Free The Complete Compleat Enchanter by Fletcher Pratt, L. Sprague deCamp Page A

’twouldn’t do to have him and Uncle Fox together. Thor’s the only one of the sir that can stand Uncle Fox.”
    Shea shivered. “Say, friend Harold,” offered Thjalfi, “how would ye like to run a few steps to warm up?”
    Shea soon learned that Thjalfi’s idea of warming up did not consist merely of dogtrotting behind the chariot. “We’ll race to yonder boulder and back to the chariot,” he said. “Be ye ready? Get set: go!” Before Shea fairly got into his stride, his woolens flapping around him, Thjalfi was halfway to the boulder, gravel flying under his shoes, and clothes fluttering stiffly behind him like a flag in a gale. Shea had not covered half the distance when Thjalfi passed him, grinning, on the way back. He had always considered himself a good runner, but against this human antelope it was no contest. Wasn’t there anything in which he could hold his own against these people?
    Thjalfi helped pull him over the tail of the chariot. “Ye do a little better than most runners, friend Harold,” he said with the cheerfulness of superiority. “But I thought I’d give ye a little surprise, seeing as how maybe ye hadn’t heard about my running. But”—he lowered his voice—“don’t let Uncle Fox get ye into any contests. He’ll make a wager and collect it out of your hide. Ye got to watch him that way.”
    “What’s Loki’s game, anyway?” asked Shea. “I heard Heimdall suggesting he might be on the other side at the big fight.”
    Thjalfi shrugged. “That there Child of Fury gets a little mite hasty about Loki. Guess he’ll turn up on the right side all right, but he’s a queer one. Always up to something, sometimes good, sometimes bad, and he won’t let anyone boss him. There’s a lay about him, the Lokasenna, ye know:

    “I say to the gods And the sons of gods
    The things that whet my thoughts;
    By the wells of the world There is none with the might
    To make me do his will.”

    That agreed fairly well with the opinion Shea had formed of the enigmatic Uncle Fox. He would have liked to discuss the matter with Thjalfi. But he found that while he could form such concepts as delayed adolescence, superego, and sadism readily enough, he could think of no words to express them. If he wanted to be a practicing psychologist in this world, he would have to invent a whole terminology for the science.
    He sneezed some more. He was catching cold. His nose clogged, and his eyes ran. The temperature was going down, and an icy breeze had risen that did nothing to add to his happiness.
    They lunched without stopping, as they had on the previous day. As the puddles of the thaw began to develop crystals and the chariot wheels began to crunch, Shea blew on his mittens and slapped himself. Thjalfi looked sympathetic. “Be ye really cold, friend Harold?” he said. “This is barely freezing. A few years back we had a winter so cold that when we made a fire in the open, flames froze solid. I broke off some pieces, and for the rest of the winter, whenever we wanted a fire, I used one of them pieces to light it with. Would’a come in mighty handy this morning. My uncle Einarr traded off some as amber.”
    It was told with so straight a countenance, that Shea was not quite certain he was being kidded. In this world it might happen.
    The terrible afternoon finally waned. Skrymir was walking with head up now, looking around him. The giant waved toward a black spot on the side of a hill. “Hey, youse, there’s a cave,” he said. “Whatcha say we camp in there, huh?”
    Thor looked around. “It is not too dark for more of progress.”
    Loki spoke up. “Not untrue, Powerful One. Yet I fear our warlock must soon freeze to an ice bone. We should have to pack him in boughs lest pieces chip off, ha-ha!”
    “Oh, dote bide be,” said Shea, “I cad stad it.” Perhaps he could; at least if they went on he wouldn’t have to manhandle that chest halfway up the hill.
    He was overruled, but, after all, did not