X
“It must be worse before it gets better”
—Northern saying.
His ruddy face thrice ruddy with cold, Bolverk, the guardsman, came stamping into the great trading-booth, kicked the door shut upon the ice-bound out-of-doors and let go a shivering breath of appreciation at the sight of the fur-littered weapon-hung room, down whose middle fires were leaping, and along whose wall-benches shaggy-maned hunters and sleek-locked Skraellings sat consuming hot drink in the intervals of bargaining.
“Hail, friends!” he greeted the company. “Now does the bread of life seem to be buttered on both sides! Here are you on the inside, as snug as fleas on a goat; and outside, I just met a young one merry because his breath froze in such clouds that he had only to stick a knob-ended root between his lips to have the appearance of smoking like a Skraelling.”
The double row of faces that had turned towards him answered variously by grins or jests or grunts, but the trader’s headman looked up from the heap of beaver skins that thralls were sorting before him to wave a cordial hand.
“Now this day seems to have been set for the return of long-absent people! Welcome to you, Bolverk the Bold! Not so much as a hair have I seen of you for three months and more.”
“That is easily true,” the guardsman assented, “for since Treaty Day I have camped as far south as Freya’s Tower. And I have worn out my shoes there, as you may see. How long would it be before you could look me up another pair? From the appearance of your benches, I should not say that the lack of my custom had caused suffering to you.”
“Nay, it is your company that we have suffered for,” the trader’s man answered, as became a trader’s man. “But I need not keep you waiting if you will give to Eldir, here, one of your old shoes for a sample.”