Garvin Blaithin pulled his cloak tightly around his shoulders and made sure Elvar and Eara were huddled tightly in theirs. The children were scared and cranky, barely having slept in the night on account of nightmares. Garvin had had nightmares too and Laura had been in every one of them. He felt like he had relived the experience of being captured by her half a hundred times.

“Are you cold?” He asked Eara who was shivering.

Elvar, his boy, was older and sturdier. Garvin picked up the little girl and carried her downstairs, his son at his heels. The noble mansion was icy because there were no servants to keep fires lit and the soldiers only bothered when they were asked, which in turn no one had done for Garvin's room. He hoped his wife had it nicer in the dungeons, though he doubted it.

“Where is mother?” Eara asked again, a tear tumbling down her round, young cheek.

They were so young, his children. It was breaking his heart that they had to endure this. That they had to was his mother's fault, a fact that still infuriated him. He wondered what reckless insanity had ridden her when she decided to seek shelter in Feyrenwall rather than Honingen or even further south, perhaps, in Abilacht.

The monstrous enormity Laura had captured the castle the day before, taking a number of hostages and making Lord Ilaen Albenblood her bannerman by that measure. That was how Garvin's children and mother had ended up in her custody as well and it was a glad tiding that they were still alive. Had Laura decided she wished to trample the place rather than keep it, they might have ended up squashed to brine, like anything else she stepped on.

Bragon Fenwasian's hall was modest and decorated to make it look like inside a forest with branches hanging from the ceiling and pots with little trees or grass standing about. The Fenwasians were fairy worshippers and their fanatic connection to the Farindel manifested all inside their lordly homes. There were wood carvings and tapestries to the same effect hung upon the walls, forest, fairies and magical animals that looked as though they meant to engage in pleasant conversation.

Conchobair soldiers were about and a few men at arms from Feyrenwall, as well as a palpable tension in the air between them. Everyone kept their blades close, but Reo Conchobair's men outnumbered Ilaen Albenblood's two to one in the hall. Outside, surcoats and badges of Albenblood were much in the majority now.

Garvin wanted to claim a seat as far away from the high table as he could in case the king pretender would show up and ask him to sing songs about the Sword King. He was very fond of those, and very much indifferent to music otherwise. Just now, though, Garvin had to get some warmth into his children's bellies.

But not long after they entered a soldier in Albenblood colours came over to speak with him.

“My lady asks that you break your fast with her.” He inclined with a tip of his helmet that would have been insolent had Garvin been high born. “She says to bring your children too.”

Garvin had no choice and so he followed, being lead to where Moraine of Draustone sat with her husband and their children on either side of them, once again flanked by three more ladies, right beneath the high table.

“My lord!” Garvin went to one knee before Ilaen Albenblood and pinched Elvar in the leg so that he would do the same.

Much as most, Ilaen Albenblood was a man with short hair, in his case chestnut brown and wild from helmet wearing. His eyes were a deep grey-green, his face unshaven, and there was a hint of recent defeat in the air about him.

“Ah.” He acknowledged. “I can see your children have slept almost as bad as mine.”

The children he referred to, Thara and Thalian, were slightly younger than Eara and Elvar respectively, so it did not surprise Garvin to hear it, and it was plainly written on their faces as well. As horrible as the situation was for anyone, it had to be worst on the youngest.

“Aye, my lord.” He said, putting his daughter on his knee.

Elia would have made a comment about the hearth in their room, if she hadn't set things right yesterday when it emerged. But Garvin did not have the guts for that.

Moraine of Draustone spoke up eagerly and more courteous than Garvin had any right to expect: “Please sit! The porridge tastes like it's been cooked by soldiers, I fear, but it is the best we have in this situation. Sir Aeneas, if you would assist him with his children.”

Garvin had to blink for a moment while a huge knight with two crossed axes and an oak tree on his cloak grabbed his children and deposited them on the bench next to him as if they were made of straw.

“This one's a strong lad, milord.” The bearded knight proclaimed nonetheless while lifting Elvar a lot higher than the bench below required. “He'd make a good page, don't you think?”

“Yes.” The lord of Feyrenwall nodded before turning to Garvin. “I was hoping to speak to you about this. Would you consent?”

Garvin's blood froze in his veins and he had almost lost consciousness, as he had with Laura.

'Why are you asking me that?' He had almost replied.

If anyone, his wife Elia made decisions like that, never he. But Elia was in the dungeons. If truth be told, he was still baffled by Lady Moraine's courtesy. She was a Stepahan, one of the utmost noble, powerful and best connected families in the kingdom.

“Uh, my lord...” He stammered helplessly.

With every second he thought about it he became less comfortable with the idea of putting Elvar on or anywhere near a battlefield. The war to come would have to be one of the worst in a long time, and one of the most deadly because Laura was no doubt committing unspeakable atrocities that her enemies then had to avenge somehow. But Elvar was of the age at which boys would become pages which would then make them squires in time, and ultimately knights if they were good.

“Your daughter, as well, ought not to grow up and aspire to be as your wife.” Lady Moraine interfered bluntly before Garvin could say any more. “Wouldn't it be good for her if she grew up at a proper court, friends with a proper lady such as my daughter will be?”

He was speechless. They were offering to foster Elvar and Eara, giving them a place in their noble home.

“I never knew Elia had such fine children, and roughly the age of mine too.” Ilaen added with an expression of shock on his face. “I rue not having invited you more often. That was wrong, I see that now, and I beg your forgiveness. The other Talvinyrs have done me good service, but frankly I was afraid Elia's daughter would take after her in her fancies and your son after...well, yours.”

That was an insult, meant or not, but Garvin was more used to swallowing such drafts than any other man could be. That his son had to hear it wounded him, but it couldn't be any worse than when Elia chastised him. The other Talvinyrs, novice Eradh and steward Eris, were looking on from further down the table, next to Garvin's mother. All were giving him wide eyes, nodding frantically to make him consent.

But Elia might see things differently, as she so often did.

If truth be told, however, Elia had never cared much about the children when they were very young and Eara was too young to play with swords yet. Elvar had learned a few songs and was beginning to show promise with the harp but had already received his first sword lesson as well. A knight could sing and play as well as fight, and one had only to look at the example of Mathariel Swordsong to know that.

If Elia misliked this she would tear out his guts, Garvin knew, but ambushed like this he had no choice.

“I...I'd be honoured!” He inclined his head, quivering. “But...”

'But will we live to see the morrow?'

As nice as this was, it seemed highly impractical. Everyone present were captives of a gigantic, man-eating monster and from now on forced to be at war with their won true king, Finnian ni Bennain.

“Thara, my love.” Moraine turned to her daughter. “Would you like to meet Eara Talvinyr? She'll be your friend and you can play together every day! Would you like that?”

“Who?” The young girl rubbed her red eyes with the back her hand.

“Eara, meet Thara Albenblood, your new friend!” He made haste to get them acquainted while looking around for food to get some warmth into his daughter's belly.

From a large bowl of porridge, scenting of pork fat, he shovelled a healthy portion into a wooden bowl and placing it before Eara, then doing the same for Elvar. Bacon seemed out of stock, the wooden platter it had been served on still swimming with grease. Garvin took two pieces of rye bread and mopped up some fat before tossing them into the bowls.

“I will get some more, it is no trouble,” smiled Ceara of Jasalin, the lady next to Moraine of Draustone and the Lord's cousin from the Jasalin line, taking the platter and hurrying down the hall.

It was rather absurd. Outside, still sleeping, was Laura, the giant beast that could end them all in an instant if she wanted. But in here, in this hall that wasn't truly theirs, they were playing at normalcy. These highborns being so friendly to Garvin was anything but normal, though, giving away the predicament in which they were.

“I don't want to.” Eara said, crying again. “I want to go home, father. Can we, please?”

“Eat your porridge, and quickly, so you can go play!” Garvin urged her while Elvar was eagerly tugging at his sleeve.

“Does this mean I will be a knight?” The boy asked, suddenly not tired and afraid any longer.

It was a great chance for him, something Garvin had no power to offer, not to mention something all boys dreamed of. The huge knight Sir Aeneas sat next to Elvar and now turned grinningly away from his ale to the boy.

“Oh, you'll be bigger than me, some day, boy!” He roared and roughed Elvar's hair with a hand larger than the boy's head. “But first you must learn!”

He reached around himself and pulled off his cloak, his surcoat and then his chain mail shirt, filling the air with sweat.

“Here!” He handed the mail to Elvar. “Get a barrel with sand and roll it. That's the best way to get the rust off. When you're done, you come back to me. I'll show you how to oil it right.”

“Thalian,” Lord Ilaen turned to his son. “Go with Elvar and show him how it's done. Get my mail as well. Later, we shall see who of you is the better swordsman!”

Thalian looked as if he had cried all night long and was in no fit state to fight anyone. He was six years old at the most.

“I don't want to, father!” He protested but Ilaen gave him a sharp look and grabbed his neck, pushing him to go.

“My boy ought to eat his porridge.” Garvin frowned but Elvar had already run halfway around the table to Thalian.

“Let boys be boys!” Roared Sir Aeneas with a laugh, slapping Garvin's back so hard he almost knocked his head into the table.

Garvin the singer and Sir Aeneas the knight could not have been more different, Garvin thought. Aeneas had a reputation for many things, including for being the worst singer in all of Albernia, whereas Garvin was likely among the worst fighters.

Eara nibbled three spoons full of porridge and then shoved the bowl away, pouting: “I want to go home!”

“Sweetling, why don't you show Eara your new doll, hm?” Moraine of Draustone urged her daughter and the two other ladies stood at once.

One was Erin Morganyr, the other Talia of Albenblood-Lighthouse, Garvin saw. They took care of the girls quicker than he would have believed, leaving him alone in the ambush, wondering if there was anything other than his children they could want of him. Why they wanted them was rather obvious, and kindness was none of their ideals. Their children needed companions, friends to make it through this horror.

“I'll see some lads take care the boys don't wander where they don't belong.” Sir Aeneas grumbled, pushing up from the table and going as well.

Garvin looked after him until he heard Lady Moraine sob, finding her burying her face in her husband's shoulder. Ilaen of Albenblood returned Garvin's look, but it was as if there were a thousand miles between them.

“I cannot thank you enough!” The lady cried, her shoulders heaving with her sobs.

Ilaen put an arm around her.

'I am looking upon skeletons.' Garvin thought. 'Living bones, hollow shells. Wrecks.'

And all that after one night. That wasn't good. He wished there was something he might do to ease their pain, but he felt like it was a bad time for singing.

Lady Ceara of Jasalin came back, looking surprised to see the children gone. She had brought a platter of bacon and a tankard of ale for Garvin as well. He took it thankfully and drank deep, trying to forget the inescapable.

Soon after, Sir Aeneas was back as well, sat down heavily and drank even deeper before starting the conversation anew.

“So...” He growled, his version of a whisper. “Last night five of your men tried to make it out over the wall with a rope. One made it, the other four were caught. They are being served to the beast when she wakes up. Those Conchobair bastards are keeping a close eye. I had a look at the gate too, but I can't see no way through that rubble.”

Ilaen gave him a hard look: “We cannot leave! Laura holds my wife and children!”

The other frowned: “Your wife is here, milord, and so were your children, until a moment ago.”

“There are guards about us at all times, I cannot risk it!” The Lord whispered, looking around in distress. “I will hear no more of this!”

He was haunted, Garvin understood. Dark shadows were beneath Ilaen's eyes and his wife was still crying.

“We have the numbers, though.” Sir Aeneas went on unperturbed. “We can butcher the pretender's scum and slit the beast's throat for her while she sleeps.”

Ilaen only looked at him with wide eyes, his jaw quivering.

“Singer,” the knight turned to Garvin instead, “what do you think?”

Garvin swallowed hard, trying to decide whether or not the question was meant as a mockery.

“Much as I wish, I am not your man, Sir Aeneas.” He replied. “Not while my wife still sits in the dungeons. I shall plead for her release today.”

“You?!”

That made the knight laugh. Garvin would do it, though, and he would do it through song. He had not yet pieced it together in his mind, becoming distracted by his fear whenever he tried to make something up, but he was confident that something would come to him eventually. Music calmed Laura, turning her into something horrifying and amiable at the same time. All Garvin had to do was sing in front of her without losing consciousness, or so he hoped.

Feeling strangely elevated he took a piece of bacon and ate it, washing it down it ale.

“Here come the king and queen!”

A shout rang in the hall and suddenly everyone was on their feet and on one knee a moment later.

The usurpers Reo Conchobair and Princess Branwyn ni Bennain came through the door side by side. The Swordking's son wore no crown and not very lordly attire besides, like Sir Aeneas having come to the hall armoured and armed, the two crossed swords of his house emblazoned on his chest. He wasn't looking very kingly at all, no grace but an unseemly swagger in his step.

At thirty seven years old the man had no good reputation. His wife had left him, his king despised him and everyone made japes about him behind his back, mostly on account of his bastard birth with some Ferdoker whore apparently being his mother. After Raidri Conchobair's only legitimate child, Rhianna Conchobair, had fallen into disgrace, Invher ni Bennain had elevated Reo because she was in need of someone to man the castle.

Reo was a squire, far as Garvin knew, and had not ever been instructed by a real knight. His whore mother had sent him to sword master Scanlail ui Uinin in Havena instead, and knights made japes about that as well.

The Princess beside him was not much better, although her tale was even more complicated. It spoke to Laura's immense might that she could even attempt to replace Finnian ui Bennain and Talena of Draustone with these two third rate nobles. Nevertheless, the princess was beautiful, sixteen years old with curls like spun gold. She wore a white gown with the dragon of Bennain on her young bosom but did not display the three Albernian crowns on blue as a queen should have.

“Haha, now that's a way to enter a hall!” Conchobair quipped, shovelling air with his hands. “Rise, friends?! We're all fighting for the same cause, are we not?”

“Eat shit, you babbling traitor!” Aeneas cursed under his breath.

The king did not hear because in that moment everyone was rising again, Garvin with them, close to a hundred feet scratching over stone. Funny enough, Garvin never remembered kneeling down in the first place.

The pretender sauntered over to the high seat, Branwyn markedly stiffly at his heels. In sitting down he fixed his gaze on Ilaen, nodding.

“Ilaen Albenblood, Lord of Feyrenwall and Baron of Niamor! How are you, this cold morning? You have rested well, I hope?”

“Not very well, my l-... your grace!” Ilaen replied haltingly.

Garvin would have liked to be in any other place but here, so uncomfortable was the very air to breathe.

Branwyn clapped her hands impatiently: “Bring ale and food, you dimwits! Why do you think we are seated here?!”

Her look could have curdled milk, but there was no doubt that her meal was already in preparation.

“My king!” Ilaen spoke up. “I have heard that some of my men have tried to escape in the night.”

“Mhm.” Conchobair nodded and leaned backwards in his chair, rubbing his fingers together before his mouth as if to salt his next words. “So they have. Now, are you the coward or they? Seems to me the fault lies with their commander no matter which way you look at it.”

“They acted without my knowledge.” The Lord of Albenblood replied, struggling to keep calm. “They are deserters, therefore, and should be treated as such.”

“I haven't decided yet.” Conchobair still rubbed his fingers together. “I suppose this depends upon how loyal you turn out in future. I saw your children are mingling with others. Whose are they?”

“M-m-mine, my lord!” Garvin spoke up instantly, raising a hand. “Your grace, I mean!”

“Ha!” Princess Branwyn gave a dismissive laugh. “Bastards, I have no doubt.”

Her betrothed shot her a painful glance at that and chewed his lip: “It is good you let them play with each other. Let's hope they do not lose their new friends all too early.”

The thinly veiled threat was just a reiteration of the one Laura had made, Garvin knew. Perhaps that was everything this king had. He had already heard that the giantess did not confide all that much with him, nor with Branwyn who had been mostly keeping to her chambers.

'I am looking at living bones, hollow shells,' he thought once again.

But were they wrecks?

Laura was capturing Albernia castle for castle at a current rate of one per day. Not counting Winhall, one might even have postulated that she was a gathering spirit rather than a destructive one. That was if it weren't for the eyewitness accounts of what she had done at Iaun Cyll, however.

So far, it did not seem that anything could stop her, but in the direction in which she was going lay now the emptied village Aran and the large city of Honingen after that. Franka Salva Galahan was not unbeatable, as Nordmarken had proved a number of times, but she was certainly cunning and had a great number of men on which she could rely. If Laura fell, so did this king. Garvin actually expected his reign to be short-lived, his end to be inevitable and his death to be painful and bloody. Bragon Fenwasian was not a character wise men crossed, neither was King Finnian nor Arlan Stepahan or indeed the Countess Franka Salva Galahan for that matter.

And Reo had all of them against him, with his two only bannermen, Ilaen and Aeneas, sitting in this hall which was not rightfully his, despising him, following only on account of threat and hostage most foul done.

That gave him an idea.

“My king!” Garvin spoke up again. “By rights, my wife is my lord of Albenblood's bannerman. Perhaps if you released her, she might...”

He broke off when he heard the laughter in the room, growing louder and louder. The king pretender laughed and the Princess giggled heartily. Sir Aeneas laughed so extensively that he sprayed ale all over Lord Ilaen and his wife, but even they chuckled.

“Hahaha! You make a good fool, I give you that!” Reo Conchobair slapped the high table with his hand. “Have we got tailors who can fit him for motley, anyone?!”

When the false king made the jape everyone laughed anew, but the echo that rang back from walls and rafters this time was largely as false as his title.

Garvin chewed his lip: “She's not a man, your grace, it is true. And yet, she is undefeated.”

Bewilderment spread on the faces all around and awkward glances were exchanged.

“She is more use to you with a sword in hand than in the dungeons. Now that Lord Ilaen of Albenblood has declared for you I see no sense in not freeing her. I plead before you, your grace. Release her.”

“I need more troops, especially knights.” Conchobair replied. “Not woman folk who fancy themselves such.”

He waved his hand, dismissing the matter. Garvin wanted to ask whether or not it was even within his power to release Elia, but he never got that far.

“I second this request, your grace!” Ilaen Albenblood stood after a moment of consideration. “You have this good man's wife in your dungeons, a lady of noble birth and sworn to me!”

“Injustice!” Aeneas roared and stood as well, scowling up to the high table.

Conchobair poked his tongue into his cheek, frowning gravely: “I shall speak to the giantess about her release then. But I must warn you. If Lady Elia's conduct displeases Laura then my mercy might well mean her ghastly and untimely death.”

It was a cunning answer. He had to admit that it wasn't within his power to release Elia on his own terms, but that would have come out either way, as Ilaen had no doubt bargained. So as not to let that fact weaken his authority Conchobair salted it with doubt over the goodness of the deed altogether.

'I am looking at liars.' Garvin thought. 'Shadows who have no power.'

What was keeping this horse afloat? Death.

“Th-thank you, your grace!” Garvin bowed. “I...”

He couldn't well give any guarantees for his wife's behaviour. There was little he could do to ever change her mind.

“I do hope for the best.” He said instead, queasy inside.

Conchobair turned to his food then and the conversation was over.

After breakfast Garvin went to see how the children took to their new friends and saw that it was good. Thalian and Elvar were futilely looking for a barrel in the garden where two laughing Araner Lancers had told them to look. The boys looked engaged and would no doubt be exhausted later and certainly sleep better tonight.

Thara and Eara sat at the fairy fountain huddled in warm blankets and attended by Erin Morganyr and Talia of Albenblood-Lighthouse. Talia was lovingly brushing Eara's hair while Erin was giving instructions in embroidery. The picture almost brought Garvin to tears, and he chose not to disturb it.

That was hard, though. He had given his children away after all. But who knew. If after all this madness there was still a world left to inhabit, Udlaidrim was not far from Feyrenwall, and Garvin would often be able to visit. Perhaps this was it. Perhaps this was the start of a better life.

If not for Laura.

The man-eating enormity was on her side, still sleeping on the other end of the castle like some queer, evil mountain that moved up and down with soft, godly breaths. She had come back late yesterday, bringing Lord Ilaen and his court to Iaun Cyll. She was snoring softly and girlishly, and yet Garvin could hear it from hundreds of meters away, like a great wind stirring in the woods. It was frightening.

While he walked aimlessly around the enormous castle, his mind was piecing together a new song, albeit one that would not help him free his wife. It was inspired largely by the look on some of the Albenblood levies' and men at arms' faces. The song was new in style as well as theme and would be difficult to realize because it required two voices, skilfully worked against each other in a conflicting duet.

The preparations for Laura's breakfast were going on, baking bread, boiling mutton, salt pork and so forth. Iaun Cyll had many kitchens to service the large barracks that were built to house an army of thousands and withstand sieges of several years while doing so. The inside of the thick outer walls would strike one as vulnerable to stone throwers because even though the houses were made of rocks and mortar their roofs were slate, thatch or shingle. That was without counting the four enormous towers, though.

On these huge, round, imposing towers had been stone and bolt throwers with long range due to their high vantage points. Only Laura must have destroyed these when she took the castle, Garvin concluded from the damage to the crenelations, and she had pulled down the top half of the north-western tower altogether.

To think that a body inhabited by a single mind was able to do such was a scary thing indeed.

But as for the people inhabiting the castle now, they all had to come to terms with their fear of Laura. If Garvin's singing could help with that then this would be a good thing.

He came by a barrack with a bench outside its doorway on which a youth in gambeson was resting out the contents of the empty wine skin next to him. His padded jacked was quartered in Albenblood red and black but a badge on his cloak showed the colours of House Ardwain, a white dog with a red collar on a green field. He had a dagger on his belt and a wooden mace was resting against the bench, next to a small lute.

At Garvin's approach, the young man opened his eyes: “What?! Urgh.”

He could not be older than sixteen.

“I see the badge of Ardwain on your cloak.” Garvin said. “Who are you?”

“That's my house's sigil.” The youth sat up and rubbed his head. “I am Cathal, son of Reodred, the castellan at Feyrenwall.” He looked about and winced. “I had hoped all of this was but a bad dream.”

Garvin had seen Reodred Ardwain once, much as he had seen most people of any note around Albernia during the time that he had been a singer. The leathery castellan was a military man through and through and an archetypal middle piece between his Lord and his garrison, capable but without many ambitions of his own. Garvin found that admirable.

“If so then why have you not stayed with your father?” He asked, trying to somehow get to the point where he might ask the youth whether he'd be interested in trying the song with him.

“Ah,” Cathal rubbed his face top to bottom, “my place is with my lord of Albenblood. I am his page.”

Sixteen was awfully old for a page, Garvin thought. The lad should have been made a squire long ago. But if he was incapable or unreliable, perhaps on account of too much of a fondness for drink, Ilaen might well withhold the advancement. In such a case it was also no wonder he went looking for new pages.

“I do not fail to see, however, that you are not with your lord and master just now.” Garvin hinted. “Uh, meaning no offence.”

The lad looked at him questioningly before his mouth formed a large, big O.

“Has...has he already broken his fast? I'm supposed to be with him. He told me to...”

“Get the rust out of his mail?” Garvin smiled softly. “That's already been taken care of. He has a new page, mine own son, Elvar.”

“Oh.” Cathal bit his lip before hanging his head and reaching for the wine skin, squeezing the last few drops into his mouth.

Clearly, Ilaen Albenblood did not enforce discipline with his pages very harshly. Garvin was inclined to like that, thinking that a clever mind needed room to develop in, but at the same time he wished not for his son to become as that which he saw.

“I should go.” The lad swayed lightly when no more wine was coming out of his skin. “He will be looking for me.”

Garvin considered for a moment, weighing the morality of what he was about to say. He did not want to anger the young man, and the iron spikes in the wooden mace gave him the shivers. But he had to try his song.

“Ca...can you play that lute?” He asked, pointing.

The youth shrugged: “Just so well, I guess. I thought the girls might like it but I don't play so well when...”

“When you're in your cups?”

He nodded.

“Perhaps I can teach you a couple of things.” Garvin suggested. “How good is your voice for singing?”

“Albernia! Eternal is our vigil! Glorious and free!”

Garvin waved a hand to make it stop. His voice was rough from wine and ache. No doubt Cathal had carpenters working in his forehead because he sounded as though he had wood in his mouth. But for Garvin's new song that might be just right.

He took the small lute and sat, giving the strings a strumming and adjusting the tightness with four wooden screws at the top to improve the sound.

Then he played, a continuous, easy tune, first plucking individual string and then strumming them all together, like a call and a response. He took a deep, long note and followed with three high ones in quick succession, making sure they changed but befit each other.

“That sounds...different.” Cathal gaped at the lute in Garvin's hands. “How do you do that?”

“Here, so.” Garvin showed him different positions of the fingers when playing multiple strings in order to create a melody. “And with the tightness of your fingers you can make a sound longer and more vibrant or shorter and scratchier, like this.”

He could tell that the young man was enticed. For all the leathery efficiency of Reodred Ardwain, the old castellan at Feyrenwall, his son was clearly cut of a much different cloth.

“Now let me teach you some words that go with this song.” Garvin ventured after playing for a while. “I want you to sing not with me but against me, my verse beginning already when yours was just about to end, and the other way around. Do you understand? I call this song man at arms.”

He kept a watchful ear out for any shouts or or other foreboding omens in the castle, but all he could hear in that regard were Laura's snores. Cathal proved forgetful when it came to the words. They went in is one ear and appeared to leak out the other at the very same speed. His voice proved very well for the song however, and he figured out how to wrought his verses into Garvin's quite quickly.

The song began with the youth's lamenting call to which Garvin then immediately replied, right before the other fell in, almost interrupting him. Then there were certain lines they had to sing together for emphasis. It really sounded quite astonishing when they got it right.

“Man at arms!”

“I didn't sleep for a week and a day and a night.”

“My nights are restless!”

“For I have seen horrors.”

“Man at arms!”

“I am not the strongest nor cunning and I do feel that my days are numbered. Aye, aye, aye, I will, my lord, what ever you say and if it be that I fall on my sword. Fight for your lordship, kill for your lordship, or die for your lordship?”

“Man at arms!”

“Great wealth, they said, and glory you'll find.”

“Man at arms!”

“My loved ones' faces blur in my mind.”

“Man at arms!”

“By greater men's behest do I fight.”

“To the death!”

“At last it must be Boron release me.”

Cathal stood when they got that far flawlessly for the first time, looking at Garvin with eyes wide.

“This is marvellous!” He said. “So sad!”

“This would not be hard song to sing drunk, eh?” Garvin allowed himself a smile.

He felt he was walking on air, seeing his song work out like that.

“What comes next?”

“Well, next, the both of us have to sing the general melody, making music with our mouths. Let me see what you can do.”

It was not half bad, after a couple of tries. After that musical bridge, Garvin found himself out of verses, however. They worked at it together, occasionally retrying the first part to get the feeling of it again. That attracted onlookers from time to time, generating the sight of queasy pleasure on the soldiers' faces as they listened. And it was a guilty pleasure indeed. The song might be deemed defeatist, damaging to morale.

Garvin did not think so, but rather that it reflected a grim reality most if not all men at arms were somewhat aware of, even if they lacked the words to speak it out loud. A noble man or captain, depending on these men to fight for him, might yet feel differently, however, but that was part of what made it so savoury as well. It was their thing, and it was meant for them.

The two musicians were still engaged when they heard the sigh that cut the merriment suddenly short. Laura had woken. When Garvin looked he could see her, having sat up and stretching her arms, each more than thirty metres long, over the castle.

“Good morning to you, you little shrinkies.” She said to some people in her massive field of vision. “I've slept quite long, haven't I.”

She evidently did not wait for a reply but stood up immediately to her full imposing height, dwarfing each and everything around her. In her sleeping bag she bag she had been naked, it was now revealed, a fact she seemed to regret, hurrying to cover herself.

“It's cold today isn't it? Bwuuh!”

The breath coming from her mouth formed palpable clouds that remained much longer than they had any right to, giving her the appearance of actually breathing fire. She ogled at that fact and went to create a particularly large one, like a child in winter.

Then she looked down at where she had slept: “Did I crush any of you guys in my sleep? No, huh. You guys are too smart for that.”

One of her legs shot out.

“Aw, what's wrong? Don't want to get squished? Haha, beg me!”

She appeared to be in a jolly mood, which was somehow even more frightening that it had been when she was wroth. Garvin noted that his bladder had let go again, but he was beyond being ashamed of that now. It would get better, he told himself. He had only spent half a day, a night and a morning at Iaun Cyll so far. He would get used to it.

“I have to go look for my...” He started at Cathal Ardwain but when he looked down he found that the youth was missing.

The mace was still there, leaning against the bench as it had been, but the wine skin was gone.

'Poor lad.' Garvin thought, claiming the lute for his own. 'And worse yet, unreliable.'

He wanted to go look for him, work on the song, cling to normalcy as Ilaen Albenblood and is wife had apparently decided was best for their humours.

“Aw, you little thing, don't be afraid.” The beast's voice rang from above. “I'm just playing!”

“Man at arms...” Garvin whispered and hummed softly under his breath as he made his way back to the lordly mansion, strumming numbly on the instrument in his hands.

Iaun Cyll was huge and constructed so orderly that it was easy to forget sometimes where one was. Barracks could look eerily alike and neigh all was stone. There were three major alleys from the lordly part of the castle through the military part and onto the gate, one in the middle and two behind each wall. Then there were two smaller ones in between again, and little paths in between the large buildings.

Near the gate, where Laura slept, almost everything was flat. The giantess had simply trampled everything in order to create a place for herself to lay down. Garvin was uncomfortable around there but at the mansion it was not quite better. Autumn had turned the fallen leaves yellow, brown and red. Needle trees stood in dark, deep green, like towering watchmen, belittling him as he went near. The hedges in the gardens were low but left to grow wild as everything else.

The Fenwasians did not believe in trimming, keeping everything as it would be in the Farindel which they held in holy regard. They did also not believe in the Twelve, which was why there were no shrines around here. The only marginally devotional item was the well, depicting the large stone fairy. No water was currently gushing from the vessel she held, but there must have been at some point, judging from where it had washed away the stone and green grime had accumulated.

Garvin turned away from the mansion for the moment and went to the well. Perhaps he'd find a shrine to pray somewhere in the barracks, but he doubted the soldiers that had ever been stationed there worshipped the gods he needed just know. And which of the Twelve might help him he was himself at a loss about as well. Possibly all of them. Possibly none at all.

He considered tossing a copper into the well for good luck, but thought that unwise. The fairy smiled her stony smile, looking sideways and down at some small fish in the waters. Birds had shat onto her head, shoulders and wings so it was unclear what she was smiling about. In a certain light, she even looked a little unhinged.

Garvin went back to go into the mansion, deciding that this was no place for him.

Inside, he found the girls Eara and Thara as well as the esteemed ladies Ceara of Jasalin, Talia of Albenblood-Lighthouse, Erin Morganyr and Moraine of Draustone sitting in front of the hearth in the great hall. Eara sucked her thumb while Thara showed her how to do needlework without pricking one's fingers. Moraine was resting her eyes while the other ladies were discussing whether flax, wool or both would make the best stuffing for new doll they would make for Thara so that Eara could have the old one. It was idyllic, even if it was playing at pretence.

The picture was disturbed by three Conchobair men at arms and two Albenblood men in attendance. The former were watching over the ladies, Garvin knew, and the latter were watching so the former would not get any ideas.

The boys Elvar and Thalian were hacking at each other with wooden swords in a corner, watched over by Hilmer, the stuttering, violently common instructor at sword and spear. Even Garvin's mother was there, occupying a window seat, knitting a small woollen sock.

No one paid him any mind and it seemed to him as if he were intruding.

'I do not belong here either.' He thought and turned on his heel. 'But where do I belong?'

Strangely, he found his place on the other side of the castle at Ilaen Albenblood's side, standing in Sir Aeneas' huge shadow. Why he'd gone here he couldn't have said. Perhaps because there was no where else for him to go.

Laura had gone over and outside the walls to wash herself in the river while the king pretender and his retinue to whom they now belonged awaited her. Masses of fodder were being brought, pots of steaming mutton poured into barrels with the broth, baskets and baskets of freshly baked bread from the ovens as well as enough oat and grain porridge to drown every man present.

“Singer!” Ilaen smiled mildly at Garvin when they met. “Have you seen my page to whom this lute belongs?”

Garvin was still carrying it, fond of its sound and even fonder of the fact that it made him visibly a musician.

“Uh.” He inclined his head. “Aye, my lord. He has a good sense for song.”

Sir Aeneas snorted into his beard but said nothing.

Ilaen gave him a frown: “That's one quality, at least. Not enough to build my hopes up, but at last something good I might say about him. He does not quite take after his father, I fear.”

“Well.” Garvin chewed his lip. “Perhaps being a warrior is not for him. It never was for me, so...”

“Would you like to receive instructions at sword and shield?” The lord interrupted him. “Perhaps, some day, I could in good conscience knight you, even.”

“Uh...” Garvin was taken aback, struggling for an excuse to decline the outrageously generous offer.

'You have my children and my thanks for that as well.' He thought. 'Would you take my music from me next?'

Mathariel Swordsong had been both a knight and a singer. The trouble was that Garvin was not Mathariel Swordsong.

“The giantess has said I must be a fool.” He finally said meekly. “I dare not defy her, for I am craven.”

Aeneas snorted again, angrily this time, but immediately caught Lord Ilaen's rebuke.

“To be afraid of her is not craven, Aeneas.” He said, surprisingly stern. “I am afraid of her to my very bones! Sense, I call that, not cowardice.”

Garvin felt immensely grateful until it all was replaced with mind-numbing terror when Laura stepped back over Iaun Cyll's enormous walls. In his mind he was trying to get songs in order in case she wanted him to perform, but all he could think of was man at arms and there was no one near to sing it with him.

He felt the tremor of her buttocks pummelling the ground when she plopped herself down in front of them all. Reo Conchobair stood out front with Eris Talvinyr, the steward of Feyrenwall. The rest of the men present were either looking on with mixed expressions on their faces or occupying themselves by delivering food. Steaming bread and mutton truly were never so mesmerizing as now, judging by the way the carriers kept their eyes upon them.

Sitting, the giantess was still at least forty metres tall, about as many steps as Garvin stood away from her.

She looked around: “Hm, I like this. We already look like a small army, don't we.”

To her, that would have been an army of ants, or something slightly larger than that. Crickets, perhaps Garvin thought, upright walking crickets in surcoats, carrying little stings capable of inflicting little more than flea bites to her. It posed the disconcerting question why she even bothered. She must have been a gathering mind after all, or a so malevolent one that she liked having her feet kissed by her victims before she murdered them in bulks.

“Why is this bread steaming?” She remarked, gingerly picking up a backed of loafs that looked as though the had just been taken from the ovens. “Is it fresh?”

The bread Garvin had eaten that morning had not been half bad. It occurred to him, however, that Iaun Cyll might have much too few bakers to accommodate Laura's enormous appetite. She had consumed tons upon tons of food the night before. Clearly far more than any army.

When she ate the hot bread, her mouth steamed even more than before but she did not wince with pain or go mad with rage as one might have feared. It simply did not perturb her.

Garvin soon found it easier to hide behind Sir Aeneas broad shoulders rather than to look upon the giantess and watch her eat. Surely it was best if she didn't see him too.

“Reo, I think I have to attack Honingen today. What do you think?” Her voice vibrated straight through the huge knight, flesh, bone and armour all.

And even if Garvin had poured molten led into his ears he was sure he would still hear it booming in his head.

“That's how the plan goes!” Reo Conchobair called up to her face. “But now that Lord Ilaen is with us I would think it wiser to secure the rest of Niamor first! I need men, Laura!”

For a moment, there was only the sound of her eating.

Then she sighed: “Fine! Lord Ilaen, that means you must come with me, I suppose? Who better to bring your fief to heel without me having to plough it under. How are you? Is your wound giving you trouble?”

Garvin hadn't known or seen any wound on him but now that he had to shout he held his side: “I'll do what ever you command so long as my wife and children are kept safe!”

There was iron stubbornness in his grey-green eyes when he tossed a defying look back at Sir Aeneas. Then he marched ahead, stopping next to Conchobair.

He was slightly taller than the king but they almost shared the same hair colour. Conchobair's was slightly darker and shorter, and not as wild. Since both their cloaks were black it still made them look almost interchangeable from behind. Ilaen wore no steel armour, whereas Reo wore chainmail beneath his blacks, so that would give it away from in front. Their faces were also largely dissimilar, Ilaen possessing somewhat deep-set eyes and Conchobair a larger, dimpled chin and bigger mouth.

“I have heard,” Ilaen continued, “that four of my men have attempted to escape in the night! I can assure you that they have acted without my knowledge. Their lives are therefore yours, for they are deserters!”

It took him strength to say it and not only on account of wound. He was an understanding man, clearly too lenient. Garvin would have thought that to be a favourable trait, but having seen what had become of Cathal, his page, he was starting to think otherwise.

“Five men!” Conchobair corrected with a side glance and a cheeky smile. “One got away!”

“Oh really?” Laura cocked a brow with a mouth full of mutton and bread. “Bring them here then!”

Conchobair waved a hand to some of his men: “They've been peeled and washed for your enjoyment!”

The four men were naked and visibly clean, walking with hands before their privy parts and their eyes locked upon the ground. Conchobair's men formed a half circle behind them, prodding them onwards whenever there was falter in their resolve.

“Hm, I like that even more!” The giantess grinned from ear to ear.

Garvin didn't look long enough to see if any slobber might be running down her chin, but judging from the hunger in her voice that might well have been true. She started right away, bending forward from her seat and down to the ground.

When the crowd gasped and took a jump backwards Garvin felt compelled to look again and almost pissed himself another time. She puckered her lips, brought them close enough to the nearest naked man and started to suck. When his shoulder seemed to touch her lip he was suddenly yanked off the ground and vanished, all at once, as if he had been sucked out of this very world by a force ungodly strong.

Then, while she rose, he re-emerged from her lips while she played with him.

He screamed, shouted and pleaded for mercy while she fed his hopes, giving him glimpses of light that he would rush to with his utmost fervour. But ere he could detach himself from her mouth she would close her lips, trap him, squeeze him, giggle and suck him back inside.

“Cursed!” Sir Aeneas gasped, sounding strangely feeble.

Only Garvin noted the stream of yellow water trickling to the ground between his feet.

“Mhhh, I craved that more than you know.” Laura informed the assembled forces, rubbing her neck.

The man inside her mouth was gone and already she went to claim the others. At this point they only prayed. No one put up any sort of fight. They did not look as though they had been tortured but they must have known that there was no mercy to be had, no escape feasible.

She sucked them into her mouth one after the other and rose once more. Then her jaw moved up and down, a slow rhythm, pulping everything that came in between her teeth.

Garvin's breakfast rushed up through his throat and ended up half on the ground and half on Sir Aeneas dark grey cloak. The knight was indisposed to mind, however, retching up ale like a waterfall.

Then, it happened.

Lord Ilaen's voice was pregnant with dread: “Giantess! King Reo has promised me to plead for the release of a banner...woman of mine! The Lady Elia Tavynyr in your dungeons!”

Conchobair shifted on his feet and swayed his head: “Err, that is true! I want to beg for her release!”

Garvin felt light-headed. He had to sit down.

'Did I accomplish this?'

Would his wife be proud of him? She had to, he figured.

Laura sighed once more.

“Why is it that you have so many demands this morning?” She said in a scolding voice. “But, fine. For the sake of little Lord Ilaen, let her free. If she annoys me I'll ram her up someone's bunghole, though, and I can't promise that it'll be mine!”

“That is all I ask!” Reo Conchobair replied too quickly, causing a hearty laugh from the giantess.

“Are you sure you're a king-to-be and not a fool?” She asked and Garvin's heart dropped into his smallclothes. “Speaking of which, where's my little singer?”

He had to come out but found himself unable to move once more. It wasn't until Aeneas yanked him to his feet and pushed him that he had use of his legs again.

“I am...very g-gratef...”

“Sing it!” She scowled down on him, seeming to grow infinitely larger as she did so.

'She's bending down to me!' A voice cried in his mind. 'She will slurp me up and send me down her gullet, like a little...'

A little what, though. What was he to her.

“My thanks!” He croaked, strumming the lute. “My wife is my life...and all...would be trite...if it weren't f-for the... her scowl...like an fearsome, old...owl! I...”

“You're not funny today.” She broke in, displeased. “I advise you get funny again, or I shall have to amuse myself with you some other way.”

'Should I reply? What would she want to hear?'

She had laughed yesterday about the most banal things.

“Aye!” He strummed and tried at his most sweet voice.

She smiled: “That's marginally better. Still, you'll have to show more elan than this. I want a new song, a really, really good one. I don't care what it's about. Make one like the one yesterday. The one I liked. It doesn't have to be funny, just really, really good,” she shrugged lightly, “or I'll kill you.”

With Garvin's head swimming, Reo Conchobair broached the next issue. It only registered with him on the side, echoing hollowly in head.

Iaun Cyll was running out of food. Laura simply consumed too much of it too quickly. Eris Talvinyr stated that even though the harvest had just been brought in, at the current rate there was only enough food for somewhere between three and seven days. She was unsure about the exact number because she did not have access to the accounts and ledgers, if there were any, so her calculations were based on assumptions and extrapolations.

Laura clearly had a hard time wrapping her mind about the subject. Her head was large, but in many respects she was clearly none too bright, not that any of them present were, far as Garvin could have said, he himself included.

Reo suggested to appoint Eris Talvinyr as steward of the castle until such a time as that Lord Ilaen would return to Feyrenwall, and that Laura should bring food out of Niamor along with the men.

“No.” Laura said to the first suggestion. “Eris can do whatever she wants, or rather, I want her to keep an eye on things. What I really want, though, is for Branwyn to finally act like a queen! She's not even here, so where is she?! Sitting in her room again, combing her fucking hair?!”

Reo Conchobair did not have an answer for that.

“Branwyn is the new steward. Eris can help her, teach her, whatever, but she can't take the work off her shoulders. I want a full report of our accounts tomorrow. Tell her that.”

Laura ingested the rest of her food in haste in order to get going, taking Lord Ilaen, Eradh Talvinyr and two Albenblood men at arms with her when she did.

“Can you do it?” Reo Conchobair put a concerned hand on Garvin's shoulder after she was finally gone.

He nodded, feeling very cold all of a sudden and finding that he had sweated waterfalls in addition to the clammy wetness between his legs.

“I should change my garb, your grace.” He said. “Then I must find Cathal Ardwain, the page.”

“You do.” The king pretender replied. “I shall speak to the princess now. She will spit blood and fire, I am sure. You, I require to speak with your wife. Lord Ilaen has requested that for the time being she guard the Lady Moraine of Draustone, as well as the children. You must let her know that if she aides in any attempt to free the Albenbloods I will have no choice but to have the both of you killed. And you know what that means now. You have witnessed it.”

“Aye, your grace.”

It didn't mean a noose, nor even a chopping block. It meant chomping teeth, large as boulders; stomping feet, or whatever cruel division sprang from Laura's mind.

Garvin went on shaking knees to get himself cleaned up and search for new clothes. He ought not to have been so scared, he tried to tell himself, because he practically already had a new song. It was brilliant, far as he dared to say, however it was not yet finished and the only person he had so far sung it with appeared to be a sixteen-year-old sot.

He found only scant women's wardrobe in the room he had previously occupied with his children, but in another room he found some spare woollens and linens he could wear.

There were no servants to draw baths and the great, marvellous bathhouse of the castle was not heated today, so he had to settle for cold water drawn from the well in order to wash himself. By the time he was done, midday had come and gone and he was no step further to completing his song.

Finding Cathal Ardwain would take another while but first he had to find his wife and speak with her. When he went to the north-eastern tower where the prisoners were kept she already waited for him without.

“You!” She grunted and punched him square in the jaw.

He felt a sharp sting of pain, a crack and felt one of his teeth on his tongue, broken in two pieces. The scent of mud came up his nose. He was face down in the dirt.

He let the tooth and blood fall out of his mouth, knowing that his wife might take offence if he spat. Then he rose and was greeted by her fist in his gut that send him right back down again, gasping for air.

“Did you fuck her!?” His wife dealt him a kick. “Did you crawl up inside her twat to get me freed you measly worm?! Urgh!”

She kicked him again and for a moment all he could see were stars.

“My lady!” Someone shouted, a young voice to be sure. “He pleaded for your release with the king and the king brokered it with the giantess! There was no exchange of...it was done in good will!”

Nevertheless, Elia wasn't satisfied ere she had dealt him another kick to the stomach, just for release of her anger. She could get terribly wroth, Garvin's wife, and when she did there was no backing down. She was undefeated, as far as arguments went in any case.

“I must...” He winced and coughed, “...make her a song. Or she will kill me!”

Elia only snorted and stomped off, still in rage.

When Garvin came to his senses he thought that some god must have had pity on him. The lad that stretched out a hand to pull him up was non other than Cathal Ardwain, glassy eyes, wine-skin on his belt and more than slightly drunk but still mostly at his senses.

He had a pimply face, this boy. Pink little hills on oily white skin, crested with little yellow dots. They seemed more pronounced than before. Perhaps the wine had done that, or perhaps the wine had made him paler.

“I've been looking for you. I...” The lad bit his lip. “Do you intend to sing our...I mean your...your song for the giant monster?”

Garvin took the hand and got to his feet, breathing. He still tasted blood in his mouth, gushing from the hole where the tooth had been. It was missing from the left lower side of his jaw and the place was swelling quickly. It wasn't the first time his wife had struck him, nor the first she'd knocked out one of his teeth. They did not regrow so losing one was probably bitter, but so long as it did not affect his singing, Garvin could live with it.

“I do not know.” He pronounced, thicker than his usual voice. “Shouldn't the song rather regard her?”

'Why am I always questioning myself?' He thought. 'Am I but a rug, for man and beast to tread on?'

He had seniority over this boy by virtue of age. Garvin was not nobly born but the name of Ardwain did not go very far. Moreover was this boy a page, and bad to boot at his job. He was a drunkard, craven, unreliable. He'd make a good singer yet.

“But I like it so much. It's good.” The boy tried a shy smile. “Would you sing it with me, just once more?”

Laura had so very much enjoyed the ad hoc song he had composed from frustration at Udlaidrim. Perhaps she would enjoy this one too. Far as he could see it stood as much chance as any. And if he could surprise her by presenting a duet then that was all the better. Or his death.

“We shall sing it.” Garvin replied. “But first we must finish it.”

And so they did.

They picked a quiet spot inside of a tower so as to be undisturbed. Conchobair men patrolled the walls of Iaun Cyll and occupied the tops of the towers so they'd be able to see anyone trying to climb without. Men were training in the yard as well and others were drinking or resting in the barracks or preparing food for the ever-hungry Laura.

Shut off from the outside world it felt wonderfully detached. Laura had gone. Elia had marched off to do Hesinde knew what. The children were taken care of, instructed at tasks the world deemed appropriate to them. If Elia misliked this, Garvin was not there as a rug to trod out her misgivings. The only measure of outside was what little light fell in from a nearby arrow slit.

“Man at arms!”

“I didn't sleep for a week and a day and a night.”

“My nights are restless!”

“For I have seen horrors.”

“Man at arms!”

“I am not the strongest nor cunning and I do feel that my days are numbered. Aye, aye, aye, I will, my lord, what ever you say and if it be that I fall on my sword. Fight for your lordship, kill for your lordship, or die for your lordship?”

“Man at arms!”

“Great wealth, they said, and glory you'll find.”

“Man at arms!”

“My loved ones' faces blur in my mind.”

“Man at arms!”

“By greater men's behest do I fight.”

“To the death!”

“At last it must be Boron release me.”

“Ohhhh!”

“Oh woe!”

“Oh woe!”

“Ohhhh!”

“Man at arms!”

“Had a friend with a heart thrice as large as his head, my lord, now he's dead, oh, my lord. The feeling of dread or' his loss has me lose all accord. I feel distraught!”

“Man at arms!”

“And I stumble and cough and I cry and I march, till I am where you want me, holding my spear. Shaking knees in face of thousands of foe men, what choice do I have now?”

“Man at arms!”

“Great wealth, they said, and glory you'll find.”

“Man at arms!”

“My loved ones' faces blur in my mind.”

“Man at arms!”

“By greater men's behest do I fight.”

“To the death!”

“At last it must be Boron release me.”

Then followed a musical part without singing before the refrain rounded the song off ere it ended.

“Ma...marvellous.” Cathal hiccuped when they were done.

He was well and truly drunk now, but it didn't affect his singing quite as much as Garvin had feared. His voice, if anything, was even improved by the wine-induced fervour and scratchiness. Garvin had had a little wine himself to dull the pain in his cheek, but not too much because it stung when he drank it. The swelling easing off and he found himself capable of delivering song in spite of Elia's beating.

“We'll have to sing it to the giantess.” He said softly, biting his tongue.

Cathal Ardwain pressed his lips together, then draining the last wine from his skin.

“We will.”

That was good. Garvin had no means to force the boy to perform with him and now that he thought of it he might expose him to danger that was avoidable.

“If she does not like it it might mean both our lives.” He said. “Perhaps I should just sing it by myself. It'll be slower and not as good but...”

“No!” Cathal's brows narrowed, his voice echoing from the walls. “I will sing! With you! She'll like it, you'll see, and maybe she'll make me a singer as thanks!”

Garvin scratched an itch on his chin: “Why would you want to become a singer? You are poised to become a knight.”

Cathal scoffed at him, swaying slightly in his seat: “I'll never be a knight! The clanger of blades gives me headaches when they crash into one another, not to mention when his lordship makes my head ring in the yard! He calls that training but I've had a bellyful of it!” He stood abruptly. “If you think you can claim all the glory of our work for yourself then...”

He stopped all so suddenly, gaping over and outside the arrow slit.

“What is this?”

They rushed to it, seeing the northern road and on it an army on the march. There was no saying how many men these were. Garvin wasn't a military man and had no eye for such things and the slit was narrowing his vision severely. Banners, he could tell though.

“We must get to the top!”

There, they saw them at once, near a thousand men, maybe more, coming down the road from the north. He saw many banners, badges and surcoats of different colours, but by far the largest bulk was yellow and black and marching behind a thistle banner with a green crest.

“Thistle Knights.” He gasped. “The strength of Barnhill.”

“Jasalin!” Cathal pointed to a smaller standard, displaying the three pointy, wine-coloured flowers on a white field.

“Aye,” Garvin nodded, breathless, “and I believe I see the colours of Belenduir. They will be from Ahawar, most likely Lady Jocya's bastards, Cirdrian and Yvain.”

The two young men had been legitimized by their mother after her husband fell in some war. Both had elven blood, pretty faces and pointy ears. The arms of Belenduir were a black stag jumping a blue river on a white field.

“The white stag with golden antlers on blue belongs to Ronan of Naris. Those will be men from Birchhang, but I'll be bitten if he's among them. He's the Baron of Seshwick in the Honinger lands where he spends his time. Birchhang has not three hundred souls.”

Ronan of Naris had been named Baron of Seshwick only a few years past after a brutal force of renegades had murdered the family branch of Stepahans who priorly held the title.

The banners they saw made clear how this force had assembled. The smaller forces came out of the Winhaller lands, to the city's south and west. It had to have been Arthgal Fenwasian of Barnhill who assembled them after hearing of what had happened.

At the rear of the large column was another large banner, the griffin of Gareth, framed by the two foxes. The man who bore that banner wore a green surcoat with white arms on his chest.

“Corrin of Wallwood.” Garvin said and pointed with his finger. “The sheriff of the Winhaller lands.”

He was from Niamor but had fallen out with Muriadh Albenblood during the time of the Red Curse. His sigil were three white firs under a white star on a green field.

“Why does he carry the imperial banner?” Cathal asked.

“For the same reason that banner used to fly over the city. Because Winhall is...uh, was an imperial city. Bragon Fenwasian had much power there and charged a large part of its taxes for protection, but nominally the city belonged to the Garethian throne.”

Winhall had not received much attention from the Garethian throne, however. That throne was sat by a little girl, Xaviera, and it were nobles, churches, wizards and trade houses who made the real politics. The Rondra church had had a holy temple in Winhall, but its members were too obsessed with fairness to haggle for any special privileges for the city on that account. It didn't have a mages college either and was not ruled by any nobles who carried weight at the Garethian court. In terms of trade houses there was only Stoerrebrandt who had been invested in the city, running a coaching house at the market square. The trade house of Hexen, native to the city, ran most other profitable ventures, mainly buying pelts from Nostrian hunters who would cross over the bridge, and then turning them into excessively expensive clothing.

That was all over now, however, ended under Laura's stomping feet and whoever the other giantess was.

Garvin noted a very peculiar thing then. The top of the tower was empty, but so were the walls. There was simply no one patrolling at this very moment.

Why, became clear shortly after when he saw what was happening in the yard. It seemed as though every man was there, watching two knights locked in combat with shields and swords.

It were Reo Conchobair, the false king, and Garvin's wife, Elia Talvinyr.

Everyone had stopped what they were doing to watch the unlikely battle, unaware of the hostile army that was approaching.

There were no siege weapons, no ladders or any such on side of the attackers, though. Far as Garvin could tell, from the enemy's vantage point it was rather impossible to determine if there were even people in Iaun Cyll at this time. All they saw were the massive walls, and gates that had been smashed and barred with rocks and rubble.

It was unlikely that they knew people were here. Garvin didn't know who would have told them. His guess was that Arthgal Fenwasian had caught wind of the horrors at Winhall, upon which he had then gathered troops and went there, gathering support at every stop. Finding the city destroyed he then turned south, following the set of giant footsteps that led here.

The question was what he would do now.

Garvin also remembered that the force might likely have come by Conchobair Castle. Whether there was even a garrison left there, and if so, if Arthgal had been able to enter that castle and question the garrison was another unknown, albeit one that would not have much influence on what would happen next.

The approaching men would only have to look at the ground in front of them to know that Laura had come and gone from Iaun Cyll several times at least. He hoped she would return soon. If not, horrible things might be about to unfold.

“What do they hope to achieve?” Cathal asked incredulously, watching the trickle of soldiers accumulate to a large pond on the road. “What madness is driving them to come here?”

That one was a very good question as well, Garvin found. He did not know. Could a thousand men in an open field hope to defeat Laura? He did not know. Were they aware of how large and terrible Laura was? He did not know.

This would be resolved once Laura came back from Niamor. For now, Reo Conchobair needed to be informed that there was an army at his gates.

That presented a new problem, however. Sir Aeneas seemed to be stirring flames of mutiny, as he had done at breakfast. Lord Ilaen was not here, but his men greatly outnumbered those of Reo Conchobair, and even amongst those men most were levies and had only come over from the forces that had been at Iaun Cyll when Laura took the castle.

If Aeneas could convince the Albenblood men to join forces with the army outside the gates, there might be bloodshed. Salvation from Laura, if this could mean that, Garvin regarded as temporary at best. She was a gathering mind and would surely rage terribly when she discovered her collection gone amiss.

'We must stand our ground and keep faith with Laura, however horrible that might be.' He thought. 'Or we must make haste and away from here, and disperse like sand into the wind so as to escape her wrath.'

“We should tell someone.” Cathal remarked.

“Aye.”

'But who?'

That was the crucial question. Whoever learned of this first would get a head-start in doing whatever they thought was right. The choice lay between Conchobair and Aeneas. This was an important decision.

It was also quite a pickle, really. Laura had openly threatened to kill Garvin if he didn't come up with a good song. But if Aeneas opted for revolt then all their survival would hinge upon being able to leave the castle before Laura came back, and they had nothing to move the boulders away from the gate.

Ropes had served but for one Albenblood man so far, meaning that the process took long. Iaun Cyll's walls were tall, twenty steps at least. Garvin didn't think he could stomach that.

So it was Reo Conchobair he must turn to, the man currently fighting his wife in the yard.

“Come.”

The duel was still going on when they arrived where Laura had slept several hours before. King Reo was wearing a pig-face bascinet, and chainmail on every inch of his body besides. Elia had donned some pot helmet that looked a little too large on her and wore less armour, especially nothing to keep her hands from being smashed. Her shield was a Fenwasian one, yellow and black, but at this point hacked almost entirely to raw wood by Conchobair's blunted blade. Her helmet had dents in it and her sword hand was bleeding badly, her pinky finger only still dangling there by a thread.

The sight turned Garvin's stomach all over again.

Conchobair grunted and staggered backwards on his feet, barely able to get his shield up, and sometimes in fact unable to parry Elia's blows. It looked as though he had been the dominant fighter early on, but lacked stamina. Elia was as methodical as she was stubborn, hacking, hacking and hacking as though she didn't feel the weight of her sword, nor her missing finger.

'She killed the man who cut off her ear.' Garvin thought queasily. 'Let's hope she does not kill this king.'

Sir Aeneas was watching, laughing heartily at Conchobair's misfortune, hard-pressed by a woman who fancied herself a knight. Even if Elia lost this mock fight the damage to the false king's reputation might already be irreparable. Then again, though, he didn't have any good reputation to loose from the beginning.

His parries came slower and slower and Elia made his head ring with her sword.

“Get him, Elia!” Aeneas roared over everyone else.

A Conchobair man at arms held against: “Your grace! Get your shield up!”

It wasn't any use, though. The pretender's strength was spent and Elia clobbered him mercilessly into submission until her pinky flew off her sword hand and her opponent lay vanquished in the dust.

Garvin looked around. The Albenblood men cheered. The Araner Lancers cheered. And the Conchobair men were fewer than them, although not quite as few as he had initially believed. Many of the Conchobair men had been Fenwasian men, though, and were levies, by enlarge, peasants someone had armed and dressed to resemble real soldiers. But the same was likely true about the Albenblood men.

All he knew was it would be bad if there was to be bloodshed.

A tall, old man in plain, brown robes rushed forward to the king on the ground: “Your grace, are you hurt?!”

“That's Rhuad Groterian, the healer.” Garvin heard one soldier whisper to another.

Conchobair's head rose, then fell again.

Elia was sucking on the stump of her finger but drew it out to sneer: “Think I can fight now, you men?!”

Some looked a little incredulous, but most did not begrudge her her victory, laughing and cheering. Conchobair had been wrong to underestimate her, but still.

“If our blades had been sharp I would have killed you thrice over, woman!” He spat on the ground.

His face was bloodied, but non too badly.

“I advice you not suck on that!” Rhuad Groterian admonished Elia. “You will breathe corruption into your flesh. I will staunch your wound with a hot knife, soon as I am certain his grace is well!”

“Pah!” Elia brushed back her hair and showed her missing ear. “Bring me a torch and I'll do it myself! Tend to this king, old man. I have no need of you. I die undefeated! Only short a finger and an ear!”

That produced roaring laughter all around. It was hard to believe that Elia had been regarded as a freak until recently, isolated in her little tower keep. Things were different now, for the nonce at least. Hate of their new king unified Niamor, and there were more Niamor men coming.

First, however, there was that little thing about the army outside the gates. Garvin wanted to move to the king and tell him to keep his hostages under stronger guard before telling him about the army. Alas, Cathal, the drunk, young fool, could no longer keep his mouth shut.

“There's a Fenwasian army outside!” He shouted, quieting everyone at once.

Then he shouted again.

Sir Aeneas' face was terrifying to behold. He was a huge man, fearsomely bearded and his grey cloak had these two crossed axes and the hideous oak tree embroidered on it.

He made the decision at once.

“Kill the usurper's men!” He screamed, eyes wide. “Free the hostages!”

“What?!”

A stir went through the assembled men but no fight broke out immediately. Sir Aeneas had already drawn his sword, however, marching straight at Reo Conchobair on the ground.

“Laura has Lord Ilaen, you great fool!” The king pretender climbed to his unsteady feet. “If you kill me, he’s done!”

The big knight stopped and scowled, then snorted like a lathering war horse and moved on, sword in hand. Reason would be no end to this folly.

But it came different than Garvin had feared. Some Araner lancers heeded the call for blood. One got a wooden mace with iron spikes, like the one Cathal had had, and smashed in the head of the man next to him. Steel was at hand all around quickly, but the Albenloods seemed non too convinced this was a good idea.

Sir Aeneas marched straight at the king. He didn't have a shield in hand, thinking this beaten foe unthreatening. Reo Conchobair had been trained by a sword master, not a knight, and Scanlail ui Uinin fought with short-sword and dagger, no shields in any case.

Elia stood stupidly, watching everywhere at once, unsure what to do. That at least was good.

The tourney swords would be precious little use in this fight and Aeneas slashed the one from Reo's weak grasp almost effortlessly. His next blow went at the king's head, but the chipped heater shield flashed up in the last instant, catching the cut on its iron rim.

The huge knight took no care about his cover, sending the next blow against the shield as well, and then another. Reo would not be able to withstand this long, but neither did he have to.

Whatever men said about Reo Conchobair, or how he won this fight, Garvin could not find it in him to condemn it. Attacking a man like this, after an exhausting fight and armed only with a blunt weapon was un-Rondrian enough to warrant nigh on any feasible defence.

The shield went low as Aeneas' sword rose for a down cut, and Reo's dagger flashed straight from its sheath up into Aeneas' beard. The eyes beneath the bushy, yellow eyebrows went wide. The sword plummeted to the ground. And the big man fell backwards while Reo held on to his blade, easing it out of Aeneas' throat red and dripping with blood.

“Stop this!” He roared, long and deeply. “Lay down your arms! In the name of me, your king, whether you like it or no!”

Reo had not been crowned yet, and he didn't wear a crown on his head, but as far as power went that was to be regarded as a minor detail.

“Get after those runners!” He pointed to three men who were sprinting down the main road to the lordly mansion. “Make certain no harm comes to Albenblood's family! The rest of you, arm yourselves! We're under siege!”

Arthgal Fenwasian was not tall for a noble, had dark blond hair, scowling eyes, a square jaw and a hideous birthmark on the right side of his face. People were generally afraid of him, not because he might have been a ferocious fighter or particularly cruel, quite the opposite, but because of a somewhat mystical aura that surrounded him. People said he could foresee things, sometimes, or know things he had no business knowing. He was forty three, and much more of a political player than a fighter.

His horse was barded yellow and black, a grey Tralloper Giant with shoulders taller than its rider.

Arthgal scowled up at them on the walls: “What in Farindel's name is this now?!”

Foresight might have failed him this time, Garvin reasoned. Perhaps this was just too unforeseeable.

A squire attended to him, but the other Thistle Knights, all three lances of Barnhill, were back with the main force.

Next to Arthgal in attendance was Corrin of Wallwood, the forty-six-year-old sheriff of the Winhaller lands with his eyes always half shut. It was as great a display of his wit as anything. The man had a reputation for being a bit on the reckless side, trusting his gut with his decisions rather than his head. He had a scruffy beard, nondescript hair and the overall appearance of a man who did not care how he looked.

“Who's that up there?” He asked, not bothering to open his eyes wide enough to see clearly.

Iaun Cyll's walls were twenty meters tall at the least, surely high enough to require one's full eye-sight to see.

“King Reo Conchobair, if it please you,” the spoken to hollered down, “though I have yet to be crowned!”

“King is it?!” Arthgal called up. “No, that does not please me! His Royal Highness always deemed you a scheming plotter! Though, truth be told, too many of his vassals are as to make a matter!”

“We're looking for two ogresses!” Corrin of Wallwood said loudly, more to the wall than the men atop. “Are they inside the castle? Why 's there rubble in your gates?”

The side glance Fenwasian dealt him said everything that needed to be said.

“Is your face red with shame, Reo?!” Elgar of Jasalin asked from his horse.

The horse was barded in a dress quite similar to Ceara of Jasalin's that morning, Garvin remembered. When one's sigil was such a beautiful one, one had best put it on display. The rider atop was not such a feast for the eyes, a nondescript man of nondescript age in chainmail.

“I have no feud with you, Jasalin!” Reo called down. “Ilaen has joined my cause. You had best stand down till he comes back!”

Ilaen and Elgar, Albenblood and Jasalin, had blood ties that ran deep enough to call them one family, indeed.

“I'll cut out your tongue for that lie!” The other shouted enraged. “By what treason is it that you hold this castle and call yourself king?!”

More and more men appeared upon the wall, many carrying bows and crossbows. The men below were getting uneasy at their sight.

“You shall have save conduct for our talk!” Reo tried to ease them and stretched out a mailed hand. “And it's blood that's on my face, mine own and that of the traitor who tried to murder me! I claim this castle and title by right of conquest! Hear me when I say that I had little choice in the matter!”

That sounded almost too absurd to believe.

“Be that as it may!” Corrin of Wallwood resolved. “You declare yourself a usurper and none here recognize your right to these walls! Consider yourself besieged! We'll root you out and hang you like the brigand you are!”

“May I offer to resolve this dispute by single combat and save us all the bother?” Offered the beautiful Yvain Belenduir.

He wore hunters gear, dark greens, a narrow huntsman's hat with a feather, a bow and quiver in his saddlebag. From his hip dangled loosely a rapier and he had wrought his black beard in a Horasian fashion, thin, pointy moustache and goatee. A man in Bragon Fenwasian's service, he displayed the Black Skirts' version of the black thistle as a badge on his jerkin. He had long ridden with the Treasury Guard and earned a reputation in the county as a ruthless man who was fanciful and deadly with his bow.

Garvin started to understand that it weren't by far mostly peasants that had come knocking on their gates here, but a large part of what forces Bragon Fenwasian used to rule as count.

“This is a distraction!” Arthgal Fenwasian noted, more to his side than the opposite. “Where are those giantesses that did for the town?!”

The town meant Winhall, which by all accounts Garvin had heard thus far had been reduced to its outer walls, all else smashed to rubble and every person annihilated. Reo Conchobair's lips pursed for a moment, thinking how to reply.

“They're not...” He started ere thinking of something better and then stopping again. “They're gone to...”

He was indecisive and took too long.

“They're not here, are they?” Yvain Belenduir dipped his hat. “What about my offer then? You and me Conchobair. I'll fight the Horasian way. No shield, no armour! Third blood, they call it. It means we will fight till you are dead!”

“Ha!” Reo gave a mocking smile in reply. “Us baseborn curs, stealing the glory from these here high-born nobles? I think not.”

Arthgal Fenwasian was studying him from below ere issuing his verdict: “Do not waste your breath on this one! It is the giantesses we are after!”

Corrin Wallwood was unappeased: “But we have to root him out of this castle!”

“I will lead a scout party to see were these foot steps lead.” The dark, quiet Cirdrian Belenduir offered. “Meanwhile you camp here and make siege towers. If the giant beasts turn up we will deal with them first.”

They expected to face two Laura's, likely having misinterpreted the footsteps they had found. Only Corrin Wallwood could be dim and heedless enough to think them ogre tracks. That they figured themselves to stand a chance made Garvin uneasy. If they did, this could turn out bad.

Laura was nowhere in sight but could move across the landscape with terrifying quickness. This evening she would come back, Garvin judged. Then the dice would fall.

“Shall we exchange arrows then, rather then words?” Reo Conchobair offered confidently. “I am weary, and I feel a strong urge to cleanse myself in the bathhouse!”

That was an unlikely eloquent insult from this man and it was largely well received. Yvain Belenduir smiled a cocky smile and swore to use Reo's head for target practise. Corrin Wallwood turned his horse about without a single emotion on his face while Elgar of Jasalin was still scowling.

“We shall.” Arthgal Fenwasian said both to Reo Conchobair and Cirdrian Belenduir's suggestions. “May Farindel watch over us while we do.”

No sooner had the riders returned to their army did they make true on their word. Garvin made sure he was not privy to the exchange of arrows and soon Reo Conchobair followed. Sir Aeneas Albenblood-Iarlaith still lay in the yard, blood pooling beneath his corps. Surviving Araner Lancers were held in custody, fodder for such a time when Laura returned.

“Don't fret, singer.” The fraud king told him when their paths crossed near the huge phallic stone that Garvin had heard a particularly gruesome tale about. “It is easy to be brave behind a castle wall and these buggers shall not reach us before Laura returns.”

She would return this evening at the latest, surely, whereas making ladders or siege towers capable of scaling the walls would likely take several days. If truth be told, Garvin had not felt unreasonably afraid before fear itself had been mentioned. Now, he felt like he might well wet himself again.

“Aye, y-your grace.” He stammered. “But perhaps it would be wisest to find something to throw at them in any case?”

The king looked at him confidently. Losing to Elia had shamed him, but repelling Sir Aeneas dishonourable attack through cunning and skill had, in his mind, no doubt restored his reputation.

“Filth, I am thinking.” He said. “I mean to have the contents of our bowels well boiled. We have pitch and oil as well, from Bragon's stores. But I think we shall not need them. Tell your wife she has done well not to pick sides. From now on, though, I expect her to be on mine.”

Elia was nowhere in evidence, and Garvin had no wish to talk to her. It wasn't as though he didn't love her. They had two children together, after all. But in this confused situation with everything uncertain she seemed even more prone to anger and violence than Garvin was used to. That frightened him as well.

“I am certain she will be glad to hear it, your grace.”

That was so strange, the easy the way the lie slipped out of his mouth. Without even thinking.

But the king smiled an even stranger smile: “I envy you not, singer. And yet, I think I am like you, in a way. Aren't we both despised by the likes of him?”

He nodded to Sir Aeneas dead body and Garvin had no idea what to say.

“It'll all come right.” Reo continued with a deep look to the ground. “It'll come right or I'll have Laura flatten it.”

And with that he marched off, pulling Garvin with him. It was no moment too soon because just then it started drizzling arrows. Bogai, instructor at bows, had the wall and the opposing forces were exchanging arrows with each other. It was more of a gesture than anything else, a probing of each other's resolve.

Soldiers were running about, bringing arrow supplies to the western wall. Then they would start carrying wounded men to the barracks. Yvain Beleduir likely had the command of the skirmishers below the wall. Garvin wanted no part of it.

Reo Conchobair, on account of his birth and the circumstances under which his father died, was not well regarded and seldom seen outside of Conchobair Castle. He had no measure of Arthgal, Elgar, Corrin, Yvain or Cirdrian. The Belenduir bastards were the real danger, vain and cruel, but capable most of all.

Yvain was a deadly accurate bowman and a fierce fighter. Everyone said so. Cirdrian on the other hand was something else. The man had come back to his mother only three years past, shaggy and dark-minded as a stray dog. He'd been a sell-sword, served with the Moor Watch at Cablaidrim and reputedly fought in many a bloody battle. He was cunning and a swift horseman. The precautions he was taking had Garvin worried most of all. If he managed to elude Laura...

-

'I'm making war like I used to write papers.' Laura thought glumly. 'Pushing deadlines on the important stuff and losing myself in trivial bullshit.'

That was in effect what she was doing here, or at least she thought so initially. She should get going on Honingen, but if truth be told, by now, she was afraid of it. Had she dealt with it in time it would not have mystified so greatly in her mind, and the amazing, bloody welcome party that she imagined awaited her there could have been avoided. But what was done was done and all lost on all fronts.

Well, not really, but she was taking too much time with Albernia. It wasn't that it was particularly big. It was just that it was so full of things, little things, things to marvel and look at, things to fall in love with, be afraid of or destroy.

She had slept long to begin with and tried to make up time on the road to Feyrenwall by walking extra fast. Yesterday had worked out okay, she surmised, but not okay enough. She ought to get a lot more done in a single day than she had thus far.

But for that purpose, doing what she did now was the opposite of what she ought to have done.

She only hoped those troops would be worth it.

They went first via Udlaidrim, Garvin's little tower, followed by the village of Eriansfield, which was empty, to Feyrenwall. Reodred Ardwain, the leathery castellan, gave to account that work on the damaged drawbridge was ongoing and that that his watches had not seen anything of note.

From there they went to Caornsrest, empty but for a first few dead on the road who must have died from exhaustion, and Aruindrim, empty as well but for a few old people. They were following a trail through the woods much too small for Laura's feet and hard to keep track of from above when Laura noted the first odd things occur. The red trees.

Ilaen, it turned out, was just the man to explain to her what the Red Curse was, where it had come from and what its effects had been, and he did so with a salty amount of hate and disdain in his voice. The horror that had been conjured up by his father's worship of some dark fairy was retreating now, but there were still signs of it here and there.

Some trees had red leaves or needles, even though the trees next to them were green, yellow, brown or bare. Some trees had red bark, leaked red sap that looked suspiciously like blood. The air smelled funny, rotten almost, next to those trees. One red tree Laura stepped upon felt like it was made out of rubber, or flesh, and bled streams of the foul, red stuff.

Once she put her foot next to one of the worse trees and could have sworn she felt it briefly grasp her ankle, like a hand, but it was probably only that her pant leg had caught in some of the sturdier branches. At Albengrove they found people who had not heard of Laura, which was astonishing because the way was not so far at all.

Much of the less-than-three-hundred-soul place fled into the woods at the first sign of her coming. Another part armed up and meant to face her, thinking her a manifestation of the curse. Ilaen was able to resolve it and put the people's mind at ease, speaking briefly to the village elder and instructing him to send every able-bodied man to Weyringen Castle.

Laura was anxious to get going.

The next place, Ludoruin, was a large farm estate run and ruled by a daughter of Reodred Ardwain, Sive, a thirty-eight-year-old widow who told them about a band of outlaws that had occupied a castle ruin nearby and was pestering the locals.

“Say no more.” Laura smiled, put down her passengers and went.

'Here we go with the trivial shit.'

Apart from being lazy and party-obsessed, her time in university had been plagued by a tendency of studying the wrong things when she actually got down to studying at all. She'd start to read an article about an anthropological subject, find a cool word or subject and google it before spiralling down in circles of procrastination, deeper and deeper into the cool but test-subject-irrelevant parts of the internet.

There was an actual ruin that had once been a castle, standing atop a large rock not all too far from Ludoruin. The floors had rotted out, the ancient walls were more not there than there and nature had crept so close that any enemy would have had an easy time creeping up on the place.

Strange animal sounds were emitted from lookouts posted on trees to warn of the approaching foe. Laura looked but briefly and only discovered one of them whom she promptly crushed along with the tree he sat on.

When she came upon the place, the outlaws were in some state of disarray, hastily packing up their ill-gotten loot in order to flee. She was too fast for them. Worse yet, since the rock the small castle ruin stood upon was high and steep, there was only one way out, down a thick, old spruce that had partially toppled and grown somewhat sideways afterwards. The outlaws used it as a ramp or ladder to get on top of the rock, and used a long, thick rope to haul up supplies.

There was a campfire below and the three that must have sat there were hastily making their way up the tree now, realizing their mistake when they saw her.

They must have expected knights or soldiers, she thought.

Anyone in that tree died when she uprooted it and trampled it to splinters with a few steps. The rest was practically a knee-high buffet that occasionally shot singular arrows at its giant patron and tried to hide in nooks and crannies when it did not. Laura ate all she could find, counting twenty nine men, and called that lunch, although they were really only a light snack. Then she turned around and did as Janna had done at Sir Ludwig's keep, bulldozing the entire place under her rump and bouncing a few times to make sure everyone little man who had eluded her got nice and pancaked.

She wished more places had convenient seats like that, but she couldn't very well take the rock with her.

“They'll trouble you no longer,” she said when she went back to the estate to pick up Ilaen, Eradh and the others.

Next they took a turn north, marching through a glade between hills and forest and soon finding themselves in a bog. The mud was deep and thick and pulled at Laura's soles whenever she stepped beside the path. It was foggy here and sometimes she missed ponds and puddles and got wet feet in return.

“Be on the lookout.” Ilaen advised darkly. “This place is not called the Whispering Moor for nought.”

“Why are we going here?” Laura asked, pulling her foot out from a particularly deep puddle.

“To get the Moor Watch.” He replied. “I resent having to pull them away from here in case the red horrors return but these are some of the best men you will be able to find.”

They went first to the village of Ildorain and told them to raise levies. Then they made for the castle of Whisper Moor.

And the bog went from bad to worse. Laura could not well traverse it, too heavy for the paths and dykes that tiny people used to get around. If she just went in she was afraid of going under and drowning. She had no idea how deep the bog was, or any bog for that matter.

Also, she was afraid of whatever might be in these waters. At Ludoruin she had seen a small stream with pinkish water, leading right into the direction of this bog, and Ilaen had warned her not to drink from it if she meant to remain of sound mind.

“You go.” She said. “I'm not doing it. But remember what happens if you run away.”

That was a defeat, of sorts. But what could she do. When Ilaen said that it were fifteen kilometres to the castle she went in anyway. She would not sit here in this ghastly, wet place and wait for them for what could be several hours.

Once she was in it wasn't so entirely bad. She wasn't one to be afraid of getting her hands dirty, once she had gotten down to it, and she only sank in up to her knees in most places and just up to her hips in the worst. The fog was menacing, pressing on her mouth and nose somehow as if to choke her. The moor bubbled, especially when she came close displacing water and mud, and set free a foul, putrid stench that was reminiscent of some of Janna's biology projects.

Also, it was cold, now that she was wet. She was glad that she had brought her blanket.

Eventually, though, she found the castle, perched atop a singular rock in the moor, and blocked its single entrance right away while letting Ilaen do the talking. It looked like a smaller, pre-upgrade version of Feyrenwall, a misshapen square with a round tower, a great hall, an armoury and a pentagonal bergfried.

There were the usual suspects required to run a castle and a hard-bitten fifty, the Moor Watch, drawn from willing men, petty criminals and nobles all around.

They wore heavy armour supplied by the castle that was somewhat run like an order and contained a few things upon further inspection that Laura did not like, mostly stemming from what she heard in the conversation between Ilaen and the watchmen of note, who of course had to be specially introduced because what bloody use was blue blood when one didn't get to bag about it.

Commander of the Moor Watchmen was a knight by the name of Sir Gell Ahawar, kin of Rodowan Ahawar who had led so many people down south from Iaun Cyll. Rodowan was one of the characters Laura was somewhat afraid of on account of their cunning and experience, according to what she had heard. It wouldn't do to have him run the Moor Watch for her, not without some convincing display on his part anyway.

Then there were two squires of the Thistle Knights, wearing the colours of Fenwasian quartered on their breasts. They had been sent here for seasoning from Aiwall Castle, another Fenwasian possession in the neighbouring Barony of Aiwallfast. The young men's names were Aelwyn Firrevel and Cullen Fentûr, and Laura would have to get rid of them.

Then there was Gwynden Roricsteen, a bastard of house Drudaigh which had provided a Thistle Knight who had to be one of the people Laura kept in her dungeons at Iaun Cyll, or had already killed without learning or recalling his name. Or he was one of the other Thistle Knights currently with Count Bragon. In any case, Laura would kill this one too.

Last was a queer character who looked and even walked and moved as though he were machine than man. He was plate, head to toe, a spiked mace in his hand and a shield on the other, moving with him permanently attached. His face was a steel mask wrought to resemble what lay beneath, or so she had thought before they took it off him.

It was a red, molten ruin, his real face, burned like a baked piece of gammon. One eye looked like it had popped, small as a pearl and so disgustingly white that Laura's toenails curled. There was no nose, only two hollow slits with a patch of white skin. His hands were prostheses made of steel. His shield was bolted to his left arm and came off with half his arm again, as if he were some cyborg. His brutal, spiked mace of black cast iron was a permanent part of the right steel glove over the burned stump of his hand.

“Can he even fight?!” She asked aghast and disgusted at the sight.

He surely could not talk, only whisper, hoarse and barely loud enough so that the man next to him could understand him, let alone Laura from ninety meters high.

Gell Ahawar answered, unaware of what Laura meant to do: “Oh, ever since a kettle of boiling oil fell on young Lucan he could not bend a bow, ride a horse or make love to a woman, it is true. With his armour on, however...you have never seen him fight. He is very determined and his impairment makes him move different to other men. Besides that, the poor man is in so much pain that a blow to him must feel like a caress. We would have seen him knighted long ago if only he were able to speak his vows.”

His full name was Lucan Firunius of Wolfstone, however, some kinsman, surely, of Rondragoras of Wolfstone who had been a Thistle Knight and lance master at Iaun Cyll. Laura had eaten him, but this one she would not want to touch with a barge pole.

“Will you fight for us?” Ilaen posed the final question after explaining what was going on.

He interrupted Laura's inquiry into Lucan, but did unwittingly so. He could not know she meant to ideologically purge the Moor Watch.

“No.” Gell Ahawar replied. “We have a purpose here, my lord, and our turn does not end for another two years. Still red beasts rise from the bog on occasion, the kind that murdered Lorcan Morganyr who was lord of this castle once. If we weren't here, how could we protect the villages, prevent them from spilling out from here and doing their horrors among our small folk, many of which are your small folk, must I remind you.”

“I regret to say that this is not an option.” Ilaen replied. “This giantess holds my family hostage and I serve her so they do not be killed. You ow your allegiance to the Count and not me, I know this, but know you that she will kill all of you if you do not do as she says.”

It was as simple as that but hearing it put so bluntly made Laura uncomfortable and unappreciative of the little lord. Suddenly, again, the entire scheme of acquiring tiny men for allies seemed to be called into question. In moments such as this, Laura wondered if it wasn't better just kill everyone she laid eyes upon and figure out a way to enslave the rest if she could. But effectively, that was what she was doing, only she wasn't doing it particularly well.

“When we're done fighting in a few days or maybe a week you can return here and pick up your post again, I promise.” She said from above.

Tensions were high in any case. This was a parley. These men were not their friends.

“If you believe in the work you do then you should take the Moor Watch to Iaun Cyll for the time being, until such time as I or Reo Conchobair release you. It's that or face the bottom of my foot, little man, and if you remain stubborn then I do not care much which it is.”

“This castle belongs to Erin Morganyr.” Ilaen added consolingly. “The giantess has her hostage as well. If you serve her you serve the lady of this castle, as demands your oath, does it not?”

“Aye.” Gell Ahawar conceded darkly. “Be it on your head!”

“You I let live, Sir Gell.” Laura decided. “But the Thistle Knights and the bastard of Thornfield I'm not taking any chances with. Their lives are forfeit. Oh, and the Wolfstone as well. Rondragoras showed me everything I cared to know about that house. Step away from them if you do not want to get underfoot.”

There ensued a back and forth with watchmen pleading and arguing for the lives of the damned, but they only convinced Laura to spare the burned man Lucan. He wasn't particularly big and showed no signs of arrogance, plus if he had once been anything like Rondragoras then she'd say that he had already gotten his penance.

Ultimately she plucked up the squires and the bastard, placed them where there was no collateral damage and stepped on them before anyone could move close. Crushing Thistle Knights felt satisfying, like a real step into the right direction, even though they were only squires. Had she taken them to Iaun Cyll they would have tried to release the other Thistle Knights, no doubt, as was true for the bastard, who was now nothing but a smudge upon the ground.

She left quickly after that, only promising that she would come back some day and dispose of all of them together if they did not show up at her castle in time.

By that time it was mid afternoon. She was taking too much time, had slept long to begin with and was growing rather sick of her own game. It wasn't for moral reasons, of course, but for the fact that it felt like work. If only Janna was there, she thought. It wasn't particularly fun, even killing, because all she did was always with some dubious higher motive in mind, that was the benefit of some other.

'I already knew this, though.' She thought. 'So why do I keep doing it?'

Next, they went to Cablaidrim, a possession of Albenblood-Lighthouse, some loose lands and a village situated on the western side of a large hill range and with a stone watchtower not unlike Udlaidrim to watch over it. In the middle of the village stood an enormous oak tree that had naturally hollowed out and served as a shrine for Farindel. These had been the original lands of house Albenblood and, perhaps oddly, was still the place were their household troops were stationed.

The Lance of Cablaidrim, they called themselves, under the direct command of the ruler of the fief, Sir Lares Damon of Albenblood-Lighthouse, a tall, athletic twenty-four-year-old. When Laura came on, everyone rushed to the tower, but that was quickly resolved as it had been at the other places. Lares' loyalty to Lord Ilaen was unwavering and he did not take any long time to convince.

The standing force was a queer one, slightly to Laura's displeasure. They were all mounted, but did not all fight mounted at that. Half the men were archers who could fire their short bows from horseback just fine. The other half, however, were pike men, and not the Horasian kind. These men wore dresses, or quilts or something close enough. And they wore their hair long, which resulted in them having some uncanny semblance to attendees of one of those horrid, shaggy metal festivals on earth when they stood in bulk.

“Not to worry.” Lord Ilaen told her. “They are mounted so they can deploy quickly on a battlefield and deny an enemy manoeuvre or retreat in that direction.”

How exactly that worked without having the horses run off after the pikemen unsaddled Laura was still sceptical about, but troops were troops and Reo had asked for them. This time she could be sure of their loyalty at least. She resolved that they should ride as soon as possible and gather the troops from the other villages on their way.

They had their own banner, these men. Supposed to depict the burgundy red silhouette of the oak tree that grew in the centre of their village on a black field, it turned out so misshapen that it looked somewhat more like a Rorschach Test.

And it was getting later and later, almost evening, suddenly.

“We should go back.” She said with a look at the sky. “It will get dark soon.”

That was bitter, though. She felt like she'd worked all day, was all muddy, wet, starting to get cold and seen several bewildering things that frightened her. She didn't even know where all that time had gone, had enjoyed herself much too little and had the feeling that, other than a few hundred more fighters, she had not achieved anything.

She also grew rather hungry by now.

There was a path west from Cablaidrin and she took it without thinking. Niamor, far as it was still inhabited, knew of her and what she wanted of it now. This was as good as it was going to get, outside of sitting next to the people or carrying them piecemeal to Iaun Cyll. It was time for some destruction.

Ilaen squirmed on her hand, visibly wrestling with himself about something. The little lord did what he was bid because Laura could digest his family and make him watch while she did so. He didn't like her. His tone had told her that he regretted every part he had in helping her and after she had purged the Moor Watch he had not said a single word.

Until now: “Laura, there are family members of mine in the neighbouring barony of Aiwallfast, where this road leads. If the Fenwasians learn that I now serve you it will be bad for them. I humbly req...I beg you, save them!”

He looked up at her and Laura saw that he was serious.

She moved fast because time was running out. The first place was Jasalinswall, a village and water castle in the lake of Sgathanil. It was all so weird and confusing by now. There was a village up north, near Winhall, that was called Jasalin, where the family of Jasalin drew their name from. Jasalinswall in the Barony of Aiwallfast on the other hand belonged to the Fenwasians, which was good for Laura's purposes.

“The fief belongs to Kaigh Fenwasian, Baron of Aiwallfast and Lord of Aiwall Castle, further north!” Ilaen explained on the way. “Leana and Laria of Albenblood-Lighthouse are at Jasalinswall! The village of Airidh Broch north of Jasalinswall is Laria's own fief, so we may look there for her as well. We must find and save them!”

“I can't keep up with all these names.” Laura moaned. “Just tell me where to go and point them out when you see them, or describe them or something.”

He chewed his lip: “Leana is past fifty and steward at Jasalinswall! Laria is young and...beautiful to look upon and with her is a pretty girl of twenty, Caira Albenblood! You must save her as well!”

“Oh, I like 'em pretty.” Laura replied with a roll of her eyes, disgruntled by this new task that threatened to spoil her fun and cost her more time.

“Then we must go south to Caornsgrove, where mine own sister, Grainne, resides with her husband!”

Of course the bloody nobility was intermarried everywhere around, she thought.

Ilaen's fate was in Laura's hand, though, literally and figuratively, and he was too good a soul to hedge his bets. If she hadn't been certain that he was her man before, she sure was now, whether he liked her or not. He probably thought her a monster, but that was fine. She did not have to rule by virtue of being liked and doing this kindness to him was reasonable and would show others that she had a good side.

“What's that tower?” She pointed ahead at a flat, round building with crenelations at the top.

It was large in diameter and had elaborate stables nearby, as well as a small building that might have had some other purpose.

Eradh Talvinyr answered: “ That is the tower of Naughderil, where the lance of the same name is stationed!”

“Thistle Knights?”

“Aye!”

Already, Laura felt like this was paying off, in spite of the rescue mission.

“Cullen Fentûr and Aelwyn Firrevel!” She shouted when she came close, the names of the two Moor Watch squires she had flattened.

Some eight men and a washerwoman emerged just before Laura was on them.

“I ground them to pulp!”

She wanted them to know it, just as a little cheery on top. She placed her foot so that everyone but the washerwoman disappeared beneath it, revelling in the feeling of seven bodies gracefully giving way to her superior weight.

“Next to the two squires at Whisper Moor, were these all of the Thistle Knights stationed here?”

The woman screamed and tore her hair, looking at Laura's foot where the men she'd washed or cooked for had been standing a moment ago. Perhaps they had been enjoying the supper she had cooked just now, before they were snuffed out of existence.

“I'll kill you too if you don't speak to me.” Laura threatened, moving her foot to reveal the gruesome gore beneath.

“All!” The woman screamed. “All! You killed them all!”

Then she had a nervous breakdown and Laura squished her almost absent-mindedly while levelling the buildings.

Jasalinswall was hard to miss, even though it wasn't particularly huge. It was situated in the lake, the waters of which were almost unnaturally black, and the village lay right outside its gates.

Laura uprooted a tree with her free hand, turned it on its head and rammed it into the ground. That was the landmark where she put down her tiny companions, Ilaen, Eradh and the two men at arms who served as bodyguards.

“Please!” Tiny Lord Albenblood shouted after her when she went, but Laura didn't want him with her for this.

It was better when she was alone, she decided. She just got sentimental when she talked with tinies which got her into collecting rather than killing them.

She'd go on a killing spree from here, not south-east to Honingen, but west, and wreak as much havoc as she could, for a day at the least. She had her blanket, she could bloody well sleep here, and Iaun Cyll would be better off without her since its food reserves were running low.

She assessed the situation at Jasalinswall as she went close. No one toiled on the fields outside the village and the livestock had been brought in. Two bells rang, one inside the village and one on the gatehouse of the castle, a huge, rectangular block of grey stone. They knew she was coming and it was possible that they had made preparations as well, maybe having received word from refugees or by way of Honingen. In that case, the Thistle Knights would have been alarmed, however.

Medieval society truly was pathetic.

'If a town up north is wiped off the map by two raging goddesses, but no one in Aiwallfast hears, did it really happen?'

The thought made her smile as she realized how much of the upper hand she had once she stopped caring so much.

Just the Albenblood women she had to save now, and there had been mentioning of some husband. She could send give them to Ilaen, get them some horses and sent them on their way back to Iaun Cyll. And then, freedom.

The castle turned out to be another death-trap, as most others before, even though it presumably worked well and as intended against tiny people. It was made up of two round islands, one the size of the seat surface of an average chair, the other thrice or four times as large.

Part of Laura wanted to know why the water was so black here, or whether the islands had grown naturally this way or if they had been made larger artificially. That would only make her care, though.

She lingered briefly until all villagers were inside the castle, seeing that they pulled up the drawbridge before the brave bell ringer from the centre of the village had had a chance to climb on.

Laura laughed at him as she went close: “Did your friends abandon you? Aw! Here, let me taste some of your local fare.”

He jumped left and right but apparently found her too huge to decide for any side, and coming on too quickly. She picked him up, lowered him into her mouth and ate him.

“Not bad, but I'll need some more, if you catch my meaning.”

Hastily assembled archers gathered on the gatehouse, ridden with terror and disarray. The rest of the walls were walkable but had no crenels for some reason, perhaps because there was simply not enough space.

“Loose the arrows, what are you waiting for!” A man screamed there.

'Fuck,' Laura realized as singular, ill-aimed shafts hissed at her, 'I forgot the names of those women I'm supposed to save.'

“Uh, is the steward in attendance?” She asked, ignoring the arrows completely. “I swear I won't harm a single soul if you deliver me the steward.”

And there had been some other lady too, and a pretty girl. With a sigh, Laura stepped over the archers and their itsy-bitsy gatehouse all at once, landing her foot on the singular tree growing in the middle of the yard, and some people who where running around in mad panic with spears in their hands.

“Albenbloods!” She sang, looking around. “I'm looking for Albenbloods! I heard they're pretty and they taste like...”

She picked up a terrified young woman with brown hair wearing an apron, but she had to be some servant.

“Are you an Albenblood?” Laura asked and the girl shook her head. “Meh.”

She was tossed into Laura's mouth and swallowed for her honesty while down below more running villagers ended up under Laura's stomping feet.

“I'll let you live if you give me the Albenbloods, don't you know?” She lied playfully.

She kept looking, but would have looked in any case and was greatly enjoying herself besides.

“I mean, you can keep dying under me if you want, but, I swear, if you give those Albenbloods to me I'll stop stepping on you at once.”

No one even thought of lowering the drawbridge so that they could get out, making instead for the other, larger island via a covered bridge. Laura made sure she did not trample any females except in cases were she was sure they were peasant women. When one struck her eye she lifted her for inspection, but none met the dubious criteria she was looking for and so she ate those she's picked.

It was bloody chaos in the castle, but she was used to that from other times she had rampaged.

“The steward is not here!” A man shouted at her, waving a Fenwasian banner to get her attention. “She's at Lady Laria's village, north, and the young Lady Ciara is with them, and Emer Benoic as well!”

Laura had no bloody idea who Emer Benoic was, but that was all the information she needed. She crushed the informer under her foot, kicked the covered bridge into the lake and put her hands on her hips. The yard of the smaller island she stood on looked like some one had upended a cup of that pinkish water she'd seen at Ludoruin. It was also covered in bits of the bodies she squelched. It was also almost too small for her feet, if truth be told, and so she got rid of it by trampling all the smaller buildings and staving in the roof and floors of the square stone gatehouse to eat the clever people who were trying to hide in there.

That was supper, albeit not quite finished yet.

Crouching on the first island, she leaned into the havoc and mayhem on the second, snatching people up and tossing them into her maw one after the other. There were three more trees growing there that she tossed into the lake, so as to have a freer hand.

“Anyone of note here, at all?” She asked no one in particular, especially not the man in chainmail and Fenwasian surcoat in her grip that she crunched between her molars a moment later.

But there weren't very many castle folk, far as she could tell. Most of the people looked like peasants. There might have been a total of three hundred or so at the start, by now reduced by about one third already, mostly by her uncaring feet. Trapped on their island, the people had only the choice of hiding now, and there wasn't so very much to help with that.

The logical place to go was the bergfried, a tall, square block of stone and cement with a door reachable via a wooden stair. Why bergfrieds usually had this stair and not their doors on ground level Laura could not say. Maybe it was so that it couldn't be rammed in, or something.

In this case here it didn't matter very much because some cruel souls had already sought refuge in the tower and barred the door shut, ignoring the desperate pleas of those outside. Then there was a gatehouse, or rather a wall with covered wall walks on top that Laura simply picked apart with her hands and ate whom she found inside.

There was an armoury crammed with weapons and old shields nailed to its walls but hardly anyone was emerging armed from there at this point anyway. Finally, the great hall, which was the only open place capable of providing cover.

Laura feasted on the press that got stuck at the entrance to the great hall before moving over to the larger island, placing a foot at the doors of the hall and ripping the roof off so she could finish her meal.

It occurred to her that she should not destroy the castle for future use when Albernia and Horas would be allied as she planned. But then she banished that thought and decided that others could deal with that problem when the time came.

She ate people by handfuls from the hall which was as impersonal an affair as fast food.

'Only now, get the Great Hall Menu at Mc Jasalinswall for free, available at a castle near you!'

Oh, how Laura missed some fried chicken. She could have fried people, she supposed, but that would require a lot of oil, preparation and helpers.

While she pondered, the cries of terror and pleas for mercy from the hall fell on ears deliberately turned deaf. She loved loved her food most like this, in bulks. Well chewed and mashed in her mouth, while some were already slush and others still largely whole as she filled her mouth, the tiny people always unfolded their full flavour. The texture was a bit slimy, but she was used to that by now, as she was used to so many other things.

She chewed, swallowed, belched and filled her mouth anew.

Finally, she stood, gave the survivors the most shit-eating grin she could muster and stepped inside the hall with both her feet. There were still so many left that the massacre was hard to describe. She had felt groups of people perish under foot before, but not often when they were pressed together as densely as this. The white rubber on the bottom sides of her chucks turned bright red with blood, where before they had still been brown with mud from the moors.

She could even feel the collective resistance when she stomped, although she was far too heavy for their bodies to stop her. Displaced so rapidly, their flesh and body matter practically liquefied, spraying the walls like something out a cheap horror flick.

She felt like it was all over a little bit to quickly afterwards, but a look back at what she had done made that good. The hall looked like something out of a horror film indeed, buckets of red blood seeping in between the cobblestones that made its floor. For the armoury she only needed another step and didn't even know if that killed anyone. The bergfried she simply shoved off its foundation and into the lake where it crashed in and shattered along with everyone inside.

“They weren't there. I asked.” She told Ilaen and the others who had watched all she had been doing from where she'd left them.

The lake was in sort of a geographical depression, giving any place outside a good vantage point, especially since there weren't any trees.

Ilaen in particular was distraught, his hair even wilder than usual from when he'd torn it, but he calmed down when she told him they would find all three little Albenbloods at that other village.

The following went down as easy as Jasalinswall had.

They went to Airidh Broch by way of stray farms that Laura smashed if they lay conveniently enough in her path. The place itself was an estate in the shadow of a wooden motte, a tiny keep on an artificially made hill with wooden palisade walls around it.

The lady of the estate was having the steward of Jasalinswall for supper there that evening, attended by her usual retinue to whom the teenage Emer Benoic also belonged. But for Leana, the old lady, they were all very pretty indeed, dressed in nice gowns which made them even prettier. Ciara Albenblood was a twenty year old girl that was particularly good looking, even rivalling Branwyn ni Bennain to some extend. She did not have such smooth features, but her broader jaw gave her character in a way that Branwyn missed by virtue of simply appearing too flawless.

Leana of Albenblood-Lighthouse was an old, stout woman of the kind Laura had seen a thousand times over. But Laria Jona of Albenblood-Lighthouse, as she named herself, was another beauty, even though she was already forty two.

Laura confronted them while two men at arms were ushering them to the motte after raising the alarm. To avoid a turmoil she trapped everyone by walking circles around the village while letting Ilaen and Eradh do the explaining. When they motioned her to them, it was all done.

Things were really moving absurdly fast now. Laura did not take her time with things. She saw a village to the east, by the small stream she had crossed earlier, and was told that it belonged to House Wolfstone, which was rater too good an opportunity to pass up. It were really only a hundred metres or so to her, so it didn't make too much of a matter.

While the Albenbloods packed their things and rallied their small folk to leave, Laura fell upon the village of Arwiallin like the wolf that snarled upon its sigil. It was an older lady that reigned there, but Laura took no time to hear her out. She herded everyone who survived her initial onslaught together on a clear spot, made them watch her demolish their remaining homes and then simply pulled down her pants and sat down on them with her bare arse.

The feeling made her giggle cynically, and then even more so the cries of those poking out with their torsos from beneath her. Those she hadn't gotten she tossed under when she adjusted herself, and the half-caught ones she poked in with her finger afterwards.

It was a colourful splotch of sandwiched people she left there. No doubt, quite a thing to investigate for whomever would come and deal with this once word would reach the powers that were. Laria served as a judge in the barony, but it would not be her who had to deal with it. Someone would, though, if only to disentangle the blob and bury these poor, little munchkins.

Now Laura's butt was wet too, but that didn't bother her. It was killing time now, and tomorrow as well, and she could just wash herself and her clothes once she was done and back at Iaun Cyll. She would stay somewhere here over night, she had decided. Ilaen could lead his kin to her castle on his own. She was too deadly important to be their stupid babysitter.

She told them as much when she saw them again. Laria, Leana and Caira would move with the small folk to Cablaidrim and group up with Ilaen's household force, the lance of Cablaidrim. In her presence no one dared to object and Laura told them that there would be no Aiwallfast after tomorrow, in case they meant to elude her.

Then she took Ilaen, Eradh and the two men at arms and took them south to Caornsgrove where they caught hold of Ilaen's sister Grainne, her husband Callan Herlogan whom Laura simply had no nerve to investigate as to his allegiances, and their baby daughter, Ciana. That was were evening finally fell and Laura said her farewells to Ilaen.

In a nearby forest with hills she made her bed afterwards on some ground she cleared, huddling in her sleeping bag as tired as a stone.

'What a weird day,' she thought back upon it, finally calming down after the rush. 'A work day indeed.'

At first it had been a bad day. It had been so cold when she got up that she could see her breath. Then she had given in to Reo's demand for more men, wasting time. Janna would be worried sick up at Joborn every minute Laura's return would be overdue. If she'd come look for Laura was a question hardly answerable, given how much she cared about that stupid wizard.

Nonetheless, Laura had to make progress here, and in the end she felt like she was finally making it.

She should just destroy things, she thought. She could sort out the rubble afterwards, or have someone sort it out for her. Going to bed with sunset meant getting up with sunrise, and well rested and full of energy at that. Tomorrow would be a black day for Albernia. She would make sure of that.

She estimated that in total she had crushed and eaten between four and eight hundred people today, three hundred or more at Jasalinswall and about only slightly less at the Wolfstone village where she had trampled the most part, but butt-crushed at least seventy. That thought made her smile, although all these were certainly rookie numbers compared to Thorwal.

There were so many more peasants here, though. Where there weren't trees there was usually a field, or at least an area for grazing livestock, close to settlements in any case. She had gotten many of these farmsteads underfoot, but by far not all, but then again she didn't really feel like she had to because peasants simply did not matter, the same way in which a hamster in a cage did not matter.

There were ten or so fewer Thistle Knights to worry about, though, and they mattered for sure, despite their comparably dwindling numbers. Tomorrow she'd figure out where the main castle of Aiwallsfast was, kill any thistle fuckers she'd find and really start to jack up the body count.

That was a good thought to go to bed with.