Giant Killer. John McNally
Carla couldn’t believe it. Finn couldn’t believe it. There he was, a metre away, his neck exposed. Helpless in shock. For the first time. Helpless …
How do you kill a giant?
“NOW CARLA!!!” Finn screamed, but her instinct beat him to it.
Adrenalin surged and with her best softball hitter’s cry, Carla jabbed her bound wrists forward to loop her shackle round Baptiste’s exposed throat, then she yanked back – hard – with every ounce of her weight and being.
Baptiste gasped, reeled and rose.
“YES!” screamed Finn, nearly pulling a clump of Carla’s hair out in excitement as she rode the back of the raging, exploding form, clinging on like a rodeo champ as they fell back – SPLASH! – like a great whale in the snow, turning and careering down the slope in a snowball fury, Carla hanging on for dear life, Finn confused, crushed, the mad frozen world tumbling and … THUMP!
They hit something, stopped dead. A boulder?
“GAHH!” – with his free hand, Baptiste forced the shackle from his throat to take desperate rasping breaths – “GAHH! GAHH! GAHH!”
Carla pulled harder, every cell of muscle stretched to breaking point, every sinew hard as nails. “GAHH! GAHH!” cried Baptiste, as they lay locked in the snow, moments stretching to eternity … He was dying … he was dying …
Until the wolves came.
OWWOWWWOOWWW!
Finn saw them first, charging down the slope, leaving powder trails like missiles.
“INCOMING! CARLA!”
OWWOWWWOOWWW!
Carla looked up and in that split second – “GHAUH!” – Baptiste flipped like a salmon, slipped the noose and grabbed the back of her scrawny neck, and before she knew it she was thrown onto her back in the snow – SLAM – and Baptiste was above her, drawing back his fist—
RRRRAAW! The first wolf hit him all claws and teeth.
Baptiste, furious, beat it away as if it was a fly, then roared caveman-like at the rest of the incoming pack.
“AARRRRRRRRRGHGHGH!”
Fear ran through the wolves and they scrambled to avoid him, sudden cowards. From the snow, Carla saw high above the mayhem an eagle break its glide, disturbed, and at the same time … she felt the earth explode.
BRBRBRRBRRBRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR …
Thunder rose from the mountain. She saw Baptiste’s momentary confusion, then – WHAM! – the mountain hit him as a wall of white, a wall of energy, of cascading snow.
“Avalanche!” Finn yelled in her hair. “Hang on!”
But nothing could be heard, nothing could be sensed in the all-encompassing chaos, the liquid totality of it …
BRBRBRRBRRBRRRRRRRRRRRBRBRRBRRBRRRRRRRRRRR …
FEBRUARY 19 15:22 (GMT+2). OBS post South, Carpathian Mountains, Romania
The Tyro lookout sharpened the focus on the Zeiss T-star image-stabilising binoculars. Her pulse quickened.
She zeroed in on the white scree slope on the Kalamatov Ridge. The avalanche was obscuring her view, but she could see at least one figure in the snow. Immediately she hit the hard comms link back to the monastery.
“Trespass alarm! Seven kilometres south-east on Kalamatov!”
BRBRBRRBRRBRRRRRRRRRRRBRBRRBRRBRRRRRRRRRRR …
Carla felt only pain – the shackles biting into her wrists as her unseen captor twisted and turned, then a SNAP of sudden release as the avalanche ran itself out, fading from a roar to a sigh …
She came to a halt, daylight leaking through the snow crystals.
She must be near the surface. For a few moments she lay in the profound silence and whiteness. She was still alive, but …
“You still there?” Carla whispered. Her greatest fear was to lose him. He was annoying, but he was in every sense her blood brother.
Finn opened his eyes in the curled sanctuary of her hair.
“Are you kidding? This stuff is like a bulletproof duvet.”
She let out a “Ha!” in relief.
“Is he still there?” said Finn in turn, hardly daring to hope.
Carla tried to move and got a shock. She still felt the pain of the shackles, but her wrists moved freely through the powder … Nothing at all binding them. She opened her arms … Smooth, delicious nothing. She felt like a princess waking in a fairy tale.
“HA!” Finn yelled when she brought her hands to her face in disbelief. “GET AWAY!”
Powered by euphoria and panic, Carla began to swim up to the surface.
“Careful!” Finn called out as the sun hit her face and she took a deep lungful of free, freezing air.
“Careful …” Finn warned again.
“OK …” Carla whispered. Slowly she wriggled and worked her head above the surface.
Baptiste …
Three feet away.
Head and shoulders out of the snow, stock-still like an Easter Island statue. Except this statue was bleeding and wisps of cloudy breath leaked from its mouth …
Carla held her own.
“Slow, slow, slow …” Finn urged.
Staring intently at the statue, Carla began to inch her way out. First her shoulders, then her arms, her knees … until she was able to take a first high step, a second …
She turned to wade down the slope, heart thumping. Three steps, four, five … She’d not been this far from him in months. The invisible chains that bound her to her captor seemed to be breaking one by one, until—
His eyes snapped open.
“AAAAARRRRRGGGGHHHH!” screamed Carla.
“RUN!” Finn yelled.
Carla ran, kneeing through the deep powder, stumbling as Baptiste exploded from the bank – “WAAAAARRRRRGGGGHHHH!” – avalanching after her, reborn in rage.
Finn shot to the top of her hair and grabbed his favourite long curl, flying free at its end like a mad bungie jumper able to bounce around and see all ways at once.
“RUN RUN RUN!”
Baptiste had pulled a knife from his belt and was closing fast.
Finn had to do something. Finn had to kill the giant. How?
“Arrrggghhhhh!” – Carla cried out suddenly as she ran onto nothingness and dropped a dozen feet before a rocky outcrop, coming to land – WHUMP – in a snowdrift at its base.
Baptiste followed – WHUMP – thumping further down the slope.
Carla instinctively rose to run again, but as she did so she heard Finn warn – “DON’T MOVE!”
She had fallen at the mouth of a cave, smashing aside the snow that concealed it. Now its contents were exposed. She sensed stink and stored heat. She saw fur. A pair of black eyes zooming in. A mother roused from a hibernating huddle.
“BEAR!”