Age of Odin

by James Lovegrove

  "Which way do you bloody think? Through the septics. There's got to be an exit at the back for them to pile out of during an assault. That's our way out too. I make a hole through them. You follow."

  "All on your own?"

  I unhooked a couple of grenades from my belt. "Nope. I'll have some help from Mr and Mrs Pineapple here."

  "And me," Odin added.

  I was through second-guessing his participation, through querying his combat readiness. He wanted in? Fine by me. I'd no idea how much cop he'd be in a scrap, but hey ho, the more the merrier.

  Three steps into the passageway, Odin said, "Gid, my ravens."

  "What about them?"

  "Someone must look after them, feed them."

  "You're worried about your birds at a time like this?"

  "If I don't survive..."

  "Let's not go there, eh?"

  "And Frigga. I want you to tell her -"

  "Listen, Odin," I said firmly. "If you're not getting out of this alive, then I'm definitely not. So I'm not about to start promising to tell anyone anything. There's no point."

  "I've been a poor husband."

  "She knows that. She also knows you love her anyway. Poor husband? I wrote the book on it. But at least you and her are still together, unlike me and Gen. You stuck it through. That counts for a great deal. Now, there's a fuckload of mercs about twenty feet away from here, and every second we spend having this heart-to-heart is another second we give them to figure out how to deal with us. So let's forget the what-ifs and focus on the right-nows, yeah?"

  "Blunt as ever, Gid," Odin said. "And in your own fashion, wise."

  "Cheers."

  I turned with a grenade in each hand and plinked out both pins with my thumbs, keeping the striker levers nice and flat with my fingers. Loki's men had withdrawn behind a steel door ahead. They'd gone quiet, which to me said they were braced to launch a counterattack. Charging down the passageway with guns blazing, two-by-two formation, one of each pair shooting high, the other low - that would be how I'd tackle it, in their position. Small arms rather than anything high velocity. Trying their utmost to keep casualties high and collateral damage to a minimum. Make each bullet count and for fuck's sake don't hole the engines.

  Sure enough, the door swung open and two pistols poked out. High and low, just like I'd predicted. The men holding them emerged as I lobbed the grenades along the passageway and in through the doorway. I grabbed Odin and hurled him and myself to the floor.

  "Oh fu -" one of the Americans managed to get out, and "Holy Mother of -" the other.

  Then: Boom! Boom!

  The near-simultaneous detonations of two frag-mentation grenades in a confined metallic space. Like gigantic gongs being rung in Hell.

  Before the smoke had even begun to clear I was inside the hold, Minimi to shoulder. Odin was hard on my heels, and I briefly wondered what he was going to do, seeing as he was bare-handed. His problem, not mine.

  The grenades had killed over half of the Yanks outright, injured plenty more, and stunned the rest. There were maybe a dozen left who were battle-worthy. They staggered to their feet as Odin and I burst in, and while they were groping for their sidearms I began putting them down with the Minimi. Nice and surgical.

  But I couldn't neutralise every one of our opponents before return fire became a reality. Pistols started to spark, and I took shelter behind a heap of sprawled bodies.

  I signalled to Odin to join me behind my gory barricade. He didn't see. Admittedly I was on his blind side, but it appeared he had his own tactic for handling the enemy fire, and that was to run straight into it.

  Crazy? Oh yes. But somehow it worked for him. Not one bullet found its mark as Odin rushed the soldiers. He moved surprisingly fast, and doubtless none of them had anticipated a full-speed-ahead frontal assault like this. They'd expected he would dive for cover - like any normal person, such as me, would - and gauged their aim accordingly.

  He seized his nearest opponent, a corn-fed, freckle-faced farmhand type, and smashed him backwards against the hold wall, knocking the wind out of him. While Farmhand wheezed for breath, Odin rammed a fist into his sternum. I heard the sound of his ribcage caving in - a splintery crack like a piece of fibreboard getting stamped on.

  Odin swung Farmhand's huge frame round just as another American, a Mike Tyson lookalike, opened fire on him from the side. The body took the bullets, jerking with the impacts. Odin then flung Farmhand at Tyson-alike, who wasted precious seconds wrestling the corpse off. By the time Tyson-alike had disentangled himself from his dead comrade's limbs, Odin had his throat in an chokehold. He wrenched, and the American's atlas bone snapped, spine and skull parting company. A professional hangman couldn't have done it better.

  I was impressed as hell. Who knew Odin had it in him? His name meant "war fury," that was what Bergelmir had said, and he was living up to it. White-haired and age-withered he might be, but when necessary he had the speed and vigour of someone far younger and better built, not to mention the killer instinct of a true warrior. The Americans, for their part, were open-mouthed with shock. An old guy, dressed like a civilian, not a gun to be seen on him, and he was taking them apart? No way. How?

  Odin kidney-punched another of them, then used the man's pistol - while he was still holding it - to eliminate two of his own colleagues. Both head-shots, one through the eye, the other ripping off its victim's entire jawbone. For the coup de grâce Odin twisted the soldier's arm up, lodged the pistol barrel under the chinstrap of his helmet, and pulled the trigger a third time. The man had a chance to choke out half a scream, but that was all. The helmet kept the top of his head from flying off but everything else got very messy.

  Me and my Minimi were starting to feel redundant. Odin was a tornado, swift, remorseless, brutal. I foresaw a time when he and Loki would finally have it out between them, just the two of them, man to man, blood brother against blood brother. It would surely have to happen, and when it did, I didn't rate Loki's chances. He could shape-shift into the Incredible Hulk, and Odin would still pound him into the dirt.

  At the very moment I had this thought, Odin glanced my way. His eye widened.

  "Gid! Behind you!"

  I rolled round to find a soldier looming over me. It was hard to know how his face looked, whether he was black, white, Asian, whatever. He had few features left, just a tarry, sticky mess of burnt skin and cartilage where lips, nose and cheeks had been. Shrapnel hedgehogged him from forehead to neck. Only his teeth, exposed by the melted O of his mouth, were intact. Straightened, bleach-white gnashers, clenched in a rictus of rage. And his eyes - bulging, aglow with the thirst for vengeance.

  If this man with the mushed mush was still in pain, he wasn't aware of it. He was somewhere way beyond that sort of concern. All he wanted to do, all he could do, was kill me.

  The semiautomatic pistol levelled at my face was poised to make his desires a reality.

  Fifty-Five

  The gun, a chunky Desert Eagle, was so close, I could see right up the barrel, along the curved grooves of the rifling, all the way to the bullet snug in the breech. Or so it seemed. Maybe I would see that bullet as it came out, watch it corkscrewing towards me during a final, precious microsecond before it hit with a white thunderclap and there was nothing more.

  It was an instant of clarity that lasted far longer than it should, stretched out like a holidaymaker on a sun lounger. Somehow I couldn't lift the Minimi, draw a bead on Pizza Face here. There was all the time in the world, and none. Surreally serene, I was able to think, Oh well, this is how it happens, this is how you die. I felt no animosity towards my would-be killer. Just a grunt doing his job, same as I'd done my job dozens of times before, killing to earn a wage. He was so badly injured, so far gone, he probably didn't even register me as anything human. I meant as much to him as a paper target at the shooting range.

  His finger squeezed. I saw the gun's hammer nod forwards.

  Then something slammed into him sidelon
g. The Desert Eagle went off and I felt the peppery sting of powder burns on my left cheeks, and my left ear when absolutely silent from the percussion of the gunshot - but I wasn't hit, I wasn't dead...

  The gun went off again, and yet again. Odin and Pizza Face were grappling on the floor, the weapon between them. The soldier was pulling the trigger over and over, a reflex, while Odin dug both thumbs into his throat, strangling with all his might. I heard a click - the Desert Eagle's magazine running empty - and another click - the hyoid bone at the base of Pizza Face's tongue breaking. He gave a rattly gurgle and went rigid.

  Grimacing, Odin eased himself off the body.

  "Done," he gasped.

  We helped each other up to our feet. I scanned the hold. Soldiers lay everywhere, a few of them moving but none with any active purpose. The writhing, spastic throes of the terminally wounded.

  Also terminally wounded, it turned out, was Odin. He sagged to his knees, and I realised the front of his overcoat was riddled with bullet holes and sodden with blood. His opponent's shots hadn't gone wild, as I'd hoped - prayed - they had. Odin had a good half-dozen rounds in him.

  The All-Father was a goner.

  I knelt by him. "We'll get you to Frigga, that's what we're going to do," I said. "We'll get you to her and she'll fix you. All you have to do is hang on. We'll be out of here in a jiffy."

  "No, Gid," he rasped. "Noble of you, but no. I've sustained harm beyond even my wife's power to mend. I can feel..." He coughed, and blood dribbled out over his beard. "I can feel how much is... broken inside me. I've not got long."

  "Bullshit. You're a god. The All-Father. Come on, you hung on a tree for nine days. You can pull through this."

  His hat had lost its rakish grip on his head, and for the first time I could see his left eye. The lids were puckered over the empty socket, sealed and sunken like lips with a secret they would never tell. His right eye still glittered, but its lustre was fading.

  "I knew going in," he said, "that this was to be my end. Swallowed by Fenrir the devourer... never to return. My fate. I am not sad. I regret leaving life... but it has been a long life... and a good one too. My wife, my lovers, my sons, my family... even my blood brother..."

  He coughed again, and this time gouts of blood bubbled up.

  "And you, Gid... It has been a privilege to know you... even if only for such a brief span of time..."

  He fell against me, crimson-bearded.

  "I saved you," he said. "Gimlé. Not Niflheim. Gimlé!"

  And that was his final word, a cry that left his body forcefully and took all his remaining strength with it. Slack, limp, he died in my arms.

  Fifty-Six

  I had about a fifth of a second to digest the fact that the All-Father was no more. Then two things happened.

  First, Fenrir reverberated to an immense explosion, rocking back on its caterpillar tracks.

  Second, Cy and Paddy came haring in from the engine room.

  "Fucker's started bombarding," Cy yelled, over the ringing in my head.

  "And we've ten seconds to get clear before the charges blow," Paddy added.

  I was still holding Odin - couldn't move. Paddy took stock of my situation. His face fell. Then, barely missing a beat, he grabbed me by the arm and wrenched me upright. Together he and Cy hauled me through the carnage that Odin and I had created in the hold. There was an exit at the rear, as I'd guessed. Cy punched a release lever, and a segmented garage-door type of affair rolled upwards in front of us. We scuttled out under it on all fours and sprinted away from Fenrir.

  The tank was now perched on the brow of the rise overlooking the castle, with the scattered corpses of trolls around it and behind. It sent a second shell scudding through the air towards the building. I heard the whizz-shriek of the projectile coming in to land, followed by the chunky wallop of masonry shattering.

  Then Fenrir itself was the one to suffer. The C-4 in the engine room did its stuff. The tank lurched upwards and bulged outwards at the same time, slumping straight back down onto the snow. It came to rest at an angle, both tracks askew, wheels out of alignment like bad teeth. Its armour stayed largely intact, but many of the rivets had popped and the steel plates didn't mesh as neatly as before.

  A second, louder explosion, this one external, saw Fenrir's head shear sideways off its neck. The control cab came to rest canted at a forward angle, like a sleeping drunk's.

  All four gun turrets were still operational but the mega-tank itself was driverless and going nowhere. Its artillery barrels were fully extended, but without anyone to fire them they were as useful as a eunuch's dick.

  Thor appeared moments later, leading Skadi, Freya, and his brothers. Between them they mopped up the gunners, whose fighting spirit had pretty much deserted them now that they were stuck defending a dead duck. Mjolnir cracked the turrets open like steel piñatas, and Freya mercilessly despatched the men inside.

  A cry of victory went up, begun by the Aesir and echoed by the mortal troops over by the castle.

  Knowing something they didn't yet, I was in no mood for celebrating.

  I felt even less like it when Backdoor emerged from the woods.

  Alone.

  Fifty-Seven

  We built a funeral pyre through the night and set it alight at sunrise.

  Odin's body was laid out on a raised wooden platform, a bier, and beneath it logs and branches were stacked up and doused with engine oil.

  He looked at peace, lying on his back, hands clasped on his chest. His hat was placed over his belly to hide the bullet holes. Frigga lovingly arranged his hair so as to cover his lost eye.

  "He was always so self-conscious about that," she said, to anyone and no one. "He didn't like it being obvious, what he'd sacrificed in order to gain knowledge." A bitter laugh. "I can't see why, since we all knew. But vanity was among his shortcomings. The least of them, but there nonetheless."

  To Thor fell the honour of igniting the pyre. There was no squabbling about this among the sons. All were aware that their father had had a favourite. It couldn't be helped. That was just how Odin had been - not always fair, not necessarily impartial - although none of them had ever for a moment doubted his love.

  Thor carried a flaming torch to the pyre, and it was awful to see him weeping. So huge in stature, but stooped now, shrunken, humbled by grief, his beard silvered with tears. He touched the trembling torch to the wood, and fire leapt from the stacked lumber.

  Huginn and Muninn had, until this moment, been stationed on the bier. I wouldn't have said they were actually in mourning for their master. They'd just hung about near his body, shuffling up and down beside it, as if at a loss for anything else to do. Sometimes they'd arch their wings and let out a doleful awwwrrkk! or preen each other as if for comfort.

  Once the fire started, the ravens took to the air. They flew away like two black souls, disappearing into the redness of the cold, bloated new sun. I doubted we'd ever see them again. Odin had been concerned about who would feed them after he was gone, but they would fend for themselves. Without him animating them, lending them his voice and mind, they were nothing special now, just birds. Nobody else would have the same rapport with them as he did, so it was right that they go off and spend the rest of their lives doing whatever ravens normally liked to do.

  The flames coiled up the logs, sparking and spitting. In no time at all they were crowding around the base of the bier. They surged onwards and upwards as though jet-blasted, roaring through the wooden latticework on which Odin lay and latching greedily on to his clothing. As his corpse began to roast, Frigga fell to her knees with a hoarse sob of anguish. Sif and Freya went to her side and caressed her shuddering shoulders. Everyone else dropped their heads, and embers and smoke rose spiralling into the sky.

  Some time later, when the fire had begun to ebb, Bragi announced he was going to recite a memorial ode. Nobody groaned, as was usually the case when a Bragi poem was in the offing. A respectful hush fell.

  Eyes red-r
immed, he began. The poem was short, to the point, and rather touching.

  As the sun rises, another sun sets.

  You shone a light. Now a darkness descends.

  Odin, All-Father, in woe and regret

  Your soul to High Heaven we humbly commend.

  You were the sly one, the wily one, wolf.

  You learned and, in learning, learned pain -

  A pain that you shared with none but yourself.

  Your wisdom you put to good gain.

  You were the war god, the furious cry,

  The patron of warrior lust,

  Looking with favour on those who would die

  For causes both noble and just.

  Your judgement might waver, your temper might flare,

  You were often aloof and apart,

  But never in doubt - and beyond all compare -

  Was the stoical strength of your heart.

  O father, my father, All-Father, you fought

  With bravery here, and you won.

  And now we whose lives your self-sacrifice bought

  Will continue the work you've begun.

  This, as your body succumbs to cremation,

  We solemnly, dutifully, fiercely maintain -

  That Asgard, our home, our snow-fastened nation,

  Shall never be conquered while Aesir remain.

  "And Vanir!" Freya shouted.

  "And us!" added one of the troops, and others agreed. "Yeah! And us!"

  All at once a great massed chorus of devotion and loyalty rose up. I would have joined in, except for the fact that Odin wasn't the only one who had died defending Asgard last night and this rankled with me. Baz's body still lay out there with Fenrir, and was he getting the state funeral, the poetic oration, the pomp and circumstance, the standing ovation? Not a bit of it.