by Nancy Farmer
“I ran across a nest of baby dragons on the other route. I figure they’ve grown up by now.” Olaf drank some water and handed the skin to Jack. “I had to carry Thorgil out of the meadow and then go back for you. It was almost too much for me. Whew! I’m not as young as I was.”
Jack wanted to lie down, but it was much more rewarding to sit up and irritate Thorgil. He moved his head from side to side, to see if the dizziness was still there. It was. “What were those leaves in the meadow?”
“Sundews. They trap and eat bugs,” said Olaf.
“Plants eat things?”
“Sundews do. Hey, that sounded like poetry. Maybe I’ll turn into a skald yet. In our world sundews are tiny, but in Jotunheim…”
“I know. Everything’s nastier,” said Jack.
“I think we should spend a day here. Give us time to recover. I saw a place in the rocks that should be easy to defend.” Olaf got up and began to gather firewood.
“The thrall should do the menial chores,” Thorgil called. Olaf ignored her. Jack studied the trees surrounding the field. They were enormous firs towering up and up, with deep green needles and trunks so dark that they were almost black. It went without saying that the shade beneath them was equally gloomy. I wonder what lives in there, Jack thought. He heard the same odd murmuring—almost whispering—he’d noticed on the ship. He strained his ears to make out the sound. Or was it voices?
Jack got up and moved closer to Olaf.
“Don’t leave Thorgil alone,” said the giant. “She’s more helpless than you.”
“I am not! ” shouted Thorgil.
After a while Olaf carried her to a campsite he’d selected in the rocks. It was a shallow cave the giant had explored carefully, and once inside you were hidden from the outside world. The entrance was concealed by a fallen tree. Olaf struck sparks with a piece of quartz and his knife and started a small fire. They ate dried fish and bread you had to gnaw at like a rat. Jack’s jaw ached by the time he was finished.
Thorgil revived considerably with the food. She was back to her old habit of ordering Jack around until Olaf told her to stop. “We’re on a quest. All of us are equal.”
“Including that witch’s familiar?” she sneered, pointing at Bold Heart.
“I don’t know what role the crow is to play, but Rune thought he was important. That’s enough for me.” The giant stretched out his legs and tried to get comfortable. The roof of the cave was so low, he couldn’t stand up, though it was more than high enough for Jack and Thorgil. Because it was midsummer, darkness was late in coming and would not last long.
Perhaps that’s good, thought Jack. Who knows what comes out in the middle of the night? He thought of wolves and bears, then of stranger creatures he’d heard about in Father’s tales: cockatrices, manticores, and dragons. How big was a baby dragon? How big was its mother? “We’ve started badly, haven’t we?” he said to Olaf.
“Quests always have their ups and downs,” rumbled the giant. “The point is never to give up, even if you’re falling off a cliff. You never know what might happen on the way to the bottom.”
“Or you could die heroically and go to Valhalla,” added Thorgil.
“You’re always talking about dying,” said Jack. “What’s wrong with living? Anyhow, from what Rune says, shield maidens don’t have a great time in Valhalla. They just wait on tables for the men.”
“You take that back!” shouted Thorgil. “That’s not true! Valkyries are beloved of Odin!”
“Seems to me they’re just glorified servants.”
Thorgil screamed and launched herself at him. She was weak and so was Jack. They ended up panting for breath and draped over each other on the ground. “That’s the most pathetic fight I’ve ever seen,” commented Olaf.
They went to bed before sunset. All three of them had knives at the ready, and Olaf stretched a rope across the entrance to the cave, to trip unexpected visitors. Jack woke up once in the brief darkness. Whisper…whisper…whisper went the trees outside, though there was no wind.
“Ahhh! It’s a fine day for adventure!” said Olaf, stepping out of the cave. “I smell ice.” Jack crawled out and sniffed the air. It was clean and fresh and invigorating. Bold Heart chased a black squirrel out of a tree. It fled round and round the trunk with the crow nipping at its tail until it disappeared into a hole. Bold Heart fluffed out his feathers and warbled.
“You’re right. It’s that kind of morning,” agreed Jack. “Where’s Thorgil?”
The shield maiden was still curled up by the fire. She glared at both Olaf and Jack and took her time about rising. “We’ll look for food,” suggested Olaf. “You can build up the fire.” He shouldered his bow and arrows and strode off with Jack in his wake. Jack was glad to get away from the sullen girl. If she called him a thrall one more time, there was going to be serious violence.
The forest looked cheerful in the early sunlight. Beams of light fell through the trees and picked out golden-flowered moss, purple violets, and spotted pink orchids. There were many other plants Jack couldn’t identify and large butterflies— really large butterflies—fluttering from blossom to blossom. “Are any of these, um, dangerous?” Jack asked.
“You can never relax here, but I’ve found this forest fairly safe,” replied Olaf. “This is a protected valley and warmer than most places in Jotunheim. Beyond we’ll have rock and ice, so we should enjoy ourselves while we can.”
They came to a tangle of fallen logs with thick undergrowth filling the gaps. Suddenly, something gave a shrill whining cry followed by puk-puk-puk and a scurrying noise. Jack almost ran into a tree, he was so startled. “You hear that?” whispered Olaf. “That’s a grouse. These woods are full of them.”
A grouse, thought Jack, trying to calm his pounding heart. Only a bird. No bigger than a chicken. Of course, that was a Jotunheim chicken, he realized a moment later. The grouse flew up with a loud whirring sound. It was three feet long and had a wingspan like a bad dream. Olaf brought it down with an arrow.
The giant slung it over Jack’s shoulder and tramped on to find more. The grouse weighed as much as a lamb. Its claws got hooked under the slave collar and dug into Jack’s neck, but he didn’t dare stop. Olaf was going ahead at a great rate, and the boy decided a few scratches were better than being left behind.
He saw giant mushrooms growing up the side of a tree. They were so white, they glowed, and he saw one of the liver-spotted slugs feeding on them. Another grouse exploded from the undergrowth, and Olaf brought it down. “That’s probably enough,” he grunted, heaving the bird to his own shoulder. “I’ll eat one, and you and Thorgil can have the other. Come on. I’ll show you something interesting.”
They went uphill to a high cliff where the trees broke off and bare rock lay below. Jack saw a huge U-shaped valley with a river meandering along the bottom. At one point, just below the cliff, a deadfall of trees had formed a kind of dam and the water spread out into smaller rivulets before breaking through on the other side. An elk—one of the magnificent animals with giant horns—came out of the deadfall and trotted upstream.
“There’s a hollow inside,” explained Olaf. “The elk use it to hide when they come down to browse on moss. We’ll use it tomorrow before we follow the river north.” The rocks in the valley were dark blue and dotted with white patches of snow. At the far end was the great ice mountain.
Hide from what? Jack thought. The land was so barren and forbidding, it seemed they could see an enemy for miles before there would be any danger.
“Let’s rest awhile,” said Olaf, and Jack was glad to lay down the grouse. “I’m unusually tired,” the giant admitted. “Jotunheim is always hostile to humans, and perhaps that’s what I feel. But it’s a little worrying.”
Olaf tired? Jack thought. Maybe that meant the giant could rip up only one tree by its roots instead of two. Jack hoped so. The idea of confronting trolls without Olaf’s strength was indeed worrying.
After a while the boy saw somethi
ng detach itself from a distant cliff and sail lazily down the river valley. It had brilliant golden wings and a long, whiplike tail that sawed back and forth as the creature balanced itself on the air currents. “Is that what I think it is?” whispered Jack.
“A dragon,” said Olaf softly. “She’s the one I used as the model for the prow of Ivar’s ship.”
“You made that?”
“It was an honor. Ivar was a great king before Frith trapped him.”
The elk looked up, realized its danger, and started galloping for shelter. The dragon folded her wings and dropped, rocking from side to side as she gathered speed. She grasped the elk, opened her wings in a flash of gold, and swept upward in a great arc that brought her close to Olaf and Jack’s perch. Jack tried to flee, but the giant held him firmly. “Look into her eyes!”
Jack saw the huge, scaly head of the dragon turn and regard them as she passed. Her eyes opened wide, and in their depths the boy saw a flame kindle. Then she was gone. She sailed off to the distant cliff with the bellowing elk in her claws.
Olaf sighed. “That’s a sight few men have seen, and lived!”
Jack was trembling all over. He’d heard about dragons from Father and the Bard, but nothing had prepared him for their awful grandeur.
“It’s good, too, that she’s eaten,” Olaf pointed out. “They hunt every week or so and spend the rest of the time napping. They’re a lot like cats.”
“W-Will th-there be m-more dragons?” Jack said.
“Not on our path,” Olaf said cheerfully. “When the young ones grow up, the mother drives them away. This is her valley. She probably has a nest up there now. Most of the dragonlets don’t survive. They kill one another off by fighting.”
The giant smiled as he gazed out over the scene. Good Olaf was in charge today. He looked so mellow, Jack decided to risk a question. “Why does Thorgil hate me so much?” he asked.
“She hates you because that’s her nature,” replied the warrior, “and because she was once a thrall.”
“ Thorgil was a thrall?”
“I’m not giving you a stick to beat her with, boy. If you mention one word about this, I’ll break your neck.”
Olaf’s threats were never idle. Jack nodded most respectfully.
“The child of a female slave is a slave. Thorgrim never freed her.”
“Then how—?” Jack said.
“King Ivar waged a war against King Sigurd Serpent-Eye. Thorgrim and I, as berserkers, were in the front line. What a fine man he was! He put me in the shade as far as courage went. You’re not to say that in my poems, though.”
“Of course not,” said Jack.
“Thorgrim outran everyone in his eagerness to fight. He chopped right and left with his battle-axe and went through the enemy’s shields—bang, bang, bang—one after the other. I can still see him, though I was cleaving a skull or two myself at the time. But Thorgrim got surrounded. He’d received his deathblow by the time King Ivar and I reached him.
“He asked for a hero’s funeral, and Ivar agreed at once. He asked for the proper sacrifices to be made. That meant Allyson would accompany him on his journey to the afterworld, and Thorgrim also asked for a horse and a noble dog.”
“I see,” said Jack, who was sickened by the whole idea. What bloated sense of self-importance demanded that an innocent woman and faithful animals be slaughtered? It was monstrous. All Jack’s initial loathing of the Northmen came back.
“‘What about Thorgil?’ I asked,” said Olaf.
“‘Who?’ he said. Thorgrim had forgotten he had a daughter.
“‘Allyson’s child,’ I said. ‘I’d like her, to remember you by.’ I was afraid he’d ask for her death, you see.
“‘Oh, the thrall,’ he said. ‘You can have her, and also my second-best sword.’
“We carried his body home and had a grand funeral.” Olaf’s eyes were misty at the memory. “We pulled his ship to the graveyard and filled it with the things he liked—wine, weapons, furs—and laid Allyson’s body next to his and the horse and dog at his feet. King Ivar gave him the wolfhound bitch who’d rescued Thorgil, which I thought quite fine. Then we set fire to it all and sent his spirit to Valhalla.”
What a totally, thoroughly sickening story, thought Jack. It wasn’t enough for Thorgrim to take Thorgil’s mother. He had to demand the one creature who’d shown her love as well. Then he cast his daughter away like an old shoe. Jack couldn’t trust himself to speak for a while. He was afraid he’d say something nasty and bring Bad Olaf out of hiding.
More elk were browsing by the river below. They were safe, though they didn’t know it. They kept looking up and acting spooked. Maybe they could smell blood.
“I gave Thorgil her freedom immediately,” said Olaf, breaking in on the silence. “That was three years ago, so she remembers well how it was to be a thrall.”
Jack fingered the slave ring on his neck and the scratches the grouse’s claws had inflicted.
“I should have had that removed before we left,” said Olaf, noticing. “I had Dirty Pants put it on to protect you.”
Jack looked at him, surprised.
“A free skald could be commanded by Ivar. To take a thrall, he’d have to go through me. I never intended you to clean out the pig barn, by the way. That was Pig Face’s idea.”
“I didn’t know you’d found out about it,” Jack said.
“Oh, Heide has ways of learning things she wants to know. If you’d complained to me, I would have killed the thralls involved. As you didn’t, I left them alone. It was honorable of you not to take revenge on lesser men.” Olaf rose, helped Jack lift his grouse, and shouldered his own. He walked off, not looking back to see if the boy was following.
Jack felt ridiculously happy with Olaf’s praise. Lesser men. That meant he, Jack, was greater. The giant didn’t think of him as a slave. For the first time the boy approached the quest with enthusiasm. They were three warriors on a perilous adventure full of glory and honor. They were equals. And their fame would never die.
Chapter Twenty-seven
The Deadfall
On the way back Olaf flushed out another grouse, so they had more meat than they knew what to do with. He built a second fire in the grassy field to roast them. “You don’t want the smell of meat close to where you’re sleeping,” he said, without saying why.
Jack plucked the three giant birds while Olaf whittled spits and Y-shaped stands to hold them. Thorgil did nothing. When Jack had removed the feathers from one bird, Olaf heaved it to Thorgil. “Clean it,” he said.
“I don’t do thrall’s work,” the girl sneered. Olaf swept her upside down by the ankles.
“You’ve not been on a quest before, so you don’t know the rules,” he explained as she struggled to free herself. “All members do all tasks, no matter how lowly. Even Thor cooks when his companions are busy. Understand?”
Thorgil’s face was red from the blood rushing to her head. “Yes,” she gasped. The giant put her down. She furiously cleaned the grouse, splashing blood and guts over her clothes.
“Something Thor would not do,” Olaf remarked, “is attract wolves by smelling like a grouse.” The girl continued to work furiously.
Eventually, all three birds were roasting over the fire. Jack went off to wash himself in a stream, and later Olaf did the same. Thorgil didn’t. She was determined to be difficult, and as the day wore on she began to smell gamy. Still, dinner was superb. Olaf had stuffed the interior of the birds with wild garlic. There was more than enough for everyone, including Bold Heart, who pecked the remnants from the bones.
When they were done, Olaf put the uneaten food in a bag. Jack climbed a tree and cached the bag high above the ground. Then they retired to the cave, and Olaf marked out a game of Wolves and Sheep in the dirt. They used juniper berries for playing pieces. Thorgil won several times. She cheered loudly and said it was easy to beat such simpleminded opponents. Thorgil was a bad winner as well as a sore loser.
They woke to cracking and crunching. Something big was tearing branches off a tree in the distance. Olaf eased out his sword. “What is it?” whispered Thorgil. The giant signaled for quiet. The forest outside was pitch-black.
Jack thought about how their fire, now glowing coals, could still make a beacon in such darkness. The fallen tree blocking the entrance might protect them, though. Jack had his own knife at the ready, and he grasped a handful of sand from the cave’s floor to throw into the eyes of whatever it was.
The snapping and crunching went on for a while and then ceased. They heard nothing more. The forest began to lighten with early dawn, and when it was possible to see, they covered the fire and departed. They hurried along a blue-shadowed trail through the trees. It wound here and there, following natural openings in the brush, and gradually went downward until it came into the U-shaped valley Jack had seen the day before.
The sky opened out. Grim, bare rock lay before them, and a cold wind blew from the ice mountain. Still, the presence of sunlight was cheering. Jack was glad not to be enclosed by trees, where anything could hide. Bold Heart, who was perched on his shoulder, murmured softly as though he, too, was relieved to be out in the open.
“What made that noise?” Thorgil repeated her question.
“Something that likes roast grouse,” Olaf said.
Jack realized they hadn’t gone back to their food cache. He felt queasy. The bag with the grouse had been stashed as high in the tree as he could manage. Whatever found it had been too large to merely slip through the branches. It had ripped them out of its way, and they’d been large branches, too.
Olaf led them across the valley floor. The wind burrowed under their clothes, and a fine grit blew off the land and made Jack’s eyes water. The change in temperature was amazing. The forest had been warm and summery. This was a place winter never, apparently, left. Ice sparkled in places the sun hadn’t reached, and fields of snow made stark patterns on dark blue stone. As Jack looked toward the mountain he saw less rock and more snow until there was a continuous white sweep up to the heart of Jotunheim.
