James Lovegrove - The Age Of Odin (26 page)

"It isn't him," Odin said.

"So - Keener. Christ. Shit. You really... Mrs Keener. You want to eliminate the President of the United States. The most powerful human being on the planet. Well, good luck with that."

"Don't you want to know why she's our foe?"

"No, Odin, I do not. What I want is not to know anything about any of this, not any more. Fuck, you nearly had me. I was thinking, 'Join the Norse gods on some military campaign? That could be cool.' But all you're after is assassinating President Keener. Bit tawdry, isn't it? And when's this going to happen? Her state visit, I suppose. You're going to bundle in with all your troops while she's on a tour of the Houses of Parliament or Buckingham Palace or wherever, take out her secret service detail, then take
her
out - and all because she's a warmonger, right? Forgive me, but that's not exactly very godly of you, is it? Or is it? Is that what gods do when they're at a loose end? Get in there amongst the mortals and create havoc? Throw their divine weight around, because they can?"

"Gid, you're coming at this from entirely the wrong angle," Odin said.

"Mortal," said Urd dismissively. Like someone else might have said
simpleton
or
moron
.

"Only seeing the superficial details," Verdande agreed.

"The broader picture eludes him," said Skuld.

I blanked them. Smug fucking bitches. "If you hate her so much," I said to Odin, "by all means feel free to. She's hardly my favourite politician, although her being a hot babe does take the edge off her for me. But what we Midgarders do in these situations is we try to vote the person out of office if we don't like them, or we go out on the streets and protest against them, or else we ignore them because if you do that long enough, eventually they go away. We don't just kill them. All right, sometimes we do. But not often, and only the real scumbags, the Ceausescus, the Saddams, the tyrants, the ones who wouldn't know a free and fair election if it came up and bit them on the ballot box. And also - America. Come on. You don't launch an attack on the leader of fucking
America
. That's inviting a complete deluge of shit to come down on your heads. Gods or not, the USA is one nation whose bad books you truly do not want to get into."

I paused for breath.

"Finished?" Odin said.

"Only getting started, mate."

"I ask because you haven't let me put forward my side of things."

"You haven't got a side to put forward. At least, not one I'm willing to hear."

"Please just give me a minute to explain."

"Explain what? That you're trying to get Britain into deep shit with the States? Because, mark my words, you manage to bump off Mrs Keener and this country's going to take the blame. Clasen'll tell the Yanks we had nothing to do with it, but with his track record of complaining about her they won't believe a word, and the fucking cruise missiles will be raining down before you can even sneeze. And that's if we're lucky. I wouldn't put it past them to drop daisy cutters or even go nuclear. They'd be that narked."

"What if I told you Mrs Keener is the one who wants to destroy
us
, not the other way round?"

"That's pretty far-fetched. How's she even know you exist? There's only one god as far as she's concerned, the big daddy of them all, Jehovah. You lot are a pagan aberration. You're not real to her. That'd be like saying she wants to get rid of unicorns. Or dinosaurs, which she doesn't believe in either." It said so in her book. Dinosaurs were a lie invented by evolutionary scientists to prove that life on earth had developed over millions of years when, as any sensible Creationist knew, the universe had been put together by God in just under a week. Must have come in kit form. Probably from Ikea.

"Unless," I went on slowly, "she does know you exist and wants to wipe you out precisely because you're non-Christian. Fuck. Is that it? Her game's heathen god genocide? The Man Upstairs has told her to do that for Him?"

Odin shook his grey head. "Would that it were that simple."

"But it doesn't bother her too much, attacking other countries. So why not pantheons as well? Your lot, the Greek ones, the Egyptian ones - I'm assuming they're all still around too."

"Not to my knowledge. As I told you before, I don't consort with deities from other faiths. I have no evidence to believe they were ever out there. Perhaps we are all isolated from one another in such a way that we can never meet. Perhaps, by cosmic design, every pantheon is an island, known only to itself and its worshippers. Every monotheist god too. This is not germane, anyway. Mrs Keener is not aggrieved with us on religious grounds, you have my assurance on that. Her hatred stems from a much closer, more personal source."

"He still hasn't fathomed it," Urd hissed to her sisters, with a nod at me.

"But he knows enough to make the connection," said Verdande.

"He is just about to," said Skuld. "It is due."

"Mrs Keener is holding a grudge against the Norse gods," I said. I was beginning to grasp the shape of something - a realisation that was immense and profound. The clues were all there. Principally I was remembering the tale Paddy had told while we were waiting for
Sleipnir
to arrive, and what Thor had said afterwards. Somehow I knew that was where the answer lay.

President Keener. Mrs Keener. Lois Keener.

Ping
. Lightbulb popping on.

Oh no. No fucking way.

It couldn't be that straightforward, could it? That completely stupidly glaringly obvious?

I was about to speak again. Then there came an urgent rapping at the front door.

Twenty-Nine

Urd went to answer it. I heard a woman's voice asking for Odin. We all went out into the hallway to see who it was. Skadi, the little skier goddess. She was on the porch, with her skis still on and her face flushed. She'd just hurried here from somewhere,
langlauf
ing straight up the Norns' garden path, ploughing ski tracks over Odin's and my footprints.

"Odin," she blurted out. "All-Father. I bear news from Heimdall. He has heard the distant advance of enemy troops. Artillery, he thinks, though he cannot identify of what kind. They approach from due west. Come quickly. We must gather our forces. Asgard is under threat."

Instead of answering, Odin merely closed his eye. I thought he was trying to pretend he hadn't heard what Skadi had said, or else was giving in to a moment of despair. Then he murmured, "Huginn, Muninn," and I realised he was communing with his ravens.

"Fly high, my faraway eyes," he said. "Higher, higher still. Soar to the apex of the heavens, where all stands revealed. Show me what you see."

He stood there for several minutes, turning his head this way and that as if scanning horizons, although his eye remained shut fast. His body swayed slightly, buffeted by winds none of the rest of us could feel. Then, at last, the eye snapped open.

"Nothing," he said.

"You mean Heimdall's wrong?" I said.

"No, no. If Heimdall has heard something, then Heimdall has heard something. And on Asgard's western boundary lies dim grey Niflheim, the world of mists. Of all the Nine Worlds, the only one I cannot see into, the only one opaque to my gaze. Which, naturally, makes it an ideal location from which to mount an incursion."

"Who's attacking? Who lives in Niflheim?"

"It is the realm of Hel, loathesome goddess of the dead. But, though she and I are hardly allies, to launch an assault like this is not her way."

"So then it's
her
."

"Her forces, yes, I believe so."

"Or rather - his."

"His," Odin agreed.

"Your blood brother. The one you banished. The one who can change his shape to become anything he likes."

"That one. I will not say his name. I cannot bring myself to."

"Loki," I said.

Loki. Lois Keener. The first syllable of each of her names, like some awful crossword clue. Loki, waving his true identity under everyone's noses, knowing that nobody would catch on except those he wanted to.

"But," I said, "isn't he chained in a cave having snake venom dripped into his eyes?"

"No punishment is everlasting, nor any prison impossible to break out of. Not to a god, and especially not to one as guileful and elusive as him. He has been free for several years. He returned to Asgard immediately after his escape, but we gave him very short shrift and sent him packing. Thereafter he went to Midgard, where he has been ever since, at large, working his wiles and gaining himself a substantial earthly power base."

"Odin..." said Skadi impatiently.

"And now he's back, he's mad, and he's out for revenge," I said.

"Indeed," said Odin.

"In other words, he's a divine Steven Seagal. In drag."

"All-Father, I beg you," said Skadi. "The men are being rallied, but we need your leadership."

"Yes, yes, Skadi. I'm coming." Odin turned back to me. "So now you know what we're up against, Gid. Our enemy has marshalled the might of the most powerful nation on earth. He has their armies and technology at his disposal. I believe he has been instrumental in devising new armaments designed specifically to combat us. You've seen the documentary. Seen how he has been pumping money into weapons research and development, to the detriment of the US economy as a whole. Seen how he has been sating his generals' lust for conflict in order to curry their favour and earn himself an unlimited say in their affairs. He has America's military-industrial complex eating out of his hand, and they've responded by innovating and manufacturing as never before, with his full connivance. Now is the time to throw in your lot with us and take up arms against the footsoldiers of the god of lies and deceit, if such is your wish."

"Lies and deceit. You really don't like the bloke, do you?"

"Nor he me," said Odin. "And his reasons for hating me are probably no less valid than mine are for hating him. Our feelings of antipathy are truly matched and mutual. His role was to commit the crime, mine to dictate the penalty, and he has resented me for it ever after. And we are seeing the first stone cast. The first battle of our war, long brewing. The first, I suspect, of many. Again, Gid - are you with us?"

"We're taking on the United States army." I was stalling for time, trying to work out which way I was going to jump on this one. "They have the latest weaponry, and by the sound of it some advanced, cutting-edge stuff as well. We're just a small bunch of has-been soldiers with conventional arms."

"I have done my best, given my limited means. And you have gods beside you, don't forget. The cream of Asgard and Vanaheim, famed for their prowess on the battlefield."

"But we're still going to be outgunned, outnumbered, out-everythinged."

"So?"

"Hopeless odds."

"So?"

"Its suicide."

Skadi was hopping from foot to foot, waving one of her ski sticks agitatedly.

"That's as may be," said Odin. "But the stakes are much higher than mere lives. Our enemy's wrath is such that, unchecked, it may shatter the Nine Worlds. Do you understand what I am saying? Thanks to him, all is imperilled. Not just Asgard and the Aesir. All. Including Midgard. Including your loved ones."

"My - ?"

"There's no time to go into the full story now. But you have to believe me, Gid. If my erstwhile blood brother is not stopped, it could spell universal doom."

"Oh," I said.

Cody.

"Well," I said.

My little boy.

"If it's universal doom that we've got to watch out for..." I said, and said no more.

Endless possibility
, the Norns had told me.
Infinite opportunity
.

I'd made my choice.

And the black rage inside me wasn't at all displeased.

Thirty

We were positioned on high ground, overlooking a plain. About a hundred of us mortal troops, half the total of Odin's forces, plus a handful of Aesir and Vanir. Brought out in two batches aboard
Sleipnir
and now parcelled out along the curving ridge of a bluff, some of us still catching our breath from tabbing hard from the drop point. I was with Cy, Paddy, Chopsticks, Baz and Backdoor. I'd fallen in with the five of them en route, bumping shoulders with them in the Wokka's cargo bay. There was us together on the bluff and a handful of others, all under the command of Thor. This, I could tell, was now my squad. The team I belonged to. These things had a way of just clicking, of their own accord.

Facing us was one of the intersections between the Nine Worlds, the corridors where one world met and overlapped with another. Down below our positions there was nothing except a snowfield stretching westward, its far edge lost in a curtain of fog. The fog hung in an almost perfect straight line, as though held back by something you couldn't see, contained by a wall of glass. It hazed the setting sun, paling the scarlet disc to pink. It was utterly still. Not a breath of wind, not a hint of turbulence in its white depths.