A Tale of The Giant

Her village has been attacked relentlessly by a foe that seems undefeatable. Britta is not quite ready to give up hope yet. Story based on the rune stave: Thurisaz.

The Giant first attacked during the spring.

It trod through the village with all the care of a child skipping over puddles in the rain. Most of the houses ended up with at least one section torn down; some collapsed entirely. The Giant trampled or ate much of the livestock. Survivors of the attack were left with either no home or no food. Some were left with neither.

The Thorstein family heard about the attack days after it happened. Their home was halfway up the mountain that shadowed the village, well out of the Giant’s path. As the only ones who were spared  from all damage, they helped the villagers to recover and rebuild. The destruction they saw, however, filled them with dread. It was only luck that had kept them from the same fate. And luck was a fickle thing.

The second attack came during the lengthening days of early summer.

Though people had hoped the Giant would not return, they had prepared for the event. This time, the Giant was met with resistance: sharp stakes encircled the village, and a wall had been hastily built, where men and women were posted to watch for its return. Blowhorns announced the Giant’s arrival as soon as its massive form was sighted in the distance.

The Giant was taller than the spruce trees it stomped through to reach the village; its head and shoulders were visible from leagues away. The villagers had plenty of time to grab their weapons and get ready to protect their recently rebuilt homes.

The Giant’s feet crushed the spikes in the ground as if they had been made of grass. The sentries on the wall fired arrows that the Giant swatted away like flies. Even spears bounced off its skin harmlessly.

The Giant tore through the village as terrified men and women dropped their weapons and fled.

The village that had barely recovered from the previous attack, was devastated. The Thorsteins, spared once again, offered their help, even as their sense of dread grew heavier and heavier.

One month after the second attack, the Giant reached the house on the mountain. For all they had seen, the Thorsteins were helpless against the onslaught. It was all they could do to avoid getting trampled.

As always, the Giant came and went, leaving disaster in its wake. The Thorstein home was turned to rubble. They lost everything.

The village wasn’t spared this time either. Given the futility of their efforts during the previous attack, the villagers had born this latest catastrophe with a mixture of dismay and resignation.

The Thorstein family gathered what little belongings they could salvage and went to the village. They joined dozens of others seeking shelter in whatever buildings were still standing.

Over the next weeks, the Thorsteins’ daughter, Britta, helped take care of the injured. Older men and women worked as quickly as they could to rebuild houses. The newest buildings were little more than plain sheds meant to put a roof over people’s heads, made without care for comfort or elegance. They figured that these buildings probably wouldn’t last beyond the next season.

There was much talk about what to do. Weapons and defenses had proven useless. Trying to build a wall large enough to deter the Giant would be a feat worthy of the gods, barely possible given the right amount of time, manpower and resources. They didn’t have any of that.

Leaving appeared to be the only real solution. They didn’t know where they would go, and there were many folk -the elderly, the poor of health- that would not be able to survive a long journey.

Britta heard all these things spoken of, in loud discussions during the day, and anxious whispers at night. She didn’t want to leave the home she had grown up in, but they made it sound as if she wouldn’t have a choice. She tried to resign herself to this fate, but a part of her resisted.

A thread of hope was offered came in the form of a passing traveler. A hooded man who came by their village and saw the remnants of destruction left in the Giant’s wake, told of a warrior who had defeated many Giants in years past. The Giantslayer, this man called him, which made the villagers scoff. They had tried to defend themselves against a Giant, and their combined efforts had not even been a nuisance to the creature. What could a single man do against such a foe?

Of all the villagers, Britta was the only one to heed the traveler’s story. She asked the man where the Giantslayer could be found, and she left the village that very evening.

Britta travelled on foot for nine long days. Upon reaching the Giantslayer’s home, she thought there had been a mistake. She must have gone the wrong way, or the traveler must have given her false directions. The place she had arrived at did not look like any human settlement Britta had ever seen. In fact, it didn’t look like a settlement at all.

It was a large, barren field. Fog gathered over the ground instead of trees or shrubs. The only thing visible through the fog, were the dozens -no, hundreds- of bones.

They weren’t ordinary bones either. The bones that littered this place were massive things. If not for the unmistakable texture and color, Britta could have mistaken them for broken buildings. They lay scattered in every direction: long, straight bones belonging to arms and legs, curving ribs, severed mandibles… Each bone was several times longer than Britta was tall.These bones belonged to giants.

Britta felt a chill run down her spine. She nearly turned back, but refused to give up so quickly. She gathered her courage and entered the boneyard.

She was dwarfed by the bones that leaned against one another, or formed ivory arches where they seemingly rose from the muddy ground. It was like walking through a city leached of all life and color, as haunting as the thought of the bodies that had once given life to these ruins.

Britta walked around the bones and through the mist until she came upon an enormous skull. It was nearly intact but for its missing mandible. The cranium stood like a dome, the eye sockets resembling windows and the slit where the nose would have been stood level with the earth, forming a kind of doorway. Britta stared at it, terrified by the size of the skeleton but entranced by its shape. She stepped through the nasal cavity.

And into a home.

There was a simple bed made of straw, a wooden table and a single chair. The curving walls, however, were fully decorated with a collection of weapons: swords, spears, axes and bows. The steel and wood bore beautiful carvings of knotted lines and sigils. Each one seemed like the greatest treasure she had ever seen, until she saw the instrument beside it and then thought the same thing of that one, and so on.

Britta was so mesmerized by the fine weapons that she almost didn’t see the skull’s occupant.

The man stood up from the where he had been seated on the dirt floor and loomed over Britta. She knew instantly that he was the Giantslayer. He wore simple clothes, instead of armor. His red hair and beard were a disarrayed mess. He was holding a hammer that looked far too large to be practical, and appeared to have been carved from bone.

It was something in the intensity of his eyes, in the power that seemed to radiate from this man, that made Britta know, without doubt, that he was indeed the Giantslayer.

“What are you doing in my house?” he asked bluntly.

Britta forced down her bashfulness and awe, and she told him who she was. Before he could respond, she told him of all the misfortune that had befallen her village. She told him of the Giant they had faced, their failed attempts at defense, and of the wanderer who had claimed he could help.

The Giantslayer listened to her story without appearing too concerned. He all but shrugged when she pleaded for him to return to the village with her.

“This is no battle of mine,” he said simply. “The Giant attacked you and your people. It is your thorn to deal with.”

Britta didn’t know whether she should start begging or storm out of there in anger. Instead of doing either of those things, she asked a simple question: “How do you defeat a Giant?”

The Giantslayer barked a laugh. “I don’t know. You hit them. Very hard.”

Britta simmered. She had expected the Giantslayer to offer his help willingly, but she was ready to stay there as long as was necessary for him to change his mind. She sat down, uninvited, and declared that she would not leave until the Giantslayer agreed to help.

“Do as you wish,” the Giantslayer said. He sat on the ground across from Britta, laying his hammer on his lap and crossing his arms. They stared at each other.

They sat for so long that Britta’s limbs ached. Her throat was parched, her stomach grumbled with hunger. But she didn’t move. The day waned outside, leaving them in the bleak gray light of a late summer night. The skull-house did nothing to keep out the evening chill, and Britta shivered, but she did not complain. She did not stand up.

After many hours had passed, the Giantslayer burst into laughter. “Very stubborn,” he chortled. “Alright. As I said, I cannot fight this Giant in your place. But, for your stubbornness, I grant you this: take any weapon you please from here. I will procure a horse and a cart for you to carry as many as you need back to your village. Now, choose.”

Britta wanted to argue that weapons were useless against the Giant, but she thought better of it. This was the Giantslayer speaking, after all.

She took her time, looking closely at the impressive weapons on the walls. Then she looked at the bone hammer on the Giantslayer’s lap. Britta knew what her choice must be.

“Give me the best bones you can find,” she said.

The Giantslayer smiled. Britta had made the right choice.

The Giantslayer spent the next day using his hammer to break off pieces of bone from the surrounding graveyard. Once he had a large enough pile of bone chunks, he left. He returned a few hours later with food, a horse and a cart, as promised. Britta helped him stack as many pieces of bone onto the cart as they could fit. When they were done arranging pieces, the Giantslayer made a fire and cooked part of the food he had brought.

They ate a hearty meal, accompanied by the crackling fire and the surrounding bones of dead giants.

Britta set out at dawn, bringing with her the rest of the food the Giantslayer had brought, and the pile of bones.

The villagers welcomed her with contempt, seeing that no Giantslayer accompanied her. Not that they had believed any such man existed, anyway. Still, they could not conceal some measure of disappointment.

Britta ignored their contempt and dismissed their disappointment. She had not come back empty-handed.

She told them of her encounter, and though she was met with skepticism, the villagers had run out of alternatives. They complied when she instructed them to take the bone pieces and forge weapons out of them. They used the bone to make the tips of arrows and spears, the blades of swords, axes and knives. It was no easy task. They quickly realized that the bone material was harder than steel, and much more difficult to work with. Rather than being disheartened, this encouraged the village folk. Harder weapons could be what they needed.

They worked more quickly than anyone thought possible to make enough weapons for every villager to carry. This was it: their last hope against the Giant.

They didn’t have to wait long to test the new weapons. The Giant returned a week after Britta’s arrival.

This time, when the alarm sounded, men and women rushed out of their homes carrying the ivory tools. Britta was among them, wielding a long spear.

The wall once built to post sentries had long since been destroyed, by rickety stands had been erected in its place. Archers stood there. They were the first to strike against the Giant as it approached.

Arrows flew high and true toward the Giant. It tried to swat them away again, but rather than bouncing off, they pierced the skin of its hands and arms. The Giant roared in surprise and anger, then raised its arms to shield its face as another volley of arrows raced its way.

The excitement in the village was palpable. There were cries of joy as people saw, for the first time, that they could wound the terrorizing creature. It was one thing to wound it, though, and another to defeat it.

The Giant recovered from its surprise and advanced to the village more quickly than before. It still covered its face with its arms, which now had dozens of arrow shafts protruding from them. Blood trickled from the injuries, but that only seemed to infuriate the Giant.

The wave of excitement that had swept over the villagers dissipated quickly as they saw the Giant break into a run.

The archers leapt from their posts mere moments before the Giant destroyed the stands with one sweep of its arms. The rest of the villagers backed away, then ran in opposite directions to avoid getting trampled as the Giant bounded through the village.

Its footsteps alone made the ground quake and brought down some of the poorly built houses. The Giant’s rage at being wounded made its attacks all the more furious. The more courageous of the villagers hurled spears and tossed axes toward it, but even when they struck their mark, the Giant merely paused for an instant before renewing its barrage on the village.

Terror and despair overtook the last vestige of hope the villagers had.

Britta felt the same horror trying to paralyze her or make her run away, but she fought against it, thinking of the Graveslayer’s words.

‘How do you defeat a Giant?’

‘You just do.’

Britta planted her feet. She clenched her jaw and clutched her spear.

The Giant, as if sensing her challenge, turned right toward where she stood. It began to run in her direction.

The Giant carelessly ran through buildings and people who didn’t move away fast enough. It headed straight toward Britta, and she…

She ran straight toward the Giant.

Holding her spear so tightly she thought her hands might fuse to it, Britta ran at the Giant while everyone else ran away. She banished all doubts, all fear. Her mind went blank, as she and the Giant closed the distance between them.

Its foot rose above her, so large that it blocked out the sun. Britta pointed her spear up as the foot came down. Then, with all her strength, she rammed the butt of the spear into the ground and rolled herself to the side as fast and far as she could.

The foot landed less than an inch away from her. The earth shook from the impact. Beyond her own heartbeat pounding in her ears, Britta heard a scream so loud it made the world rumble.

And it made her heart leap.

That scream had been of pain. Britta narrowly avoided being squashed a second time as the Giant’s knee came down this time. It had fallen to its knee to clutch its foot, which now had Britta’s spear sticking straight through it.

Britta yelled as loud as she could, meaning to call back the warriors who had abandoned the fight. She needn’t have bothered: everyone had seen the Giant come down, and many had seen Britta facing it head on just a moment before.

The battle lasted a long time, but no one else tried to flee. The villagers fought with all their courage and might, and in the end, the Giant was defeated.

It was a feat that every man and woman present would retell among themselves, to their children, and their grandchildren, for many years to come.

They rebuilt the village properly, and upon Britta’s suggestion, they used pieces of the Giant’s bones as construction materials. The result was a collection of buildings made of wood, stone and white bone. They were beautiful, and all but indestructible.

Britta’s family rebuilt their own home in the same manner, halfway up the mountain, where it had been for many generations prior, and would remain for many generations after.

Author's Note

Third installment in the Rune Tales series.