The Age Of Odin

Twelve

Whole roast suckling pigs sat on platters on the banqueting hall tables, apples in their mouths, beds of parsley all around, the works. Their skins glistened like gold in the light of the torches burning in sconces on the walls. There were pies, heaps of root vegetables, tureens of broth, a stew which I was reliably informed was made of wild boar, and more forms of cooked herring than the mind could bear. Serving staff ferried it all in from the kitchen, and two hundred or so bods tucked in avidly, helping themselves to whatever came to hand, reaching, gnawing, munching, slurping.

Odin at the top table looked down on the scene with approval. On his shoulders a pair of large black birds were sitting — ravens was my guess. They perched there like a pair of bulky epaulettes, preening themselves and occasionally riffling their beaks through Odin's hair and beard. In return he fed them titbits from his plate with an indulgent smile.

Flanking him were Frigga and Thor, and lined up on either side of those two were other members of the Aesir and Vanir families. I couldn't see any sign of Freya, however. I looked, but she wasn't anywhere in the room.

Me, I was placed somewhere far down one of the long tables, and by coincidence — or perhaps not — the bloke next to me was Cy, the black guy I'd watched Thor beating up shortly before the thunder god turned his attention to me. Close to, Cy's facial scar was impressive. A jagged line that started just below the eye and ran down his cheek to his jaw. One of those scars that didn't disfigure, didn't ruin your looks, just made you look mean and cool.

Never one to mince around, I asked him how he'd come by it.

"Fight. When I was fifteen. You should have seen the other guy, though."

"Ugly?"

"He is now."

"And don't tell me, you got put on probation and they gave you the choice — prison or the army."

"Bingo." Cy grinned. "You too, man?"

"Not quite. Me, it was army or what the fuck else are you going to do with shitty qualifications like those?"

"Nothing? No GCSEs?"

"Failed them all. I'm not thick. I just don't get on with writing essays or working out equations or remembering who signed the Magna fucking Carta. One look at an exam paper and I freeze."

"Snap."

"South London, yeah?"

"Bermondsey. You?"

"Wandsworth. And I've got a scar too, we've got that in common as well. Right big fuck-off one, only you can't really see it because my hair's grown over."

"Give us a look."

"All right. As you insist." Like I needed asking twice.

I pushed up the hair on the left side of my head. Cy peered, then whistled. It always impressed people, my scar, once it was exposed. A rough hexagon shape, about the diameter of a ping-pong ball, with straggly lines forking off it in various directions. I tapped it with a finger. "Ding-ding. Titanium underneath. Sets off airport scanners everywhere I go. Which, of course, plays havoc with my millionaire jet-set lifestyle."

"Where'd you get it?"

"Afghanistan. Gift from the Taliban. One of the 'roadside flowers' they planted for us."

"Shit, bruv," Cy said, with feeling. "Harsh."

Some of the other guys around us nodded in sympathy.

"Tell you what I heard about you, though," Cy went on. "I heard you gave Thor a run for his money. After he'd knocked seven shades out of me, you went all psycho on his arse."

"You missed a treat, Cy," said the guy opposite. Spud-faced Irishman with a nose flattened sideways and a big black monobrow. "Yer man here had him down on the floor. Got him in the nads as well. The big fella was all a-whimpering and a-groaning. Honestly, it was a joy to behold, Thor getting his comeuppance. Even if it didn't last."

"I take it nobody likes Thor then?" I said.

"Oh, I wouldn't go so far as to say nobody likes him," the Irishman replied. "He's a harsh taskmaster, that's all, and he enjoys throwing his weight around. You cross him, he lets you know about it. All in the name of maintaining discipline, to be sure, but he can carry it too far. Like with young Cyrus here. Who, all he did was suggest our unit had practised this outflanking manoeuvre one too many times and maybe we should try something else for a bit of variety, and Thor came down on him like a ton of bricks."

"To be honest," said Cy, "I was itching to take a swing at him. He'd been riding me all week, calling me lazy and sloppy and slow. Finally I cracked… and Thor schooled me, like I knew he would. But not before I got in a few good licks."

"Yeah, you looked pretty tasty from what I saw," I said, miming jabs.

"Learned to box down the youth centre when I was a kid. Won a couple of junior amateur belts. Coach reckoned I had what it takes to turn pro. Would have too, if I'd been able to keep out of trouble back home."

"Trouble?"

"Only 'cause the gangstas on our estate kept getting all up in my face, giving me shit, dissing my mum and that. Fucker that cut me up, he fancied himself this big ghetto drug-lord, had all the bling, the pimped car, everything, and he'd been after this girl who was my girl, Tanya, and Tanya wasn't having none of it, so he blamed me for that and went for me one morning. Lay in wait in the stairwell outside my mum's flat and hacked me with a machete as I came out to go to school. I wasn't carrying or nothing. Still, I learned him never to do that again."

"You got the better of a guy with a machete, and you were unarmed?" Cy kept going up and up in my estimation.

"Yeah, well, funnily enough the fuzz didn't see it that way, did they? On account of all I got was a slashed-open face, whereas him — he doesn't look anything like he used to any more, and doesn't think straight or talk so good any more either."

"Fair's fair," I said. "He asked for it. I'm Gid, by the way. Gid Coxall."

"Yeah. Cy. Cy Fearon."

Other introductions followed. The Irishman was Colm O'Donough, although everyone called him Paddy because, well, why wouldn't they? Next to him was a chunky chap with a handlebar moustache. He answered to Ian Kellaway, or "Backdoor" Kellaway if you preferred, and his greeting was to hold up one hand, thumb and little finger extended, heavy metal devil's horns fashion.

"'Backdoor'?" I said. "Should I ask?"

"It's 'cause I'm crafty," Kellaway replied. "Sneaky. In all sorts of ways."

On my right was a Yorkshireman, Tim Butterworth, whose nickname was Baz for no reason I could see other than it started with the same letter as his surname. On the other side of Cy sat a quiet-spoken mixed-race Asian who was Dennis Ling, although he'd been rechristened Chopsticks. Apparently because it was the only tune he could play on the piano, although I doubted that was all there was to it.

I got to know a little about them over the course of the meal, their back stories, their reasons for being at Asgard Hall. Cy had wound up in 2 Para but unfortunately for him it turned out that taking orders wasn't his strong suit, and after a couple of years he and the regiment agreed to go their separate ways. O'Donough had been in the Grenadier Guards, Kellaway the Light Infantry. Butterworth had been a Marine, and Ling was TA but had seen combat in the Middle East owing to our government's sheer desperation to boost front-line troop numbers. O'Donough and Kellaway had both been called up so many times they'd come down with battle fatigue and burnout.

Butterworth, meanwhile, had been officially diagnosed with PTSD after an incident in Iraq when he and his squad were ambushed and captured by insurgents, who'd then set about decapitating their prisoners one after another and videotaping the executions for the internet, or maybe simply so as to have something fun to watch of an evening when there was bugger all else on the telly. American Marines had come to the rescue, in time to save Butterworth but none of his comrades.

"The fundy-jundies forced me to watch as they carved my mates' heads off with a ceremonial sword as long as your arm," he said. "And I'd have been next if the septics hadn't turned up and blown them all to Allah. I have nightmares like you wouldn't believe."

"But still you've signed up with the Valhalla Mission?" I said.

"Aye, well, it gets into your blood, doesn't it?" Miserable yet philosophical. "I think I speak for all of us when I say that. The military is like women. Can't live with it, can't live without it."

I recharged everyone's tankards from the jug in the middle of the table. Beer was apparently not on the menu and we were drinking, no word of a lie, mead. The first gulp of which had made me gag — sickly-sweet and potent at the same time, like Golden Syrup laced with meths. After a couple more swallows, however, I'd got used to it, and now I even quite liked it. Liked the buzz I was getting from it, anyway.

"Listen," I said, "not being funny, but can any of you tell me what exactly is going on here? What's this about? The training, everything. What's it all for? I've been puzzling it over and not got anywhere near an answer."

"Yeah, well, that's the phone-a-friend question, innit?" said Cy.

"You mean you don't know? You don't even know why you're running around in the snow doing drill and learning to ski and the rest?"

"Odin's told us we'll find out soon enough. I mean, some of us have a vague idea, but mostly we're taking it on faith."

"Faith? Isn't that just a bit, well, wishy-washy?"

"I'm getting paid," said O'Donough. "The cheques are piling up, and I'm not complaining about that and I'm certainly not going to start rocking the boat. As long as the money keeps rolling in, I'm onside with the big man Odin. That's yer faith right there."

"But who are those people?" I said, nodding towards the top table.

"The Aesir, and some of their elder cousins from Vanaheim, the Vanir, who are the race of gods who came before the Aesir," said Cy. "Which of them don't you know? Those three to the right, yeah? The younger ones? Those are Odin's other sons, Tyr, Vidar and — what's the last one called again, Baz?"

"Vali," said Butterworth. "They're all half-brothers. Same dad, different mothers. Odin used to put it about a bit. A lot, actually. And the pretty golden-haired lass over on the other side, that's Sif, AKA Mrs Thor. She's wasted on him. Far too nice to be saddled with a bonehead like that. And next to her, the boyish one with the short choppy hair who looks a bit like the pop singer, Bjork. That's Skadi. She's a Vanir. Freya's auntie, believe it or not. You'd think they were more like sisters, to look at them, nobbut a year or two apart, but that's the thing with gods, they don't age the way we do. Skadi's into skiing. She's a right little speed demon on the snow. And then — "

"This is all very interesting," I said, "but it's not what I was getting at. You're telling me who they say they are. Who are they really? Any idea?"

Blank looks.

"The Norse gods," Ling said eventually, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "Who else? The great pantheon from the Sagas. I studied them at school, in Comparative Religion."

"Chopsticks got privately educated," Cy confided.

"Ohh," I said. "Eton?"

"I have, thank you, full up now," Ling said. "Arf, arf. No, my teacher made us read much of the Prose Edda and the Poetic Edda, so I know what I'm talking about here. All the tales about the gods and the Nine Worlds and how creation came to be and the Aesir's struggles and rivalries and vanities, and… those are them," he said, pointing to Odin and his associates. "They are. I'm convinced of it. They can only be."

I looked at him. Was he serious? He was serious.

"Take Tyr, for instance," Ling continued. "See he's missing a hand? Lost it to a wolf."

I rubbed my bandaged wrist. I had some idea how that might feel.

"Not just any wolf, either. The wolf. Big bad Fenrir. And Vali next to him? Him and Vidar are war gods. Tyr likewise. They're helping with our training, under Thor's overall command, and they're going to head up separate units when the time comes. I can see how sceptical you are about all this, Gid."

Sceptical? That was putting it mildly. More like a massive case of chinny reckon.

"I was too, at the outset. But then…"

Ling's voice trailed off.

"We've seen stuff," said Cy, picking up the thread. "All of us. Since coming here. Stuff that… It in't easy to put into words."

"Stuff that would make a convert out of an atheist," said O'Donough. "And unless or until you've seen it for yourself, you'll never believe, and why would you? It reminds me of my granda, my ma's pa, old Padraig MacBride, God rest him, who'd swear blind the Little People existed. Said he used to see them regular-like as a kid, fairy folk and leprechauns all cavorting in the copses and peat bogs around the village. Mind you, this was County Sligo before the war. His ma was probably slipping poteen into his milk to keep him docile, or else he was taking sly nips from the jar himself when the grown-ups' backs were turned. But Granda would become all het up and outrageous if you suggested he was making it up or pulling your leg. 'What one's own eyes behold,' he'd say, 'is never a lie.' And it's the same here, so 'tis."

"Okay then," I said. "I'll bite. What have you all seen that's convinced you? Give me a rough idea."

The four of them exchanged glances.

"There was this one time," Cy began, "it was earlier this month, actually…"

But before he could get any further, Odin thumped the table three times and stood up. Everyone shushed everyone else.

Speech.

"My warriors," Odin said. "Tonight we dine heartily, we drink deeply, we laugh and joke and boast and banter, as we ought. I have seen your delight in this repast and in one another's company, and it pleases me. I cannot, however, promise many more such occasions of merriment as this one. Enemy forces are gathering, like storm clouds amassing on the horizon. I have consulted with the Norns today, and the omens are grim. A war is coming. I have warned you of this before, and now do so again, with deeper certainty and sorrow. A war is imminent, and we must make ready for it. We have skirmished with opponents already, frost giants and the like, in order to hone our skills and foster solidarity among us. But our true adversaries await, and they will be like nothing we have hitherto faced. Henceforth we must gird ourselves for attack. It may not come tomorrow, but it will come soon. So enjoy yourselves tonight. Shortly you will be pitting yourselves in combat against an enemy of daunting might and numbers, and not all of you will survive these clashes."

With that, he resumed his seat. The banqueting hall was quiet for several moments.

"Well, that's chirped everyone up, hasn't it?" I murmured to Cy, who gave a silent laugh.

Then, just as conversation was juddering back into life, a man at the very end of the top table got to his feet.

"That's Bragi," Ling whispered to me across Cy. "Another of Odin's illegitimate sons. The poet."

"Is he going to —?"

"Afraid so. He's actually not that bad."

Bragi cleared his throat, stroked his long, lank ZZ Top beard, and said, "An ode."

There were groans.

"A short one."

There were cheers.

"It's brand new. I call it The Besting of Thor."

Louder cheers, and a number of gazes turned my way. I had a bad feeling I knew what was coming.

In a voice that resounded to the rafters, Bragi began his recital:

For all his strength and all his thunder,

Our big, brash Thor had made a blunder.

He'd challenged Gid, a perfect stranger,

To brawl with him. To most, a danger;

For Thor in combat was undefeated.

This, though, had left him quite conceited.

What's more, his foe, whilst seeming game,

Was injured, ailing, wounded, lame.

An easy win, one might foresee

For Thor, but this was not to be.

Swifter than rainwater falls

Gid did strike him in the… place where it hurts.

There was laughter at that.

Then a head blow fast did follow,

Striking Thor where he's most hollow.

And more laughter, louder.

Cries of shock! Gasps of wonder!

Down he went, the god of thunder.

Who'd have thought, who could know,

He would end up eating snow?

Not for long — but long enough -

We saw that Thor was not so tough.

Then up he rose with raucous shout.

The outcome now was ne'er in doubt.

Thor was mad. He flipped his lid,

And started beating up poor Gid.

The man was lost, and suffered sore

'Neath the pounding fists of Thor.

He needed help. Who'd save his skin?

Vanir Freya then stepped in.

She stopped the fight and stayed her cousin

From hitting Gid another dozen…

…times.

"This isn't as easy as it looks," Bragi excused himself.

Still, now we know vain cocksure Thor

Has less to boast of than before.

The lesson taught us by this rumble?

Even gods should be more humble.

"Ye rulers of the earth and sky,

Look up, not down, when man walks by."

He sat down to a roar of applause. Odin seemed amused, while Thor — undecided. He scowled at Bragi, and then across the room at me, then finally, reluctantly allowed himself a wavery smile.

Tankards were raised my way. People leaned over to give me a slap on the back. I just kept my head down and tried to ignore it all. I didn't want to be anybody's hero or the centre of attention.

In the end the fuss died down, and I saw an opportunity to leave. Mumbling something about needing to siphon the python, I made for the exit.