The Age Of Odin

Thirty-One

I counted nine of them.

Not many.

But they were big. Each basically human-shaped but twice the size. They strode in a V formation, clomping cumbersomely over the snow. Five were dark blue, the other four jet black. Their sleek, rounded contours, backlit by the fading sun, gleamed dully. Giant mechanised suits of armour.

Each had an operator inside. I could see faces peering out through tinted plexiglass faceplates. Each moved a little stiffly, but with obvious strength and power. Servomotors in the legs swayed them along, and their arms swung, providing counterbalance. In place of hands the arms ended in flared nozzles which were connected by flexible metallic tubes to pod-like tanks on their backs. Vents, cowls and farings jutted out here and there from the bodywork, some obviously functional but the majority, as far as I could tell, for show.

Across their chests were strips of lettering. The blue suits of armour had JOTUN, the black ones SURT.

"JOTUN," I said. "The US army's built its own jotuns."

"No shit," said Cy.

"But what's a SURT when it's at home?"

"Surt is a fire demon," said Chopsticks. "King of Muspelheim, the World of Fire. Scary fellow, by all accounts."

"Oh yes," said Thor. "Very much so."

We watched them plod closer, those metal replica frost giants and fire demons, and if my own feelings were anything to go by, we were perturbed but also sneakingly impressed.

"What are we supposed to call 'em, that's what I want to know," said Backdoor.

"Robo-infantry?" Chopsticks suggested.

"Bit of a mouthful."

"Mecha-modules? Mytho-exoskeletons?"

"We'll get back to you on that one, Chops," said Baz.

The nine armour thingies — they really did need a name — halted some three hundred metres from our positions.

Within range of our rifles.

Odin gave the command.

"Open fire!"

And we blizzarded the tin-plated monstrosities with bullets.

And didn't put so much as a dent in them. The salvo of bullets churned the snow around the armour suits to mush, but left them completely unscathed. As their operators must have known it would. Why else stand there like that, inviting a pelting?

The shooting became sporadic, died out. My good ear singing a lovely high-pitched song, I squinted down onto the plain. What now? Surely the enemy were going to retaliate in some way.

As one, the nine resumed their forward march, fanning out. Soon they were less than a hundred metres away from the bluff, at which point they raised their arms, levelling those nozzles at us.

Over the walkie-talkie Odin barked, "Pull back!" Me, I was already beating a hasty retreat. I didn't know what was going to emerge from the nozzles but I had a hunch it wasn't going to be spangly fairy dust or showers of confetti.

There was a loud whooshing whine, and rocks exploded at my back. I hurled myself flat, feeling the thuds of other detonations all around, hearing cries of alarm. Baz crashed headlong to the ground beside me, with a yell of "Fookin' Nora!" I raised my head to catch a peek of the goings-on, and saw a huge, sizzling hole gouged in the bluff where we're been lying just moments ago. Snow had been turned to vapour. Shattered rock glowed orange at the edges. A man — I didn't know his name — was sprawled by the impact point. The left side of his body had been almost completely burned away. Incinerated. Smoke curled up from exposed cross-sections of charred muscle and bone.

Some kind of missile?

If so, it was like none I'd ever encountered before. And in fact I doubted it was a missile at all.

The sound came again, that kind of low, resonant hiss, and another section of the edge of the bluff disintegrated. Baz and I scuttled further away on our hands and knees as scorching hot debris rattled down around us.

"Did you see that?" he said.

"No."

"Exactly. It were nowt. Just a kind of… wobble in the air. Like heat. A beam of heat."

"A heat ray?" I said. "You're telling me those things fire a fucking heat ray?"

"The black ones, yeah. Must be a million degrees or something."

"Fuck me."

"Not while there are dogs in the street."

"What about the blue ones? What do they fire?"

"How the ruddy 'eck should I know?" Baz shot back. "I'm the expert on high-tech robot suits all of a sudden?"

I looked along the line of the bluff, and got my answer. I saw a soldier rise to a crouch in order to peer over the bluff at the enemy. He unclipped a grenade from his bandolier. A bolt of shimmering air streaked towards him from below, but this one brought intense cold rather than intense heat. He cracked in two. The beam engulfed his head and shoulders, flash-froze them, and then that section sheared off, sliding to the ground in a single solid mass, its departure lubricated by an abrupt gush of blood welling up from beneath. The rest of him crumpled in the opposite direction, torso spouting torrents of crimson.

Another soldier tried the same tactic, and this time succeeded in getting the grenade in the air before he too was freeze-zapped. The little steel egg spiralled through space, and full credit to the thrower, his aim was good. He'd surely have been pleased with himself, if he hadn't happened to be lying in two halves in the snow. The grenade landed within a yard of the JOTUN that had killed him, and exploded almost instantly, before the man in the armour had a chance to react.

Take that, twat, I thought.

But when the smoke cleared, the JOTUN was still standing. Its armoured shell was scorched, scratched, but essentially intact. Through the faceplate all I could see was an enormous fucking grin. The man inside was laughing his arse off, and who could blame him? Just been hit point blank by a grenade and emerged unscathed. If that were me, I'd be as happy as a dog with Bonio-flavoured bollocks.

A couple of the other guys tried to take out one of the SURTs with a Russian-made RPG-7. Same result. The impact staggered the thing but the rocket nevertheless failed to penetrate, and the reward for their pains was to get roasted on the spot — two men reduced to human barbecue in a split second.

I spotted Thor hunkered down nearby. He was scoping out the terrain from behind a boulder, trying to fathom a way of getting down into the fray without getting blasted. I scrambled over to him, Baz behind me.

"We're sitting ducks up here," I said. "Pinned down, and if we try to climb down to attack close-up, they'll just pick us off the slope like flies on a wall."

"What do you suggest?" said Thor. "Mjolnir itches to demolish."

"We go in from the sides." I motioned to either end of the bluff, where it descended in a shallow curve, flattening to meet the plain. "Take the long way round and hit them in a pincer movement."

"All well and fine, Gid, and I believe it workable. Two problems, though. I can damage those machines with Mjolnir, I am sure, but there is but one of me. Grenades do not appear to work, and bullets certainly do not. What do you propose the rest of you do?"

"I have a vague sort of idea, I think."

"Oh, that's encouraging, that," Baz muttered. "'A vague sort of idea.'"

"The other problem," said Thor, "is that our foes are doubtless expecting us to attempt just what you're suggesting, and will move to forestall it."

"So we need a distraction. A diversion."

"Of what sort?"

"Skadi."

Baz radioed Odin with the plan, Odin relayed it to Skadi, Skadi gave it the thumbs up, and we were in business.

Skadi had her little troop of skiers with her, maybe twenty of them in all, blokes she'd spent weeks coaching rigorously in the fine art of sliding along with two planks strapped to your feet. I watched them getting ready to move out, even as my squad started crawling along the bluff towards the north end. Two groups of men led by Odin's sons Vidar and Vali were heading off the other way, southward. The JOTUNs and SURTs, meanwhile, kept battering our positions with their beams of extreme temperature. You might say, ha ha, they were running hot and cold on us.

Skadi let out a long yodelling whoop, a kind of "ul-ul-ululul-luuu!" that reminded me of the sound crowds of Europeans make at ski races. And then she shot off down the face of the bluff, her boys following. It was a nearly sheer slope, just inclined enough that snow could lie on it, with the odd ledge projecting out here and there. They scooted down, twisting and mogulling from side to side, more bouncing than skiing.

The power armour operators naturally turned their attention on them, and one poor sod got hit by a JOTUN and a SURT simultaneously, before he could even reach the bottom. Half of him became ice cubes, the rest ashes. Another of the skiers took a tumble halfway down and plummeted the rest of the way, landing with the kind of impact you didn't get up from again.

The rest made it to the plain safely and started racing towards the enemy as fast as they could, weaving and winding across the snow, making moving targets of themselves.

I caught all this in over-the-shoulder glimpses as my squad scurried to the bluff's tip. Those skiers were as brave as hell. It was a kamikaze run, but they kept on going, with scrawny little Skadi leading the way. Christ, but that goddess could shift. She was skimming across the snow faster than was humanly possible, as though there were jet engines attached to her skis. Her arms were a blur, stabbing the sticks into the ground repeatedly. Jinking left and right, she drew the lion's share of the enemy fire. Beams shot past her, coming within a whisker but never quite finding their mark. The men following her were less speedy, and therefore less lucky. The JOTUNs and SURTs wiped out half of them in the time it took us pincer movement guys to reach level with the plain.

Then Skadi pulled off one of the craziest and classiest stunts I'd ever seen. She thrust herself straight into the gap between a JOTUN and a SURT, slowing down a fraction so as to make herself a more attractive target. The enemy took the bait, both of them rotating on the spot, arms extended, eager for what looked like an easy kill.

Big mistake.

Both of them fired at her at the same time. And both were directly facing each other as they did so. Skadi ducked beneath the beams, squatting so low her nose almost touched her skis, and the JOTUN shot the SURT and the SURT shot the JOTUN, and it was glorious. Mechanical frost giant burned. Mechanical fire demon got iced. A large hole was melted in the JOTUN's chest, the beam boring through to fricassee the man inside. The whole suit of armour just went stock still, inert, hot metal dribbling down its front. As for the SURT, a section of its front turned glossy white and cracked apart, suddenly as brittle as an eggshell. The operator himself wasn't hurt, but it was clear that some vital component in the suit had been damaged. The SURT started shuddering. Its arms flailed about like a body-popper doing one of those jittery breakdance moves. Then something went ker-plof, something else went bang, and the SURT toppled. Just keeled over into its back, and I had to fight the urge to yell, "Timberrrr!"

Two down, seven to go.

Odin's voice came over the walkie-talkie. "We have drawn blood. They are not unbeatable. You have been briefed on what Gid has in mind. Put his plan into action. Go!"

With Skadi and her remaining skiers still running interference for us, we set off at a sprint, us lot on one side, Vadir's and Vali's groups on the other, all zeroing in on the enemy.

I was pretty confident my idea for crippling those power armour suits would work.

I sincerely hoped I was right, though.

Otherwise this was going to be a short and exceedingly asymmetrical battle.