The Age Of Odin

Thirty-Four

I collared Odin the next day for a chinwag. He was at the troll pen, checking up on the captives.

A large pit had been excavated not far from the castle and surrounded with a stockade of pine trunks sharpened to points. Here, the three trolls had been corralled and were being fed with whole deer carcasses supplied by Freya.

Odin was on a platform overlooking the pen. I scaled a wooden ladder to join him.

The trolls sat apart from one another around the edge of the pit. One was fast asleep, mouth slack, drool dribbling down his chin. Another had his arms folded and was distractedly scraping a furrow in the dirt with his heel while singing a repetitive, tuneless song to himself. The third was busy picking his teeth with the broken end of one of the many deer bones that lay scattered around the pen. I'd expected them to be raging against their captivity, trying to clamber up and batter their way out. In the event, all they were was bored and subdued. Gorillas at the zoo, resigned to imprisonment.

They reeked, too. The smell came not so much from the latrine hole that had been dug for them as from the trolls themselves, from giant bodies that had never known soap or a washcloth.

"Jesus!" I exclaimed, clapping a hand over my nose. It was like being downwind of a tramp, only multiplied by a hundred. "That's minging. You could stun an elephant with that."

"One gets used to it, if one stands here long enough," Odin said. "How are you, friend Gid?"

"You mean apart from slowly being choked to death by a new kind of bioweapon? Never better. Your missus has had a look at me and apparently I'm back to full fighting fitness. Everything's healed, rib, wrist, the works. It's incredible. Skadi's on the mend too. How does Frigga do it?"

"With love, skill, and a modicum of divine power. My question, however, was of a more general nature, pleased though I am to be apprised of the state of your physical wellbeing."

"I'm feeling okay, I suppose. About Loki and all that? Yeah, bring it on."

"So upbeat, even though the odds against us seem insurmountable?"

"Well, I've had a few ideas on that front."

Odin raised an intrigued eyebrow. "I'd be eager to hear them."

"One of them has to do with this lot." I pointed to the trolls. "Only, looking at them now, I'm not sure it's such a goer any more. You said they could be used as frontline shock troops, but on present form they don't look very shocking at all."

"Don't be deceived," Odin said. "They're passive now because their bellies are full and because they perceive no danger to themselves. Trolls are not at all bright creatures. When threatened, however, they turn savage. We harness that aggression, loose them against the enemy, and they will serve us well."

"Fab. Then why not let's get hold of more of them. Dozens if we can. Make it our priority over the next few days. Let's stockpile trolls like they're going out of fashion."

Odin flashed me his wolfish smile. "I like the sound of it. What else?"

"I've got a few more thoughts, some crazier than others. But before any of that, I want some background intel from you. I need to know what all this is about. Yesterday Hel mentioned a… Fimbulwinter, was it?"

"Yes."

"Now, my son used to like a TV show called The Fimbles, about some tubby, stripy creatures who lived in a magical garden with a talking bird with a Yorkshire accent. I'm guessing the Fimbulwinter's got nothing to do with them, right?"

"In so far as I have no idea what you're talking about, I'm going to hazard a guess and say no, it doesn't have anything to do with them."

"Shame, because the Fimbles are cute and cuddly."

"The Fimbulwinter is decidedly not. It is three years of the harshest, bitterest weather that has ever been known. Three years of snows, storms, hail, ice, darkened skies. And it comes as a harbinger of the end of everything. It forewarns that the time is nigh for a battle to end all battles, a final clash between the forces of righteousness and the forces of wickedness."

"And that," I said, "is Ragnarok."

He confirmed with a nod. "Ragnarok," he said, low-voiced, and repeated it, as though tolling a bell. "Ragnarok. A doom that I have long known was coming but been unable to do anything to avoid or prevent. Various factors have played out in the only way they could. I have watched events move towards this ineluctable conclusion, powerless to alter their course. Though a god, I have found myself as a mortal, a victim rather than a shaper of destiny. It has been… difficult, to say the least."

"What events? I'd like to know."

"Could you not ask one of your colleagues, perhaps? That Dennis Ling, he seems very well acquainted with Aesir lore. Or what about Bragi? He loves to spin a yarn."

"I'd rather get it straight from the top. And without lots of bad rhymes."

Odin sighed heavily. "Very well. I believe you have earned the privilege. Consider this a reward for your proven ingenuity and prowess in battle. But please bear in mind, recounting what happened — even simply recollecting it — is painful for me. Distressing in the extreme. It began with a malicious trick and a death. Not just any death, either, but a death of magnitude and great significance. Every death, one might aver, is such to the person who dies. Every death is an apocalypse. Yes. Every death is an apocalypse. Is it not, Gid?"

I shrugged. "Suppose you could say that."

"An apocalypse on a personal scale. Every death is the end of everything for the one dying. The end of their world. Their very own Ragnarok. This death, however, the one I'm about to relate to you, can truly be deemed apocalyptic. It set in train all that we are experiencing now. With it began the decline of Asgard and the ascendancy of Loki. It was the catalyst for the disaster presently facing us. Listen well. And should I shed a tear, understand that it is but a single drop from the ocean of tears that I have shed in the past and could yet shed over this tragedy."