James Lovegrove - The Age Of Odin (10 page)

Then he seized Cy by the head, with both hands, shook him around for a bit, then just kind of tossed him to the ground, as though he was an inflatable doll. Cy tried to rise. Mentally I begged him not to. He made it to his knees, and the crowd were roaring encouragement, but kneeling was as far as he managed to get. With a croaky sigh he slumped down face first into the snow, and lay there in a writhe of soft groans.

It was over. Everyone howled their joy and dismay. Thor raised his fists above his head and let out a gloating bray.

"See?" he said. "
See?
Challenge me by all means. Feel free. But never expect to best me in a fair fight. I am a god! Thor, whose name means thunder! I've waged battle since time immemorial! Do not think that any mere mortal can overcome
me
."

He bent down to the semiconscious Cy.

"A noble effort, my good fellow," he said. "But next time perhaps you'll think twice before questioning my authority. If I say you are going to rehearse a manoeuvre again, then you are going to rehearse that manoeuvre again, and again, and as many times as I tell you to, no ifs, ands or buts. Got that?"

Cy was in no fit state to "get" anything. At Thor's command, a couple of his fellow soldiers picked him up and carted him off.

"Frigga will have him back on his feet in no time," he said. "My stepmother is a miracle worker."

Now Odin stepped forward. "My son."

"Father." Thor bowed low.

"Leading by example, as ever." Just the tiniest hint of mockery in Odin's voice.

"They are keen to see combat, these men," Thor replied, bluffly, "but discipline is in short supply. Some of them have not known active service in a long while. Every now and then they need reminding who is in charge and how the command structure works."

"As long as showing them who's boss doesn't mean killing them."

"It would never come to that, father. And who is this?" Thor said, frowning at me.

"This is Gid," said Odin. "He turned up a week ago."

"Ah yes. The wolf attack man."

I detected a sneer on Thor's face as he said this, but I let it pass.

"Waylaid by a few stray dogs, were you?" Thor went on.

I held his gaze. Thor's eyes were small and dark and if they had been set any closer together, he'd have been a Cyclops.

"Wolves," I said carefully, "are not the same as dogs."

"A few measly pups. Me, I'd have just patted them on the head and told them to be off."

"Thor..." warned Odin.

But son paid father no heed. "What happened, did one of them lick you a little too hard? Is that why you require a walking stick?"

Keep a lid on it, Gid. Calm and cool. Don't let your goat be got
. "I was in a car crash as well."

"Ooh, a car crash!"

"And for your information, sunshine, it wasn't a few wolves, it was a whole pack."

"Still, if it had been me, I'd have sent them away with their tails between their legs."

"Well, aren't you the big beefy macho man?" I retorted. "Look, Thor, or whatever you real name is, I don't care what you think of me and I've no idea why you're trying to get a rise out of me. I'm just not in the mood, so give it a rest, eh?"

I turned and started walking off.

"And your friend didn't make it," Thor said to my back. "He must truly have been some kind of weakling. Was it even worth the wolves' while eating him, I wonder? I can't imagine someone so lacking in substance would have made much of a meal for them."

That wasn't the final straw.

"Oh, scared to face me, are you?" he bellowed. "Coward!"

That
was the final straw.

I halted in my tracks and spun round.

"What did you just call me?" I snapped.

"You heard."

"Say it again. Say it to my face."

The crowd, which had been dispersing, rapidly un-dispersed. They sensed what was brewing.

Thor very slowly and very deliberately repeated the word.

"Coward."

Oh dear.

Ten

This was what always used to get me into trouble, back during the bad days, post-discharge, post-divorce. Someone only had to say the wrong thing, look at me in the wrong way... Hell, they didn't even have to do that. All it needed was me
thinking
they were saying the wrong thing or looking the wrong way, and I'd bristle.

Alcohol played a part, but by no means every time. I didn't have to be drunk to lose my rag, although, let's face it, drunkenness made a flare-up a lot likelier. Mostly, though, I was just looking for any excuse to start a scrap, and finding it. I was like a balloon in a roomful of porcupines. Only had to float a few inches in any direction and
pop!

Coward
was the one word that could be absolutely guaranteed to set me off. It, of all insults, really rankled. I had a short fuse as it was, but
coward
nipped it to the quick. No idea why, unless it was simply that I'd been a soldier, I'd fought for queen and country, I'd faced enemy fire, heard bullets whizzing past my ears, seen mortar rounds turn men to mince, and I'd never once flinched - so what the fuck would you know?

I'd believed it was all behind me now, that period of easy aggravation and overenthusiastic readiness to ruck. I'd believed I had that hair-trigger temper of mine under control.

Apparently not.

I flicked a glance at Odin. He gave the slightest of shrugs:
Please yourself. I'm not going to stop you. On your own head be it
.

"You shouldn't have said that, you big fat twat," I said to Thor. "Now I'm going to have to kick your arse."

"Come on then, dog's dinner," he replied. "Give it a try."

He beckoned to me.

I limped over to him. The crowd clustered around us.

It was insane. I was in no shape for this. I'd only just risen from my sickbed. An anorexic dwarf could have mopped the floor with me.

But that didn't matter. Consequences were irrelevant. Just as in the old days, the bad days, this was about me hurting someone else in order to make myself feel better. And if the other person managed to hurt me back, that was almost a plus.

I made a show of leaning heavily on the walking stick, looking like I was in dire need of it. The hope was that Thor would underestimate me, and the crowd would sympathise. A couple of them did give me a grin and a thumbs-up, but cash was already changing hands again and I could make a pretty good guess which way the odds were going.

"I shall be gentle," Thor said.

"Don't patronise me, you great nonce," I said. "You're the one who's started this. If you're not going to follow through in any meaningful way, why bother?"

"Very well. Then this won't take long."

"Ooh, you've really got me cacking in my Calvin Kleins," I said, and then I hit him.

Or rather, before I'd even completed the sentence, while he was under the impression we were still in the trash-talking phase of the fight, I hit him. Hoicked the walking stick up between his legs, and the
thwack!
it made brought a collective sharp intake of breath from the men all around.

Thor's eyes bulged, his cheeks too, and as his hands flew to his tender parts I followed up with a heel stamp to the inside of his ankle bone, then clouted him round the head with the stick.

He reeled, and from the crowd's reaction -
oohs
of surprise - I knew that it was the first time anything like this had happened. Someone had actually staggered Thor.

I myself was a mite disappointed. I'd been counting on him falling, but he stayed upright. Worse, once he'd got over the initial shock and the pain had started to fade, he looked across at me with eyes ablaze, and I realised all I'd managed to do was piss him off.

"This is supposed," he said, "to be hand-to-hand."

I shrugged. "Nobody told me. Not my fault if you didn't lay down the rules at the beginning."

"Were I to draw Mjolnir now, that would be the end of you." He patted his hammer. "But I, at least, will play fair. Besides, that stick is no real weapon at all."

"Oh yeah? It's done pretty well so far. You're just jealous because mine's longer than yours."

The audience liked that one, although Thor didn't. He growled and lumbered at me.

He wasn't a fast mover, but it was something to see so huge a man come barrelling towards you like a fucking freight train, hands outstretched, teeth bared, bent on pulverisation. I did have a nanosecond of
Now you've gone and done it, Gid
, but then adrenaline and combat training kicked in. I sidestepped, and at the same time flipped the walking stick over so that I was holding the end with the rubber ferrule. The crook then became a handy tripping device. I snared Thor's shin and down he went, sprawling full length and sliding along in the snow like a bobsledder without a luge. His momentum was such that people in the crowd had to skip smartly aside to avoid being bowling pins.

I shot the briefest of glances at Odin, to see what Thor's dad was making of my treatment of his son. The old man's expression gave nothing away - except was that a twinkle of amusement in his eye?

I pressed on with my attack. Thor was pushing himself up off the ground, but while he remained on all fours I still had the advantage. I darted in from behind, aiming the stick at his side, hoping to give him a healthy smack in the kidneys.

Somehow, with an unexpected turn of speed, he got a hand up and caught the stick. He yanked it from my grasp distressingly easily.

I knew then that I was buggered. The stick had been my only real edge. Without it, with a bum ankle and a bad wrist, I stood the proverbial cat's chance in Hell.

To make that absolutely clear to me, Thor got to his feet and casually, as though it were made of balsa wood, snapped the stick in his hands. He chucked the broken halves aside and ran at me again.

There were two ways I could play this. Stand my ground and meet him head on, or evade and try to find a new angle of attack, and maybe a new weapon. The risky option or the sensible one.

I went for the risky. It meant a greater chance of being clobbered, but also more opportunity for locating a vulnerable spot, some chink in Thor's armour.

I'd braced myself, but Christ, it was like getting slammed into by a rhino. I managed to grab his wrists, but the force of his charge, with all that bulk behind it, was tremendous, and I found myself being driven backwards. My feet scrabbled for traction on the snow but couldn't gain any. He shoved me along, I slithered helplessly, and his face was right in my face, his reddened features filling my vision like an irate moon, his breath gusting hot on my skin.

We must have travelled twenty yards like this, me a kind of human snow plough, him the engine pushing. I kept my body rigid so as not to crumple and fall, and that was murder on my traumatised ribs, not to mention my poor old shoulder, ankle and wrist.

What eventually stopped us was one of the trestle tables. We crashed into it, and it did what trestle tables did best; namely, collapse. We fell, Thor on top, amid a scatter of gun parts. Springs, screws, feed port plugs, barrels, trigger shoes, sight assemblies, all flew everywhere.

As we hit the ground I felt one of the ribs that had been trying so hard to mend break again. I might have cried out - I wasn't really paying attention to the sounds coming out of my mouth just then. Thor, straddling me, pinned me down. He lodged one forearm under my chin, putting pressure on my throat. With his free hand he started cuffing my head.

It wasn't pleasant. He was holding back, a little. The blows were loose-handed. But they rocked me nonetheless, reverberating like seismic waves through my skull. With each thump I could feel myself becoming more remote from the world, gradually tuning out, getting stupefied. Being choked didn't help matters.

I would not give in, though. Or at any rate, I would go down fighting. Some honour had to be maintained. The humiliation must not be total. Thor was bitch-slapping me, after all. That could not be allowed.

My hand groped around and found something in the snow. I prayed that it was a gun part, and it was. Better yet, it was a rifle stock. An object with a bit of heft to it.

I swung the stock up at Thor, ramming it butt plate first into his temple. He didn't see it coming, and was startled by the impact if nothing else. The weight of his arm pressing onto my larynx eased a fraction. It was all I needed. I thrust upwards with all my might, screaming at the pain this caused - definitely screaming, so loud it made my own ears ring. I threw Thor off, and then I was scrambling away on hands and knees, dazed, wheezing for air, desperately trying to get from horizontal to vertical even as the ground underfoot kept being treacherously diagonal. Meanwhile a part of me was thinking,
Hey, you know what, this is the first fair fistfight you've had in ages
, remembering all the scuffles I'd had previously with loudmouthed knobheads in pubs, slouch-shouldered gangsta wannabes in the street, flabby nightclub doormen, and even, ye gods, that skeletal crack addict in prison who'd fancied himself the big swinging dick of B Wing and needed taking down a peg. For once I was up against someone I wasn't stronger and fitter than, someone who knew how to handle himself and didn't mind fighting dirty. I was on the losing end, which was a novelty to say the least, and almost, in some strange way, gratifying. I'd met my match. I was outclassed. And about time too. Better late than never.