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.