The Age Of Odin

gave just the tiniest of nods, and resumed looking straight ahead. There was no smile, and I hated myself for hoping for one. What was I to her? Just some mortal she was boffing, a convenient booty-call buddy, a piece of scruff she'd picked up on a whim and could just as easily drop. I fulfilled her needs in some ways, mostly in the jiggery-pokery department, but in other ways I was hopelessly lacking. She made me feel like the gamekeeper who was allowed to give the lady of the manor a right old seeing-to but would never be invited to the high-society balls.

But then, I supposed, that was what you got for shagging a goddess. Mortals and deities — it clearly wasn't a recipe for long-term relationship bliss.

Focus, Gid. Priorities.

The trolls went quiet. That, in a way, was worse than the howling.

Then the ground began to shake.

At first it was just a mild vibration, a tingle in the trouser legs. It developed gradually into a low, deep-seated throb, like someone was playing one of the bassiest, bottommost notes on a cathedral organ. We all looked around. Nobody could pinpoint which direction the sound was coming from.

It grew and grew. Soon the earth beneath us was actively juddering up and down, as though it was a trampoline some giant was leaping on. My vision blurred, and all I could think was that Fenrir's sound signature was nothing compared to this. The mega-tank had been big. We were about to be visited by something bigger still. A fuck sight bigger.

Abruptly the ground cracked open near the foot of Yggdrasil. Stones, soil and snow erupted, a geyser of solid matter, and showered down around us. We ducked and hunched. Someone screamed.

The jagged split in the earth broadened and deepened. Debris continued to burst out, propelled skyward from below. Rocks bubbled up like champagne fizz. Something, some massive machine, was tunnelling up from the depths, churning towards daylight, violently displacing vast amounts of mineral as it went. Yggdrasil trembled to its highest branches. Huge cracks and splintering were audible, the sound of the World Tree's roots being bored through and torn asunder.

The tumult reached an apex, and for once I was glad of my dud ear. I wasn't suffering as badly as anyone else. I was only hearing half as much of the cacophony. It was only half deafening me.

Up through the hole came the nose of the thing — like the end of an enormous steel pipe, blunt but with a rounded rim. It grew like the shoot of some vast plant, rising in a column that rivalled Yggdrasil itself for size. It was roughly cylindrical, its surface pitted with countless scrapes and gouges. Rows of serrated-edged wheels fringed its lower section, spinning and screaming like circular saws.

When more of the machine was out of the earth than in, it slowly tipped over under its own weight. As it slumped forwards, sinking into a furrow of its own making, a pair of panels slid open on either side near the nose, to reveal panes of thick, ultra-toughened glass. They were oval — sort of eye-shaped — and lit from within. I glimpsed the silhouettes of people in them: the vehicle's crew, moving with brisk, businesslike purpose.

The wheels stopped spinning. For a moment the now-horizontal machine appeared to be pondering, making up its mind. Then some of the sets of wheels started up again, the ones on its underside, and it swivelled, got its bearings, and tore across open ground towards the castle with a fantail of dirt and snow jetting up behind it a hundred feet in the air.

Between the castle and the snakelike, burrowing vehicle stood us and our guns.

Not much opposition at all, relatively speaking.

Fifty-Nine

'Jormungand,' said Thor.

'Jormun-who?'

'Jormungand. The Midgard Serpent.'

'Loki's tech version. What's the real Jormungand do? What's it capable of?'

'Killing. Killing with its breath alone.'

I looked back to the massive tubular behemoth barrelling towards us. Men in the front ranks had already opened fire on it, and their bullets were bouncing off like grains of rice. An RPG arced towards it, trailing smoke. The explosion left a star-shaped scorch mark but made no appreciable difference.

'Its breath…' I said, wonderingly.

And then Jormungand was within spitting distance of the outer defence perimeter, and it let rip.

The noise was indescribable. Beyond loud. Staggering. Gut-wrenching. An immense booming blare that sprang from its hollow front. The sound radiated outwards in a visible cone, a warped, white-tinged shimmer extending perhaps twenty metres ahead of the beast. And anyone touched…

…burst.

No other word for it.

Humans became patches of red fog. Clothing was shredded. Bones were pulverised. Even guns were shattered into components and fragments of components. One moment, a living, breathing person. Next, a thinning spray of popped organ and vaporised blood.

Jormungand was fitted with some kind of audio generator, massively amplified, and used soundwaves to drill a path for itself through the earth, pummelling rock to dust. Up above ground, those same soundwaves could be employed as a weapon. Nothing — organic or inorganic — could withstand a volley of such sheer volume. It was instantaneous destruction by decibel.

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