By then I was screaming for mercy. My clothes were torn; I’d lost my boots; I was bruised and bleeding. I felt as if I’d been beaten, first by a dozen men with cudgels, then by the same dozen men with whips, then set alight, and then beaten out like a dusty carpet.

‘Please!’ I said. ‘I’ll do anything!’

Finally, the eagle spoke. ‘Ark. You will?’

‘I swear!’ I said.

‘Ark.’ The voice was harsh and dry. ‘Swear you’ll bring me Idun, and her golden apples. Then I’ll let you go.’

‘Idun?’ Too late, I saw the trap.

‘And the golden apples. Ark.’

I started to protest. ‘But how? How could I even do that? She never leaves Asgard. Bragi’s with her all the time. She’s—Owwww! That was unnecessary!’

That was the tip of a young poplar, right in the spot where even a god feels it keenly.

‘Please,’ I said, when the power of speech finally returned to me. ‘It can’t be done. It’s impossible.’

‘Ark. I suggest you find a way,’ said the eagle, making for the next patch of scree. ‘Unless you want to experience the world’s worst case of road-rash.’

My throat was dry. I swallowed.

‘Um. I might be able to think of something.’

‘You’ll have to do better than that,’ he said. ‘I want your word. Your binding oath.’ And he started to plummet towards the ground, folding his wings to increase his speed.

I closed my eyes. ‘All right! I swear!’

The eagle unfolded his wings again.

‘Swear on your name. Your true name.’

‘Please! Do I have to?’

‘Yes!’

So shoot me. I swore. What else could I do?

The eagle’s trajectory broadened out and we started a long and lazy descent back. As we reached the valley floor, some thirty miles or so from the place where Odin and Honir had made their camp, finding my frozen hands free at last, I dropped the last dozen feet to the ground and lay there, exhausted and hurting.

‘Remember your oath,’ said the eagle. ‘Idun, and her apples.’

I flipped him the bird. Even doing that hurt.

The eagle just laughed as it flew away; a nasty, croaking, rusty sound. It knew I couldn’t break that oath; my true name bound me to obey. I had no glam left to shift Aspect, or to hurl runes at the fleeing bird, or even to cast the rune Bjarkán to identify my abductor. Instead I lay where I was for a while until I was strong enough to stand, then pulled myself painfully to my feet and started the long walk back to camp.