“Why, fare you well too, then,” Gar said, “and may your gods smile upon you.”
The giants all stared at him in surprise. Then Gorkin broke into a smile. “A Midgarder wishing a blessing on us! Might be hope for this world yet! Well, stranger, may all your gods smile on you, too!”
They went past, and some turned back to wave. Gar returned the wave, staring after them, feeling numb and very unreal. He had to remind himself that he hadn’t just lived through a dream, that these were genuine people who had talked to him, actual giants, or as close to the fairy-tale variety as anyone could ever be.
He forced himself to turn away and start walking again, in the direction from which the giants had come. Go back to Midgard? That would have been extremely foolish. Still, Gar very much wanted to do just that—go back to Midgard, and start preaching. If he were going to have a chance of ending the constant wars, he would have to gain the acceptance of all three nations. The giants had been so polite that he thought they would at least listen to any ideas he gave them, but if the Midgarders were so fanatical as to cast out their own children for growing too big, seven-foot-tall Gar was going to find it almost impossible to manage even a parley.
He reflected that Dirk Dulaine, his erstwhile companion, would have been welcome in Midgard society, and could have brought Gar in as his simpleton slave, a role Gar had played with Dirk more than once—but Dirk wasn’t here, and Gar would have to find a way to the Midgarders’ ears on his own. That reminded him of good times with his friend, of shared dangers and shared glory, and of his bittersweet joy at seeing Dirk marry the woman he loved, then the poignancy of their goodbye as Gar left their planet, alone. He felt a pang of loneliness, and wished he could find love as Dirk had, but knew he was too big, too taciturn, too ominous, too homely, and too reticent.
He wondered what had happened to the cheerful outgoing teenager he used to be, then remembered the kaleidoscope of women who had used him as targets for cruelty, or to make their lovers jealous, or for social climbing. On reflection, he wasn’t surprised the cheery boy had gone underground, and was more sure than ever that he would never find a mate.
The wind of alienation blew through him—he was an absurd figure, for what purpose could he have in life? He remembered his boyhood on the medieval planet of Gramarye and his leave-taking, then the aimless wandering that had led him to join SCENT, his outrage at the team’s heartless manipulation of a backward planet’s culture without regard to human rights, and his own decision to work for those rights among oppressed people, solo, then with Dirk, now solo again.
But he also remembered the planets he had put on the road to forms of government of their own choices, the lives he had saved that he knew about and the many, many he had probably saved but didn’t know about, and felt a renewed strength to go plodding on toward old age and death. His life would serve some purpose, after all, and who knew? There might still be some bits of pleasure in it, too.
Alea dried her tears, telling herself that she had to go on, that life would somehow prove worth living. She didn’t believe herself, but generations of women had drummed that idea into their daughters, and old women had told them it had proved true for them. Life had good times and bad times, and sometimes it was so bad that you couldn’t believe it would ever be good again—but it would, if you could just hang on.
She sighed, braced her tree-branch staff, and pushed herself to her feet again. At least the giants had left her food and drink. She couldn’t believe how kind they had been, how horribly the grown-ups had lied to her as a child!
Could they have lied about the bad times passing, too? Alea shoved the thought to the back of her mind—it wouldn’t bear thinking about. You had to go on, that was all, because if you gave up, if you just crawled into a hole and died, then life certainly couldn’t ever get better, could it? No, all in all, it was worth the gamble. She decided to go on a little farther yet.
At least the giants’ wallet and aleskin had strings for holding them to the belt—strings to them, but straps to her. She slung them over her shoulders and set off down the road, determined to find some place she could be happy, some place where life could have meaning. She couldn’t be the only slave who had ever escaped, after all—in fact, she’d heard stories about escapees who’d fled to the northern wasteland, and never been brought back. Of course, those stories also said the runaways lived by robbing travelers, even by eating them, but considering how badly the tales had lied about the giants, there was every reason to think they’d lied about the escapees too. She decided to take a chance on the North Country.
She stopped to look at the sun and take her bearings. It was ahead of her and off to the right, still well before noon, so her road was angling toward the north anyway, and away from Midgard. She saw a bend to the left in the distance, which meant the road would turn even further toward the north. She set off, resolving to find people of her own kind if she had to walk ten years to do it.
After ten minutes, the exhaustion hit her. A dizzy spell seized her, and she stopped in the roadway, leaning on her staff and waiting for the world to steady itself, hoping it would. She realized she was worn out both emotionally and physically, for she’d been walking all night. Daylight was her time to hide and sleep, and. she’d just started dozing when Jorak and Rokir had shaken her awake. She knew she should find another tree and hide for the day, but she didn’t want to stay where the boys had gone crashing through the roadside brush to find her, and the Jotuns had refused her. What with their tracks and the boys’, her trail was far too clear—any band of slave-hunters would see her footprints in the roadside dust, and would follow her to her tree.
The dizziness passed, and Alea forced herself to start walking again, down the middle of the road where the clay was packed hard and wouldn’t show her tracks. There was a chance that the slave-hunters would find her before she found another safe tree, but it was less than the chance that the marks of her struggle with the boys, and the tracks of the giant patrol, would reveal her old hiding place. She had to find another tree large enough to hide in and a quarter mile or more from the scene of the scuffle. She watched her feet, forcing them to move until she could trust them to keep going, then looked up and was surprised to see that the bend in the road was there already.
She was even more surprised when the half-dozen Midgarders came around that bend and saw her.
Their dogs started baying and howling on the instant, and the men shouted and came running, hands out to catch her. They didn’t ask her business or her name—her size alone was enough to tell them what she was, easily a head taller than any of them, so she couldn’t be anything but a runaway slave. They would worry whose she was after they’d bound her. They swarmed around her.
Alea swung her staff desperately, managing to knock one man in the head and jab another in the belly before one of them chopped viciously with a cudgel, and her staff broke with a loud crack. She swung the butt of it in despair, but another man seized her wrist and a third caught her around the waist, crowing with victory. Alea screamed and kicked back.
The man’s crow turned to a howl, and the hands let go of her waist. She lashed about her with the butt of her stick and kicked at the shins of the men in front of her. One went reeling, hands pressed to his head. Another fell back, hopping and howling. More hands seized her wrists and her waist, though. Then a rope whipped about her torso, pinioning her arms, and another man caught her leg. She howled in anger and horror, kicking at him, but he stepped to the side, holding the leg up.