Thor

Gríd put the iron gloves on the table, and Loki stopped eating.

Thor noticed that before he noticed anything else. His companion had spent the evening scraping a bowl clean, praising the broth, asking whether there might be more. Now his spoon remained halfway to his mouth.

“You will need these,” the giantess said.

Thor looked from the gloves to Loki. “For a meal with Geirröd?”

“For whatever he has told you is a meal.”

Loki set down the spoon very carefully.

The house was too small for Gríd to stand upright beneath its lowest beam. She moved around it with the ease of long practice, ducking once to take a belt from a peg. Thor had struck down giants taller than she was. He had not often sat at their tables while they found things to keep him alive.

“He asked me to come without weapons,” Thor said.

“And Loki persuaded you that this would please him.”

“It is usual,” Loki began, “when entering another man’s—”

“Tell him about the chest.”

The fire settled. Thor heard a small piece of wood drop into the ashes.

Loki watched it fall.

He told the story without looking up: a borrowed bird-shape, a window too tempting to pass, feet that would not come loose when he tried to fly. Geirröd had shut him in a chest. For three months there had been darkness, hunger, and the giant’s voice asking what his freedom was worth.

“At last,” Loki said, “I found an answer he liked.”

Thor’s right hand closed around nothing. Mjölnir was at home. So were his own belt and gloves, each left behind on Loki’s excellent advice.

“You bought yourself with me.”

“I thought you would be harder to kill.”

Thor rose. Loki pushed his bench backward until it struck the wall.

Gríd laid her staff across the table between them. “Break him here, if you like. Then go down to the river with nothing in your hands.”

Thor stared at the staff. Its grip was dark where her palm had worn it smooth.

Outside, the river was making a noise he had mistaken for wind.

“How far?” he asked.

“To Geirröd? Across the Vimur. Then uphill until you smell his fires.”

Loki edged toward the door. “We could go home.”

“And leave him waiting for the next price you offer?” Thor said.

He took the belt. Gríd watched him fasten it, then pushed the gloves closer.

“They are lent,” she said.

Thor picked them up. “I heard you.”

The River That Rose

By morning, the Vimur had covered the stones of its ford.

Thor stood at the edge with Gríd’s staff in his hand. The current shouldered past in thick brown folds. A torn branch turned once in an eddy and vanished.

“Stay behind me,” he told Loki.

“I had intended to.”

“Hold the belt.”

Loki glanced at him, then stepped close and caught the leather at his back.

The first cold thrust of water drove through Thor’s clothes. He planted the staff downstream, found the next stone with his foot, and moved. The belt tightened around his waist. Strength gathered through his back and legs until the pressure of the river became something he could measure and meet.

Ten paces. Fifteen.

The water climbed from his thighs to his waist.

He looked upstream. No wall of rain crossed the mountains. Yet the river was rising while he stood in it, filling the hollow beneath his ribs, striking his chest. Behind him Loki lost his footing. The belt jerked backward.

“Stand,” Thor said.

“I would welcome a place to do it.”

Thor drove the staff deeper between the stones. Water struck his chin. He turned his head to breathe, and saw her.

Far up the ravine, a vast woman stood astride the stream. She looked down at the two small figures caught in its middle. The flood surged beneath her.

Gjálp, Geirröd’s daughter. Her pleasure traveled across the distance plainly enough.

Thor had one hand on the staff. With the other he reached into the water. His fingers scraped gravel, found a rounded stone, slipped. He reached again.

Loki’s grip climbed toward his shoulders.

“The belt,” Thor snarled. “Not my throat.”

The next surge knocked Thor’s heel from its purchase. For a moment all three of them—god, dangling companion, planted staff—hung against the current.

His fingers closed around stone.

Thor straightened. The belt bit into his middle. He lifted the rock clear of the water and threw it upstream.

Gjálp’s smile disappeared. She lurched away from the strike, and the river’s rising faltered.

Thor wrenched the staff free and drove toward the bank. He gained two strides before the loosened bed gave under him. His knee struck rock. The current caught his side and turned him.

There was no hammer to throw, no solid enemy to hit. There was only water, and Loki’s weight, and a strip of muddy bank sliding past his face.

A rowan grew above it. Its lower branches reached almost to the flood.

Thor caught one.

The branch bent until leaves dragged across his mouth. Roots shifted in the bank. He hauled with his arm and thrust with both legs, bringing his chest against the mud. Loki was still in the water.

“Let go,” Loki gasped.

Thor could not tell whether he meant the belt or the branch. He caught Loki’s wrist and dragged him up beside him.

For a while they lay there, coughing river water among the roots.

Loki rolled onto his back. “You could have saved yourself some weight.”

Thor sat up. The branch he had seized was stripped bare beneath his hand. Gríd’s staff lay caught between two stones below the bank, its end beating in the current.

He reached down and retrieved it.

“Get up,” he said. “Your host is waiting.”

A Chair for the Guest

Geirröd’s servants brought them to a low outbuilding and offered Thor its only chair.

There was no food. No ale. Damp straw lay across the floor, and something beneath it smelled of old animals.

Loki remained by the entrance.

Thor sat with the staff between his knees. He wanted a moment to take the river out of his boots. He leaned forward—and his feet left the floor.

The chair was rising.

He tried to stand. Its arms closed against his thighs as the seat drove him upward. His shoulder struck a beam. Dust burst from the roof into his eyes.

Beneath the chair, someone laughed.

Thor turned his head enough to see Gjálp through the settling dust. Another woman braced beside her: Greip, her sister. Their hands were beneath the seat. They pushed together.

The beam pressed against his neck.

Thor thrust the end of Gríd’s staff into the angle of the roof, wedged its lower end against the chair, and gripped it with both hands. There was scarcely room now to draw breath. His arms bent. The staff bowed.

Below him, the sisters pushed harder.

He forced his elbows straight.

For one long moment nothing moved. Then the chair dropped a finger’s breadth. Thor drove down with all the strength the belt would give him.

The sound beneath him was short and terrible. The chair struck the floor, throwing him onto his knees. Above him, the staff sprang free of the beam.

Neither sister rose.

Thor stayed kneeling until he could breathe. He touched the wood where it had bent. There was a fresh pale scar in the grain, but it had held.

From outside came a servant’s voice.

“Geirröd asks whether his guest is ready for games.”

Thor stood, taking the staff with him.

The Host’s Gift

Fires ran along the length of Geirröd’s hall. Their heat dried the river mud on Thor’s clothes until it cracked when he moved.

At the far end stood the giant. An iron pillar rose beside him. Near his feet, a bar of metal lay among the coals, glowing almost white at its center.

Geirröd looked first at Thor’s empty belt, where Mjölnir should have hung. Then at the gloves.

“Those are not yours.”

“No.”

“Your friend gave me his word.”

“You should have asked what it was worth.”

Loki made a small movement behind him. Thor heard a shoe scrape the threshold.

Geirröd took up a pair of long tongs. “He promised me a guest without a hammer.”

Thor shifted the staff to his left hand. His neck ached where the beam had caught it. Each breath drew the smell of burning charcoal into his chest.

“You have one.”

The giant lifted the iron from the fire.

Thor saw the motion begin in his shoulder. He had room to step aside. Behind him, in the narrow doorway, Loki did not.

He dropped the staff.

The bar crossed the hall in a burst of sparks.

Thor caught it in both hands.

The blow drove him backward. His heel struck the raised threshold; he bent his knees before he could fall. Iron screamed against iron. Heat came through the gloves, fierce enough to make every finger want to open.

He closed them harder.

Geirröd was already moving behind the pillar.

Thor hauled the bar across his body. Its far end dipped, drawing a bright line over the floor. He brought his forward foot down. The threshold stone cracked beneath it.

Beyond the pillar, Geirröd’s face disappeared.

Thor threw.

The iron struck the column with a sound that emptied the hall of every other noise. It went through. The pillar split around the bright wound; beyond it, Geirröd staggered against the wall. Stone burst outward behind him, and daylight came through the opening.

Then the giant fell.

Thor stood with his hands still spread. Heat shimmered above the gloves. Slowly, carefully, he opened each finger.

Loki leaned against the doorpost. A spark had burned a small black hole in his sleeve.

For once he seemed to have no words ready.

Thor picked up Gríd’s staff. “We are leaving.”

Loki stepped out of his way.

What Was Borrowed

They reached Gríd’s house after dark.

Thor placed the belt on her table, then the gloves. One palm bore a deep groove where the bar had struck. He laid the staff beside them with its fresh scar turned upward.

Gríd examined the wood.

“You were told they were lent.”

“I brought them back.”

“So I see.” She flexed the damaged glove. “And him?”

Loki had stopped outside the door.

Thor looked toward the opening. “He is walking home.”

After a moment, footsteps moved away into the dark.

Gríd set the glove down. The door sagged as she pulled it shut; its lower edge scraped the floor. She lifted it by the handle, trying to bring the latch level.

Thor reached past her and raised it clear.

She looked at his hand beneath the wood, then went to fetch her tools.

He stood holding the door while she drove the hinge-pin home.