The Age Of Odin

Fifty-Two

Thor begged to come with us.

"Gid — friend Gid — you need me."

Sleipnir's pilots had been scrambled. We were expecting the Wokka to arrive at any moment to pick us up. In the background there was a low, ominous growl. The mega-tank was now no more than a mile from the castle, according to Odin's ravens, who'd just returned from their scouting mission.

"No, you belong here on the ground," I told Thor. "Best place for you."

"But I can help."

"Help by being the backup, the Plan B if Plan A fails, which it might well. You're one of our heaviest hitters, mate, if not the heaviest. Together with your brothers you can hold the line, if necessary pick up where we leave off."

"Surely — "

"You just can't be spared," I insisted. "A few mortal troops, on the other hand… Well, if we fuck up we won't be missed, will we?"

"Besides," said Odin, "someone has to wrangle the trolls."

"Is that not your job, father?"

"It's now yours, Thor. I shall be accompanying Gid and his men."

This was news to me, but I took it in my stride. He was the All-Father, after all. The guv'nor. What he said, went.

"I may be old," Odin continued, "but I remain a warrior. My heart still beats to the drum of battle."

"Father, no," said Thor. "If I can't be spared, then you certainly can't."

"My son." Odin laid a hand on his shoulder. He had to reach up to do it. "I must go. I have no choice. What Gid calls a 'mega-tank' is, I believe, an ancient enemy of ours brought to life in another form. In which case, it is incumbent upon me to fight it and defeat it, not you. This is what I am fated to do. It is written. So be it."

Thor puffed himself up, then deflated. The look in Odin's eye said argument was futile. His mind was made up.

"If this is really your wish, father, it cannot be gainsaid. I am your loyal, obedient son and have submitted to your will at all times."

Odin laughed, shaking his head. "No, you haven't. You have been the most wayward and headstrong of all my children, Thor."

Thor laughed too. "That is true."

"But you have also," Odin said, "been one of my proudest accomplishments. Every inch the fighter. Courageous to a fault, and a staunch protector of Asgard. Look after the place in my absence, Thor. Keep defending it to the last breath in your body. That is all I can ever ask from you."

"Father…"

"You have loved our home as I do. Continue showing it that love."

They looked at each other, and I saw a bond between them, a mutual respect, as strong as any I'd ever seen. They weren't just father and son. Not even just clan chief and heir. They were brothers in arms too. And this was their hour, their shining time, when they would prove themselves against the severest odds they had ever faced.

"I shall," said Thor. "And so, always, will you."

In reply, Odin smiled — somewhat sadly, it seemed to me — and then the Chinook came racketing in over the treetops.

We were aboard, a five-strong squad plus Odin, and ascending. We checked our weapons as Sleipnir humped us into the sky. We also checked the abseiling equipment I'd sourced from Skadi's stock of outdoor gear. Anything skiing- or mountaineering-related, you name it, Skadi had it. By the bucketload. I loved that little minx. Not only had she taken a shot meant for me, she was just so insanely fucking focused.

"This is going to be a walk in the park," I reassured everyone. "We lower ourselves down onto the top of the tank, find an access hatch, blow it, get in, plant some high-ex, bundle out, bish-bosh, the job's a good 'un."

Paddy rolled his eyes. "'Walk in the park,' the man says. Suppose it is, if by 'walk' you mean 'suicide mission' and 'park' you mean 'two-hundred-ton armour-plated enemy transport.'"

"You chicken, mick?" Backdoor sneered. "Me, I live for this shit."

"Can the backchat, both of you." I tilted my head towards Odin. Top brass on deck.

They clammed up.

Sleipnir circled, gaining altitude. I'd asked the pilots for a fly-past first so we could all get a squint at the mega-tank and assess the feasibility of my plan, if it had any. The Wokka came over it at five hundred feet, and Flight Lieutenant Jensen banked to starboard. We lined the portholes on that side, peering down.

The mega-tank had left a tremendous swathe of devastation behind it, a clear-felled path through the forest as wide as an A-road. This led the eye straight to the tank itself. Moonlight and its own running lights outlined it amid the trees. In shape, it was basically a rectangle with outcurving flanks. There were projecting structures at each corner — gun turrets, swivel-mounted and fitted with multiple-barrelled rotary cannons. I'd not been able to see those from ground level when Freya and I first encountered the tank. There was also a pod perched at the front like a head on a neck, shape of a flattened sphere. The control cab, if I didn't miss my guess.

A pair of searchlights beamed forward from the cab. On top of it rose a pair of triangular fins. I couldn't figure out what those were there for.

"Are they, like, ears?" Cy wondered.

That was how they looked to me. "Some kind of radar array?" I suggested.

Backdoor agreed. "They're curved. Could well be parabolic antennae."

"No," said Odin. "Purely decorative. Ears."

"How do you know?"

"I know, Gid, because this mechanical beast is a representation of a real, living beast. In much the same way that those so-called tanksuits purported to be jotuns and fire demons, here we have a man-made mimicry of a creature known to all in Asgard. My blood brother has been having fun. What we are looking at is Fenrir."

"Fenrir?"

"Those 'ears' confirm it. It's meant to be Fenrir. The giant wolf. The devourer. One-time scourge of the Aesir. We captured and muzzled him a long time ago. My son Tyr permanently wedged his maw open with a sword — and lost a hand in the process. As far as I know, the real Fenrir is still chained to a rock in far Muspelheim."

"And Loki's come up with his own version."

"Rather than go to the trouble of freeing the original and releasing him upon us, he has manufactured this instead."

"A high-tech stand-in," I said. "Well, nice to know, but it doesn't alter the plan. In fact, I think I'd prefer to take on a big-arse tank that looks like a wolf than a big-arse proper wolf. It's slower, for one thing."

"It's also training its guns on us," Baz warned.

Jensen had spotted this himself. His voice came over the intercom. "We're about to take incoming. Evasive action. Hang on tight!"

We grabbed onto whatever we could — seats, bulkheads, the webbing on the walls. Next instant, there was the judder of heavy calibre fire from below. Flashes of tracer fire lit up the Wokka's interior.

Sleipnir pirouetted gracelessly. A few bullets raked the hull. One shattered a porthole.

"Fuck fuck fuckfuckfuck," I breathed as broken glass flew.

The engines bawled, the entire chopper groaned and shuddered from stem to stern, as Jensen poured on the speed and threw us into a steep climb. We clung on for dear life as the cargo bay canted, rapidly reaching 45? from horizontal and getting closer to perpendicular by the second. He was trying to present Fenrir's gunners with as narrow a profile as possible, and at the same time shrinking the size of the target with distance. The comfort and safety of his passengers was a minor consideration. Getting the Wokka out of range of the rotary cannons was the prime directive. If the six of us stayed intact in the interim — bonus.

Soon Sleipnir was near vertical, straining hard against gravity. All at once Paddy lost his grip and started slithering down the bay. He'd have broken an ankle colliding with the closed cargo ramp if Baz hadn't managed to catch him by the arm as he tumbled past. The rest of us kept ourselves attached, though we were dangling around like demented marionettes.

Finally the tracers stopped their mad strobing around us. Jensen powered down a fraction and levelled Sleipnir out.

"All okay?" he asked over the intercom, before adding one of those typically droll RAF apologies. "Sorry for shaking you up like that, but crisis situation, you understand."

A quick glance round showed me no one was injured. Paddy was massaging a sprained shoulder, but winked to say no harm done. I went forward and popped my head into the cockpit.

"Good job, fellas."

"If we go in again, Coxall, those guns are going to rip us to shreds," Jensen said. "This ship isn't built for dogfighting. She handles like a brick shithouse, and even the best pilots can't do anything about that."

"And we are the best pilots," Flying Officer Thwaite chipped in.

"Of course you are," I told him. "And with a cock-duster 'tache like yours, I bet you're pretty popular with the boys down the nightclub, too."

Thwaite's eyeballs bulged in indignation.

"Now," I went on, ignoring his splutters, "we are going in again and you are getting us over and onto that fucking tank. Thor should be running the trolls in any moment. They're our diversion. The tankies will be so busy with them, they won't be concentrating on us. That's the big idea so let's make it happen, shall we?"

Thwaite looked fit to deck me. Jensen, on the other hand, just eyed his instrumentation, glanced out the windscreen, and gave a grim nod.

"Roger that," he said. "We can do this."

"But — "

He cut his co-pilot off. "We can do this."

I clapped them both on the helmet and went back aft.

Guiding Sleipnir into position ought to be relatively straightforward.

Abseiling safely onto Fenrir's back without getting massacred by those rotary cannons — now that was going to be the tricky part.