The Sword of Summer

Sam and Magnus enter the house and claim guest rights with the two eating giantesses. Since Magnus and Sam are so small, the giantesses offer to put them on a chair and then raise the chair, which involves banging it against the ceiling. The giantesses claim they were only joking and not seriously trying to hurt their guests. The group opens negotiations for Gunilla and the hammer. The giantesses agree to hand over both in exchange for Magnus and Sam as prisoners instead and “for that lovely talking sword” (393).

Magnus refuses to exchange Jack, both because he needs the sword to battle Surt and because he’s grown to like the weapon. Instead, he tells the giantesses about how they killed their sister. The confession enrages the giantesses. They admit their chair-raising was an attempt to kill their guests, “which violates the rules of hosts” (394). Jack kills one of the giantesses by flying up her nose. The other covers her face, evading the deadly strike. To distract her, Magnus jumps onto a steak knife like a diving board, sending it hurtling into the giantess’s chest. She shrieks and lowers her hands, allowing Jack to go up her nose. Magnus breaks his leg falling off the table. From the next room, a giant voice booms “girls, I’m home” (395).

The giant is Geirrod. While Sam and Magnus wait for him to find them, Blitz, Hearth, and Gunilla (still in swan form) parachute onto Magnus’s chair. When Magnus asks, Blitz informs him “dwarves always carry emergency parachutes” (397). Blitz paraglides Magnus to the floor, and the group runs into the next room with the giant. Magnus proclaims them guests and that they want to barter for Thor’s hammer and Gunilla’s freedom. Geirrod glances toward a door, giving the hammer’s position away. He is reluctant but agrees to give them the weapon and Valkyrie if they “play catch with me” (401). He picks up a hot coal from the nearest fireplace and prepares to throw.

The group runs for their lives but makes poor progress with Magnus injured. Geirrod flings hot coals at them with frightening accuracy, hitting furniture and support beams. A damaged beam reminds Magnus of camping with his mom and pitching a tent—how getting the poles to stay up was difficult but “making them collapse...that was easy” (404). The group runs toward Geirrod in a zig-zag pattern so he throws coal at the support beams on his side of the room. When enough beams are down, the ceiling collapses, killing the giant.

In the wake of the collapsing ceiling, Magnus finds his leg healed enough for him to stand. He helps Sam extract Hearth from a pile of debris and realizes the elf isn’t holding the swan. The three turn to find Gunilla back in human form. She holds Blitz hostage and tells the group they “are coming back to Valhalla as my prisoners” (406).

Gunilla lists off the crimes Magnus and his friends have committed. She will take them back to Valhalla, where they will be tried and found guilty. Hearth fools Gunilla by pointing behind her and looking frightened “as if Geirrod was rising from the rubble” (409). While Gunilla’s back is turned, Sam lunges and presses the bracer on Gunilla’s arm, ejecting her back to Valhalla.

The group breaks into the room holding Thor’s hammer, only to find it isn’t the hammer. Instead, it’s a giant-made staff, “Thor’s backup weapon” (411). Thor arrives in a flying chariot and claims the staff. As promised, he gives them a way to Fenris Wolf’s island. There are two dwarves with a boat at Long Wharf in Boston who know the way. Thor uses magic to transport the group. Magnus asks where Thor is sending them, to which Thor responds, “wherever you each need to go” (414).