The Slayer of Giants

The moment Johan realized the Cyclops was dead, he spat to the side.

Damn it...

Breaking the masterwork sword the Duke had bestowed upon him just to take down a single one-eyed giant was no small loss. The taste in his mouth was bitter. He could have simply hurled a spear from a distance, or finished the thing off with poison — instead, he had meddled up close and paid a far steeper price for it.

The eldest and third of Ahir's children, still sprawled on the ground, grew flustered at the sight of his indifferent expression. A knight who had slain such a monster ought to have been swelling with pride, crowing about his deed — yet Johan's face was grave and solemn. Was he offering up a prayer to the gods?

"Did you die or something?"

"Ah... n-no, my lord."

At Johan's summons, the two hauled themselves unsteadily to their feet. Every inch of them ached as though they'd been beaten black and blue, but this much they could manage as vampire knights.

Johan turned his gaze on the warhammer, still matted with the giant's blood and brains.

Well. It's more useful than I expected.

A warhammer was a blunt weapon with a heavy head and blade fixed at its end — the head was never meant to be especially large or heavy. Forge a weapon that way for a human to swing, and its bearer would exhaust himself or injure his own back long before the enemy did.

But the hammer the giant had wielded was peculiar. The haft ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠was wrought entirely of ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠metal, and the hammer and blade at its end were several times the usual size. An ordinary man would have struggled to lift it with both hands, let alone swing it. Johan, however, liked it — above all, it was perfectly suited as a weapon for mounted combat.

"!"

Once he shook the blood off, the words engraved along the hammer's flank came into view. Writing in the Ancient Imperial language. Giant Slayer. Johan was genuinely startled — he had never expected Ancient Imperial script here.

A relic handed down from the days of the Ancient Empire?

Given that the Cyclops itself had used the Ancient Imperial tongue, it was entirely plausible. There was a certain irony in a giant having wielded a weapon forged to slay giants, though...

At this rate, I didn't lose out after all.

Johan's mood turned abruptly warm and magnanimous — magnanimous enough, in fact, to extend a little kindness to the heathens collapsed at his feet.

"Now. Lend me your hands. Up you get."

"Th... thank you, my lord."

The eldest and third brushed off the dust and bowed with impeccable courtesy. Not a trace of insolence remained in them; they carried themselves exactly as they would before their father, Duke Ahir.

Even a hostage bound to pay his own ransom enjoyed a fair measure of customary privilege before a noble — the right to bear arms, to speak bluntly, even to show a certain disrespect. But that was only in the ordinary run of things. When a man stood before you who had just beaten a giant to death and was now holding its hammer, vampire or not, courtesy ceased to be optional.

"Now then..."

Johan turned his head. The horses that had fled behind him froze and stared back, and somehow their eyes made it plain that they were terrified.

"Don't even think about running, you goddamn nag."

Johan growled low in his throat, and the meaning apparently reached the bicorn as well. The beast fluttered and stamped, then stopped in its tracks.

The wild horses around it scattered all at once. Johan looked over the duke's warhorse — the one that, enchanted by the bicorn, had bolted without recognizing even its own master. Now it stood meek and quiet, head bowed low.

"You go back to your master."

At Johan's word, the warhorse trudged over to Ahir's children.

Only the bicorn remained. With the other horses slipping free of its dominion, the beast trembled from hoof to horn. Johan seized it by the scruff of the neck.

"If you want to fight me, knock out a horn first and come at me."

Papapak—

The bicorn kicked at the ground and thrashed violently, but it never tried to break off its horns. Johan squeezed, choking the beast's throat with one arm. The bicorn let out a mournful wail and buckled its forelegs.

It gave up resisting and swore submission with its eyes alone. Johan relaxed his arm and patted its cheek.

"Don't shed those horns. Not if you want to live."

The bicorn nodded instinctively.

It had lived in symbiosis with the Cyclops, but that was before it sensed the new arrival was leagues stronger than its old partner. And like any true monster, the bicorn bowed to strength and strength alone.

"You've actually caught the thing?!"

"Is there a bad omen in that, or something?"

Galambos shook his head. A bicorn had tastes the exact opposite of a unicorn's, but its habits were much the same. Tame either one, and you'd be riding a legendary steed. If you wanted to capture one and ride it about, the method was simple enough: lure it with something it fancied, seize it fast, and hang on until it wore itself out.

Easy to describe — and yet even the most seasoned hunters failed at it. More than a few Eastern Rangers had set out to catch a unicorn and sell it for a fortune, only to end up in the ground.

"Now that it's got your shadow on it, no need to worry, m'lord. Tame it proper and a bicorn grows a shadow just like a unicorn does."

"Then why didn't it have one under the Cyclops?"

"Two monsters, innit? More like partners than master and beast. Cyclopses are greedy bastards, mind..."

The Cyclops devoured the travelers who came chasing their lost horses; the bicorn, in return, guarded the herd from whatever other beasts might come prowling. Symbiosis between monsters was rare, but not unheard of.

Galambos crept carefully toward the bicorn's flank. He knew the beast had submitted, but fear doesn't vanish just because you know a thing. The faces of the comrades who'd died chasing unicorns were still vivid in his memory.

—Khehhin.

The bicorn blew a snort through its nostrils, but it did not reject him. At the sight, the mercenaries began to mutter among themselves.

"Didn't they say bicorns take a shine to the corrupt and the jaded?"

"Well, he does love gold something shameful. Remember how he raked it in over dice last time?"

"...My lord Count. Why not let these lads be tested by the bicorn as well?"

"Now that sounds like fun."

At Johan's words, the mercenaries pulled the longest faces imaginable. The bicorn, it seemed, found none of them to its taste.

Most of the mercenaries passed the beast's judgment anyway. Greedy men, jaded through and through — bicorns could hardly help but like them.

"Ahem. My lord Count."

Ahir's retainers, come to settle their lord's affairs, cleared their throats and called Johan over.

"Is the business concluded?"

"It is. Thanks to your aid."

Ahir's children bowed with deep respect. It was dizzying to imagine how things might have gone without Johan. The Cyclops had been a violent, cunning monster; on their own, the people gathered here would never have beaten it.

"I swear by the names of Father God and Mother God both — this debt we shall never forget."

"Think nothing of it. I did what any knight must — a monster cannot be left to roam free."

Johan was in a remarkably generous mood; he'd won both words and a weapon, after all. Had he not, the grief over his snapped sword would have left him snappish and rough.

But to the retainers, it could only read differently. They had swallowed their surrender in sullen silence while their lord Ahir was held hostage, resentment piling up all the while — and now they had no choice but to acknowledge the truth.

That the Count before them was a knight worthy of accepting their surrender.

A heathen, yes. But his skill and his honor were real.

Ahir had been beside himself when the news reached him. He had very nearly killed the Count over his beloved warhorse, so contrition came naturally. He bowed his head again and again.

"Enough. It's finished, and there was no intent behind it — how could I hold you to blame?"

"At the least, accept my words. I pray they may repay some small portion of what I owe your honor, Lord Count."

"No. Keep your steed, Duke. To strip a man of a horse so loyal to him is no work for a knight."

Ahir stared at Johan with wide eyes. For a heathen noble, this was a generosity almost impossible to credit.

It's not as though I'd be riding the beast anyway. Better to take it in gold.

Now that he had the bicorn, he had no real need of Ahir's warhorse on top of it. Which meant gold was the better prize — and if Ahir had any sense of the situation, he would naturally repay Johan with a great deal more of it. Besides, winning the favor of House Mulk came free of charge with the deal. There was no reason whatsoever to covet a single horse.

"...Your honor shall be spoken of even among the basest of your enemies, my lord."

"That's not a prospect that warms me much."

Johan remained unmoved by Ahir's praise. He did not deny the power that honor and renown could carry, but neither was he a man who felt any particular satisfaction in them.

"I hear you were insulted by the Emir of Zilirid, my lord."

"I was. That Count is a remarkable miser."

Once he returned and rested, Ahir found himself deep in thought.

Johan was an enemy of a different faith. Count Zilirid had been insolent and grasping, and his vassals had betrayed Ahir — but could he truly abandon a brother of his own faith and aid a heathen?

...And yet Johan's conduct had been too honorable to simply look past, and the blood of House Mulk owed debts too heavy to count. Unpaid debts made a man no knight at all.

"If my lord would permit it — I would aid you in your assault on the County."

"...?"

Johan turned, bewildered. A offer he had never imagined had just flown at his head.

What is this? Can't afford the ransom?

But Ahir said nothing of using this in place of his ransom. It seemed he genuinely meant simply to help.

"Do you understand what helping my assault on the County would mean?"

"How could I not, my lord? Of course I understand."

"If you're offering, then naturally I'll accept with thanks..."

Johan accepted readily, without a flicker of suspicion. Another man might have retorted, 'I'll not take charity from a heathen,' and no one would have blinked. Ahir was profoundly moved by Johan's respect for his honor, though he kept it off his face.

"I feel I'm stacking up debts I'll never repay. Shall I throw in the heads of the Zilirid brothers while I'm at it?"

"...Th-that will not be necessary."

Ahir was flustered by Johan's gruesome jest. Whatever else ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠might be said of the man, the Count's jokes carried a certain chill to them.

"You've truly been put through the wringer, my friend."

Swetlug looked thinner than before, his face carved full of exhaustion.

Johan had recruited merchants and even orc scribes, but tearing down a domain's entire administrative structure and seizing hold of the new one was no easy task. Worse, Johan was pointlessly particular, his standards ruthlessly strict. The old slapdash arrangements — 'you served as a priest once and worked there, so congratulations, you're the scribe now,' or 'fill this one sack with the taxes and you can pocket whatever's left over' — were utterly intolerable to him. Johan wanted, at minimum, a bureaucracy that looked like a bureaucracy.

The result of those demands was the exhaustion written across Swetlug's face. Gerdolf, assisting at his side, still had bright, glittering eyes — he didn't look like he'd suffered a single day's labor.

"It reminds me of the days I studied under my own master. Ah, dear me..."

Johan personally helped the old man to his seat. For all that Johan held a Count's rank, the easy intimacy of the gesture wrung a wry smile from Swetlug. Nothing gladdened him so much as proof that their friendship had weathered everything intact.

"And I've brought a few things back for you, as it happens."

"I heard the rumors. Hunting down wicked, savage monsters for the sake of your smallfolk, were you?"

Johan clapped his hands. Servants and slaves came dragging in the monster's byproducts. At the sight of the finely tanned minotaur hide and the carcass of the Cyclops, Swetlug's eyes filled with tears of emotion.

"You're not crying, are you?"

"...Step aside, if you would. I may need to send a few of these to Gulak."

Johan gave him a few hours to himself. Swetlug eventually emerged with a satisfied expression — the face of a man who had already set aside several materials worth keeping for himself.

"Well. We've a fair amount to catch up on, I imagine. Shall we start with something simple... I hear you took a weapon off the Cyclops?"

"I did."

"Then this was dwarven make."

"How can you tell?"

"Dwarves carve their maker's mark into their work like this. Your famous sword bears no such mark, so I'd wager the elves forged that one."

Johan realized Swetlug ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠was speaking of the Seal Retriever.

"Speaking of that sword — surely it's about time you were free to carry it openly?"

"Hm. Well. That one's not so easy for me to answer. True, your position is rather more settled now than it was."

'Rather more settled' was putting it very kindly indeed. Every time word drifted in from the west, Swetlug had had to rub his ears in disbelief and laugh at nothing.

Who on earth could have brought the entire south under his thumb in less than a year? It was a feat impossible unless the gods themselves loved the man.

"You may carry it freely, as far as I'm concerned. But that sword is famous. Questions will come about where you got it, and if you haven't a convincing answer, suspicions will follow."

Without a plausible story, people would whisper that he'd stolen it, or won it through some disgrace. Swetlug wanted nothing of the sort for him.

"Best thing would be to fight Karamap and then declare it to the world. Everyone would accept that without a murmur."

"But Karamap is dead, isn't he?"

"There's a false one, isn't there."