During their training exercises, Garrick's platoon is attacked by giants.  Armed only with rubber bullets and bayonets, the Tamarian soldiers defend themselves on a hill in Hungry Valley named Cutthroat Pass.

    Breathless and teetering on the brink of sheer terror, Garrick’s platoon reached the northern summit of Cutthroat Pass.  The giants running in pursuit were nearly within range of their atlatl-propelled javelins, slings and crossbows, and the rage belching from their voices matched the violent war paint slathered upon their faces.

    Garrick rested his hands on the strong shoulders of his sergeants.  “Cannons on flanks,” he began, gasping for breath.  “Keep them in front of us!”  He pointed directly ahead and inhaled quickly.  “Wedge formation . . . Hold fire until my order . . .” He breathed while glancing at the giants lumbering uphill.  “Aim for faces . . . Make them fall backward . . . When they’re down, we charge!”  Garrick turned toward his men.  “Fix bayonets, boys!  Get down!  Get down!”  Then, to a mortar crew he yelled: “Red flare!”

    Volcanic rocks whistled overhead.  Javelin shafts, driven hard toward their targets, whispered through the clear, cold air.  Crouching behind the crest of the hill, Garrick’s platoon remained safe while the giants hurled their missile weapons.  Success in defending against giants involved keeping them far enough away so that their muscle-powered projectiles could not inflict harm.  Killing them in hand-to-hand combat, however, required getting very close, where their great strength gave them a serious advantage.

    Some of the attacking humanoids stood at nearly twice Garrick’s height and weighed more than 600 pounds.  Armored in leather and banded steel, they would not be seriously injured by the rubber bullets carried by Tamarian warriors practicing their battle craft.  But their broad, flat faces remained unprotected, as giants thought it unmanly to cover their heads in combat.  Instead, they smeared themselves in ochre and blood war paint during violent, pre battle rituals.

    Garrick intended to use this practice against them.  “Steady, men!” he called as the giants approached.  Lying on the sharp gravel, Garrick pulled back the bolt action of his rifle and lined up the biggest attacker in his sights.  He had only six rounds to fire.

    Three ranks containing ten humanoids stretched across a line measuring nearly forty feet in breadth.  They stopped roughly ten yards from the summit of Cutthroat Pass, then brought their long pikes down.  This formation presented a wicked array of sharp iron against their adversaries, and giants were rightfully feared when lined up in a phalanx such as this one.

    A long, silent pause ensued.  Huge chests heaved in the thin air.  Strong muscles flexed in eager anticipation.  Large, yellowed and blackened teeth set forward in their protruding lower jaws raised the giant’s upper lips into a perpetual, reptilian snarl.  Human bones hung from sinews tied around their necks and hips.  Matted and dirty fur adorned their powerful shoulders, and had it not been for the wind, the stench of their unwashed bodies would have invoked nausea among Garrick’s men.

    “You!” one of the giants called in broken Tamarian.  “Slaves now!”

    Garrick smirked and couldn’t resist a mocking reply.  “You!” he taunted.  “Die now!”  Then he turned to his men and yelled: “Fire!”

    The thunder of thirty rifles and crew-serviced, multi barrel cannons obliterated all other sounds.  Rubber bullet impacts rippled through the giant’s ranks, shattering facial bones, destroying eyesight and forcing the huge humanoids to drop their weapons and shield their faces.  Grenades sailed through the air, erupting in ear-shattering noise and thick, chalky smoke.  Giants tumbled backward, into their second rank, coughing, wheezing and screaming in pain.

    “Forward!” Garrick cried, ordering his men out of their protected firing positions and downslope at a disciplined, deliberate pace.  The four soldiers manning multi barreled cannons turned their attention to guarding the platoon’s flanks and stopped shooting.  Near point blank range, Garrick gave another order to fire.  Then into the smoky confusion, he sent his men, armed only with their bayonets, to battle stricken giants.

    Slashing aside a lowered pike, the young Tamarian commander led the attack downhill.  He thrust his long rifle forward, sending its sharp bayonet blade deep into the neck of a kneeling, blinded monster who had, only a few moments earlier, envisioned these soldiers an easy kill.  Pulling backward with ruthless brutality, Garrick cut through the giant’s neck, slammed the butt end of his rifle into the giant’s head as it fell, then kicked it hard with a booted foot to clear it out of the way.

    Swirling smoke and the confusion of combat enveloped him.  Garrick sensed his platoon’s attack stall as they reached the second layer of pike points, and heard the tormented cries of his own men suffering the ferocity of the giants’ counterattack.  From his right, he felt the fury of a giant’s thrust slam against his armored chest, knocking him so hard he fell backward and smacked his helmeted head against the ground. 

    Garrick found he couldn’t breathe.  Panicked and vulnerable, he rolled away from a strong pike thrust, yet maintained the presence of mind to fire two more shots directly into the mouth and eye of the giant trying to kill him.  As it tumbled backward, the young Tamarian staggered to his feet again.  Then a wounded soldier fell into his right shoulder, pushing Garrick forward to the point where a pike very nearly found its mark on his face.

    Fighting fear and reacting in desperate self-defense, Garrick jammed his bayonet tip upward, deflecting the blow that otherwise would have killed him.  His rifle discharged, but its rubber bullet sailed harmlessly into the afternoon sky.  Cursing and slashing back and forth, Garrick knocked pike shafts aside as he staggered downhill in deep gravel, until the broad figure of a giant appeared directly in front of him.  Garrick jammed his bayonet into the giant’s left, inner thigh and felt a spray of warm blood wash across his neck.

    The giant screamed, pounded a mighty fist onto Garrick’s helmeted head and lashed at his face in violent fury.  The monster beat Garrick with such force the boy rolled and reeled under the punishment of many blows.  He struggled against disorientation, willed his body back under control and kept fighting, grim and determined.  Talismans rattled in rhythm to grunts and groans as Garrick repeatedly jammed his bayonet into the giant’s belly, across its arms and into its chest.  He blocked so many hits with his rifle he felt sure it would bend, but the giant kept on fighting and Garrick refused to give in.

    An incredibly strong hand grabbed his limbs and tore at his flesh, but could not seize him because Garrick fought back with equal savagery.  Enraged, the burly creature thrashed the young commander with a broken pike shaft that bounced off Garrick’s tough armor, his helmet and flesh, but no inflicted suffering persuaded the determined Tamarian soldier to yield.

    Garrick’s own hands soon became slick with sticky blood and the rifle grip felt slippery, but he attacked relentlessly until his bayonet found and severed a major artery.  Only then did the massive humanoid finally weaken until it offered no more resistance.  Then, grunting for all he was worth, the boy shoved the dying monster downhill.

    At that moment, Garrick heard a sword ring from its sheath and saw the flash of bright steel on the flank, three positions over to his right.  Methodically working the bolt action of his big rifle, Garrick lined up the right ear of the blade-wielding humanoid and sent the last of his rubber bullets into its brain through that orifice.

    Using his bloody rifle as a kind of shield while he scrambled beneath a row of pikes, Garrick reached for the sword.  He discarded his rifle and picked up the blade just in time to use it defensively, crouching beneath the weapon and deflecting a blow that otherwise would have impaled him.  An unseen, bone-crunching thrust slammed into his armored chest on the left side, but a falling Tamarian soldier took the full brunt of the follow-through attack, trading one life for another.

    Garrick groaned in pain and disorientation.  Screams and shouts, angry curses and the clash of metal surrounded him.  Something primeval drove him onward, an inner strength that burst from deep within his soul.  Sharp steel carved the wooden pike shaft as Garrick stood and forced the enemy’s weapon over his head.  In a brutal, two-handed motion, he swung the big blade into a leftward arc that slashed across the shoulder of the giant now on the right flank, and buried its entire breadth deep into flesh like the wedge of a sharp maul splitting into a soft, pine block.  The huge creature roared in agony, dropping its pike.  With a fierce grunt Garrick thrust the sword between the giant’s belt and armored vest, then corkscrewed the weapon into his adversary’s body until its hilt met the giant’s belly and he ran the powerful humanoid back into the giants’ third rank.

    Garrick yanked the weapon out of its grisly sheath and spun around, twirling the blade over his head with such force he clipped the left arm off of another giant and still maintained enough momentum to slam the sword into its neck on his next rotation.  Cutting toward the right, he hacked into the giants’ third rank, then thrashed left and mercilessly worked his way between the two rows.

    Lacking the skill of an expert swordsman, Garrick’s youthful strength and the ferocity of his attack nonetheless turned the tide of battle.  The big blade sang as it sliced through the air, cutting every spear shaft recklessly shifted to counter it.  Whenever the sword slammed into giant flesh, it hacked hunks of bloody muscle and sinew from bone.  Within moments, all Garrick needed to do was walk downhill swinging the heavy weapon around his head for the nearby giants to discard their spears and run.

    Garrick felt a crossbow bolt smack hard into his armored chest.  He heard someone yell at him to get down, so he dropped into a crouch as the giants fled.  Several of the big humanoids paused about ten yards away and picked up rocks to hurl, but their efforts were quickly thwarted by the crew-served multi barrel cannon.  It wickedly spat rubber bullets in the platoon’s defense until the big humanoids turned to run again.

    Utterly winded, dizzy and suffering in pain, Garrick forced himself to scurry leftward, out of the way of his cannon, where nausea overcame him and he vomited repeatedly.  Embarrassed, but realizing that the enemy was in full retreat, he put down the sword, wiped his mouth and evaluated the condition of his platoon.  “Don’t let them get away!” he screamed, far weaker than he would have liked to have sounded.  Looking for Sergeant Vidders, Garrick yelled: “Rockets!  Pin them down!”

    Had any surviving giants managed to regroup at the bottom of the hill, the Tamarians would have lost their significant terrain advantage.  Garrick didn’t want to be stuck on top of Cutthroat Pass at nightfall, waiting to be either attacked or rescued in the event that a friendly set of eyes had actually seen his unit fire the red flare.

    Rocket contrails whisked across the sky.  Sergeant Ringer led a squad of men downhill to dispatch the giants knocked down by rocket fire while Sergeant Vidders secured the hilltop.  The brief engagement proved deadly, as Garrick’s platoon suffered seven slain, and five other soldiers were rendered unfit for combat with blunt trauma and puncture wounds.  Although the Tamarians showed no quarter to the giants they caught, nearly a dozen of them got away.

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