Chapter 8 Giants

They say it is thunder and lightning that disturb the peace of the stormy sky. This may be true, however, half of the thunders are the sounds of giant’s footsteps and quarrels, as giants are quite quarrelsome creatures and they like throwing things in the air, be it rocks, trees, or carts left by humans out of fear when they encounter a fellow giant of the bigger size. Some of them are like big children who want to play, but they don’t have anyone to play with, so occasionally they take an unattended human child from the parents and play with them until their cheeks hurt from laughter. They don’t know much about childcare and the fact that a little human child is fragile and needs to be fed, so these children rarely come back to their parents, leaving giants with an overall bad reputation. Sometimes, the sleeping giants snore, hidden far in the mountains, making snowfall in the form of avalanches or soil collapse in the form of land-slips. They also cough when they have a cold and then, the whole earth shakes. From time to time, they visit human villages in search of food and require their citizens to give them all the food stored for winter. But what choice have you got when you face sure death at the hands of someone many times your size? You give all you have and hope for mild winter and subsidies from the merciful king.

That was about all that Edwin, Lilet, and Gwidon knew about giants from their grandmothers’ stories and overheard legends. 

Edwin prepared one of his stinking heaps to locate the whereabouts of the giants and, after a day run, following its instructions, they found themselves in the mountains. 

‘If they smash us, they will smash us entirely,’ he sighed hopelessly, stopped at the center of the valley, whispered some words, which only Lilet could understand, and in the middle of a clear blue sky, created a bolt of lightning and a rumble of loud thunder. They waited. Nothing seemed to be happening, Lilet sat on the ground, Gwidon started walking around the valley. But soon, they heard another thunder and another, and it felt as if they were in the middle of a storm. From all around the valley, the shaking of the earth announced the arrival of enormous men. They carried weapons of various sorts, they wore clothes made of sewn-together skins of whole cows, bears, and wisents. Gwidon had to look up to be able to see their heads and thought to himself that they had to be twenty times bigger than him. For them, lakes were like ponds and rivers were like streams. Mountains gave them the shelter they needed, forests and lakes provided the food and all things which they found necessary to live. 

‘Who are you and what do you want from us?’, one of the giants looked at the three little figures in the center of the valley. 

‘I’m Edwin, the Great Wizard!’

‘I’m Gwidon, the Royal Knight!’

‘I’m Lilet, The Forest Witch!’

When the giants saw Lilet, they started making incomprehensible sounds, which were a mix of laughter, tongues clicking and lips slacking. They were used to forest witches, but they expected to see someone of Edwin’s age. Instead, they saw a young and beautiful woman. 

Lilet didn’t have to read their minds to be able to know what they thought. It wasn’t the first time she wasn’t being taken seriously due to her age and sex. She was only curious whether her powers allowed her to change giants into little helpless forest swines. 

‘Ban!’ the giant put a stop to the laughter and introduced himself ‘The Giant of Mountains.’

‘San! The Giant of Forests.’

‘Zan! The Giant of Meadows.’

‘Gan! The Giant of Caves.’

‘Tan! The Giant of Swamps.’

‘Fan! The Giant of Rivers.’

‘Han! The Giant of Storms.’

‘Nan! The Giant of Lakes.’

Lilet laughed at another name. They didn’t put much effort into coming up with a complex naming system. And even though they were named almost in the same way, giants were completely different, when it came to their height, physical appearance, and the tone of voice. San was the tallest, Zan had long blond hair, Han was short and hairy, Gan was very pale, Fan had very visible veins which crossed his face and showed the pulsation of his blood, Nan was the fattest of them all, and Tan was covered in mud. 

‘Welcome. Why only eight of you?’ Edwin asked.

‘The rest decided that it’s not worthy to raise their feet for a little human call. What do you want from us?’

‘There’s going to be a war with Goblins,’ Gwidon explained, ‘The kingdom is going to be attacked by hundreds of thousands of armed underground creatures.’

‘We don’t help humans!’ Zan said and began to retreat.

‘Wait!’, Gwidon cried, ‘We don’t need your help. We wanted to inform you about a contest.’

‘What contest?’ Nan was suddenly interested.

‘Goblins told us that giants are big, awkward, and stupid. They cannot win any war, any battle, and any tournament...’

Giants started to grout. 

‘... But we believe otherwise. We told Goblins that we need to question their offensive accusations and see with our own eyes. But we cannot do this just like that. We need to have a contest. The winner will prove that what they say is not true. The winner will prove that giants are to be feared and respected.’

Lilet watched as giants began to enthusiastically clap their hands and howl like animals. They seemed to like the idea.

Gwidon took a stick and on a piece of land devoid of grass he drew a table with all the giants’ names.

‘There are going to be three separate competitions. For each one, you can win a maximum of ten points. The giant who completes the task gets a certain amount of points. After the third contest, we will sum up the number of points and choose the winner.’

‘What is the prize?’ Han asked, calculating his prospective benefits.

‘For the third place, there is a supply of the kingdom’s sheep for the winter.’ Gwidon started coming up with rewards.

Giants were fond of food, so they thought it was a fair award.

‘For the second place, there will be a supply of golden rings, bracelets, and chains. And even though you, giants, don’t seem to be fond of jewelry, your women will be grateful for some beautiful trinkets. To win the heart of a woman is difficult, but once you obtain her gratitude, there’s nothing more precious.’

And even though Gwidon had never seen a giant woman, his assumptions were true, as some giants smiled in a mutually shared understanding.

‘And for the first prize?' giants’ eyes got wider from the greed.

‘For the first prize, there will be land.’

‘Land? We have a lot of lands.’ San complained, ‘We have mountains, lakes, forests, rivers...’

‘I’m afraid you don’t own these forests, lakes, and mountains. You only live there temporarily. There are no official documents stating that you have any rights to the land that you live on. For the first prize, you will be offered a land, which you will own. Thus, you will be the owner and the ruler of this land. In other words, the one who wins the contest will be the king of this land with the right to rule. He will gain power over other giants without land.’

Giants looked and one another. All their desires were about to be appeased. For some, the best reward was food, for others women’s gratitude and happy home-life. For others yet, it was the domination over other giants. It wasn’t a silly contest. The little human could offer them something which they couldn’t obtain otherwise, whether by plundering human villages, stealing from rich merchants, or occupying valleys, forests, and ravines. Suddenly, they became serious about winning this contest. Suddenly their competitive traits won over the inborn laziness and indifference towards human fate. 

‘The first contest will be about constructing the best weapon. You can use all the resources you have around you and all the magical powers that were given to you by your ancestors. The best weapon will be given the biggest number of points. I want to be presented with these by the end of the day.’

Eight giants disappeared in the forest and loud sounds of cutting trees, breaking rocks, and forging metal were heard all around them. Lilet all this time observed Gwidon, who was dead serious about this competition. Edwin during this time laughed with all his heart at the naivety of giants and witnessed everything with the enthusiasm of a child seeing a theatre play.

The sun began to set and giants came back carrying various sorts of weapons. Gan presented a sword able to cut the strongest armor, Tan brought a bow able to shoot in the air over a hundred arrows, San displayed a crossbow which could reach the target distant over 5 miles away, Han constructed a catapult, which could throw rocks as big as houses, Zan brought a machete carved from a rock able to smash everything to pieces, Nan brought a spear sharper than the sharpest knife, Ban constructed a kurbash with a long chain and a spiked metal ball at the end with the ability to destroy everything on its way. 

‘And you?’, Gwidon asked Fan, ‘What did you make?’

Fan reached to his pocket and presented a little slingshot made of wood.

‘And how are you going to win with this little tool against your giant friends?’

Fan smiled and took a few little stones and shot at Ban’s heavy kurbash. In a second, the device turned into a green plant of the same exact shape. 

‘That’s how,’ he smiled, ‘My little sling-shot is able to turn every single weapon into a weed.’

Giants roared when their hard work was in a second outwitted by their mate. 

‘You used weedrocks!’

‘That’s not fair! You didn’t even work!’

‘You used luck!’

Ban almost strangled Fan alive. His day’s work was torn into green and leafy pieces.

‘Magic is allowed. It’s all in accordance with the rules. Fan resorted to wit and won this tournament. He gets ten points! The rest are going to win eight points each as your weapons were equally effective. Congratulations! For the second competition, I wait for you at dawn. Have a good night and see you soon!’

In the morning, Gwidon, Lilet, and Edwin jumped on rested horses. They were waiting for giants to appear in the valley.

‘Today we will measure your physical abilities! The contest looks accordingly: you will run to the castle with your weapons and leave them there. Then, you have to return here and collect as many rocks as possible and bring them to the castle. From these rocks, you will each built a wall around the castle. In front of the wall, you will have to dig the deepest canal you can manage and in there pour water. Before dawn, we will arrive at the castle and assess who has built the highest wall and the deepest canal in the fastest way. We will count points and this time Fan may fall from the first place. It’s all on the cards.’

Villagers spread all over the kingdom were sure that the country was hit by an earthquake. All earth shook when giants run to and from the castle, firstly, to carry their heavy weapons, secondly, to bring rocks with which they would build their walls.

As Gwidon, Lilet, and Edwin were riding to the castle, they had to go around giants’ feet stomping on the ground to avoid being smashed flat. When they arrived, the giants’ work was almost finished. Fan and Ban seemed to be way ahead of their friends, as Ban’s weapon was destroyed, and Fan’s was surprisingly light to carry. They started building their walls faster and thus, reached higher. But Tan and Nan seemed to be far more experienced in the building of the canals and their work below the ground was impressive. They both built huge fosses deep and wide, and impossible to cross on foot. Gwidon smiled with satisfaction at the results. For giants, it was a child’s play of putting rocks together and digging in the mud. For them, it was protecting the castle with eight varied height walls and canals, something which human constructors would do for months, possibly even years. To make matters seem even better, at each wall, there was a powerful weapon constructed by the giants, waiting to be used. 

‘Stop! Your time is up. Now we will measure the walls and measure the depth of the canals to see who was able to build the highest wall and the deepest canal.’

Lilet used some magical thread to calculate exactly the giants’ work and this time it was Nan who won over Tan by only a few inches, placing himself in the first place along with Fan. The giants who lost were angry and disappointed. 

‘Nothing is lost, dear giants! Everybody will have his chance! There’s the third contest. This is why we informed you about the war with Goblins. You have prepared your weapons (Ban, you can construct another one in your spare time), and built your walls. When Goblins arrive, you will have the opportunity to kill them. But count carefully, as the giant who kills the biggest number of Goblins, will win the third contest, and thus, can still compete for the first prize. You can also drastically change your position when it comes to the second and third place. We need you to relax and wait for their arrival. We will come back in a couple of days, so gain strength!’

‘And where are you going, little humans?’ Ban asked a bit confused, watching the three companions move away from the castle.

‘For the dragon!’ Gwidon said in a matter of fact way, as if finding dragons was something ordinary in his knight’s service.