Exact Words
"He's brought it," said the herdsman.
He stood in the kitchen doorway in the same sheepskin coat with the wool turned in, and this time there was no ice in his beard, only wet. The thaw had not come yet. But the icicles along the kitchen eaves had begun to drip at midday. The drifts against the south wall had gone grey and sunk into themselves like old bread.
Roskva had counted eleven nights since her brother came back from the hills. She stopped chopping.
"Brought what?" said Sif.
"His shield. I took it for a slab of the hill till he picked it up." The herdsman held his arms wide, and then wider. "Grey stone, all of it, thick as my doorstep. He holds it out in front of him like a man holding a door shut. He's been standing up there by the clay one two days now, facing this way."
At the board Thor was eating porridge out of a pot meant for six. He finished the mouthful.
"Then it's tomorrow."
Nobody asked him whether he was sure. Sif turned her keys over once in her hand and said, "I'll have food put up." The cook began banging pots, which was how the cook agreed with things.
"Somebody tell the boy," said Thor.
Roskva put the knife down before anyone else could be chosen. She wiped her hands on her apron and went.
She knew the way to the east stall by its warm places now: the bread-oven passage, the plank floor that boomed, the cold stretch past the cloak room where you walked fast. The lamp was lit on its shelf. Thjalfi was on his knees in the straw with the salve crock beside him. The lame goat was standing still and letting him look at its hock, which was new.
"It'll rub there," he said without turning round. "Where it did before. I want the fat on thick before the traces go on."
"Thor says tomorrow."
His hands stopped on the goat's leg. Then they went on.
"Yes, all right," he said.
Roskva had heard him say that before. She knew exactly what it meant, and she let him have it.
She took a twist of hay from the rack and held it out. The goat ate from her fingers with its eyes half shut, and while its mouth was busy Thjalfi smoothed the fat over the old place above the hock. It flicked one ear. That was all it did.
"It likes you," he said.
"It likes hay."
She sat down on the edge of the stone trough. Behind her the spout ticked water into it, drop by drop.
"Do you want his words?"
Thjalfi looked up. "Whose?"
"Hrungnir's. What he said in the hall. Exactly."
"I heard him. I was by the door."
"You heard him shout," said Roskva. "He didn't shout the part that mattered. He went quiet for it."
He wiped his hands on the straw and sat back on his heels. "Go on, then."
She shut her eyes, because the hall was easier to find that way: the soot settling on the boards, the fire, the giant's voice going low. Then she said it slowly and heavily, every word set down by itself.
"I left my shield at home, and my whetstone with it."
She opened her eyes. "That was first. Then he said come and fight him properly. Then, 'I'll have my shield there, and my stone. I'll not be caught without them again, not ever.'"
"What's a whetstone?" said Thjalfi. "For a giant."
"The same as for anybody. The stone you sharpen a blade on. Father has one for the scythe." She thought of the giant's hand closed round Thor's bowl. "His won't fit in a pocket."
"What does he sharpen with it?"
"Nothing, I should think. He hits people with it."
Thjalfi's mouth went crooked at one corner and stayed that way. He was turning the hoof knife over in his fingers.
"He said shield first," said Roskva. "Both times. Before the stone. And when he said it, his fingers did this." She closed her hand on nothing and opened it again, the way the stone fingers had done over the board.
"He was frightened," said Thjalfi slowly.
"Of Thor?"
"Of being without it. Of being caught with his front open." He frowned at the knife. "He said so. Not ever."
She waited. If she waited, he usually got there, and it was better when he got there himself.
"There's a nanny at home," he said. "The black one with the bell. When the dog comes up the scree she stands across her kid, side-on, wherever she thinks the dog is, and you can't get past her. But if somebody shouts from the other side, she swings round to face the shouting. Every time." He looked up. "And then the kid's side is open."
"So you tell him Thor's coming from somewhere else."
"And he puts his shield there."
"Where?"
Thjalfi was quiet. The lamp burned. The goat let itself down into the straw, front end first, and put its stiff leg out straight.
"I don't know yet," he said. "Somewhere he can't hold it out in front of him. I'll know when I see the ground."
Roskva did not like that answer. It was what he always said just before he ran at something. But it was a true answer, and she had asked for it.
"Say his words back to me," she said.
"I left my shield at home, and my stone with it."
"Whetstone."
"Whetstone." He said it again, right, and then the second part, and got that right the first time. Then he said them both over once more, without being asked, under his breath.
She stood and brushed the straw off her dress. At the stall door she stopped, because there was something else she had meant to say. It stayed where it was.
"Go to sleep," she said instead.
The yard had been dug out at last, and in the grey before sunrise the trodden snow was wet on top and hard underneath. Thor stood by the chariot with his two belts on, the iron gloves tucked in the outer one and the hammer hanging by its short handle. Sif had put up a food bag. Thor had already eaten some of it.
Thjalfi brought the goats through the house himself, Tanngnjost walking ahead, sure of the way, and the lame one hitching behind on its rope. Roskva held the hay. Tanngrisnir took it from her hand while her brother laid the traces over the salved place and buckled them, and it did not try to bite him once.
Thor watched them and said nothing. Then he climbed into the chariot. The floor of it went down under him, and the goats leaned into their collars.
"Get in," he said to Thjalfi. "That side."
Thjalfi climbed up on the left, above the lame one, and looked down at her. His face had gone the flat white it went before a race.
"The goat's coming with me," he said, as though he had only just worked it out.
"I know."
"Then keep the stall warm."
"Be back," said Roskva.
Thor shook the reins once.
The goats went off across the yard at a trot and then at a run, slush flying from under their hooves. The lame one ran with its hitch, a short step and a long one, and kept level with its brother. The wheels hissed. At the yard's edge the snow lay smooth and untrodden, and the goats ran straight out onto it without slowing.
Roskva watched the tracks. Two rows of split hoofprints went out across the white with a wheel line on either side. In the left-hand row every second print was dragged long where the stiff leg came down. The last one was the longest of all. After it there was only smooth snow, with the shadow of a chariot sliding away across it and nothing touching the ground.
She looked up. They were above the outer roofs already, climbing east into the grey, the goats' legs still working. Even up there the lame one kept its hitch. A short step and a long one, on nothing at all.
Thjalfi did not look round. She had not expected him to. She watched until they were a speck over the low blue hills, and then she went on watching the place where they had been.
"Come in," said Sif beside her. "You'll freeze where you stand, and then who'll peel my onions?"
Roskva went in. She went through the warm passage to the kitchens, where a heap of onions waited on the board with her knife beside it. She picked up the knife. Under her breath she said the giant's words over once more, every one in its place. Then she began on the onions, and when her eyes ran she let the onions take the blame.