He beamed smugly. Holger shook his head. “No, wrong again. “
“What? Why, you—” The ogre surged erect.
“So you’d rather fight?” said Holger. “I knew you had no intellectual staying power.”
“No, no, no!” howled the giant, starting a minor landslide. He stalked about for a while before getting enough self-control to sit down again. “Time presses,” he said, “so I’ll yield on this one and ask for the answer. Why indeed does a chicken cross the road?”
“Because it’s too far to walk around,” said Holger.
The giant’s curses exploded over him for minutes. He was quite content with that; his whole object was to stall for time, if possible for so long that the first sunrays would fall on his enemy. When the titan finally made a coherent protest, Holger had marshalled enough arguments about the meaning of the terms “question” and “answer” to keep them shouting at each other for half an hour. Bless that college course he’d taken in semantics! He killed ten minutes just reconstructing Bertrand Russell’s theory of types.
At last the giant shrugged. “Let it go,” he said ominously.
“There’ll be another night, my friend. Though I think not you will win over me this next time. Go to!”
Holger drew a breath. “What has four legs,” he asked, “yellow feathers, lives in a cage, sings and weighs eight hundred pounds?”
The ogre’s fist smote the ground so that rocks jumped. “You ask about some unheard-of chimera! That’s no riddle, that’s a question on natural philosophy.”
“If a riddle be a question resolvable by wit, then this is,” said Holger. He stole a glance eastward. Was the sky paling, ever so faintly?
The giant cuffed at him, missed, and fell to gnawing his mustache. Obviously the behemoth wasn’t very intelligent, Holger decided. Given years in which to mull over a problem, the slowest brain must come up with the answer; but what a human child would have seen in minutes this brute might need hours to solve. He certainly had powers of concentration, though. He sat with eyes squeezed shut, rocking back and forth, mumbling to himself. The fire died low; he became another misshapen shadow.
Hugi tugged at Holger’s pants. “Forget not the gold,” he whispered avariciously.
“Nor the curse on ’t,” said Alianora. “For I fear if we win, ’twill no be by wholly honest means.”
Holger was too pragmatic to worry about that aspect. Doubtless only a saint could fight evil without being to some extent corrupted by his own deeds. Nevertheless, the giant had come as an unprovoked, cannibalistic aggressor. Hoodwinking him to save Alianora could not be a very heavy sin.
Even so... curses were not to be laughed off. Holger felt a chill in his guts. He didn’t know why, but an instinct muttered to him that victory over this foe might be as ruinous as defeat.
“Done!” The hideous face opened. “I’ve found your answer, knight. Two four-hundred-pound canaries!”
Holger sighed. He couldn’t expect to win every time. “Okay, Jumbo. Third riddle.”
The giant stopped rubbing his hands together. “Don’t call me Jumbo!”
“And why not?”
“Because my name is Balamorg. A fearsome name, which many a widow, many an orphan, many a village kicked to flinders, has good cause to know. Call me truly.”
“Oh, but you see, where I come from, Jumbo is a term of respect. For hark you—” Holger spun out an improbable story for ten or fifteen minutes. Balamorg interrupted him with a grated command: “The last riddle. Make haste, or I overfall you this instant.”
“Heigh-ho. As you wish. Tell me then: what is green, has wheels, and grows around the house?”
“Huh?” The ponderous jaw fell. Holger repeated. “What house?” asked the giant.
“Any house,” said Holger.
“Grows, did you say? I told you, questions about some fabulous tree on which wagons cluster like fruit are not true riddles.”
Holger sat down and began cleaning his, nails with his sword point. It occurred to him that Alfric’s magnesium knife might have the same effect as sunlight, when kindled. Or maybe it wouldn’t. The total energy output would probably be too small. Still, if he had to fight, he could try the Dagger of Burning. He could now make out his enemy’s features, though the fire was burned down to embers.
“The challenges I’ve given you are common among children in my homeland,” he said.
True enough. But Balamorg’s wounded ego led to several more minutes of huffing and puffing. At last, with an angry grunt, he went into his trance of concentration.
Holger sat very still. Alianora and Hugi lay like stones. Even Papillon grew motionless. But their eyes were turned eastward.
And the sky lightened.
After some fraction of eternity, the ogre smote the ground and looked at them. “I give up,” he snarled. “The sun pains me already. I must find shelter. What’s the answer?”
“Why should I tell you?” Holger rose.
“Because I say so!” The colossus got up too, crouched, lips drawn back from fangs. “Or I’ll stamp your wench flat!” Holger hefted his sword. “Very well,” he said. “Grass.” “What?”
“Grass is the answer.”
“But grass has no wheels!”
“Oh, I lied about the wheels,” said Holger.
Rage ripped from Balamorg in one thunderous bellow. He hurled himself against the knight. Holger skipped back, away from Alianora. Could he keep this monster berserk and witless for another five minutes, and stay alive himself, then— “Nyah, nyah, nyah, can’t catch me!” Balamorg’s paw snatched at him. He swung his sword with all his force and hewed off a fingertip. Then it was leap and duck, cut and wriggle, taunt to enrage and gasp to breathe.
Until the sun’s rim cleared the eastern darkness.
As the first beams touched him, Balamorg screamed. Holger had never heard such agony before. Even while he ran from the toppling mass, he was haunted by the horror of it. The giant hit the ground hard enough to shake boulders loose. He writhed and changed, gruesomely. Then he was silent. The sun fell on a long slab of granite, whose human shape was hardly recognizable but which was still wrapped in skins.
Holger fell to earth also, a roaring in his ears.
He recovered with his head on Alianora’s bosom. Her hair and her tears fell on his face like the new sunlight. Hugi capered around the great stone. “Gold, gold, gold!” he cackled. “Ever they giants carry a purseful o’ gold. Hurry, man, slit yon sack and make us wealthier nor kings!”
Holger climbed to his feet and approached. “I like this no,” said Alianora. “Yet if ye deem it best we take his riches—for sure ’tis we can use some pennies on our faring—then I’ll help carry the load, and ask the curse fall on me alone. Oh, my dear!”
Holger waved hugi aside and stooped by the wallet, a crude drawstring affair. Some coins had already spilled out. They gleamed under his gaze, miniature suns in their own right. Surely, he thought if he put some of this treasure to worthy use, such as building a chapel to good St. George, he could keep the rest unharmed.
What was that smell? Not the stink of the hides, but another, a faint skiff as of rainstorms, under this clear dawn sky... Ozone? Yes. But how come?
“God!” Holger exclaimed. He sprang up, snatched Alianora in his arms and bounded back toward camp. “Hugi! Get away from there! Get away from this whole place! Don’t touch a thing if you want to live!”
They were mounted and plunging down the western slope in minutes. Not till they had come miles did Holger feel safe enough to stop. And then he must fob off his companions’ demands for an explanation with some weak excuse about the saints vouchsafing him a vision of dire peril. Fortunately his stock stood too high with them for anyone to argue.