The Age Of Odin

with two of them.'

The frost giants' ruler laughed from way down in his belly. Couldn't quite believe his good fortune.

'No! Please, no!' Backdoor yelled hoarsely as the frost giants bound him to the frame by his wrists and ankles. They strung him inside it with his limbs outstretched so that he formed an X shape, like a vote in a ballot. He bucked and struggled, but it was no use. 'This isn't right! This isn't fair! Mrs Keener, you can stop this. Please, for God's sake, stop it!'

Her response was a nonchalant shrug. 'If you're what Gid says you are, then you've outlived your usefulness to me. The game's over. What's one player less on the field?'

Bergelmir produced a short ice knife with a half-serrated blade. In a few deft strokes he slashed off Backdoor's clothes, leaving his top half bare. Backdoor yelled even harder and writhed against his bonds, but spread-eagled as he was, he had no leverage, and the knots held fast.

'There is,' said Mrs Keener, having to raise her voice to be heard above Backdoor's protests, 'an old Viking method of execution. You may have heard about it. Many of the kings and chieftains of the Norsemen's enemies died in this way. It ain't pleasant in the least. It's known as the blood eagle.'

I dimly recognised the name, although I couldn't recall the details of what a blood eagle actually involved.

Luckily, Mrs Keener was happy to explain.

'It's very simple. The executioner — in this case, Bergelmir — severs the victim's ribs one by one, right close to the spine. Then he grabs the two halves of the ribcage and yanks them back and outward so's they look like wings. Next he hauls out the lungs, leaves 'em dangling. Finally, as the coop de grass, he packs the wounds with salt. Might be overkill, that last bit, and we may not bother with it. Depends on the victim still being alive, and after all the rest you've got to think that's gonna be a mite unlikely. But we'll see. People have an amazing capacity to endure even the most extreme ordeals, so you never know. Y'all get the gist of it, anyway. This is what we're gonna do to our buddy Backdoor, and then to our buddy Gid. Blood eagling them. And you folks get to watch.'

She turned to Bergelmir.

'Any time you're ready, big guy.'

Bergelmir gave a yellow grin and brandished his knife.

Backdoor had gone limp. He hung from the ropes, his breath coming in fast, sharp pants. He was in shock. He couldn't believe what was about to happen to him. Didn't want to. I could see it in his eyes — they were glazing over, his mind was going elsewhere. He was retreating inside himself, trying to escape the here and now, vanishing into tunnels within.

Wherever he went, though, however deep he dived, he would never be quite lost enough.

And as Bergelmir got to work on him, all I could think was that was going to be me next. In a few minutes' time, that would be my back getting hacked open, my blood spilling out in steaming slicks, my bones being sawn through, my body wrenching and twisting hopelessly, helplessly, my throat hurling out those soul-searing shrieks and howls…

Sixty-Nine

In the end, they didn't need the salt. Ian 'Backdoor' Kellaway was dead by the time Bergelmir delved into his chest cavity, eased out the two wet pink sacs of his lungs and draped them down his bare lower back. Backdoor's head hung slackly. His eviscerated body, with its rack-of-rib wings, looked like some demonic angel's. Bergelmir was steeped in blood from the butchery, his forearms solid crimson, as though he was wearing elbow-length evening gloves.

'He can come down now,' Mrs Keener said, and the frost giants untied Backdoor and dumped him unceremoniously over the side of the scaffold. 'It's Gid's turn.'

Every instinct I had was screaming at me to resist, to fight, to do everything I could to escape. The berserker blackness inside me strained, wanting desperately to be allowed to cut loose. Reining it in took every ounce of self-control I had. This wasn't about me any more. This was about all those soldiers out there at the foot of the scaffold, hugging themselves, stamping their feet in the battle-churned snow. My survival no longer mattered. Theirs did.

The ropes were tied chafingly tight. I hung suspended above a puddle of Backdoor's blood, which was congealing swiftly in the cold. It had poured onto the scaffold's planks like rainfall. Mine would soon be added to it.

I wanted desperately in that moment to be able to see Cody again, one last time. Tell him I wished I'd been a better dad and I was sorry I hadn't tried harder to make things work with his mother.

That not being possible, I searched out Freya in the crowd and locked gazes with her. I would keep looking at her throughout what was coming.

'And thus we arrive at the main event,' said Mrs Keener. 'Gideon Coxall has got his own back on the man he reckons was a traitor, and now he himself is gonna suffer and die in the exact same way. If I were a betting woman, I'd wager money on him lasting a good sight longer than the previous fella. Made of tough stuff, this Gid. Pure rawhide.'

'Enough of the showman bollocks,' I said. 'I'm ready. Just give the order and let's do it.'

'You don't want me bigging you up? Very well. Oh, but there is one thing I feel I oughtta mention. In the spirit of full disclosure and such.'

'Go on, then,' I said impatiently.

'You were definitely right about me having a man on the inside. I like to think of him as my mole. Not in the sense of someone who passes on secrets but in the sense of someone who digs holes in the ground and undermines people.'

'So?'

'Well…' She drew the word out: way-ell.

Then she dropped the bombshell.

'Weren't him.'

She was looking towards Backdoor's corpse.

'Weren't him at all.'

I thought I'd lost the power of speech.

'Just felt you should know,' she said, 'seeing as you went to so much trouble fingering the fella and getting him executed and all. You were so certain you had your guy, I really didn't have the heart to tell you you were wrong. 'Sides, it was more fun this way, going along with you, giving you your head like a wild Appaloosa, seeing how far you'd take it. And you took it all the way, Gid. Right as far as you could. My, but you're a cold, hard son of a gun. Anybody gets the wrong side of you, whoa nelly, they better look out! You have no qualms about terminating them with extreme prejudice.'

She stroked my cheek.

'And I have to say, I find that kinda attractive. Sexy, even. I can see now what Freya Njorthasdottir sees in you. You're as forthright and ruthless as she is. It's a match made in Gimle.'

I managed to stir my lead-weight tongue. 'I don't believe you. This is bullshit. You're trying to trick me. It was Backdoor. It fucking was.'

'So you've persuaded yourself. But I swear, hand on heart, I never clapped eyes on the man before today. He wasn't lying either when he said the same about me.'

'But…'

'It's the most delicious thing watching you squirm like this, like a worm on the hook. It's the gravy on my biscuits. You just put an innocent man through the most obscene, brutal torture imaginable. Not wishing to get all Oprah on you, but how does that make you feel?'

Gutted. Appalled. Shattered.

Livid.

'You — you fucking bitch!' I roared. 'You could have said. Any time, you could have said.'

'And why would I have done that, when stringing you along meant I could have this moment of exquisite