“Is that so hard to believe?” Kethril fumed. “That my boy has a backbone?” The innkeeper turned to face the crowd. “You all teased him so. Every day he would come home from school battered and bloodied, but he kept going back. All you did was toughen his spirit!”

Several of the young men who had earlier carried Abril on their shoulders looked abashed and scuffed their shoes in the mud, unwilling to meet the elder Fentloque’s gaze.

“Though brave he may be, and remarkably quick, neither of these two skills today did the trick. The giant died not from a piercing of marrow, instead he was poisoned by the tip of the arrow.”

Jag, who had been mouthing the Words ‘slasher and hacker’ over and over to himself, suddenly regained his focus. “By all that’s right and just, Ekhar, who cares? The giant attacked the town. Do you think it matters to anyone that the lad used poison instead of muscle to kill it?”

“Yes! Yes!” cried Kethril. “I think he showed uncommon sense. I’ve always said he was a bright one, my Abril. Not like you, Alon M’Greely, who gave him a job and snatched it away all in the same week. So he sometimes gave back the wrong change-bah! That was no reason to fire him, let alone embarrass him the way you did!”

Ekhar Lorrent nodded to himself. Of all those gathered only Jag noticed, but then he was also the only who knew the gnome well enough to guess at the gesture’s significance. He was sure now that the pounding in his head would never stop.

“But you, innkeeper Kethril, you believe in your boy. Have you filled his whole life with nothing but joy?”

Someone from the back of the crowd yelled, “What about when the lad wanted to go to Waterdeep to study at the bardic academy? I thought you were going to flay the skin off him right there in the main room of the Dancing Roc!” And everyone gathered murmured their agreement.

“Bah! It was for his own good!” Kethril snorted. “Bardic academy indeed! We Fentloques run inns, we don’t perform in them!”

“The murder is solved, I’m happy to say. I know who it was killed the giant today!” Ekhar bounced about like a squirrel with its tail caught in a bear trap.

“Oh, Ekhar!” Jag groaned. “Abril killed the giant. I’ve been telling you that since the minute you arrived!”

“The boy killed the giant, that much is true, but how and why he did it just might surprise you!”

The gnome had every eye in the crowd on him. As much as Jag wanted to tell him to close his fool mouth, he knew that at this point the citizens would demand to hear Ekhar’s wild theory. Best just to let him go, the constable thought.

“Wary was I of the giant’s foamy lip. The odd yellow froth gave me my first tip. You don’t care that the boy used poison to fell the cyclops, but the next thing I tell you may make your eyes pop. The poison he used is called yellow-root-brew. Inn cooks use but a drop to spice their stew. But if a man were to drink a cup full of this mix, he’d be dead as that giant lying still on your bricks. In order to kill such a tremendous beast, the boy would need use a gallon, at least.”

The crowd stood mesmerized by the gnome. His explanation was the best theater Minroe had seen all year. Between his excited hopping about and his rhyming cant, it seemed to be a mixture of ballet and opera. Only Jag shook his head ruefully. He prayed Ekhar wasn’t going to say something they would all regret.

“He couldn’t possibly fit that much poison on an arrow,” shouted a man from the crowd.

“Yes!” yelled a woman closer to the front. “How did he do it?”

“I’ll tell you,” the gnome continued, “but first I must pray, that you listen quite closely to all that I say. Look, if you will, at the monster’s still feet. The mud you see there will quite closely meet, upon closer inspection if you only stare, the same exact type found on Abril’s shoes there.”

Even Ekhar was taken aback by the volume of the gasp that escaped the crowd. It was true. The mud on the cyclops’s boots was a rich brown hue since it came from the dark soil of the creature’s mountain cave, very different from the tan-colored dirt found in town. And, when they looked, the same dark mud could be clearly seen on Abril’s shoes and pant cuffs.

“The boy has been spending his time in the hills, befriending the monster, bending it to his wills. He’d bring it food from his father’s own inn, to make it believe it could trust only him. But on the gift food he would liberally sprinkle, the yellow-root brew mixed with raw periwinkle. This covered the scent so the giant could smell just the food not the poison, he never could tell.”

It seemed to Jag that the crowd was closing in on Ekhar, leaning in closer and closer so that they didn’t miss a word of this explanation.

“Something I must tell you about yellow-root-brew, it remains long in your blood whatever you do. Though each time the giant ate but a wee tiny drop, he was slowly being poisoned and the boy did not stop. He fed the beast more until he was certain, just one sprinkle more would bring death’s black curtain.”

“Why?” someone shouted, though he needn’t have. Everyone was pressed so closely together that a whisper would have probably been heard by most of the crowd. “Why would Abril do this? I mean, no one here would mourn the killing of a cyclops, but why do it in such a round about way?”

“Yes,” cried Kethril, who was growing quite nervous at this sordid tale the gnome wove about his son. Actually, the tale didn’t bother him as much as the thought that it might be true. Could Abril be so cunning?

“Why, you ask? It’s quite easy to tell. To strike back at those people who made his life hell! When he fed the dumb giant he also did show, the bruises he got from his life in Minroe. Abril shared with the giant his pain and his sorrow, in hopes that the creature would beg steal or borrow, to help his new friend take revenge on his foes. Just a pawn in his plans, but that’s how it goes.

“And what buildings suffered in the giant’s attack? Why those the boy hated, if you’ll only think back. The school where he learned to suffer daily torment, had its door torn in half and it’s portico rent. Then the store where he worked till his boss kicked him out, had its roof torn right off then littered about. And his father, innkeeper of the Dancing Roe, abused the poor boy, beat him merely to shock him from going away to pursue a career as a singer of songs that fall light on the ear. For his father he saved the most horrible loss, to see his dear inn turned to rubble and dross.

“The creature crushed everything Abril did ask, and what reward did he get for this terrible task? Once the damage was done, the revenge carried through, his friend shot him dead where he lies before you. And the final insult to both giant and town, is that Abril’s the ‘hero’ who brought the beast down.

“So there you have it, my story’s complete. Abril has blood on his hands and damning mud on his feet. I know not what punishment you’ll likely mete out, but let justice be served-the truth’s been let out!”

All was silence.

Jag stared at Ekhar, then at Abril, and finally at the crowd who still stood transfixed. It was as if they were mentally chewing on the tale the gnome told. And slowly, one by one, they swallowed it-and they began to laugh.

“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard!” cried Alon M’Greely. “I can see Abril getting in a lucky shot with his bow, but weaving such an intricate plot over imagined slights? The boy’s so scatter-brained he’s lucky he remembers to put his pants on in the morning!”

The laughter rose and rose. Jag imagined he even saw the buildings of the town shaking with mirth. Although most of the town had a higher opinion of the lad’s intellect than M’Greely did, no one believed that Abril was capable of hatching such a heinous plot. No one, that is, except Ekhar Lorrent-anci Abril himself.