Beagle chooses to leave unnamed the realm in which the events of Giant Bones take place; he only refers to it as the world of The Innkeeper's Song. It is a rough-and-tumble world, with people living in conditions similar to those of medieval Europe. The main character of the novella is Selsim, a tinker beset by wanderlust, who sells his way from village to village until he reaches mountains far to the south of where he started, though called the "northern" mountains by the narrator, who lives south of them.

These thickly forested mountains are inhabited by mysterious creatures who live above the snow line called the rock-targs, beasts that are humanlike but not human. The rock-targs are fearsome creatures; when they attack, people say "their faces slide right up and back, straight back, showing the whole skull beneath." Selsim's adventures among the giants begin when he is...