James Lovegrove - The Age Of Odin (46 page)

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.

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."