‘I’m sorry, Brokk,’ Odin said. ‘You made the bet. It’s out of my hands.’ His face was stern as granite, but I knew that inside he was smiling.

For a moment longer, Brokk tried to find words to express himself. His fists clenched. His body shook. His dark face darkened still more with rage. Then he turned on me, eyes smouldering like the coals from his forge.

‘You think you’ve outwitted me, Trickster,’ he said. ‘Well, maybe I can’t claim your head. But since it now belongs to me, I can at least make some improvements.’

‘What? Are you going to cut my hair into a more flattering style?’

Brokk shook his head. ‘No. But that smart mouth of yours can be taught a lesson. I can do that, if nothing else.’

And from his pocket he pulled out a leatherworker’s awl and a long, thin leather thong.

I said: ‘You can’t be serious.’

‘You’d be surprised,’ said Brokk, with a grin. ‘We Tunnel Folk aren’t such humorists as you seem to believe. Hold his head, someone.’

And so, while Heimdall held me down (of course, it had to be Goldie, and I could tell he was enjoying himself), Brokk sewed my lips together. It took nine stitches, each of them like being punched in the mouth by a fistful of wasps.

But much as it hurt, it didn’t hurt as much as did their laughter. Yes, they laughed, my so-called friends; they laughed as I struggled and whimpered, and no one moved a finger to help, not even Odin, who had sworn to treat me like a brother – but we all know what happened to them, don’t we? Bragi, Njörd, Frey, Honir, Thor – even goody-two-shoes Balder joined in the laughter, succumbing to peer-group pressure like the weakling he secretly was.

And it was the sound of their laughter that followed me back to my bolt hole, where I pulled out the stitches and howled in rage and swore that one day I would pay them back – all of them, and especially my loving brother – in full. In blood.

The stitches healed quickly. The pain went away. But Brokk’s awl was a magical tool. It left a permanent mark on me. Nine neat little cross-stitch scars that faded silvery with time, but never vanished. After that, my smile was never quite as true, and there was something in my heart, a barbed thing, like a roll of wire, that never ceased to trouble me. The gods never suspected it. Except perhaps for Odin, whose eye I often felt on me, and whose morality, I knew, was almost as dubious as my own.