Frenhild and Hasgar each ran one of Janna's food stores, but she did not have to rely only on them when it came to breakfast. She and Laura had slept longer than she would have wished, but that had given the Thorwalsh a head start to make a good impression with their new old bosses. Frenhild was a bony, hard woman with cruel tattoos on her long, slender arms. She might have placed herself well in some shady Hard Rock Café back on earth too. Hasgar was huge and had some few minor physical disabilities. His head was utterly too large for his misshapen body and even for his grey hair it seemed for there was much too little of it on his head. He just didn't look right, a little disgusting even, but that didn't mean he couldn't cook. He made a fish stew with milk, turnips and red beets that was just finger-licking, even though it looked like puke with blood in it.

Each leader of each competing team that provided food was present for breakfast, trying to make a buck.

“Janna, try this gruel!” Someone called at her.

“This is the best roast fish you will ever have!” Called another.

It didn't matter from whom she bought her food, but she tried to stick to her own two little underlings in order to benefit them. A coin per unit for a start. She had to start somewhere. Soon, Frenhild and Hasgar had more coin than they could carry. Paying was tedious business because the individual coins were only a little less flimsy and tiny than grains of sand her hand. She did it by sticking her hand into her pocket, retrieving a few fingers full and have the person to be paid pick it off her palm. That way, eating took a little longer than it had before, but it was a new experience entirely.

“You know, you should really do something about your bush down there.” Laura said with a mouth full of bread loaves. “And we should get our hair and nails done. We can pay the necessary workers, no problem. You look hideous by the way.”

That was true, without a doubt, Janna judged. She didn't have a mirror but the days of travel could not have improved her looks much. She had bathed in the river but her hair was knotted and her nails a little too long.

“So, will they make my hair like yours?” She asked sceptically.

Laura's hair wasn't in much a better condition than her own, cutesy little braids or no. Laura's was a tad thicker though and that worked to her benefit.

“You should have seen it when they did it new.” Laura replied. “It's kinda dissolving by now but their little hands can do more magic than your average hair salon. I just hope we didn't smush all the barbers.”

They had not, as it turned out. Some even still worked in their profession. Conquered by two titanic college students, half destroyed and a large part of her population crushed or eaten Thorwal still needed barbers. Local men were not much for shaving to the point of going beardless but that did not entail a lack of caring for their facial hair, strictly the opposite. The tendency of many men to have long hair, just like the women, along with the great emancipation of the latter that enabled them to manage their own money and spend it on themselves did the rest of it. It was counter-intuitive, but Thorwal was probably one of the best places on the planet to get a hair cut.

Laura had done this before and knew all the steps. She was really crafty when it came to beauty and even had acquired a relatively large piece of soap through some Garethian expatriate alchemist. If left to her own devices long enough, who knew, perhaps she'd someday smear tar on her eyelashes for mascara. That was a hyperbole, but not by much, did she not command a very astounded Alrik Oilboiler to produce odoriferous oils from the well-smelling plants growing in between the many far-flung boulders and rocks on Thorwal's foothills.

To forego the need for scaffolding, they had Knorrholde and Gruskona assist with the routine. They were also the only ones not getting paid a grotesque fortune for the service. Janna was a little unsure whether she like liked the procedure. Visiting a hairdresser was always awkward for her because she didn't really know what she wanted and that wasn't helped by the fear and powerlessness of the little people doing her hair now. Her result turned out simpler than Laura's. For one, she lacked the brass and copper rings but she also was too uncommunicative with her servants. She was pleased nonetheless. Having her hair un-knotted was a great improvement in and of itself. A sense of civilization returned to her when she regarded her own improved self in the still water of the winter harbour. She felt less like an ogre.

Knorrholde and Gruskona each received a tiny sword that was sharpened to go to work on Janna's pubes. She took them a fair distance away from the city for reasons of decency and that the tiny people wouldn't get scared by the view of her gigantic sex. Also, it was so that she wouldn't get the sudden idea to plunge someone in there to get a little stimulation out of them. The tiny giantesses could have hurt her, so close to her most vulnerable spot, but not without having to fear extremely gruesome deaths as a reward. By now they were broken to heel quite nicely anyway and did a good job at shearing her without incident.

She placed them back at the winter harbour afterwards, to finish dismantling the palisade, but not before pinning each of them once beneath her foot and pushing their faces into the dirt a little.

The winter harbour was also the place to build ships now, well, boats as of yet. Thorgun the evil demon worshipper had commanded the keel laying of immense new warships but that megalomaniacal project had been scrapped as soon as Janna and Laura were back in control. Laura had flattened the former shipyard good and proper and with it much of the skilled labour. Anyone who started work early or went to the shipyard in hopes for a boat to escape with that day had been crushed. There was no telling how much skill and knowledge still stuck in between the pattern underneath her Chucks. It was missing now and one-legged Snorre told Janna as much.

“Don't know much about shipbuilding myself.” He shrugged pragmatically. “And have too few workers who know what they are doing. We're doing our best though.”

As well they had to. Fish was the very staple of Thorwal's food supply.

“Started net knotting this morning.” Snorre went on after rudely clearing his nose through his mouth and spitting. “Scrapped a few from crushed houses and made new ones too. Used barrels for buoys. We can have our three boats at sea if you want and put out fish traps along the sore. We've got wooden cages to catch crabs as well.”

He knew which kinds of ships there were, what they looked like and which of those were suitable for high sea fishing but was still too insecure to start keel laying yet. The boats they had built were rowing boats of questionable seaworthiness, but they would do to operate close to the shore.

“Very well.” She said. “I will clear the canal for you.”

“Just, uh...” He hopped a step closer on his wooden leg. “What shall we do with the catch? We can sell it to you raw, or else we can dry it. To salt it down or smoke it I don't have the resources, or the men. I'd have to build a smoke house or acquire large amounts of salt. We could boil seawater...”

“Give it to Hasgar, he will know what to do with it.” She said determinedly.

“And the pay?” The glimmer of gold was in his eyes. It was astounding that he'd dare press her on it, considering that she could end him with a twitch of her foot.

They had caught two barrels of fish with fishing rods in the harbour basin, attended loosely while they worked to produce more boats. Janna paid him a gold coin for each to bring them to Hasgar but decreed that Hasgar would pay for any further barrels of produce. Snorre would be paid for any ship completed. Thus, he would have twice the incentive to do so and all the more reason to put his labour to most effective use. Since she had already paid him for the barrels of fish, she decided that the three boats already completed would be his gift to her.

He made a sour face and Janna sensed that she had made a good deal.

She left him with a whispered threat: “If I catch you selling to anyone but Frenhild or Hasgar, I'll have you killed and put into Hasgar's stew. And then I'm going to eat it.”

Laura was occupied discussing a shortage of steel with her man for the subsistence economy and did not hear. She seemed to have decided that weapons should be molten down, or at least heated up and hammered into tools in a swords-into-ploughshares sort of effort. It was as much for reasons of pacifism as for necessity, but her tiny foreperson was vehemently opposed to the idea. A warrior society after all, the Thorwalsh were clinging to their steel.

Clearing out the canal was easy and quickly done, Janna just knelt and dug out the debris still left in there.

There wasn't much she could help housebuilding with, because it didn't require much of anything other than wood and labour. A wooden frame was erected first and the walls constructed out of wattle, woven sticks covered with mud to keep the weather outside. The roof could be anything like boards nailed together or just straw, weeds or reeds, secured against the wind in various ways. Stone foundations or even lower walls were a possibility, but it took longer to construct this way and so it was foregone as was any fancy carpentry. There were no inner walls. Livestock lived on one end of the house and a family or group of people in the other. There was a fireplace in the middle, made from stone, providing warmth and a place to cook food while the smoke escaped through a simple hole in the roof.

No houses had been completed since they started paying people and so no money changed hands. Faxe, the man in charge of the operation, was overweight to the point of obesity but so scared of Janna that he couldn't speak a word with her. She couldn't spot a shortage of tools or anything for now though and guessed that everything was fine.

Traversing the streets meant constant need for attention, much as though she was driving a car or a truck. By enlarge, the roads were wide enough for her, sometimes more than enough, and tiny people could see her from far enough to scurry out of her path. When she changed directions or turned, sometimes she had to wait, especially if there were animals, carts, wagons or large objects. But that was only the case in places of high activity. Some parts of the city were almost deserted, empty, desolate, smashed and half-smashed houses and empty streets. Thorwal had lost many of it's people.

Still, getting someone underfoot was tempting and would have been easy. All she had to do was put her foot down, take an extra step and boom, just like that they would be squashed, a flattened piece of goo in the imprint of her boot. But with the average person there was no telling whether they belonged to Laura or to her or to no one at all. Squashing one tiny person would be inconsequential but it would constitute a breach of the rules nonetheless. Also, confidence made the place run. The fact that nobody had been arbitrarily undone could not have escaped the little people.

Livestock was grazing on the hill over the cliffs again and an enclosure had been build on the ruins of the former Ottaskin to keep the pigs. To some degree, sows and piglets were now shitting right on top of Thorwal's former epicentre of power. There were similar enclosures all over the city but Laura's actions had left many in ill repair. She had not squished many animals at all though, presumably aiming her footfalls for people instead, and so the situation was not as bad as Janna might have expected. Thorwal had been able to feed more than nine thousand people, more than twelve thousand in winter. It's severely reduced population might yet prove to be it's salvation it seemed.

There were fields within the city walls as well but they had been harvested, plundered or trampled. If there was any success in farming to be had, it was outside the city walls.

“I know almost nothing about this.” Bearhild, the middle-aged, huge-chested woman in charge of farming informed Janna after their greeting. “I thought all planting was done in spring and harvesting in autumn.”

Her sweating workers were ploughing the ground with shovels and picks, giving the whole scene something of a labour camp. They had an actual plough and an ox to drag it, but it had been damaged and was undergoing repair by some clueless-looking people.

“We're planting things, that much I know.” She went on. “I have that Cyclops Isles thrall going to the smiths to get nails for our plough. He can tell you all about it.”

“When can we hope to harvest something?” Janna asked, crouching over the minuscule woman and her workers.

Though technically training to become a biologist, she wasn't particularly aware of the intricacies of agriculture. Bearhild dragged a mop of thick, brown hair behind her head and looked at the sky grimly.

“If this weather holds, who knows what's possible, but it wont.” She shrugged. “This is summer rearing it's head a last time before winter. Weather is going to get really ugly, really soon. Storms and rains first and ice and snow eventually. But I don't know. To tell you the truth, I am very ill-suited for this task you gave me.”

As Janna could see, the ground was not ideal for farming either. The boulders and rocks that were strewn all around could be found beneath the ground as well. For creating fields, the stones had been removed but they clearly still turned up when digging and ploughing. The fertility didn't compare to what she had seen in Nostria or even southern Thorwal.

“I saw livestock is looking good.” She tried to cheer the miserable woman up.

“Aye.” Bearhild replied. “We took the animals from where we could before you made us give them up again. All you see now is all we have. There are no house animals left. A few chickens perhaps. I can't say if we make it through the winter. The Ottaskin would have known but they're all dead or away. Us alone I'd say we could feed three times, but you two have some appetite.”

That was true of course. If the average person ate one and a half to two kilograms of food per day it meant that a ton of food could feed at least five hundred people. To Janna and Laura, a ton of food was less than a single mouthful, depending on what it was of course. Obviously, bread was more voluminous than heavy were as a block of bacon was the opposite. The maths was going slow in her head but she forced herself to it. If Thorwal could feed twelve thousand people at it's maximum capacity it would require twenty four metric tons of food per day.

She didn't know exactly how much food she needed at her size other than that about a hundred people got her nice and full. It was bewilderingly barbaric but the only way at hand to measure her food requirement. People.

If she supposed an average weight of sixty kilograms per person the maths wasn't too hard after all because it divided twenty four thousand quite easily. Four hundred, that was the answer. Suppose that a day had three meals à one hundred people it meant that she consumed three fourths of Thorwal's entire food supply per day when it was at it's best. Eighteen tons of food. The other way around, three hundred times sixty, got her the same result too and would have been easier to begin with, she reflected.

Eighteen tons of food was enough for at least nine thousand people per day, incidently the approximate former number of Thorwal's permanent inhabitants according to Furio's information. There was no way Thorwal was able to provide that kind of output at the moment and she hadn't even taken Laura into the equation yet. They were living off stores, but that much she had known from the beginning. How long this could go on was the next question.

The dynamics were hard to see through. Normally there would be a massive fishing operation that was now basically dead. There was farming and livestock, still more going on right now. And there would be trade from more fertile lands down south. For how much what accounted for was unknown to her. She should check the size of the stores, assess specifically how much food there was, but there was no doubt in her mind that their days in Thorwal were numbered and that that number was a lot smaller than their still relatively rich meals every day were suggesting.

There was one thing she could already asses about the size of the stores. They had to have been extensive in any case. Twelve thousand people during winter had to be fed, a time in which storms and some times even ice caused fishing and sea trade to almost come to a halt. If the city had to have enough food to make it through a month without trade or fishing, twenty four times thirty tons of food had to be either in store or walking around. Seven hundred twenty tons were a lot of food, but of course the actual number in the city right now was a lot less than that. But that meant...

“What are you thinking about?” Laura asked behind her. Janna hadn't even heard her approach.

She turned around: “I just figured out that we are starving this city to death.”

“Huh?” Laura looked perplexed. “I just checked on that. There's like tons and tons and tons, barely enough room to store it all.”

“Yeah, because you smashed most of the warehouses, little miss save-the-city.” She made a face. “And think about how much food you crushed. There's barely anything being produced, no ships come to trade...”

“But there's less people too.” Laura argued. “A lot less, you know, because...”

“Because you crushed and ate the rest or let them run away, yes.” Janna interrupted her. “Let's say they go half ration while we are here, so they eat about two tons of food per day.”

Laura's face screwed up cutely while she was contemplating that number: “That's not a lot, is it? Is it a lot?”

“No, actually.” Janna laughed. “But each of us eats eighteen tons of food in the same time. Enough for nine thousand of them. In four days here, we have consumed, uh, one hundred forty four tons of food together. You get the picture.”

“Kay...” Laura shrugged half-heartedly. “What does that mean?”

“It means they will starve.” Janna pointed out. “Soon. It means that by eating people we'd actually be doing them a favour. One less mouth to feed and sixty kilos of food saved.”

Laura clicked her tongue accusingly: “So that's what this is about! You just want to eat people. We're not doing that Janna, I like this place and I want it to survive.”

Janna wondered if Laura was aware she was doing was potentially much crueller than killing them outright. It was also the worst reply for her mission and she was glad that Furio did not understand what they were saying. The tiny mage was probably somewhere in the city but at Janna's and Laura's size most people could hear most of what they spoke most of the time. English was the only way to have some privacy.

“Then we have to figure out a way to feed them.”

“Okay.” Laura played the arrogant and poked her nose into the air. “As a matter of fact, I was just going to do that, why I wanted to speak with you.”

That didn't make any sense but Janna knew better than to argue: “How?”

Laura grinned: “Up this river there are villages. I was going to pay the first one a visit and take their food.”

“But then they are going to starve.”

“No they're not?” Laura smiled viciously. “I'm gonna kill them when I'm done taking their stuff.”

“But I thought we weren't killing anyone at the moment?!”

“In this city.” Laura nodded at Thorwal beside them. “I don't give a shit about any villagers. I was going to march them back here so we have more labourers but since you say we can't feed them I'm just gonna plough them under.”

Janna sighed: “And by the way you phrased that I can only assume that I'm not invited?”

“Yap, I'm going solo.” Laura said happily. “Someone has to look after the city while I'm gone. But no killing. I'm going to ask my confidants later. If I hear you squished or munched anyone you can say good bye to Furio.”

Janna didn't know what to say and Laura turned on her heel and went, whistling a happy tune. She did take the time to not step on two working people in her path though, took the Erlenmeyer flask from their sleeping bags and wandered off along the Bodir river.

It was terribly unfair, but Janna had only a tired shrug for that fact. Seeing Laura alive and energetic was such a good thing in and of itself that she wouldn't spoil it. Thorwal was spread out before her. It was about time to have lunch and she couldn't harm a single person lest Laura would kill Furio. Janna could protect him, surely, but killing the small man would only require a second of inattention on her part. She couldn't risk it.

“Giantess!” Some voice with a completely unfamiliar accent called her from below.

She looked. The speaker was diminutive, not only next to her foot that he stood much too close to and that could have run him over and crushed him if Janna moved, but to the Thorwalsh woman that eyed him expectingly as well. Thick, black curls covered a very round head on small shoulders and an even smaller frame. He had olive skin, revealing that he did not come from here if his stature had not been clue enough. Though tiny, he didn't look very afraid.

“We're planting spring onions, winter wheat, rye and barley, lettuce, spring cabbages and peas!”

“Oh, yes.” Janna mumbled. The exchange with Laura had almost let her forget that she was still in the middle of dealing with agriculture. That whole running the economy thing had sounded so exciting yesterday and started interesting as well, but it had since grown dull quickly.

'I am off waltzing through some village and crushing people while they scream and beg me for their lives while you are here to fix a city that has no chance of survival anyway.' She could almost hear Laura singing in her head.

“Earliest harvest is going to be in Phex!”

“Friskmoon, you mean!” Bearhild roared angrily, stomped over to the tiny guy and whacked him over the head with her hand.

Those terms were months, Janna knew. It made sense. Twelve gods, twelve months, one for each, convenient, and the Thorwalsh with different expressions for them because they didn't believe in the Twelve. The length of each month was likely to be comparable to earth too because of the size of the planet, the star it circled around, the distance to it and it's velocity.

“Phex!” The tiny guy repeated defiantly and earned a backhand slap as reward.

“How long is that?” Janna asked, mildly amused.

“Four to five months!” He replied when he recovered, rubbing his brown cheek with a tiny hand.

“So, spring.” Janna concluded with a sigh. “Just out of curiosity, what month is this?”

“Travia! Ough!”

“Battlemoon!” Bearhild punched him in the gut with all her might. She was more than a head taller than the tiny guy. He didn't stand a chance against her. He was bare-chested, which allowed Janna to see that he was barely more than skin and bone.

“That's many more months than I anticipated.” She said. “I thought we tried to get a yield as quick as possible?”

“It's too late for a second fall crop!” He replied, wincing. “We need to plant for spring and summer harvest now. Now is the time! The corn seeds especially, they need to be put in soft ground and get at least one good frost or they don't grow!”

“What could be planted for a last harvest before the winter?”

He looked at her terrified, this tiny, brown speck of a man: “We may have tried turnips in late summer, but it won't work now, it's a waste of good seeds!”

Janna had absolutely no intention of spending the winter here and neither could Laura have. Because of their enormous size, it took very long for any cold to seep into their bones and give them a chill, but frost temperatures, cold winds, rain and snow were not a wise risk to take in a T-shirt.

“Stop farming. It's useless.” She commanded Bearhild at a whim. “Do what you can to get the animals nice and fat. Feed the seeds to them, they are nutritious.”

“Aye!” Bearhild was most pleased with that order. It would mean a lot less work for her to be sure.

“You can't do this!” The tiny man objected in horror. “Field crops feed three times the men animals do!”

That fields could feed more people than animals could was obvious at the latest since hypocritical Hollywood scumbags told poor people that they should stop eating meat because it was destroying the environment on earth. They had been saying that for centuries, all the while living in such a fashion that if everyone copied their lifestyle all life would end within a day.

“You can't tell me what to do, you little worm.” Janna laughed in his face.

“But we will starve!” He pleaded.

They would starve either way. If they were lucky they'd become Janna's and Laura's snacks, playthings or doormats before that occurred. She imagined a square formation of several hundred people looking up to her in terror as she came to wipe her feet on them, crushing them into oblivion in the process. That would get her boots more messy than clean to be sure, but it would be empowering.

“How many fields does it take to feed a city of nine thousand?” She asked him with an expressly uncaring look on her face.

He returned her gaze, thinking for a moment. It was bewildering to see but it seemed as though he really attempted that calculation in his head. Janna remembered some botanic science lecture in which the professor had claimed a square kilometre of primitive agriculture to be able to feed twenty one people. A third of that, livestock, would mean seven. Hunting and gathering was a lot less than that, obviously, probably one or two people at the most. So, nine thousand divided by twenty one would be the number of square kilometres in floor space for agriculture to feed nine thousand people.

'Nope.' She thought and cut short his time to come up with an answer.

“A lot more than what I am seeing here, isn't it?”

Outside of Thorwal, fields stretched out not nearly long enough to make up what ever the absurdly high result of that calculation was.

“Farming is only a small pillar this city stands on!” He urged. “But it is necessary nonetheless!”

“Oh!” She sneered, mocking him with her eyes but regretted it a moment later. What he said was perfectly true and she had known it. She just wanted to be mean to him. She wanted to eat him, in truth, even though or perhaps precisely because he was so tiny. She wanted to squash his bony, little body with her tongue and devour him. That wouldn't do though. Not with all the labourers now standing idly and watching, having abandoned their picks and hoes.

At the same time there was something else too. He was nothing if not proud and stubborn to the point of foolishness but something about his iron perseverance made him admirable, again, even though or maybe because he was but a slave here.

Janna softened her tone: “And you know about these things?”

He gave Bearhild a weary look before speaking.

“I am but a simple farmer from the hills of Putras, growing wine, olives and wheat. I catch fish at the shores too and store them in olive oil with well-smelling herbs.”

He was nowhere near done speaking before the violent Thorwal behemoth dealt him another vicious blow to the gut: “You were, you mean, thrall!”

The poor little man collapsed to his knees, breathless: “But I am a scholar just as much. My people value thought and wisdom more than these northern brutes. Ow!”

Bearhild's fist slammed through his face from his right temple down to the left side of his jaw. He was on the ground, the Thorwalsh woman over him.

“Your boy-fucking excuse for a people are living in a past long gone, thrall!” She laughed viciously at him. It had something enchanting to see this huge, stupid woman make short work of the tiny nerd.

“My name is Alriksander Efferdopulos!” He roared hoarsely. “I am a free man of the Cyclops Isles!”

“You are enjoying a spoon of your own fish stew, slaveholder!” Bearhild kicked him in the ribs with her heavy boots.

After that, he was done, cowering like a frightened child on the ground, groaning in pain. Janna remembered that whole being-moral thing a little too late.

“Don't kill him.” She urged and the woman shot her a glance far more angry than she deserved.

“He deserves everything he gets!” She spat. “Had a whole village of serfs to his name, this one! Ask them if they were treated any better!”

The parallel to ancient Greece was uncanny, even though Janna knew far too little about it. Were Greek slaves treated badly? She couldn't tell. But she knew that the Greeks had been an early, highly advanced culture with many important thinkers. Perhaps this was a chance to converse with one. She imagined Plato trying to argue with some barbarian woman hell-bound on beating him up.

“That is a lie!” Tiny Alriksander grunted defiantly. “My people were well-fed and happy before you came and slaughtered them! And what for?!”

“Shut your mouth!” Bearhild roared at him.

“No, you shut up.” Janna determined. She was deeply enough involved in moral arguments with her self without needing to hear the quarrels of others. “You, little scholar, get up.”

Her mouth watered when she watched him move. Such a tiny little man, a snack, not nearly enough to sate her hunger, huge, evil predator that she was. Perhaps she should eat Bearhild as a punishment for beating him up, but she didn't look or feel any near as helpless as Alriksander and that wouldn't make it as good even though the Thorwalsh woman could no more defend herself. Janna yearned for the power rush of people begging her not to make them her food and her mouth wasn't the only part of her salivating at that thought either. She couldn't act on any of it, while Laura was off having exactly the kind of fun Janna was craving.

“So.” She struggled to get her thoughts in line again. “Tell me, how do we feed the city?”

He looked downtrodden: “I do not know about the state of the stores. But if they do not suffice until anything has grown, supply has to come from elsewhere. Two days past a trader was spotted on the southern horizon but they turned on their heels as soon as they saw you. Land trade with the villages is dead as well, as well as river trade with neighbouring kingdoms.”

Janna hadn't heard about that trading ship but the rest was no news to her.

“I know all that.” She told him impatiently. This was all very unfulfilling. Not only was she undetermined about eating or not eating him, but she felt exactly the same way about Thorwal and it's longevity. She wasn't sure how much she actually cared about solving any of it's problems and it occurred to her that she was just doing it in order to do anything at all.

And even while Janna tried to approach the issue with her mind, Laura was probably doing a much better job at solving it and having a lot of fun in the process. That was it, though. That was the solution. If Laura could ask Furio for the location of a village then so could Janna. There were more settlements up the Bodir and no doubt still more up the northern road as well, all around the gulf of Prem. And at some point, all the villages in reach would be gone and food would become a problem as it had at the Spaceship before. And Thorwal would still starve to death then, even if Laura decided not to smash it to bits before they left.

“No need.” She snubbed Alrisksander just as he was opening his mouth. “Feed the seeds to the animals. No planting. Soon as anything grows, feed it to the animals as well.”

“And don't kill him.” She added to Bearhild. Perhaps she'd feel a bit gentler later and in want of an interesting conversation. Thorwalsh were simply too dull and monotonous in that regard. For now she was fed up with the place though. But she'd stay, stay until Laura was back and then talk to Furio and go kill something. That was something she could look forward to. For now she'd pay for her lunch as agreed upon. Hopefully Hasgar had prepared a big bunch of his stew.

When she rose and turned to go to the market where the feeding was usually celebrated, her eyes glanced over the horizon across the endless blue waters of the sea. And just in time. Sails! Not just one or two either. There was a whole host of them. No, a fleet, she thought. Thorwal longships rowed hard even though their sails were blown up to the full. Janna was so dumbstruck that she just stood and stared for a moment, asking herself if Olaf might have arrived.

It made no matter. Killing-time came earlier than anticipated and she was not going to wait for them to land or perhaps think the better of their attack, if this was one. She was already out of her boots when Furio came sprinting and shouting at her. He had developed a bit of a belly here, she saw, hanging over his belt ever so slightly, swinging.

“Janna!” He shouted. “Ships from the south!”

“I can see...” She said before she broke off. “South?!”

The ships she saw came from the east, due east if not a tad more northern than that. But indeed, when she looked south she found another fleet, this one even larger. Where the eastern one was composed of longships only, the southern one was distinctly more diverse, showing galley-type ships and others without oars but high superstructures, stern-castles and large, round bellies.

Olaf the Terrible was here and replaced what he had lost in longships with galleys and cogs, hulks and carracks and what not, taken as prizes on the sea.

“There are others from the east as well!” There was no need to shout at the poor, tiny man but Janna was just too excited.

“Prem!” Furio called back, warning. “It is quite a coincidence that they are arriving together!”

Admittedly, that was true, though Janna thought it a lucky circumstance more than anything else. There was going to be a battle and it was going to be exciting. Her boots, socks, shirt and pants went flying carelessly onto the cliffs. She was going to win this thing in her underwear, and swimming, which was a new one. Her foot landed on the cliffs with too much force and smashed the bedrock to pebbles. She didn't let it slow her down.

Her feet crashed into the water like bombs. It was a bit colder than the river, but not unpleasant in this weather at all. The cold water tingled on her skin but as she already knew it took a long time to seep through and start to cool her body down. To her surprise though, it wasn't as deep as where the river entered the sea. Where the water flowed it could push mud and ultimately even rocks with it, digging a trench for itself. Where it didn't flow, the ground was muddy, slick, with crude, sharp rocks inside. Janna's skin was tougher than that though. She was no earthen college girl who scraped her feet bloody at a misstep on a beach visit any more. She was a terrible giantess and a sea monster about to commence a battle against two fleets at once.

The ground made a sharp downturn just behind the rocky beach but only fell flatly afterwards. It was kind of awkward because she had anticipated to plunge in and swim a few strokes. This way, she went down and then back up and had to wade for a while before it was anywhere deep enough to swim.

While wading she gave her adversaries a closer inspection from afar. From the east, more than two dozen ships were approaching. Snorre, the pragmatic but not perfectly suited shipbuilder, had given Janna a brief overview of Thorwalsh types. Knorres and Vidsandrs were Thorwalsh trading ships, along with tiny Snekkars which were also the most common high-sea fishing boat. Ottas were for war and were indeed the ships Janna was looking at right now. There were three types, Skeidhs, which were smaller and quicker and Drakkars, which were larger and more robust. All of the afore mentioned had a single mast. The last type, the Wind Drakkar, had three. It was huge and there was only one in the Thorwalsh fleet right now, approaching from the south. It was Jarl Olaf's own flagship.

At last, Janna was able to start swimming. It felt good. She swam in full strokes towards the eastern fleet out of Prem. The city was on the opposite side of the gulf that was named for it, and no doubt word of Thorwal's demise had reached the Hetman or Hetwoman there and a fleet at been assembled in order to combat the threat. Their ships were well manned and they were coming on fast, while the southern fleet was still out a bit further.

Janna wondered if Olaf had gone to Prem first and ordered them to attack in conjunction with him. It sounded unlikely for a headstrong Thorwaler, but then again, Olaf was said to be a cunning son of a bitch. It didn't matter though. Ottas could be used for fishing no doubt. Laura would be pleased to see that Janna had captured ships for that purpose. The Premer ones would not carry much in terms of supplies, but the southern fleet would carry a lot of plunder, perhaps even Horasian foodstuffs, gained by raiding Scalia's supply lines.

Janna found her legs to be exceptionally fit. She was in good form, no doubt from walking for days prior to arriving at Thorwal. Her concussion was good as well, the dull pain receded. Her belly was empty, but that was a thing easy to remedy when confronted with an army of tiny, tasty men and women. In spite of fully expecting to be superior to her attackers in every respect, she still felt her heartbeat quicken. There were a lot of ships and even more fierce-looking warriors.

“Arrow ships front! Fire arrows!” She heard a deep-voiced woman command when the eastern ships were mere three meters away from her.

Janna dove her head into the water to wet her hair. It wouldn't do to fight with a burning head.

“War arrows!” She heard when she came back up, hair drenched.

Ships with axe-, spear- and swordsmen diverted their course expertly to make may for Skeidhs with bowmen in the rear. The flurry of arrows greeted her immediately. It was like getting hit by a swarm of mosquitoes.

“Aim for the eyes!”

That was a smart move, Janna had to admit, as much as the arrows failed to really hurt her. They were far too weak to penetrate her eyeballs and the arrows that stuck she could simply blink away. Nonetheless there was a discomforting sting with every hitting projectile for which she had to blink in order to make it go away. There were so many arrows that they were in fact rendering her near blind.

Janna had a few tricks up her own sleeve though. She wouldn't be a proper sea monster if she hadn't. She took two quick strokes with closed eyes and dove beneath the surface of the water. The salt stung when she opened her eyes again, but not as much as the arrows. The ships' shapes were blurred yet easily identifiable especially because of the moving oars crashing in and out of the water.

She reached up for one of the, to her, thirty plus centimetre long arrow Skeidhs. Her fingers wrapped around the railing. There were three distinct stings on her fingers, no doubt side arms being thrust into her skin. She wouldn't let it bother her and pulled.

The bow turned sideways but she was easily able to drag the vessel under. Armour-less bowmen were left swimming on the waves, their frantic feet kicking water. Some boots were lost and came drifting down almost softly, along with a man in scale armour and helmet, desperately fighting to slip out of the death-bringing steel that weighed him down. In his panic, the man had not even thought to drop his sword.

Janna opened her mouth and caught him before pushing the water out of her mouth. There was a sharp pain when he stuck his blade into her gums and she angrily transferred him to her molars and ground him to paste between them. It felt a little like chewing raw minced meat wrapped in tin foil and it was not wise to swallow any of it so she spat him out, leaving a tiny cloud of crimson and drifting pieces of flesh.

She pulled down three more ships in the same fashion, but chose to ignore any fool in armour on their way to their watery grave. One of them came aiming straight for her face with iron determination but it only took a wave of her hand to push him away and forget him.

By then, so many people were afloat that it was hard to pick a spot to come back up again. Janna chose an area were people were thickest, breaking the surface with an open mouth. She imagined minnows being hard to catch with ones mouth because they were so quick. These swimming Thorwalsh were nothing of the sort. They could swim well because their culture was deeply in bounds with water and the sea but they lacked that sudden, awesome agility of fish. They were more like krill.

In that regard, Janna felt positively like a whale when she pushed herself up. People were caught in her mouth and travelled up with her, the rest pushed aside or bouncing off her breasts. The waves she made rocked the boats hard and interrupted the effort to get the suppressive fire going again. One Otta even toppled over.

Her legs worked hard to keep her head as high above the water as possible. That was the thing that separated a sea battle from one fought on land. The water. As obvious as that was, it changed the whole deal quite a bit. For one thing, Janna's face was a lot closer to her enemies than she was used to. Also, she was swimming, slower, more cumbersome, but so were the ships. And once a man was overboard, he became almost useless in terms of fighting. Some tried to swim to her body and attack her as soon as the water was reasonably still again, but their blows could do nothing to hurt her. In turn, Janna couldn't rise and stomp and stomp and stomp foes into oblivion as she was used to. Crushing them with hands didn't have the same appeal and eating them took time.

Water splashed down her chin and onto the top of her bosom that was still more than half submerged. Her mouth was squirming with people. They were eight if she counted right, but it was hard to tell without seeing. None of them wore any armour. She grinned at their comrades below her, desperately trying to put up anything resembling a fight. Then she chewed, mouth open, letting the screams and squelching resonate. Try as they might, they were so tiny and helpless these little people. The pleasant taste of them filled her mouth, saltier than ever before. One person's belly burst between her teeth and a spray of blood came up, guts and gore trickling down Janna's chin.

“Arrows!” The woman screamed again. Her voice was already full of desperation even though Janna had only killed a handful so far. There were thousands all together on their ships, and the other fleet hadn't even arrived yet. Janna could see the woman standing at midship of a Drakkar with a hull engraved with runes and some monster's head for a bow. The wind blew around her curly blonde hair. She had a shield on her left arm and a crude axe in the other along with a piece of rigging she used to steady herself against the swell. Janna would be damned if this wasn't the hetwoman of Prem or at least some relative of hers.

“Out of ideas already?” She grinned, blinking and turning her head against the incoming fire.

The hetwoman's face hardened: “Attack!”

The ships had used the momentum of wind and oars to move past Janna, placing themselves in between her and the city. The sails had been reefed now and the oars were in the air before they were put to use again. Three hard strokes and the bows of the ships were coming in, men and women with axes already sitting ready to jump. They meant to board her like a ship, Janna realized amused.

It took some sangfroid on her part, but she stayed put and let them. With the melee-ships out of the way, undoing the marksmen was a cakewalk. Janna reached beneath the incoming ships, grabbed each of the three others by the rail and pulled them under with two fingers alone. It was like playing with grandpa's precious wooden models in an oversized swimming pool, though these were slightly larger, infinitely more detailed and, not to mention, manned.

It was hard to tell, but what the melee ships did may actually have been construed as a ramming manoeuvre. What ever it was, their bows bumped into her, rocking their crews instead of her before the fighters scrambled.

“Raaah!” They screamed courage into each other as they tried to attack. Those who sought their luck at Janna's shoulders and back were ineffectual, sliding off and plunging into the water. But Janna's breasts, pride and joy that they were to her, were small, little eremite islands to them only missing the iconic palm tree on top.

What they did there hurt her though. Her breasts' skin and flesh were soft and their crude weapons were rammed and hammered in with vicious hatred, all the strength of Thorwal's seamen's arms. She bit her lip against the pain and shook her bosom. Just a small, insignificant movement to her, a huge deal for the tiny people. The waves she made pushed the ships away from her again. The people on her tits that had been attacking her a moment ago lost their feet and several slid off and fell into the water. They fell in between her breasts as well and so Janna grabbed both of them with her hands and squeezed them together.

It wasn't easy, but when she pushed really hard she felt a few familiar pops on her soft flesh and red trails of blood snaked out slowly. She let go and flicked anyone still on her between her mounds of flesh before they could resume stabbing and hacking at her again.

“No, please!” One of the proud, fearsome warriors begged before her tits compacted them like tin cans. It was great. She reached into the water, grabbed a handful of dripping people, filled her mouth and chewed. There was more begging before her teeth chomped down and that was even better.

There were so many people around, she saw. The hetwoman saw it too and screamed at the men and women to swim and fight her. Janna reached beneath the large, ornamented Drakkar and lifted it out of the water. Everyone aboard lost their footing at once. This ship was heavy, forty centimetres long with sturdy wooden shields all along the railing. Janna couldn't lift it as high as she might have wished but it was still good enough for her purpose.

Her tongue licking her lips was the sight that greeted the Thorwalers when she lifted it to her face. Janna tilted the ship and poured. There were more people than she could hope to catch with her mouth but she made sure to get the hetwoman for certain. She plummeted in like the rest that didn't fall past or bounced off Janna's face. There were a few foreign objects as well, weapons, shields, buckets perhaps, or helmets and what ever one carried aboard a ship such as this on a short voyage.

Her mouth was full to bursting now and she wasted no time to start chewing. Thorwalsh were probably not considered tender per se, but Janna's jaws pulped everything and everyone with indifference. She wondered what that hetwoman might have thought when she knew she was being eaten. It must have been humiliating. Humans were predators to some extend, vegans and vegetarians excluded. To be turned into someone else's meal like that was to be on par with some animal, or perhaps even a plant.

She gathered another healthy handful of people from the water and introduced them to the experience. Still there were others trying to fight her, still gaining no more success than scratching or poking her a little. She let her face drop to water level and gathered people as she swam like a giant pool cleaner before pushing the water out and chewing them as well. Swallowing them whole was tempting but Janna didn't like the idea of armed men in her belly. But then again, they would be fighting an impossible battle against her digestive system, bereft of air and in complete darkness.

Floating archers were a welcome target. They had let go of their bows and arrows and most of their side arms as well so as to float better for what ever purpose they might imagine help them in their predicament. Janna sucked them from the water one by one and swallowed. They went down easy, wet as they were, and struggled nicely on their way down. Spared the agonizing prospect of being chewed alive they would instead be digested, or else suffocate unless they managed to stay afloat in an air pocket.

Lack of threats made Janna playful.

“Mhh, you look tasty. Afraid to get eaten? Would you like to be chewed or swallowed whole?” Were just a few of the lazy taunts she used to mock her individual victims before devouring them. She crushed people with her tongue again too, or sucked until they dissolved in her mouth. She had really expected this great fleet to put up more of a fight.

People were swimming away from her as fast as they could now, but they were much too slow for her. The remaining ships tried to pick up swimmers, one made away on oars against the wind, some just floated with few or no men left aboard. Janna laughed and splashed water at one of the lingering Skeidhs with both hands, sending a wave of wet and people against it. It was hit full on, pitching and tossing dangerously, going half under before re-emerging. She splashed again and it went keel up, mast breaking.

Two other vessels Janna grabbed at midships, lifted them and crushed their hulls to splinters in her grasp, many people with them.

“Is this all you have?” She laughed and turned towards the south. The rush of killing and devouring people had almost made her forget that there were more pathetic playthings coming if they had not already arrived or else turned around when they had seen how their comrades were doing.

She was confronted with a giant, grotesque, wooden monster, a dragon or a sea snake or something like that. It was fast, impossibly close and slammed straight into her head with a knock.

“Ow!” She screamed. That one had really hurt and she had just gotten over her concussion. The ship that the wooden monster belonged to was much larger than the others but it had only seemed huge because it had been so close when it suddenly appeared.

“Ram her again! Row back!” A cruel, precise voice on deck commanded. “Row forward!”

“Uh!” The oarsmen exclaimed.

“Ow!” Janna made again when the ship knocked into her head a second time.

“Row back! Double time!” The voice yelled.

Only now did Janna realize that she was dealing with Olaf and his Wind Drakkar. They made no attempt to ram her again but retreated instead. If this little Jarl thought that he could undo Janna by ramming his pathetic seventy five centimetre ship into her head then he was mistaken, three masts or no, Janna thought angrily.

“Fire arrows!” Came the command from deck and Janna received sporadic hits by burning projectiles immediately. They hurt her eyes a little more when they hit, hissing, irritating. Response time was extraordinarily fast on that vessel, that much was certain. It seemed almost as if it had been rehearsed.

Janna fumed and swam after them. Due to it's size, the Wind Drakkar was more cumbersome than other ships but could actually achieve higher speeds in the end due to it's larger sails and larger count of oars all the while maintaining the low drag and drought of a longship. It was astoundingly fast very quickly, and Janna could hear the oarsmen groan with every pull.

“Put some back into it, you maggots!”

Olaf was at astern, looking at her, one foot on the railing. He was a frightening sight if Janna ever saw one. He wore black boots, red and white striped britches and a studded leather vest with many belts of weapons on his person. A filthy, grey fur cloak was wrapped around his shoulders and an iron half-helm on his head, rings around each eye and only black behind them. His hands were black too somehow, she saw. He must have dyed them, perhaps with coal dust and fat or something like that. It was in his hair as well, dirty blond and filthy, streaming out from under his helm so much that it was impossible to tell where hair ended and hideously long beard began.

It was only natural for the civilized Horasians to fear such a man.

“Alchemist piss!” He swore when she began to close in.

'Or was it a command?' Janna pondered. He stepped aside to make way for barrels the content of which was dumped into her path as she followed them.

“Faster, come on!”

The smell was just repugnant, something between a freshly tarred road, a chemical plant and actual gasoline. The substance's colours were many and unnatural as well, black, yellow, neon green, metallic purple and rainbow coloured in places. She stopped just before she would have swum right into the mess. Her heart skipped a beat when she realized that it must be a combustible. The fire arrows had stopped.

“Haha!” Olaf emerged back at the stern of his ship with a bow and burning arrow in hand.

He didn't hold the string for longer than the blink of an eye and the sea exploded before Janna's eyes. Panic gripped her and she paddled backwards, away from the drifting carped of vicious fire. The smoke was thick and stinging but luckily blowing towards the shore.

“Fire!” Olaf roared with his terrible voice. “Give me fire! More fire! Fire!”

Janna was unclear about who he had been shouting to before the rest of his fleet emerged all around her, seemingly out of nothing. They circled her, going as fast as oars and sails allowed. Meanwhile, men were standing on the rails, holding onto rigging and exposing their manhoods and bungholes at her. It all happened so quickly, she had no time to react. And then she saw that all the ships were burning.

“Take a bite of this! Hahaha!” Someone shouted at her through the smoke.

It was thick and repulsive, everywhere all at once. Janna was choking on it and had trouble keeping her eyes open. Where was the shore? Where was Thorwal? She had turned so much in her panic that she couldn't tell any more. Worst of all, she couldn't even tell any more where that huge fire was. Arrows still came flying from some of the ships, ill-aimed, but bothersome nonetheless. The Thorwalsh were burning tallow, meat, fish, oil, human hair and who knew what else. She started coughing uncontrollably and nearly went under because of it.

Between two wads of smoke she saw a big, fat-bellied one-master crossing before her, two stinking fires aboard at bow and stern castle. The gap was closing.

“How do you like this?!” A sailor laughed before the ship vanished.

Janna took a breath of the relatively clean air while she still could, and dove down. Looking up, she saw only black and blue patches, and the fire carpet, burning and spreading horribly. She couldn't see the land from where she was, but at least she could make out the ships circling above her.

Each ship produced smoke, she reasoned, which was an exceedingly clever move. Had Janna been stupid enough to swim into the fire, she might have died or been gravely injured before losing her orientation in the smog and drowning. But with every fewer ship there would be fewer fires and lesser smoke in turn.

She swam, two strokes before she was under the circle. A comparatively tiny ship was her first victim and she could almost wrap her hand half the way around it. They had anticipated this and viciously started hacking at her fingers with all they had. She withdrew her hand but went for the ship again, crushing it in her grasp.

Some Otta was right next to it and she ripped off it's tail to let it sink. Already the circle was dissolving, but in orderly fashion, all ships sheering off at once. Three more Janna could get a hold off before her air ran out and she had to resurface.

Her lungs screamed at the stinking, foul stuff she inhaled when she came out of the water, but she forced herself from coughing and went down again. Now her muscles screamed as well, unwilling to perform the powerful strokes she took. Already, her legs started cramping, white muscle cells running out of means to produce anaerobically and red muscle cells deprived of oxygen for aerobic ATP production. If she had taken better care in class perhaps the knowledge of biology could have helped her out of this mess. But it was too late for that now.

Furious, Janna reached her arm above the water and brought it down to smash a fleeing Skeidh in two. A big, large-drought, box-shaped hulk of a ship she grabbed with both hands from beneath and pulled it under. Olaf's ships were poorly manned though. He used the vessels as weapons rather than having them be mere transports to deliver a blow. She could not spot his ship anywhere.

She resurfaced again and this time she got to breathe normally at last. Her heart was still pounding like mad but her cramps got better enough so that she didn't have to clench her teeth any more. It was hard to fathom in the moment, but somewhere in her mind she was gravely aware that she had just narrowly escaped the jaws of death. Shore and safety was in sight and she made over there quickly, pushing over another attacking Skeidh in her path.

The smoke to her right was dying away with the fires on the water and aboard the ships and more and more vessels emerged with sailors expecting to see the fruit of their labour. It had been a cunning plan and almost worked. Janna had ought not to underestimate this guy. The complete ineffectiveness of the Premer fleet had lured her into a false sense of supremacy as well.

“Oh no! Urgh!” She struggled to keep herself above the water as soon as her feet touched the slimy ground again. She paddled with her arms, face half in and out of the sea, all the while slowly hopping towards even shallower ground.

A horn was blown amidst the fading smoke.

“All hands to the oars!”

“Yaaaa!”

The ships that sported oars were faster to move, but the others blew out their sails and followed quickly. The wind was blowing land inwards as it did on most days here. It was perfect for them.

“No, please!” Janna screamed and struggled. She hopped faster, all he while maintaining her ruse. A little longer in the deep water and smoke and it might not have been one at all. Had her cramps gotten any worse she would have had to paddle to land with only her hands and not unlikely would have drowned in the process.

“For Swafnir! Double time!”

“Uhh!”

Olaf's Wind Drakkar emerged from a cloud of smoke, dirty black sails hoisted on every one of her three huge masts, all oars pulling and pulling and pulling.

“Help!” Janna shouted with a mouth half filled with water. Soon she was in such shallow waters that it became difficult not to let her face poke out too much. She exhaled and let herself sink onto her behind, watching with only the top of her head sticking out as a beacon for her attackers to aim at. She recognized the black hull of the Wind Drakkar when it came into view, sprinting at her at ramming velocity.

It was time. Janna put her feet on the ground, angled her knees and pushed herself upwards. She was glad not to miss Olaf's face when she appeared above him, splashing water, her face fifty meters high in the air. His beard made it impossible to see his mouth but he could do nothing but stare at her for a second before the ship bumped ineffectually into her crotch, causing every one on deck to lose their footing.

Olaf the Terrible fell into a bundle of hempen ropes but stuck his ugly head out again a moment later, shouting: “Row back!”

Janna grinned viciously and and raised her fist. She could have smashed him to bits right there and well she should have. There was no telling what the tiny Viking king still had up his sleeve. She sensed that he was at a wits end however, and decided hat it be a bigger statement to crush him with more fanfare. Moreover, the Wind Drakkar was an impressive ship at more than seventy centimetres long. She couldn't let it slip away before considering if it hadn't a different purpose still, a nice prize perhaps to gift to the Horasians.

The masts broke easily in her grasp and the rigging snapped one rope at a time when she pulled off the sails and discarded them behind her. The oars could not pull against her might. When she dragged her hands along each side, they snapped in their row holes like the tiny twigs that they were. Five men per rowing bench was no doubt a mighty count, but the fearsome warriors at sea were pushed off and tumbled around the deck as a result of her actions.

“Swafnir is great!” Olaf's shout rang in panic, whatever it meant.

Not even fire arrows were being shot any more. The other ships, as they arrived to attack, were smashed to splinters beneath Janna's fists, but soon the followers turned away, breaking off and fleeing. Janna was about to follow them after destroying the last ship, but there was something off about it.

Crewed scarcely, rigging hanging loose in places, holes in it's sail, the cog was moving slowly. It's waterline was lower than on any of the other ships, indicating either a hull breach or a belly full of goods. It's deck, as Janna saw, was stacked with heavy, iron banded casks. She shuddered when she spied a deathly determined man with a torch on the stern castle.

Her mind was racing quickly. She saw men on the Wind Drakkar looking at the cog, spitting over their shoulders and abandoning ship for good, trying to swim away as fast they could. It as still far enough away yet. In lack of anything else, Janna grabbed a half-smashed dromon and hurled it at the cog with both hands.

She turned her back not one moment to soon. The explosion rocked the water, rocked her and made her ears ring shrilly. Sharp pains made her scream as wooden splinters shot into the skin and flesh of her back and shoulders and a rain of water and that foul burning substance came down on her. She was a warrior now, she knew, shedding her blood for Horas' cause. She let herself fall in the water and scrubbed the substance off her skin as fast as she could.

When she turned again the Wind Drakkar was sinking, her stern ripped to pieces and she was burning were the combustible had hit. The cog was splinters in the water and a cloud of smoke and fire. The sea was stirred still even now. Many off the Wind Drakkar and the ships Janna had smashed had not survived and were drifting about, face down. The salt water stung in her wounds but it was just splinters after all. The fires on her hadn't burned long enough to her harm.

Olaf stood at bow of his sinking flagship, looking up at her. His helmet was gone, down in his hand, and his skin black as soot which made the white of his eyes shine bright and mad and beaten.

“Titanic wench!” He spat, flinging his helmet aside. He went to one knee, spreading empty hands from long, thick arms. “You beat me!”

Janna was a tad too shaken to reply something cocky. Ears still ringing, her head turned towards the city. All along the piers the Thorwalsh were standing, witnessing their ultimate defeat at her hands. Perhaps some of them had hoped that Olaf or Prem might come to relieve them. Both these hopes were now shattered much as the hulls of most of the ships.

She had her audience now, able to crush the hetman of hetmen for all of them to see.

“Damn you!” He growled. “My fleet! My city!”

“Your god.” Janna added, her wits finally about. “Don't forget we crushed your stupid whale god.”

He looked at her with uncertainty, wavering, before hate filled his eyes again.

“Damn Horas!” He spat a mouthful of bloody phlegm onto the deck of his ship. The explosion had injured him too. “Oh, don't look surprised! I know whose work this is!”

Janna contemplated her options. He was done, at last, all his aces played. Without a doubt he was the most cunning foe she had ever faced so far. Her back could attest to that. She would have to have Thorwalsh pull out the splinters for her later. As for Olaf, she could crush him or eat him now. No, not eat him, she thought. The man was filthy with whatever it was he blackened his hide with. Or she could keep him alive. Perhaps she could make him accept the twelve. Perhaps she could make him loose the bond with Gareth and have him become a leal servant to the Horasians. With Swafnir gone they had no cause to grieve the practise of whale hunting any longer. If anyone, Janna had cause to be aggrieved with that practise, knowing where it led. Somewhere in her the thought emerged that perhaps she had taken the wrong side.

The Thorwalsh were freedom-loving, wild, hard-drinking characters. They accepted the strong and their dominion over the weak and they did not seem to waste too many calories overthinking consequences. But then again, they kept slaves themselves in the form of thralls and wailed and moaned when they were overtaken by someone stronger. They were hypocrites, and worse yet backwards, ignorant and superstitious. In Janna's eyes, theirs was not a culture worth keeping.

“Go on! Kill me!” Olaf snarled. “I can see the spite in your eyes!”

She was spiteful indeed, Janna reflected, but when she questioned herself about it it was more because she had grown sick of Thorwal by now, the city especially. She wanted to go somewhere else. Somewhere new would be best. Somewhere more civilized. But to do so would require Laura's consent.

Water splashed around tiny Olaf's boots. His ship was going under. Warriors were swimming away, or trying to, much too slow. The ships were quicker. Janna wanted to catch a few small, manoeuvrable and most importantly intact ones for her fishing fleet. Or did she?

Outperforming Laura in small-scale economics had been a fun but ultimately petty idea. If Thorwal turned into a starving slum, they would have no other choice but to move on. No doubt, Laura would be so disappointed in the end that she would put the city under foot gladly. All Janna had to do was make sure Furio was save when that happened, lest Laura trample him with all the rest.

She would have gladly swum to shore, climb out of the water and reduce Thorwal to kindling. She didn't because of Laura. Why did Laura get to call the shots all of a sudden? Who knew. Perhaps because she was better looking and undoubtedly the girl in that completely queer, lesbian relationship they had.

Janna's plan was complete. The mighty, beaten hetman of hetmen was quite astounded when she snatched him off the deck, not unkindly, and placed him on her shoulder by the strap of her bra where he could hold on. Then she went after the fleeing ships. Sails and rows served them well in the water and it was quite a sport running them down. In the end, three escaped, small, quick ones. The rest Janna broke or pulled beneath the water, man and mouse, bar one.

It had been a trading ship, though having half-hearted bow and stern castles to muster. The long two-master with it's wide belly was exactly what she needed. Just as she had done for Olaf, she treated the floating sailors she encountered with kindness. She could have eaten them, drowned them or crushed them in between her fingers. But she saved them, fishing them out of the cold wet and putting them on her vessel. Sometimes she'd let them climb onto her hand before she did it.

None of them ceased to be amazed by her actions afterwards, and none more so than Olaf who held on to her bra strap dutifully but couldn't find any words to describe what he was seeing. He didn't know her real intentions. He couldn't have.

When Janna's legs were cold and cramping too badly and there were only singular stragglers left she returned to shore. The complete and utter bedazzlement aboard the ship did not escape her.

“Olaf has convinced her to throw in with us!” Some argued, already dreaming of the victories they might win with her by their side.

Others were more sceptical, insisting that Janna intended for them to be her food supply. Both were wrong. Tired and exhausted, Janna pushed the puny ship before her towards what Furio's fight with the demon-worshipper had left of Thorwal's piers. The people parted to make room for her. They knew what her feet could do.

“Olaf!” Someone shouted from below. It was hollow and vain. No one else dared speak.

Janna didn't require an executioner to do her killing. She placed the hetman of hetmen, menace to Horasians on the paved ground and stomped him flat so hard that the ground was shaking. It had been long since she had killed with her bare feet and it felt good to do it again. It had something fresh to it.

“Your Jarl is mush.” She announced towards everyone. “Put a gangway to the hulk and let his men off. Do not mingle with them or it will be bad for you.”

All in silence, the people obeyed, even the saved crew cooperated, throwing lines to tow the ship fast. When they were arranged in a large bulk before her she was amazed at how many they were.

“Here is your choice.” She addressed them, crouching and wringing water from her hair as if she didn't give a damn about the outcome of this. “Thorwal belongs to us now. You can live and be a part of it and go over here.”

She pointed to the left.

“Or,” She pointed to the right, “you can die beneath my feet like your Jarl did.”

Laura had forbidden her to kill city folk but these were outsiders, reasonably enough. Janna could do with them as she pleased.

A few made their choice at once, going left. More followed after some consideration. A very small number put on masks for faces and went to the right, swollen breasts as befit the martyrs they thought themselves. It was a terrible choice, for any sane person anyway.

“We will feast forever in Swafnir's halls beneath the sea!” One of the would-be martyrs spat at her.

Of course. They hadn't heard of the figurative killing of their god in form of the albino whale. Olaf had been surprised as well but likely found no reason why Janna should lie to him. His crew was made up of less wittier men and women however.

More and more went to the right, proud and stubborn. Warriors who had already chosen the left and life re-thought their position and went to the right as well. Janna called forth Bearhild to recount the story of how Laura had killed the white whale in front of them. That sent many back towards the middle and to the left except for a hard-core minority that just wouldn't believe it. A debate broke out, curses, slurs, none of which Janna had a mind to entertain. The middle of undecided people was fullest still.

All things considered, it was remarkable how well Olaf's former fighters took the whole deal, especially those on the right. They were looking death in the eye almost with a shrug.

“Your time is running out.” Janna said rising over them to her towering, menacing height. “I will crush anyone in the middle and on the right. Then the city will feast. We will eat and drink until we cannot stand any longer and tomorrow we will continue to rebuild a new, better and mightier Thorwal.”

She spied Furio in his simple clothes, crouching by her footprint with Olaf's remains. Beside him was a young, thin man, not a Thorwaller. They were drawing on a piece of parchment together, a sketch to better spread the news of Olaf's death and eternalise the moment for the books of history. The lad was clearly helping the mage, holding the coal and drawing according to his instructions.

Janna wondered what Furio thought of her plan, if he could see through it. In total she had saved close to a thousand, she judged. Her life vessel had been packed quite full with those she fished out of the water and many of them must have moved below decks to make room. She had spent a disproportionate amount of time saving people too.

Before her, the middle cleared with a huge rush towards the left. Perhaps it had been the promise of a feast that moved them.

“You fools!” A martyr berated them from the right. “You choose one day's feast over eternity?!”

A shield maid in the process of going over to the left was quicker to reply than Janna. She turned and said: “We are choosing life over death for a dead god!”

Three more hurried over from the right at that, and Janna had enough of the game. Her toes wriggled with anticipation. She arched her foot and stepped down into the right mob of people. There were a hundred perhaps, a number she would have considered many once. But how many had there been at Ludwig's keep, how many at that tower where she met the Horasians, how many in the villages she had trampled into the dirt. This would be a short pastime massacre by comparison.

She scrunched her toes feeling the bodies in between. Next her sole came down, flattening people as if they were made of wet mud. There were some second thoughts then and some re-consideration but it was too late. Janna's left foot followed into the carnage, coming down on those that meant to make over to the living side. She dragged her toes through them, picked them and crushed them in between. Soon her digits were smeared with blood and guts, warm since her toes were still frosty from the sea. It took her less than half a minute to reduce the rough hundred to smears but she let no harm befall the others during or afterwards. The considerably larger group backed away from the carnage nonetheless.

Once it was done, Janna lifted the ship out of the harbour, placed it on the site of the execution and trampled it to broken splinters beneath her soles. Furio looked up at her, she saw, giving her a solemn, silent salute.

“Feast!” Janna bellowed so loud that people had to hold their ears. “Do not let me catch you sober!”

There were still some obstacles to overcome. People were supposed to be working, anxious of Laura and keen to make a fortune in the redistribution of wealth. Janna hasted over to her pants and reached into her pockets but found them considerably less full. She smiled with admiration. Some cunning little thieves had taken their share already, and not conservatively. She took most of what she had left and showered it onto the assembled crowds. Then everything was good.

The food had been prepared for long by now and only needed reheating. The people could eat Laura's share, or try. Janna wondered if they could clean it all away with their puny little bellies. Ale and mead were a little scarce and so Janna absented from partaking in the bender. The party spanned across the whole city and the market place was the buffet. Many Thorwalsh drank as though it was their last time. It was well, Janna considered, so long as they weren't working. With every calorie they consumed they neared their doom and probably didn't even know it.

“Mission accomplished.” She told Furio when he found her sitting in the market square, gorging on the food.

The young man was right behind the mage and clearly uncomfortable with being so close to Janna. The stack of parchment and the other things, ink pots, coal sticks, feather quills quivered in his arms.

“Yes!” Furio called up to her. “That was deftly done indeed! I must say I feared for you, standing ashore! Did they get the splinters out of you then?”

“They did.” Janna nodded. She had pulled out the largest few herself, so far as she could reach them. Others had needed the help of many strong, tiny arms and the deep ones even a little cutting.

“I was wondering if you could help close the wounds? I worry about infection.” She added.

He looked troubled as he did always when the topic of magic was brought up as of late.

“Err, we got a nice sketch of you on your belly while they were being removed.” He diverted. “The readers of my book about this voyage will be quite fascinated, I imagine.”

That Laura and Janna would be part of history books was only natural at this stage and still she was flattered. Nonetheless she pushed on: “And my wounds, Furio?”

“Err.”

He chewed his lip. Something was wrong, clearly. He looked even more troubled and helpless, and also older, so much older than before somehow.

He diverted again, turning to gesture at the lad in his twenties: “Have you met Graham yet? He helps me with the drawings at which he shows much more skill than I do. Step forward, lad.”

Timidly, the spoken to shuffled forward, face fixed at the ground in front of him, deathly afraid. He had a mop of short, mouse-brown hair a slender stature and rather pale skin as though he didn't go out much.

“Graham has agreed to become my assistant.” Furio explained. “As I said, mostly drawings. He was Jarl Olaf's personal thrall and cartographer. He didn't have a choice in the matter, but his maps may have caused our fleets quite a headache. He is from the archduchy of Grangor, a Horasian as much much as I am.”

“I'll take care not to smush him.” Janna vowed with a frown but the original issue remained. She was half inclined to let it go since it bogged him so much. Salt water had sterilizing properties of it's own and she had been injured many times before without infection. It was just a precaution more than anything else.

She'd push him though. Perhaps it would help him to talk about it.

“So, will you heal my wounds or not?”

“I...” He looked forlorn. “I can't.”

Perhaps Janna had sensed it before, she couldn't tell. It explained everything.

“I seem to have lost my powers.” He admitted to her, distraught. “I may have underestimated the demon worshipper's powers or something else has happened. I can't tell, and neither can I very well find it out now.”

That was a bitter pill to swallow. Janna could empathise. To have that, nothing short of a superpower which it was, and lose it.

“I'm sorry about that.” She sat upright. “Oh Furio, that is so sad!”

She extended a finger to pad him on the head but withdrew when she saw how tiny and frail he looked. He didn't even see it, face to the ground, slumped shoulders, his belly hanging over his belt. He looked smaller than before too and his hair was greying quickly. Had it been greying before? Janna couldn't even remember.

Tiny Graham saw her finger though and gave a yelp of distress and stumbled backwards. A sheet of parchment fluttered from the stack he was carrying and an ink pot loosened from his grasp at the same time. In an unfortunate circumstance, the pot shattered, spraying it's contents all over the shapes and lines on the sheet.

“You little idiot!” Janna fumed at his meagre form, raising a fist to squash him.

She was enraged, not because of the lad, but because of Furio. She really felt for her tiny friend and his misfortune weighed on her emotions. She realized that a moment too late for little Graham and Furio's paperwork though. She didn't squash him but the threat was enough to send the young man screaming and running for his life, papers and ink pots forgotten all falling to the ground.

Sighing, she leaned over the little mage, cautious of her heavy tits and their danger to him, and plucked the running cartographer off the pavement.

“I'm Graham! I make maps! I'm Graham! I make maps!” He screamed over and over again, completely catatonic. While some Thorwalsh had faced death shrugging a little earlier, this little softie was broken already by a threat. His face was distorted with horror.

“Stop screaming!” Janna growled at him and he did.

Furio had moved calmly over to gather his parchments and regarded them in search of any damage.

“It is quite alright, Janna!” He called sharply. “Graham is a good lad. He will rework what he has ruined, but for that I need him to be alive.”

“Um, sure.” Janna replied, a little embarrassed over her outburst.

She regarded Graham in her hands. A little push of her feminine fingers and the young man would be crushed. There wasn't much meat on him, though he wasn't near as meagre as that Cyclops Isles boy from earlier.

“What's wrong with his face?” She asked when she noticed it.

Half of it was normal, afraid but not uncomely, the eye wide, lips pressed together. The other half still wore that grotesque mask of horror, hanging loosely, eyelid, mouth and cheek, almost zombie-like.

“A paralysis.” Furio explained. “I am not familiar as to the cause or a cure of it.”

Janna was. This boy had a severe case of Bell's Palsy or something similar, half-faced but with affection of the eye that had probably gone blind in lack of treatment. He needed steroids, discovery and method to synthesise of which were still at least several hundred years away on this planet if they would ever be discovered at all. She had a hunch that the presence of magic and other supernatural things was not very good in helping development of the scientific method. Who could tell how long their culture had existed like this.

Graham was a most unfortunate boy indeed and now Janna felt bad for him as well, and scaring him and all that. She put him down where he made a few, staggering steps before collapsing next to his master.

“If I had known you were in need of drawings I could have gotten you someone.” Janna mentioned.

Perhaps someone less fragile than this. Any Thorwalsh would still gladly have done Furio's bidding if the alternative was Janna sitting on him.

“Ah, I fear I do not agree with the Thorwalsh understanding of art.” Furio said with his nose still in the papers. “Here, redo this one.”

He handed one to Graham who lifted himself just far enough to take it before falling down again.

“And it better be an improvement.” Janna added with a playful smile.

With that she was content. Furio may have lost his magic powers but he seemed to have found a new purpose. Also, Janna cared for him and that was almost a superpower in and of it's own. She had cared for Ludwig, once, though never this strongly.

“Why is your hair greying though?” She asked her thought aloud as she pondered, absent-mindedly crunching the roasted carcass of some animal in her mouth.

Furio looked up and turned to her.

“I do not know.” He said simply. “Wizards live longer than common people, sometimes quite a lot but I hadn't thought myself that old, in truth. It could be any number of things.”

The demon-worshipper again, Janna thought wearily, or the voyage, all the killing and crushing and eating people she did. The times she must have scared him to death or threatened Rondria. Rondria's dying. The tiny man must have been laden with woes by now, she figured. Clearly it wasn't healthy for tiny people to be around her for an extended period of time, but then again, short times could be the most deadly of all. All things considered, Furio had survived quite long, but Janna sensed that it would become too much for him some day.

Graham was fighting hard not to look at her, scribbling on a fresh piece of parchment with coal. Whenever he lifted his hand Janna could see it shaking wildly, but as soon as it touched paper it turned as steady as a surgeon's. When trampling them, it was easy to forget that the tiny people all had skills of their own, personalities, secrets, a wealth of immaterial things that Janna and Laura should perhaps make more use of. But what that looked like could be seen in Thorwal and it's boring, petty squabbles and tiny problems Janna was so sick of. There was need for a change.