"Believe it, you tosser. You even admitted you fancy Mrs Keener."
"So what? Who doesn't? Okay, yes, I did fancy her, but not after I found out who she really is. If that's your basis for all this shit you're accusing me of doing, it's pretty flimsy, I've got to say."
"Also, when I first met you, you described yourself as sneaky."
"Well, I am. It was hardly a confession."
"Blatant. Rubbing our noses in it."
Backdoor laughed again, this time for the benefit of our audience: Are you hearing this unmitigated bollocks? "You know what? You're insane. That's what you are. Going around saying I've murdered my own teammates. Insane. That IED that put a hole in your head, it's done a complete number on you." He reached out and tapped my skull where the titanium plate was. "Inside here, it's all clowns and monkeys."
He shouldn't have done that.
"You shouldn't have done that," I told him.
"You shouldn't be calling me a traitor," he replied.
I swung for him. But Backdoor knew me well enough by now. Knew what I was like. The punch was predictable and he saw it coming and got up a forearm block. I craned back my head, planning to nut him on the bridge of his nose. Something nudged against my groin, and I froze.
"Ah-ah-ah," Backdoor said, shaking his head and grinning.
I didn't need to look down. He had a gun to my balls.
"Bastard," I hissed.
"What part of 'sneaky' do you not understand? You could take me in a fair fight, Gid, no question. Cream me. So why would I be so stupid as to let this be a fair fight?"
"Put it away. Let's deal with this like men."
"Isn't that what we're doing? Just as different kinds of men. You your way, me mine."
I tensed. "I'll — "
He jabbed the pistol firmly into my crown jewels, and I tried not to wince. "You'll do nothing, unless you'd like to be singing soprano for the rest of your life. Just stand still and give me what I want, which is an apology and a retraction. You don't go around calling somebody a traitor unless you have evidence. You don't have any, only a couple of half-baked theories. You've just false-accused me and you need to take it back."
"Not going to happen. I know what I know. And being the guy who's threatening to blow my balls off is hardly helping your case, is it? Sign of guilt, to my mind."
"I'm defending my reputation," Backdoor said. "Surely if I just let you beat me up, wouldn't that be more suspicious? Whereas this" — he ground the gun harder still into my nethers — "is me publicly and robustly telling you I deny everything and you can go fuck yourself."
"And this," said Freya in his ear, "is me telling you to put the gun away or you'll be the one singing soprano."
She'd crept up behind him silent as a panther, and her hunting knife was between his legs. Backdoor didn't realise it at first, until she nodded her head downward and he followed her gaze to find the blade poking out from under his crotch.
"You wouldn't," he breathed.
"Try me."
Backdoor went up on tiptoes, and the knife rose with him, blade keeping light contact with the zipper of his trousers. He searched Freya's face, and something there told him she wasn't fooling around. He hesitated. Then I felt the pressure of gun against genitalia ease. He raised the pistol with his finger outside the trigger guard, showing Freya he meant no harm.
"I'd never really have done it," he said. "I was only bluffing."
"That makes one of us," she replied. She withdrew the knife.
"But the fact remains, I'm not what Gid says I am. He's lying."
"For what it's worth, I agree. Not about the lying, but I think he's mistaken. You're not acting like someone with something to hide. Your declarations of innocence have the ring of truth."
"There," Backdoor said to me, and to everyone else. "One of the Vanir believes me. I reckon that's enough to clear my name." Smug triumph was written all over his face, which made me yearn even more to plant a fist in it.
I probably would have, but Freya saw what was brewing and held up a hand to me like a policeman stopping traffic. "Gid. Back down. You've embarrassed yourself enough as it is. No need to add idiocy to the list of offences."
"But — "
"It is the All-Father's funeral," she said tightly. "You shame his memory with these boneheaded melodramatics of yours."
"But Backdoor — "
"— deserves the apology he's asked for. Give it to him now." She leaned close and whispered so that only I could hear: "One pair of balls is much the same as another to me. I don't value yours that highly."
She wasn't joking. The knife was still in her hand.
"Backdoor," I said. "Sorry." I didn't mean it.
He shrugged. "Bygones." He didn't mean it either.
"I jumped to conclusions." I still think you got Chops and Baz killed.
"Easily done. We're under stress." You fucking wankstain.
He moved off. I'd be watching him closer than ever from now on. He knew that. I'd make sure, too, that I never turned my back on him. And he'd damn well better make sure he never turned his back on me.
Slowly the crowd started to disperse. The pyre was a heap of blackened, twisted wood, licked here and there by pale flame. What was left of Odin lay amongst it, indistinguishable.
I turned to Freya, who was sheathing her knife.
"Okay, maybe I could have timed that better," I began, "but…"
"Don't expect forgiveness," she said, head averted from me. "I'm not that kind of deity."
"I've never assumed you are. Still, you stood up for me just now. That's something."
"No. I helped you out only so as to end an impasse and defuse an awkward situation. Don't read anything more into it than that."
"You saved my bacon — by threatening to cut off his."
"Humour won't redeem you," she said, stony-faced. "Especially when it's as inappropriate as yours always is. Do you not appreciate the seriousness of our predicament? Odin is dead. We've lost our leader. And Loki will have plenty more surprises up his sleeve."
"More Thunderbirds-type machines like the tank?"
"Oh, undoubtedly. And without Odin to marshal us, exhort us, maintain morale and focus when the going gets tough — "
She was interrupted by a cry.
Someone nearby had just collapsed. Heimdall. Grief-stricken, it seemed, just as Frigga had been. He rolled on the ground and his hands were pawing at the sides of his head. It looked like he was tearing his hair out.
Then I realised. Not grief. Agony.
"My ears!" he gasped. "My… they… aaaarrrghh!!"
I frowned at Freya. Her expression was as perplexed as mine.
"I can't hear a sausage," I said.
"It's coming!" Heimdall yelled. Blood oozed between his fingers. "It's… I can't bear it! Help me! Help! It's coming! Screaming. So low… So loud…"
And then he fainted.
Fifty-Eight
Confusion reigned. Frigga took charge of Heimdall, instructing two of the men to carry his unconscious body to the castle. Meanwhile the rest of us milled about, all of a tizz because we knew an attack was imminent but had no way of telling where it was coming from or what form it would take.
"Fuck," I said to Paddy and Cy. "First we lose Odin, our eyes in the sky. Now Heimdall, our long-range radar. We're being crippled bit by bit."
"What was that, some kind of sonic weapon?" said Paddy.
"That knocked Heimdall for six? Yeah, sonic weapon'd be my guess."
"But where's it positioned?" said Cy. "How far off?"
"Wouldn't have to be close by at all, given how extraordinarily acute his hearing is. Look, we've got to get on top of this. Pads, go scare up Jensen and Thwaite. Tell them to get Sleipnir in the air, pronto. We need some idea of what's approaching and where from."
Twenty minutes later the Wokka was up and on patrol, ranging outward from the castle in an expanding spiral sweep. At intervals Thwaite radioed in. "Nothing to report," and "Still
nothing to report." No fresh penetration of Asgard's borders. No visual confirmation of anything out of the ordinary.
"You don't think maybe Heimdall got it wrong?" Cy wondered. "Whatever it was they blasted him with, it messed with his head? Made him imagine something that in't there?"
"Possible. As long as he's out cold, he can't say. But my money's on him being right. Face it, Loki's hit us once already in the past twenty-four hours, hard. He knows we've got to have sustained losses. Maybe he even knows about Odin. Naturally he's going to want to press home the advantage. Catch us while we're still reeling."
"Second bite of the cherry, type of thing."
"Only, we're a cherry that bites back. So let's make damn sure we're ready to."
I soon had Thor, Vali, Vidar and Tyr taking command of their units and organising them into a defensive position. Once again, three concentric lines were set up around the castle. I was reluctant to dish out orders to Odin's sons — it felt like an inversion of the proper chain of command — but there was drift there. Understandably. They'd just lost their dad, for fuck's sake. They were bereaved, distraught, not thinking straight. Somebody had to gee them up. Nobody else was volunteering, so the role fell to me.
The sun climbed. The morning wore on. It started to seem that perhaps Cy was right and Heimdall had been confused, misled somehow. He'd said, "It's coming!" so urgently. So why wasn't it here by now?
There was grumbling in the ranks. Apprehension spawned annoyance. The lads were impatient for something to happen, and as their tension mounted, so did their tempers. Thor and his brothers kept a rough discipline, barking at anyone who got out of line. It was not a good day to piss them off.
Noon arrived, the sun at its zenith and shedding as much weak winter warmth as it had to give. By now even I was coming to the conclusion that this was all a false alarm. Poor old Heimdall had had his senses overloaded by some long-distance weapon of Loki's. His thoughts had been scrambled and he'd not known what he was saying.
I was on the point of telling Odin's sons — or rather, gently but firmly suggesting to them — that they order the troops to stand down. Everywhere, tired and drawn faces. Frayed, ragged looks. The boys needed a break.
Suddenly, the trolls started howling in their pens.
It was a terrible sound, rough-edged with fear and panic. They babbled and hooted, repeating hoarse almost-words in their coarse almost-language. There were only ten of them left after the assault on Fenrir but they made enough racket for three times that many. The air around the castle echoed with it and with the thumping that accompanied it as the trolls pounded agitatedly at the pens' wooden stockades.
"Something's got them spooked, all right," Cy said.
"Quite," I said, and executed a quick weapons check. Others did the same. All at once, exhaustion was gone, swept aside by a flood of adrenaline. We were alert, on our mettle. The wait was over. We were in business.
I stole a sidelong glance at Freya, who like me was stationed in the second defence tier. She hunkered just over a hundred metres away with Skadi and what remained of Skadi's ski-troop unit. She turned her head my way, gave just the tiniest of nods, and resumed looking straight ahead. There was no smile, and I hated myself for hoping for one. What was I to her? Just some mortal she was boffing, a convenient booty-call buddy, a piece of scruff she'd picked up on a whim and could just as easily drop. I fulfilled her needs in some ways, mostly in the jiggery-pokery department, but in other ways I was hopelessly lacking. She made me feel like the gamekeeper who was allowed to give the lady of the manor a right old seeing-to but would never be invited to the high-society balls.
But then, I supposed, that was what you got for shagging a goddess. Mortals and deities — it clearly wasn't a recipe for long-term relationship bliss.
Focus, Gid. Priorities.
The trolls went quiet. That, in a way, was worse than the howling.
Then the ground began to shake.
At first it was just a mild vibration, a tingle in the trouser legs. It developed gradually into a low, deep-seated throb, like someone was playing one of the bassiest, bottommost notes on a cathedral organ. We all looked around. Nobody could pinpoint which direction the sound was coming from.
It grew and grew. Soon the earth beneath us was actively juddering up and down, as though it was a trampoline some giant was leaping on. My vision blurred, and all I could think was that Fenrir's sound signature was nothing compared to this. The mega-tank had been big. We were about to be visited by something bigger still. A fuck sight bigger.
Abruptly the ground cracked open near the foot of Yggdrasil. Stones, soil and snow erupted, a geyser of solid matter, and showered down around us. We ducked and hunched. Someone screamed.
The jagged split in the earth broadened and deepened. Debris continued to burst out, propelled skyward from below. Rocks bubbled up like champagne fizz. Something, some massive machine, was tunnelling up from the depths, churning towards daylight, violently displacing vast amounts of mineral as it went. Yggdrasil trembled to its highest branches. Huge cracks and splintering were audible, the sound of the World Tree's roots being bored through and torn asunder.
The tumult reached an apex, and for once I was glad of my dud ear. I wasn't suffering as badly as anyone else. I was only hearing half as much of the cacophony. It was only half deafening me.
Up through the hole came the nose of the thing — like the end of an enormous steel pipe, blunt but with a rounded rim. It grew like the shoot of some vast plant, rising in a column that rivalled Yggdrasil itself for size. It was roughly cylindrical, its surface pitted with countless scrapes and gouges. Rows of serrated-edged wheels fringed its lower section, spinning and screaming like circular saws.
When more of the machine was out of the earth than in, it slowly tipped over under its own weight. As it slumped forwards, sinking into a furrow of its own making, a pair of panels slid open on either side near the nose, to reveal panes of thick, ultra-toughened glass. They were oval — sort of eye-shaped — and lit from within. I glimpsed the silhouettes of people in them: the vehicle's crew, moving with brisk, businesslike purpose.
The wheels stopped spinning. For a moment the now-horizontal machine appeared to be pondering, making up its mind. Then some of the sets of wheels started up again, the ones on its underside, and it swivelled, got its bearings, and tore across open ground towards the castle with a fantail of dirt and snow jetting up behind it a hundred feet in the air.
Between the castle and the snakelike, burrowing vehicle stood us and our guns.
Not much opposition at all, relatively speaking.
Fifty-Nine
"Jormungand," said Thor.
"Jormun-who?"
"Jormungand. The Midgard Serpent."
"Loki's tech version. What's the real Jormungand do? What's it capable of?"
"Killing. Killing with its breath alone."
I looked back to the massive tubular behemoth barrelling towards us. Men in the front ranks had already opened fire on it, and their bullets were bouncing off like grains of rice. An RPG arced towards it, trailing smoke. The explosion left a star-shaped scorch mark but made no appreciable difference.
"Its breath…" I said, wonderingly.
And then Jormungand was within spitting distance of the outer defence perimeter, and it let rip.
The noise was indescribable. Beyond loud. Staggering. Gut-wrenching. An immense booming blare that sprang from its hollow front. The sound radiated outwards in a visible cone, a warped, white-tinged shimmer extending perhaps twenty metres ahead of the beast. And anyone touched…
…burst.
No other word for it.
Humans became patches of red fog. Clothing was shredded. Bones were pulverised. Even guns were shattered into components and fragments of components. One moment, a living, breathing person. Next, a thinning spray of popped organ and vaporised blood.
Jormungand was fitted with some kind of audio generator, massively amplified, and used
soundwaves to drill a path for itself through the earth, pummelling rock to dust. Up above ground, those same soundwaves could be employed as a weapon. Nothing — organic or inorganic — could withstand a volley of such sheer volume. It was instantaneous destruction by decibel.
There was nothing else for it but to retreat. No point holding the line when the enemy could carve through so easily. The outer defence perimeter broke. Men scattered and ran. Jormungand ploughed onward, propelled by those serrated wheels. It was on a direct course for the castle, and I doubted there was anything we could do to divert or waylay it.
The radio on my belt crackled.
"Ground forces, this is Sleipnir. I see you're, ah, having a spot of bother down there."
"Too bloody right we are, Thwaite," I said. I scanned upwards and spotted the Chinook zeroing in over the treetops. "Any ideas?"
"Flight Lieutenant Jensen's had one. Can't say I'm mad keen on it myself."
"Right now I'll take any suggestions you've got."
"We're, er, we're going to ditch the chopper."
"Ditch…?"
"On top of that thing. See if we can't stop it that way."
"Are you sure about this?"
"Christ, no. Jenners reckons there's a one in ten chance we'll make it out alive. My own estimate's somewhat more conservative. But needs must and all that sort of thing."
I didn't think I could talk them out of it. Didn't want to, truth be told. There weren't a whole lot of other options available to us.
"Fair enough," I said. "Thwaite? About your moustache?"
"Yes, Coxall?"
"It's a pretty nice one, actually. Lush. I'm just jealous."
"Acknowledged," said Thwaite. "Over and hopefully not out."
I watched Sleipnir pick up speed. It swooped in behind Jormungand, its rotors two discs of grey blur. Jensen was keeping its nose up, so that when the crash came — and it came jarringly hard — the Wokka's underside took the brunt. Sleipnir bellyflopped onto the back of the unsuspecting Jormungand, a dozen tons of aeronautical engineering colliding at speed with Loki's crawling serpentine vehicle.
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