“But that was in ancient times,” Astrid said. “They’re still fighting over that?”
Thrym explained that for a long while there had been peace between trolls and frost giants. They had engaged in lively trade, with troll artisans selling high-gloss ceramics and other wares in exchange for fish and game provided by the frost giants. There had even been an annual root vegetable festival, where troll performers dressed as turnips and beets and acted out scenes from a frost giant’s epic poem. But then King Bergelmir, the giants’ wise and peaceful ruler, had been killed by one of his own kind, a power-hungry frost giant named Hrut the Horrible, and it had been Hrut who had plunged them again into war.
“If I am to bring peace,” Thrym said, pausing for reflection, “I must defeat Hrut in combat.” From the tremor in his voice and the furrow in his brow, Astrid could see that he feared he would be facing overwhelming odds.
As they rode toward Utgard, they saw no tracks of Godrek’s party in the snow. So it was true, Dane realized—Godrek had not passed through the troll valley before them. He had dropped back behind them, letting Dane lead him to the frost giant fortress. Dane remembered the message from the runestone:
Where death adorns a kingly throne
Ye’ll find a king as still as stone
Within him rests the blade of runes
To lead you to the serpent’s doom
When he had told Thrym of this rune clue, the giant had said it sounded like the Hall of Relics, a crypt deep within the fortress where the remains of their hero kings lay. There were legends of a sword buried within one of the bodies of the dead kings, and Dane surmised that if this was the other half of the rune sword he sought, it would bear the rest of the clues and lead them to the serpent’s treasure. Godrek had to know this since he too had seen the message on the runestone in the cave. But if this was true, why was Whitecloak letting Dane have first chance at the blade? It made no sense. Until Dane realized that Godrek knew he held the ultimate bargaining advantage. He possessed Dane’s mother. And that Dane would gladly give up the blade to get her back. Lut had said that Godrek needed a woman’s life to unlock the treasure. Perhaps this meant that Godrek would trade the life of Dane’s mother for directions to the treasure.
As all this weighed on him—the rune blade, Godrek, his mother, freeing the trolls, the impossible task of getting in and out of Utgard—they began to traverse the deep cleft in the ice cliffs, the secret entrance into the Land of the Frost Giants, when suddenly Dane began to hear things. Or thought he was hearing things. A faint whispering, sweet and soft like the voices of children. Soon it became stronger, an irresistible force beckoning him onward. His father had once told him of the Lorelei, beautiful maidens whose enticing songs lured sailors to their doom along rocky shores. But this could not be them, since they were far from the sea. “Do you hear—” He turned to see Jarl riding next to him.
“Voices again?” Jarl asked, smirking. He turned back and called out to everyone, “Dane the Addled-Brain is hearing—”
“The wind,” Dane interrupted. “I heard the wind.”
“Didn’t come from me,” Fulnir said from his perch atop Thrym.
“Not that wind. I mean—oh, forget it.” They rode on, Dane trying to convince himself it was nothing more than the wind. He knew it was important to stay calm, if only to set a good example.
Following behind Thrym, they plunged into a dark, narrow canyon framed by sheer granite walls. It thrilled him to know he was soon to tread in a land unknown to most of humankind. And again the strange whispers came, Dane at first thinking the sounds were coming from inside the crater, bouncing off the canyon walls themselves. But then, the deeper they went through the cleft in the cliffs, the clearer and louder the sounds became. Dane felt as if they were coming from inside his very own mind. It was like beautiful music, swelling and sweet, and he became spellbound by the hypnotic sound, as if lost in a waking dream. He yearned to find the source of the music, to unite with it, and onward he rode like a starving man drawn by the enticing scent of fresh-baked bread or meat sizzling on a fire. His need to reach the source of whatever was calling him became overwhelming, and he was just about to spur his horse to gallop ahead when—
“Dane!”
Jerked from his reverie, he now saw that Lut had ridden up beside him and reached out and seized the reins of Dane’s horse. “Is it the siren call you hear, son?” Lut said under his breath so as not to be overheard by the others. Dane nodded, still dazed. “It’s the rune blade calling, trying to tempt you. But you must not give in to it.”
“But how?”
“Push it from your mind. Think of those you love.”
Dane looked around at the others; no one seemed to be hearing the voices. “Why does no one else hear it?”
Lut shook his head. “You were the only one to touch it. You and Godrek. Or perhaps it calls to only those it chooses.” Dane cocked his head, yearning to hear the soft, pleasing voices again. They were like sinking into a warm, soothing bath. Lut grabbed his arm.
“No! It has power to turn men mad with greed. If you are weak—if only for a moment—it will drown your soul. You’ll forget everyone—your mother, your friends, all those dear to you will be cast aside in your lust for riches. Shut it out. Resist!”
With much effort Dane willed the voices away, as if slamming a door to lock them out. But like light seeping through a crack at the bottom, the whisperings did not vanish entirely.
“The closer we are to the blade, the more it will tempt you,” Lut warned. “But you cannot, you will not give in to it.”
Dane knew how easy it would be to open that door and let the seductive voices into his head again, and he feared he would not have the strength to resist their call. “Godrek said my father was a coward for not following the rune sword to the treasure. He said that’s why they parted ways and why he came to hate my father.”
Lut pondered this a moment. “Perhaps your father feared the sword would lead to madness…or maybe he had other reasons why he shut out its call.”
“Is this what my dream was about? Does the serpent represent the call of the rune sword that threatens to swallow me?”
Lut gave a shrug. “I know only that my buttocks have grown sore in this saddle and my throat parched in thirst and I am far from the comforts of home.”
“That doesn’t exactly answer my question, Lut.”
“Well, what do you want from a cold and tired and starving old man?” said Lut. He looked heavenward, asking the gods, “Is there no pleasing young folk these days? They think they know everything!”
At last the path emerged from the deep canyon, and Dane and his friends stopped and gasped in awe. They were now standing on the rim of a gargantuan crater, and filling the bowl of the crater was a vast frozen lake. And there, built upon an island in the center of the lake, was Utgard itself in all its startling, crystalline majesty. It was a gleaming, six-sided fortress, each side seeming a full league or more in length, and its massive ice-block walls rose so impossibly high that the ramparts disappeared into the heavenly mists above. Jarl began to say that he’d expected something bigger, but the words froze fast on his lips. Thrym said nothing, gazing upon his former home in dread.
“So that’s the giants’ fortress, is it?” Drott said, staring in wonder.
“Hope so,” Ulf said, equally transfixed. “If it’s just their outhouse, I’m going home.”
And then Dane heard another distant sound, different from the whispers in his head, coming from the island fortress. At first he thought—again—that no one else could hear it, but Jarl asked, “What is that?”
“It sounds like…cheering,” Astrid said.
“It is the freista,” Thrym said gravely. “The battle test.”
Godrek watched the troll commander strut about like a bantam rooster in front of his chieftain and lieutenants. “So it was a lie!” the commander crowed. “They made us out to be fools, Dvalin! And you the biggest fool of all!”
Godrek stood, backed by Svein One Brow, Thorfinn, and five of his men in the chieftain’s lodge hall, having cast sufficient doubt about the supposed relic that lay on the stone floor before them. The commander kicked at the piece of wood. “A sliver from Thor’s Hammer? Ha! Is it not enough that the giants destroy our village and steal our people?” he raged, pointing a finger at the chieftain, who sat looking thunderstruck. “Just when we are about to kill one of the enemy, you have him healed and released. Because they brought you this!” Again the commander kicked at the wood.
Godrek knew it was a stroke of luck that he had sent Svein One Brow ahead to spy on Dane’s party. Svein had seen the two girls in the troll forest using axes to fashion the fake relic. Svein had then followed them back to the village and seen how the worshipful trolls had fallen on their knees before it. When Svein had reported back with this news, Godrek knew the truth about it would enrage the trolls—rage he would harness for his own purposes. He let the little commander strut about until he had worked himself up into a fine lather, then calmly interjected, “The frost giant you speak of—he is the one we are tracking. He has killed many men and flees to Utgard.”
The stunned chieftain roused himself and said, “He says he goes to Utgard to forge a peace between us.”
“Another lie!” the commander barked.
The chieftain ignored the outburst and said to Godrek, “The one known as Dane the Defiant says you have taken his mother.”
“True. She is to be my wife, and he does not approve. The boy is dangerously warped and uses the frost giant as his attack dog. They both must be stopped.” The Lord of the Trolls brooded on Godrek’s words, unable to fathom how he had been so deceived by Dane the Defiant.
“It pains me,” said Godrek, “that my own kind has wrought such a foul deception upon you. Perhaps we can take revenge.”
“An alliance?” the commander said warily.
“We go to Utgard,” Godrek said, “and together we will kill many frost giants.”
In the troll forest near the village clearing, Ragnar sat trying to eat a bit of cheese and stale bread. His appetite had been meager of late, his stomach and mind tied in knots over what to do with Geldrun. She sat nearby, her back against a tree, refusing to eat the food that had been given her.
Through the trees he saw the troll soldiers marching around the village, chanting in unison, clearly preparing for war. Amazingly, Godrek’s plan had worked.
He went to where Geldrun sat and said, “You must eat.”
Her defiant eyes met his for a moment and then looked away.
“Fine! Starve for all I care!” He stalked away a few steps and stopped, his anger and frustration building. He whirled on her and hissed, “Since I was foolish enough to help you the first time, my mind has been occupied with one thing: my death poem.”
“I’d like to hear it.”
“You will, if I aid you again.”
“Are you so afraid of Godrek?”
“With good reason, lady. If he caught us, my death would not go easy. I’d be tortured to set an example. And let me tell you, Godrek’s very good at torture.”
“If we leave now, we’ll slip past him,” she said quickly, “and meet up with my son and the giant.”
“So that part about him torturing me didn’t stick.”
“With the giant on our side, we’ll be safe!”
Ragnar stood there, mind racing, guts achurn. Her horse was tied with his and the others, just a few yards away. He could take her and ride off. But then what? Every day of his life he’d fear Godrek’s vengeance. He’d have to go far away. Retire from warrior work, change his name, get a little farm somewhere, and spend the rest of his days reading books and writing poetry. It didn’t sound half bad, the more he thought of it.
“Ragnar! Now!” Shaken from his reverie, he hurried to her horse, untying it. He quickly led the mount to Geldrun and was about to lift her into the saddle, when Svein and Thorfinn came through the trees and saw them. For an instant Ragnar thought they had a chance to escape but realized the men were too close.
Ragnar gave a little grin to his mate Svein, hoping to deflect any suspicion. “We ready to move out?”
For a moment Ragnar thought he read a trace of unease in Svein’s eyes, but it passed. “Godrek says bring the horses.” Ragnar boosted Geldrun onto her roan. He, Svein, and Thorfinn mounted up and led the rest of the horses toward the troll village.
Dane knew the mission into Utgard required stealth. They would have to enter under cover of night and, quiet as mice, get in and out without attracting attention. The problem was Jarl, who usually attracted more attention than a rampaging bear in a packed mead hall. So consumed with desire to prove his courage, Jarl tended to rush thoughtlessly into dangerous situations screaming his head off. True, he was an expert bladesman, and when battling most foes Dane wanted no one else at his side. But in dealing with frost giants, Dane knew there was small margin for error. One mistake and you’d be crushed under a giant foot.
Dane announced the plan: He, Lut, Ulf, Drott, Fulnir, and Thrym would go inside. Jarl would bravely protect the rear and take command in case Dane and the others didn’t make it back.
“Protect the rear?” Jarl said with scorn. “The only rear I’m concerned with are the big frosty ones I’m going to kick.” He gave a whoop and bumped chests with Rik and Vik, who also had no intention of staying back. Neither did Astrid or William. If Dane was going, they were to go, too.
“Someone has to stay back with Kára,” Dane insisted.
“What!” Kára exploded. “When will you learn I am not a dainty flower in need of protection?” She waved her axe, and everyone scattered for fear of injury. So Dane had to take them all, despite the fact that the more people came, the more things could go wrong, especially where Jarl was concerned.
They waited until long after sundown, when a deep violet night shadow lay over the iced-over lake and the fortress itself was but a pearly silhouette. After Drott and Fulnir tied up their horses, concealing them among some ice-encrusted boulders, they all set out under cover of darkness, following Thrym on foot across the frozen lake toward the walls of Utgard. It occurred to Dane that if the gods were watching them, they were most probably roaring with laughter, for eleven puny humans and one as gentle-souled as Thrym did not stand a snowball’s chance in summer against a fortress full of frost giants.
Remarkably, though, two things were in their favor.
Utgard was so secluded, it had not been attacked in centuries. Therefore, Thrym said, the giants had grown lackadaisical about guarding their stronghold and in all probability they would post no lookouts on the ramparts. Another stroke of good fortune, Thrym explained, was their arrival during a freista. All the giants would be gathered in their colossal arena within the fortress to witness and cheer the battle test, where Hrut the Horrible, the frost giants’ warlord, took on all challengers in single combat.
The ice cracked and groaned as the party crept across the frozen lake. Just ahead of them a dark shape broke through the ice and rose to the height of a man. Everyone shrank away when they saw it was the head of a frost giant.
“Worry not,” said Thrym. “It’s quite harmless.”
Indeed, Dane saw that the face of the giant was only half formed, as if a sculptor had left the details of its nose, mouth, and eyes unfinished. The head sank back under the ice, disappearing, and Thrym explained that this was the legendary Lake of Tears, where all frost giants are born. The tears of the gods fell here, he said, creating the lake, and it was from these very tears that his race was formed. To Dane’s right, a huge, unhewn hand broke through the ice, floating there for a moment, then sinking back under, as if it belonged to a baby moving fitfully in its womb.
“I pray I won’t have to assist this birth,” Lut said.
“Right,” said Ulf. “Imagine having to burp that thing.”
With haste they continued toward the walls of Utgard, along the way glimpsing the embry
onic giants beneath the ice that, Thrym explained, would not be complete for many years.
At last they made it off the shifting ice and onto the island in the center of the lake, where Utgard stood. The colossal edifice, cut from ancient glaciers, sparkled like an infinity of sky-blue diamonds. Dwarfed by the fortress, Dane craned his neck, gazing upward in amazement at the walls that went soaring into the mist. The others too stood frozen, staring upward, unable to move or speak, in awe of the massive structure and the cheering sounds coming from within it.
“Fulny, about our new nicknames…,” Drott said, his voice quaking with fear. “Are you still Fierce and am I still Dangerous?”
“What, you want to go back to our old names?”
“No, no, I was just checking.”
Thrym, their guide and protector, trudging onward, and everyone scurried to catch up.
They crept along the wall toward the fortress gate. Moving ever closer to the rune blade, with the sound of its seductive voices surging louder in his head, Dane fought harder against it. He blocked out the rune song as best he could, the cheering sounds of the frost giants helping to drown out the call of temptation. As Lut had advised, he thought only of those he loved. His father. His friends. Astrid. And, of course, his mother, held captive in the fiendish grip of a man who cared so little for love that he would trade it for treasure. Very well, Dane thought, he too would trade—treasure for love.
CRAAAACK! The sound of ice breaking pierced the air, and Dane and his friends pressed back against the shadowed wall. The colossal front gates, three times higher than Thrym himself, opened with a groan, shattering the thin sheets of ice that had formed there. Two frost giants lumbered out, pulling a gigantic sled piled high with what looked to be smashed, dismembered frost giant body parts: heads, legs, arms, and torsos, some parts still moving with life. The giants picked up the pieces and threw them high in the air toward the lake. The smaller pieces smashed like glass on the ice; the heavy ones broke through, bobbed on the water for a few moments, and sank. One giant’s head remained floating for a while, and Dane saw its eyes pop open and see everyone hiding in the shadows. The head opened its mouth to shout an alarm, when another giant’s torso crashed down on it and both torso and head disappeared beneath the ice. When the sled was empty and their disposal work done, the giants withdrew into the fortress, pulling the doors closed behind them.
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