The Age Of Odin

can.'

'Can we? We've taken such dreadful losses.'

'Still here, though, aren't we? Still standing.'

'I'm just saying I wouldn't blame you if you wanted to quit.'

'I wouldn't forgive myself if I did.'

'Asgard isn't your world.'

'It isn't yours either, lady from Vanaheim.'

'True, but I have a blood connection to it. The Aesir are family.'

'And I feel like I have a connection to it too. I liked Odin a lot. I even liked Thor, the great big buffoon. And…'

I almost said something about her. About liking her. More than liking. Her being the strongest of my connections to Asgard. But that might have spooked her. Worse, she might have just laughed scornfully, and I simply didn't want to take that chance. I wasn't scared of much but I was scared of Freya rejecting me. Better that she and I have this exclusively sexual thing going, keep it at that level. I could gamble on making it more than that, but I might well wind up broke if I did.

'And,' I said, 'I'm a bloke who finishes what he sets out to do. I don't leave a job half done. Especially this sort of job. It's just who I am, Freya. I've come to realise that. I'm not cut out for much except combat. It's my thing, what I'm built for. Which is pretty sad, when you come to think of it — that I'm not really a well-rounded person, that I'll never be content as a civilian, that fighting is all I have. But as Detective Harry Callahan famously once said, 'A man's gotta know his limitations,' and I now know mine.

'For a while, after I got dropped from the army, something was missing. Not the piece of my head that I left in Afghanistan. Something deeper, essential. A purpose. I lost that and had nothing to replace it with. Coming here was about getting a second chance, but turns out it was also about reconnecting with who I am — who I'm supposed to be.'

She didn't comment, didn't tell me to stop droning on and shut up, so I carried on.

'I fight. I kill. I'm a man of war. I'm not particularly proud of it, but I'm not ashamed of it either. Plenty of soldiers hate war. Most, I'd say. It scars them, fucks them up for life. But they fight anyway, because they're brave and because it's expected of them. And I'm no less fucked up than anyone. You should see some of the nightmares I have. Wouldn't wish them on my worst enemy. But my one advantage is that I know that, come what may, I have an aptitude for soldiering. I know I do it well, better than anything else. That — what's the word? — mitigates things for me. Makes it easier to put up with the rest of the shit that comes with the profession. Life hasn't given me a better alternative, so grin and bear it, eh?'

Her head snugged into the contours of my neck. Her shoulder pressed against my pectoral. Her hair smelled faintly, deliciously, of pine forests and ozone.

'And I'm not scared,' I said. 'Even if we lose to Loki — which we won't — I can accept it. I won't mind dying if it means I've done my bit trying to foil his plans. Bullying bastards like him can't be allowed to go unchecked. They have to be challenged, faced down, given a damn good slap if that's what's required. And above all else I know that this is the upside of me being such a full-on battlefield hardcase. I can use it in the name of what's right. Cloud, silver lining. I've been gifted with the ability to kick arses and the good sense to know which are the arses needing to be kicked. And that's… Freya?'

My only answer was a soft snore.

I smiled to myself. A Vanir goddess needed her beauty sleep as much as the next person.

I did something then that I never thought I'd do with Freya. Tenderly, I kissed the top of her head. She stirred, mumbled what might have been a complaint, then settled down again.

The wind hissed.

The castle slumbered.

It was a good night.

The best.

Sixty-Three

Screams broke the dawn hush.

I snapped awake and was on my feet in a moment. Freya was up too, and already at the room's empty socket of a window. She was staring out towards Yggdrasil, where the commotion was coming from. Low grey cloud carpeted the sky, hazing the World Tree's uppermost branches. There'd be snow soon, lots of it.

'What's going on?'

'Deserters.'

'What! No fucking way.'

'Look.'

Over by Yggdrasil, frost giants were milling about in a cluster, very busy. There were men among them. Uniformed. Ours. They were the ones screaming. Protesting. Pleading.

'Shit,' I breathed. 'How can you be sure they're deserters? Couldn't the frosties have just captured them?'

'Without a firefight? Without any of us hearing gunshots? I don't think so. And why else would anyone have left the castle, if not to desert?'

She was right, damn her. I gauged the range from us to the World Tree. Too far. The frost giants were armoured. Our rifles were no good. We couldn't help. All we could do was watch as a couple of the frost giants picked up the first of the men by his arms and raised him high. Then in a series of quick, brutally decisive movements they pinned him to Yggdrasil's trunk, skewering ice daggers through his wrists and calves. He howled and roared in hopeless torment. The other men were dealt with in the same way, until all of them, eleven in total, were impaled on the tree.

Their grisly task completed, the frost giants disappeared back into the forest. One of them turned towards the castle before he left. Even at a distance I recognised the posture, the air of pompous authority. Bergelmir.

'They came to us in the night,' he called out, in no doubt that there was an audience to be addressed. 'They came without weapons, seeking peace and the freedom to return to Midgard unmolested. They said they'd had enough of fighting. They were sick and tired of it. With Odin gone, they said, their cause was lost. Battling on would be futile. The odds against them were hopeless.' He gestured at the squirming, crucified men. 'This is our response. We jotuns do not let our enemies go unpunished. Nor do we know the meaning of mercy.'

Then he was gone, while the men fixed to the World Tree screamed on.

'He mocks us,' Freya snarled. 'He mocks the All-Father's time of trial.'

'Let's get out there. Get them down.'

'No. We can't risk it. Bergelmir will be waiting for us to do just that. Those men aren't only an object lesson, they're bait. Besides, it will take us several minutes to organise a rescue party and reach them. Shock and blood loss will have already done for them by then.'

'So we just leave them hanging there, is that it?'

'There is another way.' She raised her Lee-Enfield. 'Jotuns may not understand mercy, but I do.'

'No.'

'Yes, Gid. You know this is the right course of action. The only course of action.'

'Freya, don't.'

'I'm not asking your permission. If you're squeamish, look away.'

But I didn't.

Eleven rifle reports. Eleven shots straight through the heart. Eleven suspended bodies twitching, falling silent and still.

It wasn't until an hour later that I discovered that Paddy was one of the eleven. Their ringleader, in fact. Cy told me over breakfast, after I'd asked where our tame Irishman was.

Absolute gut punch. Left me gaping.