The first anniversary of our Glorious Revolution was fast approaching when a new prisoner was incarcerated in the town jailhouse. His name was Jack. His infamy preceded him. In the Duke’s day there had been many ‘tales’ about his exploits. But under the democratic regime People’s Commissariat such ‘tales’ were considered part of the old bourgeois plot to control the masses. Unless they were directly concerned with the many daring and selfless exploits of Comrade Eulenspiegel himself, reciting such ‘tales’ was now strictly forbidden.  

 Because of his ‘tale’ Jack was considered to be a dangerous subversive and a direct threat to the stability of the Republic. No sooner had he been captured than the Town Assembly swiftly voted to hang him and deliver his cold head on a platter to the Commissariat as a gift on Revolution Day.

Until the deed could be done Jack was delivered into the care of my Pa.

Pa had always been the town jailer. Because of this he could quite easily have been considered a class traitor himself. He was a vicious old bastard and it was common knowledge amongst the townsfolk that, in the Duke’s day, his greatest pleasure had been beating his wards. There was hardly a prisoner who passed through his care who didn’t stand before the county judge comprehensively battered and bloodied by Pa’s callous hands.

But when the Grand Old Duke ruled this part of the Marchen nobody ever brought Pa to book for his handiwork. He was simply doing the Duke’s bidding and was therefore above any form of formal reprimand or censure. You see, in the bad old days before our glorious revolution, the stream and the forest, and everything in them, belonged to the Duke’s estate. If you took a fish for your supper or even picked up a few sticks for your fire, you had to pay for the misdemeanor. It went without saying that part of that payment was to be thrashed to within an inch of your life by Horst the Jailer. 

Then, one by one, in the fiefdoms of the Marchen, the downtrodden masses rose up behind Tell Eulenspiegel, champion of the poor. At last the Grand Old Duke was sent packing - as were all of the other aristocratic cohorts of the morally corrupt monarchy. 

A new and enlightened dawn broke over the Marchen. Under the guidance of Comrade Eulenspiegel and People’s Commissariat a pronouncement was made that private property was theft. Therefore, so long as it was done for the common good, it was perfectly legitimate to tickle trout out of the stream and gather sticks in the forest. 

Full bellies and well-stocked fires all round for the common folk.

You’d have thought that this turn of events might have brought Pa’s career to an abrupt end. No such luck. Within our newly liberated Republic there were crimes of an entirely different nature. Under the patronage of the Commissariat almost anyone was at risk of being denounced by a fellow comrade citizen as a reprobate or degenerate who did nothing at all for the greater good. Enemy of the people, traitor to the cause, running dog of the clandestine royalist counter-insurgency - these were just a few of accusations that might get you arrested.

In the circumstances the town needed a jailhouse more than ever. It followed then that there also needed to be jailer to guard the class traitors incarcerated there. Nobody really wanted Pa’s old job. So, in spite of his previous loyal affiliation to the Duke’s despotic tyranny, he was quietly allowed to carry as if nothing at all had changed.

And because the felons now condemned to his care were generally considered to be lower than the lowest crawling cockroach, and dirtier than dog dirt that sticks to your shoe, it was considered fitting for Pa to beat on them as hard, if not harder, as he’d previously been given to beating on poachers and firewood thieves. No one would bring him to book. After all, whatever he did was now in the name of Comrade Eulenspiegel and the glorious revolution.

Pa found this quite amusing.

In the town alehouse he’d hold up his jug to the heroic portrait of our Great Comrade, now hanging behind the bar in the space departed by the oil painting of the Grand Old Duke. “To the new boss,” he’d toast, grinning a big cheesy grin. “Same as the old boss.” 

Duke or no Duke Pa’s life went on as normal.

And so did mine.

Despite the revolution I was as bad off as I had ever been. My poor Ma had died giving birth to me and Pa hated me for that. It was all my fault, as Pa constantly reminded me - getting born in that bad way, making Ma push so hard that her poor, delicate heart gave out. According to his way of thinking I’d as good a murdered her.

Pa gave me a list of menial tasks at the jailhouse that he wasn’t personally keen on doing himself - slopping out the battered old excrement pails, scrubbing splatters of dried blood, caked on the filthy floors, turning the sagging, lice-infested mattresses over on the rusty bunks. Pa was a hard taskmaster – a punch to motivate, a kick to reprimand. 

But I could do nothing to please him and he dished out retribution with a sadistic relish. Sometime with his ham-sized fists, sometimes with the buckle on his wide leather belt, more often than not with the fat, gnarled stick that sat forever ready by his fireside. Never a day passed without me nursing a bruise, or a shiner, or a cauliflower ear.

I learned quickly to absorb the pain and hold back my tears.

                                                                                                                                  ***********

On Jack’s first night in the jailhouse I was sent by Pa to fetch what was to pass for his supper. “Is it true that you’re a liar?” I asked him when I pushed the bread crust and mug of sour goat’s milk under the bars of his cell.

There was some yellow bruising under his left eye and a little crusted cut on the bridge of his nose. The militia had given him a bit of a working over when they’d ambushed him. They were an assortment of farmers, shopkeepers and blacksmiths who donned red militia armbands on a fortnightly roster - so the beating they gave him seemed half-hearted and nowhere near as thorough as it might have been had Pa been personally involved.

Jack took a sip of the goat’s milk and baulked at the taste.

“The way you’ve couched that question makes it impossible answer in a satisfactory manner,” he said. “If I say no I might actually be lying to cover up the fact that I am a liar. On the other hand if I say yes I would clearly be admitting to being a liar. So how would you know for sure that I was telling the truth?”

He had a smart mouth, this Jack.

Pa wouldn’t like that.

Having a smart mouth would earn Jack a beating.

“The Assembly denounced you as a liar and a cheat,” I said.

“Whoever heard of someone being tried by an Assembly?” Jack shook his head. “The whole thing’s preposterous. Where’s the justice in that?”

“It’s a whole lot fairer than it would have been in the Grand Old Duke’s day,” I told him. “Back then there was no such thing as justice for ordinary folk.”

I had learned this on one of the days that Pa let me go to school. The Commissariat was very keen that we should understand the historical context of the revolution and the depth of the corruption that rotted the old monarchist regimes from the inside out.

“You may have a point there,” conceded Jack, nibbling tentatively at one of the bread crusts. 

“They say you cheated good people out of their hard earned money by playing on their fears and getting them to pay you for protecting them against imaginary things.” This was a direct quote from the text of the deliberations of the Assembly that had been pinned up in the town square. I’d memorized it line by line.

“What’s your name?” he asked me.

“Henry,” I told him.

“Well, Henry,” said Jack. “I was once regarded as a hero. I was the people’s champion long before Tell Eulenspiegel came on the scene. Don’t you think that it’s an insult for me to be treated like this? I didn’t even have a fair trial.”

“The Assembly is elected by the people and accountable to the people,” I said.

“The people are easily fooled,” he sneered.

“Like making them believe you can bring down giants when no such things exist?” I shot back at him.

“Who says that giants don’t exist?” he asked.

“Do they?” I asked him back.

“They might,” he replied.

                                                                                                                                  *********** 

Pa would spend every night at the local alehouse. He claimed that strong ale helped him blot out the memory of what had happened to Ma.  He expected his supper to be ready and waiting as soon as he staggered through the door. Whatever time that might be.

That night, as the stew was simmering on the range, I fell asleep in front of the fire. All day my head had been filled with the wild notion that there might actually be such things as giants. Despite what the Commissariat had to say about the crass superstition engendered amongst the masses by the monarchist regime, my dreams were filled with gargantuan men and women, armed with clubs and axes, towering over towns and villages as they trampled through the countryside. I dreamed of Jack bringing them down with wile and guile, just as in his outlawed ‘tale’.

Pa came home just after midnight.

I snapped awake when I heard the front door slam. The smell of the charred meat hit me straight away. I jumped to my feet, grabbed a cloth, and snatched the smoking pot from the stove.

“What’s going on?” demanded Pa, swaying in a boozy fug by the kitchen doorway.

“Sorry,” I said, coughing against the acrid stream of smoke that engulfed my face.

“Sorry?” sneered Pa, drooling stringy saliva over his chin. “You will be!”

He stumbled into the kitchen and lurched towards me.

I dropped the pot to the floor. Bits of blackened stew splattered his boots.

“Idiot boy!” he roared.

He towered over me, eyes bulging with rage. As I cowered before him he grabbed his gnarled old stick from the side the fireplace. Its sudden impact against the side of my head sent a burst of white light exploding before my eyes. I fell back and hit the floor, barely managing to hold on to consciousness.

“Teach you to burn my supper.”

Pa stepped coldly over me and staggered off to collapse drunkenly onto his bed.

                                                                                                                                  *********** 

“Snap!” said Jack when I brought him his watery porridge the next morning.

He too had a fresh black bruise around his eye.

I slid the porridge bowl under the bars.

“Your father paid me a visit on his way home last night,” he said. 

Instinctively I reached up and touched the inflamed area just below my own left eye.

“Do you want to know how to slay a giant?” Jack asked me. 

The bristles on his chin had grown darker overnight. He would have a full beard before long. I had seen it all before. The weight would start to drop off him. Gradually he would become a different person as Pa systematically beat the will to live out of him. By the time they tied the noose around his neck Jack the Liar would be a broken man.

“I’ve got no time for your lies and nonsense,” I snapped at him. 

Jack’s chains chinked together as he lifted a spoonful of porridge to his lips.”

“Who’s to say they are lies?” he asked.

“Comrade Eulenspiegel says that the monarchy made up ‘tales’ to take people’s minds off how bad things really were,” I replied. 

“And that makes it so, does it?” challenged Jack. “Perhaps the great Tell has his own reasons for taking people’s minds off things.”

“There are no such things as giants,” I insisted.

“That is debatable,” said Jack, forcing another portion of porridge into his mouth. “Giants are bullies. They come in all shapes and sizes, Henry.”

Instantly my hand went up to my wounded eye again. 

Soon Pa would be arriving for work, settling himself behind the table in his little private room, cracking his ugly knuckles in anticipation that he might get do some more handiwork on his prisoner’s face. I turned my back on the cell and finished sweeping the floor. Jabber on, Jack, I thought to myself. You’ll be dead soon enough. 

                                                                                                                                  *********** 

But Jack’s words plagued me. Like the persistent itch left behind by a gnat’s bite they repeated over and over inside my head. “Giants are bullies. They come in all shapes and sizes.” 

Later that morning, when Pa went to the courthouse to collect Jack’s paperwork, I crept back down to the cells. Jack was seated with his back to the wall. I touched the iron bars.

“What kind of weapons do giants use then?” I asked.

His head turned to me. The eye that my father had blackened remained half shut. He regarded me with the other. “I thought that you didn’t believe in such things?”

I shrugged my shoulders and made to turn for the stairs.

“If you don’t want to tell me…”

“Giants are big and dumb,” he called out. “Anyone with half an ounce of brain can outsmart them. But they’re dangerous and destructive. They lash out. They don’t care who they hurt. It takes brains to bring them down.”

The dull pulse in my injured eye throbbed heavily.

“Are there really giants then?” I asked, returning to hover by the bars of the cell.

He winked at me with his good eye.

“A few years back everybody believed in giants,” he said. “That suited certain people, Henry. It was convenient to blame giants for all sorts of ills.”

“Like what?” I asked, unable to resist the enticing lure of his voice.

“Imagine there’s this King,” he said.

“King?”

“Or a Duke if you like,” said Jack. “He’s a powerful person. Everything around for as far as the eye can see belongs to him. When he says jump, people ask how high. They bow and grovel to him because they think he’s smart. He must be to have all this power and land, right?”

I gave a cautious nod of my head.

“I suppose so.”

“Then things start to go wrong,” Jack continued. “Crops get trampled in the night. Cattle go missing. Barn roofs get torn off and turn up miles away. So the people go to this Duke and, since he’ so damned smart, they expect him to know exactly what is going on.”

“And does he?” I asked.

“At first he’s a bit taken aback. He doesn’t know what to say. But then he sees the doubt creeping into people’s eyes. How come he doesn’t know? Isn’t he supposed to be the smart one round here? So he just comes right out and says the first thing that pops into his head.”

“A giant?” I interjected.

Jack nodded. 

“Got it in one, Henry. He tells them it’s a giant wandering in the night. Trampling their crops. Stealing their cattle. Tearing the roofs off their barns.”

I pressed my face closer to the bars.

“But then everybody starts demanding that something should be done about the giant,” said Jack. “And since this Duke is apparently so powerful it’s all down to him.”

I could feel the cold iron of the bars pressing against my cheeks as leaned in as close as I could. “So he calls on you?” I said.

Jack nodded.

“I’ll hire the services of a professional giant killer, announces the Duke. But to pay his fee I’ll have to raise a special tax. And, of course, the people are more than happy to agree to this - so long as they are rid of the pest.”

“And then you come along and kill the giant?”

“That’s what they pay me for,” said Jack.

I stepped back from the bars.

“From the tax money?”

Jack nodded his head once more.

“So it’s true what the Assembly said about you taking ordinary people’s hard earned money from them?” 

“I was paid my fee,” conceded Jack. “But it was nowhere near as much as the Duke managed to squirrel away for himself.”

Jack’s qualification made it sound to me as if he was wriggling out of his part in the deception. “But there wasn’t a giant,” I protested. “The Duke tricked the people out of their money and you took a cut.”

“Who says there wasn’t a giant?” asked Jack.

“The Duke just came up with the first thing that popped into his head,” I reminded him.

“But who’s to say that he didn’t make a lucky guess?” replied Jack.

“Henry!”

The sound of Pa yelling down the stairwell made me jump.

“Henry? Where are you? My feet are aching. I need you to help me out of my boots. Get here now or you’ll feel the back of my hand!”

Without a second glance at Jack I ran for the stairs.

                                                                                                                                  *********** 

That night I took great care to stay awake, to put just the right amount of salt and pepper into the stew, to take the pot off the boil before everything became over cooked. As I worked I was constantly churning over in my mind the possibility that there might be giants and Jack was therefore an innocent man - wrongly denounced as a class traitor.

As Jack had said - who was to say that such things didn’t exist? 

Pa came home from the alehouse, reeking of booze, unsteady on his feet, clearly angling for some sort of confrontation. The meal I laid before him wasn’t to his satisfaction. This time he didn’t beat me straight off. He knew that he could wound me just as deeply with cruel words as he could with his big fists.

“What’s this pile of horse shit?” he asked, poking his spoon around in the meat. He shoveled some up and chewed loudly and messily, dribbling gravy over his whiskers. Then he spat what was in his mouth out onto the floor.

“Horse shit!” he yelled at me. “Cow dung!”

He picked up the plate and hurled it across the room. I ducked swiftly down. The plate sailed over my head and smashed against the back wall. Lumps of beef and carrot slid down the dirty white tiles.

“Clean that mess up!” he ranted. “If your mother was alive she would have made a decent meal for hard working man like me to come home to. But she’s not here, is she, Henry? She’s not here. And you are. You, the sniveling little disease that that grew like a poison in the belly of my beautiful bride.”

Tears rolled down my face as I picked up a cloth and started to wipe the mess from the wall.

“Stop prattling around with that cloth,” yelled Pa. “Fix me something else to eat right now!”

My back went stiff. The blood rushed to my head. I could tell that he was deliberately pushing me to the edge, goading me to react. I had to bite down hard my tongue in case I said something that might make him reach for his stick.

                                                                                                                                  *********** 

While the scaffold that would hold Jack’s gallows was steadily being constructed in the Town Square I pestered him daily about the existence of giants. His answers were always ambiguous and obscure. He spoke in riddles and drove me to distraction with his evasiveness. 

“Do giants truly exist?” I’d ask him.

“That’s a big question,” he’d answer.

I’d try to pin him down.

“Just tell me plain. Are there giants? Yes or no?”

“There might be,” was all he’d say.

Most of the time one or other of us would be nursing abrasions or injuries inflicted by Pa’s cruel hands. Every now and then our wounds would match in terrible symmetry - a split lip one day, a cauliflower ear the next.

Jack’s beard had wandered across his chin and neck. His face looked overly long and unhealthily narrow. I had been slipping occasional bits of meat and turnip into his gruel. But it wasn’t nearly enough to stop the weight from wasting away from him. This was one of Pa’s sadistic ploys. The lighter a man was the longer he took to dance on the noose.

Sometimes Jack would get me so frustrated that I would retaliate by goading him. “You’re nothing but a liar and a cheat,” I’d taunt. “You deserve everything that’s coming to you. You’ll be doing the dead man’s jig because of all the lies you told.”

“People believe what they want to believe,” he’d say. “People once believed that I was a hero. Now they believe that I’m a villain. Tomorrow? Who knows?”

He’d look through the bars at me, dark rings under his eyes, a rattle in his chest when he breathed. “What do you believe about yourself, Henry?” he’d ask me.

And it would be Pa’s mocking voice that would answer inside my head - with put downs and cutting insults. Everything bad and spiteful and malicious he’d ever said about me would come crashing in. I’d turn away from the cell and Jack’s expectant glare to cover my own self-loathing.

“I am a giant killer,” Jack would say. “Because I believe I am. Not because of what anyone else believes.”

Once, in an effort to swing the conversation in the direction I wanted it to take I tried another tack and went back to the one of the questions I’d first asked him.

“What sort of weapons do giants use?” I asked.

“All sorts,” came his vague reply.

“Like what? Swords? Axes? Maces?”

“Fear is the favored weapon of a giant,” said Jack.

“Fear?”

“If someone is frightened they are considerably weakened. If you are afraid, Henry - it can paralyze you. Fear leaves you at the mercy of the person who sets out to make you afraid.”

I thought about how frightened I always was when Pa came home from the Ale House. How my muscles seemed to stiffen and how I could never seem to move myself fast enough to escape his fists or his gnarled old stick.

“You have to find a way to rise above the fear that a giant instills in you,” Jack went on. “Take the old Duke. Wasn’t he was a giant of sorts? A big man who used to throw his weight around and bully and intimidate people? Fear of him kept everyone in his or her place. Then Tell Eulenspiegel showed the people how they could rise above such tyrants and bring them down. And suddenly the Duke didn’t seem so big any more. And when the people lost their fear of him…”

“Comrade Eulenspiegel became the giant amongst men,” I interjected.

“And that may well be his eventual downfall,” said Jack. “There are some who say that Comrade Eulenspiegel is already dead and that those who have risen him to the status of a giant have done so to corrupt his vision for their own personal ends. I would wager that if he is not yet dead there are surely plots aplenty to bring him down. For wherever there is a giant a giant killer is bound to come along at some point.”

                                                                                                                                  *********** 

“I hear you, you know,” said Pa.

I was on my knees polishing his boots while he sat by the fire.

I looked up.

“You hear me?”

A grotesque smirk spread on his ugly face. “Down in the cells with Jack the 

Liar.”

My heart began to flutter chaotically. I could tell from Pa’s belligerent posture and the cantankerous tone of his voice where this would eventually lead. I bowed my head and applied more polish to the toe of the boot that I was holding.

Pa began to mimic my voice - making it sound high-pitched and feminine.

“Are there giants, Jack? Tell me the truth. Did you really slay the giants?”

Still seated he launched a kick at me. His heel made contact with my shoulder. At that angle it didn’t hurt too much - but it was enough to make me fall onto my side.

Pa snorted and laughed.

“Might there be a giant coming right now?” He cupped his hand to his ear. “Crushing houses under his feet?” His fat guts wobbled as he laughed at me. “Ripping up trees by their roots?” 

I held my tongue as I pushed myself back up onto my knees and set about working the polish into his boot.

“Listen?” he said, leaning forward in his chair. “Here comes that big, bad giant!”

He rose up and loomed over me.

“Fe-Fi-Fo-Fum, Henry!” He threw his head back and let out a great belly laugh. “Fe-Fi-Fo-Fum! Better run and fetch Jack the Liar to save you!”

“Shut up!” I yelled, before I could swallow back the words that tumbled from my wayward mouth. “Just shut up and leave me alone!”

That was all he needed. A demonic grin crested on his face. He grabbed his stick from its place by the fire. I scrambled to the nearest corner and curled myself into a tight ball as he set about me.

                                                                                                                                  *********** 

I was sent down to Jack’s cell on the eve of his planned execution.

A condemned man is entitled to a hearty meal, even Pa conceded that much. So what I brought for Jack wasn’t the usual slop, but a feast of venison and roasted vegetables, accompanied by a flagon of frothy ale. 

Approaching the cell I came to a sudden halt. Jack had committed a terrible act of vandalism. Scratched into crumbling plasterwork of the cell wall was a list of names. It ran in a long, vertical column from the ceiling down to the grimy floor. My hands trembled under the tray of food as I whispered the names over the fresh cut on my swollen lip.

Arger

Blundermore

Cormoran

Dondash

Erix

Fierabras

Grangousier

Hapmouche

Irus

Jotun

Kottos

Mugello

Otus

Phidon

Ritho

Skrymir

Typhon

Yohak

I savored the mysterious shapes these exotic names made on my tongue - still tasting the tang of the blood that had dried on my teeth. “Pa’s going to beat you again when he sees what you’ve done,” I warned Jack, as I slid meal tray under the bars of the cell.

A strained smile formed on Jack’s dry, cracked lips.

“He won’t touch me now,” he said. “Not when it is so close to the big event. If he accidentally killed me and robbed the town of the spectacle of my execution there would be hell to pay.”

He was right. Pa wouldn’t be so stupid. Besides, sooner or later there would be another prisoner for Pa to beat on - and, in the meantime, he still had me to take it out on.

“Are those the names of the giants you brought down?” I asked Jack.

“Perhaps,” he replied, evasive to the last.

He picked up the tray of food and rested it on his lap, manacles clanking as he moved. “But there’s one name missing,” he said.

“There is?” I read down the list again. “A giant that has yet to be felled?”

Jack beckoned me toward the bars.

When I approached he whispered the name.

“Horst the Jailer.”

I stumbled back from the bars. What was he doing? Why would he say that?

In panic I turned and fled.

“Anything is possible, Henry,” Jack called after me. “Anything is possible!

                                                                                                                                  *********** 

“Damn you, Jack the liar,” I whispered. “Damn you and your lies! Let the rope stretch your neck and damn you straight to Hell!”

It was well past midnight. The house was in complete darkness. I had deliberately not bothered to cook Pa’s supper. I wanted him angry. I wanted him to think that I was still afraid of him. I held his vindictive stick in my hand, curling my fist around it so tightly that my knuckles turned white.

The words that Jack had spoken had slowly worn me down. They had wormed their way into my thoughts and made me truly believe that anything might be possible. I waited patiently for Pa to come home. 

The wind came moaning down the chimney.

The blood endlessly crashed in my ears.

Cold sweat beetled down my spine.

The big clock in the hall ticked down the minutes.

I heard Pa come staggering drunkenly down the lane. 

He was singing.

“Fe-Fi-Fo-Fum!”

I swallowed down the hard lump that caught in my throat.

Another minute ticked slowly by.

I heard Pa stumble and urinate against the outside wall.

The nervous cramp in my stomach almost doubled me over.

The front door crashed open and Pa lurched into the hall.

“What’s going on?” he slurred. “Why is the house all in darkness? Strike a light, Henry. Where’s my supper?”

My ears started to whistle and sing from the galloping pressure of my blood.

Pa tripped over something and went crashing to the floor.

“Henry!” he roared. “Get here now or I’ll thrash the living daylights out of you.”

I raised Pa’s stick high above my head. 

I heard Pa unbuckle his belt.

I heard him bring it down hard on the table.

I heard him whip it against the walls.

I heard cups and plates go crashing to the floor.

I waited.

I waited.

I waited.

I heard Pa’s foot fall on the first step.

The step creaked and groaned.

I held my breath.

“I’m coming, Henry,” Pa warned.

He began to sing again.

The alcohol had made him lyrical.

“Fe-Fi-Fo-Fum!”he chanted. “I smell the blood of my worthless son!”

He came clumping up the stairs, thumping down his boot heels as thunderously as possible. “Be he awake or be he asleep,I’ll thrash his hide till he bawls and weeps.”

He began to laugh at his poetic ingenuity and cracked his belt loudly against the stair wall. I let out a stifled cry of terror. Pa looked up and saw me. His eyes popped wide when he realized just how smartly I had figured out how to rise above him. With a yell I brought down his hated stick with as much force as I could muster.

The stick splintered with a satisfying crack against his skull.

He stood there frozen for a moment, a look of surprise etched on his ugly face, as thick, hot blood trickled down from the wound. Then he fell backwards down the stairs, seeming to crumple and shrink as he went.

Not so big now, I thought.

                                                                                                                                  *********** 

“Go then,” I said to Jack when I had opened his cell and unlocked his chains. “I’m not stupid. I know that this was your plan all along. That’s why you kept putting wild notions into my head.”

Jack didn’t deny it. At that moment I think I hated him even more than I’d hated my Pa. I stepped to one side to let him pass. As he staggered out of the cell I looked at the list of names. Horst the Jailer had already been scratched into the plasterwork.

I closed my eyes and the image of Pa’s body lying twisted and broken at the bottom of the stairs, cold, dead eyes staring up at me, flooded my mind. I won’t grieve for him, I told myself. He got what he deserved. 

I heard Jack speaking to me.

“Are you coming?” he asked.

I opened my eyes.

“Me?”

This wasn’t what I’d expected.

“You can’t stay here,” he said. “Not now. With me gone they won’t want their noose to go to waste. Someone is going to have to pay the price for bringing down Horst the Jailer.”

Nervously I touched my neck and imagined a rope around it. I’d murdered my father. He was the town jailer. Anything he had done was in the name of the Commissariat and the just cause of the common people. The Assembly would reach their decision within seconds and it would be my head that was delivered on a plate to mark the anniversary of the glorious revolution!

“Will there be giants to bring down?” I called after Jack as he took to the stairs.

“There might be,” he answered.

After the only briefest moment of hesitation I followed after him.

© David Turnbull 2012

David Turnbull's previous short fantasy fiction has been published in numerous small press magazines and anthologies, most recently Fangtales (Wyvern Publications), Rapunzel's Daughters (Pink Narcissus Press) and In The Garden of The Crow (Electric Milkbath Press). His middle grade fantasy adventure novel The Tale of Euan Redcap was released on the Pixiefoot Press imprint of Wyvern Publications on March 1st this year. 

In the half-light of dawn Ashkhen always loved to squint her eyes and imagine the dusty marketplace were still the summer palace of King Suslan. Grandfather Irakli's stories supplied details of courtiers and cherkessa-clad guards, of Suslan's boon companions and of the king himself with his magic sword Steelheart that always knew its master.

Now she had grown too old for daydreams, and morning was time for work. Suslan was dead, his palace leveled in the disorders which had allowed the diabolist Vorgun to seize control of the southern capital. So Grandfather Irakli tended his shashlik stand and whispered stories of the old days and King Suslan's battles against those who made pacts with the malign supernatural.

Ashkhen's stomach growled at the savory odor rising from the skewers of roasting lamb. Dreams of rescue were fine for old men and little girls, but Suslan had died without legitimate issue, having preferred the company of courtesans to his lawful queen. Nikos the Mocker might have settled his fat buttocks on the throne in the northern capital, but his son's battle against the notorious Rakhmor laid bare the hollowness of the father's claim. Traveling merchants still brought tales of the horrors that walked in that valley blighted by the slaying of a diabolist by one who lacked royal blood.

So Ashkhen and her grandfather persevered as best they could in the face of their new ruler's exactations. Like the five cherkessa-clad men now striding in her direction.

"Smells good."

"Let's see what they've got."

They grabbed the skewers right off the brazier. Behind her, Grandfather Irakli yelped in protest.

"What's wrong, old man?"

Ashkhen squared her shoulders, looked the leader straight in the eye. "If Grandfather Irakli cannot sell his shashliki because you took them, how will we pay the taxes your own master has levied?"

His lips curled upward. "Eh, boys, she wants us to pay him."

The others tossed empty skewers onto the coals. "Here's your money, old man."

They flung him a shower of copper coins so small as to be more insult than payment. Grandfather Irakli pulled himself up as tall as his age-bent back would permit, a poor reflection of the soldier he'd once been. "Shame be upon you. King Suslan's picked men did not--"

"Suslan is dead, old man." The big man flung Grandfather Irakli to the ground. "Or did you just forget how he died of shame after striking down Mad Zviad the poet in a drunken quarrel?"

The other bullies kicked apart the shashlik stand. The brazier overturned and coals scattered on the cobblestones.

A hand closed around Ashkhen's wrist. Unable to break the thug's hold, she grabbed a shashlik skewer and jabbed it at the cording tendons of her assailant's wrist. With a cry of pain he let go. She bolted.

Where to? The old instincts reasserted themselves, from the days when she was just one weedy girl, daughter of a discarded and despised concubine. Ashkhen darted behind a fruit-seller's stand, ducked under the tables of a potter's wares.

From behind she heard crashes and shouts. Trust strong-arm men to go smashing headlong without a thought to what they hit.

Ashkhen ducked past a broken door dangling from one hinge. A dozen steps into the room beyond, the floor gave way beneath her. She forced herself to relax and roll into the fall as Grandfather Irakli had taught her. Better to land softly than to smash a bone.

Pallid light filtered through the crumbling ceiling overhead. Once it had been an elegant corridor, lined with mosaics. What civil war had not destroyed, age had eroded.

Ashkhen crept along the nearer wall, never putting her weight on her foot until she was sure the floor would support her. The light faded, yet she dared not turn back even as dimness became total darkness.

From behind came a sharp bang. Startled, she bolted only to entangle her feet in an object on the floor and fall headlong.

Ashkhen cursed her panic. What if she'd broken a bone?

Her questing fingers explored the obstacle, found cold metal intricately worked -- the hilt of a sword. She wrapped her hand in the cuff of her sleeve and carefully unsheathed the blade to examine. In such dim light it was hard to judge, but the blade did not appear to have rusted. Smithy-magic? King Suslan had been generous in the distribution of lesser magical blades.

Grandfather Irakli had taught her only the rudiments of sword-work, with a shashlik skewer for a practice weapon, but it might suffice to put her find to good use. She would go down a human being, not a hunted animal.

When she saw light, she thought it a trick of her eyes. She blinked and looked away, but it persisted.

The light grew stronger as she approached. As did the sounds of footsteps, and she realized what a fool she'd been. Those were not random glimmers from some crack, but the lamps of Vorgun's bully-boys.

Ashkhen's hand tightened around the hilt of the sword until the metalwork dug into her palm. The thugs sauntered along with casual arrogance, blades sheathed, lanterns held high. One of them looked directly at her.

"Hello, little girl. Better put away your toy before you hurt yourself."

The sword moved so fast she barely managed to maintain her grip. Steel sliced through wool and flesh alike as though they were so much cheese for khachapuri bread. The big thug dropped his lantern to grab at the snakelike coils sliding from his belly.

The skinny thug drew his sword. His overconfidence went a long way toward his own defeat, particularly when it gave way to panic. Ashkhen had no illusion that any skill on her own part had saved her. Not when the sword moved in her hand, pulled her arm through the proper motions to take him down.

Moments after the second thug fell, Ashkhen started shaking so bad she feared her knees would buckle under her. Rather than sit or fall on the filth that covered the floor, she leaned against the wall and fought to control the nausea twisting her stomach. Her hand shook so bad it sent droplets of blood flying from the sword she still clutched.

Which reminded her clearing mind of Grandfather Irakli's warning that good steel would rust if not cleaned. But with what? She didn't have any rags.

In Grandfather Irakli's stories the heroes often wiped their blades on the clothes of the villains they'd just slain. Which meant she couldn't be much of a hero, since she had carefully avoided even looking at the two sprawled corpses. The thought of actually touching them made her stomach knot in fresh nausea.

Don't look at their faces, Ashkhen told herself. Just focus on the fabric you're using to wipe the blade and you won't have to think of them as people.

The mental trick got her through wiping the sword clean, but as soon as she sheathed it and stood up, she saw the bodies as complete figures again. Servants of Vorgun, a master who would not rest until their killer was found.

She had to get out of here. She picked up the lantern the second thug had set down to fight. 

Decayed lavishness gave way to a grimmer decor, heavy on skull motifs. She turned a corner to discover an elderly man standing in a little niche. His eyes were closed and his white hair was a stark contrast to his dark garments.

"Grandfather Irakli!" Ashkhen ran, eager to embrace him, only to encounter a transparent wall. Frustrated, she reversed the sword in her hands, smashed pommel into barrier.

After the first several blows, cracks raced across its surface. Another two blows and the glass shattered to let the man trapped within fall forward.

Startled, Ashkhen grabbed him before he could hit the floor. In that moment she realized her error.

"You aren't Grandfather Irakli." Ashkhen stared at the strange man in his black cherkessa, a sword and a silver-niello dagger at his waist. "Wh-who are you?"

His eyes fluttered and opened, not the dark of the mountain people but pale blue. "Zviad." The name came as a harsh whisper. "Yes, that is my name. Zviad." He reached up to grip her arm, hard enough that his fingers dug into her flesh.

Ashkhen bit her lip against the sudden pain, determined not to cry out lest she draw attention. Zviad? She eyed the three long white braids that fell across the shoulder of his cherkessa, just as he was always portrayed.

But Mad Zviad was dead, slain by King Suslan's own hand in that disastrous last banquet. "Shh. You mustn't say that. If Vorgun's men hear you claim to be King Suslan's slain boon companion--"

The old man laughed. "Vorgun made me, lass."

"Made you?"

"Indeed." He levered himself up to a sitting position, brushed from his cherkessa the fine dust of the not-quite-glass that had imprisoned him. "He fancies himself master of life and death, so how better to prove it than to restore the dead to life."

"Necromancy!" Ashkhen flinched away, her stomach lurching with disgust.

"And you are surprised?" The old man rested a hand on the sword at his belt. "I did not ask to be torn from the joys of Paradise and returned to the land of the living. The sooner I can return, the happier I will be, and all the better if I can take him down in the doing."

"And lay the valley to waste?"

"Suslan killed many such sorcerers--"

"But his royal line died with him."

"Perhaps the legitimate line, but not all his seed." Zviad pointed to the sword still in Ashkhen's hand. "Else how can you carry Steelheart unharmed?"

"Steelheart?" Ashkhen stared at the blade. "But it was lost when Nikos the Mocker denounced Suslan as a tyrant and defiled his corpse."

"Lost, perhaps, but not destroyed." Zviad's lips curled upward. "Suslan imbued his sword with magic to give it a will of its own and the ability to protect itself from destruction. No doubt it has grown weary of hiding."

Ashkhen looked down at the sword in her lap with new appreciation. "But I can't, I mean, I'm just the daughter of a--" The word whore stuck in her throat.

"A courtesan discarded and despised after Suslan's end?" There was no judgment in Zviad's gaze, only sympathy. "Suslan was not a man made for faithfulness, and he scattered his seed in many places." He rested his hand on Ashkhen's, careful not to touch the weapon beneath it. "And in your case, it may well be the salvation of us all."

"Wh-what do you mean?"

"That you can rid us of Vorgun."

Ashkhen stared at him. "I'm no swordsman. Grandfather Irakli and I played at drill sometimes, in the evening or on rainy days." What words could be adequate to describe her ignorance?

Zviad caught a finger under her chin and turned her face back to him. "But it and your ancestry can be enough, with Steelheart in your hand. What other choice do you have with Vorgun's thugs seeking you?"

Ashkhen recalled her determination to die as a human being, not a hunted animal. "Then we do it."

Together they walked through the corridor, lit only by the guttering lantern. By the time they reached the spiral stairs with its torches in bronze sconces shaped like fists, the flame was dying.

"Abandon it."

Although Ashkhen's poverty-honed instinct resisted abandoning anything potentially useful, Zviad's tone brooked no dissent.

Up they climbed, turn after turn. They came to a room, perhaps a dozen feet across, the three windows choked by thick curtains. The only illumination came from a skull-shaped brazier.

"His personal chamber lies beyond that door." Zviad gestured with the point of his own sword. "Prepare yourself."

Steelheart slid from its scabbard with a soft sound of eagerness. The vibration ran up Ashkhen's arm until she had to bite back a gasp.

Even as she wondered how they would open that huge iron-bound door, the air shimmered and solidified. Before them stood a tall man dressed in a long black robe covered with intricate embroideries of arcane symbols. At first glance the emblems appeared random, until the occult patterns tugged at Ashkhen's mind and brought her gorge to her throat.

"So you have found yourself an escape, Zviad." Vorgun's voice twisted with mockery. "Have you changed your mind about serving me?"

Ashkhen almost shouted in defiance, then realized Zviad's plan -- to distract Vorgun's attention long enough that she might actually have some chance of getting inside his guard. Skilled as Zviad might be with a blade, he dared not strike the killing blow. That was hers alone.

Assuming he's right about Steelheart, and my being Suslan's get.

Zviad stood straight and tall. "You know I serve only my sovereign and his lawful heirs."

"Suslan is dead and his line with him." Vorgun raised his hands. The rings upon his knobby fingers glowed so bright Ashkhen had to look away.

Zviad jerked like a man struck by lightning. From his lips came a scream, thin, inhuman.

Now's my chance. Although it took all her discipline not to become transfixed with horror at Zviad's agony, she edged around the central brazier to approach the diabolist from behind.

She was almost within stabbing reach of him when the brazier crackled. A gout of smoke took form. "Do you think my master's back unguarded?" Sulfurous fumes issued from the demon's mouth and nostrils.

Ashkhen stopped to look, and in doing so allowed the demon to reach her. Hot talons raked along her forearm and it was all she could do to keep from dropping Steelheart. She bit her lip so hard it bled.

"Ashkhen, no!" In the moment Vorgun's attention was off him, Zviad flung himself at the brazier.

Coals flew in all directions. Smoke rose, too diffuse for the demon to retake tangible form.

"You fool. I could have made you great." At Vorgun's gesture, flames blazed around Zviad.

This time Ashkhen did not allow herself to be distracted by his screams of agony. She charged, Steelheart held ahead of her, seeing only the small area of Vorgun's belly just under the ribcage.

It took all the strength of her injured arm to drive the sword home. Vorgun raised his arms in a magical gesture. Knowing she dared not let him complete it, Ashkhen threw her shoulder against him.

Although mighty in the dark arts, Vorgun remained an old man, time-worn and frail. Ashkhen's attack overbalanced him and he fell to the floor, among the still-sizzling coals. His robe caught fire.

"Cut his head off." Zviad's voice was a harsh croak, full of pain. "It's the only way to make sure."

Ashkhen took Steelheart in both hands and brought it down upon Vorgun's neck. The first two blows went awry and only chopped into the flesh of his throat and shoulder. The third fell true, cleaved flesh and bone. The old man's head rolled away.

Ashkhen flinched from the sight, then remembered her companion. Mad Zviad lay sprawled upon the floor, cherkessa burned in a dozen places so badly the reddened flesh could be seen through it. Ashkhen ran to him.

He gestured her away. "Leave me here."

"No."

"With Vorgun dead, the binding spells on his tower will fail. Save yourself."

"I'm not leaving you here." Ashkhen grabbed Zviad up and with all her remaining strength dragged him over to the stairs.

How she made it down she never knew. It was a matter of putting one foot in front of the other, of continuing even when every muscle and joint in her body screamed for relief. Even as stones fell from their places all around her, she did not let go of her burden.

The walls fell away on either side, and she scrambled down a ramp of rubble to the chaos that recently had been a marketplace. Strength spent, Ashkhen slid to the ground, Zviad beside her.

Ashkhen stared at her empty hands. "I-I lost Steelheart"

"One does not lose such a blade as Steelheart. Rather, it has left you, now that you no longer have need of it." Zviad gave her a wry smile, full of pain. "In the meantime, we have freed the land of a waking nightmare."

He closed his eyes and was still. His resurrected body shimmered with magical light and dissolved into the dust from which it had been conjured.

Ashkhen looked up at the billows of smoke where Vorgun's tower had stood; around at the ordinary people creeping forth into their new freedom. Had she any right to feel as though all of her effort had been for naught, simply because of what she herself had lost?


© Leigh Kimmel 2012

Leigh Kimmel has numerous short stories published in genre anthologies and periodicals, most recently "Red Star, Yellow Sign" in Historical Lovecraft, "The Damnable Asteroid" in Future Lovecraft, and "Daddy's Girl" in Daily Science Fiction. Her short story "Tell Me a Story" will be appeared in the anthology Rocket Science in April, 2012.  

May 2, 2012
It’s May and time for another edition of Swords & Sorcery Magazine. As usual there I have two good stories to present to you. I’ve been very impressed with the quality of the submissions I’ve received so far for Swords & Sorcery. Many of the stories I’ve chosen not to publish have been excellent and my decisions have not always been easy. I try hard when I reject a story to encourage the author to keep writing and to try again. To my delight several have taken my suggestion as I intended it and have sent me a second story.

The first story for this month is “Royal Steel” by Leigh Kimmel. It is a tale of fantasy politics involving a magic sword, a royal bloodline and the overthrow of a tyrant.

The second story for May is “There Might Be Giants” by David Turnbull. Politics also plays a role in this story but at its heart it’s a tale of how the truth gives a young man the courage to face the giants that are making his life miserable.

As always, comments and suggestions are welcome. You can email me at editor@swordsandsorcerymagazine.com or join the conversation on Facebook where we have a page.  Comments on previously published stories can be made in the archives here on our website. I am still looking for suggestions for a new name for the magazine that is original and adequately describes what is published here. I am also very interested in publishing non-fiction related to the genres of fiction that I publish. I am particularly interested in reviews but would consider critical essays. Movies, comic books and novels as well as short stories are fine for review provided the works reviewed are fantasy and set in the pre-industrial past. I pay the same rates for non-fiction as I pay for fiction. More complete guidelines are in the submissions section of this site.

Thank you for reading. I hope you enjoy this month’s edition.

Curtis Ellett

Editor, Swords & Sorcery Magazine