in Asgard. We went about our business glumly, feeling as though there was little point to anything. Balder was gone. Nothing mattered. Frigga took to her room and would not emerge. Whenever I spoke to her, I got little in the way of reply. She'd lost both of her sons, don't forget. I had others but she had none. It was a devastating, crippling blow.'
'She seems to have come to terms with it.'
'Ah, the creature that you see today — the Frigga who smiles and is kind and giving and patient and oh-so- obliging — is but a shell, a mask for the real Frigga beneath, a woman lost in the ache of perpetual bereavement, a woman with a void at the core of her. As for the rest of us, in the aftermath of Balder's death we went through the motions of living but were pale imitations of ourselves. Only Loki continued to evince any animation or zest, which should perhaps have alerted us to his guilt, but we were too lost in misery and too numb with grief to notice. In hindsight I can see how obvious it was. He feigned sharing our sorrow but he was laughing at us behind his face. His eyes ever sparkled with barely concealed joy. What a coup for him! How artfully had he pulled off this, his most audacious trick yet, his most vindictive act, the acme of treachery. None could question his superiority to the Aesir now that he had contrived the murder of the finest among us. But a successful deceit is no fun for the deceiver unless others are aware that he was responsible.'
'Don't tell me, he owned up to it. Couldn't help himself.'
'It was during a banquet. Time had passed, the wound of Balder's death was beginning to heal, life in Asgard was returning to normal, and we had recovered some of our vivacity and confidence. Loki sat at the table listening to us banter and laud one another, much as we had done in times gone by, and it stung him to the quick that everyone ignored his witty comments and no one would praise him for his achievements. Eventually it became too much. His resentment boiled over and he flew into a spiteful rage. He abused us all, calling us prigs and dullards and simpletons and many more vicious names besides. My family dared not respond in kind, out of respect to me, since Loki was my blood brother and therefore under my aegis. So I felt obliged to chastise him myself. This, though, only angered him further, until at last he could contain himself no longer, and out it all spilled. How it was he who'd been the crone who'd approached Frigga, he who'd convinced Hodur to loose off the arrow, he who's substituted the shaft for one fashioned from mistletoe…'
'Talk about stitching yourself up like a kipper.'
'The Aesir rose up as one in fury, and Loki, recognising that he had gone too far and needed to save his neck, fled. With the aid of Huginn and Muninn I sought him out and found him in a house in a remote corner of the realm. There, by the hearthside, he was knotting lengths of string together in loops, something no one had ever thought to do before. As soon as he heard the Aesir coming for him, he threw what he was making into the fire, turned himself into a salmon and jumped into a stream. He thought we could never catch him in fish form, because he would be too wily to latch on to any line we cast into the water. He would not fall for a baited hook. Sadly for him, we recovered the mesh of string from the fire and used that to catch him instead. Too clever by half, Loki had been the architect of his own downfall. He had just fashioned the very device which trapped him — a net.'
'Silly arse.'
'Thor wrestled him out onto dry land and squeezed him back into his true shape. Together we then secured him in a cave with a poisonous serpent above him.'
'Venom in the eyes. That's got to hurt.'
'In ancient times our worshippers believed earthquakes were caused by Loki writhing in agony below the ground,' Odin said. 'Perhaps they were right.'
He lapsed into musing. I didn't know what to say. One of the trolls broke the silence by lifting a buttock and letting out a tremendous, ground-shaking fart.
I wouldn't have sniggered if Odin hadn't sniggered first.
'An apposite comment from below,' he said.
'Applause from the cheap seats,' I said.
'Sometimes it takes the digestive tract of a troll to remind us what is important.' Odin clasped my shoulder. 'Go, Gid, and fetch me more of these malodorous lummoxes. Just try not to get yourself asphyxiated in the process.'
Thirty-Seven
by the bard Bragi
In ages hence, in lands afar,
This tale will oft be told -
How men and gods in unison
Went out collecting trolls.
Decree there came from Odin's lips
That none should dare relent
From capturing the ogreish things,
His forces to augment.
In Jotunheim, in Svartalfheim,
In Alfheim, all around,
Gods of Asgard, men of Midgard,
Ran those trolls to ground.
They baited traps with hapless goats -
Bleating, trembling prey.
The trolls could not resist the lure.
They took it, come what may.
From caves below, the beasts were rousted,
From dens on mountain slopes,
Then were steered and stunned with gunfire;
Caught and bound with ropes.
Some resisted, some fought back,
Some raised a fearful yammer.
None, however, withstood long
Once struck with Thor's dire hammer.
Flying to and fro.
Twice or thrice, e'en four times daily
Out and back they'd go.
And so it grew, and grew and grew,
The toll of captive trolls,
And more and more was Asgard pocked
With large empenning holes.
Until at last the All-Father
In voice unduly gruff
Announced the numbers did suffice.