Henrik trudges over the ice wastes of Utgard. The frost giants’ capital looks like a bump on the horizon ahead. The wind stings around his eyes, but the snow’s rhythmic crunch under his boots threatens to lull him to sleep. Only his feeling of a glare in his neck keeps him moving forward. The Valkyrie walks behind and watches him. When she makes him nervous, he fiddles with the runic pendant on the necklace she gave him.
He scratches his scruffy, black beard under his wool face covering. “I won’t be much use if you wear me down,” he shouts over the wind.
“You’ll be tired when I tell you to be tired,” says Hilde behind him. “Now I tell you to walk.”
Henrik looks ahead. They are not halfway to the capital. It is said to be great as a mountain, but the bump far away does not intimidate him.
“Please,” he says, turns back, and reaches for her. She slaps his hands away. Her Valkyric strength baffles him every time he feels it. “I am practically Einherjar,” he says. “You should be tending to me.”
She grabs the collar of his pelt jacket. Short strands of gold hair escape her fur cap and rustle in the wind. Wool bindings cover most of her face, but her brow wrinkles with rage. Blue, runic light glimmers in her eyes. Henrik feels the necklace tighten on his throat. A cough starts to tickle inside.
“When I first saw you,” she says, “you were dangling by your neck.”
Henrik opens his mouth. Empty air sputters out. The necklace tightens further. He struggles to draw a breath.
“Your jarl did not like when you stole his son’s arm ring,” she says.
Henrik’s face turns blue. He gathers his focus and speaks a single line. “Or his daughter’s virginity.”
Hilde ignores his joke and says, “If I snap your neck like this, you will wake up in Helheim, like you were meant to.”
He falls to his knees. His eyes tear up and start to pop from his skull. The suffocating pain grows in his chest. Panic shoots up the back of his skull, but he needs to force it down a moment longer. He crawls to her and paws at her jacket.
“Odin saved you in case he needed a burglar,” says Hilde. She doesn’t lower herself to him but stands straight and watches him struggle. “With this mission, you have a chance to earn your seat in Valhalla and the title of Einherjar. If you succeed I will serve your evening mead myself.”
“Until then,” she grabs his chin and forces him to meet her eyes, “your fate balances on a dagger’s edge, and I wield the dagger.”
The pressure releases his throat. She steps back from her captive. Henrik collapses forward and lowers his forehead to the snow. He keeps his hands under his torso, out of sight.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I know the Allfather owns me.” Human color returns to his face. The strangling pain drains from his lungs. A grin plays on his lips. He keeps his face bowed and hidden. Still, he tries and fails to suppress the smile. “And through his power you own me too, Hilde.”
He clutches his fist to his chest. In it he hides a runic pendant he pickpocketed from her jacket while choking. He remains prostrated while she watches him.
She pauses and enjoys the view. “Good,” she says and walks past him. “Come now.” He slides the pendant up his sleeve, makes his face somber, and follows the Valkyrie.
Before his hanging, Henrik’s principle was that everything in the world belonged to him. If somebody else had a thing he wanted, that was a temporary situation. It didn’t matter if they were a beggar or a jarl. Their things would always be Henrik’s in the end. But the others, these transient guardians of his belongings, were always human.
He had never thought the gods were looking for a burglar. Even if they were, he was sure he was good enough to avoid their notice. When they saved him from the gallows and told him his options for the afterlife, he agreed to their demands.
They had heard rumors of a new weapon hidden in the city of Utgard. The frost giant wizards had created something powerful. The gods wanted it. They brought Henrik to steal it for them.
***
At every conscious moment in the walk over the ice, Henrik measures the capital. It never seems to get any closer, but each time he looks, the ice fortress of Utgard looms larger on the horizon. The structure looks like a mountain of ice with a city of stone on top. The palace on the peak belongs to the giant king Trym.
Inside the ice and below the wastes delve caves and great chambers. In the lowermost chamber lies the legend on which Utgard was built. There crawl the roots of the Life Tree. Dewdrops fall from the branches into the pool of knowledge. Its waters are where Odin sacrificed his eye. They are the source of the jotuns’ magic and are guarded by their highest wizard. Henrik imagines he can feel the waters’ power as a warm, pulsing vibration under his feet.
“I am on a diplomatic mission,” says Hilde. “You are my attendant.”
“That’s the story,” says Henrik. “You’ll be well entertained.”
“The jotuns always entertain the dignitaries from Asgard,” she says, “but you will not be noticed.”
“You are right,” he says, “I will not be noticed.”
“After you find the weapon,” she says, “you will meet in my chamber, and we will devise your escape.”
A grey figure sits in their path. Henrik can’t tell its size or how far it is. It looks already taller than him, even sitting. He thinks it’s out of earshot.
As he walks closer, the figure’s size seems vague and growing until he is near enough to spot the glittering in each snowflake between them. The city does not feel real until he stares up into the giant’s face.
The grey-skinned, white-maned creature sits cross-legged on the snow. It wears only a loincloth made from polar bear fur, leaving bare most of its muscular body. The top of its head reaches above thrice Henrik’s height. Its bright, blue eyes follow Hilde. She stops in front of it. Henrik follows her lead.
The giant looks to Henrik. Each fist is the size of his torso. When he meets its eyes, he wants to vomit. The eyes do not blink. They shine with inescapable clarity. He tries to remember how it felt to lie to humans, but the thought is alien. He dreads any falsehood under such eyes and before such fists.
“Jotnar!” Hilde shouts up at the guard. She lowers the wool binding below her chin and shows her face. Her cheeks and nose are red from the cold. “Tell your king who stands at his gate. Trym will want to know that I am here. He will know me as Hilde the strong, or Hilde Jotun-liver.”
The giant smiles. A deeper light flickers in its eyes. The sound of grinding ice rises behind it. A vertical crack opens in the fortress. The opening is taller than any creature Henrik can imagine, and still an unfathomable height of frozen mountain extends above it.
They enter vast ice caves with pale blue walls that glimmer with warm light inside. The pulsing glow feels alive to Henrik. He imagines its warmth from the pool of knowledge below.
A wooden elevator shaft with a massive counterweight boulder carries them to the mountaintop plateau. On the walk to Trym’s palace, Henrik still feels Hilde’s glare in his neck, but it no longer makes him nervous. He plays with the pendant hidden in his sleeve.
The king’s hall perches on the ice peak. His black stone palace could be its own mountain. To enter it is not to be an ant in a house, but to be a speck of dust.
Inside the main hall, the giants’ voices rumble together in a tongue alien to Henrik. They gather around a long timber table in the hall’s center. Their clothes are fur loincloths or colorful, embroidered tunics larger than longboat sails. They tinker with massive tools of metal or glass, unlike any Henrik has seen. Some scribble with runes that glow with a faint, blue light.
In the far corner lies a polar bear on a white carpet made of its own kind’s fur. It plays with the carcass of a smaller animal and eats off it. The blood spatters its muzzle and the carpet. It reaches its long tongue out and licks the blood off its black nose.
“Trym!” Hilde’s voice echoes through the hall. The giants’ speech fades to silence. Henrik shuffles behind her.
The central long table stands at twice Henrik’s height, but she jumps for it. With ease, she grips its edge, pulls herself up, and stands at nearly their eye level. Henrik feels naked without her, but the giants don’t look at him.
“Trym Small-gullet!” She puffs her chest out and strolls down the table’s length. Snow from the wastes falls from her pelts and decorates the dark granite. Her voice booms across the hall. “Trym Half-belly! I bring you a challenge from the Aesir!”
One giant steps out from the throng around the table’s other end. He wears a white loincloth and a vest embroidered opal blue. Gold rings weave into his mane. His eyes shine a brighter blue when they see her.
The king is not taller or shorter than the other giants, nor more muscular or more finely dressed. He distinguishes himself in his eyes, which are soft-lidded and gentle with everything they see. They shine towards Henrik’s captor.
“Hilde Man-liver! Hilde the Little!” He walks towards a crowd along the table, but they step aside for him. Behind him gallops the blood-snouted polar bear from the far corner. It licks its snout over again and grunts up towards the Valkyrie.
She reaches the table’s middle and waits for the king. The bear reaches her first. It stands on its hind legs, stretches, and scratches at the table’s edge. She crouches, takes off her wool mitten, and pets it between the ears, while it licks her hand and stains it with the carcass’ blood.
Trym stands in front of her. “Ingrid has missed you.” His echo booms through the hall. He bends down to scratch the bear’s back.
Hilde stands up and smiles into his face at eye level. She grasps the white mane that wreaths his head. A patch of the bear’s feeding-blood stains it. “And I have missed your hospitality,” she says. “I do not drink enough of your mead.”
“It is a crime,” says the king, “punishable by inebriation.”
“I told you,” she says, “I bring a challenge of the drink to you.”
“Never has my kingdom shied a challenge from your masters.” He keeps his eyes locked on Hilde’s and waves behind him. “Squire,” he says, “bring the woman our cheapest, dirtiest ale.” A loinclothed giant in the back bows and walks towards a door in the far corner.
“That is the only thing I drink.” She holds a deep stare in the giant’s eyes and waves to Henrik. “Attendant,” she says, “down to my chambers.”
Henrik bows like the other jotun and follows it. They exit the back door into a granite corridor. When the door slams shut behind them, Henrik turns to the squire. The giant does not look at him. It is about to walk down the hall.
“That way is for the kitchen?” The giant stops and squints down on him. The confused wrinkles make deep clefts on its face. Henrik thinks he could fit his pinky fingers in some of its pores.
Its eyes have the same clear blue glimmer as the guardian by the gate. Henrik’s throat turns drier every moment he stares into them. If he doesn’t say something soon, he’ll only be coughing at the giant.
“The dignitary would also like your cheapest, dirtiest male prostitute,” he says. “Where is it I find those?”
The only reaction in the giant’s face is a hint of an amused upturn in the corners of its mouth. It turns away and keeps walking down the hall.
“That’s alright, I’ll look on the other side then,” says Henrik and turns the opposite way. His heart starts beating again. A falsehood has broken the ice. This theft can be like any theft he knows from his old life.
He will seek the treasure inside the mountain, but not the one Hilde wants. When he leaves the palace and steps on the ice, he feels again the warm pulsing from under the mountain.
Below the mountain lies a treasure greater than the weapon. The pool of knowledge gave Odin’s witchcraft to him, and Henrik could not imagine that Odin was any cleverer than himself to begin with. Such a gift can slip the yoke off from under his Asgardian masters. They will find that none in the human or the higher realms can keep Henrik under their thumb.
The man walks through the mountaintop city. He passes a handful of massive buildings, each in its specialized shape. They house only a single or a few jotuns, all occupied in their own crafts. Some see movement in the corner of their eye. When they see it is a human, they look back down to their works.
Henrik reaches the elevator shaft and begins the descent. Inside the ice flickers a faint, blue glow. He can’t reach it from the timber platform. The distance pains him. He wants to feel the power inside the ice.
He descends deeper than the gate to the wastes. The warmth of the power grows below the ground. He can hear it. The glow in the ice brightens and starts to pulsate.
The shaft opens to a vast cavern below an ice dome. Along the shimmering ceiling crawl thick, dewy roots. They branch through the air and into the ice walls. Moss and flowers cover the ground below. A single ash tree grows by the bank of a small pond below the dome’s highest point.
The pond’s waters glow with runic blue so bright it hurts Henrik’s eyes. The light pulses along with the rhythmic humming from inside the water. In its center floats a small, white orb.
As the dew forms on the roots above, it drips into the pool and casts gentle, shimmering waves on the surface. The orb remains in the pool’s center, but it bobs on the waves. It rolls with each bobbing motion, and the pupil in its center passes its gaze over Henrik.
The wooden platform thumps on the ground next to the pool. The light blinds him, but he doesn’t need to see. The water calls him forward. He steps onto the soft moss and walks to the water’s edge.
“You have come a long way for knowledge.” A voice from above resonates with the well’s rhythm. Henrik looks up and sees that the roots weave together above the pool. They bind around a large jotun head that watches him. It has no body. The water shines from below and casts shadows over its mouth and eyes.
“That is a privilege I have,” says Henrik and taps his thigh with his right hand, “since I can walk on my legs.”
The roots creak and bend. They carry the head down towards him. It is larger than his whole body. Its sharp beard dips into the pool. Its eyes shine with the same runic light as the water. Henrik feels the warmth of the power in its eyes.
“This well is a blessing from Yggdrasil,” says the head. “It is not a resource for thieves.”
Henrik looks around. The flowers shine with runic light. There is no wind, but the ash tree’s leaves sway along with the water’s rhythm. He doesn’t see anyone else. The only ones in the room are he and a talking head.
“I don’t think you can decide that,” he says, “without a body.” He speaks on instinct but needs to gulp afterward. The eyes above him have a warmth that connects in his chest.
“You overestimate yourself,” says the head.
Henrik loses his sight. He does not smell the flowers or feel the moss’ softness under his feet. He hears only the thrum of the lake. From inside the rhythm rises the voice of the head. Its speech is the only thing that exists. “Here you are lesser,” it says. “You live at my whim.”
Henrik can’t feel himself fall to his knees. He can’t feel the tears that stream down his cheeks or the terror that rises in his chest. He doesn’t feel himself speak, but he hears his words. “I work for the Aesir,” he says. “They sent me to steal the jotuns’ new weapon.”
The head falls silent. Henrik hears the call of the waters but senses nothing else. He can’t tell the passage of time.
“You are an instrument,” says the head. “You are not the ultimate thief.”
“Exactly.” Henrik’s voice sounds awkward and false inside his blinded consciousness.
“Your masters are desperate for power,” says the head. “Their thievery would start a war. You will solve this problem you have made, and I will give you three gifts to do so.”
The world flashes back into Henrik’s eyes. The light burns in his skull. He kneels in the moss and tastes his tears’ salt in his mouth. The great head hovers above him.
“The first is your life,” says the head. “I will not kill you.”
“Thank you,” whispers Henrik. He tries to look into its eyes, but the light inside burns him.
“The second is a drink from my well,” says the head. “You will need its knowledge to right your wrongs.”
“I can have it?” Henrik feels tender inside after facing his death. Tears of gratitude rise in his eyes. He recognizes that these are not his usual feelings, but he doesn’t imagine their source.
“Ja,” says the head. “The gift of knowledge is yours. And the third is better. I will give you what you seek.”
The head seems to morph into an icon of comfort. Its light warms inside Henrik. “You would give it to me?”
“The weapon,” says the head, “is the last tool you need to save yourself. You will use it to run from your masters, and they will never have it.”
Henrik falls forward and worships the head. The light’s warmth fills him. He cannot forget his gratitude to the great head, which looks down on him from above.
***
Henrik sits on the bed in a human-sized chamber. He looks out the window at the view of Utgard’s ice wastes. It is long past midnight, but the sun does not touch the horizon.
The door crashes open. Hilde stumbles into the room with hazy eyes, wearing one of the giant loincloths rewrapped as a tunic. It is loose on her frame. Her gold hair falls in ragged bunches on her shoulders. She stumbles two steps toward the bed before she notices him.
She scrunches up her face. “It’s you,” she says with a drunken slur. “That’s right, we were going to meet here.” She closes the door and locks it behind her.
Henrik stands up. He lets a nervous tremor into his voice. “I sought the weapon.”
“I know what you sought,” she says. “Did you think the Allfather could not reach me here? I had to cut short the feast.”
He sees a cruel glint he recognizes in her eyes. A deep blue glow swims inside them. Up his sleeve, the runic pendant he pickpocketed starts to heat up.
She would enjoy it if he sputtered for her. He lets his breath catch in his throat and wheezes. “I found it.”
“I know what you found!” She pushes his chest. Her Valkyric strength throws him back on the bed. He holds his breath, squirms over the sheets, and clutches his necklace.
“You know what Odin sacrificed to the well of Mimir,” she says and walks next to the bed. She leers down on him and watches him pretend to struggle. “His eye sees everything in the waters of knowledge.”
Henrik’s face starts to turn blue. He lets a slight, choking gasps from his lips. “I… Found…”
Hilde can’t hear him through her drunken haze. She lowers her hungry sneer towards his face and grabs his collar.
“I…” He whispers into her face. “Found…” Her eyes grow wide. Henrik starts to breathe again and says in a normal voice, “The weapon.”
He slips it from inside his sleeve. It looks like a heavy, obsidian orb with a blue glimmer inside, which fits in his palm. He dashes it on her forehead. The moment it touches, runic light fills her eyes. She freezes in place. Henrik does not dare move.
The light fizzles from her eyes and slips into the stone. The shine from Hilde remains inside it, but a glimmer shoots back into her.
Her neck gives in and lets her chin bob on her chest. Each limb follows and tumbles her down on the wooden floor.
Henrik slips the stone back up his sleeve and stands above her. When she looks up at him, her eyes are dull. She reaches her tongue out of her mouth and tries to lick her nose. It’s too short, which distresses her. She bobs her head in the air and tries to reach her snout with her short tongue.
***
The giant king kneels in the corner of a frozen passage underneath his castle. He strikes his own chest and rips at his beard. His tears freeze on his cheeks. His grimace cracks their ice, so they fall as broken crystals and clash on the ground.
Below his hunched torso lies the body of a polar bear. It draws slow breaths but otherwise does not move. He can’t wake it.
“Ingrid,” he whispers in the Old Tongue and nudges its shoulder. “Ingrid, come back to me.” The bear does not stir.
“Trym.” His squire walks to him and lays a hand on his shoulder. “There is the matter of the dignitary.”
“Fuck the dignitary.” The king lashes behind him and slaps away the hand.
“She is erratic since the feast,” says the squire. “Does not speak and does not use chairs. The Valkyrie is simple.”
The king does not look at him. “Keep her. Feed her. Or kick her out to the wastes. It doesn’t matter. Just don’t give her any more mead.”
***
Henrik draws a deep breath. The cold air stings in his lungs. It jolts fresh life through his whole body. He gives a slow sigh. The exhale turns into a cloud. Through the vapor, he watches the evening light glitter in the ocean waves ahead of him. The wind blows the cloud back in his face.
He stands on the edge of the ice in front of a port. The giants do not sail, so none of the ships are sized for them.
A massive shelter and shop stand above the ships, with smaller huts along the side. A staircase with huge steps leads down to a human-sized pier with a human-sized longboat. Ten regular sailors fiddle with the knots and chat with the passengers. Henrik sighs again and thinks he will not miss the sting in his lungs.
There is something Henrik wants to bring home, which he could not find on the plains of ice. But a port has food and careless sailors. He closes his eyes and listens for little scratches on the wood. He has to walk around and try a few times before he hears it.
The rats here are not used to humans who chase them. He catches it inside a shack with an upturned lifeboat and a fishy smell. The dusk light trickles through the open door.
He slips the stone down from his sleeve. While clutching the squirming rat in his right-hand mitten, he admires the stone in his left. From inside the obsidian surface, the glow flickers and swirls. It dominates the gentle light from the door.
The rat starts to squeal. He touches the stone to its snout. It freezes in his hand and falls silent. Its eyes light up. It remains for a moment, before the eyes turn dull, and it collapses. He does not relax his grip.
The rat starts again to squeal and squirms harder than before. Henrik can’t help the grin that spreads on his face. “Hello rat,” he says.
The little animal stiffens. It squeaks and looks away from his face. Its rapid breathing and heartbeat pulse inside his palm.
“Try not to give yourself a heart attack now.”
The rat meets his eyes. Its face melts into a droopy, hateful grimace.
“That’s it,” says Henrik. “That’s right. I’ve put you inside of a rat.” He holds the stone in front of her face. A meek light shines in it. “But it takes a single touch to switch you back in the weapon.” He raises her in front of his face. “So remember, when I let you be inside the rat, that is when I am kind.”
He touches the stone to her snout. The bright light glides into the stone and leaves the rat’s eyes dull. He watches the dumb creature squirm in his hand and savors its helplessness. If one of the ships have a little cage, the journey will be more practical.
Henrik trudges over the ice wastes of Utgard. The frost giants’ capital looks like a bump on the horizon ahead. The wind stings around his eyes, but the snow’s rhythmic crunch under his boots threatens to lull him to sleep. Only his feeling of a glare in his neck keeps him moving forward. The Valkyrie walks behind and watches him. When she makes him nervous, he fiddles with the runic pendant on the necklace she gave him.
He scratches his scruffy, black beard under his wool face covering. “I won’t be much use if you wear me down,” he shouts over the wind.
“You’ll be tired when I tell you to be tired,” says Hilde behind him. “Now I tell you to walk.”
Henrik looks ahead. They are not halfway to the capital. It is said to be great as a mountain, but the bump far away does not intimidate him.
“Please,” he says, turns back, and reaches for her. She slaps his hands away. Her Valkyric strength baffles him every time he feels it. “I am practically Einherjar,” he says. “You should be tending to me.”
She grabs the collar of his pelt jacket. Short strands of gold hair escape her fur cap and rustle in the wind. Wool bindings cover most of her face, but her brow wrinkles with rage. Blue, runic light glimmers in her eyes. Henrik feels the necklace tighten on his throat. A cough starts to tickle inside.
“When I first saw you,” she says, “you were dangling by your neck.”
Henrik opens his mouth. Empty air sputters out. The necklace tightens further. He struggles to draw a breath.
“Your jarl did not like when you stole his son’s arm ring,” she says.
Henrik’s face turns blue. He gathers his focus and speaks a single line. “Or his daughter’s virginity.”
Hilde ignores his joke and says, “If I snap your neck like this, you will wake up in Helheim, like you were meant to.”
He falls to his knees. His eyes tear up and start to pop from his skull. The suffocating pain grows in his chest. Panic shoots up the back of his skull, but he needs to force it down a moment longer. He crawls to her and paws at her jacket.
“Odin saved you in case he needed a burglar,” says Hilde. She doesn’t lower herself to him but stands straight and watches him struggle. “With this mission, you have a chance to earn your seat in Valhalla and the title of Einherjar. If you succeed I will serve your evening mead myself.”
“Until then,” she grabs his chin and forces him to meet her eyes, “your fate balances on a dagger’s edge, and I wield the dagger.”
The pressure releases his throat. She steps back from her captive. Henrik collapses forward and lowers his forehead to the snow. He keeps his hands under his torso, out of sight.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I know the Allfather owns me.” Human color returns to his face. The strangling pain drains from his lungs. A grin plays on his lips. He keeps his face bowed and hidden. Still, he tries and fails to suppress the smile. “And through his power you own me too, Hilde.”
He clutches his fist to his chest. In it he hides a runic pendant he pickpocketed from her jacket while choking. He remains prostrated while she watches him.
She pauses and enjoys the view. “Good,” she says and walks past him. “Come now.” He slides the pendant up his sleeve, makes his face somber, and follows the Valkyrie.
Before his hanging, Henrik’s principle was that everything in the world belonged to him. If somebody else had a thing he wanted, that was a temporary situation. It didn’t matter if they were a beggar or a jarl. Their things would always be Henrik’s in the end. But the others, these transient guardians of his belongings, were always human.
He had never thought the gods were looking for a burglar. Even if they were, he was sure he was good enough to avoid their notice. When they saved him from the gallows and told him his options for the afterlife, he agreed to their demands.
They had heard rumors of a new weapon hidden in the city of Utgard. The frost giant wizards had created something powerful. The gods wanted it. They brought Henrik to steal it for them.
***
At every conscious moment in the walk over the ice, Henrik measures the capital. It never seems to get any closer, but each time he looks, the ice fortress of Utgard looms larger on the horizon. The structure looks like a mountain of ice with a city of stone on top. The palace on the peak belongs to the giant king Trym.
Inside the ice and below the wastes delve caves and great chambers. In the lowermost chamber lies the legend on which Utgard was built. There crawl the roots of the Life Tree. Dewdrops fall from the branches into the pool of knowledge. Its waters are where Odin sacrificed his eye. They are the source of the jotuns’ magic and are guarded by their highest wizard. Henrik imagines he can feel the waters’ power as a warm, pulsing vibration under his feet.
“I am on a diplomatic mission,” says Hilde. “You are my attendant.”
“That’s the story,” says Henrik. “You’ll be well entertained.”
“The jotuns always entertain the dignitaries from Asgard,” she says, “but you will not be noticed.”
“You are right,” he says, “I will not be noticed.”
“After you find the weapon,” she says, “you will meet in my chamber, and we will devise your escape.”
A grey figure sits in their path. Henrik can’t tell its size or how far it is. It looks already taller than him, even sitting. He thinks it’s out of earshot.
As he walks closer, the figure’s size seems vague and growing until he is near enough to spot the glittering in each snowflake between them. The city does not feel real until he stares up into the giant’s face.
The grey-skinned, white-maned creature sits cross-legged on the snow. It wears only a loincloth made from polar bear fur, leaving bare most of its muscular body. The top of its head reaches above thrice Henrik’s height. Its bright, blue eyes follow Hilde. She stops in front of it. Henrik follows her lead.
The giant looks to Henrik. Each fist is the size of his torso. When he meets its eyes, he wants to vomit. The eyes do not blink. They shine with inescapable clarity. He tries to remember how it felt to lie to humans, but the thought is alien. He dreads any falsehood under such eyes and before such fists.
“Jotnar!” Hilde shouts up at the guard. She lowers the wool binding below her chin and shows her face. Her cheeks and nose are red from the cold. “Tell your king who stands at his gate. Trym will want to know that I am here. He will know me as Hilde the strong, or Hilde Jotun-liver.”
The giant smiles. A deeper light flickers in its eyes. The sound of grinding ice rises behind it. A vertical crack opens in the fortress. The opening is taller than any creature Henrik can imagine, and still an unfathomable height of frozen mountain extends above it.
They enter vast ice caves with pale blue walls that glimmer with warm light inside. The pulsing glow feels alive to Henrik. He imagines its warmth from the pool of knowledge below.
A wooden elevator shaft with a massive counterweight boulder carries them to the mountaintop plateau. On the walk to Trym’s palace, Henrik still feels Hilde’s glare in his neck, but it no longer makes him nervous. He plays with the pendant hidden in his sleeve.
The king’s hall perches on the ice peak. His black stone palace could be its own mountain. To enter it is not to be an ant in a house, but to be a speck of dust.
Inside the main hall, the giants’ voices rumble together in a tongue alien to Henrik. They gather around a long timber table in the hall’s center. Their clothes are fur loincloths or colorful, embroidered tunics larger than longboat sails. They tinker with massive tools of metal or glass, unlike any Henrik has seen. Some scribble with runes that glow with a faint, blue light.
In the far corner lies a polar bear on a white carpet made of its own kind’s fur. It plays with the carcass of a smaller animal and eats off it. The blood spatters its muzzle and the carpet. It reaches its long tongue out and licks the blood off its black nose.
“Trym!” Hilde’s voice echoes through the hall. The giants’ speech fades to silence. Henrik shuffles behind her.
The central long table stands at twice Henrik’s height, but she jumps for it. With ease, she grips its edge, pulls herself up, and stands at nearly their eye level. Henrik feels naked without her, but the giants don’t look at him.
“Trym Small-gullet!” She puffs her chest out and strolls down the table’s length. Snow from the wastes falls from her pelts and decorates the dark granite. Her voice booms across the hall. “Trym Half-belly! I bring you a challenge from the Aesir!”
One giant steps out from the throng around the table’s other end. He wears a white loincloth and a vest embroidered opal blue. Gold rings weave into his mane. His eyes shine a brighter blue when they see her.
The king is not taller or shorter than the other giants, nor more muscular or more finely dressed. He distinguishes himself in his eyes, which are soft-lidded and gentle with everything they see. They shine towards Henrik’s captor.
“Hilde Man-liver! Hilde the Little!” He walks towards a crowd along the table, but they step aside for him. Behind him gallops the blood-snouted polar bear from the far corner. It licks its snout over again and grunts up towards the Valkyrie.
She reaches the table’s middle and waits for the king. The bear reaches her first. It stands on its hind legs, stretches, and scratches at the table’s edge. She crouches, takes off her wool mitten, and pets it between the ears, while it licks her hand and stains it with the carcass’ blood.
Trym stands in front of her. “Ingrid has missed you.” His echo booms through the hall. He bends down to scratch the bear’s back.
Hilde stands up and smiles into his face at eye level. She grasps the white mane that wreaths his head. A patch of the bear’s feeding-blood stains it. “And I have missed your hospitality,” she says. “I do not drink enough of your mead.”
“It is a crime,” says the king, “punishable by inebriation.”
“I told you,” she says, “I bring a challenge of the drink to you.”
“Never has my kingdom shied a challenge from your masters.” He keeps his eyes locked on Hilde’s and waves behind him. “Squire,” he says, “bring the woman our cheapest, dirtiest ale.” A loinclothed giant in the back bows and walks towards a door in the far corner.
“That is the only thing I drink.” She holds a deep stare in the giant’s eyes and waves to Henrik. “Attendant,” she says, “down to my chambers.”
Henrik bows like the other jotun and follows it. They exit the back door into a granite corridor. When the door slams shut behind them, Henrik turns to the squire. The giant does not look at him. It is about to walk down the hall.
“That way is for the kitchen?” The giant stops and squints down on him. The confused wrinkles make deep clefts on its face. Henrik thinks he could fit his pinky fingers in some of its pores.
Its eyes have the same clear blue glimmer as the guardian by the gate. Henrik’s throat turns drier every moment he stares into them. If he doesn’t say something soon, he’ll only be coughing at the giant.
“The dignitary would also like your cheapest, dirtiest male prostitute,” he says. “Where is it I find those?”
The only reaction in the giant’s face is a hint of an amused upturn in the corners of its mouth. It turns away and keeps walking down the hall.
“That’s alright, I’ll look on the other side then,” says Henrik and turns the opposite way. His heart starts beating again. A falsehood has broken the ice. This theft can be like any theft he knows from his old life.
He will seek the treasure inside the mountain, but not the one Hilde wants. When he leaves the palace and steps on the ice, he feels again the warm pulsing from under the mountain.
Below the mountain lies a treasure greater than the weapon. The pool of knowledge gave Odin’s witchcraft to him, and Henrik could not imagine that Odin was any cleverer than himself to begin with. Such a gift can slip the yoke off from under his Asgardian masters. They will find that none in the human or the higher realms can keep Henrik under their thumb.
The man walks through the mountaintop city. He passes a handful of massive buildings, each in its specialized shape. They house only a single or a few jotuns, all occupied in their own crafts. Some see movement in the corner of their eye. When they see it is a human, they look back down to their works.
Henrik reaches the elevator shaft and begins the descent. Inside the ice flickers a faint, blue glow. He can’t reach it from the timber platform. The distance pains him. He wants to feel the power inside the ice.
He descends deeper than the gate to the wastes. The warmth of the power grows below the ground. He can hear it. The glow in the ice brightens and starts to pulsate.
The shaft opens to a vast cavern below an ice dome. Along the shimmering ceiling crawl thick, dewy roots. They branch through the air and into the ice walls. Moss and flowers cover the ground below. A single ash tree grows by the bank of a small pond below the dome’s highest point.
The pond’s waters glow with runic blue so bright it hurts Henrik’s eyes. The light pulses along with the rhythmic humming from inside the water. In its center floats a small, white orb.
As the dew forms on the roots above, it drips into the pool and casts gentle, shimmering waves on the surface. The orb remains in the pool’s center, but it bobs on the waves. It rolls with each bobbing motion, and the pupil in its center passes its gaze over Henrik.
The wooden platform thumps on the ground next to the pool. The light blinds him, but he doesn’t need to see. The water calls him forward. He steps onto the soft moss and walks to the water’s edge.
“You have come a long way for knowledge.” A voice from above resonates with the well’s rhythm. Henrik looks up and sees that the roots weave together above the pool. They bind around a large jotun head that watches him. It has no body. The water shines from below and casts shadows over its mouth and eyes.
“That is a privilege I have,” says Henrik and taps his thigh with his right hand, “since I can walk on my legs.”
The roots creak and bend. They carry the head down towards him. It is larger than his whole body. Its sharp beard dips into the pool. Its eyes shine with the same runic light as the water. Henrik feels the warmth of the power in its eyes.
“This well is a blessing from Yggdrasil,” says the head. “It is not a resource for thieves.”
Henrik looks around. The flowers shine with runic light. There is no wind, but the ash tree’s leaves sway along with the water’s rhythm. He doesn’t see anyone else. The only ones in the room are he and a talking head.
“I don’t think you can decide that,” he says, “without a body.” He speaks on instinct but needs to gulp afterward. The eyes above him have a warmth that connects in his chest.
“You overestimate yourself,” says the head.
Henrik loses his sight. He does not smell the flowers or feel the moss’ softness under his feet. He hears only the thrum of the lake. From inside the rhythm rises the voice of the head. Its speech is the only thing that exists. “Here you are lesser,” it says. “You live at my whim.”
Henrik can’t feel himself fall to his knees. He can’t feel the tears that stream down his cheeks or the terror that rises in his chest. He doesn’t feel himself speak, but he hears his words. “I work for the Aesir,” he says. “They sent me to steal the jotuns’ new weapon.”
The head falls silent. Henrik hears the call of the waters but senses nothing else. He can’t tell the passage of time.
“You are an instrument,” says the head. “You are not the ultimate thief.”
“Exactly.” Henrik’s voice sounds awkward and false inside his blinded consciousness.
“Your masters are desperate for power,” says the head. “Their thievery would start a war. You will solve this problem you have made, and I will give you three gifts to do so.”
The world flashes back into Henrik’s eyes. The light burns in his skull. He kneels in the moss and tastes his tears’ salt in his mouth. The great head hovers above him.
“The first is your life,” says the head. “I will not kill you.”
“Thank you,” whispers Henrik. He tries to look into its eyes, but the light inside burns him.
“The second is a drink from my well,” says the head. “You will need its knowledge to right your wrongs.”
“I can have it?” Henrik feels tender inside after facing his death. Tears of gratitude rise in his eyes. He recognizes that these are not his usual feelings, but he doesn’t imagine their source.
“Ja,” says the head. “The gift of knowledge is yours. And the third is better. I will give you what you seek.”
The head seems to morph into an icon of comfort. Its light warms inside Henrik. “You would give it to me?”
“The weapon,” says the head, “is the last tool you need to save yourself. You will use it to run from your masters, and they will never have it.”
Henrik falls forward and worships the head. The light’s warmth fills him. He cannot forget his gratitude to the great head, which looks down on him from above.
***
Henrik sits on the bed in a human-sized chamber. He looks out the window at the view of Utgard’s ice wastes. It is long past midnight, but the sun does not touch the horizon.
The door crashes open. Hilde stumbles into the room with hazy eyes, wearing one of the giant loincloths rewrapped as a tunic. It is loose on her frame. Her gold hair falls in ragged bunches on her shoulders. She stumbles two steps toward the bed before she notices him.
She scrunches up her face. “It’s you,” she says with a drunken slur. “That’s right, we were going to meet here.” She closes the door and locks it behind her.
Henrik stands up. He lets a nervous tremor into his voice. “I sought the weapon.”
“I know what you sought,” she says. “Did you think the Allfather could not reach me here? I had to cut short the feast.”
He sees a cruel glint he recognizes in her eyes. A deep blue glow swims inside them. Up his sleeve, the runic pendant he pickpocketed starts to heat up.
She would enjoy it if he sputtered for her. He lets his breath catch in his throat and wheezes. “I found it.”
“I know what you found!” She pushes his chest. Her Valkyric strength throws him back on the bed. He holds his breath, squirms over the sheets, and clutches his necklace.
“You know what Odin sacrificed to the well of Mimir,” she says and walks next to the bed. She leers down on him and watches him pretend to struggle. “His eye sees everything in the waters of knowledge.”
Henrik’s face starts to turn blue. He lets a slight, choking gasps from his lips. “I… Found…”
Hilde can’t hear him through her drunken haze. She lowers her hungry sneer towards his face and grabs his collar.
“I…” He whispers into her face. “Found…” Her eyes grow wide. Henrik starts to breathe again and says in a normal voice, “The weapon.”
He slips it from inside his sleeve. It looks like a heavy, obsidian orb with a blue glimmer inside, which fits in his palm. He dashes it on her forehead. The moment it touches, runic light fills her eyes. She freezes in place. Henrik does not dare move.
The light fizzles from her eyes and slips into the stone. The shine from Hilde remains inside it, but a glimmer shoots back into her.
Her neck gives in and lets her chin bob on her chest. Each limb follows and tumbles her down on the wooden floor.
Henrik slips the stone back up his sleeve and stands above her. When she looks up at him, her eyes are dull. She reaches her tongue out of her mouth and tries to lick her nose. It’s too short, which distresses her. She bobs her head in the air and tries to reach her snout with her short tongue.
***
The giant king kneels in the corner of a frozen passage underneath his castle. He strikes his own chest and rips at his beard. His tears freeze on his cheeks. His grimace cracks their ice, so they fall as broken crystals and clash on the ground.
Below his hunched torso lies the body of a polar bear. It draws slow breaths but otherwise does not move. He can’t wake it.
“Ingrid,” he whispers in the Old Tongue and nudges its shoulder. “Ingrid, come back to me.” The bear does not stir.
“Trym.” His squire walks to him and lays a hand on his shoulder. “There is the matter of the dignitary.”
“Fuck the dignitary.” The king lashes behind him and slaps away the hand.
“She is erratic since the feast,” says the squire. “Does not speak and does not use chairs. The Valkyrie is simple.”
The king does not look at him. “Keep her. Feed her. Or kick her out to the wastes. It doesn’t matter. Just don’t give her any more mead.”
***
Henrik draws a deep breath. The cold air stings in his lungs. It jolts fresh life through his whole body. He gives a slow sigh. The exhale turns into a cloud. Through the vapor, he watches the evening light glitter in the ocean waves ahead of him. The wind blows the cloud back in his face.
He stands on the edge of the ice in front of a port. The giants do not sail, so none of the ships are sized for them.
A massive shelter and shop stand above the ships, with smaller huts along the side. A staircase with huge steps leads down to a human-sized pier with a human-sized longboat. Ten regular sailors fiddle with the knots and chat with the passengers. Henrik sighs again and thinks he will not miss the sting in his lungs.
There is something Henrik wants to bring home, which he could not find on the plains of ice. But a port has food and careless sailors. He closes his eyes and listens for little scratches on the wood. He has to walk around and try a few times before he hears it.
The rats here are not used to humans who chase them. He catches it inside a shack with an upturned lifeboat and a fishy smell. The dusk light trickles through the open door.
He slips the stone down from his sleeve. While clutching the squirming rat in his right-hand mitten, he admires the stone in his left. From inside the obsidian surface, the glow flickers and swirls. It dominates the gentle light from the door.
The rat starts to squeal. He touches the stone to its snout. It freezes in his hand and falls silent. Its eyes light up. It remains for a moment, before the eyes turn dull, and it collapses. He does not relax his grip.
The rat starts again to squeal and squirms harder than before. Henrik can’t help the grin that spreads on his face. “Hello rat,” he says.
The little animal stiffens. It squeaks and looks away from his face. Its rapid breathing and heartbeat pulse inside his palm.
“Try not to give yourself a heart attack now.”
The rat meets his eyes. Its face melts into a droopy, hateful grimace.
“That’s it,” says Henrik. “That’s right. I’ve put you inside of a rat.” He holds the stone in front of her face. A meek light shines in it. “But it takes a single touch to switch you back in the weapon.” He raises her in front of his face. “So remember, when I let you be inside the rat, that is when I am kind.”
He touches the stone to her snout. The bright light glides into the stone and leaves the rat’s eyes dull. He watches the dumb creature squirm in his hand and savors its helplessness. If one of the ships have a little cage, the journey will be more practical.
Henrik trudges over the ice wastes of Utgard. The frost giants’ capital looks like a bump on the horizon ahead. The wind stings around his eyes, but the snow’s rhythmic crunch under his boots threatens to lull him to sleep. Only his feeling of a glare in his neck keeps him moving forward. The Valkyrie walks behind and watches him. When she makes him nervous, he fiddles with the runic pendant on the necklace she gave him.
He scratches his scruffy, black beard under his wool face covering. “I won’t be much use if you wear me down,” he shouts over the wind.
“You’ll be tired when I tell you to be tired,” says Hilde behind him. “Now I tell you to walk.”
Henrik looks ahead. They are not halfway to the capital. It is said to be great as a mountain, but the bump far away does not intimidate him.
“Please,” he says, turns back, and reaches for her. She slaps his hands away. Her Valkyric strength baffles him every time he feels it. “I am practically Einherjar,” he says. “You should be tending to me.”
She grabs the collar of his pelt jacket. Short strands of gold hair escape her fur cap and rustle in the wind. Wool bindings cover most of her face, but her brow wrinkles with rage. Blue, runic light glimmers in her eyes. Henrik feels the necklace tighten on his throat. A cough starts to tickle inside.
“When I first saw you,” she says, “you were dangling by your neck.”
Henrik opens his mouth. Empty air sputters out. The necklace tightens further. He struggles to draw a breath.
“Your jarl did not like when you stole his son’s arm ring,” she says.
Henrik’s face turns blue. He gathers his focus and speaks a single line. “Or his daughter’s virginity.”
Hilde ignores his joke and says, “If I snap your neck like this, you will wake up in Helheim, like you were meant to.”
He falls to his knees. His eyes tear up and start to pop from his skull. The suffocating pain grows in his chest. Panic shoots up the back of his skull, but he needs to force it down a moment longer. He crawls to her and paws at her jacket.
“Odin saved you in case he needed a burglar,” says Hilde. She doesn’t lower herself to him but stands straight and watches him struggle. “With this mission, you have a chance to earn your seat in Valhalla and the title of Einherjar. If you succeed I will serve your evening mead myself.”
“Until then,” she grabs his chin and forces him to meet her eyes, “your fate balances on a dagger’s edge, and I wield the dagger.”
The pressure releases his throat. She steps back from her captive. Henrik collapses forward and lowers his forehead to the snow. He keeps his hands under his torso, out of sight.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I know the Allfather owns me.” Human color returns to his face. The strangling pain drains from his lungs. A grin plays on his lips. He keeps his face bowed and hidden. Still, he tries and fails to suppress the smile. “And through his power you own me too, Hilde.”
He clutches his fist to his chest. In it he hides a runic pendant he pickpocketed from her jacket while choking. He remains prostrated while she watches him.
She pauses and enjoys the view. “Good,” she says and walks past him. “Come now.” He slides the pendant up his sleeve, makes his face somber, and follows the Valkyrie.
Before his hanging, Henrik’s principle was that everything in the world belonged to him. If somebody else had a thing he wanted, that was a temporary situation. It didn’t matter if they were a beggar or a jarl. Their things would always be Henrik’s in the end. But the others, these transient guardians of his belongings, were always human.
He had never thought the gods were looking for a burglar. Even if they were, he was sure he was good enough to avoid their notice. When they saved him from the gallows and told him his options for the afterlife, he agreed to their demands.
They had heard rumors of a new weapon hidden in the city of Utgard. The frost giant wizards had created something powerful. The gods wanted it. They brought Henrik to steal it for them.
***
At every conscious moment in the walk over the ice, Henrik measures the capital. It never seems to get any closer, but each time he looks, the ice fortress of Utgard looms larger on the horizon. The structure looks like a mountain of ice with a city of stone on top. The palace on the peak belongs to the giant king Trym.
Inside the ice and below the wastes delve caves and great chambers. In the lowermost chamber lies the legend on which Utgard was built. There crawl the roots of the Life Tree. Dewdrops fall from the branches into the pool of knowledge. Its waters are where Odin sacrificed his eye. They are the source of the jotuns’ magic and are guarded by their highest wizard. Henrik imagines he can feel the waters’ power as a warm, pulsing vibration under his feet.
“I am on a diplomatic mission,” says Hilde. “You are my attendant.”
“That’s the story,” says Henrik. “You’ll be well entertained.”
“The jotuns always entertain the dignitaries from Asgard,” she says, “but you will not be noticed.”
“You are right,” he says, “I will not be noticed.”
“After you find the weapon,” she says, “you will meet in my chamber, and we will devise your escape.”
A grey figure sits in their path. Henrik can’t tell its size or how far it is. It looks already taller than him, even sitting. He thinks it’s out of earshot.
As he walks closer, the figure’s size seems vague and growing until he is near enough to spot the glittering in each snowflake between them. The city does not feel real until he stares up into the giant’s face.
The grey-skinned, white-maned creature sits cross-legged on the snow. It wears only a loincloth made from polar bear fur, leaving bare most of its muscular body. The top of its head reaches above thrice Henrik’s height. Its bright, blue eyes follow Hilde. She stops in front of it. Henrik follows her lead.
The giant looks to Henrik. Each fist is the size of his torso. When he meets its eyes, he wants to vomit. The eyes do not blink. They shine with inescapable clarity. He tries to remember how it felt to lie to humans, but the thought is alien. He dreads any falsehood under such eyes and before such fists.
“Jotnar!” Hilde shouts up at the guard. She lowers the wool binding below her chin and shows her face. Her cheeks and nose are red from the cold. “Tell your king who stands at his gate. Trym will want to know that I am here. He will know me as Hilde the strong, or Hilde Jotun-liver.”
The giant smiles. A deeper light flickers in its eyes. The sound of grinding ice rises behind it. A vertical crack opens in the fortress. The opening is taller than any creature Henrik can imagine, and still an unfathomable height of frozen mountain extends above it.
They enter vast ice caves with pale blue walls that glimmer with warm light inside. The pulsing glow feels alive to Henrik. He imagines its warmth from the pool of knowledge below.
A wooden elevator shaft with a massive counterweight boulder carries them to the mountaintop plateau. On the walk to Trym’s palace, Henrik still feels Hilde’s glare in his neck, but it no longer makes him nervous. He plays with the pendant hidden in his sleeve.
The king’s hall perches on the ice peak. His black stone palace could be its own mountain. To enter it is not to be an ant in a house, but to be a speck of dust.
Inside the main hall, the giants’ voices rumble together in a tongue alien to Henrik. They gather around a long timber table in the hall’s center. Their clothes are fur loincloths or colorful, embroidered tunics larger than longboat sails. They tinker with massive tools of metal or glass, unlike any Henrik has seen. Some scribble with runes that glow with a faint, blue light.
In the far corner lies a polar bear on a white carpet made of its own kind’s fur. It plays with the carcass of a smaller animal and eats off it. The blood spatters its muzzle and the carpet. It reaches its long tongue out and licks the blood off its black nose.
“Trym!” Hilde’s voice echoes through the hall. The giants’ speech fades to silence. Henrik shuffles behind her.
The central long table stands at twice Henrik’s height, but she jumps for it. With ease, she grips its edge, pulls herself up, and stands at nearly their eye level. Henrik feels naked without her, but the giants don’t look at him.
“Trym Small-gullet!” She puffs her chest out and strolls down the table’s length. Snow from the wastes falls from her pelts and decorates the dark granite. Her voice booms across the hall. “Trym Half-belly! I bring you a challenge from the Aesir!”
One giant steps out from the throng around the table’s other end. He wears a white loincloth and a vest embroidered opal blue. Gold rings weave into his mane. His eyes shine a brighter blue when they see her.
The king is not taller or shorter than the other giants, nor more muscular or more finely dressed. He distinguishes himself in his eyes, which are soft-lidded and gentle with everything they see. They shine towards Henrik’s captor.
“Hilde Man-liver! Hilde the Little!” He walks towards a crowd along the table, but they step aside for him. Behind him gallops the blood-snouted polar bear from the far corner. It licks its snout over again and grunts up towards the Valkyrie.
She reaches the table’s middle and waits for the king. The bear reaches her first. It stands on its hind legs, stretches, and scratches at the table’s edge. She crouches, takes off her wool mitten, and pets it between the ears, while it licks her hand and stains it with the carcass’ blood.
Trym stands in front of her. “Ingrid has missed you.” His echo booms through the hall. He bends down to scratch the bear’s back.
Hilde stands up and smiles into his face at eye level. She grasps the white mane that wreaths his head. A patch of the bear’s feeding-blood stains it. “And I have missed your hospitality,” she says. “I do not drink enough of your mead.”
“It is a crime,” says the king, “punishable by inebriation.”
“I told you,” she says, “I bring a challenge of the drink to you.”
“Never has my kingdom shied a challenge from your masters.” He keeps his eyes locked on Hilde’s and waves behind him. “Squire,” he says, “bring the woman our cheapest, dirtiest ale.” A loinclothed giant in the back bows and walks towards a door in the far corner.
“That is the only thing I drink.” She holds a deep stare in the giant’s eyes and waves to Henrik. “Attendant,” she says, “down to my chambers.”
Henrik bows like the other jotun and follows it. They exit the back door into a granite corridor. When the door slams shut behind them, Henrik turns to the squire. The giant does not look at him. It is about to walk down the hall.
“That way is for the kitchen?” The giant stops and squints down on him. The confused wrinkles make deep clefts on its face. Henrik thinks he could fit his pinky fingers in some of its pores.
Its eyes have the same clear blue glimmer as the guardian by the gate. Henrik’s throat turns drier every moment he stares into them. If he doesn’t say something soon, he’ll only be coughing at the giant.
“The dignitary would also like your cheapest, dirtiest male prostitute,” he says. “Where is it I find those?”
The only reaction in the giant’s face is a hint of an amused upturn in the corners of its mouth. It turns away and keeps walking down the hall.
“That’s alright, I’ll look on the other side then,” says Henrik and turns the opposite way. His heart starts beating again. A falsehood has broken the ice. This theft can be like any theft he knows from his old life.
He will seek the treasure inside the mountain, but not the one Hilde wants. When he leaves the palace and steps on the ice, he feels again the warm pulsing from under the mountain.
Below the mountain lies a treasure greater than the weapon. The pool of knowledge gave Odin’s witchcraft to him, and Henrik could not imagine that Odin was any cleverer than himself to begin with. Such a gift can slip the yoke off from under his Asgardian masters. They will find that none in the human or the higher realms can keep Henrik under their thumb.
The man walks through the mountaintop city. He passes a handful of massive buildings, each in its specialized shape. They house only a single or a few jotuns, all occupied in their own crafts. Some see movement in the corner of their eye. When they see it is a human, they look back down to their works.
Henrik reaches the elevator shaft and begins the descent. Inside the ice flickers a faint, blue glow. He can’t reach it from the timber platform. The distance pains him. He wants to feel the power inside the ice.
He descends deeper than the gate to the wastes. The warmth of the power grows below the ground. He can hear it. The glow in the ice brightens and starts to pulsate.
The shaft opens to a vast cavern below an ice dome. Along the shimmering ceiling crawl thick, dewy roots. They branch through the air and into the ice walls. Moss and flowers cover the ground below. A single ash tree grows by the bank of a small pond below the dome’s highest point.
The pond’s waters glow with runic blue so bright it hurts Henrik’s eyes. The light pulses along with the rhythmic humming from inside the water. In its center floats a small, white orb.
As the dew forms on the roots above, it drips into the pool and casts gentle, shimmering waves on the surface. The orb remains in the pool’s center, but it bobs on the waves. It rolls with each bobbing motion, and the pupil in its center passes its gaze over Henrik.
The wooden platform thumps on the ground next to the pool. The light blinds him, but he doesn’t need to see. The water calls him forward. He steps onto the soft moss and walks to the water’s edge.
“You have come a long way for knowledge.” A voice from above resonates with the well’s rhythm. Henrik looks up and sees that the roots weave together above the pool. They bind around a large jotun head that watches him. It has no body. The water shines from below and casts shadows over its mouth and eyes.
“That is a privilege I have,” says Henrik and taps his thigh with his right hand, “since I can walk on my legs.”
The roots creak and bend. They carry the head down towards him. It is larger than his whole body. Its sharp beard dips into the pool. Its eyes shine with the same runic light as the water. Henrik feels the warmth of the power in its eyes.
“This well is a blessing from Yggdrasil,” says the head. “It is not a resource for thieves.”
Henrik looks around. The flowers shine with runic light. There is no wind, but the ash tree’s leaves sway along with the water’s rhythm. He doesn’t see anyone else. The only ones in the room are he and a talking head.
“I don’t think you can decide that,” he says, “without a body.” He speaks on instinct but needs to gulp afterward. The eyes above him have a warmth that connects in his chest.
“You overestimate yourself,” says the head.
Henrik loses his sight. He does not smell the flowers or feel the moss’ softness under his feet. He hears only the thrum of the lake. From inside the rhythm rises the voice of the head. Its speech is the only thing that exists. “Here you are lesser,” it says. “You live at my whim.”
Henrik can’t feel himself fall to his knees. He can’t feel the tears that stream down his cheeks or the terror that rises in his chest. He doesn’t feel himself speak, but he hears his words. “I work for the Aesir,” he says. “They sent me to steal the jotuns’ new weapon.”
The head falls silent. Henrik hears the call of the waters but senses nothing else. He can’t tell the passage of time.
“You are an instrument,” says the head. “You are not the ultimate thief.”
“Exactly.” Henrik’s voice sounds awkward and false inside his blinded consciousness.
“Your masters are desperate for power,” says the head. “Their thievery would start a war. You will solve this problem you have made, and I will give you three gifts to do so.”
The world flashes back into Henrik’s eyes. The light burns in his skull. He kneels in the moss and tastes his tears’ salt in his mouth. The great head hovers above him.
“The first is your life,” says the head. “I will not kill you.”
“Thank you,” whispers Henrik. He tries to look into its eyes, but the light inside burns him.
“The second is a drink from my well,” says the head. “You will need its knowledge to right your wrongs.”
“I can have it?” Henrik feels tender inside after facing his death. Tears of gratitude rise in his eyes. He recognizes that these are not his usual feelings, but he doesn’t imagine their source.
“Ja,” says the head. “The gift of knowledge is yours. And the third is better. I will give you what you seek.”
The head seems to morph into an icon of comfort. Its light warms inside Henrik. “You would give it to me?”
“The weapon,” says the head, “is the last tool you need to save yourself. You will use it to run from your masters, and they will never have it.”
Henrik falls forward and worships the head. The light’s warmth fills him. He cannot forget his gratitude to the great head, which looks down on him from above.
***
Henrik sits on the bed in a human-sized chamber. He looks out the window at the view of Utgard’s ice wastes. It is long past midnight, but the sun does not touch the horizon.
The door crashes open. Hilde stumbles into the room with hazy eyes, wearing one of the giant loincloths rewrapped as a tunic. It is loose on her frame. Her gold hair falls in ragged bunches on her shoulders. She stumbles two steps toward the bed before she notices him.
She scrunches up her face. “It’s you,” she says with a drunken slur. “That’s right, we were going to meet here.” She closes the door and locks it behind her.
Henrik stands up. He lets a nervous tremor into his voice. “I sought the weapon.”
“I know what you sought,” she says. “Did you think the Allfather could not reach me here? I had to cut short the feast.”
He sees a cruel glint he recognizes in her eyes. A deep blue glow swims inside them. Up his sleeve, the runic pendant he pickpocketed starts to heat up.
She would enjoy it if he sputtered for her. He lets his breath catch in his throat and wheezes. “I found it.”
“I know what you found!” She pushes his chest. Her Valkyric strength throws him back on the bed. He holds his breath, squirms over the sheets, and clutches his necklace.
“You know what Odin sacrificed to the well of Mimir,” she says and walks next to the bed. She leers down on him and watches him pretend to struggle. “His eye sees everything in the waters of knowledge.”
Henrik’s face starts to turn blue. He lets a slight, choking gasps from his lips. “I… Found…”
Hilde can’t hear him through her drunken haze. She lowers her hungry sneer towards his face and grabs his collar.
“I…” He whispers into her face. “Found…” Her eyes grow wide. Henrik starts to breathe again and says in a normal voice, “The weapon.”
He slips it from inside his sleeve. It looks like a heavy, obsidian orb with a blue glimmer inside, which fits in his palm. He dashes it on her forehead. The moment it touches, runic light fills her eyes. She freezes in place. Henrik does not dare move.
The light fizzles from her eyes and slips into the stone. The shine from Hilde remains inside it, but a glimmer shoots back into her.
Her neck gives in and lets her chin bob on her chest. Each limb follows and tumbles her down on the wooden floor.
Henrik slips the stone back up his sleeve and stands above her. When she looks up at him, her eyes are dull. She reaches her tongue out of her mouth and tries to lick her nose. It’s too short, which distresses her. She bobs her head in the air and tries to reach her snout with her short tongue.
***
The giant king kneels in the corner of a frozen passage underneath his castle. He strikes his own chest and rips at his beard. His tears freeze on his cheeks. His grimace cracks their ice, so they fall as broken crystals and clash on the ground.
Below his hunched torso lies the body of a polar bear. It draws slow breaths but otherwise does not move. He can’t wake it.
“Ingrid,” he whispers in the Old Tongue and nudges its shoulder. “Ingrid, come back to me.” The bear does not stir.
“Trym.” His squire walks to him and lays a hand on his shoulder. “There is the matter of the dignitary.”
“Fuck the dignitary.” The king lashes behind him and slaps away the hand.
“She is erratic since the feast,” says the squire. “Does not speak and does not use chairs. The Valkyrie is simple.”
The king does not look at him. “Keep her. Feed her. Or kick her out to the wastes. It doesn’t matter. Just don’t give her any more mead.”
***
Henrik draws a deep breath. The cold air stings in his lungs. It jolts fresh life through his whole body. He gives a slow sigh. The exhale turns into a cloud. Through the vapor, he watches the evening light glitter in the ocean waves ahead of him. The wind blows the cloud back in his face.
He stands on the edge of the ice in front of a port. The giants do not sail, so none of the ships are sized for them.
A massive shelter and shop stand above the ships, with smaller huts along the side. A staircase with huge steps leads down to a human-sized pier with a human-sized longboat. Ten regular sailors fiddle with the knots and chat with the passengers. Henrik sighs again and thinks he will not miss the sting in his lungs.
There is something Henrik wants to bring home, which he could not find on the plains of ice. But a port has food and careless sailors. He closes his eyes and listens for little scratches on the wood. He has to walk around and try a few times before he hears it.
The rats here are not used to humans who chase them. He catches it inside a shack with an upturned lifeboat and a fishy smell. The dusk light trickles through the open door.
He slips the stone down from his sleeve. While clutching the squirming rat in his right-hand mitten, he admires the stone in his left. From inside the obsidian surface, the glow flickers and swirls. It dominates the gentle light from the door.
The rat starts to squeal. He touches the stone to its snout. It freezes in his hand and falls silent. Its eyes light up. It remains for a moment, before the eyes turn dull, and it collapses. He does not relax his grip.
The rat starts again to squeal and squirms harder than before. Henrik can’t help the grin that spreads on his face. “Hello rat,” he says.
The little animal stiffens. It squeaks and looks away from his face. Its rapid breathing and heartbeat pulse inside his palm.
“Try not to give yourself a heart attack now.”
The rat meets his eyes. Its face melts into a droopy, hateful grimace.
“That’s it,” says Henrik. “That’s right. I’ve put you inside of a rat.” He holds the stone in front of her face. A meek light shines in it. “But it takes a single touch to switch you back in the weapon.” He raises her in front of his face. “So remember, when I let you be inside the rat, that is when I am kind.”
He touches the stone to her snout. The bright light glides into the stone and leaves the rat’s eyes dull. He watches the dumb creature squirm in his hand and savors its helplessness. If one of the ships have a little cage, the journey will be more practical.
Henrik trudges over the ice wastes of Utgard. The frost giants’ capital looks like a bump on the horizon ahead. The wind stings around his eyes, but the snow’s rhythmic crunch under his boots threatens to lull him to sleep. Only his feeling of a glare in his neck keeps him moving forward. The Valkyrie walks behind and watches him. When she makes him nervous, he fiddles with the runic pendant on the necklace she gave him.
He scratches his scruffy, black beard under his wool face covering. “I won’t be much use if you wear me down,” he shouts over the wind.
“You’ll be tired when I tell you to be tired,” says Hilde behind him. “Now I tell you to walk.”
Henrik looks ahead. They are not halfway to the capital. It is said to be great as a mountain, but the bump far away does not intimidate him.
“Please,” he says, turns back, and reaches for her. She slaps his hands away. Her Valkyric strength baffles him every time he feels it. “I am practically Einherjar,” he says. “You should be tending to me.”
She grabs the collar of his pelt jacket. Short strands of gold hair escape her fur cap and rustle in the wind. Wool bindings cover most of her face, but her brow wrinkles with rage. Blue, runic light glimmers in her eyes. Henrik feels the necklace tighten on his throat. A cough starts to tickle inside.
“When I first saw you,” she says, “you were dangling by your neck.”
Henrik opens his mouth. Empty air sputters out. The necklace tightens further. He struggles to draw a breath.
“Your jarl did not like when you stole his son’s arm ring,” she says.
Henrik’s face turns blue. He gathers his focus and speaks a single line. “Or his daughter’s virginity.”
Hilde ignores his joke and says, “If I snap your neck like this, you will wake up in Helheim, like you were meant to.”
He falls to his knees. His eyes tear up and start to pop from his skull. The suffocating pain grows in his chest. Panic shoots up the back of his skull, but he needs to force it down a moment longer. He crawls to her and paws at her jacket.
“Odin saved you in case he needed a burglar,” says Hilde. She doesn’t lower herself to him but stands straight and watches him struggle. “With this mission, you have a chance to earn your seat in Valhalla and the title of Einherjar. If you succeed I will serve your evening mead myself.”
“Until then,” she grabs his chin and forces him to meet her eyes, “your fate balances on a dagger’s edge, and I wield the dagger.”
The pressure releases his throat. She steps back from her captive. Henrik collapses forward and lowers his forehead to the snow. He keeps his hands under his torso, out of sight.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I know the Allfather owns me.” Human color returns to his face. The strangling pain drains from his lungs. A grin plays on his lips. He keeps his face bowed and hidden. Still, he tries and fails to suppress the smile. “And through his power you own me too, Hilde.”
He clutches his fist to his chest. In it he hides a runic pendant he pickpocketed from her jacket while choking. He remains prostrated while she watches him.
She pauses and enjoys the view. “Good,” she says and walks past him. “Come now.” He slides the pendant up his sleeve, makes his face somber, and follows the Valkyrie.
Before his hanging, Henrik’s principle was that everything in the world belonged to him. If somebody else had a thing he wanted, that was a temporary situation. It didn’t matter if they were a beggar or a jarl. Their things would always be Henrik’s in the end. But the others, these transient guardians of his belongings, were always human.
He had never thought the gods were looking for a burglar. Even if they were, he was sure he was good enough to avoid their notice. When they saved him from the gallows and told him his options for the afterlife, he agreed to their demands.
They had heard rumors of a new weapon hidden in the city of Utgard. The frost giant wizards had created something powerful. The gods wanted it. They brought Henrik to steal it for them.
***
At every conscious moment in the walk over the ice, Henrik measures the capital. It never seems to get any closer, but each time he looks, the ice fortress of Utgard looms larger on the horizon. The structure looks like a mountain of ice with a city of stone on top. The palace on the peak belongs to the giant king Trym.
Inside the ice and below the wastes delve caves and great chambers. In the lowermost chamber lies the legend on which Utgard was built. There crawl the roots of the Life Tree. Dewdrops fall from the branches into the pool of knowledge. Its waters are where Odin sacrificed his eye. They are the source of the jotuns’ magic and are guarded by their highest wizard. Henrik imagines he can feel the waters’ power as a warm, pulsing vibration under his feet.
“I am on a diplomatic mission,” says Hilde. “You are my attendant.”
“That’s the story,” says Henrik. “You’ll be well entertained.”
“The jotuns always entertain the dignitaries from Asgard,” she says, “but you will not be noticed.”
“You are right,” he says, “I will not be noticed.”
“After you find the weapon,” she says, “you will meet in my chamber, and we will devise your escape.”
A grey figure sits in their path. Henrik can’t tell its size or how far it is. It looks already taller than him, even sitting. He thinks it’s out of earshot.
As he walks closer, the figure’s size seems vague and growing until he is near enough to spot the glittering in each snowflake between them. The city does not feel real until he stares up into the giant’s face.
The grey-skinned, white-maned creature sits cross-legged on the snow. It wears only a loincloth made from polar bear fur, leaving bare most of its muscular body. The top of its head reaches above thrice Henrik’s height. Its bright, blue eyes follow Hilde. She stops in front of it. Henrik follows her lead.
The giant looks to Henrik. Each fist is the size of his torso. When he meets its eyes, he wants to vomit. The eyes do not blink. They shine with inescapable clarity. He tries to remember how it felt to lie to humans, but the thought is alien. He dreads any falsehood under such eyes and before such fists.
“Jotnar!” Hilde shouts up at the guard. She lowers the wool binding below her chin and shows her face. Her cheeks and nose are red from the cold. “Tell your king who stands at his gate. Trym will want to know that I am here. He will know me as Hilde the strong, or Hilde Jotun-liver.”
The giant smiles. A deeper light flickers in its eyes. The sound of grinding ice rises behind it. A vertical crack opens in the fortress. The opening is taller than any creature Henrik can imagine, and still an unfathomable height of frozen mountain extends above it.
They enter vast ice caves with pale blue walls that glimmer with warm light inside. The pulsing glow feels alive to Henrik. He imagines its warmth from the pool of knowledge below.
A wooden elevator shaft with a massive counterweight boulder carries them to the mountaintop plateau. On the walk to Trym’s palace, Henrik still feels Hilde’s glare in his neck, but it no longer makes him nervous. He plays with the pendant hidden in his sleeve.
The king’s hall perches on the ice peak. His black stone palace could be its own mountain. To enter it is not to be an ant in a house, but to be a speck of dust.
Inside the main hall, the giants’ voices rumble together in a tongue alien to Henrik. They gather around a long timber table in the hall’s center. Their clothes are fur loincloths or colorful, embroidered tunics larger than longboat sails. They tinker with massive tools of metal or glass, unlike any Henrik has seen. Some scribble with runes that glow with a faint, blue light.
In the far corner lies a polar bear on a white carpet made of its own kind’s fur. It plays with the carcass of a smaller animal and eats off it. The blood spatters its muzzle and the carpet. It reaches its long tongue out and licks the blood off its black nose.
“Trym!” Hilde’s voice echoes through the hall. The giants’ speech fades to silence. Henrik shuffles behind her.
The central long table stands at twice Henrik’s height, but she jumps for it. With ease, she grips its edge, pulls herself up, and stands at nearly their eye level. Henrik feels naked without her, but the giants don’t look at him.
“Trym Small-gullet!” She puffs her chest out and strolls down the table’s length. Snow from the wastes falls from her pelts and decorates the dark granite. Her voice booms across the hall. “Trym Half-belly! I bring you a challenge from the Aesir!”
One giant steps out from the throng around the table’s other end. He wears a white loincloth and a vest embroidered opal blue. Gold rings weave into his mane. His eyes shine a brighter blue when they see her.
The king is not taller or shorter than the other giants, nor more muscular or more finely dressed. He distinguishes himself in his eyes, which are soft-lidded and gentle with everything they see. They shine towards Henrik’s captor.
“Hilde Man-liver! Hilde the Little!” He walks towards a crowd along the table, but they step aside for him. Behind him gallops the blood-snouted polar bear from the far corner. It licks its snout over again and grunts up towards the Valkyrie.
She reaches the table’s middle and waits for the king. The bear reaches her first. It stands on its hind legs, stretches, and scratches at the table’s edge. She crouches, takes off her wool mitten, and pets it between the ears, while it licks her hand and stains it with the carcass’ blood.
Trym stands in front of her. “Ingrid has missed you.” His echo booms through the hall. He bends down to scratch the bear’s back.
Hilde stands up and smiles into his face at eye level. She grasps the white mane that wreaths his head. A patch of the bear’s feeding-blood stains it. “And I have missed your hospitality,” she says. “I do not drink enough of your mead.”
“It is a crime,” says the king, “punishable by inebriation.”
“I told you,” she says, “I bring a challenge of the drink to you.”
“Never has my kingdom shied a challenge from your masters.” He keeps his eyes locked on Hilde’s and waves behind him. “Squire,” he says, “bring the woman our cheapest, dirtiest ale.” A loinclothed giant in the back bows and walks towards a door in the far corner.
“That is the only thing I drink.” She holds a deep stare in the giant’s eyes and waves to Henrik. “Attendant,” she says, “down to my chambers.”
Henrik bows like the other jotun and follows it. They exit the back door into a granite corridor. When the door slams shut behind them, Henrik turns to the squire. The giant does not look at him. It is about to walk down the hall.
“That way is for the kitchen?” The giant stops and squints down on him. The confused wrinkles make deep clefts on its face. Henrik thinks he could fit his pinky fingers in some of its pores.
Its eyes have the same clear blue glimmer as the guardian by the gate. Henrik’s throat turns drier every moment he stares into them. If he doesn’t say something soon, he’ll only be coughing at the giant.
“The dignitary would also like your cheapest, dirtiest male prostitute,” he says. “Where is it I find those?”
The only reaction in the giant’s face is a hint of an amused upturn in the corners of its mouth. It turns away and keeps walking down the hall.
“That’s alright, I’ll look on the other side then,” says Henrik and turns the opposite way. His heart starts beating again. A falsehood has broken the ice. This theft can be like any theft he knows from his old life.
He will seek the treasure inside the mountain, but not the one Hilde wants. When he leaves the palace and steps on the ice, he feels again the warm pulsing from under the mountain.
Below the mountain lies a treasure greater than the weapon. The pool of knowledge gave Odin’s witchcraft to him, and Henrik could not imagine that Odin was any cleverer than himself to begin with. Such a gift can slip the yoke off from under his Asgardian masters. They will find that none in the human or the higher realms can keep Henrik under their thumb.
The man walks through the mountaintop city. He passes a handful of massive buildings, each in its specialized shape. They house only a single or a few jotuns, all occupied in their own crafts. Some see movement in the corner of their eye. When they see it is a human, they look back down to their works.
Henrik reaches the elevator shaft and begins the descent. Inside the ice flickers a faint, blue glow. He can’t reach it from the timber platform. The distance pains him. He wants to feel the power inside the ice.
He descends deeper than the gate to the wastes. The warmth of the power grows below the ground. He can hear it. The glow in the ice brightens and starts to pulsate.
The shaft opens to a vast cavern below an ice dome. Along the shimmering ceiling crawl thick, dewy roots. They branch through the air and into the ice walls. Moss and flowers cover the ground below. A single ash tree grows by the bank of a small pond below the dome’s highest point.
The pond’s waters glow with runic blue so bright it hurts Henrik’s eyes. The light pulses along with the rhythmic humming from inside the water. In its center floats a small, white orb.
As the dew forms on the roots above, it drips into the pool and casts gentle, shimmering waves on the surface. The orb remains in the pool’s center, but it bobs on the waves. It rolls with each bobbing motion, and the pupil in its center passes its gaze over Henrik.
The wooden platform thumps on the ground next to the pool. The light blinds him, but he doesn’t need to see. The water calls him forward. He steps onto the soft moss and walks to the water’s edge.
“You have come a long way for knowledge.” A voice from above resonates with the well’s rhythm. Henrik looks up and sees that the roots weave together above the pool. They bind around a large jotun head that watches him. It has no body. The water shines from below and casts shadows over its mouth and eyes.
“That is a privilege I have,” says Henrik and taps his thigh with his right hand, “since I can walk on my legs.”
The roots creak and bend. They carry the head down towards him. It is larger than his whole body. Its sharp beard dips into the pool. Its eyes shine with the same runic light as the water. Henrik feels the warmth of the power in its eyes.
“This well is a blessing from Yggdrasil,” says the head. “It is not a resource for thieves.”
Henrik looks around. The flowers shine with runic light. There is no wind, but the ash tree’s leaves sway along with the water’s rhythm. He doesn’t see anyone else. The only ones in the room are he and a talking head.
“I don’t think you can decide that,” he says, “without a body.” He speaks on instinct but needs to gulp afterward. The eyes above him have a warmth that connects in his chest.
“You overestimate yourself,” says the head.
Henrik loses his sight. He does not smell the flowers or feel the moss’ softness under his feet. He hears only the thrum of the lake. From inside the rhythm rises the voice of the head. Its speech is the only thing that exists. “Here you are lesser,” it says. “You live at my whim.”
Henrik can’t feel himself fall to his knees. He can’t feel the tears that stream down his cheeks or the terror that rises in his chest. He doesn’t feel himself speak, but he hears his words. “I work for the Aesir,” he says. “They sent me to steal the jotuns’ new weapon.”
The head falls silent. Henrik hears the call of the waters but senses nothing else. He can’t tell the passage of time.
“You are an instrument,” says the head. “You are not the ultimate thief.”
“Exactly.” Henrik’s voice sounds awkward and false inside his blinded consciousness.
“Your masters are desperate for power,” says the head. “Their thievery would start a war. You will solve this problem you have made, and I will give you three gifts to do so.”
The world flashes back into Henrik’s eyes. The light burns in his skull. He kneels in the moss and tastes his tears’ salt in his mouth. The great head hovers above him.
“The first is your life,” says the head. “I will not kill you.”
“Thank you,” whispers Henrik. He tries to look into its eyes, but the light inside burns him.
“The second is a drink from my well,” says the head. “You will need its knowledge to right your wrongs.”
“I can have it?” Henrik feels tender inside after facing his death. Tears of gratitude rise in his eyes. He recognizes that these are not his usual feelings, but he doesn’t imagine their source.
“Ja,” says the head. “The gift of knowledge is yours. And the third is better. I will give you what you seek.”
The head seems to morph into an icon of comfort. Its light warms inside Henrik. “You would give it to me?”
“The weapon,” says the head, “is the last tool you need to save yourself. You will use it to run from your masters, and they will never have it.”
Henrik falls forward and worships the head. The light’s warmth fills him. He cannot forget his gratitude to the great head, which looks down on him from above.
***
Henrik sits on the bed in a human-sized chamber. He looks out the window at the view of Utgard’s ice wastes. It is long past midnight, but the sun does not touch the horizon.
The door crashes open. Hilde stumbles into the room with hazy eyes, wearing one of the giant loincloths rewrapped as a tunic. It is loose on her frame. Her gold hair falls in ragged bunches on her shoulders. She stumbles two steps toward the bed before she notices him.
She scrunches up her face. “It’s you,” she says with a drunken slur. “That’s right, we were going to meet here.” She closes the door and locks it behind her.
Henrik stands up. He lets a nervous tremor into his voice. “I sought the weapon.”
“I know what you sought,” she says. “Did you think the Allfather could not reach me here? I had to cut short the feast.”
He sees a cruel glint he recognizes in her eyes. A deep blue glow swims inside them. Up his sleeve, the runic pendant he pickpocketed starts to heat up.
She would enjoy it if he sputtered for her. He lets his breath catch in his throat and wheezes. “I found it.”
“I know what you found!” She pushes his chest. Her Valkyric strength throws him back on the bed. He holds his breath, squirms over the sheets, and clutches his necklace.
“You know what Odin sacrificed to the well of Mimir,” she says and walks next to the bed. She leers down on him and watches him pretend to struggle. “His eye sees everything in the waters of knowledge.”
Henrik’s face starts to turn blue. He lets a slight, choking gasps from his lips. “I… Found…”
Hilde can’t hear him through her drunken haze. She lowers her hungry sneer towards his face and grabs his collar.
“I…” He whispers into her face. “Found…” Her eyes grow wide. Henrik starts to breathe again and says in a normal voice, “The weapon.”
He slips it from inside his sleeve. It looks like a heavy, obsidian orb with a blue glimmer inside, which fits in his palm. He dashes it on her forehead. The moment it touches, runic light fills her eyes. She freezes in place. Henrik does not dare move.
The light fizzles from her eyes and slips into the stone. The shine from Hilde remains inside it, but a glimmer shoots back into her.
Her neck gives in and lets her chin bob on her chest. Each limb follows and tumbles her down on the wooden floor.
Henrik slips the stone back up his sleeve and stands above her. When she looks up at him, her eyes are dull. She reaches her tongue out of her mouth and tries to lick her nose. It’s too short, which distresses her. She bobs her head in the air and tries to reach her snout with her short tongue.
***
The giant king kneels in the corner of a frozen passage underneath his castle. He strikes his own chest and rips at his beard. His tears freeze on his cheeks. His grimace cracks their ice, so they fall as broken crystals and clash on the ground.
Below his hunched torso lies the body of a polar bear. It draws slow breaths but otherwise does not move. He can’t wake it.
“Ingrid,” he whispers in the Old Tongue and nudges its shoulder. “Ingrid, come back to me.” The bear does not stir.
“Trym.” His squire walks to him and lays a hand on his shoulder. “There is the matter of the dignitary.”
“Fuck the dignitary.” The king lashes behind him and slaps away the hand.
“She is erratic since the feast,” says the squire. “Does not speak and does not use chairs. The Valkyrie is simple.”
The king does not look at him. “Keep her. Feed her. Or kick her out to the wastes. It doesn’t matter. Just don’t give her any more mead.”
***
Henrik draws a deep breath. The cold air stings in his lungs. It jolts fresh life through his whole body. He gives a slow sigh. The exhale turns into a cloud. Through the vapor, he watches the evening light glitter in the ocean waves ahead of him. The wind blows the cloud back in his face.
He stands on the edge of the ice in front of a port. The giants do not sail, so none of the ships are sized for them.
A massive shelter and shop stand above the ships, with smaller huts along the side. A staircase with huge steps leads down to a human-sized pier with a human-sized longboat. Ten regular sailors fiddle with the knots and chat with the passengers. Henrik sighs again and thinks he will not miss the sting in his lungs.
There is something Henrik wants to bring home, which he could not find on the plains of ice. But a port has food and careless sailors. He closes his eyes and listens for little scratches on the wood. He has to walk around and try a few times before he hears it.
The rats here are not used to humans who chase them. He catches it inside a shack with an upturned lifeboat and a fishy smell. The dusk light trickles through the open door.
He slips the stone down from his sleeve. While clutching the squirming rat in his right-hand mitten, he admires the stone in his left. From inside the obsidian surface, the glow flickers and swirls. It dominates the gentle light from the door.
The rat starts to squeal. He touches the stone to its snout. It freezes in his hand and falls silent. Its eyes light up. It remains for a moment, before the eyes turn dull, and it collapses. He does not relax his grip.
The rat starts again to squeal and squirms harder than before. Henrik can’t help the grin that spreads on his face. “Hello rat,” he says.
The little animal stiffens. It squeaks and looks away from his face. Its rapid breathing and heartbeat pulse inside his palm.
“Try not to give yourself a heart attack now.”
The rat meets his eyes. Its face melts into a droopy, hateful grimace.
“That’s it,” says Henrik. “That’s right. I’ve put you inside of a rat.” He holds the stone in front of her face. A meek light shines in it. “But it takes a single touch to switch you back in the weapon.” He raises her in front of his face. “So remember, when I let you be inside the rat, that is when I am kind.”
He touches the stone to her snout. The bright light glides into the stone and leaves the rat’s eyes dull. He watches the dumb creature squirm in his hand and savors its helplessness. If one of the ships have a little cage, the journey will be more practical.