The Sea of Trolls

that an innocent woman and faithful animals be slaughtered? It was monstrous. All Jack’s initial loathing of the Northmen came back.

“‘What about Thorgil?’ I asked,” said Olaf.

“‘Who?’ he said. Thorgrim had forgotten he had a daughter.

“‘Allyson’s child,’ I said. ‘I’d like her, to remember you by.’ I was afraid he’d ask for her death, you see.

“‘Oh, the thrall,’ he said. ‘You can have her, and also my second-best sword.’

“We carried his body home and had a grand funeral.” Olaf’s eyes were misty at the memory. “We pulled his ship to the graveyard and filled it with the things he liked—wine, weapons, furs—and laid Allyson’s body next to his and the horse and dog at his feet. King Ivar gave him the wolfhound bitch who’d rescued Thorgil, which I thought quite fine. Then we set fire to it all and sent his spirit to Valhalla.”

What a totally, thoroughly sickening story, thought Jack. It wasn’t enough for Thorgrim to take Thorgil’s mother. He had to demand the one creature who’d shown her love as well. Then he cast his daughter away like an old shoe. Jack couldn’t trust himself to speak for a while. He was afraid he’d say something nasty and bring Bad Olaf out of hiding.

More elk were browsing by the river below. They were safe, though they didn’t know it. They kept looking up and acting spooked. Maybe they could smell blood.

“I gave Thorgil her freedom immediately,” said Olaf, breaking in on the silence. “That was three years ago, so she remembers well how it was to be a thrall.”

Jack fingered the slave ring on his neck and the scratches the grouse’s claws had inflicted.

“I should have had that removed before we left,” said Olaf, noticing. “I had Dirty Pants put it on to protect you.”

Jack looked at him, surprised.

“A free skald could be commanded by Ivar. To take a thrall, he’d have to go through me. I never intended you to clean out the pig barn, by the way. That was Pig Face’s idea.”

“I didn’t know you’d found out about it,” Jack said.

“Oh, Heide has ways of learning things she wants to know. If you’d complained to me, I would have killed the thralls involved. As you didn’t, I left them alone. It was honorable of you not to take revenge on lesser men.” Olaf rose, helped Jack lift his grouse, and shouldered his own. He walked off, not looking back to see if the boy was following.

Jack felt ridiculously happy with Olaf’s praise. Lesser men. That meant he, Jack, was greater. The giant didn’t think of him as a slave. For the first time the boy approached the quest with enthusiasm. They were three warriors on a perilous adventure full of glory and honor. They were equals. And their fame would never die.

Chapter Twenty-seven THE DEADFALL

On the way back Olaf flushed out another grouse, so they had more meat than they knew what to do with. He built a second fire in the grassy field to roast them. “You don’t want the smell of meat close to where you’re sleeping,” he said, without saying why.

Jack plucked the three giant birds while Olaf whittled spits and Y-shaped stands to hold them. Thorgil did nothing. When Jack had removed the feathers from one bird, Olaf heaved it to Thorgil. “Clean it,” he said.

“I don’t do thrall’s work,” the girl sneered. Olaf swept her upside down by the ankles.

“You’ve not been on a quest before, so you don’t know the rules,” he explained as she struggled to free herself. “All members do all tasks, no matter how lowly. Even Thor cooks when his companions are busy. Understand?”

Thorgil’s face was red from the blood rushing to her head. “Yes,” she gasped. The giant put her down. She furiously cleaned the grouse, splashing blood and guts over her clothes.

“Something Thor would not do,” Olaf remarked, “is attract wolves by smelling like a grouse.” The girl continued to work furiously.

Eventually, all three birds were roasting over the fire. Jack went off to wash himself in a stream, and later Olaf did the same. Thorgil didn’t. She was determined to be difficult, and as the day wore on she began to smell gamy. Still, dinner was superb. Olaf had stuffed the interior of the birds with wild garlic. There was more than enough for everyone, including Bold Heart, who pecked the remnants from the bones.

When they were done, Olaf put the uneaten food in a bag. Jack climbed a tree and cached the bag high above the ground. Then they retired to the cave, and Olaf marked out a game of Wolves and Sheep in the dirt. They used juniper berries for playing pieces. Thorgil won several times. She cheered loudly and said it was easy to beat such simpleminded opponents. Thorgil was a bad winner as well as a sore loser.

They woke to cracking and crunching. Something big was tearing branches off a tree in the distance. Olaf eased out his sword. “What is it?” whispered Thorgil. The giant signaled for quiet. The forest outside was pitch- black.

Jack thought about how their fire, now glowing coals, could still make a beacon in such darkness. The fallen tree blocking the entrance might protect them, though. Jack had his own knife at the ready, and he grasped a handful of sand from the cave’s floor to throw into the eyes of whatever it was.

The snapping and crunching went on for a while and then ceased. They heard nothing more. The forest began to lighten with early dawn, and when it was possible to see, they covered the fire and departed. They hurried along a blue-shadowed trail through the trees. It wound here and there, following natural openings in the brush, and gradually went downward until it came into the U-shaped valley Jack had seen the day before.

The sky opened out. Grim, bare rock lay before them, and a cold wind blew from the ice mountain. Still, the presence of sunlight was cheering. Jack was glad not to be enclosed by trees, where anything could hide. Bold Heart, who was perched on his shoulder, murmured softly as though he, too, was relieved to be out in the open.

“What made that noise?” Thorgil repeated her question.

“Something that likes roast grouse,” Olaf said.

Jack realized they hadn’t gone back to their food cache. He felt queasy. The bag with the grouse had been stashed as high in the tree as he could manage. Whatever found it had been too large to merely slip through the branches. It had ripped them out of its way, and they’d been large branches, too.

Olaf led them across the valley floor. The wind burrowed under their clothes, and a fine grit blew off the land and made Jack’s eyes water. The change in temperature was amazing. The forest had been warm and summery. This was a place winter never, apparently, left. Ice sparkled in places the sun hadn’t reached, and fields of snow made stark patterns on dark blue stone. As Jack looked toward the mountain he saw less rock and more snow until there was a continuous white sweep up to the heart of Jotunheim.

They came to the deadfall. Jack looked behind him to see the vast cliff where he and Olaf had observed the dragon. The forest massed at the top, and no doubt through the years, hundreds of trees had fallen from its edge and wound up here. They made a small mountain of logs, branches, dry moss, and twigs. He could hear water rushing ahead.

“This is the last shelter before we reach the mountain,” Olaf said. “We should rest awhile, and you, Thorgil, should bathe and sponge off your clothes.”

“It’s freezing!” she cried.

“If you’d washed in the forest, you wouldn’t have found it so bad,” the giant said. “Last night’s disturbance was a warning. Something up there is hungry, and thanks to you, it won’t find it hard to track us.”

You could have smelled Thorgil all the way to the Mountain Queen’s front door, Jack thought. The grouse blood and guts had ripened gloriously overnight. He didn’t know how Thorgil stood it, but in her perverse way she probably thought it made her seem tough. He looked forward to hearing her yelps when she got into the river.

Olaf led them into the tangle of trees, though Bold Heart refused to enter. They went down a twisting passage to a cavelike hollow. The black river swept through the middle under a roof of trunks and branches. Jack looked up uneasily. He could see patches of sky, and it seemed little would be needed to bring the logs crashing