The little human lordling on the stake gave a wheezing gurgle from his mouth. Varg had watched him for hours. She might even have helped his body's descent a little when he had suffered too silently for her taste, which was why he was now already close to the point of the wooden stake protruding from his mouth. He was still alive, but dying and no human craftsmanship could heal him now even if the took him off the four meter high pole.

At twelve meters tall Varg had had to crouch the entire time in order to watch the little man. Stakes long enough so that she could watch it standing were hard to come by. Carving them from trees of that height was simply too intensive in work.

There were hundreds of people she had impaled, or had had impaled in the same fashion. The longer she stayed, the larger her number of artworks grew. On some days Varg scarcely did anything else but skewer prisoners and watch them afterwards. She had to do something. The recent fighting had been a welcome respite but by now the human forces were already spent. A host of several thousand humans had attacked from the east, south and north through the forest.

Sly had warned her of them, not Diego. Diego was gone, apparently, as were Albino and so many others. Through the tiny raider's information Varg had been able to give her giants something to do again and still the growing discord. They had descended on the humans where they could, scoring victory after victory, crushing them and taking many captives. They had so many slaves now that it was neigh on impossible to feed them, so Varg had had some of them butchered, roasted and given to the others for food.

Reportedly, the humans hated it and only ate once the hunger was too overwhelming. She found that very amusing. Humans rejected the taste of their own, though they tasted well enough to her experience. Once the threshold was overcome, humans seemed to agree too. Meat was something precious to them. Varg only ate meat nowadays. Everyday.

To her experience life was not so bad in the camp but many of her giants disagreed. They made off, fled, oft even leaving their plunder and slaves behind. Varg did not understand that. It couldn't be because of the pathetic human war effort. The giants had only lost one battle and that had been by the oafish hands of Gloin Eartaker.

That mindless oxen of an ogre had attacked the main human force on an open field instead of forest, in broad daylight instead of night and with a force of only the smaller male giants ahead of Varg's main thrust with the females. Females did not agree to being commanded by a common male, but Gloin had been too proud to be commanded by anyone other than Albino himself.

Varg should have killed him. Killing her own was not beyond her any more. A giant had called her horse-face in her hearing and she had throttled him to death for it. Perhaps that was why giants were leaving. Murder was a grave affront. On the other hand, too many were half-openly questioning her leadership. Something had to happen, but Varg did not know what.

Suddenly the lordling on the stake started shaking and blood came gushing out of his mouth. The time of his death had come. With his last, pathetic rattle, the bloody tip of the stake broke out of his mouth and the body finally stopped shaking.

“That was Lord Anderbold.” Sly, the human raider said behind her. “Another valuable hostage you skewered.”

It had taken a while but Varg had finally understood that Sly was not his real name. He bore it like a title for his ability to move and sneak up on anyone without notice. In that, he was like that wretched, old scout Stonetree, only that one was missing as well.

“We are not trading hostages.” She turned, wondering for how long he had been there. “The human lordlings must die so we can take their places.”

There he stood, she saw, small even for a human. He was dressed in black leather and cloth, carried a sabre at his hip and always wore gloves but never shoes. The hair on his head was so scarce and receding that it looked colourless and he had no beard to speak of but a few wisps of the same silvery hair.

The slaves that attended Varg today were standing right next to him, stubbornly studying the ground and not mentioning a thing about his presence. She sauntered over and singled out a young male at the side. He was new, not fully trained to her pleasure yet, making him more disposable than the others even though Varg would not have known any of their names if her life had depended on it. She was twelve meters tall and the tiny man would have had to jump to even reach her knee with his hands. Her sole hit him without warning from above and crushed his puny body against the trampled ground. Her weight did the rest when she let it settle, snapping his bones like twigs. By now, her older slaves were broken in well enough to know that fleeing meant an even more gruesome death. Most did not even so much as flinch or shudder any more when she was taking lives.

“Next time, tell me I have a visitor.”

She stomped on the body, drawing a squelching sound and more snaps from bones.

“Careful.” Sly said tiredly. “You are going to get blood on your new looking glass.”

He hoisted it up from his feet, the largest piece of stained glass Varg had ever seen and beautifully framed like those portraits some humans could make to be hung upon walls, much like tapestries.

“My boys took it out of a holdfast.” He explained. “It's old, but large like you wanted.”

Varg took it eagerly, glimpsing at her reflection. She found a stick at the bottom of it, convenient to her hand for holding.

“I had the boys make the handle special.”

“Do you think I have a horse-face?” She asked looking at herself.

“Er...” He cleared his throat. “A tad, perhaps.”

Sly never lied, at least as far as Varg was able to tell. She did have a bit of a long face, she had to admit to herself, and the way her upper teeth protruded did not help that. But with her freckles and wired braids she did not believe that anyone could seriously deep her uncomely.

“Am I beautiful?” She asked, still lingering in the mirror.

“Does that matter?” Sly often replied brisk. Any other human Varg would have impaled, crushed under foot or used as a seat cushion, but not this one. He had proven invaluable more than once already, and other than that she quite simply liked him.

“Listen, Varg.” He went on, doing his hard truths thing he often gave her. “You had about five hundred giants here. Now there are less than three hundred left. Horas is sitting on the Nostrian side of the Ornib and could start moving here any day.”

Numbers always confused her. She knew three hundred was less than five but how many exactly she had difficulties fathoming.

“Then we crush them.” She countered dismissively. “Let them come.”

“This lot are a harder breed than what you faced last time.” He warned. “And they're a lot more too. Meanwhile your forces dwindle while you sit here with your thumbs up your giant arses.”

“We are waiting for Albino to come back.”

“He's not coming back. My boys caught some more witches and druids. We're catching them in droves these days. They said the same as those before them. Albino is gone! He found that wretched cunt Vengyr and that was the end of both of them, and even magic itself some swear!”

“Nonsense!” Varg snapped. “It's a ploy, or some other distraction!”

He sighed, grimacing his pointy face and rubbing his bony temples: “You have to come to terms with it, Varg. He's not coming back. If it is any solace, those giantesses that could crush even you at a whim seem gone for good as well. My men found their tracks leading into Thorwal and that's that.”

He always tried to make her acknowledge the existence of those two gargantuan behemoths. But she couldn't. The implications were too huge, as apparently were they. She couldn't really say if she personally believed in them or not. There was evidence enough but what must not be could not be, and so it was.

“You have to device a plan.” Sly continued when she said nothing. “Think about what your motive is. If it is still to carve out a kingdom for your kind then you'd best get started. Andergast is as good as any, but to hold it against Gareth you must employ us more than you do now.”

She looked beside him, at her body slaves. So weak and pathetic. On the other hand, if she could send humans to die in her battles, then why not. She could use them as humans sometimes used war dogs, much like she had done before with Diego's troop, only that trial had not gone particularly well for anybody.

And there was more reason to be sceptical: “Why would humans fight for me?”

“I'm human.” Sly patted his body with his hands and feigned irritation. “Why do I fight for you?”

“You scout for me, you sly, little worm and get well compensated for it, not to mention I don't tear you and your boys to pieces, as well I could if I wanted to.”

Sly and his men also did a great deal of foraging which inevitably involved fighting sometimes, but Varg left it out to see what his smart answer would be.

“Wrong.” He sighed again. “I fight for you because Diego fought for you and I followed Diego.”

He paused as if she was supposed to understand already.

“Diego fought for me because he saw a gain in it. But where is he?”

“Killed, most like.” He sighed again. “Diego is not the point.”

“Then what is it?!” She snapped again. “You know I hate riddles.”

Sly chewed on the inside of his mouth which made the stubble on his upper lip scratch so loudly against his nose that even Varg could hear from her height.

“You giants follow the large and strong,” He finally said, “as well as bloodlines. We humans are similar in a way. If you make big men, those of import follow you, then so will his kin and subjects for the most part.”

“Lordlings.” She understood. “Such as this one.”

She gestured to the skewered corpse behind her.

Sly nodded: “Aye, only dead they serve next to no purpose.”

“They amuse me.” She turned her face cold. “And should fear not motivate more of you worms to get out of my way?”

She lifted her foot to take a step and her body slaves scurried out of the way like a flock of white geese.

“They won't budge if they do not know that there is a way to side with you.” Sly hurried to keep pace with her. “You should try to...”

She walked faster, leaving him well behind quickly. It was all too much to think about. She didn't like thinking. She passed by many stockades, overfilling with captives, ogres sitting idle, eating, drinking or using humans for their purposes. She saw a young girl, six metres tall, making mud-cakes from dirt and feeding them to her living, human dolls.

“Get up, Stinky!” The child was wroth with one of them that was lying on the ground, coughing and spitting up mud in twisting convulsions. “Get up and eat your cake or mummy is going to stomp on you again!”

Before Varg passed, the girl grabbed the dying human and pressed the fistful of dirt into his face down his throat, laughing. She wondered what could drive any giant away from this place. It all felt so right. Everything would be good once Albino returned, she told herself. He could not be killed, it couldn't be true. And yet, Sly never lied.

Why had he gone, anyway? To kill a murderer, or something like that. But was his army not more important, and would he not see that it was dwindling, failing, she asked herself. And was she not a murderer now too? And if Albino was dead, what was she then? The pale giant had made her second in command. Was she first in command now? She was tall, but not even close to Albino's fifteen meters. She could well see that other giants would not accept her rule. If she was a leader then she was one facing many problems. Too many, perhaps.

At the fire pits barely anyone was going idle. Everything was scorched, deforested and smoke rose up in thick wads. When the wind was bad it clouded the entire camp and brought everyone to coughing with tears in their eyes, giants and humans alike.

Charburners burned wood in wet, earthen heaps to produce coal that was then used to heat metal enough to work it. Varg had a myriad of weapons fashioned for her size, a huge, heavy copper axe, a bronze glaive on a stick and a steel spear that she could not see would have any other purpose than to be used against her own kind. She had a suit of armour as well, though she had not worn it even once. So far she had not needed it, preferring to do her killing with her hands and unarmoured. It felt righter that way.

But when push came to shove, a human with weapons and armour was always superior to one without.

'What if the same was true for giants?' Varg could almost hear Sly whisper in her head. 'How did Albino manage to rule?'

He was huge, powerful, terrifying. He scared everyone, including his own folk. Was he though, of their folk, she wondered. He was so strange, pale and red-eyed as he was, more fangs than teeth and claws for fingernails.

“Impaler!” A male giant hailed when he saw her.

This one was so much smaller than her, even though he would count large among males. His name was Firehand, for the hopelessly burned skin on both of his hands that he had received when becoming too enchanted with glowing metal. He loved it, everything about it, fire, ambers and smithing. He even slept by the fire pits as his sooty, black skin could attest to. Against the burns and heat he rubbed himself in fat and coal dust, blackening him even more. It was a trick that one of the human smiths had taught him and they had taught him much more than that.

“Bring the helmet!” He hissed at a few humans, beating glowing arming swords and spearheads into a large chunk of steel that they could then fashion into something useable for giants.

They moved to obey at once.

“It's done!” Firehand proclaimed on his approach.

If he once had a beard it was burned off, along with some of the hair on his head, one and a half eyebrows and any hair on his arms and legs. He wore a huge leather apron such as human smiths preferred, and that was his only clothing. Since he was eight and a half meters tall, of course it was made from several hides, other than to be cut from one piece as those aprons the humans wore.

“Making a helmet is not easy, Impaler.” He said, uncomfortably close below her chin. “Oh, but you will be pleased!”

It took ten humans to carry it and it was quite something to behold. At first glance, Varg wouldn't have identified it as a helmet at all.

“Half helm.” Firehand said in awe, somewhat struggling with the weight himself when he took it. “With rings to protect your eyes against arrows and quarrels.”

Arrow and quarrel fire had been problematic in the fighting. Many giants had lost eyes, sometimes both of them, and some had even been killed by shots through the eye.

The ogre smith took the helmet and presented it too her: “Ring mail draping over the lower half of your face, twelve layered.”

“Won't it tear?” She asked uncertainly. She had to reply something and the mail armour favoured by Andergastian knights and men at arms was easy to rip apart with bare hands.

“One layer of human mail, yes.” He grinned a broken-toothed smile. “But twelve? See!”

He grasped the hanging, grey steel carpet and gave it a thorough tug, showing the toughness of it.

“Er, the same way I have refashioned your shin-guards as well, good steel to protect your dainty feet, hehehe!”

Leg protection was most important because it was the place humans most easily reached with their weapons. In a leg there were large vessels of blood that, once nicked, could easily be the death of even the toughest ogress. They had made thick leather and steel sandals for her so that she could unconcernedly step onto a spear wall. Those she had worn in the fighting and they had proven useful indeed.

“Turn your eye to the top here for a moment, if you please.” Firehand went on, beckoning to a golden spike at the top of the helmet. “Fine-smiths work. Not by my hands, too detailed.”

He grinned even wider. The golden spike was fashioned to look like one of her wooden stakes, she saw then, and impaled upon it was a human woman, feet on the pole before it entered her arse and came out through her mouth in a straight line. She was haggard, starved, as though she had been there for days, suffering and dying.

“Beautiful.” Varg whispered, pleased.

Works of fine art always did something to her when she looked at them. It was like magic. Before the war she and her mother had lived by an ancient mountain bridge somewhere. One of them would usually hide beneath it and rob, kill or capture any human wanting to cross. So that humans would not forever shun the bridge, they allowed more of them to go with their hides intact than they otherwise might have. Soon the humans understood that they had to buy their passage.

Usually the pay was food or drink, the choicer, the better. But as soon as Varg had developed a character of her own, she had also taken to accepting wood and bone carvings, paintings, tapestries, little figurines, anything that was beautiful to look at. After Albino had crossed their bridge and made them join his army Varg had had to leave all of it behind, all the nice, crafty things she had collected. Since then she had not dared to start a new collection, impaling humans on spikes instead, to fill the void. Varg's mother was dead, killed in a battle long ago, before the earth had swallowed all the giants. She did not have armour.

“Ah, I knew you'd be pleased!” Firehand gleamed. “Try it on!”

“Does it look...beautiful?” She asked hopefully when her head was inside the helmet. She raised the mirror to look at it herself.

No one would be able to see her face and so she was not certain if wearing it would be a good idea. The helmet replaced all of her face, solid metal, two rings and a carpet of mail. There was enough space for her two wire-supported braids of red hair though. Before, they had stuck to the side of her head like straight branches from a knobbly tree but now the helmet forced them down, having them poke out at her chin so they were still visible. Varg liked her hair, even though her mother had always said that it was a coarse and stubborn as the wire she used to tame it.

“Oh, most.” The smith rasped dreamily. “Oh!”

He touched her hip and drew her to him but she slapped his filthy, peeling hand away. She was not in the mood for a coupling, even though she really liked the helm.

“Put the rest of my armour on me.” She commanded.

It was time to see if this was any good. Armour and weapons had been Albino's idea, but production was slow and the use against humans not entirely apparent. But for protection against projectiles, she thought, perhaps even those horribly huge ones fired from stationary machines. The word was that humans had a great deal more of these machines now. Varg had seen one on the Andra, when they had attacked the boat-humans with Diego and his men. The effectiveness had rattled her. The Andergastian army had not had such machines and paid direly for it.

They brought it all as she commanded and Firehand went to work at putting it on. Over her sandals went the improved shin-guards with hanging layers of chainmail to protect her feet. The guards themselves were made up of long bronze plates, held together with chain, leather and furs for padding. Around her hip he draped a thick boiled leather skirt with more long bronze elements. It was clear that this was the armour fashioned first for it was by far the crudest.

“I may add more chain mail here.” Firehand vowed, padding her, as of yet, unprotected knee where it poked out between the skirt and shin-guard.

For her arms there were iron plates with spikes that looked more fearsome than serving any apparent practical purpose.

“And we also made this, with the help of the new humans.”

Before, Varg's body armour had been a wealth of hides and furs, thick enough to defeat any blow or arrow but tediously warm. She had started sweating just by looking at it. She was sweating now too, beneath the helmet, because the padding inside was precisely that, hide and fur. After defeating the Andergastian main strength the giants had descended upon their supply train and taken many valuable captives, skilled labourers and the like, armourers in particular.

What she was presented with now was a shirt, of sorts, but without arms. It was more like a blanket with a hole in it for her head, made entirely out of metal scales from steel, iron, copper and bronze, almost as large as one of Varg's ears. She liked the way it glittered in it's many colours. When she pulled it on it left her belly exposed and weighed heavy upon her arms but it would provide enough protection against a rain of arrows.

Precisely such a rain of arrows had been the end of Gloin Eartaker's attack on the humans. Most of his ogres had died even before reaching the spear wall and then a horse charge had crushed them from behind. Gloin himself had been one of the first to die, but that had not convinced his followers of the idea that they were committing folly.

“Varg, what are you doing?” Sly asked, once more behind her, and again she had no idea how long he had been standing there. He wasn't out of breath but that could or could not mean anything.

The helmet impaired her vision and awareness, she recognized, but likely she would not have noticed the tiny raider in any case.

“Perhaps I am preparing for war.” She grunted through the mail in front of her mouth.

When she took a few steps in rang merrily and made it hard to hear anything outside the helmet. She wrenched in off and handed it back to Firehand.

“Make me ear holes so I can hear!”

“At once.” Firehand bowed crookedly, making off.

Sly studied her as though he was thinking.

Varg didn't like it: “Shouldn't you be robbing someone?”

He gave a smile that reminded her of his name: “No, my boys are scouting. We've left foraging to sell-swords out of Phexcaer.”

“So you finally put some of that gold to use.”

“Aye. The Steppe Foxes they call themselves. Smart men. We've got the Thuran Brotherhood as well, a bow company from south-western Andergast, mostly broken men and some poachers. The Frundengar Hammerfists, oh, you'd like these men. Fjarningers from the mountains. They're ugly, huge, pelt-wearing barbarians, laying siege to Engasal with the Brotherhood. That is the last castle in between the capital, here and the border that defies us. After it is gone, only a mad man would stay here. There's next to nothing left, Varg.”

Varg looked around at the stacks of plunder and stockades with human slaves. The prospect of moving all this, to the other side of Andergast no less, filled her with great discomfort.

“Come.” She told the tiny raider, walking again.

She didn't move so fast as that he had to run, but not so tediously slow as that a human might stroll at a leisurely pace either. The bronze plates clanked and her scales and mail rustled when she moved now but somehow she liked it. It sounded heavy, important, foreboding. She could even feel the added weight under her feet and that was good.

“What's she wearing all that shiny stuff for?” A giantess whispered and three others by a fire sniggered when she moved past.

“And look she's got that little rat with her.”

“She looks like a bird. A big, ugly bird, hehehe! With feathers!”

“What does she need a looking glass for?”

Varg ignored them though she was boiling inside. They were only jealous, she told herself. But in truth this was a manifestation of the discord, the lack of respect to her person that festered and ate away her authority. The more giants believed that Albino would never come back, the worse this would get with a certainty. Something had to happen and waiting for the pale giant would no longer do.

“How do I lead?” She asked Sly when they were finally out of earshot from any giants around.

There was a little human woman with an obliterated leg dragging herself on the ground while pushing a bucket of something rank. When she noticed the ogress looking at her she tried to move faster but that was all for naught in her state.

“Who's are you?” Varg asked, cutting off Sly before he could say anything.

This was clearly a slave performing a task and a slave was property she could not violate at a whim.

“Please!” The human wheezed through clenched teeth. “I'm Snag's!”

“Did she crush your leg and told you to push this filth to the latrines?” Sly asked, not as if he cared.

The woman nodded. Latrines had been Diego's notion, originally, after the camp had started to smell so rank that there was no getting used to it any longer. Some giants defied the idea for some reason, perhaps simply because it had come from a human. The solution had been to place heavy wooden bars, criss-crossed over the earthen holes and ditches, and placing humans inside. That way even the most stubborn ogress could show her contempt for humans while still heeding another human in where she had to answer her nature call. The reality of it was that the slaves in the latrines got pissed and shat on, leading the most horrible life imaginable without food or drink other than what ended up there, most of which had been eaten or drunk once before already. Then there were corpses, rotting in the shit too and sometimes being cannibalized by living occupants of the shit holes.

It was great fun doing one's business there.

Varg enjoyed it as well. It was funny to hear them beg her choose another hole or ditch when she squatted over them, or to see them still cling to their abominable life when a full ditch was closed with earth to make a fresh one. She had thought that settled the issue but apparently the much celebrated enjoyment the idea had initially brought was dying down. That was disheartening. She did not want to have to deal with the faecal issue again.

“Snag shits on your leadership, it would seem.” Sly observed with a sceptically amused look at contents of the bucket. “Well, partly.”

The way the woman had moved it, pushing it over the forest ground while dragging her smashed leg behind her, much of it had spilled, not only on the woman but anywhere she went as well. It was disgusting, even to Varg who spent so much time with humans impaled on wooden stakes through their bungholes and bowels.

Varg sighed: “And you will tell me that I won't have to deal with it if we move.”

“Oh no.” He shook his head, gesturing at the woman. “This needs dealing with. Did Albino ever tolerate defiance?”

Varg chewed her lip with her protruding front teeth, uncomfortably aware of them: “No. He rarely ever had to, being terrifying enough on his own.”

“You ask me how to lead.” He arrived at the point. “Then there is your answer.”

Varg understood what he meant. It was the exact reflection of her own thoughts earlier. Still, a big part of her did not think it wise.

“And what should I do? I can't scare her unless I attack her. And if I attack her I better bloody well kill her and that will lose me more giants than I have already lost.”

“How did the first human lord ever become a lord unless he killed enough people until everyone believed him?” Sly objected. “I'd kill a lot more if I were you, those who desert especially. Send after them, catch them and have their heads off. What other use are they, Varg?”

“And if they turn on me, the whole lot?” She asked.

His suggestions were making her angry. This might very well work for humans but giants were another matter. What made her even more angry was that they were now openly discussing her failure, her shortcomings, and Sly acted as though he had known all about them all along, just as she had tried everything to not think about them.

“There is no winning this without some risk.” He shrugged. “The key is a circle of ogres who have your back, putting any other group who wish to oppose you at sufficient risk to think twice about it. If you would take another lesson from us humans, armour and weapons are key, I dare say you have noticed.”

He nodded at her from below, referring to the bronze, iron and steel guarding her person. A weapon in her hand would place her above another giantess, even of similar size, and the armour would protect her if the other chanced to have a weapon too. Varg was fierce and huge in her own right as well. Albino had not chosen her without reason.

“Now, do you have such a group of ogres?” Sly asked, already knowing the answer. “Huge, restless, violent ogresses who love nothing better than to flay the skin off human slaves to bide their time, per chance?”

Varg was not entirely unloved. That Albino had entrusted her with leadership bought her a certain gravitas with many to begin with, even though clearly fading. Male giants did not like her a lot because no matter how many gifts they gave her she would seldom ever allow to be coupled with, but they were small and of inherently low station. Among giantesses there were still many whom Varg had bestowed gifts upon. Dividing the loot fell to her and so she had many things to give.

None of the many splintered factions, scattered among bloodlines and other things, was so indebted and favourable to her though as the Skinners. Varg's herd of human slaves was vast, the vastest among all giants. To feed them she had allowed the Skinners to use them for their purpose. They were roughly more than twenty ogresses and skinning humans alive was their favourite pastime. Sometimes the skinless things they roasted afterwards were still alive before the fire killed them. Then they were chopped up and fed to the other humans, a gain for every party involved.

Suddenly it all seemed pretty clear.

“Kill her.” She grunted to Sly before she turned and walked away from him. A moment later she could hear the chopping of his blunt, rusty sabre and the woman's screams.

Where she went now there was more screaming. Varg's herd of humans in their stockades took a lot of space and in between had grown a forest of her artworks by now. The ones on stakes were dead, the caged equally silent. The screams were coming from where the Skinners dwelled.

“No! Aaargh!”

A male human was in Ulgrosh's grasp. Her fingernails were filed to sharp dagger points and she drew one across his skin, drawing blood. Ulgrosh was even larger than Varg and massive, not fat like Edda the Ogre had been, but thick of body.

“Cut here.” She taught her daughter of thirteen summers, a slender, blond version of her brown-haired mother. “Tender around the neck, not too deep or you'll kill'em.”

She drew her nail in a circle half around the human neck after apparently splitting the skin of his head and face in two before. Then she drew a red line down towards his navel where she split, using two fingers, one for each leg.

“And then you pull.” She grinned wide, grasping him by the skin of his neck and doing just that.

His screams became mad gurgles, his throat and voice not enough to provide outlet for his pain. Varg had watched human cook slaves skin rabbits before. This looked quite similar, only the human cooks had had the mercy of twisting off the rabbits' heads first.

The pink, bloody thing in Ulgrosh's hands was twitching violently, but the seasoned skinner wouldn't let it escape. By now it was useless anyway. The man was doomed, only his crazed mind didn't know it yet. When it had died down enough she tossed him to Ulfzuk, her oldest daughter, already a seasoned monster herself and today doing the seasoning.

“Pinch of salt?” She grinned, grasping the skinless creature and tossing it into the clumpy heap of fine, white crystals at her feet.

Salt was something amazing. The right amount made most everything taste better by a lot, making it a precious thing in high demand. Spilling it on the ground like this seemed wasteful, but there had been a lot of the stuff among the human army's supplies and Varg had claimed much of it for herself. She was well happy to leave some of it to the Skinners, now more than ever.

The skinned human was only howling any more before giving a last twitch and going silent forever. Ulfzuk proceeded to rub him from all sides before handing him to Balgrosh, Ulgrosh's sister who had several skinless, salted bodies beside her, tied to wooden poles for roasting. Some still twitched every now and then.

“This'll be a fine meal.” She said, licking thick, plump lips.

“It'll be fine!” Ulgrosh acknowledged, taking the next little human to be prepared out of the low stockade next to her and handing it to her daughter with a loving smile. “Here, now you go.”

The human woman was the size of the little ogress' forearm. She would have no trouble pulling the skin off it, but Varg had not come to observe.

“Impaler!” Several of them called after she cleared her throat. They had been so enchanted by their doings that they never noticed her.

“Balgrosh, roast a fresh one for the Impaler!” Ulgrosh came on at once. “Are you hungry, child?”

The huge ogress always gave Varg motherly looks too, proud and dreamy once at times and stern, concerned ones at others. That was a little unnerving. Also, if truth be told, Varg preferred her humans with the skin still on and the salt sprinkled onto it after roasting, only a little of it.

She waved off, declined and in the end still had to eat a charred, over-salted human on a stick. One did not easily say no to Ulgrosh. There was a thing Varg found queasy about eating humans, even now. In spite of their smallness and otherness, they still looked exactly like a much smaller version of giants, even skinned. The Skinners did not gut their humans either, and eating guts was something Varg particularly disliked.

It took her a wile but eventually she managed to tell Ulgrosh privily of all the things she had discussed with Sly. At first the ogress was sympathetic and condoling, then baffled and appalled and finally grim but on her side.

“If things go on as they are all this is going to end and we face being hunted by human armies.” Varg swore.

That did the trick. Ulgrosh cared for her family clan and did not want these prosperous, careless times to be over.

On way to her seat Varg already felt much better. It was reasonably secluded by now, giving her privacy with the forest of her impaled victims and stockades of her slaves in between her and the rest of the army, next to actual trees that were everywhere around. Sly was there and so were her body slaves who had returned as they always did and knew they had to. Her body slaves were reasonably privileged over the others, but that also entailed a more severe punishment if they displeased her. They kept everything clean and did all the things Varg required of them for which they were fed and watered better and not randomly killed neigh as often. The unprivileged had to dwell in the filthiest stockades and were made food or playthings of regularly, lower even than livestock.

The throne-like seat was carved out of the trunk of a once massive oak and featured a living upholstery that had to be changed after each time Varg chose to sit on it, today made up of two human females, huddled together and kept by a ring of Varg's body slaves from fleeing.

Here Varg was a goddess among insects with her crushing thumb over anybody, anytime she wanted. Would that it were as easy with the giants.

The bronze of her skirt clanked when she threw it back to plant her bare arse onto her little, shrieking cushions. Feeling weak, helpless creatures compress beneath her was always pleasing.

“I told the Skinners about it and they are with me.” She grunted to Sly beside her throne. “I will give weapons to them bit by bit.”

“I'll send five of my more skilled boys to train them.” The raider replied. “You as well. Make sure they don't get killed for any amusement.”

The head of one of the humans Varg sat upon poked out from the side of her rump and started twitching and clacking it's little jaw. To prolong the suffering the ogress shifted to the other side, allowing a few breaths before crushing it again, but in doing so she produced so many pops and cracks from the other that she ended up crushing it to death already.

She argued back and forth the tiny raider but he remained persistent. Using weapons had to be learned and practised. That set Varg's plans back a few days at least. Her copper axe was already with the Skinners for chopping up meat, but she took to her glaive and spear as soon as Sly had departed.

Then she took a human boy from a nearby stockade, placed him and the ground and tried to hit him with a thrust of her spear. She hit but the weapon had gone so blunt that it only scratched and smashed him to the ground. Down he was an easy target though, and she drove the steel point through his back, lifted him up and threw him away.

It was as she had thought. The spear would be useful against giants but of little use against humans at all because it took much too much time and effort to kill with it. She took two more humans to try a swing but they made off and ran. At first, Varg was going to catch them and break their legs but then she just jumped after them and swept with her spear, left to right. It hit, but with the blunt side the humans were only dazed and damaged. The shortcomings remained. She stomped both of their heads under her heel and turned to the glaive instead.

It was not unbeautifully made, a long, cruel blade on a thick, bronze-banded pole, slightly taller than Varg. She climbed over the fence into a stockade, packed with humans. All of them knew what she was doing by now and they started begging as soon as they realized that there was nowhere to run.

Grinning, she tried a cut but only managed to hack into the ground, cutting one human clean in half at the hip and cutting off the legs from a second one.

“Be quiet!” She growled, stepping on the screaming man and trying another swing.

This one only cut air and not injured a single human. It was frustrating. Sly was right, she needed practise and better yet if she had a teacher. Still she went on for another hour, keeping stubbornly to the glaive to kill for once. She got better but knew there was still a long way to go.

The next day she started allocating giant weapons, trading them for slaves or plunder. For most the price was almost laughably modest and none of her peers figured out what it was that she was doing or sensed an evil purpose behind her sudden love for bronze, copper and steel. They had never quite understood what Albino had wanted with weapons and armour either. Sly returned at noon with his five humans and Varg gave Ulgrosh more slaves to convince her to let her clan be taught. Varg's own teacher was a man named Brock, clad head to heel in the scales and skin of some giant, green lizard and professing to be one of the Steppe Foxes. Varg listened to him though it cost her a lot of patience. She used up a lot of slaves in that process too.

Brock instructed her to attack trees at which she would slash and hack, eventually chipping off so much wood from every stem that the tree would fall, oft crushing humans and damaging the cages in which they were kept. She got better and stronger by doing that, and when a stream of fleeing little humans came pouring out of an opened stockade Varg could mow down four or five of them with each low-swinging cut. Soon she could cut down some trees with a single swing as well.

Brock taught her how to sharpen the glaive and how to oil her chainmail to keep it from ringing so loudly and going rusty. Meanwhile Sly managed to smuggle certain individuals into the possession of giants and giantesses to probe their loyalty to and opinion of Varg. He used skilled men that would not be killed at a whim and promised them great amounts of gold as well as lands for which Varg vowed in turn. It was all very cleverly done. Sly was always clever, much more than Diego ever was.

He kept a list of those most disloyal and influential enough to be a threat. On the fourth day the foremost of that list, a fat, old giantess called Ogrin, made off with her clan of nine others just after nightfall. Sly came to Varg just as they were departing and seemed almost glad. Ogrin and her kin had killed four of his best men, despite their skills and constant obedient chumming up.

One man had died to one of Ogrin's daughters in the night while she used him to pleasure herself, grinding on top of him. A second had suffocated inside the loins of Ogrin's sister, Hurk. Hurk's young niece had bitten a third man's arm off and Ogrin had crushed his skull in between her massive breasts to stop his screaming. No one knew how the fourth had died, only that he was found dead and flat as human parchment.

“Hack off their heads and put them on display.” Sly urged her. “I cannot be near when you do it. It must all come from you and it must look like you mean it.”

With help by Ulgrosh and her Skinners, Ogrin and her kin were in Varg's custody an hour and a half later. She made a great show of it, speaking loudly of how they had abandoned Albino, her and their cause. The massive Ulgrosh held down the fat, heavy-breasted Ogrin herself and Varg cut her head off with three savage blows from her glaive. Hacking through a giant was entirely different from hacking through a human. Human's were soft, weak creatures, where giants were tough of bone, flesh and tendon.

She did the same for Hurk and the others grown of age, sparing only the youngest ones. After that she divided the loot and slaves that were now unowned among those Sly had deemed most loyal and those most likely to become so if swayed by more gifts.

Following another brilliant idea of Sly's, Ogrin's spared offspring was shared among the most loyal to be fostered so that they would grow up loyal to Varg in turn. Lastly, Varg started a clan of her own, using young, kin-less or near on kin-less giantesses that she took into her personal service after wooing them with gifts from her supply of slaves and plunder.

There was resistance of course. Snag stepped forth, protesting loudly, but Varg threatened to make her share Ogrin's fate, shutting her up and with her all others who might have thought to complain. The day after that, one of Snag's cousins made an unkind remark about Varg's appearance in her armour and lost her head for it. When Snag attacked Ulgrosh to free her the huge giantess drove the spear Varg had given her into her belly and brought her down, right before Varg hacked her savagely to pieces. It was almost frighteningly easy.

Ever since then Varg's power was not questioned any more. Two giantesses and one giant fled, were caught and executed, but that was the last of it.

“Impaler!” The ogres hailed her when she passed, standing stiff and in fear of her at once they had of Albino.

It was back to the way when the giant king had first given her power and it was good. To her pleasure she received more gifts again, winning back a good portion of what she had given away. At the same time the giantesses she had taken into her personal service used her slaves freely and ended up killing many of them. Varg did a great deal of that killing too, feeling giddy on account of her new-gained power. In abusing, torturing and killing human slaves together there was a kind of bonding experience, helping with the formation of trust and loyalty.

And the more of it formed, the less insecure Varg became. There were days were she did not even gaze into her looking glass any more. She grew happier too, less brooding, and did not skewer half so many humans as before. She still did it from time to time but barely ever had the time to watch them die. Running an army was keeping her busy, which she decided was a good thing.

But being a leader meant dealing with problems and soon there were new ones.

“There is growing restlessness again.” Ulgrosh informed one evening over a haunch of human meat, way over-salted. “I've never known ogres to grow this way in the old way. We've never killed our humans that quickly then either.”

Varg remembered that during the old way, before Albino and his war, life had been very, very slow but somehow she had been content with that, as had her mother. But ever since she had joined Albino's cause there was a constant need for something to happen, almost always, or else she would grow uncomfortable. Where before she might have sat and gazed at her beautiful things that passers of the bridge had given to her, now only killing would satisfy. Impaling was a slow business, but still, the speed with which other ogresses went through their human slaves was alarming.

“We should move!” Gundula, one of Varg's new favourites concurred. “We're going to run out of humans! They are sick too, the humans, because of the cough!”

She was a squat ogress with a big belly, neither tall nor smart nor pleasant to look upon, but Varg revered her for her fierce loyalty. She was called Maidenstomper, once for her passion of crushing human girls and once more to tell her apart from Gundula Cattlemuncher who would not touch human meat.

“The cough and the boils, and not forget the spitting of blood and the ones who foam at their mouths with bubbles.” Weepke corrected with a mouth full of flesh.

Unlike the Maidenstomper she was tall and thin, but not weak by any measure and even though she would not have passed for as witty as Sly she was no oaf either.

“It's the shit.” She added after swallowing. “They live in their own filth like pigs. The most crowded cages are worst and you can tell by the smell. I think it's the corpses making them sick too, the ones on spikes, rotting, and those who die in the cages and are overlooked.”

“And that's why I won't eat them.” Gundula Cattlemuncher threw in.

Cattlemuncher was nothing short of beautiful, if not anywhere near as tall as Varg. Varg would kill having such beautifully yellow hair as she had. She was very clean, besides.

“You're just craven!” The other Gundula laughed, happily cracking a roasted human head in between her molars and hopping on her arse to produce squelches from the teenaged female she had chosen to sit upon.

“Are giants getting sick?” Varg asked concerned.

Ulgrosh shook her head but frowned deeply: “But the humans are dying quickly and everyday more are showing signs. The rate we kill is one thing. If they start dying on their own now too...”

“It's the shit.” Weepke said again, still eating. “I crushed a human healer this morning. He said so.”

Weepke took practising very seriously and was gaining much of her day's joy by training. A thing of hers was to give real, actual weapons to a group of humans and make them attack her. She killed quick and efficient and without much passion for pain during practise.

Ulgrosh leaned and reached over a nearby stockade, picking a bold-headed male, gaunt and pale.

“Look.” She grunted, gesturing at boils on the man's chest, rotten flesh at his feet and white, bubbly slobber around his mouth. When she put him back down he fell, too weak to stand on his own.

“And many show these signs?” Varg asked.

She had not noticed, for she was too occupied and humans too far from of her considerations. Ulgrosh nodded sourly while the human on the ground only lay there, breathing labouredly.

“Take this ting away!” Gundula Cattlemuncher gagged and twisted away from him.

“Many are worse than this.” Ulgrosh picked up the human and tossed him over her shoulder like a used rag. “We must move, or at least bring the humans to new stockades that are less filthy.”

“No, the time has come.” Varg replied bitterly. “Sisters, we will break camp tomorrow.”

She had dreaded this, but it was necessary now. Many humans would die on the march but if they stayed here they risked even more of them perishing. Humans were their main food supply.

There were a few more questions and things she had to get out of the way. Gundula Cattlemuncher asked if they would go to Gareth. Maidenstomper wanted to attack the Horasians to the west and wondered if Albino would still find them if they moved. Ulgrosh wondered about Engasal and asked if they would take the castle with the help of the humans besieging it. None of that Varg actually knew but she did her best to calm their worries.

The next morning she had her body slaves wake her at break of dawn, make her hair and then start packing up her belongings. Next to the looking glass there was not much she clung to. Mostly it was pots or furs, blankets and wooden things she did not quite understand. Then there were the chests of metal coins the humans loved so much, silver and gold. The overwhelming mass had been copper but even Diego agreed that it was useless and so Firehand had been melting it for weapons. Varg would not carry any of it herself. They took the metal supplies though and many of the chunks they had not worked on yet were so huge and heavy that giants would have to carry them.

Her trusted ogresses spread the word that the camp would be broken. Most of the army seemed to agree and where resistance was encountered a few threats or a whack over the head was enough to bring the giants back in line. Mobilising took almost all day and it would be next to no good marching the mass of human slaves through the night. The more trusted humans had bound the slaves of the stockades together by their feet so that they would have no easy time slipping away. That way it was possible to rest without having to build new stockades.

By the time they marched it was almost evening and the pace was horribly slow. Bound together by their feet, the human slaves were not able to walk fast. Weepke was the first to lose patience. Roaring, she turned her glaive that was not unlike Varg's against the column she guarded, hacking them all to bloody bits and pieces before stomping off to escape Varg's reproaches. Varg said nothing in the end and even though they were able to move faster the next day, she ordered all slow and weak humans butchered at once.

The giants loved the butchering, but hated parting with their slaves at the same time. The Skinners had to kill two male giants and a giantess before order was restored and Varg had still no idea where it was they were going. For now they were making for Engasal, but if that was a wise thing she could not say.

Rain fell on their heads every now and then and once they got lost, coming up against the Ornib. If they crossed it they would run into the waiting arms of the Horasians who would cause them great losses, Sly had warned, and so Varg had the army move away from the river again before continuing north. But it was all no use, burdened with the slaves. She ordered all of them killed on the morning after, bar the smiths and three slaves per giant for whom each of them was personally responsible.

It was great butchery and caused a panic, but for the weak, skinny men and women there was no escaping.

That decision proved folly on the next day when many giants complained that they had no food without butchering one of their three. The Skinners had been smart enough to salt down as much as they could and so Varg was able to provide help with that for a time. Nonetheless it seemed to her that whatever she did proved an error. Once the salted meat ran out, which it would soon, her army would starve and that might just be the end of them.

“I...I did not think of this.” Gundula Cattlemuncher confessed when Varg consulted her, but turned wroth in the next instant. “We should have moved long ago and none of this would have happened!”

It was Varg's fault. All of this was Varg's fault and it weighed heavy on her. Many of the ogres and ogresses gave her sour looks while they were walking. It seemed as if she could not do anything right.

Looking to the land for feed was folly too, for it was bare. Any hut or settlement they came across had been devastated before, either by Sly, Diego or Varg's giants while they were plundering and foraging here. There was nothing left and what non-human supplies they had had in livestock and cured items was gone almost entirely even before breaking camp, bar what those who did not eat humans had stored away for themselves.

Before they meant to cross the Ingval they came dangerously close to a human city, sitting on the Nostrian side where the Ornib joined the larger river. Through the brushes Varg gave the place a distant look. There was a wealth of men in shiny armour up on the wooden battlements, atop the wooden walls, wooden towers and a wooden gatehouse, and machines that could throw spears large enough to skewer even her. That was what Sly had warned her of, she knew. Three giant, rotten cadavers told the story of deserters foolishly trying to attack the city, a testament to the Horasian danger.

The dead ogres wore no armour though.

Over the walls there was flying a blue banner with a flat, white fish, and a green one with a golden bird on it. There were farms around the city too, even on the Andergastian side. The ones close enough to the city were intact and still occupied by the looks of them. It almost felt like an insult.

South of the city, on the west bank of the Ornib, there were huge stone throwers, looking dangerous. The whole city looked as if it could never be taken from the east, perched on high ground as it was. It looked almost too perfect, the way the stone walls ended just where the ground lowered towards the riverbeds. There even was a small hill on that earthen plateau the city sat upon, and on that throned a stone castle, small but with high walls and two round towers.

All in all it made the appearance of being impregnable, but the more Varg looked at the place, the more she felt like wanting to attack it. Had Sly been there, he might have talked her out of it, but he wasn't.

“Bring me Brock.” She grunted at a male giant beside her.

He scowled through his thick, dirty beard and bushy eyebrows but went as soon as she scowled back. Brock would be of help here. He claimed to have travelled a lot through Andergast and Nostria by fighting as a sell-sword in their wars before his company took a protection contract up in Phexcaer while there was peace down south.

“No, no, no!” The little mercenary in lizard skins was alarmed when he saw the look on her face. “You can't attack this! Look at the Horasians and their war engines!”

He came on foot, having lost his horse to hungry ogresses when food had just begun to run short. She chewed her lip.

“You can't do this!” He went on. “You'll lose too many!”

That was the danger, as Sly had warned as well. If she attacked the Horasians she might be able to score a few victories but each would cost her so many of her giants that there would not be enough left to make a stand against the retaliation that would inevitably follow.

“Has this city ever fallen?” She asked pointedly. It was hard to imagine, given the terrain.

Brock made a sour face.

“Aye.” He confessed. “This is Joborn, city on the fork of Ornib and Ingval. No city has ever changed hands as often as this one, I'll wager, not in the wars of Nostria and Andergast in any case.”

“How was it done, from this side, do you know?”

If he lied to her she'd smite him, Varg decided. Brock was useful when it came to training, but by now she had a belly full of it. He was not Sly.

“Conventional.” He shrugged painfully. “Ladders, grappling claws and a battering ram. The walls are open toward the Ingval on the north side, so boats as well. There's the high ground though, and only two narrow paths up from the docks and there's towers overlooking the water. I heard it was bloody.”

“How did the humans cross the smaller river?”

Varg was a leader and leaders had to be smart and ask smart questions. Sly would have called her a fool, but the more she thought about attacking this city right here and now, the more it seemed like the right choice. It was risky, she saw that, but continuing to do nothing seemed even more perilous.

“The Ornib's bridged here.” Brock pointed reluctantly. “You can't see it because we are on high ground as well. There's a valley.”

She chewed her lip again.

“Please, Varg!” The little human squirmed. “This is what Sly warned you about!”

“How high are the walls?”

They didn't look very high on their own, but there was the high ground to consider.

“You could climb it, if that's what you ask.” Brock admitted. “But the time it takes you to climb it will be the men on top the walls cut off your fingers! And you wouldn't even get very close to the wall in any case, not with the scorpions, ballistas and mangonels?!”

Ballistas were the larger bolt-throwing machines, two perched on each of the square towers overlooking the bridge and a third one atop the south-eastern gate house. Scorpions were smaller, but deadly too as she had seen on the Andra. Their smaller size meant that they could be perched on the walls where ballistas couldn't. Then there would be bows and crossbows to consider too. Mangonels threw stones and balls of hay with burning oil or pitch, much as unpleasant as the rest of it, if not more.

“The walls are wood though.” She noted. “And the machines all point here.”

“Yes but we are here!” Brock pointed out. “And this is stoneoak wood! Make no mistake, that tree does not carry the name stone in it without a reason! Why do you think they're all buying it like it's fresh-baked bread? Why do you think most of it's logged away in else places?”

“I'm tired of hearing of all the things I can't do!” She snapped.

She was in need of positive news, a battle, a victory. Engasal would be easy, she expected, but easy meant dull, cheap and of little consequence. There would not be enough to kill for her three hundred and likely not near enough food besides. Andergast would be a tempting option but it was far away and Joborn here right before her. Inside those city walls would be great food stores, plunder and helpless humans, reasonably well fed and free of sickness. Taking this city would mean instant gratification and a lot of prestige besides.

A horn was blown from the city walls and all of a sudden the humans scrambled. Giants had been seen.

“Move back, Varg!” Brock pleaded. “They're loading the artillery!”

He sounded just like Sly then and she gave the command but lingered to see the humans fire. Loading took a long time. It might not have been a problem where opposing an enemy host was concerned, but ogres moved fast. Too fast, if she was lucky.

With three massive thrums the ballistas loosed their meter-long bolts into the forest but hit nothing other than trees who took the impacts swinging. When they were finally loaded the stone throwers wooshed and a hail of stones came flying as well but they were ill aimed and only smashed twigs and branches off here and there.

Brock was alone with her, hopping from one tiny foot to the other, wanting to bail.

“Are all mercenaries so craven?” Varg regarded him coldly from above.

“Let us go!” He urged, ignoring the insult.

She looked again at Joborn, that fat, thorny fruit she wanted so bad. When she arrived back at her army, her mind was made up. Ulgrosh received command of the largest part of Varg's forces including all she trusted the least. Half of the Skinners as well as her personal confidants Varg took with her, next to some others. They forded the Ingval easily. It ran high on account of the rains but where a human army might never have had a chance the giantesses crossed with no trouble at all. Then, north of the river, they made west on the Andergastian side where Nostrian and Horasian humans were barred from going by law.

Nonetheless, Weepke and the Maidenstomper sniffed out a scout party, but they were on foot and as easy to catch as cattle. Varg sat on one and watched Ulfzuk pull the skin off another. After that, the other two told her everything she wanted to know. When they were squeezed dry for information Varg passed them on. One was smashed to porridge beneath the Maidenstomper's massive stone hammer. The other bolted when he saw that but died seconds after, cleft lengthwise in twain in an instant. Weepke had let him go to show off her skills with the glaive and laughed when the two grotesque halves of him slid wetly to the moss-covered ground.

Somewhere north of Joborn Weepke and Gundula stayed behind to wade back across the river and attack through the open docks after Varg attacked from the west. West of Joborn the Ingval made a sharp northern turn where she wanted to cross and make back to the city. Over open plains and fields they had to walk because the banks of the river had been logged by humans. That was quite common because water was the single best way to transport the large and heavy tree once the branches were off. Now, with the war, there was scarcely any logging going on any more.

Getting out of the dense forest had something to it and where the trees were gone the sunlight reached smaller plants, brush and weeds that thrived next to stick thin saplings meaning to kill everything beneath them once more whence they had grown to height. A few bugs were buzzing around here, perhaps a beehive in one of the rotten stumps. Before the party reached the water however, Varg heard a familiar, terrible thrum.

“Run!”

A steel-tipped bolt, long as a human man, smashed into the ground in front of her and another found one of her unarmoured ogresses who died with a grunt drawing screams of terror from the others all at an instant.

“There!” Ulfzuk pointed to a patch of forest on the opposite side of the Ingval.

The green flag with a golden bird was flapping merrily in the wind and below it was an encampment of wooden stakes and two large ballistas on wooden wheels. Half engulfed by brush and forest it was neigh on invisible if one did not know to look for it. There were scorpions as well, Varg saw, and crossbowmen making ready, some of their weapons so huge that they needed a support pole to operate because they were too heavy to be shot free-handed.

“Retreat!” Brock shouted from Ulfzuk's shoulder where he was riding so that they did not have to wait on him and his short, human legs.

No one heeded his words but Varg understood that they should have as soon as they reached the riverbed. Scorpions and crossbows greeted them with a hail of death before they had even gotten a foot in.

The armour Firehand had made proved well thought out though and she thanked him in her head with every clank of steel on steel when bolts bounced off of her or tangled in the multi-layered mats of mail.

Those ogresses that did not wear armour were not so lucky. Five died behind Varg just by the first onslaught.

“Ford!” She screamed desperately. “Armour in front!”

By the time they had waded through the river, here almost one hundred meters wide, the humans fired twice again, killing thirteen and Ulfzuk among them. Ulgrosh's eldest daughter had worn some armour and thick pelts otherwise to guard her against arrows but the massive scorpion bolt that hammered through her head was too powerful. Varg fished Brock out of the swirling, red waters and threw him onto her back so he would be out of danger.

But with her golden-tipped helm, the impaled woman, marching in the front-most line she soon became the prime target of the human artillery. Three times scorpion bolts slammed into the water and into her chest, but each time Firehand's armour held. Against the flurry of crossbows, Varg turned her head sideways so as to protect her eyes. There was the mail and solid metal rings around them, but she still needed to see and so there was a way for a lucky quarrel to get through there.

A ballista shot hit her helm so hard that it almost came flying off and rang her head hard enough to make her forget where upwards and downwards were. For a moment she lost her foting and swallowed water, but Gundula Cattlemuncher was there to pull her out or else she might have drowned.

They came out of the water screaming but the Horasians were already there, brandishing long pikes and other things, long swords or polearms half axe, half spear. The pikes were the worst, looking viciously pointy. Arranged to a wall as they were they might have warded off any unarmoured giant, and the longest went all the way up to Varg's belly.

She was past that now though, having come too far, blundered too terribly already to turn away. If she retreated now it would be the death of her and all that were with her, she was certain. Besides, she now had armour and her glaive and it was bloody well time to try them on real foes.

Some pikemen wore steel cuirasses and half helms but all that mattered little when she introduced them to her new-learned skills. Whoever was not cut in half by her brutal swing was done for by the sheer force of the impact. Men screamed then and Varg swung again, left, right, left, cutting humans and pikes to pieces and launching others flailing through the air like a giant farmer cutting grass with a scythe.

The gash she hacked into the Horasian line was enough for the ogresses behind her and a heartbeat later they were in the thick of them, stomping. Varg was glad for her thick, reinforced sandals but nonetheless some small arms found her flesh.

“Hold the line!” A fancy man in inlaid armour and a green sash shouted, hacking at her with a curved blade.

Varg ran him over with her foot and leaned onto him, feeling steel and flesh crumble beneath her as blood guttered out of his mouth.

“Kill them all!” She roared just before another onslaught of bolts caught them.

Several found her belly but did not go deep enough to concern her. When she looked behind though she saw that of about fifty ogresses she had taken with her only half were left, the dead strewn around or drifting lifelessly in the current. It made her angry, just as it had on the Andra, and just as back then she knew she had to neutralize the missiles.

The sharpened stakes the humans had put into the ground might have served them well against horses, but not against her. Varg was too big for them, her legs too long, and once she had trampled over their defences she wreaked havoc among the crossbowmen and artillerists alike.

That gave her force exactly the respite they needed. Riders came charging out of nowhere but met sorrowful ends killing more fleeing footsoldiers than giants. Varg had no illusions however. She knew that some riders would not have attacked but run to get reinforcements and spread the word of her crossing.

“Kill as many as you can!” She commanded, smashing a ballista with her glaive and trampling dropped crossbows to splinters beneath her soles. “We must attack now!”

Gundula Cattlemuncher fought with a long, wooden pole. She had argued that she did not need a blade to kill humans and she would have no part of killing her own kind. The beautiful, intelligent giantess had the truth of it, it seemed. The end of her stick was running red with blood and she smashed it left and right, cracking skulls, bones and armour bellow. She did not look very beautiful in the helm she wore, a crude, copper cup for her head with mail draped all around, looking like an iron veil. The rest of her armour was clobbered together, fur, bronze and mail, not near as nice as the things that had been made for Varg.

The chain mail rattled when she turned her head: “But it is not dark yet! They will see us!”

Varg's plan had been to wait for nightfall and attack Joborn from the west. Once all the humans were drawn there to defend the city, Ulgrosh would lead the main thrust in from the east, crossing the pitch ditches and all the rest hopefully without a single casualty. Meanwhile, Maidenstomper and Weepke would ford the Ingval and march through the open docks, making the chaos complete.

But without darkness, any artillery on the western walls would see Varg approaching and pose a grievous threat. There was artillery there, the scouts had said so, but not nearly as much as was directed towards the Nostrian border.

The scent of failure was enough to make Varg furious again and she channelled her anger onto the remaining humans. Some of them were begging by now, for all the good that did them, cowering or crying and whimpering. Within a matter of minutes the battle devolved into butchery and then into sadistic games when ogresses started to play with the humans they had caught.

“Form up and and move!” Varg growled at Trundle, a young, thick ogress that was smashing moaning, wounded humans to broken lumps under her arse.

Whenever she saw one she'd get off the one she had crushed before, stand over him giggling and drop onto his grovelling form with a little jump. At Varg's words she looked up, scowling.

“We've lost too many!” Cattlemuncher protested, ending a wounded squealer under the butt of her stick.

The other giantesses were still very much in the heat of battle, smashing or torturing anyone still daring to draw breath. Brock hung on to Varg's back, trying to climb her shoulder.

“She's right!” He argued feverishly. “This will not serve!”

She reached around herself, plucked him and gave his craven chest a painful squeeze.

“We are moving now!” She roared. “We will take that city!”

She clung to it, desperately, though part of her had already forgotten what she wanted with Joborn. All this had been folly. Again. More than thirty dead or wounded and all for nothing. It couldn't have been for nothing.

“If we don't attack now, the humans will bring more men!”

“If we attack now, will Weepke and Ulgrosh know to attack with us?” Gundula asked insistingly. “You told them to wait for night! Besides, I saw riders go that way. What if they turn those stone throwers in our direction? We'll be dead before Ulgrosh has even gotten off her rump!”

And just like that, Varg was defeated, Joborn save for now. She turned her anger against a few surviving humans, even taking the time to impale four of them so the reinforcements would know that it had been her work. Even still, all the while she did that, her dead were lying on the ground bleeding or drifting downstream. Each of them weighed as much one hundred humans, irreplaceable, to her anyway, if only she had employed them right. Their loss was a bitter thing and now she would have to return to the main force empty-handed. She wondered if it could get any worse than this.

No sooner had they crossed the river again, after stripping the armour off their fallen, than the human reinforcements arrived on horseback from two sides at once. It itched in Varg's fingers to move back and fight them, but she did no longer possess the strength to do it and some of the riders were carrying crossbows. So, they ran, tug-tailed, the humans unable to cross the Ingval without the help of a bridge, floats or boats, none of which they had.

Finding Weepke and the Maidenstomper took frustratingly long and the look on Weepke's face when Varg told her that the attack was called off was foretelling as to what the other giants and giantesses would think. She should have never gone against what Sly had told her, Varg knew then, wishing that he was there to give her guidance. The most frustrating part of the realization was that they, the ogres, for all their hugeness, were utterly helpless without human support. It was what Sly had told her, she realized, albeit be it in different terms.

After fording the Ingval for the third time that day it was almost evening. Wide, incredulous eyes greeted them when they marched back into the main force.

“They had machines.” Varg confessed bitterly, feeling that she had to. “Many are dead. Ulfzuk too.”

Ulgrosh's scream was so loud and sorrowful that they must have heard it in Joborn. It was a very sad time.

“You shouldn't have done this, Varg.” Sly said critically.

She only saw him then, and other men of his band, sitting horses amongst giant legs. She looked back at him helplessly.

He frowned and tried to console her: “Andergast does not have this military might. Take it. Take it now. I have a plan.”

“Albino always said we couldn't hold it.” Cattlemuncher reminded him softly.

“Aye.” He agreed, reining his horse away from Ulgrosh's angry crying. “Not unless you use the human lords.”

He rode in a circle before them all, this minuscule worm of a man with his bold head and bony face.

“You say that.” Varg squirmed to maintain the appearance of a leader. “But what does that mean?”

“It means,” Sly smiled, “that you must ally with them.”

A murmur went up at the word and a quite angry one at that.

“Why would we ally with humans?” Gundula Maidenstomper chuckled hollowly.

Sly's smile did not waver: “More pointedly, why should human lord's ally with you?”

He looked around, not as much in awe as Varg would have liked but rather dismissive.

“We will start at Engasal.” He went on. “We'll capture Lord Geldrick Oakhard and his brother Uriwin. But that's not all.”

He turned his head and a fat giantess stepped forward into their midst. Varg had never seen this one before, she was certain. Naked and copper-skinned, with huge, brown nipples and fat, wormy lips the giantess was an ugly beast. Her black hair was straight and looked well taken care of though. Her steps clanged oddly and when Varg looked down she saw a leather band around the ogress' ankle with an iron chain and a human slave at the other end of it. The little one was old, white of hair, haggard and in terrible condition.

“May I present,” Sly gestured, “the lady Bergatroll Mannelig. And her husband.”

On the way north to Engasal Sly unveiled all the intricacies of his plan. It was oddly detailed, so much so that Varg knew he must have been hatching it for a while. The fact that he had not confided with her earlier did not rouse her distrust, however. It spoke of her state of mind more than of his. He had simply deemed her unfit to grasp and understand the scheme, and she was well inclined to agree with him.

He laid it all out in great detail as they moved with the pace of the riders, keeping away from the river to conceal as much of their movement to the Horasians as they still could. Sly's remarks and predictions were so numerous and detailed that it took almost all the way to discuss them, one and a half days.

Frundengar Hammerfists, large Fjarninger humans, and Thuran Brotherhood, Andergastian outlaws, looked quite astounded when Varg arrived in their siege camp. Initial exchanges would be awkward, but necessary, she knew. Her giants had to learn that these humans were allies and not slaves they could use and abuse, and the humans had to learn that the giants could be trusted, even from a close distance.

“Anyone lays a hand on our allies, loses a hand,” was the directive Varg staked her hopes on. Nonetheless she had agreed with Sly that it was best if at first she came alone to meet them, leaving her army in waiting for now.

The Thuran brotherhood was led by a bowman in a hooded, green cloak called Badluck Robin.

“I didn't think they'd be that huge.” He grimaced when Sly dismounted to greet the man. “Have you brought any supplies? Supplies is shite here.”

He was every bit as shifty as Sly had described him, and tedious, but no fool.

“As everywhere.” The raider smiled. “Anything unusual?”

“Unusual?” The outlaw quipped. “Fjarninger barbarians and scum of the woods besieging a castle with knights inside. Ain't that unusual enough for ya? Them Fjarningers thought the burning arrows comin' from the castle was magic. They would have bolted, but that shaman of theirs threw some bones on the ground and determined the omens were favourable or something like that. You know him, it's the only smart one they got, Gillax son of...uh, someone...I think.”

“Most people are the sons of someone.” Sly grinned lazily. “Gillax is son of Muragosh. Where is Arombolosh son of Mogrox?”

Varg stood, huge, but ignored. It vexed her but it was part of the plan. Sly acted as her mouth, so to keep her from blundering. She could be brisk and unkind when speaking to humans, a thing that would not do if these paid-for alliances were to be kept.

“Uh, he is hunting.” Badluck Robin replied. “That one's gotta kill once every fortnight, or I swear he becomes insufferable.”

“How many inside the castle?” Sly went on pointedly, ushering the conversation along.

“Uh, not many.” The outlaw swallowed hard, looking up at Varg. “But not many less than last time you asked that. We picked off a few when they poked their sorry heads over the merlons, but that's that. Did you bring any supplies? I don't understand siege all that much but I thought it was s'posed to be them inside doing the starving.”

The raider gave him an amused, questioning look: “Are you starving already?”

It were only the lamentations of a greedy, vain man, as warned.

“Not quite yet, but soon!” Robin swore, looking back at him.

“Sly!”

The speaker was a Fjarninger, taller than Sly by more than two heads. He was old, crooked and clad in furs with bones and skulls all over his person, some of them plainly human.

“Gillax the wise.” Sly inclined his head.

Had Varg asked herself what Sly had been doing whenever he wasn't with her, she now had at least part of her answer. All these humans knew each other somehow. The raider had been busy, all the while she had been doing next to nothing.

“The spirits have noted that your belly is a bottomless pit, Badluck.” The shaman moved closer. “There is plenty here to stuff it!”

His speech was swollen, smokey somehow and ominous.

“Heh!” Badluck Robin chuckled. “Bottomless pit, get it? Because there's shite coming out the other end.”

“Both ends.” Gillax gave him a reprimanding look.

How Sly had managed to make this joined effort work without being present all of the time was a mystery to Varg. The Fjarningers almost looked like smaller giants, and it would not be surprising if they behaved accordingly. The outlaws were Andergastian scum, the lowest of the low on the human ladder, and their leader was an insolent wretch.

The camp was placed in the middle of several small hills providing shelter from the river's winds to the humans. This had been the farmland of Engasal once, before chaos enveloped everything. Barely a single tree stood here. She could see less than a hundred men but understood that this was a siege which meant that somewhere else other men were cutting off ways to supply the besieged or exchange messages with them.

Judging by the cook fires there was no lack of food.

“I must apologise for this worm, great ogress!” The shaman bowed before Varg, speaking as though he could hear her thoughts. “The kind spirits of the river endow us with fish and birds of those which sit on water and the ghosts of the trees whisper of deer and boar.”

“Ya, whisper they do.” Robin the outlaw complained. “I won't eat fish, y'know, and there's only so many of 'em birds.”

Varg decided that she did not like the man.

“Well, you won't need to live off the land much longer.” Sly settled the issue. “Varg is here to storm the castle.”

“What, she alone?” The outlaw gave her a look. “I mean, she's huge, but...”

“There's more than two hundred of her kind waiting a little south of here, gathering stones.” Sly intervened. “Now go, show it to her.”

Varg could already see the castle from where she stood but agreed to get a little closer. Of the village there was little left and no soul dwelled there any more. On the field towards the castle there were Thuran Brotherhood men huddling behind large, makeshift mobile shields with their longbows, peering at the grey stone battlements for careless targets to unleash some shafts. They had to be skilled bowmen to make shots like that, Varg reckoned.

“Well as you can see,” Badluck Robin explained after a short walk, “that south there is the Ingval and that tributary stream to the west, the way it loops, they corner the castle and make besieging it very, very easy if you control the water. We got bowmen up- and downstream, but to be honest there's hardly any boat comin' by at all.”

The castle sat close by the water and was a glorified ruin. Once it had been big, that much was obvious, but the mighty, round towers that commanded the waterfront were collapsed, as was the very bergfried, the last bastion of defence.

“Two towers are in repair, flanking the gatehouse which still very much works. Iron portcullis, and we got nothing can batter it down.” The outlaw shrugged. “Inside them men I'd say is well determined, and much better provisioned than we are, not having to eat fish everyday and all.”

“The spirits demand a great victory!” Gillax son of Muragosh proclaimed. “Storm the man-made mountain! We do not argue with spirits!”

“There is no storming this castle, you rattling fool.” Robin objected. “The spirits of that fucking iron gate don't give a flying shite over how many of 'em bones you throw in the dirt, and they won't budge none either.”

“What of the Horasians?” Sly wrenched them out of their dispute.

“North Drakenburg is that way.” The outlaw pointed. “Some patrols along the river, some scouts, but they keep away mostly. They can't see much in any case, 'cause of 'em cliffs.”

The Engasal Cliffs on the opposite side of the castle were not unimposing, a great mass of rock that sprouted out of the water, old, withered and spotted with lichen, but still somehow not quite seeming to belong. They were steep, high and simply impassable.

That was incredibly good news. If there were Horasian patrols, reinforcements, maybe even an encampment like the one they had encountered at Joborn across the river, the attack on Engasal would have been a lot more dangerous and perhaps even impossible. About an iron gate Varg cared little. The walls were crumbled and no more than eight meters high at the most. There was no high ground or rocks to be overcome either.

“I have seen enough.” She finally spoke.

That was all she said to her allies before turning heel and going.

As it turned out, there were less fighters in the castle than she had giants but there was no way to know that from outside the castle. Her attack consisted of three waves. First they threw stones at the castle, just to give it a try. Such a tactic might serve well against Horasian artillery at some point. It worked reasonably well on the old fortress as several bowmen were swept off the walls and a ruined tower collapsed completely, falling partly into the yard. Then those ogres who had armour stormed the walls to neutralize the rest of the longbows before at last the rest were to join in as well. It proved too much in the end, excessive.

Varg attacked with the armoured rush on foot, swept a complete wall-walk clean of defenders with her glaive and climbed over. Gundula Maidenstomper battered a few towers with her hammer until they collapsed. Some ogresses used the mobile shields of the Thuran brotherhood to guard themselves against arrows which proved an ingenious idea with a lot of potential. There were no grave injuries, no losses. It was almost too easy, nothing compared to the Horasians at Joborn with their artillery.

The yard inside the castle held several dozen humans with spears but as soon as Varg was over the walls they broke and went into hiding with those who could not fight. Built for human scale it was all so small that Varg called off the third wave so as not to end up butchering the many able-bodied in the confusion. And confusing it was. She stepped on three that had fallen, hacked a lightly armoured man in two with her glaive and crushed the heads of two bowmen on the gatehouse in her fist.

Then it was already over and she went to organising the aftermath while her ogresses pulled the hiders from wherever they found them and gathered them in the yard. What buildings had been there, a smithy, stables and such, had all collapsed under the hail of stones. The shimthy could still be used once the fallen roof was removed and the food stores and livestock had been kept in the bergfried that, though partially collapsed, had walls thick enough to withstand the half-heartedly thrown rocks. The stables had been hit by a large boulder though and all but two horses had been crushed.

Maidenstomper smashed holes in towers, the gatehouse and the ruined bergfried with her hammer until all defenders and non-combatants were caught.

Many lay slain too, amongst the rubble, most wearing white surcoats or just a piece of cloth with a crude, green tree on it. Unfortunately, Lord Geldrick Oakhard was among the dead, crushed to pink porridge under a rock flung by the ogresses. Therefore, Varg now had to figure out who became lord after him, information the humans were eager to give up as soon as she stomped a wounded woman into a broken mess under her foot.

Heir to Engasal turned out to be Geldrick's eldest son of the same name, only that man had died too, overlooked by Varg when she swept the battlements. Next in line of succession was Geldrick's second eldest son, the squire Arbolf, who had gotten both his legs crushed under some ogress' foot. A legless lord did not serve Sly's plans very well, so Varg dragged him out and and twisted his head off.

That was the convenient thing about succession. There was almost always someone to fill the spot.

“So, given your power to swat men like flies,” Sly had instructed her priorly, “you may well dispose of this one or the other until the title falls to someone with sufficient gravitas, enough weight behind them in other men's eyes.”

He had specifically told her to try and make Geldrick's brother Sir Uriwin lord of Engasal in case the former died. Uriwin had been caught unharmed, plummeting right into the hands of Weepke when he fell off a wall while fighting her and losing his sword in the process.

Next in line, however, was a page called Little Willem. No one seemed to know where he was until he was discovered, flat and dead, in one of Ulgrosh's footprints. After, the title finally fell to Uriwin. It was necessary because the man was known to be a capable knight. Holding him as Lord was valuable and breaking him into an alliance carried more weight than a crippled squire, a young boy or any such weaklings.

That left the noble ladies to consider, three wives, a married sister whose husband was missing and presumed dead, and five daughters, three of Uriwin and two of Geldrick. They were supposed to be the key to Uriwin, though it was utterly unclear if it would work. It was an experiment of sorts, Sly had said. If it worked, Andergast under her rule could be stable and secured, perhaps even recognized by the large, threatening power of Gareth. Varg had less than three hundred giants and maybe as many humans in her rule right now. Gareth supposedly had several thousand times as many humans.

She did not know how many exactly but it sounded intimidating when Sly described it even if she could not hope to contemplate the number.

The vanquished humans cried and moaned before her, some cursed or gritted their teeth solemnly. It was nothing knew. Humans feared ogres.

“I accept your surrender.” She leaned down towards the new-made lord.

The noble females huddled behind his small, mail-clad form while the commoners edged away as much as they could. That led to the mass of humans bunching up even more because they would not get any closer to the other giantesses that encircled them or those that gathered the dropped arms.

“Be cursed, monster!” He spat predictably.

She smiled: “Do you wish to protect your people? Do you wish to keep your lands and station?”

He looked at her incredulous for a moment before his face turned hard again: “I will spit on your corpse, Impaler!”

“Good.” She shrugged and pulled a young lady from behind his back. “Will you spit on her corpse too?”

The girl squirmed and tried to pull free but it was no use. Varg could have crushed her arm in her grasp had she wished to. There was something sweet and innocent about her, and no doubt that would make torturing her a glee, but power over thousands would be still sweeter than mere power over her. And there was power in this lord's allegiance. Carving out a kingdom in Andergast was easy in and of itself, but carving out a place in the world was a different matter.

“Spare her!” He urged heroically. “Take me instead!”

“I would if I wanted to.” She gave the tiny arm a painful yank, producing the kind of weak, female shriek that drove human males sheer mad. “But I don't. You can save all of them though, and her, all of this, if you would listen.”

“Crush her!” Gundula Maidenstomper slobbered greedily, brandishing her hammer.

Varg ignored her for now.

“And what evil would you have of me, monster?!” Uriwin asked.

She could see the desperation in his eyes, mixing with his defiance. It was every bit as Sly had predicted.

“You would be my ally.” She said, studying him.

At that, he was startled, mistrusting, as was to be expected.

“To what end, you ask yourself.” She went on as Sly had taught her. “What should keep you from turning against me at the first opportunity?”

The truth of it was written on his face, plain as day. The very fact that he was now negotiating with an ogress was already enough to leave his view of the world in shambles, and Varg was not even remotely done.

“I will not take hostages.” She continued, regarding the girl she held, wondering if it was his daughter or his brother's. “Your kin shall live, you'll keep your lands and most of your people. I must give my giantesses something to play with, I hope you understand.”

Maidenstomper chuckled and started dancing thunderously from one foot to the next.

“You will rule these lands under me as your queen.” She went on calmly. “We will save this broken kingdom and rebuild it. There is a place for you humans. All I will do is place my giants above you. You will be free to heed your hearts, plough your fields and worship your gods. You will make tribute to us and fight in our wars if there are any. Some of you will be our slaves. That is all.”

“Andergast has a queen!” He spat after short consideration. “Calling yourself one does not make you so, even if you kill her! In good time we will have a new king too, and then you will be routed, hunted down and slain and it will be my great pleasure to be a part of that if you spare me today!”

Sly had foreseen this as well.

“I will crush that queen.” She said, unimpressed as though she was speaking about a dog. “And kings, they raised a host, did you know? They tried to stop me. Now all of them are dead or our slaves. Aele's bastard is feeding the crows and I know where to find the queen's betrothed. I will not kill him. He will marry the queen, I will crush her, and then I will marry him. I will be queen in keeping with your very own laws, in the sight of you worms and whatever gods you worship.”

For a sweet, sweet moment the colour vanished from his face and he grew as pale as snow. Then he caught himself, dismissing what he had heard: “Men and monsters cannot marry! No more than men and pigs!”

“There is precedent.” She smiled calmly. “One of your lords has already married one of my giantesses and he ruled his lands without much change at all. She overruled him, of course, when she cared to. That was all until the king regent made the mistake of killing her daughter. Now she is out for revenge. If you refuse me, I will let her kill him. What becomes then of Andergast after I crush the little queen? We cannot hold against Gareth or Horas. Someone will snatch these lands away and that will be the end. There is barely anything left now. So would you doom your kingdom, or do what needs to be done, my lord?”

He could have just said yes and betrayed her later, as threatened, but this man was too proud, too honourable. At the same time had he already contemplated the end and was not yet very far from embracing it, even if it meant the end of his life, his line and the kingdom which he served.

“This will never work!” He swore. “The people will flee, you will be defeated!”

“The strong will do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” Varg recited Sly's words. “It has happened before and it was not half as bad as you envision. A future, or death for us all. The choice is yours.”

She pushed her little captive to the ground and a moved a foot over her, pinning her down. Uriwin's mouth twisted. Was he alone in this, he would have chosen death, there was no doubt about it. But with his family at stake, combined with all the rest, he may still yet change his mind.

“I've changed my mind.” She said in a move to sway him. “I will spare all your subjects that still live. After all, we will need every hand to rebuild the kingdom. My ogres will spit and swear but I am willing to make this gesture of good faith to you.”

Another one of Sly's sly ideas, and like most of them she could see it work before her eyes. How did a raider ever become so smart, and a human at that, with such a small, bony head, she wondered.

“And what will happen then?” Uriwin asked, already half-way there.

“Your fighters will join mine.” She replied. “I already have humans in my employ. It will be like any war, only much less bloody. This kingdom has suffered enough and I mean to restore order. One by one your fortresses will fall to us and I will establish the new order as I am doing here now. Your lords will marry my ogresses for the sake of the claim and we will rebuild what was destroyed and lead Andergast to a new era of greatness, such as it has never known.”

'And create a place were giants are not hunted, and rule over you human worms as we rightfully should.' She added in her mind.

“It's either that or we will have our fun with all of you.” She said instead. “Imagine it, my lord. And when I'm done, Andergast will be naught but a smear in one of your dusty tomes somewhere.”

“Please, milord!” The begging started from the commoners and disarmed soldiers.

“You killed my brother and all of his sons!” Lord Uriwin exclaimed with tears in his eyes.

His voice was hoarse, his world view crumbled and either his daughter or his niece under Varg's foot, ready to be crushed at a shift of weight.

“Slain in combat, as is good and fair by your own rules, my lord.” Varg recited Sly once more.

“Please, uncle!” The little lady beneath her cried out. “You cannot save the dead! Think of the living!”

“It is not my wish to crush her.” Varg half-lied heavily. “All I want is a realm for my kind where we can live without fear of knights, crossbows and war machines. The world has changed. Our old king Albino is dead. Your king is dead, your armies destroyed, your villages burnt and your people scattered to the wind, those which are not rotting in the ground or being gorged upon by feral beasts that stray emboldened as you please.”

“Please, uncle!” The girl cried again and thus achieved so far more with so much fewer words.

Her mother, late Lord Geldrick's widow started forward in desperation but Uriwin caught her and wrestled her back.

“I consent!” He screamed against all and himself. “I consent! Release her!”

Varg lifted her foot at once and the little high-born thing scurried over to him, hugging both him and her mother.

“Good.” She said, pleased. “You shall marry Ulgrosh the Skinner.”

His head twisted around in confusion. She had said it before, in a way, but he had overheard it.

“I already have a wife.” He started when the gargantuan form of Ulgrosh, clad in crude copper, wood and furs crouched over them. The guards on her forearms had been doors of houses once.

The huge, meaty ogress had grieved fiercely for her oldest daughter that had died in the blunder at Joborn. But in the end she had other kin that needed caring about and so it would not do to let herself be consumed. Giving these first and by no means poor lands to her was Varg's way of reconciliation.

Bergatroll was a cruel ogress with motivations mostly nebulous, even to Sly. She had had only one daughter, living in the village where they would go next, where the king was allegedly besieged by a clan of mountain savages, doing Bergatroll's bidding. Sly had convinced her that she could get revenge for her slain child with Varg's help, treading loose all that was happening now.

Varg did not like Bergatroll at all. She was a drunk that had to be kept in ale at all times, ale that Sly's Boys provided and would not be shared. Her human husband was shackled to her foot and little more than a grovelling slave. Supposedly there were great herds of goat and sheep in their possession and Varg meant to have those as much as she needed the king. That Bergatroll would not be allowed to crush the king she did not know. The only reason Varg did not slay her was that Bergatroll could tell dreamily of her life when she was a human lord's wife, warming the ogresses greatly to the idea.

Ulgrosh was very fond such talk and eyed her future husband greedily now. Bergatroll really made it sound paradisical, carefree and abundant.

“Do not worry, little one.” The Skinner grinned crookedly. “We only marry for the claim. You can stick that tiny prick of yours in any wench you like and make little, pink bastards. I won't even peel the skins off them, I swear.”

“We need to make you a widower though, so you are free to marry.” Varg explained with an apologetic smile that was not as true as would have been best.

On queue, Ulgrosh grasped Uriwin's wife and lifted her out of his reach.

“No!” The lord screamed. “I did not consent to this! I do not consent, you hear me?!”

“Crush her!” Gundula Maidenstomper urged, laughing.

The woman in Ulgrosh's hands shrieked and begged, as did her relatives, until the huge ogress started squeezing the lady's throat and grunted for quiet.

“She can give your wife a quick death.” Varg explained to the lordling in front her. “That is, so long as you consent. If you do not consent, Ulgrosh is going to have some fun with her and I will give half the rest of your sorry kin to the Maidenstomper. I will impale your own daughters myself after I have made you watch me spend some time with them.”

She caught some other little high-born girl, banking on it being one spawned from Uriwin's loins.

“She'll fit inside me.” She rasped, pushing the young woman's head against her nether lips.

The way she crouched, her female parts were visible to the humans anyway due to the nature of the bronze-reinforced skirt she was wearing. Sly had warned to keep this as a last resort of cruelty. The act was unconscionable to any decent human and would accomplish instant shock and terror. It seemed fitting here, because what Varg had to overcome was no less than Uriwin's presumed love for his current lady wife.

Varg was wet down there from all the playing and once this was done she would find a decent-looking slave to let the pressure out on, somewhere in privacy. The innocent, noble lady would be sweeter, but once again, she was the key to Uriwin. Part of Varg wished that he declined so she could fuck his daughters and nieces to death in front of him. All of them were of breeding age, but she doubted that they were married yet, or else they would have been with their husbands. That circumstance was queer, Sly had said. Given that both Uriwin and Geldrick had so many daughters one would assume them to have made matches and married off a few, for the sake of grandsons.

“They must love their daughters very much.” The raider had concluded on the way, thinking.

That much was clear now.

“No!” Lord Uriwin Oakhard's head snapped desperately left and right in between his wife and the other.

Ulgrosh took her fingers off his wife's throat and started squeezing her head instead, laughing: “I'll pop her eyes out!”

Varg started to push the head of her little captive into her folds.

“Stop, gods, stop!” Uriwin pleaded, falling to his knees.

As Sly had predicted, the younger one was more important to him. It was a natural thing. Living beings wanted their lines to be continued and a younger female that had already reached the capacity to produce offspring weighed heavier than any other thing. Nonetheless it was the cruellest possible choice to the little man but one he had to make all the same. In retrospect, it would have been best to inconspicuously smash the little wife before any of this marriage talk had started, but not even Sly had been smart enough to think of that.

“I consent!” Uriwin was going sheer mad. “I consent, please!”

He only had eyes for his daughter now, her hair already slick with Varg's juices. Varg withdrew the girl and shoved her back at him, smiling, while Ulgrosh stopped squeezing as well.

“A quick death.” Varg reminded her.

“I'm much more woman than her anyway.” The huge ogress chuckled before she pushed the wife's head into the castle wall with the flat of her hand, producing a horrible crunching noise and crimson splotch of blood when she crushed it.

It did not take her any effort at all.

“Good.” Varg rose and addressed her ogresses, ignoring Uriwin's screams and human cries of terror. “Sly says he holds a priest that the humans will recognize to perform the ceremony. I understand there is a feast when humans marry. So it shall be.”

An hour later, Uriwin and his people were in the middle of the siege camp with nowhere to run. Varg took them all, even those who were no fighters. It would not do to have Ulgrosh's new subjects run over to Nostria before they had a chance to enjoy being ruled by the Skinners for a time.

The rest of her army, as well as her human allies took the whole event quite badly though. They had been looking forward to the glory of victory and the plunder and rape that came with it. To console them there was a feast, performed with Engasal's lavish provisions. That was splendid. There was food again, and most importantly ale and wine as well.

The outlaws and Fjarningers received a certain amount of silver as retribution for their dutiful besieging. If truth be told, Varg had trouble seeing the point of the siege now, other than catching some nobles alive. Perhaps Sly had feared the whole lot making over to Nostria. Silver, ale and food, that was her bribe to keep everyone from claiming the spoils they felt they were entitled to. It worked well initially, but even though only a minority had fought at all, the blood was up amongst her ranks and there were fresh humans, some of whom were female.

“I'll have no rapes.” She told Badluck Robin, Gillax and Arombolosh just as Sly had instructed her in a quiet moment. “Marriage must be sacred from now on, else we are liars. If your men want an unmarried woman, they must woo her in an honourable fashion or keep their hands to themselves. Lord Uriwin's people are my allies, just like you.”

“Fine by me.” Robin the outlaw grinned, letting a silver coin travel across his knuckles.

Varg had feared a snide remark from him, but it seemed that his lust for gold outweighed all his other shortcomings. Sly had been more concerned that Arombolosh, warlord and leader of the Frundengar Hammerfists, would not understand. He was right.

“We threw them into the dust!” The barbarian warlord roared. “It is our spoils you are claiming, Impaler!”

He closed one nostril with a finger to shoot snot towards the ground from the other in a grotesque and disgusting gesture of outrage. Arombolosh was even taller than the shaman, and slightly younger though the scars on his sinewy body made him look old and used somehow. He fought with a two-handed, double-bladed battleaxe of bronze and wore a polished helmet of the same metal that gave him a somewhat golden appearance. The teeth in his mouth were brown, rotten stumps though, his eyes tiny, black beetles and his nose a red, leaking beak.

In front of Varg he was but a little twig, and he had best known that she could break him like one if she wanted.

“You did nothing!” She spat back at him. “You were hunting! The next time I call upon you you had best be there, or else I'll make you and yours my spoils!”

There was something vicious on his tongue but Gillax intervened quickly.

“I have consulted the spirits of the trees and rivers!” He howled ominously. “This was not the victory they foretold! A greater victory lies ahead of us, and we shall have all our due spoils there!”

The fire on Arombolosh's face died away at once.

“It's like Gillax said,” Sly had told her before, “they do not argue with spirits. Funny enough though, those spirits somehow always end up wanting the same things as Gillax.”

“Rapers will be gelded.” Varg told the three humans before her, settling the issue for good.

She understood them though, those with the longing for that kind of pleasure. The same fire was burning within her, but there was too much queening to do to grab a slave and have some lone time in the woods.

Arombolosh had upturned a sounder of wild boar on his hunt, three parent animals and eleven shoats, all of which were soon roasting merrily over cook fires. The Fjarningers took out the guts from the animals, hung them on trees and started worshipping them, drawing appalled and disgusted looks from the castle people. It was a queer custom indeed, found Varg. Worship in general she could partly understand in such tiny creatures, but guts on trees were a different matter.

As it stood, Uriwin and his flock were less powerful than the Fjarningers, but ultimately they would be the future. At that point there might be a falling out with the wild humans and Varg might have to have them killed. It was alright because when when it came to that they would have exceeded their usefulness in any case and by killing them or making them slaves Varg could earn favour with the Andergastians.

Sly's Boys and the brotherhood of outlaws would stand in conflict with the old Andergastian nobility too, but in that instance Varg would simply have to overrule them after forcing them to her side. There was preciously little left of that nobility in any case, with the all the dead lords and sirs that had been crushed or skewered when they came to undo the giants.

The priest the raiders had caught was a terrified woman of advanced age. She wore a red and orange dress and an orange cap upon her head, all tattered before but neatly patched up for the occasion. To show Uriwin that Varg's new society took the old customs seriously, everyone was bid to stand and be quiet for the ceremony, no matter how ridiculous or strange they thought it was. Varg stood too far away to hear the words spoken in the pact of Travia. It was all just masquerade anyway. In the world of humans, marriage was a political weapon and for all intends and purposes the world belonged very much to the humans.

Getting the marriages recognised by the powers that were would be difficult, but as it turned out Andergast was the single best ground to do it on. The Kingdom was easily defensible. To the north, there were mountains, then more mountains and a steppe. To the north east there was steppe as well, too hostile for any large army. To bring in a large host from the west the Ornib had to be crossed. To do that by any other way than the bridge at Joborn would take so much time that defenders would have an easy time preparing a defence. From the Garethian empire there were two ways into Andergast. One led up from the city of Winhall, a small road along the river Tommel until it bound north and around the Thuran lake.

The other way was the big, imperial road that connected the cities of Andergast and Griffinsford through in between the huge, impassable mountain ranges that were named Shadow Ridge and Kosh. One bridge and two roads should be easy enough to defend with giants, the idea being that Gareth would see trade and a continuation of prior arrangements as more beneficial to itself than war. The Garethians may well attempt war as their first option, Sly warned, and so, after taking Andergast and securing the crown, defending the road to Griffinsford would be the primary objective.

Then, with a first, crushing victory on their side, Varg might begin negotiations. Another idea was to try and somehow get Horas to attack Gareth, at which point the great, central empire would have next to no choice other than accepting Varg's rule, because if they wouldn't she would threaten to fall into their lands as well and give them a second front to worry about. How to start such a thing though, Varg did not know, much less from Andergast and with less than three hundred giants.

With the ones she'd lost at Joborn and the ones too young or too pregnant to fight, her actual force was closer to two hundred now, but Sly said that with the kingdom established, wandering ogres and ogresses would join her forces in time, making her stronger again. More humans under her rule would make her stronger too. They were small and weak but incredibly numerous and could kill each other just fine.

“It would have been kinder to give him to the Cattlemuncher.” Sly observed when Ulgrosh lifted her newly made husband off the ground and planted a slobbering, wet kiss onto the entirety of his face.

She wore a vicious, malevolent smile and no sooner was the pact sealed than she marched off towards privacy to consummate the marriage in order to finalize it. Varg was thirteen meters tall, Ulgrosh even slightly larger, making her a most unusual beast. She was instructed not to kill or injure Uriwin and she understood well enough the importance of his person. Nonetheless she would have some fun with him tonight and he would not enjoy it. Uriwin Oakhard was no Herman Mannelig, that grovelling, submissive worm.

The feasting did not require groom and bride for there was drink to be had and delicious food as well. Engasal's treasury had been disappointing, though Sly called the amount of coin retrieved lavish for Andergastian circumstances. The food stores on the other hand had been expansive and the quality of it was a welcome change after eating only roasted humans for so long. Big, fat hams there were, greasy bacon, beef, mutton, roasted chicken and honeyed duck. Fish was in good supply as well, though dry. Bread was there, both dry and stale or fresh; white, grey or black. Turnips, carrots, apples, oats, corns, there was even some cheese, several kinds of it with very different flavours.

On this day, Varg did not care for the expense, wishing for everyone to have an exquisite time to start this new era. She drank very little herself, too anxious that anything would go amiss. Groups stuck together, but other than that, there did not seem to be any trouble, even though everyone in Uriwin's party would probably have gladly killed everyone else present.

Perched on a stack of barrels sat a strange human with soot-black skin, clad in blue and white motley and with a cap that had small ringing bells attached to it. They called him Krool, for his cruel japes and songs and because it rhymed with fool. Krool the Fool had a wooden harp that he carried with him wherever he hopped. And whenever he hopped he grinned, huge and shiny yellow.

“I'll marry me a lordling fine, lordling fine, I'll make him mine; I marry me a lordling fine and then I'll crush his wife!” He sang, smiling broadly at the feasting listeners.

The harp he picked at with his fingers did not produce matching tones but Varg guessed that is was part of the grotesque act he was playing.

“I'll take him home and fuck him flat, I'll fuck him flat, like this and that; I'll take him home and fuck him flat, and then I'll crush his wife!”

The song he sang was not very good and obviously made up on short order. Some in the group that belonged to Uriwin scowled while others, as well as all the rest, laughed and jeered merrily.

“I'll make him lick between my toes, 'tween my toes, like these and those; I'll make him lick between my toes, and then I'll crush his wife!”

Varg wondered if Krool had somehow listened in on the tales that Bergatroll was spreading. Far as she knew though, the fool belonged to Engasal and house Oakhard. Holding creatures like this was not uncommon, she knew, and their lives not to envy.

“I'll make him lick my bunghole clean, bunghole clean, to brightened sheen; I'll make him lick my bunghole clean, and then I'll crush his wife!”

Some noble females with the people of Engasal began to cry when the fool suddenly leapt up, turned his arse towards them and dropped his britches. There was no way that Krool would have been this vicious towards his masters before. Prehaps he was taking revenge on how they treated him.

“His prick goes not inside my cunt, 'side my cunt, too short and stunt; his prick goes not inside my cunt, instead – I'll use his head!”

He hopped, grinned and spread his arms to roaring laughter and more crying from the ladies. The song was over and the next older and not specifically devised to cause emotional distress. It was about a girl that murdered her own family and managed to get a few men off their feet and start clumsily dancing around. Any advances they made towards the survivors of Engasal however were firmly rejected.

While the feast was going on, Firehand and his smiths were tasked with using what metal could be scrapped to make collars around the necks of slaves in order to mark them. The distinction was necessary now more than ever. It would take all night and was only possible because at this point there were so few slaves left. The human smiths would not receive collars. They were free, valuable men, though not allowed to leave either, as well they knew.

When the slaves returned with their new-made metal collars, some ogresses tossed them scraps of food and even allowed them a drink. A few took one of theirs into the hills to get some pleasure of them when they were drunk.

Male giants wanted to couple but found that they had little to offer other than their seed. Food and drink was provided by Varg now and she had disallowed any giant to own more than three slaves so the column would not be overburdened. Plunder meant having to carry more things, so the value of that had declined as well. They could not even rape human women, if such a thing was even possible, because Varg would have them gelded for it. They were the real losers in the current bargain, as she observed with unease. Still, the female giants were more important as ever for their larger numbers and body size.

“You may trade your slaves!” She decreed loudly at one point. “The rule of three is no longer necessary and overturned!”

That got the stone rolling for some lucky ogres. With the previously imposed maximum, the value of each individual slave had risen enormously and those males willing to part with theirs found many open thighs.

Suddenly it all seemed very good and there was mutual agreement that such a lucky, abundant situation should be kept in everyone's favour. A drunk Frundengar Hammerfist grabbed a girl at one point and meant to pull her off but Arombolosh dealt him a few curt words to put an end to it. The outlaws were smarter, using their share of coin to pay women from the castle to go with them. Even Badluck Robin did so, though he haggled fiercely over the price. Sly had Brock stand by and make sure that no married women were allowed to make whores of themselves and that no coercion took place.

The darkness and overall merriment blinded Varg of the ugly things that took place during that night. The next morning it was revealed that several rapes had taken place despite her efforts. Human men had intercepted women on their return to the feast and had their ways with them. Those perpetrators that could be identified Varg commanded gelded with hot knives, root and stem, and so one of Sly's boys, five Fjarningers and two Thuran Brotherhood men lost their manhoods.

Five women had been killed, two with slit throats and three crushed by ogresses using them. There were several conflicting accusations and suspicions, some of which very convincing. When the particularly flattened corpse of a young woman was revealed Trundle and Gundula Maidenstomper both chuckled. Nonetheless, Varg declared that it was inconclusive and no one would be punished unless there was more solid evidence produced.

The aftermath soured what had been a great initial success, but still everyone was eager to move on, achieve the next victory and have it all over again. The people of Engasal were not so eager but left with little choice. Lord Uriwin looked as though he had spent the night with demons and ghosts, all pale and shivering. Ulgrosh carried him like a swaddling babe in her arms, demeaning, though if truth be told he was even smaller than any newborn ogre. Bergatroll carried her Lord Mannelig on the march as well, treating him like a rag at other times but still making sure that the old men did not die on her.

When they started, so did a rain, falling sudden and heavy. The regrown column was slow moving but quick to respond to produce cloaks and whatever they had to keep dry. Engasal had been plundered bare, anything of use taken. The day that Ulgrosh and her Skinners would return to this place to reclaim it they would have a lot of rebuilding to do. Varg wondered when it would be. Autumn was late, but it was coming. The forest was losing it's leaves.