To my right, Rollar surged forward on his direbear, the usually huge animal looking like a puppy when compared to the Jotunn. But as big as the Frost Giants were, blasts of thunder from Rollar’s enchanted war hammer would knock them off their feet. Mur was sprinting along ahead, propelled by a raging lust for vengeance against the warriors who had killed his brothers and his friends. He smashed into the leading Jotunn, engaging two of them simultaneously with his huge axe, hacking and slashing with a manic fury and beating them back with ease.
Fang roared and launched himself into a leap at the nearest giant. My zombie lizard may have been a little smaller than the Frost Giants, but his weight and speed contributed to our tremendous momentum. I lashed the end of my kusarigama chain into the Jotunn’s chest, and the full force of 50 skeletons hitting him in one concentrated point hurled him off his feet, crushing his chest in the process and sending him flying through the air.
He landed on his back. A second later, Fang and I landed on top of him. Without delay, Fang tore the giant’s throat out with his jaws before charging onward toward the castle gates, leaving the huge blood-spurting corpse jerking on the ground.
With that, I had killed my first Frost Giant.
The defenders at the castle had now realized that they had no option but to fight, so they were racing down off the battlements to mount some sort of defense against my undead army. The Jotunn in action were a sight to behold. They fought with precision and fury, even though their coordination was off and their reflexes were slower than if they’d been sober.
One particularly huge Jotunn was storming through, sweeping his stone club in massive arcs, roaring as he smashed a path through the swarming undead. With each scooping blow of his club, he sent dozens of skeletons and zombies flying upward and outward in all directions.
I needed to take this son of a bitch down immediately, but there were too many undead swarming him. Even Fang couldn’t find room to attack him.
But I could.
I jumped off Fang, leaving him to his own violent pursuits—he always had a great time in battles, the rascal. I strode through the chaos of warring troops, calmly dodging, ducking under, or jumping over wild swings of Jotunn clubs and axes. If a single enemy weapon had connected, it would have popped my whole body like a ripe pumpkin. I tucked my kusarigama into its sheath on my back; my Plague Fists would be a more suitable weapon to use on this Frost Giant. Once I’d kicked his ass, I would stab Grave Oath through his eyeball. Sucking out a few Frost Giant souls would give me a generous skill boost, I figured.
I sucked the power of old Death up through the ground, and it turned my fists from their usual flesh tone to an eerie gray. There was plenty of Death power for me to suck in here—many skeletons of long-dead Frost Giants, as well as tens of thousands of human bodies, the people the Jotunn had eaten over millennia.
My fists pulsing with Plague power, I jumped over one of my downed zombie barbarians, his form turned into a grisly, almost unrecognizable lump of pulverized flesh.
“Hey, asshole!” I yelled at the giant. “Down here! You think you have what it takes to tangle with a god? Bring it on, you ugly motherfucker.”
The Frost Giant roared and brought his club down in a furious blow. I rolled to the side, easily dodging the powerful but clumsy attack. The giant’s club smashed a grave-sized crater in the stone floor next to me. I came up from the roll smoothly and sent a right hook into the side of the Jotunn’s knee, which was just higher than my head. Now, even a punch from the strongest man in the world landing on one of these Frost Giants would have felt scarcely more painful than a flea bite to them. But this was no ordinary punch. This was a blow imbued with the power of ancient Death and the necrotic magic of decaying corpses. My fist smashed the giant’s knee, pulverizing the bones and ripping out the tendons, all while spreading crippling black rot through his flesh. The force of it not only demolished his knee but also sent him crashing to the ground.
To his credit, he stood after a few seconds, breathing hard and leaning on his club. He was trying to keep his weight off his ruined leg, which was quickly turning black and rotting. He glared down at me with a new sense of grudging respect in his eyes, but he was still intent on swatting me like a pesky fly.
Standing on one leg, he aimed another swing at me, but I had other plans, including a plan for a much bolder and more devastating attack. I jumped over the huge club as it whistled through the air and grabbed onto his forearm as it passed me. His traveling forearm became a kind of ladder that I clambered up with monkey-like speed. Before he could swat me off him, I aimed a sharp jab at a place I knew would do some crazy damage.
Yes, I punched a giant in the dick.
The blow must have been the equivalent of a sledgehammer swung by the world’s strongest Jotunn into your balls. I somersaulted backward as soon as the punch connected.
He roared and crumpled to the ground. Then this huge, ferocious Frost Giant curled up into a ball and started crying like a little girl as the Plague rot consumed his genitals. I considered punching him in the head to finish him off, now that he was lying on
