Valdan was carried outside by the towering warrior and into the stable next to the inn, which at present housed only his own horse, since no-one else appeared to be staying there. He was then shoved roughly against a wooden pillar and pinned there by an arm that seemed impossibly strong. Then the stranger removed the black cloak and hood, and Valdan gasped in surprise once again: his kidnapper was actually a woman. Beneath her cloak she was wearing a full set of plate armour, fashioned out of some strange-looking dark metal. To Valdan, however, that fact wasn’t nearly as astonishing as her size: she was fully three feet taller than he was. Her skin was deeply tanned, while her hair was long, untidy and as black as her cloak. She was staring at him with a pair of piercing brown eyes set in a young, attractive face, although at the moment it seemed much more frightening than alluring to Valdan, giving his situation. She also had a smile on her lips, but not the friendly kind.
“Please…please let me go!” Valdan asked fretfully, wincing from the pressure she put on his chest as she pressed him against the pillar. “I don’t mean you any harm! You can have all the money I’ve got. I promise!”
“What about that little sword of yours?” she asked, grinning at him. “You seemed pretty desperate not to let those brutes in there have it.”
“Like I told them, it’s a gift from my father! I can’t just give it away!”
“Your father? The one who’s a king of some place called Vandan?”
“Yes…wait, you were listening?”
“Of course, I was listening, and I heard a lot of nonsense, to be honest. Do you really expect me to believe you’re some kind of prince? If that’s true, then what on earth are you doing in a place like this?”
“That’s none of your business! Look, just…just kill me, if that’s what you’re planning to do. Then you can take what you want from me.”
“You’re not going to try and fight back? Those idiots back there in the inn certainly gave it their best shot.”
“No, I’m not. We both know I wouldn’t stand a chance against you – you’re twice my size!”
She gave him another grin, then let go of his chest. He fell on the floor below, landing on hands and knees, and didn’t make any attempt to get up. The mighty female warrior picked up her cloak and wrapped it around her again. Valdan waited for her to finish him off, almost too scared to breathe, but that moment never came.
“You can get up now,” she ordered him. “I’m not going to kill you, little ‘prince’. So you can relax as well.”
He stood up and dusted himself off, but had no intention of relaxing. He looked up warily at his new opponent – if that’s indeed what she was.
“Thank you for your help in there,” he repeated. “I probably could have handled myself against one or two of them, but I’d never have been able to take care of a whole room full of thieves. Here, please take this in return.”
He held out a bag of gold coins to her, the only money he had left from his long journey. His dwindling number of coins was another reason why Valdan felt it was about time he made his way back home again.
“No thanks, I don’t want your money,” the woman said, looking down at him with a softer expression than before. “Taking care of those rats was no big deal for me. I just hate seeing men like them preying on others, but it seems that no matter where I go…”
“Yes…I understand. Well, thank you all the same. I…look…you never told me your name.”
“No, I suppose I didn’t. It’s Marigal. And before you ask…yes, I am a real-life, in-the-flesh Selkarian warrior.”
“Selkarian?” Valdan thought for a moment, trying to recall where he had heard that word before. Then he remembered: about two weeks ago, in a town that lay many miles south of where he was now, the inhabitants had told him of the Selkarians – legendary warrior women, who long ago had been numerous and hostile enough to keep all the inhabitants of this part of the world living in fear, but who were now merely a shadowy remnant of what they had once been. The man who had told him the story didn’t seem to take the legends very seriously, so Valdan had just assumed it to be nothing more than a myth.
“I…I didn’t think you were…were real,” he admitted. Marigal laughed at his astonishment.
“How about now?” she asked sarcastically. “You can’t have been travelling all that far and wide, ‘Prince’ Valdan, or else you’d have known that there are actually quite a few of us Selkarian ladies still around.”
“No, I guess I haven’t been. So…are you travelling as well?”
“Look, if you don’t want to tell me who you really are and what you are doing here, then I don’t have to share with you either. Now, why don’t you go back inside, hmm? Things should be safe for you inside, for now. I don’t think any of those thugs will be bothering you again – not tonight, at least.”
“What about you? Aren’t you staying at the inn too?”
“No…not exactly.”
She looked around impatiently, kicking aside a few stones that lay on the dirt floor of the stables. Valdan stared up at her, confused for a few moments, but then he figured it out.
“You’re sleeping here?” he asked. “Right here, I mean…in the stables?”
“So?”
“But you could get a room at the inn, just like I did?”
“With what money? Not everyone is lucky enough to be royalty, like you! I have to get by with what I have, and tonight that was only enough for one pint at the inn. Now, why don’t you leave me alone, all right?”
“But you can’t stay in here! It’s dirty and smelly, and it gets really cold during the night. Why don’t you come and sleep in my room instead?”
She stared at him with a withering look and he immediately blushed when he realized how inappropriate his request had sounded.
“No, I don’t mean ‘sleep with me’, I just…look, you can have my bed for tonight, and I’ll sleep in one of the chairs in the room. I’ll be leaving very early tomorrow morning in any case.”
“So will I…leave, that is.”
“Are you heading north?”
“Why, what’s it to you?”
“Well, if you are…then the two of us can travel together. I haven’t journeyed through the Tugusar Mountains before, but everyone I’ve met who has, has told me how dangerous the way is. If we go together…if you’re actually going that way, that is…then it’ll be a lot safer, I think.”
“And all I have to do in return is put up with your annoying presence? I’ll have to think about it first.”
“I’m not annoying!” Valdan protested. “That’s more my sister Sylvie’s speciality. But if you don’t want to do it, that’s fine. Then I guess this is goodbye.”
He turned around and headed out into the cold night air, then hurried back to the inn. The common room on the ground floor was still deserted, with only the bodies of the unfortunate thieves Marigal had killed still lying where they fell. Kereg, however, seemed to have come round again, since he wasn’t lying where Valdan had left him. He hoped that it would be the last he would ever see of that unpleasant fellow. Since there was quite a bit of damage to the place’s furniture, Valdan left his bag of coins in a shelf underneath the bar, hoping that the innkeeper would find it there when he returns, whenever that may be. Then he headed to the stairs, but before he could climb them to his room, he heard a noise behind him. He turned around and saw Marigal enter the inn, bending almost double to fit her lofty frame underneath the door. She caught up with him in a few steps.
“You were right…it is pretty cold outside,” she said, sounding just the slightest bit apologetic.
“So, you’ll be staying with me tonight then?” Valdan asked.
“Yes…but you can keep your bed. It’s much too small for me. I’ll just lie on the floor if that’s all right. It’s what I’m used to, and this cloak of mine makes a pretty comfortable pillow.”
“All right, whatever you prefer.”
They headed upstairs, and Valdan had to force himself not to laugh at how awkward Marigal looked as she walked, bent over, through the inn’s low-ceilinged corridors. He wished she would tell him more about herself: where she had come from, what she was doing here all by herself, and whether or not the rest of her people were just as tall as she was. But it was getting very late and both of them were feeling tired, so they just said goodnight and went to bed. Or rather, he climbed into his bed while she lay down between him and the door, her head and feet nearly touching the two opposite walls of the room. He had been unable to make her tell him if she’d be willing to be his travelling companion tomorrow, but he hoped that she would agree in the end. After such a long time he had spent wandering by himself, it would be nice to have some company for a change. Especially if said company was a nine-foot-tall warrior woman who could take on ten men by herself in a fight without breaking a sweat. Of course, compared to his giantess sisters, Marigal would only be doll-sized in comparison. He wondered what she would say if he told her that fact.
“Probably wouldn’t believe me,” he thought to himself. “Oh well, I guess that can’t be helped. I don’t really have any proof I am who I say I am. Maybe I could convince her to travel all the way back with me? Then she’d see that I was telling the truth…but no, I don’t think she’d be willing to do that. As long as she can help me get through the mountains safely, though, that’d be enough for me. Marigal…what an odd name! But rather beautiful, in a way. I wonder what the other Selkarians are like?”
As he tried to picture what her home was like, he gradually fell asleep.
Giantess World
