Porto could not leave Kolbjorn to fight and die alone. He pulled himself up onto his hands and knees but could barely feel his limbs, and still could not breathe deeply enough to snuff the spangles of light floating before his eyes. Something inside him was cracked, broken. He crawled to his sword, narrowly avoiding the giant’s ponderous feet as the beast finally dislodged the makeshift spear and turned to face the attacker.
Porto curled his hand around his sword hilt and kept crawling forward. Kolbjorn thrust again, and this time his spear went high into the giant’s belly, but was stopped from sinking in too far by a cross-branch left on the shaft. Now Kolbjorn could only hold grimly onto the end of his weapon as the giant tried to reach him, the broken branch like the haft on a boar spear. Then the monster reached down and snapped the spear in half with a twist of its massive hand. Red blood was blooming in the white fur where the spear had entered, but only a trickle compared to the larger wound in its throat.
As the giant lurched toward Kolbjorn, its roars now ragged at the edges with fury and pain, it turned its back on Porto. He heaved himself onto his feet and staggered toward it. His chest seemed to be on fire, but he set his feet as well as he could and swung his sword through a hard, flat arc into the back of the creature’s leg just above the knee. The giant staggered, then threw back its head and howled, and in the monster’s moment of inattention Kolbjorn snatched up the spear that had first wounded the creature’s neck and drove it as hard as he could into the hairy white stomach. The roar changed pitch once more, growing higher and even angrier, but as the creature staggered toward Kolbjorn with arms spread, yet another shape rose from the broken trunks.
Porto had thought Aerling killed by the giant’s terrible blow, but now the leader of the Mountain Goats climbed unsteadily onto his feet, supporting himself on a fallen tree, then stepped under the giant’s reaching arms to ram his own sword into the creature’s groin. The iron blade was yanked from Aerling’s hand as the giant staggered backward, but blood now fountained from the monster’s inner thigh.
Growling, moaning, the creature raised both arms above its head, as though in its rage it wished to pull down the whole wide sky. It took a single step toward Aerling, spraying blood over the broken trees and snow, then it tottered, took another step, and fell.
Porto crawled toward it, his thoughts so disordered he could not even remember where he was or how such a madness had come to be. As he climbed onto the creature’s back he could still feel its hitching breath. The feeling of the huge, warm thing beneath him was so disgusting, so maddening, that Porto plunged his sword into its back, then pulled it out despite the shrieking pain of his own ribs and rammed it into the giant’s back over and over until the pain finally took all his senses away.
The afternoon had all but gone by the time they had found what was left of the other Mountain Goats and buried them in the clearing near the blood-matted body of the Hunë. Dragi’s head had rolled or been flung a hundred paces down the mountainside. When they found it, the old soldier’s face wore an expression closer to surprise than fear.
“A head for a head,” said Aerling, and began to hack through the giant’s shaggy neck, a butchery that took a long time. Porto knew he would never forget the noise it made. Then the last of the Mountain Goats stumbled back down the mountain as the gray day waned, Aerling carrying the monster’s heavy, bloody head cradled against his chest as though it were something precious.
The duke’s army had already begun their withdrawal from the gate for the parley, but several sentries rushed toward Porto and the rest when they appeared out of the heights of the mountain. Porto simply stood and stared at the faces around them and the bustle of activity across the camp as though he had never been there before.
The sentries escorted them back to the remains of the camp with no little ceremony, and a crowd soon formed around them. He and Aerling and Kolbjorn could muster only a few words for their comrades, but Aerling’s bloody trophy quickly made the main details clear. Porto met his second nearly mythical creature of the day only a short time later, when Duke Isgrimnur himself came to see them. The duke was almost as tall as Porto but twice his girth, and although Isgrimnur was clearly distracted by the approaching parley, he clasped each Mountain Goat’s hand and thanked them.
“By God, you have done a hero’s work today, each of you,” he said. “If that thing had come down from the mountain and caught me and the others unarmed at the parley . . .” He shook his head. “But look at you, wounded and still bleeding! God’s Suffering, why hasn’t anyone seen to these men?” He called for a surgeon.
Porto watched the duke and the others as though from the bottom of a deep well. He could hear what was said but it seemed mostly nonsense, and his thoughts kept wandering away.
“Why do you stand so, fellow?” Isgrimnur demanded of him. “Oh, aye, you’re the Perdruin-man. What is your name—is it Porto? Here, what are you hiding under that cloak?”
“Nothing,” said Porto, finding his tongue at last. “My ribs, I think . . . might be broken.”
“Can you kneel?” Isgrimnur asked him, but Porto did not understand his meaning, nor much of anything else. “See, Sludig? He’s almost dead on his feet, the poor devil,” the duke fumed. “Frayja’s Garters, where is that surgeon?”
“His Grace wants you to kneel if you can,” said Isgrimnur’s yellow-bearded lieutenant, not unkindly.
Will they put us to death? Porto wondered, and at that moment it did not seem a strange thing. He felt as though he and Aerling and Kolbjorn were all steeped in blood and destruction, that they had become something apart from all these ordinary soldiers—something terrible.
Young Kolbjorn looked up at the duke. The young man’s gaze was distant and almost sleepy, his hands red with dried blood. “It killed Dragi. Tore his head off.”
“I heard, lad,” said Isgrimnur, “and I am sorrier than you can guess. But you have done a brave thing, the three of you.”
“We were six when we went up,” said Aerling, still clutching the giant’s head like a treasured heirloom.
“And we will say prayers for your brave brothers tonight, I promise,” the duke said. “But I have the authority of the king and queen of all the High Ward, and you will be knights for this.”
Porto tried to lower himself to his knees, but the pain was so fierce in his chest that he swayed.
“Sludig, help that man,” the duke said, and the yellow-bearded one clasped a strong hand around Porto’s arm and let him down slowly.
Isgrimnur began to speak words that Porto could only partly hear, because a red noise was rising in his skull that seemed loud as a rushing river. He heard the names of King Seoman and Queen Miriamele and wondered why he did not entirely remember who they were. In his weary mind he imagined them as Isgrimnur’s masters, monarchs of the far north sitting on thrones of ice, both swaddled in furs and jewels.
Something touched him. It was Isgrimnur’s great sword Kvalnir, and it moved gently from one side of his head to the other, tapping each shoulder. “Then I name you champions of the High Ward,” the duke said, “and lay on you the charges of knighthood. Arise, Sir Aerling, Sir Kolbjorn, Sir Porto.”
But Porto could not manage to get up until the yellow-bearded one named Sludig helped him. He felt like a newborn colt, his legs shuddering sticks that could barely hold his weight. The duke was already being called away to other duties. A surgeon had arrived, his pack full of linen bandages and salves.
Aerling was still clutching the giant’s bloody head and would not let anyone take it from him.