Five
Shea awoke before dawn, shivering. The temperature was still above freezing, but a wind had come up, and the gray landscape was curtained with driving rain. He yawned and sat up with his blanket round him like an Indian. The others were still asleep and he stared out for a moment, trying to recover the thread of last night’s thoughts.
This world he was in—perhaps permanently—was governed by laws of its own. What were those laws? There was one piece of equipment of which the transference had not robbed him; his modern mind, habituated to studying and analyzing the general rules guiding individual events. He ought to be able to reason out the rules governing this existence and to use them—something which the rustic Thjalfi would never think of doing. So far the only rules he had noticed were that the gods had unusual powers. But there must be general laws underlying even these—
Thor’s snores died away into a gasping rattle. The red-bearded god rubbed his eyes, sat up, and spat.
“Up, all Æsir’s men!” he said. “Ah, Harold of the Turnips, you are already awake. Cold salmon will be our breakfast again since your fire magic failed.” Then, as he saw Shea stiffen: “Nay, take it not unkindly. We Æsir are not unkind to mortals, and I’ve seen more unpromising objects than you turn out all right. Make a man of you yet, youngling. Just watch me and imitate what I do.” He yawned and the yawn spread into a bristling grin.
The others bestirred themselves. Thjalfi got out some smoked salmon. However good the stuff was, Shea found the third successive meal of it a little too much.
They were just beginning to gnaw when there was a heavy tramp outside. Through the rain loomed a gray shape whose outline made Shea’s scalp tingle. It was mannish, but at least ten feet tall, with massive columnar legs. It was a giant.
The giant stooped and looked into the travelers’ refuge. Shea, his heart beating madly, backed up against the curving wall, his hand feeling for his hunting knife. The face that looked in was huge, with bloodshot gray eyes and a scraggly iron-gray beard, and its expression was not encouraging.
“Ungh,” snarled the giant, showing yellow snags of teeth. His voice was a couple of octaves beneath the lowest human bass. “ ’Scuse me, gents, but I been looking for my glove. How ’bout having a little breakfast together, huh?”
Shea, Thjalfi and Loki all looked at Thor. The Red God stood with feet wide apart, surveying the giant for some minutes. Then he said: “Good is guesting on a journey. We offer some smoked salmon. But what have you?”
“The name’s Skrymir, buddy. I got some bread and dried dragon meat. Say, ain’t you Thor Odinnsson, the hammer thrower?”
“That is not incorrect.”
“Boy, oh, boy, ain’t that something?” The giant made a horrible face that was probably intended for a friendly grin. He reached around for a bag that hung at his back and, sitting down in front of the shelter, opened it. Shea got a better view of him, though not one that inspired a more favorable impression. The monster’s long gray hair was done up in a topknot with bone skewers stuck through it. He was dressed entirely in furs, of which the cloak must have come from the grandfather of all the bears, though it was none too large for him.
Skrymir took from his bag a slab of Norse bread the size of a mattress, and several hunks of leathery gray meat. These he slapped down in front of the travelers. “All right, youse guys, help yourselves,” he rumbled. “Let’s see some of that salmon, huh?”
Thjalfi mutely handed over a piece of the salmon on which the giant set noisily to work. He drooled, now and then wiping his face with the back of his huge paw, and getting himself well smeared with salmon grease.
Shea found he had to break up his portion of the bread with his knife handle before he could manage it, so hard was the material. The dragon meat was a little easier, but still required some hard chewing, and his jaw muscles were sore from the beating they had taken in the last twenty-four hours. The dragon meat had a pungent, garlicky flavor that he didn’t care for.
As Shea gnawed he saw a louse the size of a cockroach crawl out from the upper edge of one of Skrymir’s black fur leggings, amble around a bit in the jungle of hair below the giant’s knee, and stroll back into its sanctuary. Shea almost gagged. His appetite tapered off, though presently it returned. After what he had been through lately, it would take more than a single louse to spoil his interest in food for any length of time. What the hell?
Loki, grinning slyly, asked: “Are there turnips in your bag, Hairy One?”
Skrymir frowned. “Turnips? Naw. Whatcha want with ’em?”
“Our warlock”—Loki jerked his thumb at Shea—“eats them.”
“What-a-at? No kiddin’!” roared the giant. “I heard of guys that eat bugs and drink cow’s milk, but I ain’t never heard of nobody what eats turnips.”
Shea said: “That’s how I get some of my magic powers,” with a somewhat sickly smile, and felt he had come out of it fairly well.
Skrymir belched. It was not an ordinary run-of-the-mine belch, but something akin to a natural cataclysm. Shea tried to hold his breath until the air cleared. The giant settled himself and inquired: “Say, how come youse is traveling in Jötunheim?”
“The Wing Thor travels where he will,” observed Loki loftily, but with a side glance.
“Aw right, aw right, butcha don’t have to get snotty about it. I just was thinking there’s some relations of Hrungnir and Geirröd that was laying for Thor. They’d just love to have a chance to get even witcha for bumping off those giants.”
Thor rumbled: “Few will be more pleased than I to meet—”
But Loki interrupted: “Thank you for the warning, friend Skrymir. Good is the guesting when men are friendly. We will do as much for you one of these days. Will you have more salmon?”
“Naw, I had all I want.”
Loki continued silkily: “Would it be impertinence to ask whither your giantship is bound?”
“Aw, I’m going up to Utgard. Utgardaloki’s throwing a big feed for all the giants.”
“Great and glorious will be that feasting.”
“You’re damn right it’ll be great. All the hill giants and frost giants and fire giants together at once—say, that’s something!”
“It would give us pleasure to see it. If we went as guests of so formidable a giant as yourself, none of Hrungnir’s or Geirröd’s friends would dare make trouble, would they?”
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 travelers 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 gray of the clouds, crawled over the hills. Outside, the travelers 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 shrunk 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 up on 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 modern 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 Voluspö says, the words of the prophetess.”
“Then isn’t Skrymir a shade too friendly with someone he’s going to fight?”
Thjalfi gave a barking laugh. “Ye don’t know much about Oku-Thjor to say that. This Skrymir may be big, but Redbeard 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 gloves 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 signifies 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 Harold.” He looked around. “I wish we had Heimdall along. He can see a hundred leagues in the dark and hear the wool growing on the sheep’s back. But ’twouldn’t do to have him and Uncle Fox together. Thor’s the only one of the sir that can stand Uncle Fox.”
Shea shivered. “Say, friend Harold,” 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 woolens 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?
Thjalfi helped pull him over the tail of the chariot. “Ye do a little better than most runners, friend Harold,” 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’ll turn up on 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 practicing 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 Harold?” 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 mighty 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 toward 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 cad 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 not 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 odor pricked through the veil of his cold. A familiar odor—chlorine gas! What—
“Hey, you,” roared Skrymir behind him. Shea jumped a foot. “Get the hell outta my way.”
Shea got. Skrymir 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 toward 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 disemboweled 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 dreamgirl 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 anymore, 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 humor.
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 out 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, turnipman! 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.