* * * * *
The first two assassins died, relatively quickly. One, disemboweled by a horizontal slash from the claybeg. The other, choking to death on his own blood as the baselard plunged straight into his throat!
After that, Crawford was surrounded. His assailants poking at him with their improvised torches, in between attempted thrusts with their stilettos. As for the two gypsies? Padraic O'Riordan was using his horsewhip with skillful abandon. Doing his best to keep his own and his daughter's attackers at bay!
That is; till a pair of the Garduna assassins climbed on top of the wagon's roof. With a "whoosh" and a "thunk" their stilletos took flight...and landed with all-too fatal accuracy in the gypsy tinker's back.
"Papa!" screamed Elena, as her father fell to the ground, face-first.
Naturally, she fell to her knees beside him, desperately trying to reassure herself that he might only be wounded. Alas! He was not. And, in her initial mixture of panic and grief, she was blind to her father's killers jumping down from the wagon roof, and grabbing her from behind. Whereupon, they dragged her to her feet. Suspending her between them like a spread-out deer hide waiting to be tanned!
"Mi jefe!" one of them called out: "La mujer es nuestras!* "
"Bueno!" exulted the Garduna spokesman.
He then turned to back to Crawford.
"Where are the sheep, senor? Tell us, and we release you to breed your Scottish mules Refuse? And, we kill you as well as the gitana!"
"Release her with me, and I'll tell you," the Scotsman countered.
"No! She is a heathen puta and deserves nothing less than death. Under _any_ circumstances!"
"Then, there's no reason for me to co-operate," Crawford replied: "Is there?"
"Wait!" Elena cried out: "I will show you where the sheep are."
Whereupon, she suddenly shot upwards to a height of fifty feet!
The Garduna assassins were stunned speechless. That is; till Elena lifted up each of her former captors, and positioned them over her mouth. She shook loose the one clinging for dear life to her right index finger, and he fell in. His screams of terror fading only after her swallowing of him.
The second one did no less, as she shook him loose from her left index finger.
When that was over with, she used her right hand to delicately remove a giant burlap pouch from within her immense cleavage! She then untied the strings at the top of the pouch, prior to depositing its contents (a merino ram, half a dozen ewes, and a black-and-white Scottish border collie) upon the ground.
"Are you happy, now, senores?" the half-Granadan gypsy girl demanded: "If so, I will now claim satisfaction for myself!"
Whereupon, she began a bare-footed flamenco dance that crushed every one of the other Garduna assassins. Naturally, they all tried to flee! But, Elena was too good a dancer to permit that. And, their spokesman?
She saved him for last.
"Por favor!" he whimpered: "No!!"
"Vaya con Dios..." she replied: "Bastardo!"
She not only stepped on him. She also ground his body into the dirt until even his powdered bones were invisible. She then resumed normal size, and helped Crawford and the collie regroup the sheep. And, the following spring?
They repeated this little sheep-smuggling ploy with no trouble, at all.
THE END
Giantess World
Chapter End Notes:
* "My chief! The woman is ours!"