The Age Of Odin

sometimes three. Somebody would come in from head-on, get obliterated, but his frontal assault meant somebody else could slip in from behind and plonk a grenade into place while the JOTUN or SURT was otherwise engaged. I saw Backdoor Kellaway do exactly that, with all the stealth and dexterity that his nickname implied. Then, when each bad guy was down, we were able to polish him off with a couple more well-placed grenades, dropped just by the faceplate. If the explosion itself didn't turn the operator's brains to soup, the percussion wave did. We swarmed around the enemy like hornets, and they swatted us, but we still managed to sting them. Fatally.

At last there was just a lone JOTUN left, and Thor went for it as though it was one of the real frost giants he despised so much. He clobbered it left, right and centre, so violently and enthusiastically that its operator was unable to draw a bead on him. Every time he pointed an arm at Thor, it was bashed aside by Mjolnir. Eventually Thor managed to knock loose both of the feeder tubes that supplied the freeze beam weapons. Detached, they dangled like limp dicks, gushing liquid nitrogen or some such all over the ground in a hissing glassy slick. The suit was now pretty much defenceless, and the operator knew he was fucked five ways to Sunday. His face was a mask of panic. He raised the suit's arms in surrender, but Thor wasn't having a bar of it.

'Clemency? Compassion?' he roared. 'Mortal, you are sadly deluded. I am Thor, god of thunder, and I bear Mjolnir, whose name means lightning. A storm knows no mercy. It flattens all with its fury, and so do I.'

He made short work of the JOTUN after that. Ultimately it was sprawled on the ground and he was hammering at it like a blacksmith working at his anvil. Every gong-like blow wrecked the power armour a little further. Parts came off. Fragments flew like shrapnel. The bloke inside was long dead before Thor finished trashing the thing. Organs liquefied by the impacts, I imagined. Bones reduced to powder.

All that the rest of us could do was stand around and wait for Thor to be done. He was drenched with sweat by the end of it. Steam plumed from his head. He straightened up, surveyed the mess he had made of the JOTUN, holstered Mjolnir, planted his fists on his hips, and heaved a deep and satisfied sigh.

'Remind me not to piss him off,' I murmured to Cy.

'You already did once, remember?'

'Oh yeah. Well, remind me not to do it again.'

'I won't if you won't.'

'Roger that.'

Victory secured, Odin arrived on the scene, accompanied by Freya and Tyr. It was near dark, the sun just a red ghost on the horizon. The ruler of the Aesir took stock, casting his eye over the nine ruined suits of power armour and the thirty or so of his troops who'd lost their lives defeating them.

I piped up, 'Don't suppose that was it, eh? Loki's taken his best shot and lost?'

Sombrely Odin shook his head. 'Far from it, Gid. My blood brother does nothing by halves. If I know him, and I do, this was merely an exploratory sortie, to give us a foretaste of the full mayhem and misery that is his to unleash. There will be more of this kind of thing. More and worse.'

Freya came over. She'd just been to examine Skadi's remains.

'My aunt still lives, All-Father,' she announced, much to my surprise but not, it seemed, the gods'. 'Gravely wounded, but I can detect the divine spark still fluttering within her. We should get her to Frigga as soon as possible. Summon Sleipnir.'

'It is already done,' Odin said. 'Huginn and Muninn have conveyed word to the pilots. Skadi will be in receipt of my wife's ministrations within the hour.'

Which was the best news I'd had all evening. Skadi had taken a shot meant for me, and she was going to survive. I could kiss my guilt about that goodbye.

'You have done well today,' Odin told us all. 'You have fought with uncommon courage, cunning and valour. Some of our comrades have fallen. It was inevitable. But we will remember them. Bragi will celebrate them in verse. They will live on in our hearts. As for these others…' he said, indicating the enemy.

'They, All-Father, belong to me,' hissed a voice.

The most horrible voice I had ever heard.

And its owner was no oil painting either.

Thirty-Three

'Hel,' intoned Odin, and a definite shudder ran through him as he said it.

Not that I blamed him. Because the woman now stalking towards us across the battlefield was truly repellent. I'd seen some munters in my time, but this one was in a league of munterdom all her own. Although there was probably more to Odin's horror of her than just her looks.

She was gaunt, with a prominent cliff of a forehead, eyebrows so sparse they might as well have not been there, and lips so dark red they were all but black. Her face looked like she'd never known anything but nightmares all her life and had learned to love it. Haggard and forlorn, she seemed to embody utter despair, and this was echoed in her clothing, from the tattered black scarf that wreathed her head to the rough strips of black gauze that covered some but nowhere near enough of her emaciated torso.

Top half, bad. Bottom half, downright vile.

Because her legs weren't just bony like the rest of her, they were distended and misshapen. The flesh didn't hang on them right. It bulged and sagged and slid about as she walked, like raw dough that had been injected into a pair of sheer stockings. The skin on them was grey and marbled with blue veins. I'd seen legs like that before. On a decomposing corpse. But this was a living creature, wasn't it? How could she have a corpse's legs?

And then I thought, Why the fuck not? I was in a place where ravens could be used for long-range reconnaissance and communication, where there were such things as frost giants and trolls, and where somebody was gifted with the ability to hear stuff happening miles away. A part-living, part-dead woman? Big deal. Ho-hum.

Hel sashayed up to Odin, pleased with the effect her appearance had on everyone present. Men recoiled from her as she passed. Freya, even Thor, stepped back so as not to be within reaching distance of her. The smell she trailed in her wake was both sweet and foul. Rotting lilies. The fruity stench of shit. Soil and bitter almonds. The twilight air was cold, but the air around Hel was even colder.

It took everything Odin had just to stand his ground. But he waited for Hel to come, and barely flinched as she halted in front of him, close enough to place a hand on his cheek if she wanted. I knew somehow, without having to be told, that to touch or be touched by Hel was fatal. God or not, fatal.

'Brother of my father,' she said.

'Daughter of my one-time brother,' he replied.

'But not quite my uncle.'

'Nor quite my niece.'

'Hel's dad is Loki,' Chopsticks whispered in my ear.

'I'd just twigged,' I said.

'No fond words of greeting, Odin? No kiss for beautiful Hel?'

Beautiful? Had this bint checked in a mirror lately?

'You know I would be a fool even to shake your hand. And kiss?' Odin's mouth downturned. 'I would rather kiss a dead dog's pizzle.'

This wasn't bravado. From the way he spat out the words, I realised that what I'd taken for fear was actually something else: disgust. Odin wasn't scared of Hel. He simply detested her. With a passion.

'Yet one day you will welcome me,' Hel said. 'One day I will open my arms to you and you will sink into my embrace.'

'I hope, for my sake, that that day is a long time hence, and that when it happens, I will be a plague upon you for all eternity. My groans of sorrow and sighs of regret will torment your ears and allow you not one moment's peace.'

She looked mock-hurt. 'How you spurn me, All-Father. Never forget, I can bring you rest. I can bring peace to that troubled heart of yours. Am I not famed as the purveyor of blessed oblivion, she who offers surcease to all woes?'

'I have no desire to lose myself in the misty greyness of your realm, Hel,' said Odin. 'Life, for all its pains and