The giant squatted down and poked up the fire with a forefinger like a shaggy staff . As flames guttered high, Holger saw the creature was humanoid, though grotesquely squat and short-legged in proportion to height. Well, his thought flashed, even if the law of proportion doesn’t work quite the same here as at home, he needs enough cross section to bear his weight. The uncouth body wore skins, crudely stitched together; what whiff he caught made Holger glad he was upwind. As nearly as could be judged in that tangled hair and beard, the giant’s features were acromegalic, eyes roofed with bony ridges, nose and jaw jutting coarsely forth, heavy lips and grisly huge teeth.
“Get on Papillon, Hugi,” said Holger. Now that the first shock was past, he stopped being afraid. He didn’t dare be. “I’ll hold him as long as I can. Alianora, you get airborne.”
“I’ll stand wi’ ye .” Her voice was small, but she trod up beside him with chin lifted.
“Hoo could it ha’ happened?” moaned Hugi. “He’s o’ Middle World breed. The charms would balk him.”
“He stalked us,” said Alianora roughly. “Such folk can gang quiet when they will. He waited for a moment when there was such ungodliness o’ thocht in our midst that the holy signs were annulled.” Her glance accused the cowering dwarf. Holger knew with wretchedness that Hugi was not to blame. But—
“Talk so I can hear you!”
That giant did not speak deafeningly loud, nor was his accent too barbarous. What made him hard to understand was the pitch: so low that the inaudible bottom registers shivered in human bones. Holger wet his lips, stepped forward, and said in his own deepest voice, “In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, I bid you begone.”
“Haw!” fleered the giant. “Too late for that, mortal, when you’ve broken the good circle by your sinful wishes and not yet made act of contrition. “ He reached out a hand. “Alfric told me I’d find tender prey on this path. Give me the maiden, and you may continue.”
Holger wanted to throw back some ringing challenge, suitable to his disgust at any such notion. By God, there were worse things than death! Unfortunately, he could only think of a phrase unfit for the maiden’s ears. He lunged instead. His sword blazed across the immense knuckles.
The giant yanked his hand back, blew on the smoking wound, and cried: “Hold! Let’s talk!” Nearly blasted off his feet by the volume, Holger paused.
To him, who was used to being the largest person around, the face above his seemed even broader than it was. But he stood fast and heard the basso profundissimo say in a rather reasonable tone:
“Look here, mortal, I sense you’re a great champion. And of course the touch of iron hurts me. Yet there’s a lot of me, and I could belike crush you with stones before you got in too many blows. What say we contest an easier way? If you win by your wit, you may go on unmolested. In fact, I’ll give you a helmetful of gold.” He pointed to a wallet at his side which must hold a hundredweight or more. “If you lose, you surrender the girl to me.”
“No!” Holger spat on the earth.
“Wait. Wait, darling.” Alianora seized his arm with sudden eagerness. “Ask him if he means a riddling contest.”
Puzzled, Holger did. The giant nodded. “Aye. For know, we of the Great Folk sit in our halls throughout the endless winter night of our homeland, year after year, century after century, and pass the time with contests of skill. Above all are we fond of riddles. It were worth my while to let you pass, could you give me three new ones of which I cannot answer two, that I may use them in turn.” His bestial visage turned eastward, anxiously. “Be quick, though.”
Alianora’s eyes kindled. “I thocht so, Holger. Make the bargain. Ye can outtrick him.” The giant showed no comprehension. Of course, Holger realized. A creature that big couldn’t hear far into the human range of frequencies.
He answered falsetto, “I can’t think of anything.”
“Ye can.” Her confidence sank a little. She stared at the ground and dug with one toe. “If ye canna, well, let him have me. He only wants me to eat. Ye mean too much, Holger, to the whole world, methinks, to risk death in a fight over nobbut me.”
He groped in his bewilderment. What puzzles did he know? “Four hanging, four ganging, two leading, one trailing: a cow.” Samson’s poser to the Philistines. A few such. But surely over the centuries, the ogre had heard them. And he, Holger, wasn’t bright enough to invent a brain teaser on such short notice.
“I’d rather fight for someone I know, like you, than—” he began. The squatting monster interrupted him with a gruff “Hurry, I say!”
A wild idea coursed through Holger. “Can’t he stand the sun?” he asked Alianora in his stage-eunuch tone.
“Nay,” she said. “The bricht rays turn his flesh to stone.”
“Oh-ho,” squeaked Hugi, “if ye hold his mind fast eneugh, lad, so dawn comes on him unawares, then we can loot yon bag o’ gold.”
“I dinna know about that,” said Alianora. “I’ve heard treasure won by such a trick is cursed, and the man who wins it soon dies. But Holger, in an hour he must flee the dawn. Can ye no delay him an hour, ye who overcame the dragon?”
“I... think... so.” Holger swung back on the colossus, who was beginning to growl in angry impatience. “I’ll contest with you,” he said.
“For this one night, then,” said the giant. His grin was sadistic. “Perhaps another night after that... Well, bind the wench so she can’t flee. Hurry!”
Holger moved as slowly as he dared. Tying Alianora’s wrists, he piped, “You can throw off this knot, if worst comes to worst.”
“Nay, I willna flee, or he’ll turn on ye.”
“He’ll have to fight me anyway,” said Holger. “You might as well save your own life.” But he couldn’t sound very heroic in falsetto.
He threw some more sticks on the fire and turned to the giant, who had sat down with knees under hairy chin. “Here we go,” he said.
“Good. You will be glad to know for your honor, I am the riddle champion of nine flintgarths.” The giant looked at Alianora and smacked his lips. “A delicate morsel.”
Holger’s sword was aloft before he knew what he was about. “Hold your foul tongue!” he roared.
“Would you liefer fight?” The vast muscles bunched.
“No.” Holger checked his temper. But that such a hippo dared look on his Alianora—! “Okay,” he snapped. “First riddle. Why does a chicken cross the road?”
“What?” The giant gaped till his teeth shone like wet rocks. “You ask me that?”
“I do.”
“But the veriest child knows. To get to the other side.”
Holger shook his yellow-maned head. “Wrong.”
“You lie!” The mammoth shape half rose.
Holger swung his sword whistling. “I have a perfectly good answer,” he said. “You must find it.”
“I never heard the like,” complained the giant. But he seated himself and tugged his beard with one filthy hand. “Why does a chicken cross the road? Why not, if not to get to the other side? What mystical intent is here? What might a chicken and a road represent?” He shut his eyes and swayed back and forth. Alianora, lying bound near the fire, gave Holger a cheer.
After an endlessness of cold wind and colder stars, Holger saw the eyes of the monster open. They glowed in the firelight like two blood-colored lamps, deep under the cavernous brows. “I have the answer,“ said the terrifying voice. “’Tis not unlike the one that Thiazi baffled Grotnir with, five hundred winters agone. See you, mortal, a chicken is the human soul, and the road is life which must be crossed, from the ditch of birth to the ditch of death. On that road are many perils, not alone the ruts of toil and the mire of sin, but wagons of war and pestilence, drawn by the oxen of destruction; while overhead wheels that hawk bight Satan, ever ready to stoop. The chicken knows not why it crosses the road, save that it sees greener fields on the far side. It crosses because it must, even as we all must.”