it?'
'How did you get here?'
'I followed you.' He pulled the screwed up, empty cigarette packet out of his pocket and put it on the table. 'Thanks,' he said, 'I owe you.'
It was a pretty feeble type of apology, he thought, but it was the best he could manage.
'Oh ah.' The man looked away.
'What was Thor's challenge to Odin?' said Dirk, trying hard to keep the impatience out of his voice this time.
'What does it matter to you?' the old immortal said bitterly. 'You're a mortal. Why should you care? You've got what you want out of it, you and your kind, for what little it's now worth.'
'Got what we want out of what?'
'The deal,' said the old immortal. 'The contract that Thor claims Odin has entered into.'
'Contract?' said Dirk. 'What contract?'
The man's face filled with an expression of slow anger. The bonfires of Valhalla danced deeply in his eyes as he looked at Dirk.
'The sale,' he said darkly, 'of an immortal soul.'
'What?' said Dirk. He had already considered this idea and discounted it. 'You mean a man has sold his soul to him? What man? It doesn't make sense.'
'No,' said the man, 'that wouldn't make sense at all. I said an immortal soul. Thor says that Odin has sold his soul to Man.'
Dirk stared at him with horror and then slowly raised his eyes to the balcony. Something was happening there. The great drum beat out again, and the hall of Valhalla began to hush itself once more. But a second or third drumbeat failed to come. Something unexpected seemed to have occurred, and the figures on the balcony were moving in some confusion. The Challenging Hour was just expiring, but a challenge of some kind seemed to have arrived.
Dirk beat his palms to his forehead and swayed where he sat as all kinds of realisations finally dawned on him.
'Not to Man,' he said, 'but to a man, and a woman. A lawyer and an advertiser. I said it was all her fault the moment I saw her. I didn't realise I might actually be right.' He rounded on his companion urgently. 'I have to get up there,' he said, 'for Gods' sake, help me.'
Chapter 29
'O...dddddiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnn!!!!!!!'
Thor let out a bellow of rage which made the sky shake. The heavy clouds let out a surprised grunt of thunder at the sheer volume of air that moved beneath them. Kate started back, white with fear and shock, with her ears ringing.
'Toe Rag!!!!'
He hurled his hammer to the ground right at his very feet with both hands. He hurled it this short distance with such astounding force that it hit and rebounded into the air up to about a hundred feet.
'Ggggrrrrrraaaaaaaah!!!!!!' With an immense explosion of air from his lungs he hurled himself up into the air after it, caught it just as it was beginning to drop, and hurled it straight back down at the ground again, catching it again as it bounded back up, twisting violently round in mid-air and hurling it with all the force he could muster out to sea before falling to the ground himself on his back, and pounding the earth with his ankles, elbows and fists in an incredible tattoo of rage.
The hammer shot out over the sea on a very low trajectory. The head went down into the water and planed through it at a constant depth of about six inches. A sharp ripple opened slowly but easily across its surface, extending eventually to about a mile as the hammer sliced its way through it like a surgeon's knife. The inner walls of the ripple deepened smoothly in its wake, falling away from the sheer force of the hammer, till a vast valley had opened in the face of the sea. The walls of the valley wobbled and swayed uncertainly, then folded up and crashed together in crazed and foaming tumult. The hammer lifted its head and swung up high into the air. Thor leapt to his feet and watched it, still pounding his feet on the ground like a boxer, but like a boxer who was perhaps about to precipitate a major earthquake. When the hammer reached the top of its trajectory, Thor hurled his fist downwards like a conductor, and the hammer hurtled down into the crashing mass of sea.
That seemed to calm the sea for a moment in the same way that a smack in the face will calm a hysteric. The moment passed. An immense column of watcr crupted out of the smack, and seconds later the hammer exploded upwards out of its centre, pulling another huge column of water up from the middle of the first one.
The hammer somersaulted at the top of its rise, turned, spun, and rushed back to its owner like a wildly over-excited puppy. Thor caught at it, but instead of stopping it he allowed it to carry him backwards, and together they tumbled back through the rocks for about a hundred yards and scuffled to a halt in some soft earth.
Instantly, Thor was back on his feet again. He turned round and round, bounding from one leg to the other with strides of nearly ten feet, swinging the hammer round him at arm's length. When he released it again it raced out to sea once more, but this time it tore round the surface in a giant semicircle, causing the sea to rear up around its circumference to form for a moment a gigantic amphitheatre of water. When it fell forward it crashed like a tidal wave, ran forward and threw itself, e nraged, against the short wall of the cliff.
The hammer returned to Thor, who threw it off again instantly in a great overarm. It flew into a rock, hitting off a fat angry spark. It bounded off further and hit a spark off another rock, and another. Thor threw himself forward on to his knees, and with each rock the hammer hit he pounded the ground with his fist to make the rock
