James Lovegrove - The Age Of Odin (20 page)

I ran, slip-slithering on the scree and crusty snow, again and again losing my balance and only just managing to stay upright, until we made it to the bottom, Thor and I, in time to meet Freya scrambling down from the other side. She paused to frown at me - what was I, a mortal, doing there, when this was god business? - while Thor didn't pause at all. He pounced on the nearest troll, straddling his back like a mahout on an elephant, and whanged Mjolnir repeatedly against his skull as though hammering an anvil. Freya tackled another of them, coming at him sidelong and wrapping both arms around his meaty neck. Grimacing, she tightened her grip, and the troll started to choke and splutter.

Me, I went for the third of the creatures with scarcely a thought. He was curled up on his side in the foetal position like some giant baby, trembling with pain and distress. I set about booting him in the head, hard as I knew how. It was like stamping on a huge lump of wax, solid but yielding. When my leg began to ache I switched to the hollow butt of the Minimi, with which I pounded the troll until a hand seized my arm, gently but firmly.

"It is done, Gid," said Thor. "The creature is insensible."

And lo and behold, he was right. The darkness cleared from my vision, and I saw that my troll was out cold, and looking in a pretty sorry shape too. What with the bullet hits and my blows, his head was all swollen and lumpy, raw as a tenderised cut of beef. Thor's troll was in no better condition, while Freya's had been throttled into unconsciousness. The breath wheezed threadily in and out of his lungs.

"Now I see why my father was so insistent that we retrieve you," Thor said to me. "I can understand Freya and myself being willing to take on a troll single-handed, but a mortal? One not gifted with the strength and endurance of gods? Truly that is the mark of warrior greatness."

"Or just plain foolhardiness," Freya commented. "Even when half subdued, that troll could still have killed you, Gid. All it would have taken was a heedless swipe of his arm, and every bone in your body would have been shattered."

"I'm touched by the concern," I said.

"I'm not concerned," Freya shot back. "Other than that I would have to face Odin's wrath were I to fail to bring you back to Asgard alive."

"All right then, but you must admit you're ever so slightly impressed by what I just did."

"So many people mistake madness for bravery."

"Never known the difference myself."

"And that," said Freya, "is why, whatever Thor may say, you are no warrior. You do not know fear. The true warrior understands that his greatest foe is his own terror of battle. It never pales and must be conquered again and again, and it keeps things in perspective. Whereas you, Gid, have either forgotten what fear is or never knew it in the first instance. That makes you reckless - a danger to yourself and, worse, to others - and
that
is why I am not happy to fight alongside you. And now" - she spun on her heel - "where are those ravens? Huginn! Muninn! Can you hear me? We have the trolls. Odin must send
Sleipnir
now, before they awaken."

Thor clapped me on the back, virtually knocking me off my feet. "Pay no attention to my elder cousin, friend Gid. Her asperity cloaks her true feelings."

"Which are?"

"Who can say? I'm sure she has some. Mine is the opinion that counts in these matters, and you can fight alongside me any time."

Flattered? I sort of was. I was definitely supposed to be.

Mainly, though, I was thinking, and not for the first time in my life, how fucking maddening women could be. Even goddesses.

No, especially goddesses.

Twenty-Three

"
Sleipnir
?"

"If I told you 'eight-legged horse that can fly,'" said Paddy, "what would you say?"

"A day ago I'd have said you might want to think about laying off the Guinness for a bit. Now, though..."

Paddy chuckled. Cy too. Tea had been made, and we were all sitting around waiting for the promised transport to arrive.

"Really?" I said. "An eight-legged horse? With wings? This I've got to see. Although" - having thought about it further - "it's going to have to be an enormous fucking horse to fit three trolls on its back. Or even one. You're pulling my plonker, aren't you?"

"Odin did have a horse called Sleipnir, back in the day," Paddy said. "Loki, his blood brother, was its mother."

"Hang on, did you say mother?"

"Bragi entertained us with a lovely long poem about it once. I think I can remember the basic gist of it. What happened was, this man, a stonemason, turned up offering to build a wall around Asgard, and the price he demanded was only the sun and the moon! And not just those, either, but also your lady over there, Freya. The Aesir wouldn't agree to his terms 'til Loki suggested they set some impossible conditions. The stonemason had to build the wall single-handed and must do it within the space of one winter. If he defaulted, they'd have the wall for free. Bear in mind, this was going to be a vast fortification all the way around Asgard, so the Aesir never thought he'd have it done in time. The stonemason said, 'Fine,' and rolled up his sleeves and set to work. He was a right big strapping fella, with a huge black carthorse to help him, and he toiled hard as can be all through the winter, and it began to look as if he might just meet the deadline after all."

"Oh, this is terrific," I said, settling back against a rock, cradling my steaming brew. "Paddy does
Jackanory
. Carry on."

"So the Aesir were naturally a mite aggrieved," Paddy continued. He loved to spin a good yarn. "Thanks to Loki they were on course to lose the sun, the moon, and a very beautiful Vanir goddess to boot. So they bashed him around a bit, as you do, and told him to fix things. Now, in case you don't know about Loki, here's the salient point. He's a shifty little devil. And that's no mere figure of speech. He can change his shape to become anything he likes. And what he did was he transformed himself into a mare, a very pretty one with a nice mane and fine fetlocks and a long swishy tail and whatever else it is a lady horse has that makes her attractive to the men horses, and he went off prancing up and down in front of the stonemason's carthorse, which was a stallion in the full prime of life, no gelding, if you catch my drift."

"I very much do."

"And the carthorse went tearing off after Loki in his mare form, and the stonemason was obliged to down tools and give chase, because the horse had been doing a great deal of the work for him, hauling boulders and the like, which he couldn't do himself. He ran after them for a day and a night, and finally caught up with them the following afternoon. He dragged the carthorse back to Asgard but he was too knackered to do anything more on the wall that day, and would you believe it, spring arrived the very next morning, and basically he'd blown his deadline and forfeited his fee."

"Makes a change," I said, "a builder who overcharges not getting paid."

"Ah, but he wasn't just any builder. He was actually a frost giant in disguise, and when he saw that the Aesir had pulled a fast one on him he flew into a rage. He demolished the wall, then turned his attention on Asgard itself. Luckily Thor was on hand to clobber him with Mjolnir, and that was that."

"Or was it?"

"You've spotted that there's an epilogue coming."

"The carthorse managed to catch up with the mare before the stonemason reached them, and got busy. They did the deed, and Sleipnir was the result."

"Kee-rect," said Cy. "Give the man a medal."

"No thanks. Already got some, and I'm not quite sure what the point of them is."

"So, indeed," said Paddy, "Loki comes wandering back to Asgard a few weeks later, looking somewhat red-faced, and he's leading a colt on a rein. A colt with eight legs that seems to float in the air rather than walk - seems to glide like a bird, in actual fact. And he presents it as a gift to his blood brother Odin, and that's what Odin decides to call it: Sleipnir, which means Glider."

"Priceless," I said. "Loki's not only a transsexual but a transsexual in a different species,
and
he manages to get himself knocked up. There's the plot of the weirdest porn film ever made, right there." My next question seemed the obvious one to ask. "So where is he anyway? I'd like to meet him. 'How was it getting rogered by a carthorse? Still sore?'"

"Loki isn't at Asgard any more," Paddy said. "Something happened."

"Got himself kicked out," said Cy.

"How?"

"He was banished for the most heinous of crimes," a voice rumbled in my ear. I hadn't realised that Thor had sidled up to us during Paddy's tale and been eavesdropping. His expression was cold, his face as dark as, well, a thundercloud. "Loki destroyed the one, true, bright shining thing in all of Asgard. His trickery, his treachery, brought tragedy to our family, and for what he did my father consigned him to a dismal cave deep in the earth, where he was stretched across three sharp ledges, bound fast with iron fetters, and a serpent was hung above him, its fangs dripping venom into his eyes for all eternity. And no less a punishment did he deserve."

Thor's voice trembled with pure hatred. The anger radiating off him was almost a physical force.

"But what?" I said. "What did he actually do?"

Before Thor could answer, a low resonant thrumming started up from the north - a sound you felt as much as heard. The vibration seemed to bypass your ears and go straight to the bones of your skull. I knew straight away it was generated by a helicopter, but there was a particular shape to the sound, a pattern to the
whupping
and whirring, that was more than a little familiar. It had two layers, wavelengths doubling and overlapping, and it faded in and out of hearing as the chopper's position altered in relation to the acoustics of the landscape.

I stood - we all stood - as the aircraft finally hoved into view at the valley's far end, and glory be, it was exactly as I thought. A Chinook. A good old Wokka. Hauling itself through the sky, skimming just below the cloud cover, with that strange combination of majesty and ungainliness that only a Chinook had, like a whale in flight. Twin rotors savaging the air, running lights aglow in the gloomy greyness, exhaust hissing like a billion snakes - an aircraft I'd ridden in more than a few times and always been in awe of but never learned to love.

As it came close I saw that it had the name
Sleipnir
painted on the fuselage, just to the rear of the cockpit windscreen, along with a silhouette of a horse with four pairs of legs. I also saw by the lack of long-range fuel tanks on the sides that it was one of the older models, an HC2. Decommissioned, perhaps, once the HC3s came along in the mid-nineties, or else the MoD couldn't be arsed to spring for an overhaul and modifications and sold it off to the highest bidder, which in this instance was Odin Borrson.

The Wokka did a flyby, then put its nose down and pivoted smartly about on its front axis to come roaring back. The valley was just wide enough and flat-bottomed enough for the pilot to pull off a landing. Precision manoeuvring, clearance minimal, not a touchdown anyone would want to attempt too often, but he managed it, while we all crouched and turned away from the corrosive blast of dust and gravel the chopper's downwash inflicted on us.

Down went the cargo ramp and its extensions, revealing the grey interior of the cargo bay and the swathe of multicoloured cables that rimmed the doorway. At the same time up popped the starboard entry door and out stepped none other than Odin himself. His ravens flew to him the moment the Wokka's rotor blades fell still. With one balancing on each shoulder he went to inspect the trolls, then began supervising their loading onto the helicopter. It took fifteen men to lift each troll and cart him into the cargo bay. We squashed them in there one after another like sardines, making sure they were tied up tightly with the ropes Odin had brought. Then, soon,
Sleipnir
was taking off, even less balletic in the air for having a couple of tons of troll stuffed in its belly. It chuntered off over the horizon, lost from sight a full minute before it was lost from hearing.

Odin stayed behind. "The pilots know the way home without me," he said, "and the mood has taken me to accompany you on the rest of your journey."

For a time we all ambled along together in a straggling column, Odin using a forked staff as a walking aid, like some beardy old rambler. He chatted with Thor and Freya, and with the troops, but I could sense him working his way towards me. Every time I glanced round, he'd advanced a little further up the line, closer to where I was.

Finally he reached me.

"Gid. A word," he said, drawing me aside.

"Ooh, teacher's pet," said Cy, with a leer.

I gave him my middle finger.

Odin held me back until everyone else had gone past, and then we resumed walking, the two of us a good twenty paces to the rear of the others.

"Reports are," he said, "you slew a jotun in single combat. And you helped signally with the capture of the trolls."

"What can I say? I'm an all-round champ."

"You do see now, don't you, that your doubts were unfounded?"

I chose my words carefully. "Let's say I'm a whole lot more open-minded than I used to be."

"But questions remain."