The Druid Queen - Douglas Niles [59]
"Charge!" Thurgol bellowed, pushing through the last screen of brush to emerge onto the coastal field. All around him, the giant-kin came smashing out of the forest, sounding for all the world like blinded bulls stumbling through a tangled maze of fencework. Their own bellows joined the cries of their chieftain, and the firbolgs lunged across the field toward the gaping humans defending Codscove's shantytown.
A few of these had bows and raised the weapons, casting desultory arrows into the onrushing rank of giants. Thurgol seized one of the boulders from his pouch and hurled it on the run, cursing as it sailed over an archer's head. A dozen other rocks missed the same target, but the one that hit proved sufficient. The bowman dropped like a felled tree, blood flowing from a gaping wound on his skull.
The other archers met similar fates as the firbolgs rushed closer. Thurgol raised his club, the old battle rage once again seizing him in its bloodthirsty grip. He cursed as the few humans before him turned away and vanished into the maze of shacks and sheds. Their cowardice made sense; these were the men, after all, who wouldn't join their comrades in rallying to the sound of fighting, but the disappearance of his quarry enraged Thurgol beyond all his previous fury.
He smashed his club through the roof of a ramshackle building, crudely pleased as the structure splintered into pieces from the force of the blow. Stepping through the shattered remains, he saw a human swordsman darting from the wreckage toward another, more sturdy building. Thurgol caught him in two quick bounds, dropping the man with a crushing blow that almost knocked the wretch's head from his shoulders.
All around him, the firbolgs shouted in triumph, wading into the motley buildings, chasing out and killing the few humans they found there. The giant-kin began to smash the shacks with clubs, fists, and feet, until very little of the shantytown remained.
The sturdy building that had originally attracted Thurgol's victim proved to be an exception. It was some kind of fish warehouse, judging from the smell, but it benefitted from far sturdier construction than the other buildings they had come across. Now a number of men had barricaded themselves inside, jabbing through cracks in the walls with sharp spears at any firbolg who dared approach.
One of the giant-kin near Thurgol grunted in deep, sudden pain. Stumbling to his knees and cursing, the firbolg pulled an arrow from his shoulder.
"Up there!" cackled Garisa, pointing a bony finger at the archer, who tried to duck out of sight on the roof of the fish warehouse. A barrage of rocks followed him into his hiding place, with what effect the firbolgs couldn't tell. No more arrows came down from the roof, however.
"Smash down the door!" shouted Thurgol as battle-crazed giants teemed around him, probing and smashing through the ruined shantytown, shaking fists and clubs, throwing stones, and bellowing savagely at the tightly secured warehouse.
A pair of firbolgs lunged at the door, carrying a heavy timber between them. The foot of the beam crunched into the solid portal, creaking the barrier on its hinges but failing to bash it open. Immediately a long spear snaked from a crack beside the entrance, its barbed head driving deep into the flank of one of the lumbering attackers. The firbolg cried out loudly in pain, stumbling away from the door in panic. His companion, left holding the heavy timber by himself, dropped the beam and hastened after the wounded giant-kin.
"All of you, attack!" shouted Thurgol, his own fury compelling him to focus on this stubbornly defended building. Firbolgs surged against the square structure from all sides, smashing against the walls, crashing makeshift battering rams into the two doors. They smashed the shutters over the place's windows, but these apertures proved too small for firbolg bodies. Instead, they opened the attackers up to murderously accurate short-range bow fire from within the darkened warehouse. The giants, on the