[i]Pier Four...[/i]

“Metal ships.” White-Eye spoke with a face screwed up with hate and spat, “Devil-make.”

Jorwen said nothing, only watched. The ships that went out to meet the invaders were quick work for them and he had a hard time feeling anything for them. There was a fine line between heroism and stupidity and the sailors may have crossed it. They’d have done better to not bother with the ships at all and sailed west with haste. Of course, Jorwen wasn’t their captain, so any strategy was lost on them. They all stood in a mass of loosely defined formation on the docks, thirty-some of Ashav’s men. Him and White-Eye among them. He cast a glance to the gates and curled his lips in a heavy frown that he wasn’t inside with Solveig and Cleftjaw, protecting his wife with them. When the ships made port in varying degrees of splintered wood and grinding metal-on-stone, his wishes were doubled and his veins grew cold. His knuckles were white and his skin creaked across the leather as his grip tightened on his sword.

For a few minutes, made hours by the tension in the air as thick as the smell of sweat and fear, the ships did nothing. It was quiet, save for the smacking of waves on the piers and the beaches. The wind came and tickled at Jorwen’s hair and he closed his eyes. For a few moments, Jorwen was a man of peace. And then he heard them, the pounding footsteps of moving glaciers. Arrows came down and killed one in a cloud of mist and stinging ice shards. The other one was brought down by swords and axes, seeing only one man dead. There was another lull too short for Jorwen to enjoy as the guardsmen loosed arrows that either stuck in wood or pinged off metal. When the bastards finally disembarked, it seemed they were fighting giants. It was a feat to baffle Jorwen with the size of another, but they did it. They came on, silent save for their beating feet. “We’ll be giant-slayers today if you hold with me, you bloody killers!” Jorwen hadn’t even meant to say it, but the men around him all let loose their warcries at the words, high keening, ghostly screams mingled with deep, guttural yells as they beat their shields.

They came on like rogue waves. Three men were put on their backs as one charged straight into their line and blades glanced off metal. Jorwen’s section was the next, his line smashed apart with a terrifying swing of a maul. The giant butted him and he was sent stumbling back, whooping. Without thinking, he sprang off of his lead foot and felt the air and the pleasure of an arc of a weapon that had missed its mark. The battle seemed to have stopped around them, Jorwen’s ears deaf to it. The lads at his back clung to each other and had their shields raised more like children behind their blankets than warriors behind their shields. He looked around, and it was just him and the giant. He swallowed sand, it felt like, and he stretched his mind’s hands down as far as it would go to the bottom of his barrel, searching for that mad fucker from years ago. The dagger-eyed prick that would bleed Skyrim dry for a hard name and do the blackest deeds for two pieces of gold to rub together. That would kill a man for a wrong word or a hard stare.

But the searching was cut short by the giant’s arm, coming at him and hitting him like a log. It lifted him off his feet and sent him tumbling against shields and it was the damnedest thing that he was pushed back. So it was the circle all over again, a duel, and to the death. No time to list his pedigree though, as the giant came on again, this time with his huge-headed maul. He stepped to the side and swung his sword with a grunt and it thudded against the giant’s armor on his midsection. To his credit, it gave the giant pause and he thought he heard a grunt of its own. He’d no time to dance a merry jig as the giant smashed the haft of his maul into his forehead. He saw a burst of white and suddenly was too heavy for his legs to carry as he stumbled sideways into another. He shook his head to see another man come screaming out of the mass of terror-gripped cowards’ shields and swing his axe with a wild-eyed and throaty roar. The axe found its mark at the crook of the giant’s leg and put it on its knee, still able to see almost eye-to-eye with the man. It took longer than he expected, but Jorwen recognized the man as White-Eye. 

It almost seemed as if White-Eye was going to kill the thing. He ducked under a boulder of a fist and his axe panged off the thing’s helmet hard enough to send it reeling. It sat on all fours and White-Eye raised his axe and let loose a roar and brought it down. The giant simply reached up and grabbed it by the haft like a thing foreseen, halting its advance. It stood and wrenched the axe from White-Eye’s hands but the old man was having none of it. Quick as an eel through water, he ducked  and planted his hands behind its knees and tackled it to the ground, bringing out a knife in a white-knuckle fist as he clambered to mount the giant’s chest but the thing palmed him in the gut hard enough to send him to the ground a few feet away. Jorwen got himself on his freshly-steady legs and hefted his sword, but not quick enough to stop the giant from bringing down a fist like a god’s anger. When the giant’s arm was lifted again, there was red beneath in White-Eye’s mail and cloth. White-Eye yelled and lanced out an arm with a knife in his hand but it only glanced off the giant’s helmet. Another boulder of a fist made a dull thud and White-Eye’s one good eye went glassy.

And Jorwen cold all over.

He let loose an ear-shattering roar and charged forward as soon as the thing stood. The giant had enough time to turn to look at him, but it wasn’t enough to stop the big blade from pounding into his leg like a mammoth’s trunk. He heard something pop and the giant faltered, turned and roared as he swung his tree-trunk arm over Jorwen’s head as he ducked. Quick as lightning and with the sound of thunder following, Jorwen reared back and hard as he could, brought his big blade down on the giant’s helmet. The giant faltered again, letting go a groan. Jorwen saw his chance. He planted his shoulder in the giant’s gut as he sprang, sending them both toppling to the ground. Jorwen unsheathed his big knife and shoved it into the slit of the giant’s helmet, but it still rose after as if the knife was a splinter. Jorwen moved to the side and the giant’s arm scraped along his mail’d shoulder. Jorwen rolled away and grabbed the closest thing to him, a hammer. He hid it behind his back as the giant came on, screaming its warcry. Once it got close, Jorwen swung and the beak of the hammer opened the slit of its helmet with the scraping of metal and the giant toppled over like an old oak to the ground.

Jorwen left the hammer in the giant’s helmet and ripped out his knife to put it back in its sheath. He grasped up his big sword as the lines were reforming. There was still work to be done, always more work. He’d killed only one of those things and he felt like he’d fought ten men. He stood with the men at his shoulder and they looked at him with resolve or awe. He looked to one of the men and his eyes shot away from Jorwen. It shamed him to say he enjoyed that, seeing the same fear and respect. By the time another of the giants came, the men met it with a little more bravery now that they knew it could be killed. It seemed the old battle-lust was snaking its fingers over his and making his heart beat like a smith’s hammer on the anvil. Maybe he didn’t have to search far for that mad fucker, he’d bleed these giants dry and they’d whisper of him around their fires by days end.