A bushy, red-headed Kittim stood outside his smithy, watching the stray animals with undisguised disgust. He hardly glanced up when Jacque approached him.
"What caused all this?" asked The Toad.
"Hill trash," the smith spat.
"Hill trash?"
The Kittim nodded. "Hill trash. Oh, you might call it a giant, but for us, we calls it hill trash. See, they's giants and they's giants. This thing, it big, 'bout twice as high as you, or more, see. But it an idiot. All them hill trash kinda giants is idiots."
Jacque frowned. "You mean he can't read or write, something like that?"
"I mean it can't talk, nor make tools, nor make clothes, nor nothing. It hill trash. It sleeps where it fall when it gets tired, and it throw on some hides when it's cold, and it eat anything that smell like food. Or smell like used to be food. Food for anything. It like fresh stuff, which I guess show some sense. It really like raw stuff, which I guess don't show sense." The blacksmith shook his furry red head. His voice dropped. "It see a Kittim village like a larder. It eat sheep and ponies, which be bad, but it eat people, too. It eat some of my people." The smith idly whacked the side of smithy with his hammer. "It hill trash. We want to kill it. But them as goes after it, they don't always come back. And they don't kill it." The smithy spat.
Jacque stood silently with the smith, watching the farmers chase the animals into the shattered pens. Finally he asked, "So, your people, they'd like to get rid of this 'hill trash'?"
The smith turned to look full on Jacque. "You an itinerant giant killer? You wander around saving village from hill trash?"
Jacque had rarely heard such thick sarcasm. He had heard the Kittim were an honest lot. If they thought you were a fool or a braggart or a liar, they let you know quick enough.
"I'll admit," answered Jacque as if the question had been an honest inquiry, "I've never done such a thing. But I want to try."
"One reason be a reward? Hmm?"
"You offer a reward?" The Toad turned that over in his mind. "There is a reward I would ask."
The smith chuckled. "Ask! Ask what you like. We not paid yet. And I seen 'em big as you and bigger go off to them hills."
Jacque nodded as though the smith had given him good advice. "I hear your people are clever, poetic, forceful story tellers."
The smith's eyes narrowed; praise from the stranger made him nervous. He nodded for Jacque to continue.
"Well," said The Toad, "if I rid your village of this hill trash, will you make a ballad or poem about it for me?"
The smith laughed. "Giant-hunter, we got folk who will sing a poem about you stopping in our village for lunch. They make a song cycle about a giant killing, whether you want it or no."
"That's my price," said Jacque. "I want poetry, and I want it heroic. And I want it in writing, too. There's some one I need to send it to."
Shaking his head in disbelief, the smith laid aside the hammer and stuck out a hammy, calloused hand. "You big folks do this with the hands," he said. "Shake my hand on it, giant-thumper. You clean out the hill trash, you shall have poetry."
It never occurred to them to fool the giant. Not that they were opposed to a ruse that would rid them of their trouble. It's just that frontal assault was the only idea that ever occurred to them.
So, it wasn't, strictly speaking, their fault when Jacque had trouble getting anyone to help him dig a pit and build a corral just outside the village. They didn't understand how such a thing would kill a giant. Jacque shrugged. Doing it himself should make a better song, he thought.
The trap was simple and time tested. Jacque built a sheep pen among some rocks, traded several days labor for some sheep and goats, and put them in the pen. There was only one way into the pen, and in front of the entrance he dug a deep pit. Then he covered the hole with sticks, straw, grass and mould so it looked like the surrounding ground. His trap ready, Jacque made a club from a shaft of oak. On the end he strapped a boulder so large it was all he could do to lift and swing the club. Satisfied with this, The Toad settled in to wait for the giant to grow hungry.
It was a short wait. A couple of days later, shepherds ran into the village shouting that the hill trash was coming. Mothers snatched children off the street, and herders chased their flocks out of town, hoping the giant would be too lazy to chase them.
They needn't have worried. As soon as the creature hove into view, Jacque began shouting and waving. The giant stopped to watch. Jacque held up a wineskin full of milk and let some of the creamy liquid hiss out of the bag and down his throat. Then he held the bag over his head and waved for the giant to come and get it. Behind him, the sheep bleated in their pen.
The smith was right. The giant was an idiotic creature. Over twelve feet tall, it wore nothing but its own thick, filthy hide and hair. It had splayed feet as big as serving trays, a stink that would turn a goat's stomach, and it carried a small tree as a club.
"Come and get it," yelled Jacque. It did. Of course, the creature crashed through the sticks and straw, falling into the pit. As the monster thrashed around in the hole, Jacque snatched up his club, spun like a top to gather speed - and cracked the giant upside his head. The creature grunted and collapsed backwards. The combat was over.
Jacque had underestimated the size of the creature (and had little enthusiasm for digging pits). Even in collapse, it was propped up so that it stood almost upright. No matter, thought Jacque. 'It's not like the thing will be uncomfortable.'
The Kittim were as excited as Jacque had hoped. And they all knew they were poet enough to tell the tale of Jacque, Giant Slayer. Or Giant Trapper. Or Giant Trickster. There bandied a number of titles around, combining them and looking for rhymes. The Toad told them to work on it. And while they did, some of them should grab shovels and help him bury the thing. Many of the small, stout people grabbed tools, and soon dirt was flying into the pit.
They had earth packed up past the creature's elbows when they got an excuse to take a break - the monster woke up!
"You idiot!" shouted one of the Kittim at Jacque. "You didn't kill it. You never deal with hill trash? They tough."
"So I see," said Jacque. For the first time in his life he understood the phrase 'at a loss.' He didn't know what to do next.
He was safe enough while he thought it over. The giant, though quite noisy, could only rock and sway his head. His arms and legs were trapped under the packed earth. The Kittim, expert miners, had done an excellent job of filling the pit.
"You'll have to finish it," the Kittim said to Jacque.
"What?" This suggestion brought Jacque out of his confusion. "What? Kill it? I can't kill that thing."
"No?"
Jacque waved a hand at the struggling giant. "Look at it. It's trapped. When it could fight back and kill me, that was one thing. But this...this would make me as bad as it is, killing the helpless. No, you'll have to do it yourself."
The Kittim looked at each and then at the giant. And then at each other again.
"What's wrong?" asked Jacque.
"Well," said the Kittim who had called Jacque an idiot, "we can't. See? We can't kill it. I mean, look at it. It trapped. An open, honest fight am one thing. But this...we be bad as it. But I guess you understand that."
"I tell you what I understand," announced the red-headed blacksmith Jacque had first met. "If we don't fill the pit, that thing will break loose and we will have an honest fight on our hands. Remember? We never won those against this trash?"
Soon the dirt was flying.
Jacque smiled. He remembered. He hesitantly took the scroll, covered in tiny Kittim characters, line after line of Kittim poetry describing the victory of the Giant Trapper. Jacque stuffed it into his backpack. 'They're doing their best,' he told himself. 'Be nice.'
He thanked the smith and the other Kittim who stood around to bid him good-bye. As he shook hands all around, he looked over their heads to the rocks where he had dug his giant trap. One of the Kittim women, bushy and bearded as any husband in the village, drug a load of scraps to the giant. Chained at the neck and ankle, the creature growled and hooted happily at the woman's approach. Living off the village's garbage was a much easier life than hunting in the mountains; table scraps never ran away or fought back.
Jacque smiled and shook a final stumpy hand. With a wave to his well-wishers, some of the them singing their Giant-Beater songs, The Toad strode down the road from the village.
'That scroll will never see public eye,' he thought. Providing the Kittim village with a garbage disposal was not the tale of heroism he wished to lay before his unknown liberator.