Not Halfway
"You can't see that far," said Thjalfi.
He said it low, into her hair, because Utgard-Loki was only a few strides off. Roskva let go of his sleeve.
"I can," she said.
"Not from here. Nobody could. It's all boots and frost down there, and the stick's no thicker than your finger."
He looked down the course to show her. The stick stood up white at the far end of it, very small. "He went round it. He had to. That's the rule."
"I watched him," said Roskva.
"You watched me. You said so. The patched boots." He heard his voice going up and brought it down again. "I'd have seen."
She looked at him for a long moment with her grey eyes. Then she looked at the mud between them, where his toes had marked it, and said nothing else. Her hand went to her spindle.
He turned his back on her. It was easier than her face.
Utgard-Loki had finished talking up at the rows. Now he looked past Thjalfi, over his head, to where Thor stood with his arms folded.
"A third heat," he said pleasantly. "Unless your man would rather rest. I did mention the floor. There's room on it for two, if his master cares to sit down with him."
The giants laughed. Thjalfi had heard them laugh all afternoon, but this laugh went somewhere else. It ran up the rows and came down again over his head and on past him.
A giant near the gate leaned down with his hands on his knees. "Does the little one carry the hammer for him too?" he called. "To save him the weight?" Somebody further off shouted a word about gates, and the laugh came again, louder.
None of them were looking at Thjalfi. They were looking at Thor.
Thor did not move. His face did not move. Only his arms tightened across the two belts, and the small iron plates on the backs of his gloves clinked once against each other.
Thjalfi turned to the course and made himself do the sum. The first time, Hugi had met him halfway. The second time Thjalfi had run faster than he had ever run in his life, barefoot, laid out until he was nearly falling, and Hugi had turned with a long bowshot to spare. Thjalfi had got quicker, and Hugi had got further away. It was a simple sum.
He was going to lose.
He knew it in his legs and in his stomach, plainly, and it sat there cold. Down by his feet the mud was soft and dark, and there was a great deal of it. He could sit, and nobody would stop him. Utgard-Loki had said himself there was no shame in it. And then the giants would laugh, and they would be laughing at Thor.
Once, he looked back. Roskva stood a step behind him with his shoes held against her chest. She was not watching Hugi or the stick. She was watching him.
Thjalfi set his feet in his prints.
"Third time," said Loki, to nobody in particular. "That's meant to be the lucky one, isn't it?"
Nobody answered him. Hugi came and stood on his white frost at Thjalfi's elbow, and Thjalfi kept his eyes on the stick.
Under his breath he counted the goats. The old nanny, the black one with the bell, the brindled one, the twins, and on down through the eleven. Then Tanngnjost, and Tanngrisnir with the split ear and the stiff leg, backed up against the byre wall. He got to the end this time, thirteen. It came out right, and it made no difference at all.
He leaned until he was falling. Utgard-Loki lifted his finger, and Thjalfi went.
He went on the finger and not after it. For a stride, and then another, he and Hugi were level. The mud let go of his feet and the frost took them, and something in his chest lifted.
Then Hugi was ahead. He did not seem to try. He did not lean or lay himself out. He only ran, long and easy, and the ground went away under him faster than Thjalfi's eyes could follow it.
Thjalfi ran after him. The frost cut his feet in the places it had cut them before, and he felt each place open and kept going. The boots went by on either side. He kept his head low and his eyes on the white stick, and on the pale back going away toward it.
All the way out he looked for the patched boots. Roskva had counted them: last time he had passed them before Hugi turned. If he reached them sooner again, he was quicker again, and that would be something to bring back to her. He could not find them. There were only boots and frost.
Far down the course, the pale back came to the stick and swung round.
Thjalfi was not halfway. He knew where halfway was. It was the place where Hugi had met him in the first heat. It looked like all the rest of the plain, and it was still a good way in front of him. The patched boots were somewhere beyond that.
Then Hugi was coming back, straight up the middle of the course toward Thjalfi, and he was so far off that he was small. Thjalfi had never once seen him small. In the hall and at the line Hugi had stood a head taller than him and more, with his pale hair lifting. Now he was a little pale thing at the bottom of the long lane, no bigger than a gull standing on Orm's shingle when you looked down at it from the top of the valley path. He grew as Thjalfi watched, steadily, while the stick behind him stayed small.
Thjalfi ran at him. There was nothing else on the course to run at.
Somewhere high up, a giant said, "Enough."
A giant on the left-hand row had said it quietly. Then it was all along both rows at once, rolling away toward the gate and back again. "Enough. That's enough of that."
Thjalfi ran three more strides. Then his legs understood before he did. They slowed, and he was standing still in the middle of the frost with his chest heaving and his feet stinging, short of halfway. Hugi went by him wide, on the far side of the course, running easily, and was home.
Up at the line Utgard-Loki lifted both his hands. "I think so too," he said, and his light voice carried all the way down. "It's been tried enough. We'll call it settled."
The giants turned. All along both rows they turned and began to walk back up the course toward the gate, talking among themselves. Their boots came down on either side of Thjalfi and went on past. One stepped right over the course, over his head, and its shadow crossed him and was gone. Nobody looked down.
Thjalfi stood where he was. Then he walked back, and it was a long way, walking. The frost crunched under his feet and took their dark marks, and his breath went out ahead of him in a small cloud. Nobody turned round to watch him come.
On the way up he saw the patched boots. They were walking away from him toward the gate with the rest, a dark square of leather sewn over each heel. He looked back down the course at the place where he had stopped. It was a long way behind the boots. He had not even reached them.
By the time he reached the line, the giants had gathered in a wide crowd in front of the gate. They were all looking one way, high over his head, at Thor.
Roskva was waiting at the edge of the mud. She held out the shoes, and this time he took them, but he did not put them on. He stood holding them, one in each hand. She did not say anything, and she did not look at Hugi's feet. She looked at his.
Utgard-Loki had gone over to Thor. He stooped to do it, slowly, from very high up, as though bending were a kindness he was doing.
"Well, Thor," he said. "Your man has run and lost, and your friend has eaten and lost. That leaves you."
He smiled with all his teeth. "There are tales told about you, great ones. People bring them to my gate, and even here we've been curious. So which of your deeds will you show us? I'd hate to think you'd come all this way and brought us nothing but the tales."
Thjalfi knew those tales. His father had told them by the hearth all his life, on winter nights with the wind going over the roof turf: Thor and his hammer, Thor and the giants of the east. Sitting on the bench with his knees pulled up, Thjalfi had never once thought that somebody might take a tale and test it like a rope.
Roskva had come up close beside him. "They want to see if it's true," she said, very low. "What people say about him."
The rows had gone quiet. They leaned in over the plain, every long face turned down toward one red-brown beard, and waited.
Thor unfolded his arms.
He looked at Utgard-Loki for a long time, up the whole height of him, with his brows drawn. Then he stepped forward past Thjalfi into the trodden mud by the line. He did not look down as he went. Thjalfi felt the cold air move beside him, and kept his eyes on the shoes in his hands.
"I'll drink," said Thor. His voice came out rough, as if he had left it somewhere and only just picked it up again. "Against any man you have."
Utgard-Loki straightened and went on straightening, smiling wider all the way up. "Gladly," he said.
He turned toward his gate with his rings flashing, and Thor went after him through the crowd of giants with his fists shut.