He was looking past Ser John’s shoulder, and he’d just drawn his sword.
There was a loud snap as a branch was broken. Everyone froze.
‘Blessed Virgin,’ Ser Richard said.
Ser John saw movement in the downed trees. ‘Dismount!’ he shouted.
Ser Richard didn’t dismount. He put his horse at the downed tree immediately behind them and his horse made the leap – man and armour and all. Ser Richard had a royal education – so he rode like a centaur.
The archers and squires dismounted. Jamie took the horses’ heads and pulled them clear of the men, but the downed trees on the road made the space so restricted that any fidgeting from the horses would crowd the men, or worse.
Ser John’s eyes met his squires’. ‘Get them out of here,’ he barked.
Jamie began to thread his way through the fallen timbers.
The archers were still stringing their great war bows.
‘What is it?’ asked Ser Richard.
‘No idea,’ spat Ser John.
‘Giant,’ said the priest. Like Ser Richard, he was still mounted.
Behind him, the smell of something foul reached the horses, and they panicked. The pack horses ran – one misstepped, and its leg broke with a sickening crack. The horse screamed.
The scream acted like a signal, and two giants rose out of the downed trees and struck.
They were huge.
And, unlike legend, they were fast.
In forty years of fighting, Ser John had never seen one, and he was rooted to the spot for a fatal moment. His mouth framed the word, ‘Christ.’
The priest went forward, and his horse leaped a downed spruce, despite the weight of the armoured man on his back, and the priest’s sword took a finger off the giant’s reaching left hand and he was by.
The monster was shaped like a man, if that man were very ugly, had legs only as long as his torso, and no neck. And only one great eye.
And carried a club roughly the size of a small boy.
But for some reason, the thing threw its blow at the screaming pack horse, as if its cries pierced the thing’s enormous shell ears, or the pain of the wound to its hand disoriented it.
‘It is a giant,’ said Odo the archer, unnecessarily. And then his first shaft, thirty-five inches long and weighing four royal ounces, slammed into the giant’s thigh. The livery head with a bodkin point went so far into the giant’s meat that only the fletching showed.
The giant roared, and the woods shook with the sound.
Off to his left, Ser John heard Ser Richard call his war cry and heard the pounding of his horse’s hooves.
Umfrey loosed a shaft and missed.
Sir John made himself move forward at the giant, which was just about three times his own height. Its club had pulped the horse’s head and spattered all of them with gore.
Lord Wimarc followed at his shoulder, a fine gold-chased pole-axe in his hand.
‘What- What do we do?’ asked the younger man.
‘We kill it,’ said Ser John.
The giant was as fast as a man. It turned to face the two armoured men, and while Odo missed, Umphrey’s second shaft went right through the thick muscles of its upper right arm, spoiling its blow at Lord Wimarc. Most of the blow went into the ground, but the club skipped and caught him, breaking both his legs and knocking him flat. He screamed – a nasty, choked sound. Despite the wound, Wimarc swung his pole-axe at a finger the size of his wrist, and connected despite lying flat on his back. Only then did he lie back and scream in earnest.
Ser John didn’t waste his free moments. He had a hammer with a five-foot haft and a spiked back. He slammed it full force into the giant’s right foot, shattering bone, and then stepped in between the reeking thing’s legs and lifted his hammer, catching the giant’s dangling testicles with the spike and ripping – pivoting on his hips and passing the pole-arm through a whole butterfly to slam his third strike into the giant’s left knee.
Its scream sent every bird for four miles into the air. Its mate paused, turned and took Ser Richard’s lance in its belly.
She cut down with her club, shattering Ser Richard’s shield, breaking his hand and arm, but Ser Richard put spurs deep into the side of his beloved Arrow and the big horse responded in a rage of injured horse-friendship, plunging forward into the bad smell and pushing the lance head deep into the she-giant’s belly.
Umfrey and Odo saw the male giant go down, turned together like veterans, and engaged their second target. Neither missed. They drew and loosed, nocked, drew and loosed, their bows singing every few seconds. The female giant was only ten paces distant, and she had no cover.
Ser John slammed the point at the end of his hammer into her rump as she fell, got between her legs and turned and hit again.
It made a piteous sound, and fell to hands and knees across Lord Wimarc. Ser John was behind it, and he broke its thigh with his hammer on his third blow. And then started on where its kidneys ought to be.
The female plucked Ser Richard from the saddle, breaking his collarbone and dropping him on his already broken arm and hand. But she didn’t seem to be able to understand where the heavy livery arrows were coming from, and she slapped at them after they hit her, like a small child slapping insects that have already bitten and left.
Ser Richard rolled over on training alone, cut at the ankle and connected. He cut again, screaming his terror and his war cry at the giantess, and she ignored him and turned and saw the archers.
Umfrey’s bow broke with a snap – he’d been drawing hard, with every shot, in something like blind panic. ‘Uh-oh,’ he said.
Odo put an arrow into her face, but he missed the eye and the arrowhead bounced off the bone. He reached for another shaft but there weren’t any more. The rest were on the pack horse.
Umfrey drew his sword and turned to run.
Odo caught an arrow in Umfrey’s belt by the head and pulled it clear. He nocked.
Ser Richard cut with everything he had at the giantess’s hamstring and then fainted.
Father Arnaud appeared behind the giantess. His horse rose like it had wings, and his sword went in to the hilt – in with a long over-arm thrust, out again like a deadly needle punching living flesh, and he was past again, and her blow missed him as his horse bounded away like a deer.
Ser John’s giant voided his bowels and collapsed. Ser John couldn’t see Ser Richard – the other knight’s horse was kicking at the giantess, and she stood stock-still on one foot. There was an arrow in her eye, and Odo was standing, watching her with a curious look of triumph on his face.
Her club pulped him.
But when she stepped forward to finish his mortally wounded mate, her right leg gave under her, the hamstring completely severed, and she fell.
Umfrey saw Odo die and went berserk. He shouted. He screamed. He wept, and his sword hacked at the downed giant as fast as a woodpecker eats insects, striking along her dangling breasts and into her shoulder. She screamed and tried to rise.
Father Arnaud hit her in the back of the head with a mace plucked from his saddle bow, full force, and the mace head broke the back of her skull with a spurt of blood and pulverised brains.
Darkness was falling when Helewise, who listened every night for such things, heard voices from the gatehouse, which had become a sort of barracks for their newer folks. She had sixty people now – far more women then men, and most of the men were older, but everyone worked and the fields had been cleared.
She wasn’t yet undressed, but she ran a brush through her hair in hope and then ran down the steps from her solar to the main hall of the old manor.
‘Blessed Saint Katherine, what is that smell?’ she asked before she was out the door.