The Boy Who Raced Thought

Thjalfi took the steps three at a time and the last five in one jump.

He landed hard in the trodden snow beside the gate and kept going. The gatekeeper was leaning on his gate leaf where he had left him, scraping ice off his boot with the edge of the other one.

"Riders," Thjalfi said. "Two of them. Coming fast."

"That'll be the old one. He always comes fast."

"The other one's bigger."

The man stopped scraping. He walked out through the gateway a few steps, put a hand over his eyes against the low sun, and stood very still.

Thjalfi heard them before he saw them again. The packed snow under his shoes began to shake, and the shaking had a beat in it, and the beat was wrong. He had heard horses gallop on the valley road all his life, and a galloping horse has gaps in it. This had none. It went on and on, close and hurried, as if two horses were running inside one skin and neither would let the other go first.

Then the first rider came over the last low swell of white, and Thjalfi saw the legs.

The horse was grey, the grey of a wet stone, and it had eight legs. They came down without tangling, in an order he could not follow, four and four, then two and six, then something else, and each time he thought he had it, the order changed. Snow burst up from under the hooves and never had time to fall. The horse's neck was stretched out long and its ears were flat back, and it was enjoying itself.

Behind it the tracks ran away across the snow to the edge of the sky. Thjalfi had read tracks since he could walk, in mud and frost and on the loose screes, and could tell a lame nanny from a sound one by her prints alone. These he could not read at all.

The rider sat straight, with the reins in one hand. On his head was a helmet of gold, and the sun struck it so hard that it hurt to look. Under it his grey beard was blown back over one shoulder. He had one eye; where the other should have been, the lid lay closed and flat. Geir's winter tales had a one-eyed man in them, who rode a horse with too many legs.

"Oh," said the gatekeeper softly. "That's torn it." His eyes were on what came behind.

The second horse was a big chestnut, its mane streaming out like a flag. The man on it was larger than Thor, grey all over and heavy in the way a boulder is heavy. His head was stone. It was rough and pitted like a cliff face where the gulls nest, and his eyes were sunk so deep in it that Thjalfi only saw them when he turned toward the light. He was shouting.

"Longer! You hear me? Gullfaxi's stride is longer than that eight-footed thing's, and I'll show you to your face!"

Odin did not look round. That only made the stone-headed man roar louder. "You staked your head!" he bellowed. "Your own head, that there wasn't a horse in all our country to match him! I'll have it off you at your own door!"

Thjalfi looked at the open gate. The old one was coming home, and something with a head of stone was coming home right behind him.

"Shut it," he said. "After the first one. Shut it after him."

The gatekeeper stared at him for half a breath. Then he ran for the far leaf, and Thjalfi put his shoulder to the near one.

It was timber banded with iron, as wide as a hay sledge, and it had stood open all winter. Snow had banked against its foot. He dug in his heels and shoved, and the snow squealed, and the leaf moved the width of his hand. He shoved again. Across the gateway the gatekeeper was red in the face and swearing, and his leaf was moving too.

The ground under the gate began to jump.

He kept his head down and pushed. Then the grey horse was in the gateway, and there was nothing to do but flatten himself against the timber with his arms spread wide. Sleipnir went past so close that the wind of him dragged Thjalfi's hair across his eyes.

For a breath the whole gate was full of legs and flying snow and the clatter of hooves on stone. He saw a boot in a stirrup level with his nose, and the hem of a grey cloak. Then the road outside was empty again, and he threw his weight at the leaf.

He had one breath. Perhaps two.

The chestnut came at the narrowing gap with its shoulder down. The leaf slammed back and pinned Thjalfi flat against the wall, and the giant's knee went by above his head, bigger than the whole of him. Then they were through, both of them, and inside Asgard.

Thjalfi squeezed out from behind the leaf. His shoulder ached where the iron band had caught it. On the far side the gatekeeper sat in the snow, looking at his empty hands.

"Well," the man said. "We tried."

Just inside, the giant hauled on his reins so hard that the chestnut sat back on its haunches. He looked round at the high white walls of the dug paths, at the halls and the smoke going up from their roofs. His mouth hung open in the stone. Thjalfi had seen that look on the old billy at home, the day it chased the dog clean through a gap in the wall and found itself in the wrong field, and no dog anywhere.

Doors were opening up and down the paths. Men came out of the halls, big men with their sleeves pushed up and cups still in their hands. The men stayed where they were, and every one of them looked at Odin.

Odin had turned the grey round, unhurried. Sleipnir stood with all eight legs planted in the snow, blowing, steam rising off its back. Its rider looked down at the giant with his one eye, and he did not seem surprised to find him there, or sorry.

"Hrungnir," he said. "Strongest of all the giants, and you've come through my gate. You must have wanted to badly."

"I didn't mean to come in. I meant to catch you."

"You didn't."

"Gullfaxi was gaining!" Hrungnir slapped the chestnut's neck, and the bright mane shook. "Golden Mane, they call him at home, and there's not a horse in all the world with his stride. You staked your head on that grey."

"So I did," said Odin. "I've still got it."

Somebody along the path laughed and turned it into a cough. "You're inside now," Odin said. "A man who rides that far should have a drink before he rides back. Come and drink."

Hrungnir looked at the men in the paths, and at the cups in their hands. Then he looked down at his own hands on the reins. They were empty. There was nothing on his back and nothing at his belt. Thjalfi saw him look, and saw the stone fingers close.

"Drink," said Hrungnir slowly. Then, much louder, so that snow slid off the nearest roof: "Drink, is it? Yes. I'll drink with you. Find me a cup big enough."

When you see him coming, the old woman had said, you come and tell me. Thjalfi ran.

He knew the path to the big hall; he had walked it once with a bowl on his back. Now he ran it with nothing at all, between walls of snow higher than his head, with only a strip of sky above.

Behind him the horses were walking, and men were talking all round them, and someone was calling for torches. His shoes slipped on the corners and he caught himself on the snow walls with both hands and went on. He was not trying to beat anyone. He only had to get there first.

The great door stood open with lamplight coming out of it. He went through it and down the whole length of the hall, past the long benches and the tables now laid with cups and boards, past servants who turned to stare at him. The boy on the table top was still setting out cups. He nearly dropped one.

The old woman stood at the head of the board with a tally stick in her hand, counting loaves.

"He's here," Thjalfi said, and had to stop and breathe. "The old one. He's come."

"I heard the gate bang," she said. "You were meant to come before it banged."

"He's brought somebody."

"Who?"

"A giant. With a head of stone. He wants a cup big enough."

She looked at him a long moment. Then her eyes went past him to the far end of the board, where Thor's two bowls stood in their place beside the empty high seat. Her mouth went very thin.

She turned and put her head through the low door in the side wall. "Ale," she called down the passage behind it. "All of it. And every jug that's got a handle on."

Feet ran in the passage. For a moment a face looked out of the low door over the rim of a big jug, grey-eyed and white, and found Thjalfi, and was gone again.

"You ran," the old woman said, without turning round.

"Yes."

"Then go and stand by the wall, out of the way, and keep your feet still."

He went back down the hall and stood against the wall near the door, among the other servants. Nobody spoke. Outside, the voices came nearer along the path, and the slow crunch of the horses stopped, and a man laughed, high and nervous, and stopped too.

Then, over all of it, came a long grinding scrape, stone dragged across old timber, so loud that every cup on the nearest table rang. Flakes of black wood drifted down out of the doorway and settled on the straw.

Hrungnir bent his stone head low, and came in.