Three Nights Old
Hrungnir's foot lay across the back of Thor's neck. It was as long as a hay sledge and made of the same stone as the rest of him. It was rough under Thjalfi's palms and cold right through, with grit packed into every crack of the heel.
Thjalfi knelt where the heel came down on Thor's shoulders and worked his fingers under its edge. There was room for his fingers and nothing else. He pulled until the blood sang in his ears, and the foot did not seem to know he was there.
"I said you wouldn't," said Thor, into the stones.
"I know."
He tried his shoulder next. He set it under the curve of the heel, got his good foot flat and pushed up with everything he had left. The bad ankle took its share of the weight and then let go of all of it at once. He went down on his face beside Thor with grit in his mouth.
For a while neither of them spoke. Thor's breath stirred the dust by his beard. It came short, because of the weight on him, and slow.
"They'll come," said Thor. "Somebody will notice I'm not home."
Thjalfi thought of Sif with her keys, who did not send anyone looking.
He sat up and looked at the hill. The chariot stood on its top where Thor had left it. The goats were still in the traces, two small dark shapes against a sky gone from red to grey.
"I can fetch them," he said.
"Not on that leg. I heard you go down. Twice now."
"The goats can, then."
Thor was quiet. "The lame one won't go for you."
Thjalfi did not answer that. He was already getting up.
The scree was worse going up. Every stone he trusted wanted to go back down to the flat and take some of him with it. Where it was steepest he went on his hands and his good knee, dragging the other foot. He stopped when the ankle told him to, and went on when it had finished telling him. Halfway up he could hear himself breathing like the old nanny at the top of the high scree on a hot day.
At the top the wind came straight off the east and found every gap in his tunic. Tanngnjost turned its head to look at him. Tanngrisnir did not need to turn. It had been looking at him all along.
His fingers were stiff on the buckles. He worked the traces free, then the collars, and laid the harness over the chariot's side where it would be found. Under the strap on the lame leg the old rubbed place was whole, the new hair grown in short and grey. He put his hand on it a moment, and the goat let him.
He walked them to the west edge of the hilltop. The land fell away there toward the far ridges, and somewhere past them were Bilskirnir and the warm stall and his sister.
"Home," he said. "Go on. Bring them."
Tanngnjost went. It jumped down off the rocks onto the far slope and was away, sure-footed, its beard flying, and did not look back.
Tanngrisnir stood. Its split ear was back and its eyes were on him. Thjalfi did not reach for it. He stepped back instead, one step, the way he stepped back from the hay every morning so that it would eat.
"Tanngrisnir," he said. "Home."
The goat looked at him a moment longer. Then it turned and went after its twin, down off the hill in its own lopsided hurry, the stiff leg swinging wide. The slope took it out of sight.
He watched the place where it had gone until the cold made him stop.
Sif's food bag lay on the chariot floor. He hung it round his neck and went back down most of the scree sitting, with stones running beside him. On the flat he went the long way round, past the broken clay, and pulled his cloak out from under the giant's arm. The clay had gone hard in the cold. It let go of the wool in one sheet and left a grey print of an elbow behind.
Dark came quickly. He spread the cloak over Thor's shoulders and the back of his head, as far round the stone heel as it would go. He tucked the edge in under the beard. On Thor it looked about the size of a dishcloth.
"You'll freeze," said Thor.
"So will you."
Thor grunted into the grit, which might have meant anything.
Even with his face in the stones, Thor smelled the bag before Thjalfi opened it. "What's in that?"
"Bread. Cheese. Some of the mutton."
"Some?"
"You ate the rest on the way here."
"So I did."
Thjalfi broke the bread small and set it by Thor's mouth, a piece at a time, and Thor ate it off the stones. When Thor had had most of everything, Thjalfi ate what was left. It was not much.
"The clay one," said Thor, a long time later. "Where's it gone?"
"Down. Up the slope there, in pieces."
"You did that."
"It fell over."
Thor breathed in and out under the foot. "And the goats?"
"Gone home. Both of them."
"The lame one too?"
"Yes."
That was all either of them said. Frost came down onto the flat and whitened the grit round them. Thjalfi sat with his back against the giant's stone shin, because it kept off the wind, and his bad foot out in front of him. Once in the night he woke and did not know where he was. Then Thor breathed under the cloak, and he knew.
The goats came back the next day, a little after noon. He heard them first, small hooves knocking on the far side of the scout hill. Then they came over the top side by side, the lame one a length behind its twin, and stood there with their heads up.
"They're back," said Thjalfi.
"Both?"
"Both. And they've brought everybody."
Behind them came the gods.
They came over the hill on foot and on horseback, more of them than he could count at once. There were big men in heavy cloaks and tall women with their hoods pushed back, and each of them stopped at the top and looked down at the field. Thjalfi knew some of the faces from torchlight in Asgard's hall. Odin came last, on the grey horse, and stayed in the saddle.
The first of them down the scree stopped short at the sight of Thor. "Is he dead?"
"No," said Thjalfi.
"I'm not dead," said Thor, into the stones. "Get it off me."
They walked round Hrungnir without going near his head. One of them stood a long while looking up the slope at the broken clay. Then he looked across the flat at Thjalfi, and Thjalfi found something to do with the cloak.
Four of them got their hands under the heel together. Their faces went dark red and their boots sank into the grit, and the foot rocked the width of a finger and settled back. Thor made a sound into the stones that Thjalfi did not like.
"All of us, then," said a woman with a grey braid.
They all tried at once. They got a rope round the stone ankle and ran it back over a boulder, and as many of them as could get a hand on it hauled. The rope creaked and sang, and then it broke, and they sat down on the scree in a long row.
Odin had not got down. He sat his horse with the reins in one hand and watched all of it with his one eye.
"He told us he'd carry Valhalla home on his back," he said. "He's got as far as Thor."
Nobody laughed. They were all still getting their breath back.
Thjalfi saw the boy first, because the boy was shorter than anyone there but him. He was coming down the scree by himself. It was Magni, Thor's son, three nights old and already the size of a big child of two, wrapped in a fleece that trailed on the stones behind him. He walked on his own two feet the whole way down and did not fall once. His hair was red-brown and stood straight up on his head like a chick's.
The gods moved out of his road. He went between them to the foot and looked at it, and then he went round to Thor's face and looked at that.
"Father," he said. His voice was high and cheerful, a small child's voice.
Under the cloak Thor's eye came open wide. "Magni?"
"Who is he?" said Thjalfi. It came out before he could stop it.
"My son," said Thor. "Mine and Jarnsaxa's. She's a giantess, out east." His breath went short under the weight. "He was born three nights ago."
Thjalfi looked at the boy. The boy wiped his nose on a corner of the fleece.
Then Magni took the fleece off and put it down on the stones, folded, as if someone had told him to keep it clean. He bent, set both hands flat under Hrungnir's heel, and straightened his legs.
The foot came up. It came up off Thor's neck and kept on coming, past the boy's chest, higher than his own red head. He held it there with his small arms straight.
Then he gave it a little push. It went over. It fell on the far side of Thor with a thud that Thjalfi felt in his bad ankle. It lay on its side among the grit, one stone foot with nothing under it at all.
Nobody on the flat said anything.
Magni dusted his hands together. "Is that all it was?" he said. "It's only a foot."
He looked along the flat at Hrungnir then, at the whole long length of him, and his face fell. "It's a pity I came so late," he said, quite sorry about it. "I'd have killed him for you with my fist."
Thor got up. He got his hands under him and then his knees, and the cloak slid off his back. He sat back on his heels in the grit with his beard full of it. The piece of whetstone stood out above his right brow, grey as the rest of the field. He did not touch it.
Then he laughed, short and loud, and picked his son up in both iron gloves and held him out at arm's length to look at him. Magni looked back, pleased.
"Hrungnir rode a horse," said Thor. "Golden Mane, he called it. The best in Jotunheim, he said. It's yours."
Odin shifted on the grey horse. "That horse should have come to me," he said. "Not to a giantess's son."
"He lifted the foot," said Thor. "You didn't."
Odin looked at him with his one eye for a while. "No," he said. "I didn't." He turned his horse round.
Two of the gods brought the chariot down off the hill. Thjalfi harnessed the goats himself, because his fingers knew the buckles and nobody else's did. Tanngrisnir stood for it. It did not bite.
Thor climbed in heavily, like a man getting into a boat after a long day at the nets. He looked up the slope at the broken clay for a while. Then he looked down at Thjalfi's foot, and said nothing about either of them, and moved over.
Thjalfi got in on his side, above the lame goat.
The goats leaned into the traces. The chariot turned on the grit, slowly, until the broken clay man was behind them and the long low light of the afternoon was in their faces. Thor sat up in it with the reins in his iron gloves. Above his right brow, where the light found it, a stone sat in his head as if it had always been there.