Odds and Gods

by Tom Holt

Like soldiers in riots, war gods are obliged to go through certain set procedures before letting rip. Procedure one: try calm, conciliatory negotiation.

  ‘No,’Teutates snarled, ‘you look, you raddled old boiler. Either you take this pigswill away and bring me a bloody great hunk of Stilton and a box of Ritz crackers, or tonight you go home in a matchbox. Kapisch?’

  This, by divine standards, is calm, conciliatory negotiation verging on wimpishness. The waitress tutted.

  ‘Don’t you use that tone of voice with me,’ she replied sniffily, ‘or I’ll tell Mrs . . .’

  Procedure two: fair warning. ‘Okay, prune-face, go ahead and try it. I can’t turn you into a frog because by the looks of you someone’s beaten me to it, but I’m sure I’ll think of something else just as appropriate.’

  ‘That does it. Mrs Henderson!’

  Procedure three: there is no procedure three.

  ‘Mrs Henderson,’ said the waitress, ‘Mr Teutates is being very rude to me and he won’t eat up his nice keekeekeekeekeekeekee. ’

  It was, in all fairness, pretty slickly done and Mrs Henderson, who had seen many such phenomena over the years, couldn’t quite manage to keep the overtones of grudging admiration out of her voice.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Teutates,’ she nevertheless said, ‘that’ll be quite enough of that, thank you very much. Now, would you please turn Mrs Hill back into her proper shape before you put the other residents off their food.’

  Teutates grinned. ‘That is her proper shape,’ he replied. ‘Stands to reason. I’ve said it a hundred times, Mrs Hill’s really a polecat turned into a human and it’s high time someone turned her back. Ask anybody.’

  ‘Mr Teutates . . .’

  ‘I’m not blaming you. Must be really difficult getting staff on the wages you pay. Still, like they say, if you pay peanuts you must expect to employ monkeys. That,’ he added darkly, ‘can also be arranged.’

  ‘That will do.’ Mrs Henderson drew her eyebrows together, creating a formation fully as intimidating as an advancing battalion of the Imperial Guard. ‘Now I’ve warned you about this before, and . . .’

  She stopped, struggling to regain her balance. The force of the attack, the sheer malevolence, had taken her by surprise.

  ‘Mr Teutates!’

  It had been a long time - oh, over forty years - since one of her residents had tried to turn her into something, and never in all her experience in the residential care business had anyone ever tried to metamorphose her into one of those. Quite obviously there was something going on here.

  Something that had to be sorted out. Just for now, though, best to play it cool.

  ‘Really, Mr Teutates, you know better than that.’ She folded her arms and gave Teutates the Number One cold stare. ‘Honestly, I’d have thought you’d have more sense, at your age.’

  Teutates nodded curtly, admitting that she had a point. Quite understandably given the nature of her position, Mrs Henderson was hexed about with enough protective charms, amulets, written undertakings and runes of power to withstand a direct hit from an atomic bomb. Low voltage transmigration spells bounced off her like tennis balls off a dreadnought.

  ‘I do not,’ Teutates said slowly, ‘like rice pudding. Understood?’

  ‘Now, then,’ said Mrs Henderson, shaken but firm, ‘of course you like rice pudding. It’s good for you.’

  Teutates glowered at her. ‘Listen, missus,’ he growled. ‘In the beginning I created the Heavens and the Earth out of the curds left at the bottom of the churn of Eternity. Singlehanded I subdued the Wolves of Famine, the Three-headed Dragon of Pestilence and the Wild Dogs of Death. I can count the stars in the sky, the sands on the seashore and the days that are past. Stands to reason I can make up my own mind whether I like rice pudding or not. And I don’t. You got that, or shall I write it down for you?’

  ‘Oh.’ Mrs Henderson hesitated. There was definitely something here she didn’t understand; she could sense it, and it disturbed her. ‘Then why didn’t you say so before, you silly man?’ she rallied bravely.

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Be that as it may,’ Mrs Henderson said, ‘that’s no reason why poor Mrs Hill should have to be a polecat. I must insist that you turn her back at once.’

  Teutates considered his options. On the one hand he was a war god, and he hadn’t felt this good in nineteen centuries. On the other hand, he had to go on living here, because he had nowhere else to go; and one of the first rules you learn when you’re a war god is, Don’t take work home with you.

  ‘Do a deal,’ he said. ‘No more rice pudding ever again and the polecat walks.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Certainly,’ said Mrs Henderson, putting a smile on her face with the same ease as one spreads butter still rock-hard from the fridge on to newly baked bread. ‘You only had to ask, you know. We always bend over backwards to make life as pleasant as possible for all our residents.’

  As she escorted the newly restored Mrs Hill back to the staff room for a nice lie down and a slice or two of raw liver (there’s always a brief period of readjustment after a metamorphosis) Mrs Henderson came to a firm conclusion.

  Something was badly wrong, and she didn’t know what.

  Something would have to be done about that.

  The first really ominous thing that Osiris and his companions came across on what was, they fervently hoped, the last leg of the journey was a big notice nailed to a tree. It said, in big capitals:YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE DEAD TO ENTER HERE, BUT IT HELPS

  and below, in small italics:PS All hope to be abandoned prior to entry. Please help keep eternity tidy by placing your hope in the receptacles provided.

  ‘That’s all right,’ Pan commented, ‘I haven’t got any with me anyway. How about the rest of you?’

  Nobody said anything; but nobody made an effort to abandon anything either; and into the valley of death trudged the five.

  ‘Is where we’re going hard to get to?’ Sandra asked.

  ‘To get to, no problem,’ Pan replied. ‘To get out of is an entirely different proposition. In theory, Ozzie and I have sort of implied return tickets - well, season tickets, really - but what I always say is, theory is fine in theory. As for you three, if I was in your shoes I’d be using them to get out of here fast. This place,’ he summarised, ‘gives me the creeps.’

  ‘It does?’

  ‘Always has.’

  Sandra raised an eyebrow. ‘You’ve been here before, then?’

  ‘A couple of times, yes. Trade delegations, diplomatic junkets, that sort of thing.’

  ‘You got out all right then, didn’t you?’

  Pan shrugged. ‘It was different,’ he replied. ‘Those times, I was meant to be there. They gave me one of those little plastic badges you pin on your lapel that says who you are. You’ve no idea how comforting it is having one of them when you’re down among the dead men.’

  Thus far, the environment had been fairly normal, if not exactly welcoming. From Reykjavik they had caught the scheduled bus north as far as Thingvellir, and thence by a succession of progressively older and more decrepit minibuses up into Vididal. The last conveyance, which had been held together by insulating tape and force of habit, had shaken itself to bits ten miles back, since when they had dragged themselves over rocks and past the messy dribblings of volcanoes, taking it in turns to push the wheelchair, until they had arrived . . .

  ... Well, here; wherever the hell (so to speak) it was. It consisted of a cave in a cliff, which someone had rather half-heartedly tried to disguise as the result of perfectly natural seismic activity. There was a marked smell of sulphur, brimstone and stale vinegar.

  Lundqvist shifted his rucksack on his back and suppressed an urge to whimper. His work had taken him to some pretty unpleasant places - the mountain lair of Mazdrhahn, King of Bats, being one example that stuck in his memory, the Los Angeles sewer network another - but while those places had been terrifying, nauseating, spine-melting et cetera, none of them h
ad ever come anywhere close to this in sheer unmitigated dreariness. He also felt virtually nude, armed as he was with little more than a Macmillan .50BMG rifle, a .454 Casull revolver, an Ingrams sub-machine gun custom-chambered for .44 Magnum and a big sack full of hand grenades; which was the basic minimum as far as he was concerned, the sort of things he stuffed in his dressing-gown pockets if he had to get up in the night for a pee (for his motto had always been not so much Have gun, will travel as Haven’t gun, won’t). What he really needed in this context, he felt sure, was a squadron of main battle tanks, tactical air support, two divisions of special forces and, for choice, his mummy.

  ‘This is it, huh?’ he asked, trying to keep his voice gruffly baritone and failing.

  ‘Sort of,’ Osiris replied, aggravatingly chirpy. ‘Tradesmen’s entrance, really. This is the laundry chute.’

  Lundqvist did a double-take. ‘Laundry?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Osiris replied airily. ‘Guards’ uniforms, bed-linen, tablecloths, winding-sheets, that sort of thing. They used to do it in-house but now they use a lot of outside contractors. That’s why,’ he added, jerking this thumb at the mysterious laundry basket thing they’d been taking it in turns to lug over the rocks and mountains, ‘we need that.’

  ‘I was wondering when you’d explain about that,’ Pan said. ‘What is it, exactly?’

  ‘It’s a laundry basket.’

  ‘And what’s in it?’

  ‘Laundry.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘It’s our cover.’

  ‘I thought he said it was laundry.’

  ‘Shut up, Carl.’

  ‘It’s a freshly laundered cover,’ Pan explained. ‘Has to be dry-cleaned to get the bloodstains out.’

  ‘What bloodstains?’

  ‘Ignore him, everyone. Now,’ Osiris went on, ‘if you open the lid you’ll find some uniforms. White coats, that sort of thing. Also, like I said, lots of pillow-cases, table-napkins, socks and the like. When you’ve got into the uniforms, I want you to put me in the basket and carry me through the doorway. And try and look natural, all right?’

  A few minutes later, the procession found itself in total darkness, which was a blessing in fairly transparent disguise; anything you could see in a tunnel like that would probably keep you awake at nights for several years. The way the floor crunched underfoot was particularly evocative.

  ‘It’s all right him saying act natural,’ Pan grumbled,

  ‘but it’s not as easy as that. I’ve been trying to do it all my life and I’ve never quite seemed to get the hang of it . . .’

  The floor shook. To those of the party who had never experienced anything of the kind, it was an eerie moment; not violent, certainly not enough to shake you off your feet, but quite remarkably disorientating; rather like being told by your mother that she never really liked you anyway. And then the lights came on.

  Not much to see, but what there was of it wasn’t precisely reassuring. A huge wooden doorway, without a door; and nothing but shadows and a heavy smell of something unpleasant (but extremely familiar).

  ‘Oh balls,’ Pan muttered. ‘I’d forgotten all about this bit. I still maintain we should have gone to the seaside again. Even Weymouth would be better than—’

  ‘Hey,’ Lundqvist interrupted. ‘What goes on here, then?’

  Osiris chuckled. ‘You don’t know?’ he said. ‘Read what it says over the door.’

  Lundqvist did as he said, and saw the words:BEWARE OF THE DOG

  The fact that none of the three mortals turned and fled at this stage only goes to show what a disadvantage it is to try and make out in life without the inestimable benefit of a classical education.

  ‘That’s it, is it?’ Lundqvist said, and relief slugged it out with disappointment for control of his voice. ‘A dog. Hell, for a minute there you had me wor—’

  Enter the Dog.

  ‘Gaskets?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Cotter pins?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Camchains?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Tappet return springs?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Reciprocating mainshaft lubricator baffles?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Mendelssohn cables?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Cigar lighter?’

  ‘Yes!’

  Thor shrugged. ‘Okay, then,’ he said. ‘Fire her up.’

  The engine quivered, chugged, roared, raced and died. Thor and Frey looked at each other.

  ‘I take it,’ Thor said pleasantly, ‘that you did remember to put some coal in the furnace.’

  ‘Ah.’ Odin frowned. ‘There’s always something, isn’t there?’

  ‘Not always, no. Only when you have anything to do with it.’

  Odin ignored that, and shovelled some coal into the firebox. A few minutes later the engine quivered, chugged, roared, raced and then went catumple-catumple-catumple quietly under its breath.

  ‘Right,’ said Thor, ‘and off we go.’

  Slowly but with gathering momentum, the enormous engine rolled forward and thundered across the improvised jungle runway. It took it rather longer than anticipated; but the environmentally aware can rest assured that none of the trees flattened as it cut a swathe through the virgin forest was an endangered hardwood, and most of them were run-of-the-mill renewable resource softwoods.

  ‘I’m sorry if this is a silly question,’ Frey shouted, pulling bits of twig out of his beard, ‘but this time are we sure we know where we’re going?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because,’ Thor called back, ‘this time I’m navigating. All right?’

  ‘Yes. I feel better now.’

  ‘Thought you’d say that.’ Thor glanced down at the map on his knees, consulted the position of the sun and nodded approvingly. ‘Now then,’ he said, ‘those hills over there are quite definitely the Pennines, so that down there must be Leeds, and in another five minutes or so we’ll see the M6 directly below us.’

  Slowly, ponderously, in its own unique way magnificently, the giant traction engine flew on across the Amazon jungle.

  ‘It’s not,’ hissed Pan, backing away, ‘quite as bad as it seems.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No. It’s still pretty bad, but not that bad.’

  ‘Ah.’

  The Dog, also known as Cerberus and the Hound of Hell, rolled its six eyes and bared its three pairs of teeth, but stayed where it was. The massive iron chain fastened to the collar that surrounded the place just below where the three necks diverged probably had some influence on this, but probably not a decisive one. The chain hadn’t been forged which could withstand a determined tug from Cerberus.

  ‘Basically,’ Pan went on, trying to back behind the laundry basket but finding it hard because all the space was already taken, ‘it’s just another official. A civil servant, if you like. Only doing its job, and all that.’

  ‘Really.’

  ‘Really. That explains why it says everything in triplicate. ’ Pan tried to sidle an extra few microns in the direction of relative safety and tripped over his own feet. ‘Good boy,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Okay,’ said Lundqvist, ‘you guys just leave this to me.’

  With the deftness of long practice he heeled a round into the chamber of the Macmillan. Bloody great big animals with teeth were what he was good at, and the combination of his skill and experience and six hundred and fifty grains of jacketed hollow-pointed bullet flying at three thousand feet a second ought, he reasoned with himself, to give him the slight edge that, in the final analysis, makes all the difference.

  He stood up, took aim and fired. The bullet sang in the air for a fraction of a second too small to quantify on even the most modern equipment, and hit the Dog more or less where the heart should have been.

  And bounced off.

  The second, third and fourth bullets landed within half a minute of angle of the first, were flattened into thin lead
and copper discs, and fell to the ground. The fifth went high, ricocheted off the Dog’s collar, cannoned backwards and forwards down the passageway, and embedded itself in a large nugget of hard quartz sunk into the wall. The chips of stone thereby caused would, if properly cut, have made the Kohinoor look like the tip of a very cheap industrial glasscutter.

  The grenades weren’t much more use, either; and all the armour-piercing rocket that constituted Lundqvist’s ultimate rainy-day backup managed to achieve was to cut the chain neatly in two. The Dog, deprived of the chain’s support, lurched forward a pace or so, and growled.

  ‘Don’t be such a lot of babies,’ remarked a voice, apparently inside the basket. ‘They’re far more afraid of you than you are of them.’

  ‘In which case,’ Pan replied, ‘the poor thing must be absolutely fucking terrified. Doesn’t look it, though.’

  ‘Talk to it,’ urged the voice. ‘Firmly. Let it know who’s the boss.’

  By now there were flecks of foam on the Dog’s jaw; exactly the same amount in precisely the same place on each of its three heads. It had its eye, or four of them at least, on Lundqvist’s neck.

  ‘There, boy. Sit.’

  The Dog sat. After a breathless second, it wagged its tail, panted and held out one paw.

  ‘I think,’ said Carl, ‘he wants to shake hands. Don’t you, boy?’

  ‘Excuse me.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  Pan swallowed and pointed. ‘You sure this is working?’ he asked.

  Carl nodded. ‘I’m used to dogs, see,’ he explained. ‘My sister in Neath, she’s got a dog. Bigger’n this one, too.’

  Two gods and two mortals stared at him as if he’d just pulled a blackcurrant and kirsch gateau out of his ear. The Dog, meanwhile, had produced three identical rubber bones out of nowhere and was offering them to Carl with the air of an envoy trying to interest Tamburlaine the Great in a spot of tribute.

  ‘Here,’ said Carl, ‘fetch.’

  He stooped down, picked up a stone and hurled it away. From the outer darkness there came an indignant cry. The Dog picked up its feet and scampered away, its tail thrashing like an amphetamine-crazed metronome.