“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 awhile the boy saw something 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.
They came to the deadfall. Jack looked behind him to see the vast cliff where he and Olaf had observed the dragon. The forest massed at the top, and no doubt through the years, hundreds of trees had fallen from its edge and wound up here. They made a small mountain of logs, branches, dry moss, and twigs. He could hear water rushing ahead.
“This is the last shelter before we reach the mountain,” Olaf said. “We should rest awhile, and you, Thorgil, should bathe and sponge off your clothes.”
“It’s freezing!” she cried.
“If you’d washed in the forest, you wouldn’t have found it so bad,” the giant said. “Last night’s disturbance was a warning. Something up there is hungry, and thanks to you, it won’t find it hard to track us.”
You could have smelled Thorgil all the way to the Mountain Queen’s front door, Jack thought. The grouse blood and guts had ripened gloriously overnight. He didn’t know how Thorgil stood it, but in her perverse way she probably thought it made her seem tough. He looked forward to hearing her yelps when she got into the river.
Olaf led them into the tangle of trees, though Bold Heart refused to enter. They went down a twisting passage to a cavelike hollow. The black river swept through the middle under a roof of trunks and branches. Jack looked up uneasily. He could see patches of sky, and it seemed little would be needed to bring the logs crashing down. But Olaf said the hollow had been there many years. Its floor was deep in pine needles, and Jack saw places where animals had lain. A faint barnyard smell hung over the place.
The air was slightly warmer. But not too warm, Jack thought happily as he and Olaf turned their backs so Thorgil could take a bath. Jack heard her gasp and then curse richly as she splashed. He heard her wiping off her clothes with damp clumps of moss.
“You can turn around now,” she called. She still didn’t smell good, but she was passable.
“Do you know what’s following us?” Jack asked.
“Maybe n
othing,” said Olaf. “With any luck, it’s too afraid of the dragon to come out.”
“Dragon!” cried Thorgil.
“Keep your voice down. Jack and I saw one yesterday.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You weren’t in a talkative mood,” Olaf said. “Anyhow, the dragon’s digesting an elk right now. She won’t be hunting for at least a week, but whatever it was in the forest doesn’t know that.”
“Whatever what was?” insisted Jack.
“If I knew, I’d tell you,” Olaf said crossly. “We’ll rest here awhile and then push on. It’ll take three days to reach the hall of the Mountain Queen. It looks near, but the last part’s steep and slippery.”
Olaf cleared away pine needles and drew a picture in the dirt of the route they would follow. It was straightforward enough: Follow the river to its source at the foot of the mountain. If they hadn’t encountered trolls by then, they would climb until they did. “Jotuns patrol their territory regularly,” said Olaf. “You can tell they’re near—I don’t know how to describe it exactly—by a tickling in your mind. Kind of like whispering.”
“Whispering?” Jack said. “I’ve been hearing that ever since we arrived.”
“That’s interesting. I haven’t,” said the giant. “Maybe you pick things up more easily because you’re a skald.”
“Or maybe because he’s a witch,” said Thorgil.
“I’ve been meaning to ask this,” Jack said. “What’s to keep the trolls from attacking the minute we do run into them?”
“First of all, because we’re not trying to hide, they’ll be curious. They’ll ask our business before trying to beat our brains out. That gives us time to produce the chess piece.” Olaf beamed as he laid out this strategy.
“Are you sure that’s how they’ll react?” Jack said.
“Pretty sure.”
“I’ve written a poem,” Thorgil announced suddenly.