To the Frostfangs we go!

Varryn replied just as quietly, keeping alert for any noise. "If we find them, we'll see if they want to join the army. Maybe offer a few of the women." Varryn laughed.

"The same thing I've offered everyone else. An end to being hunted, being forced to live a life they didn't choose. Giants walked in the North just as the Free Folk did."

"We'll just have to be sure not to piss them off then, won't we?" Varryn smirked. "We have enough fights ahead of us as it is."

Time passed, probably an hour or more by Varryn's estimate. The men with him began to grumble about whether the scouts were coming back. A couple wanted to return to the camp, and others suggested they head into the Skirling Pass in pursuit of their comrades.

"They're both dead, like as not," the man who had spoken about the giants remarked.

"Nah. Probably hunting. If I were-"

But whatever the other man was about to say was immediately cut off by the sound of running footsteps and the Bronze Maiden bursts through the pass, her clothes rragged and torn, her face bloody. She threw herself down in front of Varryn, gasping for breath, looking like she was about to collapse. Her face was very white.

"They got Toregg," she gasped, meaning the other scout. "The giants, I mean. Tore his head right off. Gods, I've never seen anything so big!"

"Maybe you should send one the cat ahead first," one man said. "The beast can smell the giants before the giants smell us."

"Speak for yerself," another man said, laughing.

But all the men began reading themselves, waiting for Varryn's further instructions as they moved slowly forward, some reluctant.

The woman knelt on the ground with one of the men, who had given her his waterskin for her to drink while he examined her wounds.

"More'n nine, I wager."

"Nah, we can take 'em."

But the men fell in with Varryn's orders while the shadowcat ranged ahead. The female scout was trailing behind with one of the other men, due to her exhaustion. They approached the mountains but Varryn knew they would have to be on their guard against wild animals as well as the giants. The mountains rose high around them. There was nothing to see beyond mountains and valleys, though up ahead Varryn thought he saw a dark spec where a cave might lie. But as one of the men was again offering to go ahead and look for sign of habitation, two dark shapes hurtled out of the mountains, snarling. Varryn's shadowcat growled in answer at the other two shadowcats, both of them with bloody jaws. They were bigger creatures than the one with Varryn.

The wildlings immediately readied their weapons but everyone knew how dangerous shadowcats could be.

Varryn's confidence, and their greater numbers inspires the wildlings. The two shadowcats leap forward, snarling. One of the men narrowly escapes a mauling by the foremost shadowcat, but it is to prove the creature's doom as the motley swords, spears and axes descend, cleaving him in two. The other shadowcat, snarling, takes a final swipe at one of the men and flees.

"Least we know what clawed the wench," one man said. "Pity about the pelt, though. I could do with a shadowskin cloak."

Then suddenly they hear a strange, unfamiliar noise, clearly made by some beast or other, though Varryn knows its neither a shadowcat nor a wolf.

The men ready themselves for trouble. The strange noise occurs again. One of the men looks anxiously at Varryn. "What's that? Don't sound like no wolf, nor no man neither. Nor a bear."

"Probably a snark or a grumpkin," another says with a nervous laugh, that turns into a yelp when another man elbows him.

"Maybe one of us should go ahead, see what it is. Could be a giant, could be your dragon," the first man said to Varryn.

But Varryn realised that the sound was definitely not a dragon's roar. Indeed, it was not really a roar at all. It was something different entirely. The closest he could think of was that it sounded a little like someone blowing a rather tuneless horn. They moved forward, slowly, the shadowcat growling in agitation. And then, as the path widened as they crossed into a valley, finally they could see the source of the noise. They saw a pair of large manlike beings, though their limbs and features had a distinctly inhuman cast to them, with wide heads and sloped shoulders. They were perhaps twice the height of a man, and broad, but seemed bigger still, mounted as they were atop gigantic hairy beasts the like of which Varryn had never seen before, creatures with great snouts and tusks. fortunately neither giants nor beasts had seen them, but beyond Varryn could just about make out the shapes of some kind of settlement.

"Grumpkins," one man said, quivering and backing away.

"You stupid, think those are mammoths," another answered. "What now? We're finished if they see us."

The group looked to Varryn, while the shadowcat paced in agitation, tail whipping slowly from side to side.

As they have just travelled through a mountain pass, there isn't really anywhere to go, except forward, even if they attempt to keep close to the mountains and circle around the giants' settlement, but they cannot avoid the risk of being spotted. He realises that he has two choices if he intends the entire group to move together. Either they must go singly or in pairs and hope to avoid detection by their small size, or else attempt to move all together.

The men paired off, of course, but made sure their weapons were to hand. They organised themselves as Varryn had commanded, before one man asked "What kind of distraction?" He glanced worriedly over at the immense figures mounted on the mammoths, clearly not rating Varryn's chances if he was forced into combat.