The Age Of Odin

Sixty-Three

Screams broke the dawn hush.

I snapped awake and was on my feet in a moment. Freya was up too, and already at the room's empty socket of a window. She was staring out towards Yggdrasil, where the commotion was coming from. Low grey cloud carpeted the sky, hazing the World Tree's uppermost branches. There'd be snow soon, lots of it.

"What's going on?"

"Deserters."

"What! No fucking way."

"Look."

Over by Yggdrasil, frost giants were milling about in a cluster, very busy. There were men among them. Uniformed. Ours. They were the ones screaming. Protesting. Pleading.

"Shit," I breathed. "How can you be sure they're deserters? Couldn't the frosties have just captured them?"

"Without a firefight? Without any of us hearing gunshots? I don't think so. And why else would anyone have left the castle, if not to desert?"

She was right, damn her. I gauged the range from us to the World Tree. Too far. The frost giants were armoured. Our rifles were no good. We couldn't help. All we could do was watch as a couple of the frost giants picked up the first of the men by his arms and raised him high. Then in a series of quick, brutally decisive movements they pinned him to Yggdrasil's trunk, skewering ice daggers through his wrists and calves. He howled and roared in hopeless torment. The other men were dealt with in the same way, until all of them, eleven in total, were impaled on the tree.

Their grisly task completed, the frost giants disappeared back into the forest. One of them turned towards the castle before he left. Even at a distance I recognised the posture, the air of pompous authority. Bergelmir.

"They came to us in the night," he called out, in no doubt that there was an audience to be addressed. "They came without weapons, seeking peace and the freedom to return to Midgard unmolested. They said they'd had enough of fighting. They were sick and tired of it. With Odin gone, they said, their cause was lost. Battling on would be futile. The odds against them were hopeless." He gestured at the squirming, crucified men. "This is our response. We jotuns do not let our enemies go unpunished. Nor do we know the meaning of mercy."

Then he was gone, while the men fixed to the World Tree screamed on.

"He mocks us," Freya snarled. "He mocks the All-Father's time of trial."

"Let's get out there. Get them down."

"No. We can't risk it. Bergelmir will be waiting for us to do just that. Those men aren't only an object lesson, they're bait. Besides, it will take us several minutes to organise a rescue party and reach them. Shock and blood loss will have already done for them by then."

"So we just leave them hanging there, is that it?"

"There is another way." She raised her Lee-Enfield. "Jotuns may not understand mercy, but I do."

"No."

"Yes, Gid. You know this is the right course of action. The only course of action."

"Freya, don't."

"I'm not asking your permission. If you're squeamish, look away."

But I didn't.

Eleven rifle reports. Eleven shots straight through the heart. Eleven suspended bodies twitching, falling silent and still.

It wasn't until an hour later that I discovered that Paddy was one of the eleven. Their ringleader, in fact. Cy told me over breakfast, after I'd asked where our tame Irishman was.

Absolute gut punch. Left me gaping.

"Paddy?" I said. "But…"

"You didn't realise?"

Numbly I shook my head. "I couldn't make out any of their faces. Haven't checked since. Paddy? You're sure?"

Cy nodded.

"Fuck. Fuck the fucking fucker."

"I know. I can't believe it either."

"But he was, you know, one of us. One of the gang. He was probably the last person I'd have expected to wimp out on us. Wait. Didn't you and him have a bit of a barney last night?"

"Yeah. Who told you?"

"Little dicky bird. What was it about? You piss him off somehow?"

"No. Well, yeah, a little. But it wasn't like that. That wasn't why he went out. He came to me, and he was well fed up. Said some stuff about nobody being in charge any more, this was turning into a slaughter, the frosties would just keep coming at us 'til they'd polished us all off. Asked me if I'd join him in a walkout. I told him not to be so defeatist. It got heated. I may've even called him a coward. Paddy got the hump and flounced off. That was it. I honestly didn't think he was going to go through with it. I thought it was just talk, him letting off some steam."

"He thought he could negotiate with the frosties? Persuade them to let him through their lines?"

"Apparently."

"For such a smart man, he was a stupid arse, then, wasn't he?"

"Smart was Paddy's problem, if you ask me. Overthinking things. Trusting the frosties would listen to reason. Assuming they'd act honourably under the circumstances. Those are mistakes a smart person makes."

"Yeah, we're well past the honourable stage with them. It's just about winning or losing now. Living or dying." I sighed. "Paddy… you big Irish twat."

"Suppose we should be grateful he only managed to get ten men to go with him," Cy said. "Could've been worse. Could've been more."

"Is that the general mood? Could there have been more?"

"Honestly, bruv?"

"Go on," I said, knowing I wouldn't like what he had to say.

"Yeah. There's a lot of unhappy fellas here, Gid. Lot of people wondering if it's worth it any more, if we in't on a hiding to nothing. Odin's gone. So's Thor. We're down by our two biggest players, and no disrespect to Vidar, Vali and Tyr but they're none of 'em in the same league. Strong all right, but they don't fill the hole. Don't carry the same weight. And there's however many frosties out there, not to mention Loki. Fuck knows what he's still got in the pipeline, but it's bound to be something big and nasty if what we've seen so far is anything to go by. There's men here who reckon Pads and the others had the right idea."

"Yeah, and look how far it got them."

"Which only makes it worse, dunnit? Now everyone's feeling even more trapped. Rats in a cage and that. No way out."

"How come this is news to me?" I said. "You've have thought I'd have picked up on it, wouldn't you?"

"Mate, no offence, but you're not exactly 'man of the people' these days. You're not in touch with the vibe. You hobnob with the Aesir, you give orders — whether you realise it or not, you've become officer class. So naturally no one's going to tell you the truth to your face now."

"Apart from you."

"Apart from me. And then there's laying into Backdoor like you did, tearing a strip off him at Odin's funeral…"

"Officer class again?"

"Well, that and you came across as a bit, sort of, I dunno…"

"Be gentle."

"Nuts."

"How nuts?"

"Nutty as squirrel shit."

I sat back and peered around the banqueting hall. People were hunched over their food, eating mechanically, subdued. Nobody looked like they'd slept much. Hollow eyes, taut faces. A few of them caught my gaze and glanced away immediately. Resentment I could have coped with, but they were just blanking me, as if there was a barrier between us and nothing to say that would penetrate it, nothing they could express in words.

It was time to take matters in hand.

I stood up.

"What're you doing, man?" Cy asked.

"Grabbing the initiative," I said, and strode to the top table, where the handful of remaining gods sat.

I rapped the table with a spoon until the already near-silent hall was completely quiet.

"Listen up, everyone," I said. "Going to keep this short. Short and as sweet as possible. Last night some men did a very foolish thing. One of them was somebody I considered a pal. If I'd had any inkling what he was about to do, I'd have talked him out of it. Failing that, I'd have beaten some sense into him. I realise what many of you are thinking. 'We're screwed. There's no point carrying on. We're all going to wind up dead. If the frost giants don't get us, Loki will. Might as well give up.' I'll tell you what. Not only is that bollocks, but if you allow yourselves to think that way, then we are screwed. Yes, we've had setbacks, and yes, I'll admit that the enemy do seem to have the upper hand. But I know something they don't and probably even you yourselves don't, and it's this. When the blue team has something worth defending and the red team doesn't, the blue team wins, hands down. Every time. Doesn't matter how many of them there are, how well supplied or not, how well armed or not, they always win. And we have something worth defending."

"Yeah?" shouted someone. "Such as what? A fucked old castle?"

There was a ripple of bleak laughter.

"Nine worlds," I said. "Not one. Not two. Not even three. Nine of them. And Loki will stomp all over the lot of them in his stiletto heels unless we stop him. You know what earth's been like since Mrs Keener got elected. Tearing itself apart, conflict on top of conflict, and her lording over it all, looking all kitten-cute and butter-wouldn't-melt. Imagine that times by nine. That is why we've plonked ourselves down here in this 'fucked old castle.' That is why we're going to keep holding it come hell or high water. Just to wipe the grin off her — Loki's — smug fucking face. So let's do this. Let's get out there and fight like we mean it. Let's Ragnarok and roll!"

No great rapturous surge of applause greeted the end of my little speech, but then I was hardly Winston Churchill and it was hardly "We shall fight them on the beaches…"

As I looked around the banqueting hall, however, nobody was avoiding my gaze any more. People were sitting up a little straighter. I'd knocked some of the despair out of them.

I prayed it would be enough.

Really, it had to be.

Before going outside to face the music once again, I paid a call on Frigga in the field hospital to find out if any of the injured was in a fit state to hold a gun.

Odin's widow shook her head sadly.

"Anyone who's here is too severely wounded even to walk," she said, nodding at the rows of mattresses on the floor and the men sprawled on them. She looked wrung out, empty, like a used juice carton. "I have helped them all I can, and now rest is the best cure they can hope for."

In one corner there were several bodies lined up head to toe, under blankets.

"And that lot aren't going anywhere," I remarked.

"Alas, no. Them I can do nothing further for."

"Heimdall? What about him? Any change?"

"See for yourself."

Asgard's gatekeeper lay with a bandage round his head covering wadding on both ears. He was so still, he could almost have been one of the nearby corpses. His chest moved up and down lightly, infrequently.

"The trauma is as much to his mind as his ears," said Frigga. "Sensory overload on an unimaginable scale. He ought to recover, but when, how soon — who can say?"

"And you?" I asked. "How are you bearing up?"

"I have never been so tired."

"I mean about Odin. Losing your husband."

"You are kind to worry, but I cannot think about that right now. Cannot afford to. I must be strong, for all our sakes. My own concerns must wait. Besides, I am accustomed to bereavement. It's become almost a way of life for me."

"I'm finishing this," I told her firmly. "I'm seeing it through right to the bitter end. For Odin. I owe it to him. If it wasn't for him I wouldn't be alive. He died saving me."

"That's my husband," she said. "That's him through and through."

"I just wanted you to know that."

"I'm grateful. And I wish you luck, Gid." Doubt clouded her wan, genial features. "I fear, though…"

I stopped her. "Uh-uh. None of that."

She stiffened, understanding, steeling herself. "Of course. There is always hope."

"That's the spirit," I said. "Always hope."

Because, I thought, when you're completely fucked, when your back's to the abyss and the hordes of Hell are closing in, when everything's stacked against you and you're down to the last dregs of your strength — hope is the only real weapon you've got.