Giants Read Online Free PDF Page A

cedar-topped hill. He shouted and waved until they jogged toward him.
    It was Eber and Nestor, the latter a tall groom with a red band around his head. “You’re late,” Nestor said.
    “Where did everyone go?” Joash asked.
    “To the birch tree,” Nestor said. “We’re supposed to bring water. Oh, and make sure you keep Harn out of danger, especially from attacking sabertooths. Those are direct orders from Lord Uriah.”
    “Why would he order that?” Joash asked.
    “A Kenaz charioteer told us a new pride of sabertooths was spotted prowling around the cooking-wagons.”
    “ More new sabertooths,” Joash said.
    “What’s that mean?”
    Joash told them about the sabertooths, the marsh and the black stallion.
    “And you think this is another new pride?” Nestor asked.
    “I’ll tell you if I’m going blind,” Joash said.
    Nestor stroked his beak of a nose. “There’s nothing we can do about it now. You can tell Herrek later. Ready? Let’s go.”
    Big Eber lifted two water-skins. Nestor slung one over his shoulder and gave the lightest to Joash. They followed chariot-wheel tracks, avoided thistle patches, and kept a sharp lookout for sabertooths. They came across a lone set of chariot tracks. The grass-crushed lines headed north instead of east with the others.
    “Who headed north?” Nestor asked.
    Eber shifted his water-pole. “Are we stopping?”
    Nestor nodded, and they crouched in the shade of thorn bushes.
    “I wish we would have come during winter,” Joash said, as he wiped his sweaty brow.
    Nestor chuckled. “My brother came with Herrek ten years ago. The steppes howled with blizzards then.”
    Joash studied movement along the eastern horizon, the direction they were traveling. A strange cry came from there.
    “Are those hyenas?” Nestor asked. His eyesight was poor.
    “They slink like them,” Joash said.
    “I hate hyenas,” Eber said ponderously.
    Joash didn’t know of anybody who loved them.
    ***
    Old Three-Paws the sabertooth bitterly hated hyenas.
    The hatred had started long ago. He’d been a cub then, barely able to eat solid food. His mother’s mouth had become swollen from giant porcupine quills. She’d wasted away, and had finally lain down, as the pride had padded away to hunt mammoths. Sensing her weakness, hyenas had come in their howling pack. As a cub, Old Three Paws had squeezed into an abandoned jackal hole and had snapped and clawed at the hyenas who had tried to worm in after him. The nightmare still haunted his sleep.
    A pack of hyenas prowled in the reeds, watching him eat the stallion. Three-Paws roared, spittle flying from his bloody mouth.
    Although past his prime, Three-Paws was still the pride leader and grotesquely powerful, over nine-hundred pounds in weight. Bad-tempered and mean, his long-ago wounding by a two-legs fueled his constant rages. For all his cruelty, however, Three-Paws kept the pride safe from foreign sabertooths. He also had a fanatical loathing of any beast that came near the sacred cubbing den.
    A new sound filled the clearing: a blistering roar. The sabertooths looked up in alarm while the hyenas fled with their tails between their legs. In the reeds moved a creature that dwarfed the sabertooths. The creature roared again.
    Old Three-Paws cowered, his ears laid flat against his head. The god-creature that had driven them here sounded angry.
    One by one, the sabertooths slunk on their bellies toward the god-creature. Three-Paws hesitated. It enraged him that the god-creature wanted him to leave meat. He’d fought the god-creature a week ago and had lost. Now, he must obey, even as he’d obeyed the god-creature’s orders to leave the cubbing den and come here. Three-Paws finally slunk on his belly and licked the god-creature’s snout in submission. He endured the harsh snarls and the buffets to his head.
    Attack the two-legs now, the god-creature ordered. Obey .
    Three-Paws and his pride hurried away. Three-Paws dared look back, and saw