The Age Of Odin

'You missed a treat, Cy,' said the guy opposite. Spud-faced Irishman with a nose flattened sideways and a big black monobrow. 'Yer man here had him down on the floor. Got him in the nads as well. The big fella was all a- whimpering and a-groaning. Honestly, it was a joy to behold, Thor getting his comeuppance. Even if it didn't last.'

'I take it nobody likes Thor then?' I said.

'Oh, I wouldn't go so far as to say nobody likes him,' the Irishman replied. 'He's a harsh taskmaster, that's all, and he enjoys throwing his weight around. You cross him, he lets you know about it. All in the name of maintaining discipline, to be sure, but he can carry it too far. Like with young Cyrus here. Who, all he did was suggest our unit had practised this outflanking manoeuvre one too many times and maybe we should try something else for a bit of variety, and Thor came down on him like a ton of bricks.'

'To be honest,' said Cy, 'I was itching to take a swing at him. He'd been riding me all week, calling me lazy and sloppy and slow. Finally I cracked… and Thor schooled me, like I knew he would. But not before I got in a few good licks.'

'Yeah, you looked pretty tasty from what I saw,' I said, miming jabs.

'Learned to box down the youth centre when I was a kid. Won a couple of junior amateur belts. Coach reckoned I had what it takes to turn pro. Would have too, if I'd been able to keep out of trouble back home.'

'Trouble?'

'Only 'cause the gangstas on our estate kept getting all up in my face, giving me shit, dissing my mum and that. Fucker that cut me up, he fancied himself this big ghetto drug-lord, had all the bling, the pimped car, everything, and he'd been after this girl who was my girl, Tanya, and Tanya wasn't having none of it, so he blamed me for that and went for me one morning. Lay in wait in the stairwell outside my mum's flat and hacked me with a machete as I came out to go to school. I wasn't carrying or nothing. Still, I learned him never to do that again.'

'You got the better of a guy with a machete, and you were unarmed?' Cy kept going up and up in my estimation.

'Yeah, well, funnily enough the fuzz didn't see it that way, did they? On account of all I got was a slashed- open face, whereas him — he doesn't look anything like he used to any more, and doesn't think straight or talk so good any more either.'

'Fair's fair,' I said. 'He asked for it. I'm Gid, by the way. Gid Coxall.'

'Yeah. Cy. Cy Fearon.'

Other introductions followed. The Irishman was Colm O'Donough, although everyone called him Paddy because, well, why wouldn't they? Next to him was a chunky chap with a handlebar moustache. He answered to Ian Kellaway, or 'Backdoor' Kellaway if you preferred, and his greeting was to hold up one hand, thumb and little finger extended, heavy metal devil's horns fashion.

''Backdoor'?' I said. 'Should I ask?'

'It's 'cause I'm crafty,' Kellaway replied. 'Sneaky. In all sorts of ways.'

On my right was a Yorkshireman, Tim Butterworth, whose nickname was Baz for no reason I could see other than it started with the same letter as his surname. On the other side of Cy sat a quiet-spoken mixed-race Asian who was Dennis Ling, although he'd been rechristened Chopsticks. Apparently because it was the only tune he could play on the piano, although I doubted that was all there was to it.

I got to know a little about them over the course of the meal, their back stories, their reasons for being at Asgard Hall. Cy had wound up in 2 Para but unfortunately for him it turned out that taking orders wasn't his strong suit, and after a couple of years he and the regiment agreed to go their separate ways. O'Donough had been in the Grenadier Guards, Kellaway the Light Infantry. Butterworth had been a Marine, and Ling was TA but had seen combat in the Middle East owing to our government's sheer desperation to boost front-line troop numbers. O'Donough and Kellaway had both been called up so many times they'd come down with battle fatigue and burnout.

Butterworth, meanwhile, had been officially diagnosed with PTSD after an incident in Iraq when he and his squad were ambushed and captured by insurgents, who'd then set about decapitating their prisoners one after another and videotaping the executions for the internet, or maybe simply so as to have something fun to watch of an evening when there was bugger all else on the telly. American Marines had come to the rescue, in time to save Butterworth but none of his comrades.

'The fundy-jundies forced me to watch as they carved my mates' heads off with a ceremonial sword as long as your arm,' he said. 'And I'd have been next if the septics hadn't turned up and blown them all to Allah. I have nightmares like you wouldn't believe.'

'But still you've signed up with the Valhalla Mission?' I said.

'Aye, well, it gets into your blood, doesn't it?' Miserable yet philosophical. 'I think I speak for all of us when I say that. The military is like women. Can't live with it, can't live without it.'

I recharged everyone's tankards from the jug in the middle of the table. Beer was apparently not on the menu and we were drinking, no word of a lie, mead. The first gulp of which had made me gag — sickly-sweet and potent at the same time, like Golden Syrup laced with meths. After a couple more swallows, however, I'd got used to it, and now I even quite liked it. Liked the buzz I was getting from it, anyway.

'Listen,' I said, 'not being funny, but can any of you tell me what exactly is going on here? What's this about? The training, everything. What's it all for? I've been puzzling it over and not got anywhere near an answer.'

'Yeah, well, that's the phone-a-friend question, innit?' said Cy.

'You mean you don't know? You don't even know why you're running around in the snow doing drill and learning to ski and the rest?'

'Odin's told us we'll find out soon enough. I mean, some of us have a vague idea, but mostly we're taking it on faith.'

'Faith? Isn't that just a bit, well, wishy-washy?'

'I'm getting paid,' said O'Donough. 'The cheques are piling up, and I'm not complaining about that and I'm certainly not going to start rocking the boat. As long as the money keeps rolling in, I'm onside with the big man Odin. That's yer faith right there.'

'But who are those people?' I said, nodding towards the top table.

'The Aesir, and some of their elder cousins from Vanaheim, the Vanir, who are the race of gods who came before the Aesir,' said Cy. 'Which of them don't you know? Those three to the right, yeah? The younger ones? Those are Odin's other sons, Tyr, Vidar and — what's the last one called again, Baz?'

'Vali,' said Butterworth. 'They're all half-brothers. Same dad, different mothers. Odin used to put it about a bit. A lot, actually. And the pretty golden-haired lass over on the other side, that's Sif, AKA Mrs Thor. She's wasted on him. Far too nice to be saddled with a bonehead like that. And next to her, the boyish one with the short choppy hair who looks a bit like the pop singer, Bjork. That's Skadi. She's a Vanir. Freya's auntie, believe it or not. You'd think they were more like sisters, to look at them, nobbut a year or two apart, but that's the thing with gods, they don't age the way we do. Skadi's into skiing. She's a right little speed demon on the snow. And then — '

'This is all very interesting,' I said, 'but it's not what I was getting at. You're telling me who they say they are. Who are they really? Any idea?'

Blank looks.

'The Norse gods,' Ling said eventually, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. 'Who else? The great pantheon from the Sagas. I studied them at school, in Comparative Religion.'

'Chopsticks got privately educated,' Cy confided.

'Ohh,' I said. 'Eton?'

'I have, thank you, full up now,' Ling said. 'Arf, arf. No, my teacher made us read much of the Prose Edda and the Poetic Edda, so I know what I'm talking about here. All the tales about the gods and the Nine Worlds and how creation came to be and the Aesir's struggles and rivalries and vanities, and… those are them,' he said, pointing to Odin and his associates. 'They are. I'm convinced of it. They can only be.'

I looked at him. Was he serious? He was serious.

'Take Tyr, for instance,' Ling continued. 'See he's missing a hand? Lost it to a wolf.'

I rubbed my bandaged wrist. I had some idea how that might feel.

'Not just any wolf, either. The wolf. Big bad Fenrir. And Vali next to him? Him and