The distant ends of the roads vanished into the darkness of the night. Rain fell in unbroken waves, its curtains washed in a lonely golden shimmer by the light of scattered lanterns. In the cracks of the cobblestones, hundreds of narrow rivulets ran towards the roadside gutters, branching again and again like the mouth of a broad river spreading across the plain before it reached the sea. Water poured from the eaves in cascades, while above them the signs of various shops creaked in the wind like rusted metal banners.

  The sky rumbled. Bluish-white flashes cast the houses into otherworldly shadows. A sky darker than the night itself was drawing closer to the city, dragging darkness over the land beneath it. The true storm had not yet arrived.

  Not a soul was on the streets. No sensible person went out in weather like this unless it was unavoidable, and at such a late hour no respectable person was likely to walk the roads. Warm light spilled from the inn’s windows into the blustery night, painting pale islands across the soaked stone. Blurred human silhouettes swayed behind the opaque glass panes, and from time to time the muffled sound of cheerful laughter broke through the roar of the rain.

  A young man stood at the counter, somewhere in his mid-twenties. His gaze was distant, heavy with sorrow. The innkeeper drew a golden drink from a barrel with careful attention, setting it before him once the foam had settled, spilling invitingly down the side of the mug.

  “Thank you.”

  The cold, rough-voiced young man wandered back to his table and disappeared into its gloom.

  He and his sibling had always sat there; it had become a habit. Close to the counter, far enough from the hearth not to freeze, but not so close as to overheat. Above their heads, bolted to the pillar, a branching candleholder cast a pleasant, wavering light. If anyone else happened to take their seats while they were away, they learned quickly upon the pair’s return that they had chosen poorly, and soon found another place to sit. Usually it was he who did the arguing, while the other made sure the dispute did not spiral out of control between him and whichever guest happened to be involved. Matters tended to unfold this way most often when a sturdier patron insisted on being right—an insistence that usually grew firmer the more empty mugs gathered on the table in question. In such cases, the innkeeper stepped in to restore the tavern’s fragile balance.

  Though the two were hardly a refined pair, they unquestionably had taste—and a talent for swift persuasion.

  Lately, however, the young man came alone and sat by himself. Several empty mugs already stood on his table, their number slowly but steadily increasing. As time passed, the inn grew louder, the mood warmer. Now and then, a guest heading for the counter paused beside the table wrapped in dim candlelight to offer a word of encouragement, then gestured invitingly towards their own company. Each time, the brooding man merely shook his head in reply.

  Only a few swallows remained in his mug. With forced gulps, he drained it and set it among the others. Then he rose and returned to the counter.

  “Pour me some of the usual rotgut as well. Not a shot—a mug.”

  “Don’t do this, Jasu,” the innkeeper said quietly. “Don’t drink yourself into the ground like this. It won’t help Thom, and it won’t help you either. You’ll only feel worse.”

  “It helps more than your shitty advice,” Jasu snapped.

  An irritated grunt answered him.

  “If I didn’t know you since you were a child, and didn’t know it’s the drink talking rather than disrespect, I’d knock some sense into you hard enough to sober you on the spot. I’ve told you before—mind your tongue. All that swearing just makes people think you’re rude and stupid.”

  Jasu accepted the parental scolding without a flicker in his expression.

  “Are you pouring,” he asked, “or throwing me out?”

  Hobb shook his head. He took one of the many bottles lined along the shelf and began filling a small wooden cup with the reddish liquor. The sharp, alcoholic fumes spread through the air, heavy and dizzying, seeping into their heads like the slow pulse of an oncoming hangover.

  Which was blown away in an instant by the cold wind that slammed through the door. The freezing gust snuffed out most of the candles and fled with a loud howl through the opposite exit towards the rear garden. In the doorway stood a vast, dark figure. As if the clouds themselves had been waiting for this moment, the landscape behind it flashed blue. A deep, thunderous rumble rolled across the sky.

  The monster had to duck to pass beneath the lintel. The ground shuddered beneath its feet. The draft suddenly slammed both doors shut, and the inn fell into complete silence. By the dim light of the few candles still burning, a massive human shape took form. Its shoulders were as broad and thick as beams. Its body—thicker than the pillars of fortress halls—was clad in battered armour, heavy furred hides, and a gray cloak. The top of its helmet nearly brushed the ceiling, while from its sides twisted horns jutted out, so chilling they looked as though they had been torn from a demon and hammered into place.

  A single cross-shaped slit ran down the front of the helm, and behind it lay a darkness deeper than the night sky itself.

  The giant advanced towards the counter like a collapsing mountainside. Those seated at the nearby tables felt the weight of its steps through their chairs. The massive, rough-edged greatsword hanging from its belt scraped along the floor with a sound like some legendary beast growling low and deep. From its right shoulder hung a shapeless sack, dragged downward by a heavy burden, its side strained outward by something hard and uneven. Its appearance suggested that no one wished to know what lay inside—lest they share the same fate as its contents. From the other shoulder, on a short strap, dangled a thick cudgel, warning against sudden impulses.

  With two bone-shaking thuds, the monster halted before the counter. It loomed over it as if a wall had been raised there, its shadow swallowing the frozen figures seated behind. The helmet turned towards the innkeeper with unreal slowness, then—when it faced him directly—stopped as though time itself had been severed.

  Hobb gathered every shred of strength he had to keep the terror from showing. Wearing a face of forced goodwill, he met the mountain’s invisible gaze.

  A sudden wave of sickness seized him. The world wavered around him, space itself seeming to stiffen and lock in place. His body refused to move, the bottle frozen in his hand. His awareness caught in the slit of the helmet, where it pulsed slowly, sinking deeper and deeper into shadow. As the outer world blurred, the flickering candlelight vanished into a thickening, vibrating haze. The endless, profound emptiness that emanated from the nothingness dwelling inside the helm drew him in, closing around him as though he had fallen into a bottomless nocturnal ocean—one where there was no knowing where the surface lay, if it existed at all.

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  A growing roar split his head. Like someone who had drunk himself to the edge of collapse, a dizzy nausea overtook him, and he felt as though the blood in his ears were heating to a boil. The monstrous figure began to shimmer. It seemed to split within itself, and at its centre a shape formed—one that took on a human outline.

  A wooden cup rolled from the counter.

  The floor rang in Hobb’s head as if a broad metal plate had been struck. Reddish liquid spilled to the floor beside the giant’s hand. He blinked rapidly. His thoughts cleared, leaving behind only a dull, numbing hum where the sensation had been. In the gentlest, calmest, most reassuring voice he could manage, he spoke.

  “—What can I get you?”

  The patrons remained seated as though carved from wood. The figure raised its heavy, armoured hand. The air itself seemed to shift aside, almost with a sound, as it moved. Without a word, it pointed to a small wine barrel.

  Jasu was not known in the area for having a particularly sharp mind, but he always did his work with diligence and honesty, and when he gave his word, it could be trusted. Everyone knew him as a reliable, decent lad, strong in the way one expects of someone his age. His simple nature and straightforward way of seeing the world, however, inevitably meant that he failed to recognize the moments when it would have been wiser to keep his mouth shut.

  Or simply chose not to recognize them.

  He was still standing at the counter, waiting for the drink that had yet to reach his hand—more than that, the half-filled cup now lay on the floor. In its place, directly before him, loomed an armoured hand as large as his head. Despite this, he opened his mouth.

  With a drawn, confrontational expression, he turned sideways towards the landslide of a figure. Both hands slipped into his pockets. There was no fear in his rasping voice—only the dull confidence and foolishness of those who pick fights in the street with half-lidded eyes and stretched-out words.

  “Hey, you lumbering brute, can you hear under that big helmet? I was standing here first. You’re supposed to be behind me in line. That’s how things work in civilized places. Though, looking at you, I’m guessing you don’t have the faintest idea what I’m talking about. Or maybe you can’t even see properly through that slit.”

  The patrons froze harder than ice. Not a single breath could be heard. The air tightened, drawn taut like a massive string.

  The helmet—if such a thing is even possible—was stunned.

  Slowly, it turned to the side. The movement was smooth and even, as though the head of a stone statue were rotating atop an unmoving body. The statue’s face settled on Jasu, and Jasu stared back—straight into the endless depth behind the cross-shaped slit.

  “Yes, I’m talking to you, you oversized heap of rust.”

  The massive hand moved. It reached towards him in a single, direct motion—straight for his head.

  “Hey, you idiot, what are you—”

  The armoured fingers closed around his throat like a vice.

  For perhaps the first time in his life, Jasu’s face twisted in genuine panic. He tried to swallow but couldn’t. Before he could do anything else—before he could even pull his hand from his pocket—his feet left the ground. A spasm seized his body. He clawed at the enormous fist, tugging it with all his strength, but it did not budge in the slightest. The spreading numbness in his limbs was so complete he could scarcely feel the pressure itself, as though he were gripping nothing at all.

  His face drained of color. Cold sweat bloomed on his brow like frost on glass. As the room spun around him, his lungs expelled what little air they held. He tried to draw breath—and failed. His eyes rolled towards the ceiling, which began to flicker, while the pounding in his ears dissolved into a distant, muffled roar.

  Then he realised he was standing.

  Standing on the floor.

  He had been standing all along.

  He became aware that there was no pain in his throat—there never had been. No one was holding him. No one had touched him at all.

  Gasping, though not from lack of air, he lifted his dazed gaze.

  The giant stood ahead of him.

  Ahead of him in line.

  For a few moments longer, the helmet stared down at him from above its stone-like shoulders. Then, without interest, it turned forward again.

  Jasu wandered back to his chair with a glassy stare, suddenly feeling bound to it by a depth of affection usually reserved for lifelong friends, and collapsed into it. The patrons gaped at him with open mouths and wide eyes, before gradually turning their attention back to the counter.

  The massive hand rose once more, pointing first to the barrel, then to a large loaf of bread lying on a broad plank, and finally to a bowl of apples and vegetables.

  Hobb hesitated, baffled.

  “So… if I understand correctly,” he said carefully, “one cup of wine, a slice of bread, and… an apple?”

  The helmet tilted—just once, from left to right—but the dissatisfaction radiating from it seemed to seize the air itself.

  “Then… a whole mug?” Hobb ventured.

  The helmet tilted again, exactly the same way, for exactly the same length of time. The room fell under a far heavier sense of threat.

  The beam that formed the figure’s shoulders shifted slightly, and the misshapen sack that had been hanging at its back swung forward, slamming onto the counter with a crash like a heap of iron ore being dumped all at once. Chairs shuddered beneath their occupants—whether from the impact or from bodies tensing at once was hard to tell.

  The mouth of the sack gaped open, staring at Hobb with dark, silent hunger.

  “Oh. Oh! Right. So those go in there,” Hobb said quickly. “I see. I see… uh… the barrel too?”

  The helmet dipped—slowly, with the weight of eternity.

  Hobb packed everything into the sack in neat order. First came the small barrel, heavy with several litres of wine. On top of it he laid the large loaf of bread, carefully wrapping it beforehand in a clean cloth of suitable size, so that no reproach could fall upon the house. Last came the fruits and vegetables, placed in one by one.

  As he worked, Hobb kept his head turned slightly aside. He had no intention of looking into the sack. He snatched his hands back from it as if something inside might bite them off at any moment. It would not have surprised anyone if the hard, knotted shape pressing against the fabric earlier had turned out to move—though not necessarily to be alive.

  When everything was packed, the two armoured hands tied the sack shut with meticulous care, forming a large, surprisingly tidy bow, before slinging it back across the figure’s wall-wide shoulders.

  The darkness behind the slit remained fixed on Hobb.

  “Hmmm… ah…” Hobb spread his arms in what he hoped was a friendly, generous gesture. “This one’s on the house.”

  The helmet tilted once more from right to left, exactly as before—yet this time the shadow it cast over Hobb felt far more ominous.

  The air shuddered as though it were a single solid mass. A sound rolled forth, so deep it seemed impossible for a human throat to produce—like mountains grinding against one another in the belly of the earth. Blue lightning tore across the windows, and the sky thundered in answer as the sound echoed from within the helmet.

  “How much?” asked the abyss.

  Hobb’s head began to ring again. Sweat broke across his brow. He lowered his gaze and began counting on his fingers—less to calculate the price than to decide how far from the truth he dared to stray, careful not to insult his guest with a sum either too small or too great.

  After a moment, he looked up at the top of the tower before him.

  “Two coppers will do, good sir,” he said kindly, drenched in sweat.

  The armoured hand slipped beneath the cloak and rummaged about with a sound like a thousand hedgehogs crossing autumn leaves. Then it struck the counter with a heavy thud.

  When it lifted, two silver coins lay where it had been.

  “Thank you kindly,” rumbled the roots of the mountains.

  A sharp ringing pierced Hobb’s ears. He closed his eyes and pressed a hand to his throbbing forehead. His mind, against his will, reached outward—grasping, searching blindly through the dark.

  …shorter than a passing thought…

  …no more than a fragment of a moment…

  …as if from beyond a distant sheet of water, and yet somehow very near…

  …from slightly lower than his own height…

  …from behind the thunder-voiced tower of armour…

  …he thought he heard a very soft, very sad sigh.

  The gigantic figure turned with a thunderous clatter, dragging its sword across the floor as it went, and strode out with steps that made the ground rumble beneath them. At the door, it carefully pinched the handle between two massive fingers and opened it gently, mindful not to let the draft slam it again and disturb the peace.

  The door closed quietly behind it.

  The tension that had been stretched to tearing point collapsed in a rush of ragged breathing.

  Jasu felt nausea surge through him, as though a cart had rolled over his skull. His face twisted, his stomach clenched—and moments later, he retched onto the floor.

  Hobb poured himself a shot from his own closely guarded liquor, set the glass down, and drank straight from the bottle.