Hammered

Chapter 22

There are some sights that, once seen, can never be unseen. They replay themselves on a loop in your mind’s home-theatre system with Dolby surround sound until you’re so desperate to be rid of them that you’ll resort to other loops simply to dislodge them for a while.

The long table I’d been expecting to see was actually there. Hrym had mounted his partner on top of it; they’d made little effort to clear away the trays of food or the spilled tankards of mead, and they were completely oblivious to the fact that they were now humping in front of a live audience. I am not sure they would have stopped for our benefit in any case.

“Graah,” Hrym said. Slap-slap-slap.

“Graah,” his partner said. Slap-slap-slap.

Suttung did his best to close the door again both quickly and discreetly, but the damage to my psyche had already been done. Recognizing the danger, I closed my eyes and began to sing: “ ‘The farmer in the dell, the farmer in the dell, hi-ho the derry-o, the farmer in the dell. The farmer takes a wife’—oh, bugger, that won’t do at all! Help me, guys, help me, I need a different song!”

“What are you on about, Atticus?” Gunnar asked.

“I need a vastly irritating, mind-numbing song to sing that will prevent me from reliving what I just saw. I have an intense need to forget it.”

“Oh, excellent plan. I’m with you,” Gunnar said, every bit as disturbed as I was. “How about ‘El Paso’ by Marty Robbins?”

“That’s good, it’s a catchy tune, but it won’t reduce us to catatonia quickly enough.”

“I have it!” Väinämöinen said, unexpectedly chiming in. “ ‘It’s a Small World, After All.’ ”

“That’s perfect!” I cried. “That’s just the tonic we need in a land of giants! Everybody, on three.” Soon the six of us were singing the execrable song with all the gusto at our disposal, a bit wild-eyed and panicked in the snow. Perun and Zhang Guo Lao weren’t familiar with it, but they learned quickly and joined us the second time around.

Suttung the frost Jötunn stared at us in perplexed silence, embarrassed at his faux pas and half convinced that we were all mad.