Free Jack, the giant-killer by Charles De Lint Page B

touched all of Faerie that night: there was a new hope in the Seelie Court—a small one, true, but a hope all the same—and she meant to free the Laird’s daughter and would too, except that if the bogans didn’t get to her, then surely the Wild Hunt would. But whether she was doomed or not, the rumour of her ran from the heart of Kinrowan to the Borderlands. It was heard by the fiaina sidhe in their solitary haunts, and by the Seelie Court and the Host alike.
    Hidden in a tree from which he could view both Manswater and Underbridge (the Rideau Canal and Lansdowne Bridge, respectively) with equal ease, Dunrobin Finn listened to the rumours, listened hard to hear if the Unseelie Court was looking for a hob skillyman as well. It wasn’t, not so that he heard, but he frowned all the same.
    “Now she’s done it,” he muttered to himself. “She won’t get five feet from whatever hidey-hole she’s found, little say recover the Laird’s daughter now—not with half the Host looking for her tonight. And the Hunt…”
    He pursed his lips and studied the sky. The night was draining quickly into morning. Too late for the Hunt to ride tonight perhaps, but it would be out tomorrow night, and then Jacky Rowan would know what it meant to be afraid.
    “And they’ll be looking for her today,” he added aloud. “Those that can abide the light of day.”
    He could see the troll who lived in Underbridge stirring, sifting through the rubbish he called his treasure. Looking for a sword, Finn thought. Looking for something with which to cut himself a piece of Jacky Rowan before he took what was left of her to Gyre the Elder.
    “Oh, Jacky Rowan. You’d better learn or steal a greatspell damn quick if you want to live out the day.”
    Finn frowned again, fingers plucking nervously at his beard. Oh, she was in trouble, deep trouble, there was no doubt about that, and he’d as much as thrown her to the wolves himself. If he’d just left well enough alone. Snatched Tom’s cap from her, maybe. Never told her about the Gruagagh, surely. Minded his own business like a good hob couldn’t.
    “And that’s the trick, isn’t it?” he said to the night.
    “To be a good hob, you’ve got to stick your nose into a place or two and play your tricks, or what are you? Not a hob, that’s for damn sure.”
    In Underbridge, the troll had found a rusty old sword and was now rubbing it on the big stone supports of the bridge. The grinding noise was loud coming across the water of the canal and it set Finn’s teeth on edge.
    And they’ll all be doing that, he thought.
    Sharpening their weapons—those that have weapons. He shivered, remembering all the sluagh he’d seen go by tonight. A troll’s stupid face, with its crooked teeth and mismatched eyes, nose like a big bird’s beak—that was nothing like the faces of the restless dead. They had a drowned look about them—pale and bloated. From across the canal, the troll’s grinding continued. Finn scurried down his tree at last, mind made up. He was looking for Jacky Rowan, so it was best he got back to it. Best he found her, before something else did.
    “And that’s one thing for rumours,” he said as he set off at a quick run, south and east. “They tell you where to go.”
    Like following the thread of one of his own hob stitcheries, he chased the threads of the rumors. They led him through Cockle Tom’s Garve, back and forth across the Manswater, then down into Crowdie Wort’s Bally, where he’d first met and then lost Jacky earlier that night. Here the rumours were too thick, the threads twisting in and out of each other, for him to locate exactly where she was.
    “But she’s here,” he said as he found a perch in a comfortable old oak tree on Killbrodie Way, which is the faerie name for Sunnyside Avenue. “And close, too. I’ll bide a bit, now won’t I, Mistress Oak, snug in your arms. Then we’ll see what the morning brings.”
    Three blocks east, the Big Man’s