Thor's voice trembled with pure hatred. The anger radiating off him was almost a physical force.
"But what?" I said. "What did he actually do?"
Before Thor could answer, a low resonant thrumming started up from the north - a sound you felt as much as heard. The vibration seemed to bypass your ears and go straight to the bones of your skull. I knew straight away it was generated by a helicopter, but there was a particular shape to the sound, a pattern to the whupping and whirring, that was more than a little familiar. It had two layers, wavelengths doubling and overlapping, and it faded in and out of hearing as the chopper's position altered in relation to the acoustics of the landscape.
I stood - we all stood - as the aircraft finally hoved into view at the valley's far end, and glory be, it was exactly as I thought. A Chinook. A good old Wokka. Hauling itself through the sky, skimming just below the cloud cover, with that strange combination of majesty and ungainliness that only a Chinook had, like a whale in flight. Twin rotors savaging the air, running lights aglow in the gloomy greyness, exhaust hissing like a billion snakes - an aircraft I'd ridden in more than a few times and always been in awe of but never learned to love.
As it came close I saw that it had the name Sleipnir painted on the fuselage, just to the rear of the cockpit windscreen, along with a silhouette of a horse with four pairs of legs. I also saw by the lack of long-range fuel tanks on the sides that it was one of the older models, an HC2. Decommissioned, perhaps, once the HC3s came along in the mid-nineties, or else the MoD couldn't be arsed to spring for an overhaul and modifications and sold it off to the highest bidder, which in this instance was Odin Borrson.
The Wokka did a flyby, then put its nose down and pivoted smartly about on its front axis to come roaring back. The valley was just wide enough and flat-bottomed enough for the pilot to pull off a landing. Precision manoeuvring, clearance minimal, not a touchdown anyone would want to attempt too often, but he managed it, while we all crouched and turned away from the corrosive blast of dust and gravel the chopper's downwash inflicted on us.
Down went the cargo ramp and its extensions, revealing the grey interior of the cargo bay and the swathe of multicoloured cables that rimmed the doorway. At the same time up popped the starboard entry door and out stepped none other than Odin himself. His ravens flew to him the moment the Wokka's rotor blades fell still. With one balancing on each shoulder he went to inspect the trolls, then began supervising their loading onto the helicopter. It took fifteen men to lift each troll and cart him into the cargo bay. We squashed them in there one after another like sardines, making sure they were tied up tightly with the ropes Odin had brought. Then, soon, Sleipnir was taking off, even less balletic in the air for having a couple of tons of troll stuffed in its belly. It chuntered off over the horizon, lost from sight a full minute before it was lost from hearing.
Odin stayed behind. "The pilots know the way home without me," he said, "and the mood has taken me to accompany you on the rest of your journey."
For a time we all ambled along together in a straggling column, Odin using a forked staff as a walking aid, like some beardy old rambler. He chatted with Thor and Freya, and with the troops, but I could sense him working his way towards me. Every time I glanced round, he'd advanced a little further up the line, closer to where I was.
Finally he reached me.
"Gid. A word," he said, drawing me aside.
"Ooh, teacher's pet," said Cy, with a leer.
I gave him my middle finger.
Odin held me back until everyone else had gone past, and then we resumed walking, the two of us a good twenty paces to the rear of the others.
"Reports are," he said, "you slew a jotun in single combat. And you helped signally with the capture of the trolls."
"What can I say? I'm an all-round champ."
"You do see now, don't you, that your doubts were unfounded?"
I chose my words carefully. "Let's say I'm a whole lot more open-minded than I used to be."
"But questions remain."
"They do."
"Then now's your chance. Ask away. Anything you want."
His one eye gazed at me unswervingly. Huginn's and Muninn's eyes added to the scrutiny. I felt exposed, as though the whole world was looking at me, curious, prying.
"Okay then," I said, "for starters, let's take that helicopter of yours. I guess you have a landing pad for it not far from the castle."
"And a hangar. Not far but not near. Asgard is large. Plenty of acreage in which to squirrel things away. Even a Chinook."
"The thing here, though, is - assuming you are what you appear to be, one of the actual Norse gods, in the flesh, how come you have a helicopter at all? You've named it after your flying horse. Where is that horse? Have you got that stabled out in the grounds of the castle as well?"
"No," said Odin. "No, I no longer have Sleipnir. I had to give him up. Similarly, the Valkyries no longer ride steeds but use snowmobiles instead."
"You've moved with the times, is that it? You've updated. Upgraded."
He half smiled. "To a certain extent, yes. Gods are, after all, what men make them. A thousand years ago, when horses were the principal mode of transport, naturally we gods rode horses too. Anything else would have been strange. Nowadays, when people use mechanised conveyances, there's no reason why we should not too. By the same token, we wield guns now rather than broadswords and axes. Thor is the exception. He wouldn't be without his hammer. He's very attached to it. But the rest of us have embraced the physics of projectile and explosive. Why not? If nothing else it lends us an added edge over our traditional foes. The jotuns may be content to continue to use their ice weaponry, but little good does such a reactionary stance serve them in this day and age."
"Except when it comes to one-on-one duels."
"Their way of making a point. On their own terms, with issgeisls and the like, they are formidable. It makes them feel better about themselves to capture a mortal every so often and demonstrate the virtues of their own old-fashioned battlecraft. It won't win them any wars, but it does prevent them from lapsing into utter despair. Poor things." Said with an almost fond chuckle.
"There's more to it, however," he went on, serious again. "Sleipnir is a very good example of the regrettable truth about being a deity in the modern age. Simply put, I don't have him any more because I lack the power to have him."
"Huh?" Simply put my arse. What the hell did he mean?
"I am, Gid, a mere shadow of the god I used to be. That's true of all of us Aesir and Vanir. In our heyday we were quite extraordinary beings. To stand in our presence would have been an overwhelming, mind-shattering experience for you. You would have reeled in awe before our splendour. You might never have fully recovered from the meeting, so dazzled and dizzied would it have left you."
"Blimey, talk about having a ticket on yourself."
"Whereas today, a man may walk beside me, close enough to brush my garment, and make flippant, derogatory comments, and neither is he cowed nor ashamed. That is how humbled we have become, how straitened. So much so that I cannot even lay claim to my horse. He is gone - lost. There was no tearful parting. I simply discovered at some point that Sleipnir had ceased to be one of my common appurtenances and would have to be replaced with some more prosaic equivalent. He was not to belong to me any more. Little does now. My ravens are perhaps the sole remaining legacy of my former greatness."
He chucked Huginn and Muninn under the beak with his thumb. They crooned softly.
"So, what, you're telling me you've had to downsize?" I said. "There've been divine budgetary cuts? Like the aristocracy, even gods can fall on hard times?"
"More or less," he said. "We are granted life by belief. Faith gives us form and vigour. Once, we were believed in fervently. The Norsemen worshipped and adored us. To the Vikings we were superstars, and every prayer sent up to us, every feast held in our honour, every battle waged in our name, every saga and folksong sung about us, filled
us with ever greater power." He sighed, and the ravens let out odd little hisses that could have been sighs too. "Men gave willingly of themselves to nourish us and keep us. That is no longer so. Tell me, how many in Midgard these days even remember the Norse pantheon, let alone venerate it?"
"Er, not that many. We still know the stories, I suppose, but venerate? Nobody's really doing any of that."
"The stories help. They keep us alive. Whenever, wherever, someone commits a tale about us to the page or celebrates us verbally, it sustains us. It is an act of homage, whether it is done knowingly with that aim or not. It gives us credence. But the people of Midgard are largely secular now, or else in thrall to single, overarching gods who are all ideology and ideal."
"Like the God. Capital-G God."
"Yes."
"Have you met Him? What's He like?"
"We don't all get together at god club and compare notes, Gid," Odin said. "Besides, I don't believe in Him, and if He does exist, I don't like Him. His type of gods aren't gods who echo how mortals behave. They're gods who are held up as example of perfection to be emulated. They're not gods of the people. They're remote and inaccessible, and they demand blind, unthinking obedience from their followers. They're dictators. We Aesir and Vanir, by contrast, are mirrors. Other gods rule. We reflect and magnify. We are you, only more so. We share your flaws and foibles. We are as humanlike as we are divine, and I think we're all the better for that."
"Trouble is, that isn't the brand of god that's wanted in the twenty-first century."
"Hasn't been wanted for a very long time," Odin agreed, sombrely. "We are, I don't deny, superannuated. A throwback. It is, some might say, a miracle that we're still here at all. But we are. And like it or not, we still have a role to play in the affairs of men. As long as we continue to exist, we can't help but do."
"Any particular reason why you decided to decamp from, I don't know, Scandinavia or wherever, to the north of England? Was that part of the downsizing too? A forced relocation?"
"Ah, Gid, who's to say we have relocated?"
"Well, haven't you? Asgard Hall is in the north of England, right?"
"You're thinking literally. Like a mortal. Which isn't your fault, of course. How else could you think?"
"Where is it, then? Don't tell me Scotland. I haven't had my vaccinations!"
"Just the north," said Odin. "The frozen north. Everywhere has a north, and where that north is, where the snow tumbles and the winds blow icy cold and the nights are long and dark and the wolves cry, that's where you'll find us. That's our natural habitat. Anywhere north."
I pondered this a while, and decided it made sense. Not a great deal of sense, but as much sense as anything else around here was making.
"All right," I said finally. "I think we've covered pretty much all I need to know. Just one last question. You've talked about a true enemy. One you're gearing up to fight with. That's what you're recruiting for, why you're offering blokes like me employment, the reason for the training and the troll catching and all of it..."
"Who," said Odin, anticipating where I was headed.
"Yes. Who. Who is it? Who's the enemy?"
"Better than telling you," he said, "when we get back to Asgard I'll show you. Or rather, the Norns will."
Twenty-Four
The Norns lived in a cottage on the opposite side of Yggdrasil from Asgard Hall. You couldn't see the castle from the cottage and vice versa. The World Tree blocked the view both ways. Odin and I headed straight there as soon as we got back on Asgardian soil, with a slight detour on the way so that I could visit Frigga for some running repairs. She changed my dressings, applied salves to my new injuries, dosed me up with some of that barely swallowable medicine of hers, and clucked and tutted a bit, telling her husband I was a man in clear need of rest. That wasn't on the cards, but I left feeling a great deal better than I had done. Right as rain and not as wet.
Cottage, as a matter of fact, was a generous description for the Norns' residence. Tumbledown shack would have been nearer the truth. Slates were missing from the roof, sometimes so many in one spot as to leave gaping great holes in its pelt of snow. Broken windowpanes had been patched up with rectangles of fibreboard. The brickwork was cracked and flaky and in serious need of repointing. Ivy and Virginia creeper had the building in their clutches and seemed to be doing their level best to pull it down into the ground. The whole place was sagging and lopsided from threshold to chimney.
A gate, leaning off a single hinge, opened onto an unruly, overgrown front garden. There was a well in the middle of the lawn, an olde-worlde wishing well type of affair with a small peaked roof on top and a rusty bucket hanging from the handle. Looked like no one had drawn water from it in ages. The path up to the front door looked like no one had walked up it in ages either. It meandered, a curving line of smooth, undisturbed snow to the porch.
Odin was not happy. His mouth was pursed. Nervousness was coming off him like a bad odour. Every step closer to the cottage, he seemed to have to drag himself that bit harder along.
"What's up?" I asked. "Somewhere else you'd rather be?"
"Anywhere else," he replied. "I don't dread much, but I dread the Norns."
"But you're Odin. The All-Father. The big kahuna. You're in charge of the show. What's the problem?"
"All Aesir and Vanir fear the Norns. They are the Pronouncers, the Three Fays of Destiny. They were old while we were still young. They determine the fates of all. Even gods must bow before them."
Three women you really don't want to meet, Freya had said. And Odin wasn't that keen on paying them a house call. Even Huginn and Muninn had chosen to give the event a miss and had fluttered off on some birdie errand or other. So, understandably, I was beginning to wonder myself whether this was such a good idea.
"We could come back another time. Or maybe you could tell me yourself about the enemy. We don't have to go to all this trouble if you don't want to."
"It's the best way," said Odin, grimly, gravely. "The Norns have skills that I lack. Their demonstrations of fact are more convincing than any mere words of mine would be."
He reached out to tug at the knob of a bell-pull. A bell clanged deep, unfathomably deep inside the cottage.
"Oh well, nobody home," I said before the ringing had even stopped. "Let's go."
"They're home. They're never not home. Hold fast."
We were on the doorstep for nearly five minutes, and I was starting to hope that Odin was wrong and the Norns were, for once, out. Nipped down to Asda or the bingo or something.
Then: light footsteps, stiff bolts being shot, a key creakily turning, and the door was opened by...
...not a wrinkly white-haired crone like I'd been picturing, but a girl, barely a teenager, blossom-cheeked and pretty. Reminded me very much of Sally Stringer, who I'd lusted after through most of secondary school, tried countless times to chat up at parties and discos without getting anywhere, and had my boyish heart broken by when she started going out with Brett Hughes. It had been an especially painful kick in the teeth because Brett's parents were well-off, had a large house, gave him a generous allowance, and Sally - the Sally I thought she was, the Sally I'd built her up to be in my mind - wasn't the kind of girl to have her head turned by wealth. Although apparently, at the end of the day, she was.
The girl smiled at us, coldly welcoming.
"Odin," she said.
"Urd," said Odin, and he had lowered his head, as if he could scarcely bring himself to look at her. He was even, I thought, shaking.
But she was just a girl. Simply dressed. Slender. Not tall. Slip of a thing. No threat to anyone.
"And Gideon Coxall," she said, turning to me.
"Gid."
"Your mother always preferred Gideon. Your father was the one who shortened it. It was a bone of contention between them - one of the few, all minor, until his infidelity. Afterwards, she wouldn't even let your friends call you Gid while they were in the house. 'Gideon,' she would insis
t. 'As in the Bible.'"
Me: eyes on stalks, jaw open to the neck.
But I recovered well, I thought.
"Okay, that trick isn't creepy much. What have you got back there, The Big Book Of Gideon Coxall, complete with illustrations?"
"Something of that ilk," said Urd. "I shall use Gideon too, because it was your mother's choice, and she is a significant factor in your past. What my sisters call you is their own business."
"Will you invite us in?" said Odin, having to force the request out. "I can't believe our visit was not expected."
"Nothing is unexpected to the Norns," Urd said, "and indeed we already know your motives for being here and have prepared accordingly. Come in, both."
She let us in, shut the door behind, and showed us along the hallway through to a lounge. The cottage's interior matched its exterior. Ripped and peeling wallpaper. Threadbare rugs and throws. Chairs well ventilated with holes. Moth-eaten, mildewed, mouldering curtains with hems so rotted away they barely touched the sills. The smell of dust, dense and peppery in the air. If the Norns were deliberately going for the shabby-chic look, they'd nailed it. Nailed it to the point of overkill.
In the lounge, two women rose to greet us. Both had a similar look about them to Urd. Same posture, same mannerisms, same colouring. In point of fact, they were exact replicas of her, just older. One by maybe twenty years, the other by a lot. One was Urd as she might be after childbirth, broader in the hips, plumper around the jowls. Matronly was the word that sprang to mind. The other was Urd as she'd become once menopause, osteoporosis, and the general withering of age had taken their toll: stooped, hair streaked with silver, lips shrivelled to a dog's bumhole with a sketching of moustache across the top.
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