Chapter Five: In which I save the town and others do some fighting as well.

I didn’t have time to speak to Ellwood Cyrene and Ellwood Cyrene didn’t have time to speak to me either. Seconds after we had jointly dispatched the first giant, which is to say, killed him together, we were set upon by another.  In a great acrobatic leap and using this new giant’s bended knee as a platform, Ellwood launched into the air, stabbing the monster through the left eye.  Ellwood was always showing off like that.  It was revolting.  I was so revolted, that I turned and went off to find my own giant to kill.

I didn’t have to look far.  Another frost giant was ripping the roof off of a small house.  I jogged over to him, but he took no notice of me, being, by this time, engaged in looking down into the house like a decent fellow would have looked down into a stew pot, having just lifted the lid.  I thought about leaping up into an acrobatic display that would put to shame anything that Ellwood Cyrene could do.  I thought about it long and hard.  In the end though, it just seemed like a waste of energy, so I stabbed up into the giant’s manly bits.

I can’t say for certain just how manly the giant’s bits may have been.  Had they been exposed, I certainly wouldn’t have looked at them, and they were completely covered.  On the other hand, I feel certain that they were quite manly, which is to say, large, or giant, or even Brobdingnagian.  Even if they were proportionately very tiny, they still would have been very large because he was a very large giant.  He certainly reacted in a very manly way, which is to say, he grabbed his crotch and screamed girlishly before falling.

In my dispatching that giant, I did prove that though they may have had very large brains, since they had very large heads, the giants were not proportionately smart.  If I had been a giant, fighting, for the most part, beings that were less than waist-high to me, the one article of armor upon which I would have insisted would have been a cod piece, which is to say that piece of metal which guards the family jewels.  But while many, if not all, giants wore helmets, I cannot recall ever having seen a giant wearing a cod piece.  How often do you suppose a frost giant is hit upon the head, unless it be by another frost giant?

I looked around.  The battle seemed to be over, for while I could see four giants in addition to the two that I killed, I could see no living ones.

“You killed one frost giant,” said Ellwood Cyrene, “and I’m not sure he’s dead.”

“Of course he is dead,” said I.

“Look.  He’s moving.”

I walked over and stabbed the giant in the neck several times.

“Are you happy now?” I asked.

“You still only killed one giant,” said Ellwood.

“One and a half,” I corrected, “for I knee-capped that one before you stabbed him in the back.  That was rather a rather cowardly blow, if I may say so.”

“I had to stab him quickly in order to save your life.  At least I didn’t poke him in meat and two veg.”

I shook my head and looked around.  The town had been lucky.  In addition to myself and Ellwood Cyrene, a mercenary company known as The Bloody Dogs were camping at the edge of the village.  Evidently, they were as unhappy as I to be woken in the middle of the night by marauding giants.  They had taken down two and had apparently wounded another, for there was a trail of blood leading away to the north.

“At least I saved the mayor,” I said, pointing to the house from which that the giant had torn the roof.

“The mayor’s house is down the street,” said Ellwood.  “That home belongs to the local wet nurse.”

“Even better,” said I.  “A wet nurse is far more valuable to a town than a politician.”

“I’ve missed you, Eaglethorpe,” said Ellwood, eyes filling with tears, and lip trembling.  “It’s been eight years.”

“It’s been six years, eleven months, and sixteen days,” I said, “and some number of hours, minutes, and seconds.”