Three Blows
Skrymir took one step, and Thjalfi took eleven, and by the twelfth the giant had gone over the next rise.
That was how the whole day went. The forest thinned behind them into heather and grey boulders and long slopes of loose stone, and Skrymir crossed it in strides that each ate a hillside. Thor kept up by walking hard and saying nothing. Loki kept up without ever seeming to hurry. Roskva put her head down and did not stop.
Thjalfi ran.
He had run the screes above the farm since he could walk. Nobody in Steinsdal could catch him, and no goat either, once he had its line.
Now he ran with the empty bag slapping his hip. Every time he topped a rise he saw the grey back two rises on, with the sack riding high on it, round and fat. The cheese was in there. He ran at the sack as if he could catch it.
By the middle of the afternoon his legs had gone heavy from the knees down. The bite on his thigh had stopped aching and started burning. He had never in his life run after something and lost ground on it, and he kept losing ground, a little more at every rise.
Once, Skrymir waited. He sat on a ridge with his knees drawn up and watched them toil toward him. He had the mild look of a man watching ants cross a doorstep.
"Little legs," he said to nobody, and got up, and went on.
The light was going when they came down into a valley with a great oak in it. Its trunk was so thick that the four of them holding hands could not have reached a quarter of the way round. Its lowest branch was higher than the roof of the longhouse at home. Skrymir was already lying under it on his back, with the sack beside him.
"I'm for sleep," he said, without opening his eyes. "Take the sack and help yourselves. Wake me if the sky falls."
He began to snore at once. It was a long dragging sound, like a saw going through wet timber, and then a pause, and then the saw again.
Thor went to the sack. Thjalfi went with him, because his stomach went and the rest of him followed.
The knots sat on top in a heap, each one as big as Thjalfi's head. Thor took hold of the nearest in both hands and worked at it. His thumbs dug in. The muscles stood up along his arms. The knot did not move by a hair.
He tried the next one. He set his boot on the sack and pulled with his whole back, and Megingjord creaked round his middle, and his boots went down into the turf. Nothing gave. His brows came down until his eyes were two dark slits.
Thor said a word Thjalfi had never heard before. It was short, and Loki laughed at it. Then Thor let go and walked away from the sack. He stood with his back to them, breathing like a man who has carried a cow up a hill.
Thjalfi did not wait to be told. He dropped onto his knees by the knots and went at the nearest one with his fingers. There had to be an end. Every knot had an end, if you looked for it.
He picked and pried and pushed his nails into the folds, and the knot went in and in on itself and never came out anywhere. It was cold. It had ridden all day on a giant's back, and it was colder than rope had any right to be.
He took out his hoof knife and sawed. The blade skated off with a small squeal and left no mark. He set it again, harder, and leaned on it, and it jumped and took the skin off his knuckle instead.
"If he can't," said Loki kindly, "you can't. That's simple sums."
Thjalfi sucked his knuckle and did not look at him. Roskva was standing a few steps off with her hand on her spindle. She did not look at Loki either.
Thor turned round. He reached to his belt, the everyday one under Megingjord, and took off the iron gloves that hung there. They were dark and heavy, made in small plates over the fingers. They clinked against each other as he pulled them on, one and then the other, working each finger down.
"What are those for?" said Thjalfi. It was out before he could stop it.
"The handle's short." Thor shut his fist and opened it. "Can't hold it hard enough without them." He took the hammer off his belt in both iron hands and walked to the giant's head.
Thjalfi had seen that hammer raise two goats out of their own bones. He had seen it come up over his father's hearth, and over his own head, and stop. He had never seen it come down.
It came down now, on the top of Skrymir's head, with a thud like a door slammed in another house.
The snoring stopped. One grey eye opened. A hand the size of a sledge came up out of the dark and rubbed the place, slowly.
"Hm," said Skrymir. He looked up into the branches. "Did a leaf fall on me? This tree keeps dropping things. Have you eaten?"
Thor stood with the hammer at his side. "We're going to sleep."
"Good. Off you go, then." The eye closed. After a moment the saw started up again.
They went a little way down the valley, under another oak, and lay down in the roots without a fire. Nobody spoke. The cold came up out of the ground into Thjalfi's back, and his stomach had gone past hurting into a hollow, dizzy quiet.
Something touched his hand. It was Roskva's hand, and it was holding something. He smelled it before he understood it: dried fish, and old rag, and the storehouse at home. Her fingers opened. There were two pieces in them, broken apart in the dark.
His hand went to the bigger one. It had chosen before he had.
He knew it at once, by the weight. It sat heavy in his palm and the other piece was gone, back into her hand, small and light. He lay with the fish against his chin and knew exactly what he had done. Then he ate it, slowly, to make it last, and it was the best thing he had ever tasted.
Roskva said nothing. He heard her eating, very quietly, and then he heard her stop.
He did not sleep. Some time after the moon came up over the side of the valley, he heard Thor get up.
Thjalfi rolled over and lifted his head. The moonlight lay grey across the slope. Thor went up it with the hammer in both hands and stood over Skrymir's head and swung, high and hard, with all his back in it.
The hammer went into the crown of the giant's head. Thjalfi saw it go. The iron head sank out of sight into the grey hair, and Thor's gloves stopped against the skull.
Skrymir woke. "Thor?" he said, quite cheerfully. "Is that you up? Something's knocked me on the head. An acorn, would that be?"
Thor pulled the hammer free. "It's the middle of the night still. Sleep."
"So it is," said Skrymir, and did.
Thor did not come back down to the second oak. He sat on a stone halfway between, with the hammer across his knees, and Thjalfi watched his shape against the sky until the moon went over.
The third time, the sky had just begun to grey in the east. Thjalfi saw Thor stand. He saw him take three running steps and lift the hammer as high as his arms would go. Then he brought it down on the side of Skrymir's head, at the temple, with all his own strength and Megingjord's on top of it.
The hammer went in up to its handle.
There was nothing left of it to see but the short handle, sticking out of the giant's grey hair, and Thor's two iron fists round it. Thjalfi lay on the frozen roots with his mouth open, and forgot to shut it.
Skrymir sat up. Thor came away with him, still holding on, and his boots left the ground, and then the hammer came free and he dropped back onto the turf. Skrymir put a hand to his cheek and rubbed it.
"Birds," he said. He peered up into the oak. "There must be birds up there. They keep dropping moss on me. Are you awake, Thor?"
Thor stood with the hammer hanging from his fist. He said nothing at all.
Skrymir yawned and got to his feet. Standing, his head was up where the last stars were going out. He stretched, and something in his back cracked. Then he looked down at all four of them pleasantly, Thjalfi with his empty bag and Roskva with her spindle.
"Not far now to Utgard," he said. "You'll be there by noon, if your legs hold. I'll tell you something for nothing. You'll see bigger men than me there."
He let that sit. "Utgard-Loki's men don't care for big talk, and they care for it least from little people. Keep your mouths small. Better still," he said, and bent and picked up the sack and swung it onto his shoulder, knots and all, "turn round and go home. If you won't do that, the road's east. My way's north."
He went north. He walked up the side of the valley and over the top in four strides. The sack went with him, bobbing on his back with the knots piled on top and the cheese inside. Thjalfi watched it go over the next ridge, and the one after that. It got smaller each time, until it was a lump on the skyline in the dawn, and then it was gone.
The bag on his shoulder weighed nothing.
Thor looked north for a long time. Then he hung the hammer on his belt, turned his back on the place where the sack had gone, and walked east, and Thjalfi went after him.