Top half, bad. Bottom half, downright vile.
Because her legs weren't just bony like the rest of her, they were distended and misshapen. The flesh didn't hang on them right. It bulged and sagged and slid about as she walked, like raw dough that had been injected into a pair of sheer stockings. The skin on them was grey and marbled with blue veins. I'd seen legs like that before. On a decomposing corpse. But this was a living creature, wasn't it? How could she have a corpse's legs?
And then I thought, Why the fuck not? I was in a place where ravens could be used for long-range reconnaissance and communication, where there were such things as frost giants and trolls, and where somebody was gifted with the ability to hear stuff happening miles away. A part-living, part-dead woman? Big deal. Ho-hum.
Hel sashayed up to Odin, pleased with the effect her appearance had on everyone present. Men recoiled from her as she passed. Freya, even Thor, stepped back so as not to be within reaching distance of her. The smell she trailed in her wake was both sweet and foul. Rotting lilies. The fruity stench of shit. Soil and bitter almonds. The twilight air was cold, but the air around Hel was even colder.
It took everything Odin had just to stand his ground. But he waited for Hel to come, and barely flinched as she halted in front of him, close enough to place a hand on his cheek if she wanted. I knew somehow, without having to be told, that to touch or be touched by Hel was fatal. God or not, fatal.
"Brother of my father," she said.
"Daughter of my one-time brother," he replied.
"But not quite my uncle."
"Nor quite my niece."
"Hel's dad is Loki," Chopsticks whispered in my ear.
"I'd just twigged," I said.
"No fond words of greeting, Odin? No kiss for beautiful Hel?"
Beautiful? Had this bint checked in a mirror lately?
"You know I would be a fool even to shake your hand. And kiss?" Odin's mouth downturned. "I would rather kiss a dead dog's pizzle."
This wasn't bravado. From the way he spat out the words, I realised that what I'd taken for fear was actually something else: disgust. Odin wasn't scared of Hel. He simply detested her. With a passion.
"Yet one day you will welcome me," Hel said. "One day I will open my arms to you and you will sink into my embrace."
"I hope, for my sake, that that day is a long time hence, and that when it happens, I will be a plague upon you for all eternity. My groans of sorrow and sighs of regret will torment your ears and allow you not one moment's peace."
She looked mock-hurt. "How you spurn me, All-Father. Never forget, I can bring you rest. I can bring peace to that troubled heart of yours. Am I not famed as the purveyor of blessed oblivion, she who offers surcease to all woes?"
"I have no desire to lose myself in the misty greyness of your realm, Hel," said Odin. "Life, for all its pains and complications, continues to hold its lustre for me."
"But for how much longer?" Hel began to walk around him, like someone appraising a car. "You are old, Odin. Weary. A time of tribulation is coming, and even gods can perish. Why not let me take you now and spare you the effort and anguish of the coming days? Why not quit early and leave the struggle to these underlings and lesser gods?"
A claw-like hand waved dismissively at the rest of us.
"After all, with or without you they do not stand a chance against my father. Save yourself the distress of watching them stumble and fail. Come with me. Take my arm and walk beside me into Niflheim, and there let me entertain you in my palace, whose name is Sickbed, where the walls are a wickerwork of entwining serpents and where the black rooster sits, ever silent, never crowing. Let me lead you past Garm, my hound who howls at the gate, and let me carve food for you with my knife called Hunger and serve it up to you on a plate called Starvation."
"You're never going to win Come Dine With Me with a menu like that," I blurted out.
Hel rounded on me, whiplash-fast, and her eyes were black ice and the angry hiss she let out was a gust of arctic wind.
"Hold your tongue, mortal!" she snapped. "This is god business. Not for the likes of you to interrupt."
But, as Magnus Magnusson might have said, I'd started so I might as well finish. "Ooh, I get it. 'Be quiet, the grown-ups are talking.'"
I wasn't sure quite why I was taunting her this way. Maybe I didn't want her to know how fucking terrified she made me, how even just looking at her turned my guts to water.
"One more remark out of you," Hel told me, pointing a gnarled finger, "and you're mine. Is that what you wish? When you've heard what's in store for those I take to my world?"
I caught a warning glance off Freya. But was that - could it be - a flicker of admiration in her eyes as well?
I was probably imagining it.
"Well, it's an appealing offer, love," I said regardless, "but I'm going to have to say no. Nothing personal. You seem nice enough and all, but I'm into more than just character. Looks count for a lot."
"Impudent insect!" Hel made a lunge for me, arm outstretched.
In return, instinctively, I raised my rifle. I didn't think a bullet would do much good, but it was all I had.
Hel took one look at the gun, stopped, and threw back her head and laughed, a sound like bones fracturing. Like the choking of someone being throttled. Like a blade stabbing repeatedly into flesh.
"Amusing. You truly believe I can be repulsed by a mere weapon?"
"It's worth a try. Look, you're here for the soldiers in those suits, right? Why not just take them, then, and fuck off out of it? Instead of hanging around making everyone feel queasy. Grab what's yours and go."
Hel laughed again. Her laughter was infectious. Infectious like the ebola virus.
"You scorn death. Fascinating."
"I've seen enough of it to know it should be scorned," I said. "Death's a joke. Big and intimidating, but when you get right up to it, not nearly as bad as it's cracked up to be. I died once, sort of. Death's just nothing. Unpleasant, inconvenient, but that's all."
"Perhaps death is like that where you come from, mortal, but here death is different. The afterlife in Niflheim is long and cold and dreary, a slow fade, a slow forgetting. Your spirit erodes over eons, worn to a nub by time. And all the while I preside over you, delighting in the sight of your prolonged, protracted withering. Does that sound like 'just nothing'? I think not."
Her words gave me a genuine chill.
"Not so quick with the repartee now, eh?"
"No," I said, and lowered the rifle. "Just that bit more sold on the idea of staying alive, actually."
"Sensible man."
"These nine souls," said Odin, indicating the scattered JOTUNs and SURTs. "They are the price for your allowing our adversary's troops access to Asgard through Niflheim?"
"Nothing is given for free, not even between my father and me," Hel said. "He told me if I permitted them safe passage, I could take back as many of them as died here. He anticipated all of them would, as did I, although not without cost to your side."
"Is it the first and last time he will attack via your realm?"
"Do you seriously expect me to reveal Loki's plans to you? What I can tell you is that this is only the beginning. A statement of intent."
"I assumed as much."
"Loki has more in reserve. Considerably more. And, from my point of view, these nine souls serve as a mere appetiser to the glut that will soon be coming my way."
All at once I realised there were grey shadows clustered behind Hel. Nine of them. I hadn't seen them appear. They were suddenly... just there. They were blurry, like figures seen through a shower curtain. I could just about make out the outline of heads, bodies, limbs. Nine dead American soldiers hovering obediently at Hel's back, and for all that they had no distinct features there was something horribly lost and inconsolable about them: the way they stood, the slumped posture. Helpless. Docile. Like kittens trapped in a sack, waiting to be thrown in the canal.
"Everything is arrayed aga
inst you, Odin," Hel said. "You cannot and will not win, certainly not with so pathetic and inadequate an army as the one you have mustered. It is over. The Fimbulwinter is here and all but done, and sure as night follows day, Ragnarök is coming in its wake. You know this. The pattern is set and cannot be altered. The pieces are in their right places. Ragnarök - the end of everything, the fall of the gods, carnage and catastrophe!"
She relished this last sentence, savouring the words like a fine wine.
"Fight, by all means," she concluded. "Resist. Scream defiance at the inevitable. In the end, the only one who will profit is me."
And with that, she turned and left, and the nine grey shadows trailed after her in a straggling line, like ducklings behind mother duck. Into the fog bank. Into Niflheim.
And the last faint glimmer of sunlight drained from the sky, and there was nothing but darkness.
Thirty-Four
I collared Odin the next day for a chinwag. He was at the troll pen, checking up on the captives.
A large pit had been excavated not far from the castle and surrounded with a stockade of pine trunks sharpened to points. Here, the three trolls had been corralled and were being fed with whole deer carcasses supplied by Freya.
Odin was on a platform overlooking the pen. I scaled a wooden ladder to join him.
The trolls sat apart from one another around the edge of the pit. One was fast asleep, mouth slack, drool dribbling down his chin. Another had his arms folded and was distractedly scraping a furrow in the dirt with his heel while singing a repetitive, tuneless song to himself. The third was busy picking his teeth with the broken end of one of the many deer bones that lay scattered around the pen. I'd expected them to be raging against their captivity, trying to clamber up and batter their way out. In the event, all they were was bored and subdued. Gorillas at the zoo, resigned to imprisonment.
They reeked, too. The smell came not so much from the latrine hole that had been dug for them as from the trolls themselves, from giant bodies that had never known soap or a washcloth.
"Jesus!" I exclaimed, clapping a hand over my nose. It was like being downwind of a tramp, only multiplied by a hundred. "That's minging. You could stun an elephant with that."
"One gets used to it, if one stands here long enough," Odin said. "How are you, friend Gid?"
"You mean apart from slowly being choked to death by a new kind of bioweapon? Never better. Your missus has had a look at me and apparently I'm back to full fighting fitness. Everything's healed, rib, wrist, the works. It's incredible. Skadi's on the mend too. How does Frigga do it?"
"With love, skill, and a modicum of divine power. My question, however, was of a more general nature, pleased though I am to be apprised of the state of your physical wellbeing."
"I'm feeling okay, I suppose. About Loki and all that? Yeah, bring it on."
"So upbeat, even though the odds against us seem insurmountable?"
"Well, I've had a few ideas on that front."
Odin raised an intrigued eyebrow. "I'd be eager to hear them."
"One of them has to do with this lot." I pointed to the trolls. "Only, looking at them now, I'm not sure it's such a goer any more. You said they could be used as frontline shock troops, but on present form they don't look very shocking at all."
"Don't be deceived," Odin said. "They're passive now because their bellies are full and because they perceive no danger to themselves. Trolls are not at all bright creatures. When threatened, however, they turn savage. We harness that aggression, loose them against the enemy, and they will serve us well."
"Fab. Then why not let's get hold of more of them. Dozens if we can. Make it our priority over the next few days. Let's stockpile trolls like they're going out of fashion."
Odin flashed me his wolfish smile. "I like the sound of it. What else?"
"I've got a few more thoughts, some crazier than others. But before any of that, I want some background intel from you. I need to know what all this is about. Yesterday Hel mentioned a... Fimbulwinter, was it?"
"Yes."
"Now, my son used to like a TV show called The Fimbles, about some tubby, stripy creatures who lived in a magical garden with a talking bird with a Yorkshire accent. I'm guessing the Fimbulwinter's got nothing to do with them, right?"
"In so far as I have no idea what you're talking about, I'm going to hazard a guess and say no, it doesn't have anything to do with them."
"Shame, because the Fimbles are cute and cuddly."
"The Fimbulwinter is decidedly not. It is three years of the harshest, bitterest weather that has ever been known. Three years of snows, storms, hail, ice, darkened skies. And it comes as a harbinger of the end of everything. It forewarns that the time is nigh for a battle to end all battles, a final clash between the forces of righteousness and the forces of wickedness."
"And that," I said, "is Ragnarök."
He confirmed with a nod. "Ragnarök," he said, low-voiced, and repeated it, as though tolling a bell. "Ragnarök. A doom that I have long known was coming but been unable to do anything to avoid or prevent. Various factors have played out in the only way they could. I have watched events move towards this ineluctable conclusion, powerless to alter their course. Though a god, I have found myself as a mortal, a victim rather than a shaper of destiny. It has been... difficult, to say the least."
"What events? I'd like to know."
"Could you not ask one of your colleagues, perhaps? That Dennis Ling, he seems very well acquainted with Aesir lore. Or what about Bragi? He loves to spin a yarn."
"I'd rather get it straight from the top. And without lots of bad rhymes."
Odin sighed heavily. "Very well. I believe you have earned the privilege. Consider this a reward for your proven ingenuity and prowess in battle. But please bear in mind, recounting what happened - even simply recollecting it - is painful for me. Distressing in the extreme. It began with a malicious trick and a death. Not just any death, either, but a death of magnitude and great significance. Every death, one might aver, is such to the person who dies. Every death is an apocalypse. Yes. Every death is an apocalypse. Is it not, Gid?"
I shrugged. "Suppose you could say that."
"An apocalypse on a personal scale. Every death is the end of everything for the one dying. The end of their world. Their very own Ragnarök. This death, however, the one I'm about to relate to you, can truly be deemed apocalyptic. It set in train all that we are experiencing now. With it began the decline of Asgard and the ascendancy of Loki. It was the catalyst for the disaster presently facing us. Listen well. And should I shed a tear, understand that it is but a single drop from the ocean of tears that I have shed in the past and could yet shed over this tragedy."
Thirty-Five
His name was Balder, Odin said, and he was my favourite son. One should not have favourites among one's offspring. One should love them all equally and treat them all equally, whatever their virtues or shortcomings.
Balder, though, was different. Balder was special. And it wasn't I alone who knew this. Everyone did. All among the Aesir, and among the Vanir, recognised that Balder was a cut above. He was handsome. Not just handsome; beautiful, exquisitely so. His hair shone like the sun. His eyes sparkled like a limpid stream. His voice was as soft and gentle as a warm summer breeze. Nor did he vaunt his looks or succumb to vanity in any way. He was modest and kind, with never a bad word for anyone. He was brave. He was forgiving. You couldn't think a cruel or unjust thought in his presence, let alone give voice to one.
I doted on him. How could I not? As did his mother. Frigga had only two children by me: Balder and Hodur, the latter of whom emerged from the womb as blind as an earthworm. Both we loved, Balder for his perfection, Hodur for his imperfection. My other sons... well, let's just say I haven't been the most faithful of husbands. In my callow early years I sowed my seed profligately. I have calmed down since, of course, and have become a contentedly uxorious individual. And I have never disowned or disavowed any of my chil
dren fathered on other mothers. Thor, Bragi, Vali and the rest, they are all flesh of my flesh and I am proud to acknowledge them as such. But the children one has with one's true love, one's forever wife, one holds in perhaps higher regard than the others. It cannot be helped.
The point is, Balder was universally adored. He was the best of us, the shining light of Asgard. Flowers would bloom in his footsteps. It's true. Even the gnomes, who are spiteful at the best of times, loved Balder. The jotuns too! Even them. He could do no wrong.
His only failing was no fault of his. Balder suffered from nightmares. Always they prophesied that he was going to die, and that his death would be murder, carried out by one of his brothers. The dreams tormented him in his sleep and also during his waking hours, with their memory.
Word spread among the Aesir about these nightmares, and the news brought gloom to all. An atmosphere of dread settled over Asgard, clouding our mirth. Were they merely dreams? Or an augury of a future event? Eventually a meeting was called at the foot of Yggdrasil to address the matter. At this council the Norns instructed me to visit a völva, a Midgardian seeress who had died many years previously. I mounted Sleipnir and rode to the völva's gravesite, a burial mound where on a wild and windy midnight I sang a chant and wove a spell to resurrect her. Those were the days when I had magic and plenty of it.
The völva clawed her way up out of the ground, groaning and shrieking. Her corpse stood before me, wreathed in rotted cerements, and in a voice as dry and crackly as fallen leaves she asked me what I desired to know. I told her: an interpretation of Balder's dreams. Her reply, instead of bringing enlightenment, served only to darken further the shadows that were already casting a pall over my soul.
She said Balder's days were numbered. Hel awaited him. And his murderer, she added, would not even realise he was his murderer until it was too late.
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