Skrymir showed his snags in a pleased grin. “Them punks? Haw, they wouldn’t do nothing.” He picked his teeth thoughtfully with thumb and forefinger. “Yeah, I guess you can come. The big boss, Utgardaloki, is a good guy and a friend of mine. So you won’t have no trouble. If youse’ll clear outta my glove, we can start right now.”
“What? All four spoke at once.
“Yeah. My glove, that’s what you slept in.”
The implications of this statement were so alarming that the four travellers picked up their belongings and scrambled out of the shelter with ludicrous haste — the mighty Thor included.
* * *
The rain had ceased. Ragged serpents of mist, pearly against the darker grey of the clouds, crawled over the hills. Outside, the travellers looked back at their shelter. There was no question that it was an enormous glove.
Skrymir grasped the upper edge of the opening with his left hand and thrust the right into the erstwhile dwelling. From where he stood, Shea couldn’t see whether the big glove had shrink to fit or whether it had faded out of sight and been replaced by a smaller one. At the same time he became suddenly conscious of the fact that he was wet to the skin.
Before he had a chance to think over the meaning of these facts, Thor was bellowing at him to help get the chariot loaded.
When he was sitting hunched upon the chest and swaying to the movement of the cart, Thjalfi murmured to him: “I knew Loki would get around the Hairy One. When it’s something that calls for smartness, ye can depend on Uncle Fox, I always say.”
Shea nodded silently and sneezed. He’d be lucky if he didn’t come down with a first-class cold, riding in these wet garments. The landscape was wilder and bleaker around them than even on the previous day’s journey. Ahead Skrymir tramped along, the bag on his back swaying with his strides, his sour sweat smell wafting back over the chariot.
Wet garments. Why? The rain had stopped when they emerged from that monstrous glove. There was something peculiar about the whole business of that glove. The others, including the two gods, had unhesitatingly accepted its huge size as an indication that Skrymir was even larger and more powerful than he seemed. He was undoubtedly a giant — but hardly that much of a giant. Shea supposed that although the world he was in did not respond to the natural laws of that from which he had come, there was no reason to conceive that the laws of illusion had changed. He had studied psychology enough to know something of the standard methods used by stage magicians. But others, unfamiliar both with such methods and the technique of modem thought, would not think of criticizing observation with pure logic. For that matter, they would not think of questioning the evidence of observation — “You know,” he whispered suddenly to Thjalfi, “I just wonder whether Loki is as clever as he thinks, and whether Skrymir isn’t smarter than he pretends.”
The servant of gods gave him a startled glance. “A mighty strange word is that. Why?”
“Well, didn’t you say the giants would be fighting against the gods when this big smash comes?”
“Truly I did:
High blows Heimdall.
The horn is aloft;
The ash shall shake
And the rime-giants ride
On the roads of Hell —
Leastways that’s what Völuspa says, the words of the prophetess.”
“Then isn’t Skrymir a shade too friendly with someone he’s going to fight?”
Thialfi gave a barking laugh. “Ye don’t know much about Öku-Thor to say that. This Skrymir may be big, but Red-beard has his strength belt on. He could twist that there giant right up, snip-snap.”
Shea sighed, But he tried once more. “Well, look here, did you notice that when Skrymir put his glove on, your clothes got wet all of a sudden?”
“Why, yes now that I think of it.”
“My idea is that there wasn’t any giant glove there at all. It was an illusion, a magic, to scare us. We really slept in the open without knowing it, and got soaked. But whoever magicked us did a good job, so we didn’t feel the wet till the spell was off and the big glove disappeared.”
“Maybe so. But how does it signify?”
“It signified that Skrymir didn’t blunder into us by accident. It was a put-up job.”
The rustic scratched his head in puzzlement. “Seems to me ye’re being a little mite fancy, friend Harald.” He looked around. “I wish we had Heimdall along. He can see a hundred leagues in the dark and hear the wool growing on a sheep’s back. But ’twouldn’t do to have him and Uncle Fox together. Thor’s the only one of the Æsir that can stand Uncle Fox.”
Shea shivered. “Say, friend Harald,” offered Thjalfi, “how would ye like to run a few steps to warm up?”
Shea soon learned that Thjalfi’s idea of warming up did not consist merely of dogtrotting behind the chariot, “We’ll race to yonder boulder and back to the chariot,” he said. “Be ye ready? Get set; go! Before Shea fairly got into his stride, his woollen flapping around him, Thjalfi was halfway to the boulder, gravel flying under his shoes, and clothes fluttering stiffly behind him like a flag in a gale. Shea had not covered half the distance when Thjalfi passed him, grinning, on the way back. He had always considered himself a good runner, but against this human antelope it was no contest. Wasn’t there anything in which he could hold his own against these people?
* * *
ThjaIfi helped pull him over the tail of the chariot. “Ye do a little better than most runners, friend Harald,” he said with the cheerfulness of superiority. “But I thought I’d give ye a little surprise, seeing as how maybe ye hadn’t heard about my running. But” — he lowered his voice — “don’t let Uncle Fox get ye into any contests. He’ll make a wager and collect it out of your hide. Ye got to watch him that way.”
“What’s Loki’s game, anyway?” asked Shea. “I heard Heimdall suggesting he might be on the other side at the big fight.”
Thjalfi shrugged. “That there Child of Fury gets a little mite hasty about Loki. Guess he’d turn upon the right side all right, but he’s a queer one. Always up to something, sometimes good, sometimes bad, and he won’t let anyone boss him. There’s a lay about him, the Lokasenna, ye know:
I say to the gods
And the Sons of gods
The things that whet my thoughts;
By the wells of the world
There is none with the might
To make me do his will.”
That agreed fairly well with the opinion Shea had formed of the enigmatic Uncle Fox. He would have liked to discuss the matter with Thjalfi. But he found that while he could form such concepts as delayed adolescence, superego, and sadism readily enough, he could think of no words to express them. If he wanted to be a practising psychologist in this world, he would have to invent a whole terminology for the science.
He sneezed some more. He was catching cold. His nose clogged, and his eyes ran. The temperature was going down, and an icy breeze had risen that did nothing to add to his happiness.
They lunched without stopping, as they had on the previous day. As the puddles of the thaw began to develop crystals and the chariot wheels began to crunch, Shea blew on his mittens and slapped himself. Thjalfi looked sympathetic. “Be ye really cold, friend Harald?” he said. “This is barely freezing. A few years back we had a winter so cold that when we made a fire in the open, flames froze solid. I broke off some pieces and for the rest of the winter, whenever we wanted a
fire, I used one of them pieces to light it with. Would ’a’ come in might handy this morning. My uncle Einarr traded off some as amber.”
It was told with so straight a countenance, that Shea was not quite certain he was being kidded. In this world it might happen.
The terrible afternoon finally waned. Skrymir was walking with head up now, looking around him. The giant waved towards a black spot on the side of a hill. “Hey, youse, there’s a cave,” he said. “Whatcha say we camp in there, huh?”
Thor looked around. “It is not too
dark for more of progress.”
Loki spoke up. “Not untrue, Powerful One, Yet I fear our warlock must soon freeze to an ice bone. We should have to pack him in boughs lest pieces chip off, ha-ha!”
“Oh, dote bide be,” said Shea. “I can stad it.” Perhaps he could; at least if they went on he wouldn’t have to manhandle that chest halfway up the hill.
He was overruled, but, after all, did nor have to carry the chest. When the chariot had been parked at the edge of a snowdrift, Skrymir took that bulky object under one arm and led the way up the stony slope to the cave mouth.
“Could you get us fire?” Thor asked Skrymir.
“Sure thing, buddy.” Skrymir strode down to a clump of small trees, pulled up a couple by the roots, and breaking them across his knee laid them for burning.
* * *
Shea put his head into the cave. At first he was conscious of nothing but the rocky gloom. Then he sniffed. He hadn’t been able to smell anything — not even Skrymir — for some hours, but now an odour pricked through the veil of his cold. A familiar odour — chlorine gas! What — “Hey, you,” roared Skrymir behind him. Shea jumped a foot. “Get the hell outta my way.”
Shea got. Skrvmir put his head down and whistled. At least he did what would have been called a whistle in a human being. From his lips it sounded more like an air-raid warning.
A little man about three feet tall, with a beard that made him look like a miniature Santa Claus, appeared at the mouth of the cave. He had a pointed hood, and the tail of his beard was tucked into his belt.
“Hey, you,” said Skrymir. “Let’s have some fire. Make it snappy.” He pointed to the pile of logs and brush in front of the cave mouth.
“Yes, sir,” said the dwarf. He toddled over to the pile and produced a coppery-looking bar out of his jacket. Shea watched the process with interest, but just then Loki tucked an icicle down his back, and when Shea had extracted it the fire was already burning with a hiss of damp wood.
The dwarf spoke up in a little chirping voice. “You are not planning to camp here, are you?”
“Yeah,” replied Skrymir. “Now beat it.”
“Oh, but you must not —”
“Shut up!” bellowed the giant. “We camp where we damn please.”
“Yessir. Thank you, sir. Anything else, sir?”
“Naw. Go on, beat it, before I step on you.”
The dwarf vanished into the cave. They got their belongings out and disposed themselves around the fire, which took a long time to grow. The setting sun broke through the clouds for a minute and smeared them with streaks of lurid vermilion. To Shea’s imagination, the clouds took on the form of apocalyptic monsters. Far in the distance he heard the cry of a wolf.
Thjalfi looked up suddenly, frowning. “What’s that noise?”
“What noise?” said Thor. Then he jumped up — he had been sitting with his back to the cave mouth — and spun around. “Hai, Clever One, our cave is already not untenanted!” He backed away slowly. From the depths of the cave there came a hiss like that of a steam-pipe leak, followed by a harsh, metallic cry.
“A dragon!” cried Thjalfi. A puff of yellow gas from the cave set them all coughing. A scrape of scales, a rattle of loose stones, and in the dark a pair of yellow eyes the size of dinner plates caught the reflection of the fire.
Æsir, giant, and Thjalfi shouted incoherently, grabbing for whatever might serve as a weapon.
“Here, I cad take care of hib!” cried Shea, forgetting his previous reasoning. He pulled out the revolver. As the great snakelike head came into view in the firelight, he aimed at one of the eyes and pulled the trigger.
The hammer clicked harmlessly. He tried again and again, click, click. The jaws came open with a reek of chlorine.
Harold Shea stumbled back. There was a flash of movement past his head. The butt end of a young tree, wielded by Skrymir, swished down on the beast’s head.
The eyes rolled. The head half turned towards the giant. Thor leaped in with a roaring yell, and let fly a right hook that would have demolished Joe Louis. There was a crunch of snapping bones; the fist sank right into the reptile’s face. With a scream like that of a disembowelled horse the head vanished into the cave.
Thjalfi helped Shea up. “Now maybe ye can see,” remarked the servant of gods, “why Skrymir would as lief not take chances with the Lord of the Goats.” He chuckled. “That there dragon’s going to have him a toothache next spring — if there is any spring before the Time.”
The dwarf popped out again. “Hai, Skrymir!”
“Huh?”
“I tried to warn you that a fire would bring the dragon out of hibernation. But you wouldn’t listen. Think you’re smart, don’t you? Yah! Yah! Yah!” The vest-pocket Santa Claus capered in the cave mouth for an instant, thumbing his nose with both hands. He vanished as Skrymir picked up a stone to throw.
The giant lumbered over to the cave and felt around inside.
“Never catch the little totrug now. They have burrows all through these hills,” he observed gloomily.
* * *
The evening meal was eaten in a silence made more pointed for Shea by the fact that he felt it was mostly directed at himself. He ought to have known better, he told himself bitterly.
In fact, he ought to have known better than to embark on such an expedition at all. Adventure! Romance! Bosh! As for the dream-girl whose fancied image he had once in a rash moment described to Walter Bayard, those he had seen in this miserable dump were like lady wrestlers. If he could have used the formulas to return instantly, he would.
But he could not. That was the point. The formulas didn’t exist any more, as far as he was concerned. Nothing existed but the bleak, snowbound hillside, the nauseating giant, the two Æsir and their servant regarding him with aversion. There was nothing he could do —
Whoa, Shea, steady, he remarked to himself. You’re talking yourself into a state of melancholy, which is, as Chalmers once remarked, of no philosophical or practical value. Too bad old Doc wasn’t along, to furnish a mature intellect and civilized company. The intelligent thing to do, was not to bemoan the past but to live in the present. He lacked the physical equipment to imitate Thor’s forthright approach to problems. But he could at least come somewhere near Loki’s sardonic and intelligent humour.
And speaking of intelligence, had he not already decided to make use of it in discovering the laws of this world? Laws which these people were not fitted, by their mental habit, to deduce?
He turned suddenly and asked: “Didn’t that dwarf say the fire fetched the dragon our of hibernation?”
Skrymir yawned, and spoke. “Yeah. What about it, snotty?”
“The fire’s still here. What if he, or another one comes back during the night?”
“Prob’ly eat you, and serve you right.” He cackled a laugh.
“The niggeling speaks sooth,” said Loki. “It were best to move our camp.”
The accent of contempt in the voice made Shea wince. But he went on: “We don’t have to do that, do we, sir? It’s freezing now and getting colder. If we take some of that Snow and stuff it into the cave, it seems to me the dragon would hardly come out across it.”
Loki slapped a knee. “Soundly and well said, turnip-man! Now you and Thjalfi shall do it. I perceive you are not altogether without your uses, since there has been a certain gain in wit since you joined our party. Who would have thought of stopping a dragon with snow?”
Thor grunted.
Chapter Six
WHEN SHEA AWOKE he was still sniffling, but at least his head was of normal weight. He wondered whether the chlorine he had inhaled the previous evening might not have helped the cold. Or whether the improvement were a general one, based on his determination to accept his surroundings and make the most of them.
After breakfast they set out as before, Skrymir tramping on ahead. The sky was the colour of old lead. The wind was keen, rattling the branches of the scrubby trees and whirling an occasiona
l snowflake before it. The goats slipped on patches of frozen slush, plodding uphill most of the time. The hills were all about them now, rising steadily and with more vegetation, mostly pine and spruce.
It must have been around noon—Shea could only guess at the time — when Skrymir turned and waved at the biggest mountain they had yet seen. The wind carried away the giant’s words, but Thor seemed to have understood. The goats quickened their pace towards the mountain, whose top hung in cloud.
After a good hour of climbing, Shea began to get glimpses of a shape looming from the bare crest, intermittently blotted out by the eddies of mist. When they were close enough to see it plainly, it became clearly a house, not unlike that of the bonder Sverre. But it was cruder, made of logs with the bark on, and vastly bigger — as big as a metropolitan railroad terminal.
Thjalfi said into his ear: “That will be Utgard Castle. Ye’ll need whatever mite of courage ye have here, friend Harald.” The young man’s teeth were chattering from something other than cold.
Skrymir lurched up to the door and pounded on it with his fist. He stood there for a long minute, the wind flapping his furs. A rectangular hole opened in the door. The door swung open. The chariot riders climbed down, stretching their stiff muscles as they followed their guide. The door banged shut behind them. They were in a dark vestibule like that in Sverre’s house but larger and foul with the odour of unwashed giant. A huge arm pushed the leather curtain aside, revealing through the triangular opening a view of roaring yellow flame and thronging, shouting giants.
Thjalfi murmured: “Keep your eyes open, Harald. As Thjodolf of Hvin says:
All the gateways
Ere one goes out
Thoughtfully should a man scan;
Uncertain it is
Where sits the unfriendly
Upon the bench before thee.”
Within, the place was a disorderly parody of Sverre’s. Of the same general form, with the same benches, its tables were all uneven, filthy, and littered with fragments of food. The fire in the centre hung a pall of smoke under the rafters. The dirty straw on the floor was thick about the ankles.
The Incompleat Enchanter Page 7
