The Age Of Odin aog-3

by James Lovegrove

  "Don't you mean if?"

  "No offence, bruv, but diplomatic? You?"

  "Point taken. But I think I have some leverage here. The frosties should at least hear me out."

  "And then when they've heard you out and start trying to kill you…"

  "Then, and only then, the shooting starts. Just try not to get trigger-happy, Coco Pops."

  "Oh for fuck's sake!" Cy exclaimed, exasperated. "My surname's Fearon. If I have to have a nickname, why can't it be something to do with that? No-Fear Fearon. How about that? Works, don't it? Or what about Cyanide? Get it? Cy. Cyanide. As in, deadly as… That'd be all right. I could live with that."

  "Sonny, there's nothing you can do about nicknames. Once you've got one, you've got one and that's it. Tough, but there you go."

  "What did they use to call you, then? In the army?"

  Our RSM had come up with Cocks-Up. Gideon Coxall. Cocks-Up. See what he did there? He'd tried his very best to make it stick, but it hadn't. Mainly, I reckoned, because I wasn't the type who cocked up, not when it came to playing the army game at any rate. A nickname had to have a kernel of truth to it if it was going to work.

  "Just Gid," I told Cy, straight-faced. "Nothing else."

  I wasn't sure he believed me, not if the Whatchoo talkin' 'bout, Willis? look he shot at me was anything to go by. But he let it lie.

  "I've got a question for you," I said. "You said you and the army life didn't get on."

  "Yeah, so?"

  "So why hook up with this outfit? Was it just the money?"

  "Dunno. Probably. I'm a bit hazy on it myself, to be honest. Suppose I felt I was all out of other options, and fighting's the only marketable skill I have. I'd been on the dole for ages. Jobseeker's Allowance. Hah! There's a joke. Fifty quid a week doesn't allow you to do much except sit at home and watch daytime TV and eat tinned beans. And then I'd see all the dealers on the estate, how much they were making, the stuff they had, the cars with the thirty-two-inch subwoofers and the under-chassis strobe lighting and that… It didn't seem right, y'know? Didn't seem hardly fair. And there's soldiering in my blood. My granddad was a squaddie too, see. Mind you, it fucked him up good and proper."

  "Second World War?"

  "Nah, he missed that," Cy said. "Too young. But after. Did his National Service and liked it so much he enlisted. 'Took the Queen's shilling,' he used to say. He was white, by the way. My mum's dad. He married black, so that makes me, I dunno, eighth white or something."

  "That might explain the — "

  "Don't even start," he said, wagging a warning finger. "But the Queen's shilling wasn't worth shit, not after what they did to him."

  "Which was what?"

  "Christmas Island. Operation Grapple. The nuclear tests. Him and about a thousand other servicemen, the army just plonked them down on a speck of land in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, lined them up on a beach and blew up a fucking hydrogen bomb in front of them. My granddad said it was the weirdest thing he'd ever seen."

  "His own bones visible through his hand?"

  "Yeah, exactly. He had his back to the explosion and still his hand went all X-ray. There were no shadows anywhere, the light was that bright. And the noise… the noise was incredible. 'Like the planet splitting in two,' he said. And then a few days later his palms all blistered up, and so did the soles of his feet, and he got pretty sick. Then he got better again, and he thought that was it, end of. Only it wasn't."

  "Cancer?"

  "Funnily enough, not. He should've died from that. Plenty of the others did. And he smoked like a fucking chimney all his life. One way or another a tumour should've got him. But what happened was a whole lot more peculiar. One day, when he was in his fifties, he woke up and suddenly he couldn't remember who he was. No idea. Complete blank. He didn't recognise the woman lying in bed beside him. Didn't know her name."

  "Well, we've all had mornings like that."

  "Yeah, but she was his wife. They'd just celebrated their fortieth wedding anniversary. And he had no memory of who she was, or what his own name was either, or where he lived, what he did for a living, any of it. This is a true story. My gran took him off to hospital, and he stayed there for about three months while they ran tests on him, did scans, you name it. Some of the best brain specialists the NHS had to offer came to examine him. Some private guys as well, because he was such a mystery and his case was getting famous in the medical community. No one could figure it out. My gran brought in old photos to show him, his medals, stuff like that. He looked at it and nothing rang a bell. His mates came and he hadn't the foggiest who they were. They told him about things they'd done together, hoping to tweak a memory. Not a flicker. Didn't recognise his own children, or me. It was bizarre the way he looked at me, studying me like he knew he should know me but just couldn't think how. Like when you see someone's face in the street and it's familiar but you can't put a name to it or figure out if you ever actually met them."

  "And he stayed like that the rest of his life?"

  "Pretty much. His whole memory gone, his whole life, apart from scraps, a few bits and bobs. All the major stuff — fwoosh!"

  "Poor bugger."

  "Him and my gran got sort of to know each other again, and they carried on living together, but they was like flatmates more than husband and wife. He adjusted, although of course he was never the same again. And we're sure the bomb tests were to blame. Couldn't've been anything else. The radiation planted this, like, time-delay computer virus in his head, and one day it went off and crashed his hard drive and he had to reboot from scratch."

  "Don't suppose he tried suing the MoD."

  "Yeah, like that ever works."

  "Yeah. 'Bomb tests. What bomb tests?'"

  "Or, 'You knew what you were getting into when you volunteered. You take the consequences.' I guess that's where my, like, ambivalent attitude to the service comes from. We give everything, they treat us like dogshit in return."

  "Not here, though," I said.

  "Seems that way. And Gid, don't worry. Seriously. We won't fuck this up. I've got your back, bruv."

  I patted his scarred cheek. "Mate, I know you have. I've no worries on that score."

  Utgard loomed ahead. The pilots summoned me up to the cockpit for a squint. It was like some amazing dream-city, all shimmering spires and gleaming domed roofs. It rose sheer from the plain of ice, and it was ice itself, white and pale blue and in some places transparent but shot through with sparkling rainbow glints. There were layers to it, layers within layers folded together like the petals of a rose, and hundreds of cylindrical towers capped with spikes, reminiscent of minarets. In all it looked delicate and sturdy at the same time. Unshakeable. Unbreachable. Eternal.

  Fair took my breath away.

  "I'd never have imagined…" I said. "The frost giants are such honking great clodhoppers, but this…"

  "Not bad, is it?" said the first pilot, Flight Lieutenant Jensen. Ex-RAF, and a decent enough bloke. Posh but not stuck-up like a lot of Blue Job flyboys were. Same applied to his co-pilot, Flying Officer Thwaite, who did insist on wearing the most annoying moustache in the world ever. Like a miniature bog brush fastened to his upper lip. He might as well have had I am a bell-end tattooed there instead. And he and Jensen were permanently deadpan, as though there was some massive private joke going on that only they were in on. But still, like I said, decent enough, the pair of them.

  "Tall as Canary Wharf, some of those towers," Thwaite said. "And the whole thing's got to cover several hundred hectares, wouldn't you say, Jenners? For what's essentially a castle, that's pretty damn sizeable."

  Jensen nodded. "Well-fortified, too. Only one way in or out, far as I can tell — that gate, with the bridge in front. Otherwise, rampart walls a couple of hundred metres high and a huge crevasse all the way round the perimeter. You could defend the place for ever and no one would get in."

  "But we're not laying siege to it," I pointed out. "Just going up and knocking on the front door
."

  "Your funeral," Thwaite offered out of the side of his mouth.

  "You'd like us to do a flyby, correct?" said Jensen.

  "Make a meal of it," I told him. "They already know we're here. They'll have heard this crate coming a mile off. Let them have a good look at us, show them we're not making an effort to be sneaky or anything, it's all out in the open."

  "'We come in peace.'"

  "That's the general idea."

  "These are frost giants, Coxall," said Thwaite. "I don't think 'peace' is in their vocabulary."

  "Then today's the day they learn a new word."

  Jensen yanked on the cyclic control column and took us in close to Utgard. We buzzed the jotun stronghold clockwise, banking steeply, and by the time we were halfway round, scores of frost giants were appearing on the battlements and on the balconies of towers. They gesticulated at us. They hopped up and down. I could see them yelling, and you didn't have to be a lip-reader to tell that they weren't showering us with warm words of welcome. Several of them, to get their point across, even turned, bent over and mooned us.

  "A frostie's arse," I said. "Ugh. There's a sight I hoped I'd never see again."

  Once we'd completed our circuit and made sure there couldn't be a single frost giant in Utgard who wasn't aware of our presence, Jensen stamped on the rudder pedals and we veered sharply off at right angles.

  "How far out do you want me to set down?"

  "Near, but not too near. A klick should do it. They're already spooked, so best not rub it in. Besides, I fancy a stroll more than a hike."

  I went aft to inform the team that we were on standby to land, not that they didn't know this already.

  To the lads I said, "Kindly fasten your seatbelts, return your tray tables to upright, and stop trying to fondle the stewardesses' bums."

  Then to the Valkyries I said, "Ladies, you're here for emergency extraction purposes only. We come out of that place running, with a hod of frost giants up our arses, you swoop in and pick us up and get us back to Sleipnir ASAP."

  The three of them looked at me as though I was the village idiot telling them how to tie their own shoelaces.

  "We have trailer sleds fastened to the rear of our snowmobiles," one of them said. "What else are we likely to be wanting to do with them?"

  "Just don't dawdle. You spot us coming, no hanging around, come fetch, fast as you can."

  "We know how to drive these vehicles, mortal. Unlike some."

  "Yeah, yeah, all right. I'm sorry. How many times do I have to say it? I stole your snowmobile and crashed it, and I'm sorry. It'll never happen again."

  Apologies didn't wash with Valkyries, apparently. I wasn't ever going to be forgiven for my spot of twocking. They'd patched the snowmobile up, beaten out the dents and got it working again, but still. I'd sullied their "precious thing" with my grubby non-godly hands and that was an unpardonable offence.

  Nonetheless, I didn't doubt that they would race to our rescue if need be, all guns blazing. According to Odin, the Valkyries were as dependable as rain at a picnic (although that wasn't precisely how he'd put it) and, moreover, they loved a good scrap. If we got into difficulties they'd be there like a shot. Trouble was something Valkyries hurried towards, not away from. They had a nose for it, Odin had said. Could scent it a mile off. Lapped it up.

  Sleipnir bumped to earth, flinging up great billows of powder snow around it. The cargo ramp opened, letting in a burst of frigid air, and the Valkyries mounted their snowmobiles and roared outside, trailer sleds rattling along behind them. Each trailer sled seated two and, practising with them, we'd found that it was a safe ride, as long as you hung on for dear life to the handle grips on the sides. Otherwise you could easily get bounced off. The Valkyries parked in the lee of the chopper, whose fuselage screened them from direct line of sight from Utgard. The rest of us shouldered our weapons and, hunching against the bite of a bitter wind, began the march across the ice to the stronghold.

  Forty

  There was a reception committee waiting at the gate. A couple of dozen frost giants in full ice-armour regalia, armaments galore, and not a friendly smile to be seen. I motioned to the others to hold back. Then, solo, I set a tentative foot on the bridge spanning the crevasse. A quick glance over the edge showed me a sheer and apparently bottomless drop. I felt a wobble of vertigo. No handrail, no barrier of any kind, nothing to stop you slipping off the side and falling if you didn't watch your footing. Health and Safety would have had a stroke.

  I took another step forwards, and the frost giants firmed their grips on their weapons and growled.

  One of them had a fancier helmet and a more ornately engraved breastplate than the rest, marking him out as the commanding officer present, captain of the guard or some such. He came out a few paces from the gateway to challenge me, issgeisl to the fore.

  "Aesir!" he boomed. "Halt. You are trespassing on sovereign jotun territory. It is prohibited. Take one step further and perish."

  "Two points, sunshine," I said, ticking them off on my fingers. "One: I'm not an Aesir, I'm just your bog-standard mortal. And two: it's not really trespassing if you come in an official capacity, is it?"

  The frost giant just snarled, revealing blunt yellow teeth.

  "All right," I said, "I'm willing to concede on that. You say I'm trespassing, then I am. But I have business here."

  "With who?"

  "First off, can I ask your name?"

  He looked startled. "My name is no affair of yours."

  "Hear, hear!" agreed one of the frost giants behind him. "That's the way, Suttung, give him nothing."

  I nearly snorted with laughter.

  The captain of the guard, Suttung, wheeled round and clouted the other frost giant with the flat of his issgeisl blade.

  "Dimwit!" he cried. "Next time think before you open your mouth."

  The other frost giant, rubbing his head, took a moment to work out what he'd done wrong, then cringed with shame.

  "Well now… Suttung, is it?" I said. "I was wondering if Bergelmir's in."

  "What if he is?" Suttung puffed out his chest, hoping to regain some of the authority his subordinate had lost for him.

  "I want a word with him. I'd like to parley."

  "Parley?" Suttung frowned. "You come here with guns, yet all you wish to do is talk? Forgive me if I find that hard to believe."

  "I understand your suspicion, but the guns are just a precaution. Face it, you wouldn't turn up on the doorstep at Asgard unarmed, would you? But look at us. Only six of us, and there's three times as many of you guys here and thousands more within those walls. We're obviously no threat. We'd be crazy to think we were. Therefore you have to accept that what I'm saying is true. It stands to reason."

  Suttung tried to look sly and knowing, which for the average frostie did not come naturally. "This could all be some trick. Some clever ploy. Odin is a cunning one."

  "Nah, you're thinking of Loki there, mate, not Odin. But it is on the All-Father's behalf that we've come. I'd very much like an audience with Bergelmir, in Odin's name."

  "And what if mighty Bergelmir does not desire an audience with you?"

  "Oh he will," I said. "Just give him this message. Tell him, 'Hval the Bald's a lot shorter than he used to be.' Coming from a human, that ought to tweak his todger."

  Minutes passed. Then the frost giant that Suttung had sent off with my message returned, and not long after that the six of us were being escorted through Utgard. The city guard formed a tight phalanx around us, and every so often there'd be a spot of jostling, an "accidental" jab with an elbow, an attempt to trip one of us up with a carelessly trailing weapon haft. None of us rose to it, we kept our cool, and soon enough the frost giants got bored of trying to provoke us. It was no fun if we didn't react.

  Utgard really was a marvel. I hated to be so impressed by it, but I was. The place had everything you might have expected to find in a medium-size metropolis, all the amenities — shops, workplaces, plazas,
accommodation — and every last bit of it constructed from ice. Ice walls, ice windows, ice furniture, ice tools. I saw a fishmonger's shop, his goods laid out in front keeping fresh on ice trays. I saw jotun kids, tall as me, playing with dolls of ice. I saw municipal statues, ice sculptures far larger and more intricate than any I'd ever seen made by human hands. A snowball was lobbed at me, chips of ice scraped up off the ground and compacted together by some frostie showing off to his mates how much he despised anyone from Asgard. It stung, but I shrugged it off.

  Finally we reached a citadel, a palatial igloo-shaped building whose sides were studded with millions of ice crystals, creating a dazzling diamante effect. Liberace and Dolly Parton would have felt right at home here. Inside there was more of the frou-frou architecture and design: spindly columns carved in rising spirals, skeletal staircases that curved and arched and seemed to have no purpose other than just to be there, and ceilings with shapes suspended from them that resembled either snail shells or, if you had a mind to it, dog turds. There were also large numbers of…

  "Chops, what do you call those carvings on the walls?"

  "Ice friezes?" suggested Chopsticks.

  "I know it does, but — "

  "No, friezes. Ice friezes."

  "Ohhh."

  "Quiet, humans!" barked Suttung. "No talking."

  Some of the friezes depicted great jotuns throughout history, heroes and leaders in suitably noble and dramatic stances. Others showed frost giants and Aesir in battle. Still others were unflattering portraits of Jotunheim's Public Enemy Number One, Thor. Thor, very overweight, with boss eyes, man-boobs, and a tiddly little Mjolnir held at crotch level. Thor going toe-to-toe with some frost giant or other and looking like he was getting the worst of the fight, even though I was pretty sure he'd never actually lost any of his legendary clashes with the jotuns. Thor lying face down, comatose, surrounded by empty drinking vessels, with a puddle of what could only be urine seeping out from under him. It was a crude, tub-thumping display of propaganda; part of me wished Thor could be here to see it, and part of me was relieved he wasn't.