by Lou Anders
“What about you?” Karn snapped back. “You often walk around in the middle of snowy nowhere alone?”
“I live here.”
“Here?” Karn gaped. “You mean this is Ymiria? I’ve gone that far?”
“You don’t even know where you are?”
“I was running, okay?”
“To where?”
“For my life.”
That hung in the air.
“Is your village nearby?” Karn asked after a moment. A frost giant village might not be his ideal destination, but it would have food and shelter and a lot of very big giants he could place between him and any draug.
Thianna glanced through the small doorway in their ice shelter to the range of icy peaks that framed the horizon.
“Not near enough,” she said wistfully. “Anyway, I can’t go back there.”
Karn gave her a questioning look.
“I don’t want to talk about it either.”
“Well, that doesn’t leave us much to talk about.”
Thianna shrugged. The Norrønboy wasn’t of much use. He didn’t have any supplies of his own, so he’d be a drain on hers. But … he couldn’t survive out here without her. And it was good to have someone—anyone—to talk to.
“How about what we do now?” she offered.
“Find food and safety. But first, find food, obviously.”
“Well, isn’t that something,” said a large voice from outside. “We go looking for food. And here we find food looking for food itself.”
A large gray-green hand reached into their shelter to grip the ice block that formed the lintel of their small doorway. They saw broken and dirty fingernails, then the hand—and then the arm it was attached to heaved. The ceiling of their shelter was tossed effortlessly aside, landing with a whump in a bank of snow. Five ugly, hairy, warty faces glared down at them from above. Five faces, but only three bodies.
“Oh great,” said Karn. “More trolls.”
Thianna leapt straight up and out of their ruined shelter. She cleared the low ice wall and landed on her feet. The trolls hollered in surprise.
“Grab her!” one yelled.
“She’s got more meat than the other,” his second head added helpfully. They all sprang after her.
Karn hauled himself to his feet. He didn’t feel fully recovered, but while the troll’s attention was on Thianna, he thought maybe he could sneak away. It wasn’t like he could fight them, and he’d seen how the giant girl moved. She had a better chance than he did, so he had to take the chance he’d been offered. He clambered over the wall.
“Hey, now, where are you going?”
One of the trolls, a two-headed one, had spied him when one of its heads looked back. Now both heads swung to his attention.
“Food doesn’t get to get away,” one head said.
“I’ve got cheese!” Karn yelled. But he could see the teeth in both sets of mouths and none of them seemed to be broken.
“Good,” said the troll. “We can toss it in to flavor the meat in the stew.”
The troll reached down, and before Karn could move, he found himself gripped by the ankles and hauled up into the air. The creature shook him once, then brusquely patted him down, looking for weapons. It snatched Karn’s father’s sword and shoved the blade in its own pack. When the troll was satisfied the boy wasn’t carrying anything else sharp enough to give it trouble, it swung him over its back.
Karn kicked and struggled, but the troll was moving swiftly, hurrying to join its fellows in the hunt for Thianna. Bouncing around, with his face colliding frequently with the troll’s smelly bum, Karn couldn’t tell what was going on, but he could hear the sounds of their exertions. Shouts of “Grab her” and “Get her” and “Squash her” were mixed with cries of “Curse her” and “Blast her” and “Ouch” and “What did you go and do that for?” It sounded like Thianna was giving as good as she got. Karn began to feel hopeful, but three against one was poor odds. Soon the noises quieted down and the trolls’ shouts turned to wicked laughter.
The troll carrying Karn came alongside another one. Thianna suddenly appeared on its back, hung upside down by her ankles just like Karn.
“You ran,” he said, somewhat stung she’d deserted him.
“You didn’t,” she shot back angrily.
Karn started to protest but the trolls were talking.
“We could eat the little one and take the big one captive,” one of them said.
“The big one would make for better eating,” another offered. “And I doubt she’d make a very good slave.”
“You got that right, ugly!” Thianna shouted. “I’m nobody’s slave.”
“See?” the troll said. “Eat her now.”
“Shut up,” hissed Karn. “Are you crazy?” Then he called out loudly to the trolls, “She’d make a very good slave. She’s strong.”
“But she won’t break easily,” the troll objected.
“She will. She’ll be grateful not to be eaten. Tell them you break, Thianna.”
From her upside-down predicament, Thianna scowled at him.
“Tell them,” Karn stressed.
“I break, I break.”
“See?” said Karn hopefully.
“Anyway, we’ve still got a good bit of that moose we caught yesterday,” said the troll. “We can haul these two back to Trollheim and let the king decide if they’re for eatin’ or slavin’.”
This was generally agreed by all five heads to be a good plan, as the Troll King was sure to reward them for the capture, and his favor was thought to be worth considerably more than the scant meat they could get off their two prisoners.
“Plus,” said one of the trolls, “you two will like Trollheim. Finest city there is. Everybody should see it once before they die.”
“Which in your case,” offered another helpfully, “might be pretty soon after seeing it.”
“But count yourself lucky you’ll get to see it first,” the third offered.
So it was that Thianna and Karn were bundled along, dangling upside down behind two smelly trolls. Even worse, Karn’s troll was flatulent, forcing him to jerk his head to avoid great blasts of smelly air from spraying him in the face. As desperate as their situation was, Thianna couldn’t help giggling at him.
“You’re impossible,” he shot at her. “As bad as things are—”
“They aren’t as bad as all that,” said the troll carrying Karn. “You get to see—”
“Trollheim, yes, I know,” said Karn. “Before I get eaten.”
“Oh, cheer up. You’re a little one. The king probably won’t eat you for a few years yet. When you’ve gone and grown bigger.”
“There is that,” said Karn.
“See,” said the troll, missing the sarcasm, “you’ve just got to look on the bright side.” Then he let loose with a burst of flatulence.
“Ugh.” Karn winced. “Any side would be better than the one I’m facing.”
Thianna giggled again.
Karn glared at her.
“I know things are bad, Karn,” she said. “Believe me.”
“However bad they are for you,” said Karn, “they’re worse for me.”
“Really? I suppose you just fled your village to draw the fire of mysterious, flying foreigners away from your home, did you?”
Karn couldn’t think of a response to that. Not one he wanted to share anyway.
“Foreigners can fly, can they?” asked Karn’s troll.
“Nobody can fly,” said Thianna’s troll.
“These can,” said Thianna. “They are riding wyverns.”
“Wyverns?” asked Karn’s troll. “What’s that?”
“Like little two-legged dragons.”
“No such thing,” her troll replied.
“Anyway, you’ll be safe from them where you’re going.”
“Trollheim?” said Thianna.
“Into a cooking pot, most like,” said her troll.
“Anyway,” said Ka
rn, “you have to look on the bright side.…”
Things went on like that for most of the day. Occasionally, the trolls would haul them around right-side up and shake them “so the blood going to your head don’t kill you ’fore you see the glories of Trollheim,” they explained, and then they would be swung unceremoniously over the great, warty shoulders and carried some more.
Karn and Thianna tried to whisper to each other, but it was hard to be heard over the troll’s conversation, bouncing around upside down, and they weren’t always side by side. But during one of their shakings, when they were proceeding up a precarious ridge between two hills, Thianna thought she noticed something—a swirl of snow like the vortices that Eggthoda had shown her.
Thianna puckered her lips. She let out a strange, high-pitched warbling whistle.
“Ow,” said her troll, giving her a quick shake. “That hurt my ears.”
“What did?” asked Thianna, all innocence.
“That noise.”
“This one?” she asked. Then she let loose another loud whistle.
“Yes, that one,” said the troll. “Stop it!”
“Stop this?” she asked. She whistled again.
“Yes, stop it!”
“So, to be clear,” said Thianna, “you are asking me to stop doing this.” She whistled again.
“Yes. Will you stop doing that?” said the troll, clearly getting angry.
Karn wondered what she was doing. Then he noticed the strange way the snow flurries were swirling around them.
“Skapa kaldr skapa kaldr skapa kaldr skapa kaldr,” Thianna called out.
The snow in the flurries thickened. Karn could see shapes. They looked like eels made of snow, spinning in the air.
“What?” he asked.
“Frost sprites,” Thianna answered. “Friends of mine.”
“Friends of yours?” said a troll.
“Yes,” said Thianna. Karn could see her grin. Karn was beginning to realize how dangerous her grin was. He kept quiet. She let loose another burst of “skapa kaldr” chanting.
The trolls gawked at the cavorting sprites. As Thianna cooled the air, the frost sprites grew more agitated. This worried the trolls, who ducked and batted at the sprites as they swooped around them. Inevitably, one of the trolls took a swing at one of the creatures. His great hand tore the sprite in half, but the snow that formed it quickly regathered into its previous shape.
Thianna beamed in self-satisfaction.
All at once, the sprites turned on the trolls. In an instant, the playful creatures transformed into savage monsters. They struck at the trolls again and again, taking vicious bites out of the trolls’ hides with teeth sharp as icicles. Karn even saw one sprite shoot up a troll’s nostril, only to reemerge from its other nostril as the unfortunate troll howled and clutched its nose in pain. Amid all this chaos, Thianna and Karn were forgotten, dropped to tumble in the snow along with most of the trolls’ gear.
Screaming and yelling, the three trolls ran and tumbled down an escarpment as the sprites pursued them, icicle teeth snapping and biting.
Karn couldn’t help himself. He cupped his hands and yelled.
“Remember, you have to look on the bright side!”
The Avalanche
“We’ve got plenty of meat,” said Karn, digging in the trolls’ discarded packs. “I wish it weren’t moose meat, but we’re better off than we were this morning.”
“The bright side?” said Thianna with a smile.
“Exactly.” He thought a minute. “You knew the trolls would upset the frost sprites, didn’t you? You were banking on them not being respectful.”
Thianna nodded, remembering the lesson that Eggthoda had taught her, which seemed so long ago.
“All creatures behave according to their nature,” she said.
“Yeah,” said Karn. “Well, I’m glad your nature is on my side.”
When they had gone through the packs, they found they had a week’s worth of meat, a stone ax, several bundles of kindling, some threadbare blankets that smelled of troll, and a couple of poorly skinned hares. They found Whitestorm, to Karn’s relief, as well as Thianna’s pack, though her skis had been left behind. This put Thianna in a glum mood.
While Thianna sulked, Karn used some of the kindling to start a small fire. He set about roasting the hare—they weren’t desperate enough to eat moose yet—and considering their next steps.
“We should head back south,” Thianna said. “More chance of food and shelter.”
“I can’t go south.”
“I could even pick up my skis.”
“I can’t go south.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
Karn glared at her.
“Well, I won’t go north,” she said.
“You really fled your village?”
“Yeah.”
“From wyverns?”
“Yeah.”
“What—?”
“I don’t know why they were after me. Something to do with my mother.”
“Your mother?”
“Yeah. She was like you.”
“Like me?”
“Human, I mean. But she wasn’t a Norrønur.”
“What was she?”
“She never said. Wouldn’t say.”
Karn noticed her use of the past tense.
“I’m sorry, is she—?”
“It was a long time ago. Anyway, if you wondered why a frost giant was so short and dark …” Thianna let her voice trail off. Karn looked for a way to divert her thoughts.
“But these foreigners are after you?”
“I think they come from wherever she came from. I think she was fleeing them when she first came here. I don’t know why they’ve come back now, though.”
“Rabbit’s ready,” said Karn. The meat was too hot to hold in their hands, so they passed the spit back and forth and tore into it with their teeth. As they ate, their moods improved.
“This is the best rabbit-on-a-stick I’ve ever had,” Thianna said, only half joking.
“You think?”
“Sure. When we get wherever we’re going, you could open a tavern. Stick Rabbit à la Norrønboy.”
“That’s a mouthful.”
“So is this,” said Thianna, ripping into the hare and tearing off a big chunk. “But I bet you’d totally put whoever the local rabbit-on-a-stick guy is out of business.”
“So I open the Norrønboy Tavern. What will you be?”
“Not your serving wench, that’s for sure.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it. You could be my doorman. Uh, door woman? Door giant?”
“Keep the customers in line? Break the kneecaps of anybody who tries to leave without paying? I could do that.” She fake-glared at Karn from under her dark bangs. “What’s this job worth? What kind of coin do you pay in?”
“Well, I don’t have any money,” laughed Karn, “but I can guarantee you a steady supply of Stick Rabbit.”
They fell into easy laughter then. Karn pulled the other hare from the fire and took a great bite of it.
“Truth, though? This rabbit needs something.” He wished they had some salt.
“Hold on,” said Thianna. She dug in her pack and pulled out the wheel of cheese. “A little piece of home.”
Karn’s face fell when he saw Korlundr’s famed cheese. He pictured his father as he had last seen him, a runestone on a barrow mound.
“Karn,” said Thianna, seeing the look in his eyes. “What is it? Did something happen to your father?”
“The story Ori told us. It’s true. I woke Helltoppr. I called him out. I did, my fault. Those stones in the longship shape are all people. When you lose a fight with Helltoppr, you turn into one.”
“Oh, sweet Ymir,” Thianna said.
“And … and there’s a new standing stone now.”
“Korlundr?”
Karn nodded.
“It was supposed to be my fight. My father took—” Karn’s voice broke. It was all h
e could do to stammer out his next words. “H-he took my place. That stone. It should have been me. It should be me.”
“Oh, Karn, I’m so sorry.”
“I can never go back, you understand?” He met her eyes and she saw how haunted his were. “How could I tell them what I’ve done? My mother, my sisters—I’ve ruined all our lives.”
They sat by the fire a long time, nibbling slowly at the second hare and, yes, eventually some of the cheese. Karn told Thianna more about Helltoppr and the events in the barrow. Thianna told him about life on Gunnlod’s Plateau, about Thrudgelmir, and then finally about the huntress in bronze and gold. Karn sat up straight at the mention of wyverns.
“Her name is Sydia,” he said.
“She didn’t give her name,” Thianna replied. “I don’t know it.”
“I do. It’s Sydia.”
Thianna gripped his arm.
“You’ve met her?”
“She was in Bense—that’s a town we trade in. Weeks ago. She was asking about—”
“About me?”
Karn thought back to his altercation with Sydia at Stolki’s Hall.
“No. At least I don’t think so. She said she was looking for something, not someone.”
“Something? You’re sure?”
“Yes,” said Karn. “Something that was lost long ago.”
“She must have meant my mother. She didn’t know she was dead. I don’t know why she’s after me, though. Unless she thinks I’ll lead them to her.”
“Can’t they find your mother in the Hall of the Fallen?”
“The ice is foggy without a cantrip. And no giant, not even Thrudgelmir, would desecrate that hall by clearing it for an outsider. So, if I stay on the run, Sydia stays away from the village. But if I go back, Sydia will invade my home again. So I can’t go north.”
“I can’t head south,” Karn said.
Thianna nodded.
“We should head east,” she said. “For a bit at least. We can cut south when we’re clear of Norrøngard. Then we can head down into Saisland, or Araland.”
“Sydia, her two lackeys, three draug, Thrudgelmir.” Karn ticked them off on his fingers. “That’s a lot of enemies between us.”
“We could even try for Escoraine.”
“I hear they have good cheese there.” Karn snorted. “And probably no Stick Rabbit. Anyway, the farther, the better.”