The force of the impact smashed Jormungand's rear end deep into the ground and crumpled part of its topside inwards. It also split Sleipnir's fuselage in two, and I saw the forward section of the helicopter, cockpit and all, shear off and roll down Jormungand's flank. It hit the earth head-on, bounced, and came to a halt.
The aviation fuel in Sleipnir's tanks ignited. The fireball engulfed fully half of Jormungand, and the vehicle jolted, then shuddered to a complete standstill.
The explosion flung chopper parts far and wide. One of the rotors hurtled into the woods, scything through trees. The other shot over our heads, falling apart as it flew, each of the three blades separating from the rotor head mechanism in weird slow motion. One blade struck the castle, embedding itself in the side of a turret. The other two sailed lazily over the top of the building to land somewhere on the far side.
As the smoke cleared and the flames subsided, it became apparent that Jormungand had been halted in its tracks for good. Jensen's possibly suicidal ploy had worked. The burrowing machine's back had been broken and a significant number of its serrated wheels damaged beyond use, including the crucial underside ones, crushed by the falling Wokka. Jormungand was disabled.
Not entirely, though.
It might not be able to move but its soundwave drill remained intact. Its nose was pointing straight at the castle, but I judged that the building was safe; Jormungand had been stopped a hundred metres short of it, well outside the drill's range.
What I hadn't counted on was that the focus of the drill could be narrowed and elongated. The aperture at Jormungand's front began to contract like the iris of an eye un-dilating. Metal plates slid inwards from the circumference, screeching against one another as they tightened the drill's scope to a circle just a couple of metres in diameter. They were honeycomb-patterned, sound-deflecting.
Then the metal beast roared, and a beam of pure bludgeoning sonic power leapt from it, pounding into the castle like some huge spectral lance. Stones and mortar imploded. The whole building groaned and seemed to recoil. Ripples spread outward from the initial point of impact, solid three-foot-thick walls quivering like jelly. Windows detonated, spraying out shards. Flakes and fragments of masonry tumbled down in a kind of landslide, leaving jagged gaping views of the rooms within. Sections of roof fell in on themselves. The castle from end to end seemed to be losing cohesion, shaking itself to bits as though in the clutches of a Richter 10 earthquake. No doubt all this demolition would have been as noisy as hell, if Jormungand hadn't been drowning out everything with its drill's devastating howl.
"No!"
This was Thor, and I saw him mouth the word rather than heard it. His face was aghast, a mask of disbelief.
"No!" he exclaimed again, and then without any further ado he turned and charged at Jormungand, tugging Mjolnir from his belt as he went.
I followed him, for no good reason other than that somebody needed to cover his back, just in case. Also, I wanted a piece of that machine almost as much as he did, although I wasn't sure there was a great deal I personally could do.
Thor leapt up onto the front of Jormungand, right into its gaping maw. His only thought was to destroy the device that was destroying his castle. Hammer in hand, he set about beating the metal plates that served as a focusing lens for the drill. They began to crack and splinter.
It occurred to me that this wasn't a wise move. Thor hadn't thought it all the way through. Or maybe he had and just didn't care. Ending Jormungand's attack was his sole ambition. The likely consequences of the method he'd chosen to achieve this were neither here nor there.
One of the plates broke away, and the quality of the drill's sound changed. It became less steady, with a shrill edge. Thor continued to chip away at the plates, and I saw the sleeve of his tunic fly off in tatters. His left arm was exposed to the soundwaves and the skin started to wrinkle and tear.
I yelled at him to give up, that he was going to kill himself. Of course he couldn't hear me. Teeth clenched, jaw set, he rained hammer blows on the plates. The skin of his arm was curling off in ribbons and bloody loops. Either he was so intent on what he was doing that he didn't notice or, more probably, the pain was of no importance to him. Only subduing Jormungand mattered.
Another plate shattered and fell free. The drill was now making a hideous, irregular droning noise. The soundwaves needed a circular, symmetrical outlet to function properly. By ruining the funnel, Thor was disrupting their pattern of emergence. De-optimising the drill's efficiency. Already — a backward glance showed me — the castle was shaking far less violently, although deep fissures were still appearing in its walls. One entire buttress crumbled away, as though cut loose. Roof tiles slithered off in cascades.
Thor himself wasn't faring much better. His left arm had been flayed to the muscle and hung useless at his side. Flesh dangled off it in grisly tatters. Blood poured down in rivulets.
He didn't let up, though. One-handed, he pounded with Mjolnir, relentless. The more damage he did to Jormungand, the more damage it did to him in return. The vehicle's "breath" was butchering him, peeling him, rending him to pieces. His left leg was starting to go the way of his left arm. His chest was bared and reddening. The drill ate away at him layer by layer. It was as though he was being sand-blasted to oblivion. And there was little else I could do except stand and watch. If I climbed up there with him, I'd be gone in a nanosecond. It was only because he was a god that he could withstand the drill at all. Divine strength and durability were buying him the time he needed. Those and his own sheer willpower.
Would it be enough?
It had to be enough.
Rib bone glinted. Muscle glistened. The hammer beats slowed but didn't stop. Thor had cleared a hole in the plates that allowed him to step through. He did so. He staggered into the full hurricane force of the drill, which cleaned the hair off his head, the beard from his face. I had no idea how he was able to keep going, how he could even put one foot in front of the other, but nonetheless he somehow managed to stumble on into the throat of the machine. Mjolnir was suffering too, its head turning to dust, its handle to splinters. Both it and its wielder were losing integrity before my very eyes.
Finally Thor raised Mjolnir above his head and delivered an immense, devastating blow to something inside Jormungand. I didn't see precisely what he hit. I was at the wrong angle, not close enough. Whatever it was, though, it must have been vital to the operation of the drill because in an instant the sound died and a silence fell. A silence shot through with the screaming of tinnitus.
Thor, what was left of him, tottered backwards. He took nine steps. He was a ghastly, gory scarecrow version of himself. Barely alive, ruined beyond redemption. He sagged to his knees on the rim of Jormungand's front end, and then slipped off onto the ground. When his body hit the snow it splashed rather than thudded.
I hurried over for a closer look. Was he — could be conceivably be — still alive?
No. Not a hope.
What lay in front of the vehicle was only just recognisable as physical remains, a fractured skeleton in a soupy puddle of blood and organs. Nothing apart from the half-eroded hammer still clutched in one hand would have told you that this mangled mess had once been the god of thunder.
Sixty
Vali, Vidar and Tyr got inside the incapacitated Jormungand and wrought havoc on the crew. As reprisals went it was neither swift nor gentle. They took their time exacting revenge for the death of their brother. Screams came from within the vehicle — raw, pleading, protracted. The windows that were its eyes were spattered with red.
It wasn't unsatisfying to know that this was being done.
Then there was an interval of numbness. A period in which to take stock. Regroup. Lick wounds. Drink. Eat. Tally up how much we'd got left.
Our inventory of assets went something like this:
* a dozen Aesir and Vanir
* the Valkyries
* ten trolls
* just over one hundred and
fifty mortal troops
We'd lost our head man, our strongest warrior, our one and only transport helicopter, and most of our castle. Heimdall was out of action for the foreseeable future, lying comatose in bed, blood still leaking from his traumatised eardrums. Frigga was tending to him and to the injured men, most of whom were suffering from wounds inflicted by falling debris, bone breaks, severe contusions, concussion, that sort of thing. One of the intact wings of the castle was now a field hospital. Thwaite was there. He'd been pulled from the wreckage of Sleipnir in very bad shape, and Frigga had promised to do what she could for him, but she wasn't optimistic about his chances. Jensen, unfortunately, was past saving.
The respite lasted, in all, a little under three hours.
Then the frost giants arrived.
A delegation of them appeared at the castle gate. Three in all, led by Bergelmir himself. They requested an audience with Odin, but didn't seem surprised to learn that he wasn't around any more. Nor Thor either.
In the event, they got lumped with me. I went out to meet them, taking Cy, Paddy and Vali along for backup and moral support.
"Gid Coxall," Bergelmir said, almost affectionately. "Well, well, well. What a state Asgard finds itself in, eh? That it should come to this. And your poor castle. An impressive edifice once, although hardly the rival of Utgard."
"We're redecorating," I said. "Once we're finished, you'll love what we're doing with the place. It's going to add hugely to the value when the time comes to sell. Kirstie and Phil would be proud."
"You speak in riddles, as always," Bergelmir said. "Familiar words put together in incomprehensibly strange ways. It's one of the things that makes you so intriguing and so maddening."
"All right, so what's the deal here? Let's cut right to it. I'm not in the mood for fannying around. Have you come to a decision on my offer? Us and you, in partnership. Because I'll be frank, we could do with reinforcements. Loki's got us on the ropes and there's surely more to come from him. Frost giants and Asgardians together, the dream team, what do you say?"
Bergelmir's contemptuous laugh was an answer in itself.
"Oh no! Dear me, no. That bird has definitely flown. In the light of your treacherous behaviour in Utgard, an alliance? I think not."
"It was an accident," I argued, not convincingly because I wasn't convinced myself that it had been. "A slip-up. I wish it had never happened."
"And well may you, but it doesn't change anything. Jotuns died, among them Suttung, a much feared and respected figure among our race. And after I'd granted you immunity from harm, too. I took that as a personal affront. A blatant slap in the face. No, any charitable feelings I may have harboured towards you, Gid, are long since vanished. Now I desire only your painful demise."
"Well, that's good to know. I mean, at least I'm clear where I stand. So you're here to tell us any deal's off, yes? Is that all?"
"In a manner of speaking. This is us doing you the courtesy of informing you that there now exists a state of all-out war between Jotunheim and Asgard. Ragnarok is upon us, and it is beholden to us as jotuns to assist as energetically as we can in the complete and utter destruction of the Aesir and all their collaborators."
"So you're siding with Loki. That's it. Non-negotiable."
"Yes."
"And if at a later date he turns on you?"
"We will act accordingly," said Bergelmir. "But I doubt it will ever come to pass. Especially not if we prove ourselves to be diligent aides to him in this instance."
"Right now I'm looking at three frost giants," I said. "Forgive me if I'm not exactly quaking in my boots."
"Ah, but observe."
Bergelmir turned, put a hand to his mouth, and let out a long, loud, hooting call that echoed across the landscape.
And frost giants appeared. They came out from the woods, stomping into view, kitted out in a glittering array of ice armour and weaponry. There were hundreds of them. Maybe even thousands. Everywhere I looked, frost giants.
"We have the castle fully surrounded," their leader said. "Every able-bodied jotun of fighting age, male and female, has taken up arms and come. We will grant you one hour in which to rally your forces and prepare. One hour and not a minute more. Think of it as a vestigial mark of the esteem in which I once held you. Then we attack. No mercy. No quarter. We will fight you until the very last of us is dead — or the very last of you. Good day, Gid. When we two next meet — and I'm sure we will, and soon — you will find me altogether less congenial."Bergelmir smiled, bowed, and left with his companions.
Sixty-One
He was as good as his word. One hour later, almost to the second, the frost giants moved on the castle.
I'd used the grace period to assess where the building's weak points were — and there were plenty of them — and make sure they were as well defended as they could possibly be. Jormungand had inflicted the most damage on the west-facing aspect. One major hole and several minor ones. Rubble formed convenient ramps, and I'd predicted the frosties would concentrate their efforts on using these to storm the breaches. That way they could establish a beachhead within the castle walls.
Which was exactly their plan, and we hit them with a withering crossfire as they came. We had to shoot from reasonably close range since we couldn't afford to waste too much ammo. Ice armour was effective at deflecting bullets at a distance, so we kept it down to fifty metres or less, which didn't leave much room for error. A few of the frosties got through and the combat turned dirty and hand-to-hand. The majority didn't make it past the slopes of rubble, however. The bodies began to pile up in the breaches, two, three, even four high.
The first wave of the attack lasted nearly forty minutes before a horn sounded the retreat. Bergelmir's troops withdrew to the trees, to retrench and steel themselves to start again.
By that point I'd had an idea. "A brilliant one, even if I do say so myself."
"Go on then," said Paddy, and when I'd outlined it he twisted his mouth up and said, "That could work. Maybe. Can't hurt to try, at any rate."
"Oh give over, it's genius!"
"No, Finnegans Wake is genius. You've come up with something that might make a difference and equally might not. Which is hardly the same."
"Sour grapes. You just wish it was your idea."
"If it makes you feel better, then to be sure, I do."
We got down to business preparing a — ho ho! — warm reception for the frost giants. No sooner were we done than they came at us once more, a fresh wave of them scrambling up the rubble, yowling and bellowing all the way.
"Fire!" I yelled into the walkie-talkie, but I wasn't referring to guns. All along the castle's western flank, men threw flash bombs onto the stacks of frostie corpses, which we'd laced with every kind of combustible liquid we could lay our hands on — fuel oil, lamp oil, diesel, petrol, even cooking fat. The bodies quickly became a great flaming barrier, a fiery screen with a dual function: it drove the attacking frost giants back, and the heat affected their weaponry and armour. Some of the ice-smiths' handiwork melted outright. Some of it held together, but was severely compromised — blades blunted, helmets and breastplates thinned.
Steaming, sodden, more vulnerable than before, the frost giants fled for the safety of the trees. Snipers on the battlements took them down as they ran. Freya was up there, leading the shooting, and her Lee-Enfield cracked rhythmically and repeatedly. I'd known she was a top-notch markswoman, but this was something else. No frostie she aimed at made it back to the forest. She would ratchet the rifle's bolt, sight, pull the trigger, and that was another of the big buggers flat on the deck. Reloading the five-round magazine took her next to no time, too.
The stench from the burning corpses was atrocious. All that fur and fatty flesh. And as the flames subsided and the acrid smoke cleared, out of the woods the frost giants came yet again. Now, though, they were closing in on the castle from all sides evenly, and I could tell they weren't going to converge on the breaches, not this time. Tried that
twice and got nowhere. They went straight for the walls instead, and started to climb.
Boy, could they climb. The long talons on their hands and feet dug deep into the mortar and the cracks and crevices in the stonework, as effective as a mountaineer's ice picks and crampons. The frost giants swarmed up the walls like the biggest, ugliest, whitest spiders imaginable. We shot them down as they clambered, but there were masses of them and we weren't able to pick them off quickly enough. They began cresting the battlements, unslung their issgeisls and other weapons, and engaged with us in earnest.
All along the castle's rim, men and gods grappled with towering, shaggy monsters. Odin's sons were at the forefront. Vali, Vidar and Tyr despatched frost giants in all directions, sending bodies tumbling to the ground. The Valkyries were in the thick of it too, whooping high-pitched battlecries as they gunned frosties down. Skadi was there.
Sif too. Thor's missus hadn't struck me as the Xena Warrior Princess type. I'd written her off as pleasant but mousy, and assumed she would stick with Frigga, helping to care for the injured, but not a bit of it. She was Aesir, and that meant getting down and mixing it with the enemy at a time of crisis. The death of her beloved gave her added impetus. She was a little hellcat, eyes bloodshot, taking out her very considerable anguish on her late husband's favourite punchbags. Any frost giant who strayed into her path didn't live long to regret it.
Freya, of course, performed sterling work, and I did my bit. Gave a pretty good account of myself, in fact. Just let my inner berserker have free rein and went along for the ride. Up on the battlements, I forgot everything. I didn't feel anger or hatred or fear or regret. I didn't have any petty problems any more. Nothing bothered me or distracted me. I was pure purpose. I existed to do one thing and that was kill frost giants. They appeared, I did away with them. Some I shot, some I stabbed, whatever suited. I had my Minimi in one hand and an appropriated issgeisl in the other, and ploughed through their ranks, cold, unfeeling, inexhaustible. I could have gone on for ever. Time had no meaning; I measured my progress through the world in terms of enemies exterminated. The only clock that counted was the one that registered the racking up of dead frost giants.
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