The Age Of Odin

in fervently. The Norsemen worshipped and adored us. To the Vikings we were superstars, and every prayer sent up to us, every feast held in our honour, every battle waged in our name, every saga and folksong sung about us, filled us with ever greater power.' He sighed, and the ravens let out odd little hisses that could have been sighs too. 'Men gave willingly of themselves to nourish us and keep us. That is no longer so. Tell me, how many in Midgard these days even remember the Norse pantheon, let alone venerate it?'

'Er, not that many. We still know the stories, I suppose, but venerate? Nobody's really doing any of that.'

'The stories help. They keep us alive. Whenever, wherever, someone commits a tale about us to the page or celebrates us verbally, it sustains us. It is an act of homage, whether it is done knowingly with that aim or not. It gives us credence. But the people of Midgard are largely secular now, or else in thrall to single, overarching gods who are all ideology and ideal.'

'Like the God. Capital-G God.'

'Yes.'

'Have you met Him? What's He like?'

'We don't all get together at god club and compare notes, Gid,' Odin said. 'Besides, I don't believe in Him, and if He does exist, I don't like Him. His type of gods aren't gods who echo how mortals behave. They're gods who are held up as example of perfection to be emulated. They're not gods of the people. They're remote and inaccessible, and they demand blind, unthinking obedience from their followers. They're dictators. We Aesir and Vanir, by contrast, are mirrors. Other gods rule. We reflect and magnify. We are you, only more so. We share your flaws and foibles. We are as humanlike as we are divine, and I think we're all the better for that.'

'Trouble is, that isn't the brand of god that's wanted in the twenty-first century.'

'Hasn't been wanted for a very long time,' Odin agreed, sombrely. 'We are, I don't deny, superannuated. A throwback. It is, some might say, a miracle that we're still here at all. But we are. And like it or not, we still have a role to play in the affairs of men. As long as we continue to exist, we can't help but do.'

'Any particular reason why you decided to decamp from, I don't know, Scandinavia or wherever, to the north of England? Was that part of the downsizing too? A forced relocation?'

'Ah, Gid, who's to say we have relocated?'

'Well, haven't you? Asgard Hall is in the north of England, right?'

'You're thinking literally. Like a mortal. Which isn't your fault, of course. How else could you think?'

'Where is it, then? Don't tell me Scotland. I haven't had my vaccinations!'

'Just the north,' said Odin. 'The frozen north. Everywhere has a north, and where that north is, where the snow tumbles and the winds blow icy cold and the nights are long and dark and the wolves cry, that's where you'll find us. That's our natural habitat. Anywhere north.'

I pondered this a while, and decided it made sense. Not a great deal of sense, but as much sense as anything else around here was making.

'All right,' I said finally. 'I think we've covered pretty much all I need to know. Just one last question. You've talked about a true enemy. One you're gearing up to fight with. That's what you're recruiting for, why you're offering blokes like me employment, the reason for the training and the troll catching and all of it…'

'Who,' said Odin, anticipating where I was headed.

'Yes. Who. Who is it? Who's the enemy?'

'Better than telling you,' he said, 'when we get back to Asgard I'll show you. Or rather, the Norns will.'

Twenty-Four

The Norns lived in a cottage on the opposite side of Yggdrasil from Asgard Hall. You couldn't see the castle from the cottage and vice versa. The World Tree blocked the view both ways. Odin and I headed straight there as soon as we got back on Asgardian soil, with a slight detour on the way so that I could visit Frigga for some running repairs. She changed my dressings, applied salves to my new injuries, dosed me up with some of that barely swallowable medicine of hers, and clucked and tutted a bit, telling her husband I was a man in clear need of rest. That wasn't on the cards, but I left feeling a great deal better than I had done. Right as rain and not as wet.

Cottage, as a matter of fact, was a generous description for the Norns' residence. Tumbledown shack would have been nearer the truth. Slates were missing from the roof, sometimes so many in one spot as to leave gaping great holes in its pelt of snow. Broken windowpanes had been patched up with rectangles of fibreboard. The brickwork was cracked and flaky and in serious need of repointing. Ivy and Virginia creeper had the building in their clutches and seemed to be doing their level best to pull it down into the ground. The whole place was sagging and lopsided from threshold to chimney.

A gate, leaning off a single hinge, opened onto an unruly, overgrown front garden. There was a well in the middle of the lawn, an olde-worlde wishing well type of affair with a small peaked roof on top and a rusty bucket hanging from the handle. Looked like no one had drawn water from it in ages. The path up to the front door looked like no one had walked up it in ages either. It meandered, a curving line of smooth, undisturbed snow to the porch.

Odin was not happy. His mouth was pursed. Nervousness was coming off him like a bad odour. Every step closer to the cottage, he seemed to have to drag himself that bit harder along.

'What's up?' I asked. 'Somewhere else you'd rather be?'

'Anywhere else,' he replied. 'I don't dread much, but I dread the Norns.'

'But you're Odin. The All-Father. The big kahuna. You're in charge of the show. What's the problem?'

'All Aesir and Vanir fear the Norns. They are the Pronouncers, the Three Fays of Destiny. They were old while we were still young. They determine the fates of all. Even gods must bow before them.'

Three women you really don't want to meet, Freya had said. And Odin wasn't that keen on paying them a house call. Even Huginn and Muninn had chosen to give the event a miss and had fluttered off on some birdie errand or other. So, understandably, I was beginning to wonder myself whether this was such a good idea.

'We could come back another time. Or maybe you could tell me yourself about the enemy. We don't have to go to all this trouble if you don't want to.'

'It's the best way,' said Odin, grimly, gravely. 'The Norns have skills that I lack. Their demonstrations of fact are more convincing than any mere words of mine would be.'

He reached out to tug at the knob of a bell-pull. A bell clanged deep, unfathomably deep inside the cottage.

'Oh well, nobody home,' I said before the ringing had even stopped. 'Let's go.'

'They're home. They're never not home. Hold fast.'

We were on the doorstep for nearly five minutes, and I was starting to hope that Odin was wrong and the Norns were, for once, out. Nipped down to Asda or the bingo or something.

Then: light footsteps, stiff bolts being shot, a key creakily turning, and the door was opened by…

…not a wrinkly white-haired crone like I'd been picturing, but a girl, barely a teenager, blossom-cheeked and pretty. Reminded me very much of Sally Stringer, who I'd lusted after through most of secondary school, tried countless times to chat up at parties and discos without getting anywhere, and had my boyish heart broken by when she started going out with Brett Hughes. It had been an especially painful kick in the teeth because Brett's parents were well-off, had a large house, gave him a generous allowance, and Sally — the Sally I thought she was, the Sally I'd built her up to be in my mind — wasn't the kind of girl to have her head turned by wealth. Although apparently, at the end of the day, she was.

The girl smiled at us, coldly welcoming.

'Odin,' she said.

'Urd,' said Odin, and he had lowered his head, as if he could scarcely bring himself to look at her. He was even, I thought, shaking.

But she was just a girl. Simply dressed. Slender. Not tall. Slip of a thing. No threat to anyone.

'And Gideon Coxall,' she said, turning to me.