The Boy Who Raced Thought

The laugh began at the high seat and ran away down both benches into the smoke. It went on a long time. Somewhere at the far end of the hall, where Thjalfi could not see, someone banged a cup on the board to keep it going.

Utgard-Loki let it run. Then he lifted one ringed hand, and the hall went quiet again.

"Faster than any man here," he said. "That's a large claim from a small mouth. Still, a skill is a skill, and we're fond of meat." He turned his head a little toward the benches. "Logi. Come and eat."

A man got up from the bench on the left. He was thin for a giant, long in the neck and narrow in the chest, and his face was red all over, as though he had sat too near the fire pits all his life. He came down onto the floor quickly, and once there he kept moving. His fingers kept moving at his sides, and his weight went from one foot to the other and back.

Two giants brought in the trough. It took both of them, one at each end, and when they set it down in the rushes between the last fire and the high seat, Thjalfi felt the thump come up through his heels. It was made of plain grey planks, and it was long enough for him to have lain down in it twice over. It was heaped from end to end with meat.

There were ribs, and shoulders, and whole haunches with the bone standing out of them. Steam went up off it. The fat had cooked brown and split open, and it was still running.

Thjalfi's body leaned toward the trough before he knew it had. He had eaten half a fish in the dark under Skrymir's oak, and before that nothing he could properly remember. His mouth flooded. Behind him, Roskva's fist tightened in the back of his tunic.

He put his hands behind his back. He took hold of one wrist with the other hand and held on.

"One of you at each end," said Utgard-Loki. "You eat toward each other. Whoever reaches the middle first has eaten fastest." He smiled. "Even a small mouth can follow that."

Loki pushed his sleeves up to the elbow. He took his place at the near end and looked up at the benches, pleasant and easy, a man at a game he played most evenings. Logi stood at the far end and looked at nothing but the meat.

"And the bones?" said Loki. "Do they count?"

"Eat whatever you like," said Utgard-Loki. "We're not fussy here."

"Whenever you like, then," said Loki.

"Now," said Utgard-Loki.

Loki ate.

Thjalfi had seen hungry men eat at home, after the hay was in. He had never seen anything like this. Loki's hands went into the heap and came out full. He tore the meat off with his teeth and tossed the bone over his shoulder into the rushes, and his hands were back in the trough before it landed.

Grease ran to his wrists. He wasted nothing. He never reached twice for the same piece, and he never dropped one. Thjalfi knew about fast, and he could see that Loki was fast.

On the nearer bench the giants began to stamp in time with the bones landing. Thjalfi found his own foot moving with them and made it stop.

"Mind your fingers, little one!" somebody shouted down at Loki, and somebody else shouted, "Go on, Logi, go on!"

He watched Loki, because Loki was theirs. He looked at Logi only now and then, from the corner of his eye. Logi ate with both hands, bent right over the trough with his elbows out, and he did not throw anything behind him at all.

Loki came to the middle with a rib in his fist. He looked up, his chin shining, and grinned down the trough to see how far Logi still had to come.

Logi was already there. He stood across the middle from Loki, close enough to touch, and he was chewing.

Thjalfi looked past him, down Logi's half of the trough.

There was no half. On Loki's side the planks ran from the end board to the middle, picked clean and slick with fat. A litter of bones lay in the rushes behind.

On Logi's side there were no bones in the rushes. There was no meat, no end board, no planks. The trough simply stopped in the middle, as if someone had sawn it through, and beyond the cut there was only floor. The rushes there were pressed flat in the shape of where it had stood, and they were dry.

Logi put out one long finger and ran it along the cut edge in front of him. He licked the finger. Then he snapped a splinter off the edge and ate that too.

For a breath nobody in the hall made a sound. Thjalfi heard the fires.

Then the benches roared. The laugh came down from so high and so many places at once that Thjalfi felt it in his teeth. Giants struck the board with their fists. One of them leaned so far back that he nearly went off the end of his bench, and his neighbors had to catch him.

Utgard-Loki waited until it had nearly worn itself out. "Well," he said. "Your man ate the meat. Mine ate the supper. I think we'll count that one to Logi."

"He ate the trough," said Loki. His voice came out light, but it came out fast. "Nobody said anything about the trough."

"You asked about the bones," said Utgard-Loki. "You never asked about the trough. I did say we weren't fussy."

Logi went back to his place on the bench. He did not look round, and he did not wipe his hands.

Loki stood where he was. He looked at his own half of the trough for a long moment. Then he wiped his fingers on the front of his tunic, slowly, one at a time, and smiled up at the high seat as if he had won something small and did not care to mention it.

"And that's one of the gods?" said a giant on the near bench, loud enough to carry. "Him?"

"Of course he is," said the one beside him, wiping his eyes. "They count him with the gods over there. Always have. His father was one of ours, mind you." He laughed so hard his beard shook. "You'd think it would've helped him at a trough."

The laughter went round again. Loki kept smiling. Thjalfi watched the smile, and then he looked away from it.

On the plain, Loki had said that a name wasn't a family. He had not said anything about fathers.

"So," said Utgard-Loki. He turned his cup in his long fingers. "That's one. Is that all the skill Thor brings with him to Utgard? I had heard more." His eyes went past Thjalfi, up to Thor's face, and waited there.

Thor's jaw moved. Thjalfi heard the breath go in through his nose, and saw the iron fingers close on the hammer's handle.

Thjalfi stepped out onto the floor.

A strip of meat had fallen from Loki's side into the rushes, right beside his foot. It lay there steaming. He stepped over it. Behind him he felt the cloth of his tunic pull and then come free, as Roskva's hand let go or was left behind.

"I can run," said Thjalfi.

It came out much louder than the last time he had spoken in this hall. It went up into the smoke and the giants heard it. Faces turned down toward him all along the near bench.

"I can run faster than anybody," he said. "I'll race anyone in this hall. Anyone you like."

His mouth was open now, and the words had gone out of it, and there was no getting them back in.

He did not look round at Thor. He could feel him there, a step behind and a long way up, and he kept his own eyes on the high seat.

Utgard-Loki leaned forward. It was the first time he had done it, and the whole hall seemed to lean with him. He looked Thjalfi over slowly, from the hacked-short hair down to the scabbed shins and the shoes worn through at the toes.

"A runner," he said. "Now that is a skill worth having, if it's true. Most people who say they're quick have only been quick at home." He tapped one ring against his cup. "I'll take you at your word. You'll race one of mine, out on the plain, where there's room for legs to stretch. If you beat him, you'll have earned a place on my bench and meat from my trough." He smiled. "What's left of it."

The giants laughed, but not for long. They wanted to see.

"I warn you," said Utgard-Loki pleasantly. "You'll need to be very quick. I keep a quick one."

Thjalfi's legs were empty and his stomach was a hard knot, and he did not care. He knew the feeling that came up through him now. It was the feeling on the high scree, with the goats above him and the whole slope still to climb.

"Yes, all right," he said.

"Good." Utgard-Loki sat back. He did not raise his voice. He only said the name, the way a man speaks to someone who is already listening.

"Hugi."

Far down the left bench, past the second fire pit, a young man stood up. He was tall and slim, and his hair was pale even through the smoke. He came up the hall between the fires at an easy walk, without hurrying, and the giants drew in their boots to let him by. Thjalfi turned to watch him come. Before he had finished turning, the young man was standing beside him at the foot of the high seat, looking down at him with a friendly face.