It panned out pretty well - for us. Two days later the commando unit sneaked in over the border again, at dawn. We'd set up the appearance of basic guard duty near the intersection, a pair of two-man tents whose occupants kept watch on four-hour rotating shifts, not varying their routine one iota. Loki's men tiptoed through the grey light, combat knives drawn. Throat-slashing was on their minds. Easy kills.
Then they were strafed with gunfire from a secondary encampment hidden on high ground further into our territory, and while they were scrambling to their fall-back positions Vali came stomping onto the scene.
The gnomes had provided us a half-dozen suits of armour made of iron, according to the specifications I'd provided. These were no match for the enemy's tanksuits in terms of firepower, mainly because they had none, but they were at least their equal in bulk and density. Each of the contraptions weighed an ounce or so shy of a ton and stood nine feet from boot to head, with a barrel body some fifteen feet in circumference. Only a warrior god could wear one. Only a warrior god had the strength to move the legs with his legs and manipulate the arms with his arms.
Vali, strapped inside the armour, bore down on the startled commandos. They rattled away at him with submachine guns but couldn't put a dent in his inch-thick ironclad hide. Then he was on top of them and started side-swiping them with the armour's fists, which were solid, cannonball-like clubs. Bodies flew. Skulls were crushed.
The remaining commandos saw sense and beat a hasty retreat towards Svartalfheim, but treetop snipers picked them off as they ran. Not one of them made it safely out of range.
"And that, ladies and gentlemen," I said, from an obs post overlooking the kill zone, "is how you do that."
It was a good start. We'd field-tested the gnome-built armour and it worked. Slow and clunky, but it did the trick. And we'd convincingly repulsed a covert attack. Score one for the home side.
But other cross-border raids came from Niflheim and Muspelheim. Commandos darted in and blew shit up. Our painstakingly laid ammo dumps went up in smoke one after another, and there were low-level skirmishes all round the perimeter of Asgard, often costing us lives. We were being pinpricked left, right and centre. We could sustain it for the time being, and gave back as good as we got. But it was obvious this repeated harrying was all part of a softening-up process, designed to wear down our reserves little by little, and our resolve.
One thing we learned about the bad guys. With any we killed, inspection of the bodies consistently revealed no uniform insignia and no dogtags. These, then, weren't legit soldiers; they were mercs. We weren't fighting GI Joe but Blackwater or ArmorGroup or some other private military contractor, and somehow that made it better. Rather than being ordinary, straight-arrow, regular-army types who'd enlisted with the noble intention to defend their homeland, these were men who'd signed on the dotted line specifically to take part in war. Just like us. Level playing field, as it were. Each side as dirty as the other.
The siege wore on, and what really got on my tits was that, being as it was a siege, we had no real way of taking the fight to the enemy. We could only react, not act. A full-on assault by Loki would have been something we could deal with directly - meet and grapple with - and it was surely coming. Until then, we were perpetually on the back foot, fending off and playing catch-up. Not my idea of fun.
Meanwhile Odin, in spare moments, was following events in Midgard via raven-cam. Mrs Keener's state visit was turning out to be a surprising success. It was a charm offensive of epic proportions, the President glad-handing and back-slapping and generally winning round her UK detractors. The London protest march coincided with her first chat-show appearance, and that may have accounted for the low turnout on the streets of the capital. The organisers surmised that people had stayed home to watch her on TV so that they could fuel themselves with indignation and come out afterwards all fired up and ready to demonstrate.
They must have been disappointed, then, when a second London protest march, hastily scheduled for the next day, was even more poorly attended than the first. The public, it seemed, didn't dislike Mrs Keener as much as it had been assumed they did. After having seen her on telly, where she'd defended her policies, dismissed the climate doomsayers and their fears about the neverending winter, and gone on at length about her family and her love of the Good Lord Jesus, they were coming to the conclusion that she really wasn't as bad as everyone made out. And with each subsequent interview broadcast, British opinion of her rose. This had the result that, when she began a tour of the regions, the marches intended to dovetail with her itinerary never materialised. They had to be called off due to lack of interest.
The papers even started talking about a "Keener effect." One editorial described her as "an all too rare ray of sunshine" and another "an antidote to the dismalness of the times." Even The Guardian admitted she had a certain something.
It drove me into a frenzy to hear Odin report all this.
"She's Loki!" I yelled. "Fucking Loki! Why doesn't anyone see through her? I thought only Yanks were gullible, but us lot are just as bad. Worse, even. We shouldn't be falling for any of this guff. Are we not British? Naturally cynical? Don't we laugh when we see sincerity and Christian faith?"
Not any more, it seemed. Not in these dark, difficult days. Mrs Keener was offering hope and simple answers, something Clasen had been failing to do. Loki had honed his craft over centuries of misleading and hoodwinking the Aesir and Vanir. Frightened mortals were easy marks for him.
"And thus his might increases," Odin said. "In the guise of President Keener he makes them love him, or fear him, and are not love and fear both forms of reverence? Are they not both the prostration of the lesser before the greater? He said it himself - he has billions under his thumb now, either through intimidation or enthralment. They celebrate him. They speak of his deeds, and whether approvingly or not doesn't matter, as long as they're speaking of him at all. Their words augment him. He becomes more puissant with every mention, more energised, capable of ever greater, ever bolder feats of wickedness and mayhem. He feeds off their expressions of adulation and detestation. Millions of your countrymen, Gid, are adding further to his stores of power."
"Simply by feeling strongly about him and talking about it?"
"It's a kind of worship. As his reputation grows, so does his divinity."
"Gods are stories, Bragi told me."
"And my blood brother's tale is now being retold millions of times a day," Odin said with a sad, sage shake of the head. "He is on countless mortal tongues. Not realising it, they imbue him with significance whenever they praise Mrs Keener, or criticise her. They lend him their belief and that enhances the myth of him and armours him. Oh, it's a grand deceit he's practised this time, a hoax of unparalleled proportions. I almost admire him for it."
"Personally, it makes me wish I could have another crack at killing him."
"That is not your role, Gid. You are a hero."
"Isn't it the hero's job to take down the archvillain?"
"Sometimes," said Odin. "But sometimes the hero is simply the man who makes the right decisions. He enables what should be to be."
The phony war lasted another four days or so. The guerrilla-style sorties became more frequent and nudged further and further into Asgardian turf. We were stretched thin trying to cover and defend so many of the intersections at once. Our troops were getting tired and discouraged, and the major assault hadn't even started yet. Loki had us chasing around all the time, shoring up our forces at each intersection, repelling attacks. Barely did we have a chance to catch our breath before we had to tackle the next incursion somewhere else along the borderlands.
Physically it was gruelling. Psychologically, too. Relationships within the ranks began to fragment. In my own squad, Paddy and Backdoor were getting on each other's nerves, and Cy and Backdoor as well. Backdoor, in fact, was pissing just about everybody off, even mild-mannered, affable Baz. A bit of needling and ribbing was par for the course in army li
fe, but in Backdoor's case the name-calling had started to take on an edge. He flung "bog-trotter" at Paddy twice and got away with it the first time but not the second. It was the way he said it, more than anything, that put the Irishman's back up. The "fucking" he stuck in front of it the second time didn't help.
They'd have come to blows if I hadn't stepped in and managed to pacify them. I even persuaded them to shake hands manfully. This was for their benefit but also for the benefit of everyone else in our cabin. There was a score of spectators to this bedtime fracas, keen to see a punch-up. None of that shit, I was telling them. Not on my watch.
It happened again the very next morning during the wee small hours. Me and the team - minus Thor, who'd drunk too much the previous evening and couldn't be got out of his bed for love nor money - were yomping towards a Niflheim intersection. That was where, according to Heimdall's ultra-sharp ears, yet another raid was about to take place. It was our turn to take care of it.
Backdoor was whingeing about lack of sleep and the futility of seeing off one attack only to have to deal with another one a few hours later somewhere different. I was about to tell him to stow it but Cy got in before me.
"Will you just put a fucking sock in it, all right?" he hissed.
Backdoor retorted using the most unpardonable word for a black person there is. Cy, understandably, went ballistic and laid into him. I let him give Backdoor a pasting for a little while, because the fucker deserved it. But when I weighed in and hauled Cy off, what did the kid do but turn round and lamp me.
That could not stand. I lamped him back, then while he was reeling I grabbed him and put him into a compliance hold. Wristlock, twisting the hand round, followed by rotation of the entire arm. This forced him down onto his knees, head bent. I put a knee in the small of his back for good measure. He writhed but couldn't get free. All he could do in his helplessness was swear at me. I bellowed at him to shut the fuck up, then launched into a big long rant about everybody not arguing, not sniping at one another, not using racial slurs of any kind, just keeping all their shit in one bucket and pulling together and playing as a team, because if this was what we were like now, imagine how bad it could get when the proper fighting started.
"So stop bitching, start behaving like you were born with some balls, all of you," I finished off, "or else!"
We continued on our way in silence. I'd asserted my authority and felt I'd made my point, but I was still fuming inside. We shouldn't be in-fighting and falling to pieces. That was exactly what Loki wanted.
And once more, suspicion was flitting through my mind. We had an infiltrator, an agent-fucking-provocateur in our midst. And I was growing more and more certain that I knew who it was.
One good thing came of the incident. When the enemy emerged from the mists of Niflheim, we were all so keyed up that we didn't hesitate. We gave them what-for, venting our frustrations in a hail of bullets. Bastards didn't know what hit them. We roared like lions as we fired, and I was roaring loudest of all.
Fifty-One
A lull.
The raids ceased.
A hush settled along Asgard's borders.
We caught up on lost sleep, scoffed plenty of scran to replenish our strength, and enjoyed the downtime while it lasted. Because we knew it wouldn't last long.
The calm before the shitstorm.
Freya and I were out on one of our, ahem, "hunting expeditions." These we fitted in as and when we could, always at her instigation. With her tracking skills she'd find me wherever I was, hand me a rifle, and off we'd trot. Sometimes, once the fun and games were over, we'd even go and bag a token deer or rabbit to bring back, just so's no one would suspect we were up to anything other than what we said we were up to.
She was the fiercest sexual partner I'd ever had. Silent and intense while we did the deed. Hardly ever crying out in pleasure, but bucking and shuddering so violently when the moment came that I was never in any doubt I'd hit the spot. She'd claw me, often bite. It was fighting as much as fornication, each of us wrestling for dominance, demanding a submission from the other.
Something in me responded well to this. I'd lose myself while shagging Freya much as I'd lose myself during combat. It was primal and animal, us out in the woods, in the snow. None of your candlelit lovemaking with rose petals on the bed and Barry White grunting in the background. Just body thrusting and grinding savagely against body. Bare skin getting smeared with a mush of snow, soil, flakes of bark and fallen pine needles. Very few words exchanged beyond "turn over" or "try this" or "there."
It was how people fucked when there was a war on and a world was at stake and lives could end tomorrow. Urgently, no grace or ritual to it. Raw, raw, raw.
On this particular occasion we were on our second go-round, or maybe third. It was easy to lose track. One bout of rampant shaggery shaded into another, with little recovery time in between. Then all at once Freya said, "Stop."
I said, "Stop as in we're changing position, or...?"
"Just stop. And be quiet."
I froze. We listened. Me on my knees, her on all fours.
"I don't -"
"Hssst!"
Then I detected it. Sensed it through my legs rather than my ears.
Vibration.
Rumbling.
The earth moving, but not in that way.
"What is that?"
"I don't know. We need to go and see."
Abrupt withdrawal. Clothes flung back on. Charging through the woods towards the sound.
It was being made by an engine of some sort - a massively horsepowered motor that propelled something wheeled and huge. The closer we got, the more resonant and ground-shaking the sound became. The snow on the forest floor danced. The trees themselves shivered.
We began to hear crashing noises and splintering creaks. Pines falling, being shoved over.
Finally we caught our first glimpse of the machine. It was a wall of grey metal moving among the tree trunks ahead. There were caterpillar tracks as thick as my thigh, wheels several feet in diameter. Whatever this was, it barged the trees aside as though they were nothing. Old-growth pines shattered into toothpicks in front of it, toppled over like ninepins either side of it.
A tank.
But the biggest ruddy tank ever. Like twelve double-decker buses bolted together, three abreast, in two tiers of six. Just steamrollering through the forest, butting aside anything that got in its way.
As it passed us by and trundled off, leaving a cloud of black fumes, I looked at Freya. "How do we stop that?"
"No idea. We just do. Someone has to. It's heading for the castle. It mustn't get there."
"We need to raise the alarm."
"I'd be surprised if Heimdall hasn't already."
She had a point. The mega-tank might have caught the two of us with our pants down, but Heimdall napping? Not a chance. Especially not when it was setting up such an unholy row. Heimdall, who could hear an ant breaking wind in the Brazilian rainforest, knew full well this monster was on its way.
"Odin will already be mounting a defence," Freya went on. "We should get back there and join in. That's where we can be the most useful."
So we belted off in the direction of the castle. Freya led the way unerringly, and we soon overtook the mega-tank, which was going at little better than walking pace. It must have weighed several hundred tons, and no engine, however large, could move that much bulk at any decent speed. On foot we outstripped it easily, and we were back at the castle well before it got anywhere near.
As Freya had predicted, preparations were under way to meet it. Everyone was out, and armed. The Valkyries were gunning their snowmobiles. Skadi was on her skis, fully recovered now and looking as sprightly and agile as she'd ever done. Odin was marshalling the troops to form a defensive perimeter, with secondary and tertiary lines behind.
Freya and I went straight up to him and told him that men and guns alone weren't going to cut the mustard.
"Have you seen this thing?" I a
sked.
"Not yet. Huginn and Muninn are aloft, but..."
"Trust me, it's not going to be bothered by bullets. Not even an RPG'll pierce its armour, I don't think. It's just... mammoth. I don't know if it's got firepower. Didn't see. It probably has. But even without, it could roll right over us and we'd be nothing but roadkill."
"What, then? What do you suggest?"
"There's only one possibility. Is Sleipnir prepped?"
"It can be."
"Shit. Then we'll need a delaying tactic as well. Can you spare some trolls?"
"Of course. How many?"
"Let 'em loose. As many as possible. While they're, hopefully, holding that machine up, we get a small unit to tackle it from the only direction no one'll be expecting."
"Which is?" asked Odin.
"Above."
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 -"
Age of Odin Page 29