Following Eko’s instructions, Arabel led her diminished troop up through overgrown paths that veered ever further from civilisation. The rocks were green with moss and winding weeds. By the time they stopped, it felt like they were shielded from the world, trees on one side and a gently trickling stream running between rocks on the other. The group dismounted and Arabel and Grawn gently helped the small people down to the stream, so they could wash. Arabel took the opportunity to wash some clothes herself. It was a warm afternoon and they had definitely earned the break.
When she’d laid out some of her off-white linens on rocks to dry, Arabel settled next to the gathering of small people to face the problem of what to do next. Eko was sitting thoughtfully on a tall rock, about chest height. Caracae was resting against a tree with Harper next to her, the other side of the clearing, while Grawn had gone up the path to keep watch for trouble.
Arabel looked awkwardly from Eko down to the other people they had rescued, a hundred thoughts and questions troubling her. The scholar in her wanted to dive into a rich and detailed study of what these semi-naked people had been through in their time as prisoners of a thundress. The kinder part of her merely wanted to nurture and protect such tiny people, and somehow deliver them to safety. Eko spoke up before Arabel could decide which way to go: “We’re going to have a problem with that witch sooner rather than later, aren’t we?”
Arabel frowned Caracae’s way and the witch’s eyes opened a crack to watch her, with a prescience that made Arabel look quickly away again. She whispered, “I think she was genuinely trying to help.”
“Scuttle-shit,” Eko spat. Her voice was strangely clear, the huntress clearly able to project well and not reduced to quite the same pathetic squeak as Dansot. “I still had my blade, I could’ve handled myself. She knew I was the only thing stopping her from taking over this whole expedition, Arabel; she wanted this.”
“Why would she?” Arabel countered. “She’ll only get her reward if we’re successful.”
“She’s a witch, idiot,” Eko said. “For all we know, she wants to get close to the princess to take her hostage herself.”
Arabel couldn’t help a laugh, but stifled it when she saw Eko’s hard expression. “Sorry. But so far she’s protected us. I thought we’d almost lost you.”
“Yeah? Might as well have, leaving me pocket-sized like this.”
Caracae stood and rolled her neck, preparing to come over, evidently made curious by watching them talk. Arabel looked uncertainly from Eko to the witch, knowing this was about to get awkward. To put that off, she quickly addressed the closest of the thundress’s captives, one of the men who’d been strapped to the leg: “Excuse me. But where are you from?”
The man pointed to himself nervously, seemingly no longer used to being addressed politely. It would take him a while to recover from the ordeal of living as jewelry. He cleared his throat and said, “Village is gone, ma’am. White Vale. Anyone who survived would’ve fled far as possible.”
“We were the lucky ones,” the woman with him croaked, sounding uncertain if she believed it. “Saw so many people we knew killed.”
“I’m sorry,” Arabel said., as Caracae slowly drew up alongside her. “And so sorry now. To save you from that, only for this.”
The man shrugged. “I’ll take it. Got used to feeling small. Don’t know if it’s been weeks, months, more. Gave up ever being rescued – just hanging there, seeing terrible things.”
“Always wondering when she’d take one of us for a snack,” the woman added, with a sniff.
“And you?” Arabel asked the others, who stood further back – the ones who’d been hanging from the giantess’s hair. “Were you all from the same village?”
One shook his head and the other merely stared silently. The woman in a pink dress, though, stepped forward and shuffled as though trying to make herself presentable, which was difficult considering how filthy her capture had made the once-fine material. She said, voice almost inaudible, “I was travelling from Land’s Barrow. The village we just left. A thundress’s had been spotted nearby. But my family and me, we were spotted on the road –”
“We saw,” Arabel admitted, guiltily, and the tiny woman regarded her with surprise, then hung her head. If only they had stopped the thundress the day before.
“Is it true,” the pink-dressed lady asked, “that some of those people might’ve been saved from the giant’s belly?”
“They swallow them alive,” the man from the leg said, helpfully. “Mostly whole.”
“Yes,” Arabel said and details of her reading came out unfiltered: “It’s a question of dominance; while we vie for control of the land, they want us to know we are prey, right up to the end. It’s also considered a sign of personal fortitude, to be able to stomach eating people alive. Literally.”
One of the men from the hair snorted, unimpressed. “They don’t think so much. They’re just cruel. Do it for fun.”
“But those people could be alive?” the pink-dressed lady pressed.
Arabel hesitated, not sure quite how useful her book-smarts were compared to their first-hand experience, now. She said, “Not for long. Most of what we know of thundress anatomy comes from Abbot Veed’s book – he compiled various texts and observations of travellers, including analysis of stool, and suggested the thundress stomach is much like a human one, digesting via acid. Anything that lands in the stomach would not last long. They’re not magical in the same way a witch is, for example, which –” She paused, seeing the mixture of horrified faces on the small people, aware this topic could only get worse. Especially with Caracae watching and the memory of her promising Dansot would’ve survived an hour or so inside her.
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“Are there more of them nearby?” Eko asked brusquely, to move the conversation on. “That giant have any friends?”
“No, ma’am,” the man from the leg said. “She travelled alone, all the way from the mountain. She’d wander out into the plains for a day, sometimes two, then take her captives back up to their village. Once or twice a week. The rest of the time we were back there.”
“Did you see the princess?” Arabel asked, hopefully.
“The princess got taken?” the pink-dressed lady gasped.
“Lot of people get taken up into the mountains,” the leg man said, unsurprised. “When a giant gets a grip on someone, doesn’t make a difference, royalty or slave.”
“They keep cages around the tribe,” his female companion added. “Toss people in together and forget about them until there’s a task to do or a giant gets hungry. No telling, once you’re in a cage, how long it’ll be for or why you’ll get taken out again. At least we were always with the same monster. Fed and watered us when we needed it.”
“When she decided we needed it,” the vocal hair-man snapped. “Didn’t so much as let us off to relieve ourselves. And you had to hold it – Ribo, my friend Ribo –” He had to take a moment, sniffing back emotion. “He couldn’t hold it, and wet her shoulder, and she punished him by – she said he peed on her, so she would – well, she put him in a jar – squatted over it –”
“You’re free now, though,” Arabel cut in before they were subject to the full details of a horrific death. “We can take you wherever you want to go. And I’m sure we can find a way to –” She looked to Caracae. “We’ll make things right, won’t we?”
Caracae looked at Eko, who scowled back. “Let me be absolutely clear. Constriction magic is like lighting a fire. Burning something twice does not make it better, you understand? Though there are other areas of magic to explore. With the Rake Stone, for example –”
“Here we go,” Eko said. “See. Accidentally shrunk us all, but give her unlimited power and she’ll find a way to make it better. Do not trust this witch, Arabel.”
“I’m not saying there is a way,” Caracae said. “The stone would just give me more options. Truthfully, I don’t have much hope for you. For any of you. It is why I was reluctant to intervene in the first place.”
“Then you shouldn’t have,” Eko snarled.
Arabel fully believed she might draw her tiny sword and charge the witch, never mind her height. Caracae was not bothered, though, and answered calmly, “You chose to enter that fight, not me. I merely thought this was better than getting eaten.”
“Well, it’s done now,” Arabel said, again trying to avoid worse conflict. “The question is what do we do next. Obviously, it makes no sense to take you all with you. We could go to the nearest town, find somewhere safe, then return to Burgwec together when this is over.” She addressed the tiny people, particularly the pink-dressed lady. “No one needs to know you’re there; I can rent a room for a week or more and leave you food.”
“We don’t have time for that,” Caracae said.
“It’s been three nights, now,” Eko said, with an air of reluctant agreement. “It’ll take at least a day out of our way to reach a town I’d deem suitably safe, by this point. Forget it, we’re pressing on to the tribe.”
“The tribe?” the vocal hair-man cried. “You want to go to the giants’ lair? With us like this?” They all murmured fear and distrust, with the trio from the leg shuffling close together.
The woman in a pink dress pleaded, “Please, miss – I have family in Gull Port.”
“No one’s going to bloody Gull Port,” Eko said. “Not now. Way I see it, we have two choices. Leave this lot here, with supplies, and pick them up on the way back, or everyone goes together.”
As the other small people started up in complaints, Arabel was stunned, not least because the huntress was clearly not grouping herself with the other small people. She fully intended to keep going.
“We should take them with us,” Caracae said. “They’ll die out here without us, and might prove useful.”
“Useful for what?” Arabel replied, but Eko was quicker on the uptake.
“Breath of Saints,” the huntress gasped. “You monstrous sow, you can’t be suggesting what I think. I oughta cut your throat right now.”
“That’s enough,” Arabel said, raising a hand to Eko, but saw from the witch’s pleased expression she was suggesting the worst. Bring along these people for witch food? Arabel moved close to Caracae, lowering her voice. “These are innocent people who have suffered enough. They are not some – some –” She couldn’t bring herself to say it, making the witch’s lips stretch to a smile.
“My magic has already been drained, today,” Caracae said. “I may be in a position to defend us against another giant by late tomorrow. No one else here will be, with Eko’s current condition. One unlucky encounter and we all die. But with help, a little sacrifice . . .”
“You’ll go through me to do it,” Eko snarled, half-drawing her blade. Meaning to use it, Arabel was sure.
“That would be a waste,” Caracae said, “but if you insist.”
Arabel tugged at the witch’s sleeve urgently, eyes on the pouch at her hip, and lowered her voice to keep it between them. “You still have some extra energy, don’t you? That thug. Ruft?”
Caracae gave her a sly look that could be read either way. Had she eaten the man she shrank in Gorm already?
“What are you talking about?” the pink-dressed dress cried, skipping over the stones to come closer. Arabel looked down at her, a doll come to life racing towards her boot. “Miss, please! I just want to live!”
The others erupted in agreement, the ones from the leg desperately hopeful while the vocal hair-man gave angry sounds. There was no way Arabel could condone putting them in harm’s way. To bring them at all would make that horrible choice inevitable, if Eko was to be believed; at some point, Caracae would make demands of them.
“No,” Arabel decided. “We’ll make a shelter for you. We’ll come back, I promise.” They weren’t happy, keeping up their complaints, but Arabel was mostly interested in Caracae’s response. The witch gave nothing away as Arabel went on, “These people have earned a second chance, however limited, and we won’t take it from them.” She turned to Eko. “You can stay, too. I’ll see you still receive your full fee; you’ve done more than enough already.”
“Like hell,” Eko replied. “You’ll never reach the tribe alive without me. I’m coming and we’re continuing on my terms. We’re against the clock with the princess, so we deal with the witch later. Only Arabel gets to touch me. The rest of you” – she glared at Caracae, then spared a look for Harper, watching from across the clearing – “try anything and I’ll cut off your fucking fingers. Understood?”
Caracae spread her hands innocently. “You’re the expert, I suppose. But you’re welcome to reconsider at any time. I do have experience with people in your . . . situation.” She put a hand to her chest, sliding a seductive finger over the curve of her exposed cleavage. “I’m sure I can make you more comfortable than Arabel.”
Arabel fixed her eyes on Eko rather than Caracae, to avoid being uncomfortably drawn to stare at the swell of the witch’s breasts, but her imagination went there anyway – picturing the little huntress fitting between them.
Eko’s expression said she was doubly unhappy with the idea, with no love for Caracae, and the monster hunter growled, “Watch yourself. I don’t need to be taller than your ankle to know how to bring you down.”
“Great, so we’re agreed,” Arabel said quickly, to settle it. “These people are kept safe, the mission continues as before.” Except, she had to admit herself, she had the sole responsibility of keeping a tiny huntress from killing or being killed by their witch.