According to the advanced scouts, the giant had been lying in wait. After following the giant’s path to where it exited from the forest, they continued following the giants’ footprints until they came to a hill. They thought they’d get a good view of where the giants’ tracks were going from the top before heading back, but when they got up they found the grey giant waiting for them just out of view on the other side.

He caught them by surprise and even almost managed to grab one of them too. The scouts were quick to react, however, and sent their horses sprinting before he could lay a hand on them.

Once they were out of his reach, the giant couldn’t keep pace with their swift horses. They probably wouldn’t have even called for reinforcements and just observed the giant if it hadn’t been for the wolves.

After the giant shouted, the wolves came streaming out their hiding spots within the woodlands. The scouts did have the experience to outmaneuver these simpleminded beasts, but realized their horses would fatigue before reaching any true escape. That’s when one of them decided to ring the bell.

Having known the purpose of a giant’s path before arriving in these woodlands, the Godfreys had already ordered their men to place rope traps and pikemen in the trees of one of its ambush corridors down the way. Now knowing the giant’s strength, it's become clear that such an ambush was doomed to fail to begin with, but thanks to the wolves' involvement things ended even worse than they should have.

Rather than surprising the giant, the baron’s men were busy protecting their horses and when he did finally arrive, anyone foolhardy enough to stay in the trees and attack him was killed. Honestly, they were lucky only seven lives were lost there.

As his men fled deeper into the forest, Godfrey Sr. rang the retreat signal while the giant continued shadowing them from the road. The giant ran into our group of reinforcements from there and the rest of it you already know.

After the fight, we arrived back at the clearing with the majority of what remained of the Godfreys’ men. Godfrey Jr. had a couple of the riders trail us from behind with a miracle bell in case any more giants or wolves were coming, but they never gave the signal.

“Hey!” As soon as we arrived, Howard, the last of the four town guards roped into this, ran over us. Waiting for our return along with him were the other scouts who’d been too far in the wrong direction to arrive before the retreat signal was given and the men in charge of supplies.

As for Agatha and Hailee, they were waiting for us over on the house’s porch. While Agatha was sporting a look that was more on the reserved side of the emotional spectrum, Hailee’s was a bit closer to pissed.

Seeing that, I made sure Ben and Matthew asked to be given a moment by the Godfreys. Wasn’t about to let them have me walk into this by myself, after all.

Once we were in the house with the front door closed behind us, it began.

“Ben, Matt, what were your guys thinking?” Hailee asked.

“What do you mean what were we thinking?” Ben responded.

“Why’d you bring Jack along with you?”

“Because Jack wanted to come and we had space.”

To add some clarification to ‘had space,’ I got word later on that the twins had convinced Howard to partner up with one of the baron’s men, so that I could ride with Ben if the giants turned up. Must have been opposite day when they said they kept me out of trouble.

“You told them you wanted to come?” Hailee asked me.

Well, I couldn’t deny that. “They offered and I agreed,” I said.

“Shouldn’t you have thought of what your mother would think before you did something like that?”

“I should have,” I agreed. She wasn’t wrong and now that all the adrenaline was gone, seeing Agatha’s gloomy expression after what I had done was making me feel kind of depressed. After resolving myself to support her, it was amazing how fast I’d managed to turn around and give her grief the next day. “Sorry, Mom.”

There was a long silence as we all waited for Agatha to respond.

“Uh, I hope you’re not too mad with Jack, Auntie Agatha,” Ben said as he scratched his head, “Even if you’re against what he did, he still ended up saving someone’s life today,” he said. He left out the part where that same someone was killed not two minutes after.

“Why do you always feel the need to do these sorts of things?” Agatha finally spoke up and asked me.

“What sorts of things?”

“Exactly. You can’t even remember any more. You have to ask me. Not three days since they took your memory and now you’re riding back out so that they could take your life too.”

I didn’t have a response.

“I’m not going to give you a speech,” Agatha continued. “Even before you lost your memory, you wouldn’t remember them anyway.” She walked up to me, placed her hand on my cheek, and looked into my eyes. “I just want you to try to think a little about how I’d feel before you go off doing these sorts of things again. You’re the only son I have left.”

“Yeah, Mom,” I felt what was left of the other Jack saying it with me, “I’ll try.”

After that exchange, we gave Hailee and Agatha a summary of what had happened in the forest, making sure to leave out the part where I almost died. Just when we had finished telling them everything they needed to hear, someone knocked on the front door. We opened the door to find Godfrey Jr. and a couple of the advanced scouts waiting for us.

“Sorry to interrupt you,” Godfrey said, “But we’d like to make an offer for the giant’s blood in your yard from you before we go.”

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“What do you need it for?” I asked.

“You remember seeing us using that bottled fire earlier, right?”

I nodded my head.

“We’ll need giant’s blood if we want alchemists to make us any more of those.”

Agatha asked how much they were willing to offer for what we had and Godfrey Jr. gave a price per a bucket that one of his men was holding. The bucket looked like it could hold about half a gallon.

“Can you give us some time to think about it?” Agatha asked.

“Only enough to send you to the village and back if you’re in need of someone’s advice. We’ll be riding out before the sun sets.”

“I’m assuming you won’t be riding out after the giants,” I said.

“I’m not keen on seeing how many more of our men they’ll end up killing in the dark. That goes for the wolves as well.”

“So what are we supposed to do then?” I couldn’t blame them for wanting to leave, but I still had to ask.

Godfrey shrugged. “Same thing you were doing before you found out we were coming.”

“And if the giant’s come around looking for revenge?”

“Run? Hide? If we're going by the story your mother gave us, they’ve got no reason to believe that anyone lives here anymore. Just have to make sure you don’t spend too much time in the yard.

“Of course, you could come with us too. We’ve got ten good men to replace and it looks like you can handle yourself pretty well after a dismount. If you give us a good price for the giant’s blood, I’ll even help you find a nice place for your mother in Rosstree.”

I didn’t really know enough about money here yet to be judging his offer, but the giant’s blood must have been valuable if he was offering that. Shouldn’t have been a surprise, though, considering it was farmed from giant maneating murder machines.

“I think we’ll have to get some advice on that offer too.” I said.

“Fair enough,” he said, before looking to Ben and Matt. “I’m expecting that one of you will help your friend with a ride?”

“Yes, Sir,” Matthew said.

“Good. Once you're done sorting things out in there, I’d also like you two to help us load up the carts as well.”

“Yes, Sir.”

Godfrey Jr. and his men left us and the five of us went back inside.

“I think we should ride out to Mr. Edward’s,” Matthew said. “He’s probably the best estimate we’ll get for what the blood’s worth.”

“Yeah,” Ben agreed.

“Are you going to take him up on his offer, Jack?” Hailee asked.

I wasn’t sure. “What do you think, Mom?”

“You should go,” Agatha said.

“And you’ll come with me?”

She took a deep breath in. “No, I’m still not ready to leave.”

“Then I won’t leave until you're ready to leave either.”

She took a moment to think after hearing me say that, then said, “As long as you don’t go and almost get yourself killed again, I can live with that.”

“Like I said, I’ll try.”

“Then it’s okay.”

With nothing much else to left to say, Matthew and I took Runner out to Mr. Edward’s house in the hamlet while Ben got to helping the baron’s men pack. Though the trading of alchemical ingredients wasn’t Mr. Edwards profession, he’d managed various projects for the baron before ‘retiring’ here, so was probably the best person to ask for advice that wasn’t an alchemist or a merchant who dealt with them often.

Taking into account the rarity of giant’s blood even on the frontlines, the emerging threat of giants in the area, and it being such a valuable resource for fighting them, he came up with a counteroffer for us that took what funds the baron’s men had on hand into consideration.

“Unless they have little on hand, you shouldn’t ask for more than they have,” he said. “Considering the times, they’ll just use having to deal with the giants as an excuse to postpone the payment. And when the giants come to our doorstep, they’ll weigh the debt against us when deciding to abandon us in favor of others.”

At the end of his explanation, he asked that we help with the current food shortage by splitting the earnings between the families of those who died. I told him I’d have to talk about it with Agatha first, but that I was for the idea.

After riding back and telling Agatha about what was said, I gave the baron’s men our counteroffer. The Godfreys took it as more than fair and since they did in fact have enough money on hand, we ended the business there with them being allowed to take most of the blood and them throwing in a couple bottles of bottled fire for self-defense.

A couple bottles wouldn’t bring down a giant, but it was better for fighting or slowing one down than anything else we had available, so I made sure to get some in the deal. As for why I didn’t sell them all the blood, well, it was blood from a magic creature, after all. I wasn’t about to let them have all of it.

While the baron’s men collected the blood, Ben and Lawrence approached us with a cow that had a black cat riding on its back.

“Howard and the guy he rode out with found this cow wandering around in the woods before all the mess with the giants earlier,” Ben said. “She’s yours right?”

“Yes, she is,” Agatha said, before taking the cow’s lead rope from him and petting the cat.

“And how about the cat?” Lawrence asked. Apparently, the baron’s men had tried scaring it away, but it just wouldn’t budge.

“No. Just some feral thing that stops by for milk from time to time.”

“You should try to get rid of it then. Give those things a chance and they’ll give you bad luck.”

I wouldn’t have thought much of that hearing it back where I was from, but here…

“That’s just some made up thing,” Agatha said.

“You still want to say that after all this suffering you’ve gone through?” Lawrence asked.

She glared at him for that. “The one who made me suffer were those giants, not some cat. And besides, it’s been coming here for two years already. How come it took the giants so long to come if it’s the cat’s fault?”

“Probably took that long to build up enough bad luck for something this bad to happen,” our local superstitions expert answered.

Agatha wasn’t having any of it. “The cat can come and go as it pleases.”

“Hmph, suit yourself.”

Once all the blood had been collected, we said our goodbyes to the twins, Lawrence, and Howard, the Godfreys thanked us for our hospitality, and the few short of thirty men left our yard. Like it had been before they came, things were quiet in the clearing once again.

Or at least things would have been if the cat hadn’t started trying to call us over as soon as they left. Couldn’t get her to stop until I gave her some milk fresh from the cow.

After she’d had her fill, she was straight back into the woods. I doubt she was even grateful. The cow, on the other hand, seemed quite happy to have been milked for the first time in a couple days.

Since the barn was in need of more than a little bit of maintenance before it could be safely occupied again and since we were hoping the giants would think this place was abandoned, I walked the cow out into the forest and tied her to one of the trees. We tried to keep out of sight ourselves as much as possible for the rest of the day, but there were still things we had to handle outside.

With the sun setting and a good day’s work done, Agatha, Hailee, and I shared dinner before calling it a night. As soon as I closed the door to Andrew’s room behind me, however, I went over to his head and pulled out my page from beneath his pillow. Just like I had expected, there were some new entries listed among my possessions.