omething hissed unable to see anything

only armed guy in the room. The thugs both tried to pile on and bear him down under
their combined weight, but he laid them both out with one long hammer swipe. Both
men’s masks shattered as the force of the blow hurled them in opposite directions across
the chamber. They too crashed into stone walls and slid down. When no one rose, Eric
hefted his hammer and bellowed his triumph in a wordless whoop that boomed like thunder.
The part of him that had been raised by civilized people and should have been horrified at such
violence was nowhere in evidence. At that moment, he was a warrior, victorious in battle.
The next moment, he was just a man again as a new enemy approached from the narrow tunnel at the
far end of the chamber. Eric strode halfway across the space to meet this new danger, but he stopped
dead when he saw who—rather, what—emerged. It was shaped like a man, but it was enormous in both
breadth and stature. This, then, must be Jared—the giant about whom Sylvester had not actually been
exaggerating.
Eric could only stare for a second as his brain spun its wheels trying to accept the reality of what towered
over him. Not only was Jared simply taller and broader of shoulder than any man could be, he was
inhuman in other ways too. His thick hair, beard and mustache were a bright, luminous white that hung
straight and motionless in matted tangles reminiscent of icicles. His skin was blue-white, and his nose and

blinding white
ears tapered to sharp points. Tiny beads of ice dangled from those points like crystal jewelry, and billowing
clouds puffed from his mouth and nose with every breath. As the giant approached, Eric could see that the
monster’s mouth wasn’t full of teeth, but instead sported two rows of transparent cleats made of glistening
ice. Perhaps most bizarrely of all, the giant was dressed in the knee-shorts, thong sandals and tank-top
muscle shirt of a California beach bum, as if even this brisk winter climate was too warm for him.
“Hey, Jared!” Sly called down from his safe vantage high up in the wall. Chagrined realization and cold
resentment coiled in Eric’s stomach.

shapes surrounded and moved

Ignoring the words, the giant locked his eyes on Eric and splashed into the water toward him. The
water’s temperature plunged, shocking Eric out of his momentary paralysis. He planted his back foot and
stood up straight, determined not to show fear or to back down. What did he have to be afraid of? The
monster wasn’t quite twice as tall as he was. No problem.
“You’ve got a lot of nerve coming here,” Jared said to him in a voice that made Eric’s eardrums pound.
“This is my mountain now!”
The giant reached for him, and Eric struck back as best he could. Shouting in adrenaline-fueled defiance,
he knocked the giant’s hand aside with the back of one fist and brought his stolen sledgehammer down onto
the giant’s collarbone. The weapon’s wooden haft shattered like ice from the impact, and its metal head
rebounded into the shadows. The giant flinched, but he might as well have been swatting a mosquito bite for
all the damage the blow seemed to do him. The giant’s flesh wasn’t gouged or torn but chipped, and only
slightly. Annoyed, Eric threw the useless, broken-off haft of the hammer at the giant. He missed.
Growling in bestial rage, Jared surged forward in a single long stride and kicked Eric under the chin. white-hot flare
Eric danced backward seeing stars, wondering dazedly what miracle had kept his head attached. Another
blow he never even saw coming slammed into his stomach, folding him up like a rag doll. A third punch,
or maybe a kick, pulled his feet off the ground, and the wall rushed up into his back to knock the breath
out of him. He landed on a dry part of the floor and rose as high as his hands and knees before his strength
reached its limit. He was too dizzy to tell how hurt he might be. It was all he could do to lift his head to
figure out where Jared was.
The giant stood across the chamber from him on a dry stone that stuck out from the wall. As Eric fought
armed men

to regain his feet, Jared snarled in malicious good humor and stuck his hands into the water up to his wrists.
The temperature in the entire cavern plummeted now as a crunching, crackling sound radiated from the
rock where the giant crouched. Faster than the eye could follow, all the water in the room froze solid into

boomed like thunder no one rose laid them both out rushed him all at once closed in