The Burning Wharf

"O Betrayer!"

"Oh, it was a fine day to be wed and a sorry day for giants. For what the invader had never said was that this was the thousand years, and that these were the times when everything changes, when everything sits balanced on the edge of the sword. The giant knew that the woman he bore away could give him many children and it would mean the future for his race. Or else he would be the last of the giants, and fade away a muttering old man."

In the kitchen before the wedding was to take place the mother Mrrta helped her daughter prepare her cake. It was long and thick and fat, the outside of it glazed with summer honey and baked brown and hard, and it was the tradition that this cake be shared among the village whenever a wedding of consequence occurred
....
Now the naked belly of the giant began to swell and churn from the efforts of the young deerherders within--now it distended as they arched and prodded the inner linings with feet and heads and elbow--now the giant groaned and pressed his four fingered hands to contain this inner enemy. A bump appeared, poked between the fingers and Sateen gasped in misery as yellow bile burst away from the point of a sharpened knife, the very knife which Anika and her mother had baked whole within the wedding cake that morning.

"Oh, betrayer," the giant screamed, his last scream. And he dropped to his knees as Snorri ripped the blade through and opened his gut to the air. 'Your vow."