Against the Giants Read Online Free Page B

charms and spells, while fortune-tellers with greasy packets
of cards or poorly blown gazing-balls tried to sell their skills.
    The wealthy and noble kept summer quarters high in the hills,
well away from the heat and stench of the city. In winter, they lived in comfort
behind locked gates, sending armed guards to accompany their servants on errands
beyond the household walls.
    But to a boy who’d only once a year gone to New Market with
his father, Cryllor was shining and glorious. I should have come here with
Father, like he wanted, not like this, Lhors thought, but there had never been
enough free time. The village had depended too heavily on Lharis for his hunting
skills.
    Now Lhors gazed listlessly from paved streets and stone
fountains to the carved doors on ancient dwellings and the gargoyles perched on
the corners of flat roofs. The city was more impressive than he could have
imagined from his father’s tales—yet it mattered no more than the incredible
variety of people crowding those streets. He stared briefly at two reed-slender
elves, then at a girl in bright-colored skirts and scarves swaying on a small,
raised platform. At her feet two boys sat cross-legged, fiddling with their reed
pipes while a third paced back and forth, adjusting the skin on his drum. None
of this held Lhors’ attention for long. None of it was important.
    He gazed up at one of the inner lengths of wall—all that was
left of what might have been an outer wall a long time before when the city had
been much smaller. Now there was barely room for two guards to pace a few steps
and keep watch over the people below.
    “My father might have stood there once,” Lhors said to
himself. His throat closed. He drew breath through his nostrils then forced his
attention elsewhere.
    Some distance away, a man clad in mail and plate armor that
shone like silver moved through the crowd. He was followed closely by a boy and
a horse. The horse was a huge creature, blue-black with a well-brushed mane and
tail that hung nearly to the paving. The steeds head rested on the knights
plate-clad shoulder as if he were an enormous pet.
    That’s a paladin! Lhors thought in amazement. To think! His
father had told him wonderful tales about paladins, and this past winter he’d
openly spoken of his hopes that Lhors might become equerry to such a man. I
might have liked that, Lhors mused, if only because Father would have been
proud, but the village could never have spared me. Even Lhors’ hunting
skills—nowhere near as good as his father’s—were needed.
    Lhors glanced after the paladin and the boy with renewed
interest. Odd companions. The mail-clad man was an impressive figure, the boy a
gawky creature of perhaps ten years with spiky brown hair and ragged clothing.
Curious, Lhors thought. There must be some tale there, though he hadn’t the wit
to work one out.
    Some distance on, a gray-bearded man juggled three lit
torches. Lhors slowed but moved on almost at once. He had seen a boy moving
among the awed crowd, using a slender-bladed knife to relieve people of their
coin bags. Cutpurse. So that is where the word comes from, Lhors realized. He
made certain of his own coins and kept going.
    He paused now and again to repeat the gate guard’s
instructions to himself. Straight past the Shrine of Heironeous, which he would
know by the huge stone hand clutching a lightning bolt. He tried not to think
about the combination of huge hands and lightning. Who or what was a Heironeous?
It must be a god to have a shrine, but who prayed to a god who called upon
lightning?
    Upper Haven had prayed to all the gods in general—one never
knew which might be offended by being left out. Lhors knew little of such things
himself. His father now and again invoked the name of Trithereon, though when
things went wrong, Lharis bespoke one he named as Dread Hextor. “One who was a
warrior and is now poor is doubly in the care of Hextor,” was