"So then it's her."
"Her forces, yes, I believe so."
"Or rather — his."
"His," Odin agreed.
"Your blood brother. The one you banished. The one who can change his shape to become anything he likes."
"That one. I will not say his name. I cannot bring myself to."
"Loki," I said.
Loki. Lois Keener. The first syllable of each of her names, like some awful crossword clue. Loki, waving his true identity under everyone's noses, knowing that nobody would catch on except those he wanted to.
"But," I said, "isn't he chained in a cave having snake venom dripped into his eyes?"
"No punishment is everlasting, nor any prison impossible to break out of. Not to a god, and especially not to one as guileful and elusive as him. He has been free for several years. He returned to Asgard immediately after his escape, but we gave him very short shrift and sent him packing. Thereafter he went to Midgard, where he has been ever since, at large, working his wiles and gaining himself a substantial earthly power base."
"Odin…" said Skadi impatiently.
"And now he's back, he's mad, and he's out for revenge," I said.
"Indeed," said Odin.
"In other words, he's a divine Steven Seagal. In drag."
"All-Father, I beg you," said Skadi. "The men are being rallied, but we need your leadership."
"Yes, yes, Skadi. I'm coming." Odin turned back to me. "So now you know what we're up against, Gid. Our enemy has marshalled the might of the most powerful nation on earth. He has their armies and technology at his disposal. I believe he has been instrumental in devising new armaments designed specifically to combat us. You've seen the documentary. Seen how he has been pumping money into weapons research and development, to the detriment of the US economy as a whole. Seen how he has been sating his generals' lust for conflict in order to curry their favour and earn himself an unlimited say in their affairs. He has America's military-industrial complex eating out of his hand, and they've responded by innovating and manufacturing as never before, with his full connivance. Now is the time to throw in your lot with us and take up arms against the footsoldiers of the god of lies and deceit, if such is your wish."
"Lies and deceit. You really don't like the bloke, do you?"
"Nor he me," said Odin. "And his reasons for hating me are probably no less valid than mine are for hating him. Our feelings of antipathy are truly matched and mutual. His role was to commit the crime, mine to dictate the penalty, and he has resented me for it ever after. And we are seeing the first stone cast. The first battle of our war, long brewing. The first, I suspect, of many. Again, Gid — are you with us?"
"We're taking on the United States army." I was stalling for time, trying to work out which way I was going to jump on this one. "They have the latest weaponry, and by the sound of it some advanced, cutting-edge stuff as well. We're just a small bunch of has-been soldiers with conventional arms."
"I have done my best, given my limited means. And you have gods beside you, don't forget. The cream of Asgard and Vanaheim, famed for their prowess on the battlefield."
"But we're still going to be outgunned, outnumbered, out-everythinged."
"So?"
"Hopeless odds."
"So?"
"Its suicide."
Skadi was hopping from foot to foot, waving one of her ski sticks agitatedly.
"That's as may be," said Odin. "But the stakes are much higher than mere lives. Our enemy's wrath is such that, unchecked, it may shatter the Nine Worlds. Do you understand what I am saying? Thanks to him, all is imperilled. Not just Asgard and the Aesir. All. Including Midgard. Including your loved ones."
"My —?"
"There's no time to go into the full story now. But you have to believe me, Gid. If my erstwhile blood brother is not stopped, it could spell universal doom."
"Oh," I said.
Cody.
"Well," I said.
My little boy.
"If it's universal doom that we've got to watch out for…" I said, and said no more.
Endless possibility, the Norns had told me. Infinite opportunity.
I'd made my choice.
And the black rage inside me wasn't at all displeased.
Thirty
We were positioned on high ground, overlooking a plain. About a hundred of us mortal troops, half the total of Odin's forces, plus a handful of Aesir and Vanir. Brought out in two batches aboard Sleipnir and now parcelled out along the curving ridge of a bluff, some of us still catching our breath from tabbing hard from the drop point. I was with Cy, Paddy, Chopsticks, Baz and Backdoor. I'd fallen in with the five of them en route, bumping shoulders with them in the Wokka's cargo bay. There was us together on the bluff and a handful of others, all under the command of Thor. This, I could tell, was now my squad. The team I belonged to. These things had a way of just clicking, of their own accord.
Facing us was one of the intersections between the Nine Worlds, the corridors where one world met and overlapped with another. Down below our positions there was nothing except a snowfield stretching westward, its far edge lost in a curtain of fog. The fog hung in an almost perfect straight line, as though held back by something you couldn't see, contained by a wall of glass. It hazed the setting sun, paling the scarlet disc to pink. It was utterly still. Not a breath of wind, not a hint of turbulence in its white depths.
Up to the fog bank was Asgardian turf. Beyond lay Niflheim.
"Where are they?" I murmured, mostly to myself. "Where the fuck are they?"
"They wait," said Thor. "They are well hidden. They wish us to grow uneasy and restless, so they wait. When they have waited long enough, they will emerge. Control of the battlefield is any army's priority, and that starts with control of the timing of battle. They know we would not dare venture into the mist, so the upper hand is theirs — the leisure to decide when to commence the attack."
"And in the meantime we lie here with our ball sacks turning to icepacks."
"Would you rather go down there into that impenetrable mist, where you can't even see the hand in front of your face, and try to root them out? I think not."
He had a point. Not that I wasn't tempted. I didn't much enjoy hanging around twiddling my thumbs before a contact. I wanted to get in there, mix things up. The black rage inside me wanted that too. This was what it lived for: moments of bloodshed and personal danger. What it craved, like a vampire craved blood or a zombie craved flesh. I was an addict, that was what it came down to. Violence was my drug, and for too long I'd gone without. It had been cold turkey for me ever since I left prison. I'd been straight for two years — straight and miserable. But I was well off the wagon now, and all the happier and healthier for it.
I glanced across at Cy, his eyes met mine, and I saw it in him too. Paddy likewise, and Baz. All of them. The same eagerness, the same unquenchable thirst. We feared it so much, yet at the same time needed it. We could die today. This could be our final few minutes, our last hurrah. We were shit-scared, skating along the edge of the screaming abdabs, and loving it.
Baz had the walkie-talkie for our unit, and now it squawked in his hand.
"This is Odin, to all."
"Here we go," I said. "Big pre-match pep talk from the coach."
"Hush!" snapped Thor. "My father speaks."
"Our foe's desire is to unsettle us," Odin said over the airwaves. "Stand firm. It will not be long. Night is falling fast, and they will not want to fight in the dark. We have but minutes to go before battle is joined. Today is the culmination of all your work hitherto, your training, your dedication. The enemy intends to essay our strengths and vulnerabilities. Let us demonstrate our abundance of the former and absence of the latter. They have made this move earlier than anticipated, in hopes of catching us unawares, unprepared. Do not worry. We are ready."
The sun kept sinking, getting fainter and fainter, dusk deepening around it. Evening, and I'd had no lunch, and breakf
ast had been measly. I should have felt famished, but fear quelled the pangs. What a day it had been. What a twenty-four hours. From frost giants to trolls to the Norns to Mrs Keener — talk about having your world turned upside down.
"Any clue what's lurking out there?" I asked Baz.
He shrugged. "Intel hasn't been superb on this one. But then, what else is new?"
"Good point. Back in the army, I don't think I was in a single engagement where we didn't go in half-cocked, knowing next to nothing of what we should have known. Different situation, same old shit."
"American black ops guys, that's what I heard," said Backdoor. "With some kind of high-tech equipment. Who'd have thought we'd be going up against the septics, eh? So much for the Special Relationship."
"I think, seeing as who Mrs Keener really is, the Special Relationship's more like a Special Needs Relationship," said Chopsticks. "And we're the one in the wheelchair, being pushed around."
"Sure and that was a shocker, wasn't it?" said Paddy. "Ultra-conservative president turns out to be Norse god in disguise. Hands up who saw that one coming."
"And a male god and all," said Backdoor. "Makes me a bit sick to think I might have knocked one out over her a couple of times."
"Holy Mother of God, you didn't!"
"I only said might have, Pads. Never said I did."
"Oh, you did," I said. "You big divine-gender-bender fancier you." I turned to Cy. "While we're here male-bonding with insults, and just in case I don't get another chance to ask — 'Coco Pops'?"
A grimace. "If I told you it was my favourite brand of cereal and that's all, would you leave it at that?"
"Nope."
"Thought not."
"Lad has certain tastes," said Baz, with glee.
"For…?" I said.
"Likes the white women, so he does," said Paddy. "By his own admission, prefers them to ladies of his own colour."
"And…?" I said. We were all grinning, even Thor. It was fun watching the youngster squirm. Helped take our minds off what was coming.
"Well, you remember the adverts, don't you?"
"This is so offensive," Cy muttered.
"'Turns the milk chocolatey.'"
I guffawed. Couldn't help it.
"Come on, seriously," Cy said. "It's borderline racist."
"Mate, you're blushing," I said to him.
"Am not. How can you tell?"
"I can tell. Is it true? White birds do it for you?"
"Nothing wrong with white birds, is there?"
"Nothing at all."
"You wouldn't believe how keen they are for a bit of brother, actually, Gid. Gagging for it. You lot obviously aren't measuring up. That's why they come to me, and man, are they grateful. I give 'em something they won't forget. You know the saying. 'Once you've had black…'"
"Hsst!" said Thor. "Enough. Look."
We looked, and there were figures in the fog. Dim, hulking outlines. Grey shadows that moved ponderously, purposefully. Coming towards us. Resolving. Getting sharper and clearer. Emerging. Revealing themselves.
I held my breath.
Mrs Keener and the Pentagon had, it seemed, been busy bees.
Very busy bees indeed.
Thirty-One
I counted nine of them.
Not many.
But they were big. Each basically human-shaped but twice the size. They strode in a V formation, clomping cumbersomely over the snow. Five were dark blue, the other four jet black. Their sleek, rounded contours, backlit by the fading sun, gleamed dully. Giant mechanised suits of armour.
Each had an operator inside. I could see faces peering out through tinted plexiglass faceplates. Each moved a little stiffly, but with obvious strength and power. Servomotors in the legs swayed them along, and their arms swung, providing counterbalance. In place of hands the arms ended in flared nozzles which were connected by flexible metallic tubes to pod-like tanks on their backs. Vents, cowls and farings jutted out here and there from the bodywork, some obviously functional but the majority, as far as I could tell, for show.
Across their chests were strips of lettering. The blue suits of armour had JOTUN, the black ones SURT.
"JOTUN," I said. "The US army's built its own jotuns."
"No shit," said Cy.
"But what's a SURT when it's at home?"
"Surt is a fire demon," said Chopsticks. "King of Muspelheim, the World of Fire. Scary fellow, by all accounts."
"Oh yes," said Thor. "Very much so."
We watched them plod closer, those metal replica frost giants and fire demons, and if my own feelings were anything to go by, we were perturbed but also sneakingly impressed.
"What are we supposed to call 'em, that's what I want to know," said Backdoor.
"Robo-infantry?" Chopsticks suggested.
"Bit of a mouthful."
"Mecha-modules? Mytho-exoskeletons?"
"We'll get back to you on that one, Chops," said Baz.
The nine armour thingies — they really did need a name — halted some three hundred metres from our positions.
Within range of our rifles.
Odin gave the command.
"Open fire!"
And we blizzarded the tin-plated monstrosities with bullets.
And didn't put so much as a dent in them. The salvo of bullets churned the snow around the armour suits to mush, but left them completely unscathed. As their operators must have known it would. Why else stand there like that, inviting a pelting?
The shooting became sporadic, died out. My good ear singing a lovely high-pitched song, I squinted down onto the plain. What now? Surely the enemy were going to retaliate in some way.
As one, the nine resumed their forward march, fanning out. Soon they were less than a hundred metres away from the bluff, at which point they raised their arms, levelling those nozzles at us.
Over the walkie-talkie Odin barked, "Pull back!" Me, I was already beating a hasty retreat. I didn't know what was going to emerge from the nozzles but I had a hunch it wasn't going to be spangly fairy dust or showers of confetti.
There was a loud whooshing whine, and rocks exploded at my back. I hurled myself flat, feeling the thuds of other detonations all around, hearing cries of alarm. Baz crashed headlong to the ground beside me, with a yell of "Fookin' Nora!" I raised my head to catch a peek of the goings-on, and saw a huge, sizzling hole gouged in the bluff where we're been lying just moments ago. Snow had been turned to vapour. Shattered rock glowed orange at the edges. A man — I didn't know his name — was sprawled by the impact point. The left side of his body had been almost completely burned away. Incinerated. Smoke curled up from exposed cross-sections of charred muscle and bone.
Some kind of missile?
If so, it was like none I'd ever encountered before. And in fact I doubted it was a missile at all.
The sound came again, that kind of low, resonant hiss, and another section of the edge of the bluff disintegrated. Baz and I scuttled further away on our hands and knees as scorching hot debris rattled down around us.
"Did you see that?" he said.
"No."
"Exactly. It were nowt. Just a kind of… wobble in the air. Like heat. A beam of heat."
"A heat ray?" I said. "You're telling me those things fire a fucking heat ray?"
"The black ones, yeah. Must be a million degrees or something."
"Fuck me."
"Not while there are dogs in the street."
"What about the blue ones? What do they fire?"
"How the ruddy 'eck should I know?" Baz shot back. "I'm the expert on high-tech robot suits all of a sudden?"
I looked along the line of the bluff, and got my answer. I saw a soldier rise to a crouch in order to peer over the bluff at the enemy. He unclipped a grenade from his bandolier. A bolt of shimmering air streaked towards him from below, but this one brought intense cold rather than intense heat. He cracked in two. The beam engulfed his head and shoulders, flash-froze them, and then that section shear
ed off, sliding to the ground in a single solid mass, its departure lubricated by an abrupt gush of blood welling up from beneath. The rest of him crumpled in the opposite direction, torso spouting torrents of crimson.
Another soldier tried the same tactic, and this time succeeded in getting the grenade in the air before he too was freeze-zapped. The little steel egg spiralled through space, and full credit to the thrower, his aim was good. He'd surely have been pleased with himself, if he hadn't happened to be lying in two halves in the snow. The grenade landed within a yard of the JOTUN that had killed him, and exploded almost instantly, before the man in the armour had a chance to react.
Take that, twat, I thought.
But when the smoke cleared, the JOTUN was still standing. Its armoured shell was scorched, scratched, but essentially intact. Through the faceplate all I could see was an enormous fucking grin. The man inside was laughing his arse off, and who could blame him? Just been hit point blank by a grenade and emerged unscathed. If that were me, I'd be as happy as a dog with Bonio-flavoured bollocks.
A couple of the other guys tried to take out one of the SURTs with a Russian-made RPG-7. Same result. The impact staggered the thing but the rocket nevertheless failed to penetrate, and the reward for their pains was to get roasted on the spot — two men reduced to human barbecue in a split second.
I spotted Thor hunkered down nearby. He was scoping out the terrain from behind a boulder, trying to fathom a way of getting down into the fray without getting blasted. I scrambled over to him, Baz behind me.
"We're sitting ducks up here," I said. "Pinned down, and if we try to climb down to attack close-up, they'll just pick us off the slope like flies on a wall."
"What do you suggest?" said Thor. "Mjolnir itches to demolish."
"We go in from the sides." I motioned to either end of the bluff, where it descended in a shallow curve, flattening to meet the plain. "Take the long way round and hit them in a pincer movement."
"All well and fine, Gid, and I believe it workable. Two problems, though. I can damage those machines with Mjolnir, I am sure, but there is but one of me. Grenades do not appear to work, and bullets certainly do not. What do you propose the rest of you do?"
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