The Complete Compleat Enchanter (8 page)

“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.

Six

When Shea awoke he was still sniffling, but at least his head was of normal weight. He wondered whether the chlorine he had inhaled the previous evening might not have helped the cold. Or whether the improvement were a general one, based on his determination to accept his surroundings and make the most of them.

After breakfast they set out as before, Skrymir tramping on ahead. The sky was the color of old lead. The wind was keen, rattling the branches of the scrubby trees and whirling an occasional snowflake before it. The goats slipped on patches of frozen slush, plodding uphill most of the time. The hills were all about them now, rising steadily and with more vegetation, mostly pine and spruce.

It must have been around noon—Shea could only guess at the time—when Skrymir turned and waved at the biggest mountain they had yet seen. The wind carried away the giant’s words, but Thor seemed to have understood. The goats quickened their pace toward the mountain, whose top hung in cloud.

After a good hour of climbing, Shea began to get glimpses of a shape looming from the bare crest, intermittently blotted out by the eddies of mist. When they were close enough to see it plainly, it became clearly a house, not unlike that of the bonder Sverre. But it was cruder, made of logs with the bark on, and vastly bigger—as big as a metropolitan railroad terminal.

Thjalfi said into his ear: “That will be Utgard Castle. Ye’ll need whatever mite of courage ye have here, friend Harold.” The young man’s teeth were chattering from something other than cold.

Skrymir lurched up to the door and pounded on it with his fist. He stood there for a long minute, the wind flapping his furs. A rectangular hole opened in the door. The door swung open. The chariot riders climbed down, stretching their stiff muscles as they followed their guide.

The door banged shut behind them. They were in a dark vestibule, like that in Sverre’s house but larger and foul with the odor of unwashed giant. A huge arm pushed the leather curtain aside, revealing through the triangular opening a view of roaring yellow flame and thronging, snouting giants.

Thjalfi murmured: “Keep your eyes open, Harold. As Thjodolf of Hvin says:

“All the
gateways Ere
one goes out

Thoughtfully should a man scan;

Uncertain it
is Where
sits the unfriendly

Upon the bench before thee.”

Within, the place was a disorderly parody of Sverre’s. Of the same general form, with the same benches, its tables were all uneven, filthy, and littered with fragments of food. The fire in the center hung a pall of smoke under the rafters. The dirty straw on the floor was thick about the ankles.

The benches and the passageway behind them were filled with giants, drinking, eating, shouting at the tops of their voices. Before him a group of six, with iron-gray topknots and patchy beards like Skrymir’s, were wrangling. One drew back his arm in anger. His elbow struck a mug of mead borne by a harassed-looking man who was evidently a thrall. The mead splashed onto another giant, who instantly snatched up a bowl of stew from the table and slammed it on the man’s head.

Down went the man with a squeal. Skrymir calmly kicked him from the path of his guests. The six giants burst into bubbling laughter, rolling in their seats and clapping each other on the back, their argument forgotten.

“Hai, Skridbaldnir!” Skrymir was gripping another giant on the bench by the arm. “How’s every little thing wit’ you? Commere, I wantcha to meet a friend of mine. This here guy’s Asa-Thor!”

Skridbaldnir turned. Shea noticed that he was slenderer than Skrymir, with ash-blond hair, the pink eyes of an albino, and a long, red, ulcerated nose.

“He’s a frost giant,” whispered Thjalfi, “and that gang over there are fire giants.” He waved a trembling hand toward the other side of the table, where a group of individuals like taller and straighter gorillas were howling at each other. They were shorter than the other giants, not much more than eight feet tall. They had prognathous jaws and coarse black hair where their bodies were exposed. They scratched ceaselessly.

Halfway down the hall, at one side, sat the biggest hill giant of all, in a huge chair with interwoven serpents carved on the legs and arms. His costume was distinguished from those of the other giants in that the bone skewers through his topknot had rough gold knobs on their ends. One of his lower snag teeth projected for several inches beyond his upper lip. He looked at Skrymir and said: “Hai, bud. I see you got some kids witcha. It ain’t a good idea to bring kids to these feeds; they learns bad language.”

“They ain’t kids,” said Skrymir. “They’re a couple of men and a couple of Æsir. I told ’em they could come wit’ me. That okay, boss?”

Utgardaloki picked his nose and wiped his fingers on his greasy leather jacket before replying: “I guess so. But ain’t that one with the red whiskers Asa-Thor?”

“You are not mistaken,” said Thor.