Books by Philip Hoy
Everything happens just as you have seen it.
Shields collide, your comrade falls, your side is exposed. Only this time you rush to meet it, with all your strength you leap forward to embrace the javelin’s point. It slides past, impaling the man behind you.
Your sudden surge has pushed you ahead of your phalanx, separated you from your unit. Now your shield is wedged between the enemy’s shields. Your arm is pinned. Your entire body is exposed. Now, every blade has a killing stroke.
But you are already dead. You have nothing else to lose.
You heave forward, tossing men aside with your shield. Thrusting, slashing, hacking your way among them. Warriors fall back in fear and confusion as you wedge yourself between their shields, splitting their forces in two. There is a rallying cry from behind and what remains of your own army advances through the gap you’ve created.
Still you do not hesitate. Your sword and shield come alive in your arms, and every part of you, head, shoulder, elbow, knee, becomes a weapon. Men scatter before you, the scales of the great metal-beast shed in disarray.
Above you on the hillside flies the enemy banner, a bird of golden fire on a black background. This is now your goal. You begin to sprint up the sandy embankment. No one stands between you and the warriors now circling their commander above. Javelins fly toward you, swift as black starlings on the wind. You see their marks, know if they will embed themselves in the sand, impale your calf, or pierce your throat, and you dodge and weave among them without a scratch.
You feel an army gathering behind you now and know without turning that it is your own.
You are almost on them when the giant appears. He is as tall as two men and as wide as three, wielding a tree trunk as a club. His handlers slacken the chains attached to the iron collar around his neck and crack their whips. He rushes for you … and you see. He will swing his club just as you leap. The force will be enough to split a ship in two, but he will miss and you will be on him before he has time to swing again. In one swift, descending stroke, the tip of your blade will enter just above his collarbone, alongside his throat, and pierce downward into his heart.
He swings, you leap, and then you see another choice. Dispatch him at once or break the chains that bind him, though what comes after you cannot yet know.
CHOOSE:
(A) Kill the giant.
(B) Free the giant.
THE MISADVENTURES OF MATTHEW VAN DER BOOT is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental … no matter how many times you ask.