blood on her skirts, asking herself how bad it really was and how much of it Laura and Janna knew. For herself, however, she regarded the issue of small importance. All she wanted was to sleep with Mara and the others so that she might feel safe, if only for a little while. Already, she couldn't see the giantesses anymore.

“Do you know where the Queen is going?” She asked. “When will she come back?”

“Aran lies that way,” Arvo Lovgold waved into the distance with his hand, the direction the giantesses had taken. “Feyrenwall, uh, Weyringen and the Farindel. None of these are far away on her legs. I expect she will be back long before nightfall.”

Linbirg nodded. Now all she had to do was lay out what she would say. And she should look for weapons.

-

I’ve got to say what I’ve got to say, and then, I swear, I’ll go away, but I can’t promise you’ll enjoy the words. I guess I’ll save the best for last, my future seems like one big past, you’ll live with me for either way it hurts.

“You said, you didn’t trust her.” Janna said as they walked. “And to be honest, I found your reasoning pretty sound.”

Laura tossed Dari up into the air before catching her again. The tiny woman sailed like a spinning star, arms and legs spread wide, before coiling into a ball and then turning into a solid rod, like a candle. When Laura’s hand was beneath her, moving downwards to mitigate the impact from a drop of at least six meters, Dari managed to land feet-first and standing almost without failure. Nevertheless, the tiny assassin was visibly disturbed and terrified by Laura’s uncompromising trust in her abilities given the potential drop far in excess of anything she might survive.

“Have you ever noticed how you and I always want the exact opposite?” Laura avoided the issue. “And when I turn around and agree with your position, suddenly you want what I wanted before. Arguing with you is like arguing with a Stairmaster.”

She tossed Dari even higher than before and snatched her out of the air sideways.

“You're a dumbass, Laura,” Janna pointed out. “You have convinced me with arguments before going three-sixty on your position totally out of the fucking blue.”

“One-eighty,” Laura corrected cockily, flicking the tiny girl back up with her thumb. “I've been thinking, you know. The way I see it, the risk is manageable. Dari could’ve fucked off long ago, probably, but she didn’t. I don’t know why she sticks around, whether it’s fear, loyalty or whatever. But I mean to set her free if she does this for us. For real. That ought to be enough of an incentive, given that we are practically gods to her. And Chris and Steve? How long have our friends been in captivity now? They must be going insane, and we have totally failed them. We should’ve fixed this shit ages ago already.”

There was a huge list with criticism unravelling in Janna’s mind. For one, they had tried to fix it by sending some Horasians, only that plan had apparently failed. Also, Steve and Christina weren’t exactly their friends, more like their classmates, even though they had started to grow closer since meeting here. And Dari was a whole other thing.

“How can you be so sure?” She asked as they walked, one foot in front of the other with intention of going to the Farindel.

They had no Farindel experts with them, though, Janna recognized. Not even Furio. It was a bit stupid but she had not assumed that they would need help to take a mere look at the situation first. Now that they were underway she wasn’t so sure anymore.

“I’m not,” Laura replied. “I said the risk is manageable. I mean, rotting away in some hole they aren’t exactly much use to us, are they. So even if they get hurt…”

“Just shut up,” Janna shook her head.

She had thought the same thing before but banished it from her mind for being too horrible. Reality was cruel sometimes.

“Just make sure Dari knows we are going to turn kingdoms upside down to find her if Steve and Christina don’t make it.”

“Sure,” Laura smiled. “On the bright side, if she succeeds, we can finally hunt ogres in ogre country. It’s gonna be loads of fun!”

They arrived at Aran which was teeming with life again as men were busy making some changes to the village. They were mostly building large wood and earth pits and a few other things needed for tanning, located here because the work would be incredibly smelly. There were many dogs around, Janna could see, whose faeces were used in turning hides into leather, along with human urine for ammonia. The animal hides themselves smelled horrid as well, and the scraps of rotting meat and fat that still clung to them.

The skin of the dragon Laura had killed was being stretched out in a massive wooden frame outside the village, guarded by a newly constructed stockade to ward off thieves. The carcass lay beside it, beset with carryon crows. It did not look as though the dogs had taken to it, but maybe that was because it was already too old.

“Can you, uh…sail a boat?” Laura asked into her hand.

‘Where would she have learned that?!’ Janna wanted to scoff but the tiny girl had already said yes.

Janna was almost certain Dari was lying.

Finding a boat and putting it to the test was easy. There were a number still beached upon the bank of the river, their owners fled or dead. Despite the tanners, most of Aran was still a ghost town, made evident among other things by the abandoned tavern that no longer looked so inviting after looters had apparently broken in. And where the tanners were digging now, once there had been a market, some remnants of which still could be seen.

“Well, show us what you can do.” Laura smiled at Dari in her hand. “We are going to walk downstream with you for a while and you better make a good impression. Remember, get Steve and Christina back to us alive and I will set you free. You have my word on that. Do anything stupid and we will find you, squish you within an inch of your life, have a wizard fix you up and then do it all over again until you die from sheer lack of will. The river you are on is the Tommel. Follow it until Winhall and then go straight north on land from there. Our friends are with the ogres, as you know, which means that they are either in Andergast or Nostria. My best guess is, if you find the ogre queen, you will find Christina and Steve. Good luck, and don’t disappoint me.”

With that, Laura simply dumped the tiny girl in the best boat she could find and set her out on the river along with a gentle push in the direction of the stream. The boat had had a sail once, but it had been stolen, yet the current was strong enough to carry the vessel along.

“Looking good.” Laura approved after a moment before taking a step forward and leaning over the river. “But can you dodge this?”

She stuck a finger in the water immediately in front of the boat, upon which Dari pushed her rudder hard to the left to make it to the middle of the river before immediately and softly reverting the movement in order to keep her boat from capsizing.

It was an impressive manoeuvre that raised the question whether there was anything outside of abject magic that Dari couldn’t do. Perhaps she was just one of those people who were exceptionally lucky with their talents. People like that should use their skills for the greater good, though, not for killing people. If Dari came back with Steve and Christina, Janna would still crush her, she decided. There was something about that girl she did not like.

“Seems solid, right?” Laura asked while Janna was still chewing her tongue.

“When the hell did you make all these decisions?” She asked instead of answering the question. “I mean, you didn’t tell me you were suddenly fine with sending her, not to mention that you wanted to do it by boat and with no horse and no adequate equipment. If you want to get her killed just hand her over and give me some privacy.”

“Way ahead of you!” Laura chuckled, reached into her pocket and produced a little bundle that she simply dumped into the bow of Dari’s boat. “There you go, provisions, some tools and winter clothing. If she needs a horse, I bet you she can find one. There’s no way it would fit into a boat this size, and any boat big enough would need a crew. That would put her at risk of being sold out though.”

Janna wondered when Laura had come up with the plan and prepared it all. She hated not being involved in it, and she hated even more that Laura was so entirely nonchalant. This was a very important event, for Janna anyway, one she pinned many hopes on. Laura seemed to shrug it off, like it wasn't a big deal.

Dari was drifting slowly down the Tommel in her boat.

“You know,” Janna said, “she would be way quicker if we just carried her to Winhall. That way, we could give her a horse as well.”

Laura nodded: “You're right. Also, since we're so nice and tall, anybody watching the border will probably see what we're doing, and they can lead her straight to Steve and Chris. Oh, wait!” She slapped herself on the forehead. “North of the Tommel are our enemies!”

“Alright, I get your point.” Janna replied angrily. “Just talk to me, next time. I'm starting to think we've got a massive communications problem. Like, what specifically made you think we can suddenly trust her with this?”

Laura smiled superiorly: “Praiodan of Whiterock, the Chosen One. She had no reason to come back to Honingen other than me saying I'd find and kill her. And she still came back. I'm a lot smarter than you give me credit for, you know.”

Janna scoffed: “Don't act like you've planned this all along! You wanted that guy dead, plain and simple, and you almost destroyed the peace with Nordmarken.”

“I made that peace possible.” Laura replied stubbornly. “Granted, I can’t see the future, but that doesn’t mean I don't know what I'm doing.”

It didn't make any sense, but Janna chose to leave it. Endless arguing went nowhere.

The Farindel was visible in the distance, sticking out like a lance into the sky because for some weird reason there were no clouds above it and the sun was shining straight through, cloaking it in red-golden light.

“If you were as smart as you think you would have brought somebody who knows the Red Curse,” Janna changed the subject.

Laura grimaced a bit: “There are people over there at Feyrenwall Castle. They’re keeping an eye on it for me. Let’s hear what they say.”

They overtook Dari with their first two steps and went to the place Laura had pointed out, a while further on and much closer to the forest. Janna judged that the girl would take at least half a day to Winhall at this rate, and even longer after that, which meant that it would be weeks if not months before they would hear anything, provided they were going to hear anything ever.

It was no good thinking about it, but still better than anything Janna had.

The castle of Feyrenwall lay atop a rock formation by the river and looked rather archetypal. Far as Janna had seen thus far, there were two types of castles, those that were built according to a rigid defensive plan, usually massive and symmetrical, and those that were built according to their environment. Feyrenwall castle was a strong example for the latter category with an outer and inner ward, approachable effectively only from one side up the steep rock on a small serpentine path. Just before the gate, a ravine with wooden spikes at the bottom could only be overcome via a drawbridge, which had to be this castle’s most impressive feature. The rest was rather mundane, unimpressive walls, a large main building that looked a bit like a barn, stables, a couple of other buildings and towers as well as a pentagonal bergfried.

Most of the castle was just yard space with a couple of trees growing there. But then again, that was what Janna liked about it. It looked like a medieval castle should, not like those palaces of Galahan and Herlogan or the giant almost bunker-like abominations they had seen further downstream.

Laura bandied a few words with a man on the gatehouse until tiny people streamed out of the main building, including a man being carried on a primitive wooden litter. This man turned out to be the lord, Ilaen Albenblood.

“Damned wound tore open on my ride home.” He explained at Laura’s request. “Eradh says it’s not inflamed. I just need to give it time to heal.”

The thirtyish man grinned painfully, revealing that he and Laura had some history Janna did not know. She had seen the castle before, but that had been during her illness and she couldn’t have said if anything of note had happened at that time.

One thing about the castle stood out, however, and she saw it only because she found the conversation increasingly uninteresting. Laura asked how everybody was doing, especially a number of children who were there. She seemed to pay no attention to the banners atop the towers and gatehouses which were horrible and frightening, three red trees over a river of blood, all on a ground of black earth. This could not be a coincidence.

“Have you noticed this?” She seized Laura by the shoulder and pointed her to the flags.

The more Janna looked around, the more representations of that horrible sigil became evident. The lord himself may not have looked particularly evil. In fact, Janna had hardly ever seen a more average man. But looks could be deceiving. And he even carried the word ‘blood’ in his family name.

“Uh, yeah,” Laura explained, angered slightly by the interruption. “That’s the sigil Ilaen’s father got himself when the Red Curse happened the first time. He made a pact with like a dark fairy or something, and the Curse went away after he died.”

Janna fumed: “Don’t you think that would be rather important to know?! Why didn’t you tell me this, and why aren’t you asking them about this, rather than playing with the stupid kids?!”

The offspring of nobility lived their lives steeped in absurd wealth, undue power and unearned privilege. If anything, one should treat them a little bit rougher than others, to compensate and give them a taste of reality. Laura, however, talked to them as though they were made of glass, and for some reason took a very peculiar interest in them.

Laura’s face turned venomous at Janna’s words: “I talk to the kids because I accidentally smushed their father. That singer I was so sad about? Yeah, two of these are his, and I need to find out which ones so I can very carefully tell them and apologize. I don’t even know where their mother is right now. I promised her she could ride in the tourney that never materialized. It’s all fucked up.”

She sighed and shook her head and there was a hint of wetness accumulating at the corners of her eyes. The realization that Laura actually cared hit home pretty hard. Now Janna’s eyes were getting wet as well. It was just awful.

“I’m sorry.” She said, ashamed of herself. “I didn’t know.”

“Yeah.” Laura swallowed dryly and turned her gaze back into the yard.

The affected children were Elvar and Eara, a boy and a girl. The boy was a bit older and appeared to have been made a page for Lord Ilaen while the girl clutched a little cloth doll that made her look just adorable, even while they were both absolutely terrified.

Ilaen Albenblood reported that the two were having a hard time even on their better days, despite his best efforts. They were missing their home and their parents.

“They worry about their father and mother,” Ilaen Albenblood said. “We saw Lady Elia in arms and armour attacking the mob when the riot broke out and we do not know what became of Garvin Blaithin after he sang his song.”

They sounded like a rather unusual medieval couple, Janna sensed, almost as if their gender roles were reversed.

Laura pressed her lips together and closed her eyes for a moment.

“Elia was not among those I killed,” she finally gave to account. “Which, given her prowess, probably means she is alive. Galahan Palace was still crawling with nobles the last time I checked so it might be I just didn’t notice her. I will see to her whereabouts when I get back, you have my word on this.”

“I understand,” the tiny, injured lord made from his litter and turned to his attendees. “Take the children inside now. Give them some mulled wine to drink and put them to bed. A little rest makes these troubled times go by swifter.”

It was perfectly normal in medieval times for children to drink alcoholic beverages, Janna knew. In fact, the reason practically all Europeans had that certain enzyme in their bodies which could break down alcohol faster and lessen its nasty side effects was that for a long time only drinks with alcohol were clean enough to drink. Anyone bereft of the enzyme must have died, either from dirty water or not being able to handle the alcohol. For children, this normally meant ale, however, which could be very weak in this period, nothing compared to modern beer unless it was specifically brewed to get people drunk. Medieval wine, far as Janna knew, was just as strong as its modern equivalents.

“But I’m not tired!” Ilaen’s own daughter complained.

Ilaen snapped at her: “You’ll do as I say! Go inside, now!”

The atmosphere suddenly became rather frosty and the unspoken truth hung in the air like a foul smell. Most adults probably understood that Garvin Blaithin was dead. Laura’s long-winded account as to the wife had given it away. Janna sure hoped she was still breathing.

When the children were gone, Ilaen Albenblood asked only how the singer died.

“The rebels took the city and I took it back in rage,” Laura whispered softly. “They never told me they had taken hostages. I just crushed them all and didn’t look twice who was under my feet. I am so, so sorry, my lord. Please tell them. I owe them a great debt.”

Janna was conflicted. On the one hand, making someone else tell the children later seemed like a cop-out. Then again, though, it was probably best if they didn’t learn about their father having been killed from the mouth of the one that had done it. The half-lie about taking back the city intentionally, as well as the singer having been taken hostage, lent dignity to his death. It also lent dignity to Laura, however, who in truth – if it was to be believed – had just been high as a kite and reckless, not to mention that it seemed to shift the blame onto the rebels. Ilaen Albenblood noted it as well.

“Praios blast their eyes!” He cursed viciously. “Do not blame yourself, Your Grace, it was not your fault!”

Janna gave Laura a careful examination to see how she’d react.

“Yes, it was, my lord,” She lowered her head after a moment. “A queen should think before she acts, especially if she is as powerful as I am.”

It was contorted by the swollen medievalness but once again Janna judged it genuine enough to allow. They were on the right path. Now all they had to do was stay on it.

“Which brings us to the other reason why we are here.” Janna decided to enter the conversation. “The Red Curse, my lord, I understand your father had something to do with it the last time it broke out?”

The Farindel, steeped in bloody crimson, was easy to see from Feyrenwall. It was right there, in the distance, standing in that eerie, unmoving pillar of sunshine. The sight was quite possibly the reddest thing Janna had ever seen, and spooky beyond comparison. It also looked to have grown a little bit since their last visit, although she wouldn't have put money on that assertion.

The account of Ilaen Albenblood on this topic revealed that Laura had made the right choice in coming here. Not only had Laura herself misunderstood a lot, but there were also grievous errors in the tales Janna had heard.

“I learned a lot of this stuff from Branwyn ni Bennain and Reo Conchobair,” Laura defended herself when Janna called her out on it. “I didn’t think they were lying about that as well. Although, to be honest, maybe they didn’t know any better.”

Janna had forgotten those names and needed a reminder. Reo Conchobair and Branwyn ni Bennain had tried to manipulate Laura into making them king and queen of Albernia, mostly by having her kill everyone who didn’t bend the knee. They were woefully inadequate, however, and Laura found out about their lies. She crushed Reo and ate Branwyn, dipped in honey, and in frustration simply declared herself queen, which was the main reason for a lot if not all of this headache.

“It was stupid,” Laura recalled with yet another shake of her head. “Just stupid. I don’t even remember half the dumb shit I did for them. But I sure killed a ton of people.”

The story of the Red Curse was no less complicated. Muriadh Albenblood of Niamor-Jasalin, Ilaen’s father, had tried to summon a dark fairy through a very long, very evil ritual. The closer it got to completion, the more the Red Curse spread. He had not, it turned out, chosen the red trees and bloody river for his banner, but a red dragon, the Red Wyrm, as they called it, on a white disk on black. The trees and river had been chosen by his wife, Ilaen’s mother, who ultimately found him out and betrayed him which led to his downfall and execution at the hands of Bragon Fenwasian.

“But this Muriadh is dead,” Janna pointed out. “Bragon Fenwasian beheaded him, right?”

He had actually been hanged, drawn and quartered, Ilaen Albenblood corrected without a hint of grief. But that wasn’t the point.

“Then who is performing that ritual now? All we have to do is stop it and the Curse should go away again, right? And what if we wait too long and that dark fairy actually appears?”

“How long did the Red Curse last the last time?” Laura asked Lord Ilaen. “Before it retreated, I mean.”

It was a clever, methodical question, if put a tad clumsily. But Laura also seemed to miss the other two Janna had raised. She might as well think that they were too blatantly obvious, but that was somewhat why Janna had asked them. It was obvious.

“It started in Praios.” Lord Ilaen replied, visibly thinking. “By Ingerimm it was moving back.”

“Those are the names of months.” Laura whispered in English while seesawing left and right on her knees. “Heh, how convenient for us that they’ve got twelve gods. Did you know that their day has two times twelve hours as well?”

The observation was curious but didn’t really belong in this time and place. Janna swiped it away.

“It’s just a logical system to divide things by,” she said. “Tons of things divide by twelve because it splits very well. It can be neatly divided by two, three, four and six, for instance. That’s also the reason most currencies used to divide by twelve.”

“How many turns of the moon is that, Ilaen?” Laura asked the lord.

“Well, ten at least,” he replied. “But you should know that shortly after this, we started being attacked by strange red creatures coming out of the woods, and we’ve already seen this happen for a while now, so the danger might be more imminent than we…than we believed!”

He seemed to realize it while speaking. If it was fake it was a good one, but Janna decided not to put too much faith into it. He might have explained away his banners but there was something still bugging her, something that was very, very obvious when one came to think of it.

“Let’s go,” she tapped Laura on the shoulder and stood up, towering over the tiny castle.

If she turned around now and sat down, she could cross Ilaen Albenblood off the list of potential culprits. But if he was innocent she would rob his children of their father without cause, like Laura had, not to mention that she would flatten all of the attendees. She didn’t want that.

“Where are you going?” Laura asked, not understanding why Janna wanted to leave the conversation.

“I don’t trust him.” Janna said in English while smiling amiably and nodding towards the red forest. “I’ll explain why. Come.”

Laura gave in grudgingly and followed, but already launched a retort: “He’s totally harmless, Janna. Honestly, he’s a bit stupid and stuff, but that’s just how lesser nobles are. Most, anyway.”

“You’re sure about that?” Janna asked while slowly making her way to the edge of the Farindel. “Think about it. It’s so simple. All we gotta do is find out who is performing that ritual, probably kill them, and everything is going to be fine.”

“I guess,” Laura shrugged and frowned at the same time. “But then again, there’s that black wizard. Maybe he made things more complicated?”

“Ilaen doesn’t know about him,” Janna replied, letting her smile turn mean. “If he really only knows what he just told us then the answer to the Red Curse is obvious. And he was at Honingen, right next to us, but he didn’t even bother to raise the issue. He could have investigated the matter himself too. Don’t you think that’s weird, that he hasn’t done anything, given that the threat is basically right outside the gates of the castle where his children are sleeping?!”

To be fair, it wasn’t right outside his gates. It was within viewing distance, but only for someone as high up as the castle, which may have stood at forty meters or so on its hill. She was speaking figuratively.

“I don’t know,” Laura sounded unconvinced. “But then again, I don’t think he did either, until a moment ago. I mean, with all that’s gone down? Easy enough for us to lose track, and we don’t even have to deal with two walking-talking murder machines stomping into our world.”

Janna wasn’t sure enough to make an ultimate judgement, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t investigate.

“We have to check out every castle, every village, every holdfast, even every fucking farm around this forest if we have to,” she determined. “And if we don’t find anything, we need to look into your little friend over there.”

Laura did not reply. She was being weird. Sometimes, if she had an idea, she didn’t even bother to tell Janna about it before putting it into action, like she had done on this very day.  But if Janna had some notions of her own, suddenly she lost all interest. She became listless and sceptical then, as she was now.

They walked towards the Red Curse together, scanning the ground and countryside for signs of civilized life. Even at their size, this was going to be a mammoth task that would require a lot of time and effort. It would probably be best to outsource it to scouts on horseback in the long run. For the time being, there was an abandoned shed off the road and a somewhat hidden farmstead surrounded by willows a little further on, and then along some path that did not deserve the name of road there was a little village with a tower.

This presented the another problem, because the parameters by which they were supposed to conduct this search had not been defined, culminating in possible disaster when Laura simply stepped on and flattened the shed to scratch it off their to-do list. The tiny building never stood a chance, but neither would have any occupants, guilty or not. Janna picked through Laura’s footprint with her index finger to make sure there hadn't been anybody in there, and also ensured Laura would conduct the search in a more inquisitive fashion from then onwards.

It would take more time that way but they couldn’t just crush every dwelling they found without killing loads of innocent people.

The farmstead proved abandoned. Janna carefully removed the rotten bark roofs off the buildings, but there was no one there. If whoever had occupied it previously wanted to return to it, however, they would now have to re-roof it, but it looked like the inside was very much in disarray already. The same went for the village, which could hardly be called even that. After an investigation that felt like it took way too long, there was nobody there, not even in the tower. Everybody had fled. Laura said that she had been there before, but she did not recall the name of the place. All this helped very little. Janna decided that it was time to call it off and let the plethora of mounted minions they could summon from Honingen do their thing. They knew the land much better anyway. But she couldn’t leave without taking a closer look at the problem now that she had finally beaten her illness.

So, she moved closer to the sea of red plants and trees. It was very weird to see the red mingle with the natural colours, brown, rotting leaves, black earth and all that. Anything alive was turning deep, bloody red, apparently. She pushed her sole against a spruce to push it down which wasn’t harder than it should have been although the wood felt a little bit more rubbery. When the stem cracked and burst, a red liquid poured out, much like before. It was like very thick blood and had a smell of sap to it but also something sulphury. She looked for animals but didn’t see any this time and no strange movements on part of the trees either.

“I think it’s not as bad as on the other side,” she said, walking deeper into it. “Maybe we should…”

Falling. Janna was falling fast. There was no ground beneath her and the air seemed strange. A strong wind made her hair fly and overwhelmed her hearing. The ground grew and grew and rushed up to meet her. Then there were darkness and pain, a massive thud that rang her head like a bell. But it hurt only for a moment.

When she opened her eyes again, she screamed.

A tree that had reached hardly past her shin before was now overshadowing her, it’s red, bleeding branches clawing at the sky. She could feel the wetness of the grass, soaking her jeans’ bottom. She had shrunk, or else the world had grown, and it all looked so entirely different.

“Janna?!” Laura’s thunderous voice filled the air behind her and giant footfalls sent tremors through the ground.

Janna spun around and could already see the titan that was her friend looming above her, filling up the sky and looking for someone that was no longer there. It was terrifying, the speed with which Laura moved. Every casual twitch of her muscles seemed imposing and threatening. Janna was already in complete shock and panic, the adrenaline cursing through her veins making rational thought impossible, but the possibility of being crushed like a bug made her jump to her feet.

Laura was coming right at her, but there seemed to be no safe place within reach. Any tree would crumble like twigs, any cave collapse. Only not getting stepped on would save her, but that was easier said than done when the gargantuan feet that were about to do it moved so incredibly fast.

This had to be the last thing thousands of people saw, Janna thought, before she and Laura destroyed them for one reason or another.

This remained the only consideration she had, however. There might have come more, but with a pop Laura suddenly disappeared from view.

Janna's heart was pumping madly in her throat. The red fauna scared her and if red beasts attacked her in this state then there was nothing she could do. The direction in which she chose to run, therefore, was green, or as green as winter ever got.

She could see strange, shallow indents in the ground, somewhat like large, artificial garden ponds, and realized that they were her own footprints. Everything inside them was flat.

As she ran, suddenly there was a screech and she could see something crash into the ground at incredible speed, half a football field in front of her.

It was Laura.

“No, no, no...” She muttered involuntarily.

All sense of proportion screamed that Laura was dead, the velocity, the violent sound of the impact. When she found her shrunken friend amidst some bushes, that was not so, however, and Janna understood that she herself must have looked quite the same during her own fall. It defied logic.

Laura was cowering on the ground, right in the spot where she had crashed. She had her knees at her chin and was whimpering like a frightened little child.

Janna rushed too her and closed her in her arms. She was not even out of breath from running. The situation was utterly absurd. It did not compute. Was this a dream after all, one of Janna's night terrors?

“We're dead!” Laura cried, rocking back and forth. “We're dead! We are so dead!”

Janna did not want it to be true.

“We're not fucking dead!” She growled. “Look at me.” She took Laura's head with her hands. “Look at me!” Slap. “Could I do this if I was dead?! Could I do it if I was dead?! Could I?!  Huh?!”

Laura held her cheek, now pink, and stared at Janna as though she was seeing a ghost. Then, quick as lightning, she gave Janna a slap across the face in return.

“Does that feel like we're dreaming?!” She asked through her tears.

It stung, which told Janna that they were not dreaming, but the pain faded much more quickly than expected, and much more completely as well. There was no numbness or anything like that, as though she had never been struck in the first place.

Something strange was happening. The fall had hurt as well, Janna suddenly became aware, and abominably so. But that, too, faded into nothing quite quickly. She had had a dream in Nostria that had felt very real, and then the one where she had been Bessa. This might be Lissandra's work, or else...

“The black wizard,” Janna whispered, fearfully looking around.

Could this be one of his tricks? Or was this real, had he found a way to finally get rid of them?

“It's the Farindel!” Laura started crying again. “It does weird things like this, it has to be!”

Janna considered for a moment: “You think we really shrank?”

Laura grimaced and shrugged, still whimpering: “Doesn’t matter. If it’s a dream, I will wake up and everything will be fine. If it isn’t a dream then…then we’re dead, both of us.” She started crying harder. “It’s not a dream, is it?”

Janna couldn’t really tell, although if this was a dream it would be highly unlikely for Laura to ask such a question. It was not how dreams were supposed to work. Her mind was spinning. What Laura had said was certainly true, but then again...

“That fall should've killed us,” she noted. “But in a dream it shouldn’t have hurt.”

She pinched herself hard, feeling pain.

Just to be on the safe side, it was probably best to take precautions, lest Laura be proven right and they'd be doomed.

“We can't stay here,” she determined. “Come on.”

Laura looked at her: “And where the fuck do we go, hm, Einstein?! Back to Honingen, so Mara can fuck us flat like we did her sisters?! Or Nordmarken, Nostria, Andergast perhaps? We're dead, Janna! We're lucky if the first people we run into don't rape and torture us before they kill us for good!”

It was true. Janna even felt a sense of strange satisfaction from it, since this was basically proving her right about being evil. It was a real shame if it should end here, just when she thought she had Laura on the right track, at last. They had to try and make it.

“At least we fit into a spaceship now, when help arrives,” Janna said, forcing confidence. “All we gotta do is go someplace nobody knows our faces and lay low. We just need to avoid any people for the time b...”

“Well, well, well,” a male voice said behind them. “If it isn't Queen Laura, come to visit us again!”

They both spun around and Janna felt as though she might lose her breakfast, as though a massive boulder had been dropped onto her gut. The man was out of breath, his boots mud-spattered and his knees green from kneeling in the grass. He wore a yellow surcoat with a black device on it that Janna couldn't identify, but he had a sword on his belt, as well as a quiver of arrows, and a wooden longbow was in his hands, arrow knocked.

“Fuck, I know this guy,” Laura muttered in English, her voice aghast.

Behind him, more armed men approached. They had been running too.

Janna had to think quickly.

“Listen, Sirs,” she began but the man in the black surcoat already raised his hand.

“You'll not talk your way out of this.”

He stared at them darkly. His earlier words had suggested schadenfreude, but his tone did not convey as much. His face was hard to read, but happy he looked not, nor dismayed.

“We should kill them now, while we can!” Another incomer shouted and drew his sword.

“Not before Bragon has seen them,” replied the first one. “You know how he gets.”

“They won't be growin' back, will they?” An older man asked. “If they do, we're mincemeat!”

“Blindfold,” the bowman replied flatly. “And keep a spear at their backs. Any sign of growing and you'll skewer them like pigs. Our prayers have been answered! I always knew Farindel would not abandon us!”

“Aye!” Some of the men shouted.

He wasn’t a great speaker. The jubilant cry sounded more like duty than anything else. And his men were a ragtag raggedy bunch too. They all had muddy boots and dirt on their cloaks if they had any. Some wore heraldry, surcoats, badges, pins and there was some jewellery, but mostly they wore drab, earthy colours and only light armour. He who appeared to be their leader wore chainmail, byrnie and shirt, but he had also a silken handkerchief wrapped around one of his arms and a torn piece of surcoat on the other, not even in his own colours. He wasn’t very tall either, more on the short side and his hair and beard were dark brown and his eyes green-brown on an altogether not very noble-looking face.

They were eight or nine men, armed with boar spears or bows but also sidearms and there were brown blood spatters on their clothing as well. It was only now that Janna truly realized she would be killed. Unless they spoke of another man, it was Bragon Fenwasian she and Laura would be presented to. The device on the man’s chest was a thistle.

“Remember me, Your Grace?” The Fenwasian stepped forward, taking a cloth sack from one of his men.

They had one for Janna as well, after they dumped out the mouldy bread it had hitherto contained.

Laura was dissolved in tears: “Please, please don’t kill me! Please!”

She sounded like one of her own victims, pathetic, powerless, pitiful. The countless people Janna had undone had sounded much the same, or many of them anyway. It was a different thing to be on the receiving end of it, and Janna didn’t like it regardless of how righteous it made her feel.

Tears started dripping down from her face and fell onto her bosom, feeling like drops of ice there.

“Mathariel Swordsong,” the man said. “He was a good man. So was Rondragoras of Wolfstone. You ate him, do you remember?”

“Mercy, please!” Laura cried, a bubble of snot forming at her nose.

The man looked half about to weep and half in rage.

“And Elric and Moril?!” He screamed. “They were good boys! You crushed them under your arse as though they were mere…urgh!”

“No!” Janna called out when she saw him walk up to Laura and hit her square in the gut.

It was a short, hard punch that drew a painful squeak from Laura before she went down. When she tried to sit up almost immediately after, he bent and dealt her another one square in the face.

Janna felt sick. Regardless of what she and Laura had done, and no matter the rather compact size of him, this was a man beating up a woman who couldn’t defend herself.

“I am Ian Conan Galahed Fenwasian!” He roared into Laura’s cowering form. “Do you remember me now?!”

Laura was crying too much to reply and two of the Fenwasian’s own men cautiously pulled him back.

Janna was furious: “Do you feel strong now?! Do you feel like a man, you piece of filth, that you beat up a woman?!”

“Oh, shut yer yap!” She heard from her left and she knew was receiving a blow before she even felt it.

She heard a crack inside her own skull and her world tumbled before the ground slapped her face on the other side. The pain, the shame, the humiliation, the insignificance she felt, she hated all of it so much and yet was powerless to stop it. Her cheek was burning for a moment, but then it all went away as quickly as it had happened. It was not normal, far as Janna could tell.

She was left no opportunity to investigate, or otherwise ponder it much because just then a sack was pulled over her head and she was yanked to her feet.

The sack smelled abominably and made it hard to breathe, and the whole horrid reality set back in. She had her hands tied behind her back with rope after that, and Laura presumably as well. Then she was shoved in the back and they set out on a long, stumbling march that she feared would last for hours.

Walking at this size felt fruitless, a waste of time. She couldn’t see where they were going but she knew they weren’t covering a lot of distance quickly. What had been laughable distances before now cost a lot of effort. It was all Janna could do to stare at the inside of the sack and listen to the sounds around her while her thoughts were circling.

It was a truly bad situation. She wondered if the people she and Laura killed had similar thoughts when they were trapped and realized that there was no way out. If she hadn’t shrunk, and before realizing how inexcusably evil she had been, Janna would have done unspeakable things to these men. Nevertheless, she wished to be big again.

But at the same time, she and Laura had it coming. And it came.

“Think he’ll hang them or have their heads?” a gruff voice inquired a short while into the march.

Janna wondered at the same time how these men felt about their catch. It didn’t seem as though they had expected it, judging by what she had seen on their faces when she hadn’t been stuck in this sack. But then again, she felt like a little more jubilation would have been appropriate.

“Hang, draw and quarter, I’d say,” another voice replied confidently. “He’s fond of that one but sees it only fit for the worst.”

“Two silvers says it’s hanging.” A third voice entered in. “We’ve hung all them traitors too!”

“Hanged!” The voice of Ian Fenwasian corrected snidely. “We hanged the collaborators. Hung is what you do to meat!”

“They are meat, though, heh, heh,” the other voice laughed. “Well hung and ripe they make a bountiful feast for the flies.”

Janna felt a hand grope for her buttocks and was utterly appalled that this was happening to her, despite everything. She stumbled a tad faster to escape and the hand retreated for the moment.

“I bet it’s beheadin’,” said a younger voice, not the groper’s. “If she’s a queen, she’s too good for the rope.”

Ian Fenwasian ordered a pot established and many men cast their bets. They even recorded it with tally sticks when having a brief rest by a stream during which Janna had her face roughly pushed into cold water and her buttocks groped again.

When the man lifted her, he went for her breast as well, but the sack was off her mouth and she spat at him.

Ian Fenwasian saw and said: “Keep your hands to yourself if you want to keep them. You know how Bragon gets.”

Somehow, that made her feel grateful towards this Bragon Fenwasian, which was absurd, given that he would be the one killing her.

A while after, there was a sudden shout of alarm followed by the rattle of arms and armour, and the distinct sound of arrows being laid on bows. This was almost immediately accompanied by a horrid squeaking, something between a terrified pig and an immensely large rat.

The sound of steel entering flesh put a sudden end to it.

“Damn beasts!” A voice complained. “Why do they look so queer, this one has five legs!”

“Which means I won that bet,” a happy man replied. “Not to worry, I’ll drink one to your health too!”

They marched perhaps another hour after that, although the sack made it hard to say. Janna wondered if they had even covered a tenth of the distance they had to go. The wait and not knowing was torture.

It was like someone had heard her thoughts, because just then a horn was blown in the distance and the men stirred in unison.

“It’s Bragon!” One man shouted while they had laid in waiting and the sound of hoofbeats could be heard.

There were at least twenty horses, Janna judged, and they whinnied and whickered as their riders shouted at them. The sounds were approaching fast and were on them in no time. Then someone big and heavy hit the ground with both feet and there was the rattle of armour.

“My Lord!” Ian Fenwasian greeted. “We were on our way back, how come you rode out on this fine day?”

“We were looking for you, Ian.” A masculine voice replied. “Were you attacked?”

It was full of strength, very deep and very dark but nevertheless exceedingly clear. It was also not very loud, but still strong and piercing and oddly attractive, far as voices went.

“What?” Ian replied. “No, well, yes, but…we…we set out three days ago, all according to-”

“You were gone for weeks.” The other cut him off, matter-of-factly.

Shocked silence answered him. Janna found it strange. How could these men lose track of time like that? The way they talked about Bragon Fenwasian somewhat hinted at them enjoying the countryside more than their lord’s company, but still…

The man in plate gave the softest of laughs: “Did you venture too deep into the woods, mayhaps?”

“We…” Ian was struggling. “We tracked a herd of the creatures and cut them down. We didn’t think…”

“Aye,” his superior cut him off again. “Who are these prisoners you have brought me? Their garb is queer. Why are these women wearing britches?”

“Oh, we can have them off, milord,” suggested one of the other, more lowly voices.

The air seemed to grow a little colder and no one laughed.

“We have brought you a gift from Farindel herself,” Ian Fenwasian said humbly. “May I present, Her Grace, Queen Laura, and the other monster.”

Janna felt a strange sting to her pride. It both hurt, being mistaken for less than Laura and being called a monster.

“Oh?” The superior voice replied. “I had heard they were somewhat bigger than this.”

Ian’s voice trumpeted, like a little boy reporting to his father: “They have shrunk! We saw it with out own eyes. We were watching them and suddenly, poof, it was our fairy of Farindel, I know it was!”

“Is that so?”

Janna shivered. It was like every time the man spoke there was a horrible silence afterwards and this time it was as thick and cold as a blanket of snow, covering everything. She could hear the man move and take off Laura's hood.

“Please!” Laura whispered through her tears.

“That tree there should be good.” The man said coldly. “Bring the rope. See she doesn't die before you let her down. Fetch my hammer and sword.”

“Aye!” Shouted the voice that had put its money on hanging, drawing and quartering.

It would seem Laura was in for some excruciating torture before her death. Janna wondered if her earlier conversion to morality would spare her at least this fate. She wanted to say something, defend herself, but the words caught in her throat.

“Are you sure you want to do it here?” Ian Fenwasian asked timidly. “A larger audience mayhaps would be…”

Something silenced him that could only have been a look from his superior.

Janna started weeping uncontrollably while she could hear the rope being slung over the tree. Laura still begged at first before her utterances became entirely incoherent. By the end, she only mumbled “sorry” over and over again. This stopped when the hempen rope was drawn tight, a mean sound, an evil sound that spoke of death.

Hanging utilized a person's own bodyweight to block off the windpipe in the throat, making breathing impossible. Proper hanging from a drop was meant to break the neck and kill quickly, which was exactly what these men did not want.

With the method they used, and if they did it well, Laura should not have been able to make a sound. And yet Janna could hear her gurgling and fighting after a moment. Being killed by men who did a butcher's job of it was even more cruel.

“Please, My Lord!” It broke out of Janna. “I have changed my ways, please! I swore off killing!”

True as it was, she had still killed people. Master Ilmenview, the herald and Signor Hatchet, they all were dead now because of her.

The sack was wrenched roughly off her head.

“Who are you?”

He was tall and stunningly handsome, Janna saw. A chiselled jaw with a hint of golden stubble, long, powerful hair that was more encroaching on brown than blond and still shun in the light. His eyes were cold and piercing like grey-blue icicles and he had an eerie gravity to his being, calm, relaxed and captivating.

His age was hard to guess. There were some lines on his face, a very pronounced frown wrinkle between the eyes foremost of all. He might have been thirty, or fifty-odd, or anything in between. Janna wondered if offering her body to him might get her out of this, and she wouldn't even have considered it demeaning, no matter what he'd do to her.

“Hard to imagine,” he said, “that you should have been a hundred paces tall. What did you do with these powers? I'm told that anyone who crossed your path found themselves in great peril.”

Janna's first impulse was unquestioning agreement, simply because he was who he was. He could have said ‘Heil Hitler' and she would have said it with him. He had her thoroughly weak at the knees. The underlying biological reality was not lost to her, of course. A larger number of men found a larger number of women suitable to mate with because male cost of procreation was relatively small. Vice versa, this was not the case. A small number of very lucky men were the recipients of almost all female sexual interest. This meant that a man like Bragon could appear almost godlike to a woman, and therefore make her brain work in unreasonable ways.

Also, she might have had a genuine case of Stockholm Syndrome.

His words revealed that he knew her, however, and lying was a terrible idea.

“They did, My Lord,” she hung her head in shame. “It was wrong. I have seen that. A…friend showed it to me. I haven't killed anyone on purpose in weeks, My Lord, you have to believe me!”

Had it really been weeks, she asked herself. Time seemed such a meaningless concept here, it was little wonder so few people paid it any mind. She also wondered where Lissandra was in all this.

“Weeks!” He gasped. “Oh, well, then I must let you go, mustn't I?”

Her mind worked clearer while she didn't look at him and she understood he was being sarcastic. Over by the tree, Laura gurgled louder and Janna’s eyes shot up. The man who was probably Lord Bragon Fenwasian had captured her attention so thoroughly that she hadn't even looked at her dying friend.

Laura was in a horrible state. Her face was beet-red and swollen, her licks puckered and her nostrils bulged as she tried to breathe. Her legs kicked and she struggled left and right continuously. This was all in spite of the fact that the slipknot they had tied looked terrifyingly professional to Janna’s eyes. The other end of the thick rope was held by two big men who looked increasingly tired of holding her. As well they might. Laura should've long been dead already, or close enough as made no matter, but she still appeared as though they had only just begun strangling her.

“Why won't she die?!” The Lord suddenly shouted at Janna.

When his voice was loud and angry, it pierced her. She could feel it in the marrow of her bones. She shrieked and cowered back, stumbling and falling on her arse in the process. The days when this would make the ground shake were done, however.

But it was odd. Perhaps it was karma, Janna thought, awkwardly aware of how stupid that notion was. It was surely not a reliable concept, but she couldn’t help that it seemed to her as though Laura was suffering for her sins. If that was true, Janna’s own passing would shape up to be only marginally less gruesome.

She started begging: “Please, My Lord, I know you must kill me, but please not this!”

Bragon Fenwasian stared at Laura in disgust.

“Aye,” he said slowly after a long moment.

She was both glad and sad when he took her by the arm, bodily dragging her to her knees. He was very strong, she noted, and thought of what sleeping with Steve might have felt like at this size. They could have enjoyed nature together, she thought, sit in a meadow under a tree, watch the clouds and listen to the songs of birds. And they could’ve fucked all day long. This would never happen.

In lack of a tree stump for a chopping block, they brought a bundle of old blankets over from the horses. Laura still grunted and croaked in her tree, feet kicking the thin air.

Janna placed her head on the blankets herself and shook her hair from her neck. It seemed she would outdo Laura even in dying. Bragon brought forth his huge executioner’s sword, a savage, broad and long blade of grey steel, well-oiled and honed to perfection.

Then, Janna closed her eyes.

-

The giantesses did not return that day, which left Linbirg with a queer knot in her belly. It was good, she forced herself to think, because it kept her from the possibility of being killed and gave her ample time to look for weapons.

She found out that every tower in the city wall contained an armoury to arm city folk in case of an attack. How well-stocked these armouries were and if the weapons in them were of any use, she had no idea. A big, two-handed great sword would look like a measly iron nail on an ogress, and something even smaller to the giantesses. But bigger things were hard to imagine, for they would require impossibly strong smiths to make.

Marag’s Children did not work metal. They did not even do proper tanning. Most of their pelts and hides were stolen from humans, the feral tribes that populated the hills between Albernia and the Windhag. The ogresses were able to stich these together with leather thread they could make, and they could work wood to some crude, ogrish degree, like the baskets they had made on the road, but something told Linbirg that attacking Laura and Janna merely with sharpened stakes was not a wise notion.

The building dragged on and on. People came and went, noble or not, studying the ogresses at their labour. It was Arvo Lovgold the next time Linbirg was summoned, telling her to attend the countess' pleasure outside of the gate through which she had entered before, the north-western one if her sense of direction served.

“You are not allowed to bring any of your ogresses,” she was informed further.

Linbirg didn’t like it but went anyway, seeing as she had little choice in the matter. If Laura and Janna were friendly with whoever summoned her, then the consequences of refusing could be dire.

Instead of the countess, she was confronted by a young, handsome man with dark blond hair and grey eyes, wearing heavy armour and Galahan colours, three white weasels on green. He had a small army attending him at this time, an inordinacy that made some of them laugh when little Linbirg in her dress and cloak stepped out of the huge city gate alone.

He seemed irritated and taut like a bowstring: “It’s my grandmother. She is afraid for my life. I think she does not wholly trust you in her city.”

If the countess was his grandmother, that would place him somewhere in the line of succession for this county, she sensed, a member of the ruling family, although she would have appreciated a more formal introduction, a proper greeting, or at least a name.

“I have no desire to be in her city,” she replied. “But the Queen commands. I must do as she says.”

“My grandmother understands,” he said after clearing his throat. “She sends me to settle a few questions that will arise if the Queen does not return by evenfall.”

At the time, Linbirg did not comprehend: “Why would she not be coming back?”

A pained expression played on the young man's face for a moment: “It is the Queen's royal prerogative to sleep where she will. I understand you have requested the same for yourself?”

It sounded accusatory. Linbirg began slowly to understand just how afraid he and his grandmother were of her, or more specifically of her ogres. It made her feel powerful, which was a thing she was not quite used to yet. Sure, she had made Mara commit wanton murder, kill possibly innocent people on no grounds but suspicion alone. But that this family, the Galahans of Honingen, one of the foremost in the kingdom, should be afraid of little Lin from the Bordermark was something she had never dared dream of.

“Suppose I do,” she prodded the waters, sticking a timid toe in and feeling how roused they really were.

“My grandmother had rather you sleep where she can see you,” the grandson replied abruptly. “She fears your creatures, but she fears the Queen’s wrath even more. She thinks it wiser to err on the side of caution.”

It took courage to admit it. Linbirg had to give him that. Moreover, he did not seem to like his role very much, being a glorified messenger with an entourage that suggested he was a coward, even though it was obvious he didn't have a choice.

Linbirg felt awkward, discussing where she would sleep, like she was some little child. She was a child, by law if nothing else, and this conversation rubbed it in like salt.

“Do you know where the Bordermark is?” She asked him. “It is a little barony of bogs and rocky hills, sitting on the Windhager border. I am as Albernian as you are, and I would never do anything to betray my kingdom.”

His mouth seemed to harden a little at that, but in a good way, as though he felt the same. Linbirg had never talked like that before, ever. It just came to her when she thought what he might want to hear.

“You have a new overlord,” he remarked suddenly, his face flush with realization. “Queen Laura took the County of Big River from Havena’s mark lands. You now serve Hagrobald, Duke of Nordmarken.”

Linbirg felt as though these were the first words he spoke to her that weren’t his grandmother’s, though the true weight of their contents was lost on her for a moment. She knew that Albernia and Nordmarken had been at war many times, for many different reasons. But somehow she did not really understand what his words meant.

She was unsure how she should feel. It was probably not very good news, but then again, the Bordermark usually drew little interest. With the appearance of Marag’s Children, that might change, however, if Linbirg ever got to return home.

She did not know what to say, so she chose something she had heard men with power talk about at table: “Does he levy high taxes?”

Her opposite gaped at her with eyes wide: “Taxes?! Uh, I would not know. But it’s a clear move to increase his influence in our kingdom! I’ve heard it said that when it comes to blows between us the next time, the lords of his county will have to make a choice between their liege lord and their king, uh, queen. The question has been raised on which side you and your ogres will be fighting.”

It was an absurd and therefore futile hypothetical because the giantesses could simply flatten any army of men they disliked. But it was an easy opportunity to gain favour.

“Albernia, of course!” She said confidently. “That’s obvious!”

He nodded thoughtfully. This whole situation did not sit right with him, she could tell, and he was still trying to make sense of it. She could certainly sympathize with him on that count.

That was when she realized that Mara and the others could take Honingen if Linbirg wanted. Likely, they could attack the palace as well. It was too small for them to enter, but it had glass windows which could be broken easily, not to mention that they could climb in through the roof and wreck true havoc. The realization that the life and death of anybody she saw before her hung in the balance of a single command from her lips gave her goosebumps.

She would not do such a thing, of course. It would be stupid. Marag’s Children might kill everyone they could get their hands on, but many ogresses might be injured or killed, not to mention what Laura and Janna would do when they came back. It was probably good to know of the possibility, however, and not to rule it out too definitively.

“My grandmother would still like you to sleep with us in the palace,” he grimaced apologetically with his words. “It’s as much for your safety as it is for ours. The Queen commanded you to watch over your beasts, but we were commanded just the same to watch over you. If out in the cold you caught a fever and died, all our lives might be in jeopardy. I pray you can understand and forgive me.”

His demeanour gave away that he was anxious of her reply, well aware of the power vested in Linbirg through Marag's Children. But if she chose to disobey, there was a chance those men behind him would apprehend her, and there was no guarantee Mara could free her again in time. That whole scenario was ugly to think about. If she obeyed, on the other hand, gone was her opportunity to work towards Laura’s and Janna’s assassination. And nightfall was approaching fast.

She decided that safety was most important, for now. If the giantesses came back the next day, she could ask them then. The palace made her feel naked and small but that had been before. Now, surely her station had changed a little.

“Will you put me in chains again?” she asked the young noble softly so his men wouldn’t hear. “Will you confine me to my room with a headsman at the door and servants babbling openly about stuffing food down my throat?”

He looked appalled: “What?! I would have them flogged! You need not fear any such things, My Lady! In fact, my grandmother requests that you take supper with us this evening.”

Linbirg flinched away from the prospect and tried to diverge: “And what will my ogresses eat in the meantime? They have done much hard work and need sustenance, and I fear what they might do if we leave them starving.”

She was lying. Mara and the others would do nothing that counteracted her command, of that much she was certain. They also had not worked particularly hard at all. After the giantesses left, the ogresses moved at a more leisurely pace. They did not exert themselves to an inappropriate degree either. If anything, they were growing bored.

That might give birth to an entirely different kind of danger which might in turn give Linbirg a pretext for staying with the ogresses. If truth be told, a little unruliness from Marag’s Children might go a long way in putting her where she wanted to be.

“Ah, yes,” the young Galahan replied. “That is the other issue. Food stocks are growing short. We are already butchering healthy cows in unprecedented numbers. My grandmother is very displeased.”

As she might be, Linbirg thought. Just what she had seen Janna and Laura devour during the morning had to have cost a fortune.

“Feeding us is your duty,” Linbirg replied, giving him the cold shoulder. “If you fail in yours, I cannot guarantee I can uphold mine.”

He swallowed hard.

“We will…find a way,” he promised, albeit in a way that wasn’t entirely reassuring.

The whitewash of this great city appeared to be crumbling, and rot started to show. There might be more underneath yet to find, but it was doubtful of how much use this would be to Linbirg. She was walking on thin ice no matter what she did.

She decided to lend him a hand, lest he dislike her: “You need only to provide the raw stuffs. Preparing and cooking I can organize with the help of the city. There is no need to trouble your grandmother.”

“Oh, you wouldn’t like her cooking,” he smiled at her as he turned, a thing she realized too late was a jape. “Please come to the palace soon. I will lend you men to escort you.”

Linbirg had just enough time to organize the feeding of the ogresses, tasking Mara with maintaining order and the plentiful people who cooked for Laura and Janna on a regular basis to throw together some meal. Linbirg had no idea how the system of cookery was working, how it had come to into being and according to what rules it currently operated. But she had seen that it at least functioned to some degree. The Mandible family, who had been well-renowned candlemakers before, were an example of the workings of this system. They had converted their chandlery shop into a great kitchen cooking stew and porridge for the giantesses with the exact same tools they had used for melting wax and making candles before. The same went for the soap boilers of Morelin and many others. Whoever could, helped – or they were forced to.

All other things were of secondary importance at best. Candles and soap were running short as well as food, as was a nameless multitude of other goods and things that could not be produced or repaired at this time, to say nothing of things that had to be brought in from other places. Scarcity was everywhere.

This could not be said for Galahan Palace, though. In the Bordermark, when the winter had been early, harsh and long, even Linbirg’s family ate poorly. Meanwhile, Franka Salva Galahan’s table was overflowing with items people in the city could only dream of.

The young man who had spoken to Linbirg at the city gates turned out to be Franka’s direct heir, Ardan Jumian Galahan. His wife Devona was the most beautiful woman Linbirg had ever seen. It made her feel wholly inadequate about herself which immediately stirred a strong dislike against Devona on her part, which may or may not have been a great injustice.

The countess was old, wrinkly and clothed in dark green finery. She was courteous enough, at least in the beginning.

Walking the construction sites had thoroughly ruined the the gown Linbirg had been given, so the first order upon arriving at the palace was a change of dress. The same maid as before laid out another of Lady Devona’s gowns for her, but Lin didn’t want that.

“I’ve already ruined one,” she reasoned feebly. “Please, give me my old clothes back. They fit me much better!”

They weren't really hers either but belonged to some squire who was the son of one of Linbirg's knights. Likely, the boy was dead now, as was his father. But she liked those clothes, the chainmail especially. She was the Ironman.

The maid steadfastly refused until Linbirg inquired of her family name and asked whether she had relatives in or around the city, strongly implying that the ogresses might hurt them. It made the maid cry, but got Linbirg what she wanted.

“Oh, ho, ho, poor child, you must be expecting an ambush!” The countess laughed when Linbirg was presented at the supper.

The room was lavish and warm, filled with luxury. Even the ceiling was whitewashed and painted with a scene that showed a woman feeding sick people from a jar.

Sir Ardan and Lady Devona were already seated. When Linbirg was formally introduced to them she apologized for ruining the gown.

“Oh, Lady Linbirg, that is so good of you, but there is really no need!” Devona replied amiably.

She had a cold, immaculate aura that made her appear arrogant, something better than Linbirg and well aware of it. But as soon as she spoke, this was all but gone, like winter turned to spring overnight. It might have been just that Lin envied her beauty.

“I like her clothes, Grandmother,” Lady Devona added to the countess. “They are...practical. And who could fault anyone for wearing mail in these times?”

Linbirg was aware that her garb was entirely inappropriate and the radiant beauty was being friendly – or venomous, depending on what she truly meant. Lin was a tad too tired for bandying words. Besides, she could have worn lace made of spun gold, she still would have looked like a bucket of dung next to Devona.

Her armour would also do her little good. She did not carry even so much as a dirk while the knight she had just spotted in one of the corners had a hefty sword on his belt. If they wanted to kill her, she couldn't stop them.

“Come sit, child,” the old lady smiled in an almost motherly way. “You must be exhausted, all day out there in the cold, rebuilding my city! Will you take a glass of wine while we wait?”

There was no wine to be had anymore, in the city. What stores existed were all being kept for the giantesses.

“Now, red or white, hm?” The countess studied Linbirg. “I'm willing to wager you crave a hearty red but my cook makes a mulled white that you must have a taste of!”

Linbirg had never tasted white wine, only cider, much less a hot and spiced version of one. A cup of hot sour red was all she craved indeed, and she wondered whether it was likely that she would be poisoned tonight.

At a wave from the countess, one of the three attending servants stepped over to the hearth were a fire crackled underneath a steaming cast iron kettle. He returned from there with a glass cup in hand, containing a liquid that was lightly coloured somewhere between yellow and green.

Linbirg received it with shaking hands, more fascinated by the vessel than the contents. It was truly remarkable, a cup that one could see through, as if it was made from those crystals the hill tribes sometimes brought down to trade. She had no idea how glass was made and it might have been witchcraft as far as she was concerned.

Terribly, Linbirg was so transfixed on what it looked like that she paid no attention to how hot it was, and a sudden, buning pain in her hand made her scream. The glass fell. The wine spilled. And the cup shattered on the carpeted floor into a thousand pieces.

Linbirg started to cry: “I am so sorry, My Lady!”

It was excruciatingly embarrassing, but Lady Devona rushed to her side quickly and held her arm.

“It's just a cup,” she cooed lightly. “It's not a big thing, really.”

Again, Linbirg wasn't entirely sure whether what she heard was sincere empathy or something else. It could be, after all, that Devona said it only to flaunt the wealth in which she was living.

Two servants rushed to deal with the mess.

“One more reason to prefer white over red,” smiled the countess. “It doesn't leave traces.”

The old lady waved and the third servant brought over a fresh cup which Linbirg took more carefully. The steam coming off of it had a peculiar smell, somewhat irritating although not completely appalling. Linbirg decided that worrying about poison was stupid and took a swig from it.

It was the most wonderful, wholesome thing she had ever drunk.

“Can we eat now, Grandmother?” Ardan asked impatiently. “I am starving.”

“Ardan!” His wife chided him in turn. “It is ill manners to begin before all your guests have arrived!”

Just at that moment, a strange man was admitted to the room, clothed in robes that were red and grey and black. They looked unwashed, as did the rest of him, his hair matted and tangled and his beard untrimmed.

In his mouth, he carried a long, slender stick that was smoking from a small cup at one end and gave off a stench worse than a peat fire. Linbirg had never seen such a thing and must have oggled a tad too obviously at it because the man suddenly started to return her stare.

“May I present,” the Countess called out, “Master Furio the Red of the Order of the White Pentagram!”

‘The witcher!’ Linbirg knew at once.

She had seen him before but he had looked better then. Now he appeared to have just crawled out of bed. He bore none of the splendor that being a wizard seemed to entail. Even his splendid robes looked like bed sheets on him.

Linbirg was frightened of witchcraft as much as anybody. But this man did not look like he could have tied his own shoestring if his life depended on it.

“My Lady,” he rumbled throatily at the countess. “What is the meaning of this summons?”

He was very discourteous and brisk, arrogant and not well-spoken. Linbirg did not like him.

“Food, Master Furio,” the countess showed a smile that was sweet as sugar. “May I present to you the Lady Linbirg of house Farnwart, heir apparent of the Bordermark and the ogres’ Ironman.”

“My Lady,” the wizard gave Linbirg a hinted nod.

“Please, sit!” The countess gestured. “Will you take a glass of wine? A bumper of mulled white for Master Furio!”

The wizard made no attempts to move: “My Lady, begging your pardon, but I have no desire to sup with you. Signor Hatchet’s death leaves me very busy.”

“Busy sleeping?” Lady Franka asked cockily. “Oh, no, busy digging through what remains of my city hall! It was such a beautiful building, fit for a queen. Such a shame the masonry did not support her.”

The wizard paid her an irritated look before turning to go.

“Say, Lady Linbirg,” the old woman continued, unabashed. “How will the new city hall look? Will it be pretty? Are your beasts done yet, clearing out the rubble?”

The wizard stopped in his tracks and turned with eyes open wide. It scared Linbirg and she tried to reply to the countess as quickly and accurately as she could in hopes of getting away from him.

“They are, Your…” She couldn’t think of the correct title right away. “Your Highborn, they are! The new one…the new one will…well…”

Far as Linbirg was concerned, it was a disaster and yet another blunder she was putting her foot in. It seemed there was no end to her embarrassments. With winter approaching fast, the best thing they could do was build log cabins. For the city hall, they were trying to use the longest logs possible to make it big, but it was still ugly, primitive and surely nowhere near as nice as the presumably whitewashed, glass-windowed and possibly ornamented old one had been. In fact, it was shaping up to be a large, draughty, hollow box that they somehow had to cobble floors into once the walls and roof were completed, provided they would ever be able to make it high enough. Finding sufficient wood for this project wasn’t easy because the trees had to have a very even diameter over a great length, which was a rare quality at the best of times. Already they were putting in far too many windows to save on logs.

The connection between what the countess had said to the wizard before, occurred to her only belatedly.

“Do you mean to say you pulled off my men?!” He growled at her, furious.

Linbirg shrieked a little and tried to think. She had no idea what he meant. Had she done something wrong? Would the wizard bewitch her? Tears started pooling in her eyes.

“Stop, both of you, you are scaring her!” Lady Devona shouted.

Linbirg was immensely grateful, but she had no idea what was going on. She had no idea to respond to Master Furio either, which led to a very awkward silence.

“You are a moral carcass, Furio Montane,” Countess Franka said calmly into the quiet. “The girl had nothing to do with it. It were your giantesses who pulled off the daytallers to help with the rebuilding. Now, had you been there instead of sweating your stink into the bed I gave you, you may have prevented it. Don’t blame the girl for your own shortcomings, My Lord.”

This was true embarrassment, true shame, Linbirg sensed. But for once she was not the subject of it.

Instead, the wizard had to straighten himself with all eyes upon him, and when he cleared his throat to speak his voice was thin and stiff: “Why was I not informed of this?”

More information sifted through Linbirg’s mind. ‘Your giantesses,’ the countess had said. Was this man to blame for Laura and Janna? Did he control them? It was hard to believe. Also, in retrospect it appeared rather petty to care about who removed some wreched rubble so long as the work was done well, and no one could have done a better job at it than Marag’s Children.

The countess shrugged and grinned, showing teeth that were very grey but otherwise in good condition for such an old woman: “Sit. Eat. We have bigger things to discuss than some dead man’s parchments.”

Lady Franka sat at one end of the long table, and the wizard at the other. Devona sat closest to the wizard and to the right of Ardan Jumian, which enabled Linbirg to place herself between the young heir and the countess, the place where she felt she would be safest for now. If truth be told, she had no stomach for eating anymore. She just wanted to go back to Mara. She wouldn’t even mind pleasuring her and the others again, if that was what it took. Her duty was done for this moon, but it was better by lengths than whatever this meal was shaping up to become.

As it would be the case during a feast, Lady Franka lorded over the food and assigned portions to her guests according her good graces. For a base sort of sustenance, each guest had a bread trencher in front of them, filled with meat and gravy.

The wine helped Linbirg feel a tad more at ease but after her second cup she started to feel a little lightheaded.

“This capon is delicious, Grandmother.” Lady Devona remarked gleefully.

“Mhm!” Ardan agreed through his stuffed mouth.

It cut through the awkwardness like a knife and seemed to finally lighten even that terrible witcher. He had ignored the wondrous mulled white wine and ordered a bumper of red instead, which to Linbirg’s surprise did not seem to vex the countess at all.

“Greasier than what I’m used to.” He remarked. “Uh, Almadan?”

“Mh!” The countess swallowed and smiled. “You know your capons, My Lord!”

He did not laugh but showed the hint of a smile, at least. The Kingdom of Almada lay south of Nordmarken, bordering on the Horasian Empire and the desert of Khôm. Linbirg had to try it or else she would be filled with regrets later on.

It was customary, of course, to bring one’s own spoon and knife for eating, but Linbirg had been thoroughly disarmed. She carried neither sword, nor knife, nor spoon anymore. They had taken it all after she had been given into the custody of the Galahans. She half hoped someone would intervene when she started reaching into her trencher with bare hands, but they only stole her glances of irritation. Capon, it turned out, tasted very much like chicken. In fact, Linbirg was certain that it was chicken, which was odd.

“The people of Almada force feed theirs to fatten them,” the wizard explained. “I was unaware Albernians did the same?”

“Almadan cook,” the countess elegantly stretched her chin. “I had to have most of his red powders thrown into the river. He cried bitterly but after that, I can’t say I ever had better. Will you take a bite of sugar?”

Besides the trenchers filled with meat and gravy there were many other dishes laid out on the table, costlier-looking and more unfamiliar to Linbirg the closer they were to Franka’s side of the table. She could see the raw slabs of bacon that she knew weren’t what they appeared to be.

The wizard frowned and waved off: “Too sweet.”

Linbirg’s stomach churned with lust for sugar and a feeling that she did not belong with these people. They were so wealthy, apparently, that they could even refuse this strange, wonderful sweetmeat.

The countess gave a laugh and waved at one of her servants who rushed over, took the sugar platter and offered it to Linbirg.

“I know you will have some, won’t you sweetling?”

Linbirg nodded fiercely and took one of the slabs, chewing on it right away.

“Mh!” Ardan made, seemingly to indicate that he wanted one too.

That made Lady Devona laugh in turn.

“Men should eat meat!” She playfully scolded her husband. “If you eat too much sugar you will wash away in the rain!”

“I am eating meat.” The young man pointed defensively at his trencher which by the looks of it was nearly empty already.

Young men could have large appetites.

“Have all the nobles departed, yes?” The sorcerer inquired. “What of His Highness, Duke Hagrobald?”

Linbirg’s ears pricked up at the mentioning of her new liege lord.

The countess took her time sucking the meat off a capon bone before replying: “Gone with the rest of them. It wouldn’t be that you have unfinished business with him? If you do, we can announce another tourney. He should be back here within a fortnight.”

That made the wizard utter a bark of laughter: “Ah, your knights and their jousting!”

Once he had started drinking his red wine, his sips had grown larger and more frequent. Now, his cheeks were starting to flush behind his beard and his eating became impetuous.

“Don’t you have tourneys in the Lovely Meadows, My Lord Furio?” Ardan inquired.

The Lovely Meadows, or Meadows Lovely, was a fancy name for the Horasian Empire, a land of stuck-up, forever envious scoundrels, according to Linbirg's father. That was already the entire extent of Linbirg's knowledge, however.

The countess tittered but allowed the sorcerer to explain: “We have done away with knighthood altogether, young Ardan. We found it…out of fashion. There are duels more than enough, mind you, although these are commonly fought on foot and without armour. We have bouts, performed by mummers or professional fighters, just like the gladiators in Bospharan of old, and we have hunts, balls and such things, but not jousts as such.”

Ardan's head snapped to his grandmother: “Will Albernia abandon knighthood too?!”

The young man sounded petrified by the notion, and Linbirg found it dubious as well. In lack of knights, bound to honour and land, the choice of men who would defend the realm seemed rather scarce. Levies were notoriously unreliable, professional soldiers exceedingly expensive, and mercenaries were both. Knights were paid, most usually, in power, infefted with land and the peasants to work it. But power could breed a hunger for more power, which was why Linbirg had to have virtually all knights of the Bordermark killed. It might come back to haunt her, she sensed, but that was far away yet. For now, she had to survive.

“Uh…” The wizard stared at his trencher, saying nothing.

The countess laughed: “Well, are we or are we not a part of the Horasian Empire now?”

Silence answered her while the wizard's beard moved. Linbirg concentrated on her sugar to avoid being dragged into this absurdity.

“Hard to say,” Furio Montane finally replied. “There's war, it's...chaos. Madness and stupidity, I've heard it said. At present, I'd counsel not to worry too much about jousting.”

The countess took a swig of wine before putting her cup down just slightly too hard: “What, might it be that we are utterly alone? Albernia against the world, independent at last?”

The wizard fumbled at a pouch and began to stuff something into his smoke stick but the countess held him to an answer.

“You'll not smoke those stinking whorehouse leaves in my chambers again. Bring Master Furio some of our Stoerrebrandt's!”

He stopped and threw everything down on the table, sighing and leaning back in defeat.

“We are the subjects of Janna and Laura, My Lady,” he finally admitted after emptying his cup. “That is all I know.”

That was as much as Linbirg knew as well, which was reassuring. It also seemed to imply that he did not rule the giantesses, for better or worse.

“If that is so then where are they?” The countess asked. “They have left us no instructions, they haven't come back, and all we know is that they went north!”

While his cup was refilled, the wizard smiled warmly for the first time: “I know them better than most and can say that this is not at all unusual. If something along the way captivates their imagination then they are liable to play with it until it is destroyed. They may be huge and terrifying but I have oft found that they possess the minds of children. They will come back, just as suddenly as they went. Do we know where they intended to go, at least?”

Linbirg studied him from behind Ardan Jumian's back. He sounded confident enough but there was something wrong about his eyes. They had been red and glassy before, but when he spoke about Laura and Janna they had seemed to draw back, shifting quickly as though he was much more worried than he was leading on.

“Oh!” The countess let out, sinking back against the rest of her chair. “Your words are balm on a frightened heart, Master Furio! Please forgive me my rash words, I have been worried sick!”

“Oh, Grandmother!” Lady Devona rose and flitted around the table to the elderly woman, crouching down to stroke an old, wrinkly hand.

“There is no need,” the wizard began while licking his lips and looking in expectation at a serving man who stood awaiting the countess' pleasure, “to apologize, My Lady, and no need to worry. I...I promise I will do everything that is within my power to protect you, your family and your city from any, uh...any further damage. Um, the pipe weed?”

“I regret to inform you that it is gone, My Lady,” the servant said.

This seemed to alarm the wizard somewhat, in a way Linbirg didn't understand.

“Gone?” Franka echoed, perplexed. “Oh, how forgetful of me! The Gods know I'm growing old.”

She reached next to her trencher for a fine green leather pouch, grasping it delicately before handing it over to Lin.

“Of course I had this prepared for you already,” she smiled. “Lady Linbirg, hand it on, will you? I apologize, Master Furio.”

Lin took the pouch delicately, wondering why it seemed so very important. Perhaps what was inside was even more expensive than sugar, she reasoned, or simply very tasty if one acquired the taste. She had never liked blood pudding as a child but came to love it later.

Ardan’s arms were long enough so that he could reach over his wife's empty seat and hand the pouch to the wizard who accepted it greedily.

“Again...My Lady...there is no need for apologies.”

He was speaking while stuffing the dark brown substance from the leather pouch into the recepticle of his wooden smoke stick. It seemed more important to him than anything else in the world. Then, suddenly, he husked at his finger and it seemed that his fingernail had become a candle. He was on fire! It had to be something wrong with her eyes, Linbirg thought and blinked, but when she opened them again, he was lighting another smouldering fire in the recepticle, drawing on the hollow wooden haulm and sucking thick white smoke into his mouth with obvious glee.

This smoke was not half as bad-smelling as earlier, but still a far cry from pleasant. It was truly strange. His burning finger did not seem to cause him pain or distress either, and he finally blew it out with a mouthful of smoke.

“Well,” the countess finally said firmly, “I believe then we should discuss how things are going to go during their absence, since I have both of you here.”

She looked at Master Furio and then Linbirg in turn, and Linbirg finally understood why she had been invited. It was all a mummer’s farce, the food, the wine, the idle talk, all of it only served to ease into what was about to happen next.

“I will still need to investigate the whereabouts of Hatchet’s papers,” the wizard said. “I cannot take over the man’s mantle without knowledge of his doings.”

“Oh, by all means,” the countess replied. “Lady Linbirg, I’m sure you will be able to help our friend in this endeavour?”

Farce, farce, farce, was all Linbirg could think. Suddenly, they were friends now.

“Oh, of course!” She replied dutifully. “Whatever Master Furio needs!”

‘Head low, elbows to your chest and squeeze through,’ she thought.

“Very well then,” smiled Lady Franka. “I presume you will continue the rebuilding on the morrow?”

“Yes, My Lady!” Linbirg nodded again.

It wasn’t as if she had any other choice. She didn’t want to get eaten once the giantesses convened themselves to return to Honingen, as the wizard had all but promised they would. Until that time, there would be a power vacuum in which Linbirg might be able to carve out some influence for herself, but she was entirely unsure how to make this work for her. It was one thing to talk to Ardan Jumian Galahan, who at present was still stuffing his handsome face with food and seemed to have no strong notions about anything that was going on. Strongarming Franka Salva Galahan with words was quite another matter. If Mara could inadvertently step on the old woman, that would be truly advantageous. Devona had all the temperament of a kitten, and her husband the cunning of a slug. Lin would easily be able to expand her power then.

“Good. I understand you and my grandson have already haggled out how your ogres will be fed. Now, the only thing I worry about is what your creatures might do once their current work is complete. I reckon, you do control them sufficiently that I might as well ask what you intend to do then?”

“Will…” Linbirg was unsure. “Will the…will Janna and Laura be gone for such a long time?”

That was the shadow over everything. Once the two terrifying behemoths came back, all these words were naught but a big bag of wind. Once again, Linbirg felt as though they were children playing. It was wistful thinking, perhaps. If Laura and Janna never returned, that would be sweeter even than Franka’s sugar and all the honey in Honingen combined.

The countess smiled warmly: “As years beyond count have taught me, child, no time spent at preparation is ever wasted! We must know in advance of all things and equip ourselves to meet every eventuality!”

“Then we will do whatever you would have us do,” Linbirg offered.

She could go back on it later. There was no sanctity to promises made while effectively naked and under duress, surely.

“Splendid!” The countess replied. “I knew we would get along just fine. Ah, it is always nice to make new friends, don’t you agree? Now, let us drink to our understanding!”

She began to stand. Ardan and Devona were on their feet at once. The wizard, however, had some difficulty. As he began to rise, it seemed like his legs failed him.

“Oh!” He made, his speech slurred. “Too much wine, I think, privy, I…what?”

His cheeks were even more flushed than before but his eyes were wide open now, full of terror. Then they rolled back into his skull and he plummeted dead, face-first into his trencher.

Devona cried out in anguish. Ardan gasped. When Linbirg wanted to stand up a strong hand pushed down upon her shoulder.

Tears welled up in her eyes again.

“Grandmother, what is…” Ardan started but Franka cut him off.

“Hush now, sweetling,” she smiled before calling out. “Help! Master Furio is not well! See him to his chambers and have a healer tend to him at once!”

The door swung open and a big, frog-faced knight came through, followed by more men. The knight clasped an iron shackle around the wizard’s wrist even before pulling him out of the trencher. Then he and two other armed men lifted the wizard up to carry him away.

“Will he live?!” Lady Devona asked, her voice full of sorrow.

“That depends,” Countess Franka replied, strangely cold, before turning to Linbirg in rage. “Arrest Lady Linbirg, in the name of Queen Laura!”

Two strong hands grabbed Linbirg by the armpits and hoisted her up. Her knee slammed into the table and she cried out.

“Why?” Ardan was beside himself with confusion. “Unhand her! I have promised we would do her no harm!”

Devona gasped: “She has poisoned Master Furio! Drink no more wine, Ardan, like as not she has poisoned us as well!”

She threw her wine upon the floor and did the same with her husband's.

“I have done nothing!” Linbirg screamed when she understood what was at stake.

“Oh, don’t you deny it!” Lady Franka pointed at her with a bony finger. “What have you given him, hm?! Spit it out so we can give him an antidote, quick!”

“Did he not just…have too much wine and pipe weed?” Ardan reasoned against. “Why would Lady Linbirg poison him?!”

“It wasn’t only him she was after!” Franka explained, lying through those grey, old teeth of hers. “She wanted to kill all of us so she could flee with her monsters, but not after reducing my city to kindling!”

“The city is burning, My Lady!” Someone shouted at the door. “All new houses, someone has set nearly all of them alight!”

Franka returned a look of irritation before rounding on Linbirg: “There you have it! And to think that I have invited her into my own home, oh, curses!”

“Shall we question her as to the nature of the poison, My Lady?” The man behind Linbirg asked.

Franka waved off: “I do not dare harm her, as she well knows, the little demon! Lock her in her chambers and shackle her well! And tell the headsman to keep his steel sharpened in case she tries any shenanigans!”

Linbirg cried and cried and cried. She did not understand what was going on. They did with her as threatened, shackle, chamber and headsman at her door again. None of her complaints achieved anything.

She cried herself to sleep that night. And the next morning she started crying all over again, when the maid came to brush out her hair. It was as if she had never gotten out.

Laura and Janna did not return in the night, nor in the morning. Linbirg was held with a blade at her throat, gagged and blindfolded when she was presented to Mara and the others at noon. Mara growled and demanded Linbirg be released. She threatened and called them all worms but it helped nothing.

“As restitution and penance for your crimes of your master, you are hereby ordered to do labour in the service of Franka Salva Galahan!” The herald announced so loud that it hurt Linbirg’s ears. “Failure to do so will result in the immediate execution of Linbirg Madahild Farnwart, whom you call Ironman!”

The longer Linbirg waited, the clearer it became to her that she had been the victim of a plot. She couldn’t figure out why, in the beginning. But when Laura and Janna failed to return for a full week it started to dawn on her.

-

Janna felt the cold steel bite into the flesh of her neck. She could feel the cut, the warmth of her blood upon her skin, and hear the terrible ringing of the blade. She became aware of how cold it was, suddenly. She had only a shirt on and no longer her size to ward off winter. Being small was terrible in many ways.

But she was not dead.

“What?!” Her executioner asked, incredulous.

She opened her eyes, just in time to see the blade descend on her a second time, crashing into her skull at full force. Her head rang like a bell. She could see stars. She could smell the blankets and the grass beneath them.

But she was not dead.

“Niamus!” Count Bragon roared and an old rider with snow-white hair spurred himself into motion.

It was very confusing.

“Mine Lord?” The old man said after riding close, speaking very queerly and with a heavy accent Janna did not know.

“Why won't they die?!” The tall, handsome man complained. “What sorcery is this?!”

“I know it not, Mine Lord,” replied the other.

Janna could feel a gloved hand on her head.

“It didn't so much as cut her hair!”

The blade came into view again, but this time it was being cast away in disgust, thumping the ground with a dim, muffled clanger. Janna almost wanted to get up when she felt another object crash into her head.

It hurt terribly and made her dizzy, but at least that seemed to spare her from feeling the blows to her back.

When she finally looked, she saw that she had just been chopped to pieces with an axe, or at least that was what should have happened.

It didn't even feel as though her shirt had ripped.

“I have once dreamt,” the strange old man frowned, oblivious to the rage of his master, “that I a little dandelion was. A yellow blossom was my head and mine arms had teeth. Then something tried me to eat, I believe a rabbit, and it chewed and pulled me so stark and long, but I came not asunder. Very hurtful, though, very hurtful was that.”

Maybe he wasn't quite right in the head, Janna thought. The memory certainly seemed to give him chills.

“It could be that it a memory was, on when I misplaced mineself and ventured in too deeply,” he concluded. “I know it not, Mine Lord.”

“I fear you are right, old friend,” replied the tall man out of breath and with obvious disquiet.

Janna didn't understand.

Laura made all manner of horrid noises when she was let go, wreathing in the wet grass like a fish out of water.

Someone asked: “What now?! What do we do with them?”

“Try again!” Suggested a smaller man. “If we cut long enough, who knows, perhaps we'll chew that dandelion eventually!”

Laura swayed left and right on her knees with the limp rope still around her neck, crawling through the grass towards Janna.

“Sink them in the moor!” Another man shouted. “Let the muck do the work for us!”

“Piss idea!” An older man cautioned. “Worse things than them been crawling back out of there!”

Laura threw herself at Janna's chest, weeping. Janna looked at Laura's neck but could not even see a mark there, let alone anything that indicated hanging, other than the rope, of course.

“An oubliette,” the newest cruel idea came. “Yes, put them in a hole and throw away the key!”

Bragon Fenwasian said nothing and Janna couldn't place his demeanour at all.

Then the voice of a lookout called: “Riders approaching!”

This completed the chaos.

For a moment, the hoof beats made Janna think the cavalry had arrived to save them, but had to immediately concede that it was too unlikely. What reason could anyone have for saving them, after all, with all they had done. Even someone as cynical as Franka Salva Galahan was not like to have mercy on them at this stage.

There were only two horses coming, explaining why the men were not worried. The people on those horses Janna didn't recognize right away. It was a young, handsome man in obvious hunting gear sitting a grey stallion, and a young, ravenous beauty in elegant travel attire atop a sand-coloured mare.

“Father!” The woman called out, her voice familiar.

She half fell, half jumped off her horse, right into the arms of Bragon Fenwasian, the man who had tried to cut off Janna’s head before bludgeoning her with a battleaxe.

“Devona,” Laura whispered aghast. “And Ardan Julian Galahan.”

Devona and the older man embraced intimately, while Ardan handily rode to catch Devona's horse.

After father and daughter disentangled each other, the young lady looked at Janna and Laura. Devona looked tall now, and even more beautiful than ever, although there was a distinct sadness in her gaze.

“So, it's true,” she said softly.

This seemed to surprise Bragon: “You knew? How?”

“They left Honingen a week ago,” she replied. “I thought something had gone awry when they did not return. Franka knew before anyone else, although she must have believed they vanished.”

“A week?” Bragon repeated, looking about.

They were close to the Red Curse but within the column of light. Evidently, that was too close for comfort.

“You must leave here,” Bragon told his daughter. “It is not safe.”

Devona made no effort to comply but sauntered over, looking at Laura and Janna. It felt strange, being looked at like that. Janna didn’t like it.

Suddenly, the beautiful woman gasped: “Father, do you intend to hang them?!”

She had noticed the rope around Laura’s neck.

“We tried,” he replied darkly. “But whatever crimes they have committed, Farindel has only seen fit to rob them of their size.”

Devona gasped again and crouched down to Laura, putting a slender, beautiful hand on Laura’s head.

“Do you remember when I sat in your hand?” She said. “You were nice to us. Father, you shouldn’t have done that!”

One of Bragon’s men scoffed, but his master dealt him a look that could’ve shock-frozen boiling lava, and the man suddenly started coughing instead.

Ardan came riding over, two sets of reins in one hand. He was a handsome rider, very sure in the saddle, but he looked down as though he didn’t know what to feel. It was all very terrible, but at least Laura and Janna weren’t dead. Then again, though, if they were to be thrown in an oubliette and endure constant suffering for a very long time, perhaps that wasn’t such a good thing after all.

“They need to pay for their crimes,” said Count Bragon. “One nicety does not wipe out the murder of thousands.”

“Why did you come here?” Devona asked Janna directly.

Janna flinched involuntarily. While watching others talk, she could pretend she wasn’t really here, like watching a movie. Now she was yanked back into this horrid reality all at once.

“We wanted to fight the Red Curse,” she replied, her own voice sounding strange in her ears. “We were warned but we went anyway, and now here we are. I know you must kill us, but we had rather you do it quickly.”

“No!” Laura screamed through her tears and threw herself at Devona in Janna’s stead. “Please!”

“I’m sorry,” Devona whispered and gave the kneeling Laura as close a thing to a hug as she could muster.

It was heart-warming, despite everything. And it didn't end there.

Bragon ordered marching formation and soon they were going again. This time, Janna and Laura were spared the sacks.

Again, Bragon told Devona and Ardan to leave, and again Devona ignored him, even though Ardan was ready to jump and comply. For all his eerie frostiness it seemed that the Count of Winhall had one very common weakness. He had a hard time saying ‘no’ to his daughter, and she had gotten it into her head that she must help alleviate the Red Curse.

“Do we know who is behind it, this time?” Devona asked her father as they went, stubbornly riding at his side.

If she was doing what Janna thought she was doing then it was exceedingly clever.

Bragon shook his head: “We've been everywhere. No trace of anyone yet, it must be deeper in the woods.”

“We know,” Janna announced.

“Shut yer yap, monster!” It rang from behind and she received a painful clout over the head with the point of some spear.

But it only hurt for an instant.

Bragon raised a hand and turned in the saddle: “You do?”

“It is a black wizard,” Janna explained. “He opened the gate in the Farindel to bring magic back into this world.”

He looked at her with contempt in his eyes: “And does your black wizard have a name? Where is he?”

Janna had to grimace involuntarily.

“We don't know,” she admitted. “But he's very powerful.”

“He warned us not to come here,” Laura added suddenly, much as Janna wished she had kept her mouth shut. “He said the hero is already in motion.”

That made the men around them laugh, but not Bragon.

“Oh, that would be you then, My Lord, wouldn't it,” A soldier cackled. “Nought to worry about then, eh?”

“I don't think he would stick around to perform the ritual,” Laura continued. “It must be someone else.”

“I see,” Count Bragon turned his solemn gaze back ahead. “It is the black wizard, but not the black wizard.”

Some of his men were smirking. It wasn't that they were taking the Red Curse as a reason for levity, but rather that they didn't believe she and Laura could possibly possess useful information. And they were cynical, to a man.

“You can ask Lissandra,” she said, trying to prove them wrong. “She has seen him.”

She let the name hang there like bait, for the first man who could to snap at it. But they didn’t bite.

“Lissandra?” Someone from behind asked. “Who’s that now?”

There was a heavy silence full of tension. Someone else behind them laughed, but it died a lonely death amidst the footsteps.

“The witch who guards the gate.” Devona said after a moment, looking at Janna full of uncertainty.

It was unexpected. By the looks of him, not even Bragon Fenwasian knew. Janna didn’t know what to make of it, but it seemed like her best chance.

“When magic wasn’t…anymore,” she began, thinking, speaking and walking at the same time, “the black wizard performed blood magic to open the gate and get his magic…his normal magic back. Lissandra had been taken by some ogresses in the meantime. Then I tracked them down and took them with me but then I got sick and Lissandra must have run away back to her gate. The wizard said he wanted her to do so, in my dream. And that’s how the Red Curse got out.”

This seemed to imply that something very close to the gate was performing the ritual, but it couldn’t be Lissandra. Janna didn’t get to say as much, however, because just then she was suddenly cut off by more laughter, and the sack being violently pulled over head again.

Janna knew rage would be useless. She tried to recall if there had been anything else, any bits of useful information that may have seemed trivial at the time. But she drew a blank. She was so impotent in this position and she hated every minute of it.

Bragon settled the issue: “We will find whoever is responsible for this, never fear!”

They marched and marched and Janna got entirely fed up with it until their surroundings changed. She could tell that the air was growing wetter and there were fewer trees. It was still so cold. Her skin was starting to burn with it and her joints ached. The ground beneath their feet grew softer and then the sack was pulled off her head once more.

“Need to know where you're going,” the voice breathed into her neck. “Do not venture off the beaten path.”

She was looking at a horrible bog, brown and black, a vast, wet wasteland with the occasional birch tree amongst it, tiny, crippled and forlorn. A causeway snaked its way through the marshes, an earthen dyke reinforced with rotting wood, constituting the path she should stick to. The front of the column was already moving there, leading the horses by their bridles.

“They're taking us to the Moorwatch,” Laura said in English. “There’s a castle in the middle of this swamp.”

She wasn't crying anymore.

“Eyes peeled, men!” Ian Fenwasian shouted a reminder. “And stay together! Any man who drops out is left behind!”

“We need to get big again,” Laura whispered frantically. “This sucks!”

Janna could only agree wordlessly before they were told to shut up and someone spear-butted them into motion.

Walking the causeway wasn't as easy as Janna had initially believed. It was getting dark now, and the pillar of light was gone. The men lit torches to illumiate the way, but even so Janna stumbled often because she didn't have her hands to balance herself.

“I've been thinking,” Laura whispered a while later, now ahead of her. “That weird guy with the white hair is hundreds of years old, supposedly. He walked too deep into the Farindel as well and it did things to him. But once he went out, he was normal again...you know, not counting being a bit fucked in the mental department. If we make it out of Farindel's influence we should...well, we might get big again!”

There was some logic to it but Janna was uncertain. None of this seemed as though logic necessarily applied but then again that might be the reason Laura was right.

They hadn't gone that far into the woods, Janna felt, although that judgement was difficult to make. Maybe it was different where they had entered or maybe things had just changed since the first time they had crushed a red tree.

“Think about it,” Laura went on. “They can't kill us, right? What if we just run! If they catch us, we just keep fighting till we can get away! I'm not the least bit tired. Are you? I think we're still ourselves, just not as strong or big or heavy as before.”

Being big and strong and heavy was very important in fighting, however, Janna knew. It was stupid, the men would simply tie them up with rope and throw them over the back of a horse. Besides...

“You could've had that idea before we were in a fucking swamp!” She hissed at Laura.

“Shit,” Laura conceded, looking around. “But I went to the Moorwatch before and I didn't shrink! Does this mean...”

“Will ye shut up now!” The voice behind called.

Laura turned. For a moment, Janna thought she would do something stupid, but then she only flared her nostrils and continued to stumble down the path.

It was pitch-dark by the time they saw lights in the distance. By then, the cold had crept so thoroughly into Janna’s bones that she started to shiver uncontrollably. It got so bad that she didn’t even mind the prospect of an oubliette, only if it meant being a little warmer.

Later, much later, Janna realized that she had been wrong about Ilaen Albenblood. It wasn't that he hadn't looked into the Red Curse because he didn't care or because he had some other, more nefarious motives. Nor was it the case that with all the strange things happening, not to mention Laura and Janna taking over the kingdom, everyone was simply too preoccupied to deal with the issue just now. No. The reason he and others seemed not to care was because they knew someone else was already handling the problem, someone who knew how and had done it before: Bragon Fenwasian.