The Age Of Odin

Forty

There was a reception committee waiting at the gate. A couple of dozen frost giants in full ice-armour regalia, armaments galore, and not a friendly smile to be seen. I motioned to the others to hold back. Then, solo, I set a tentative foot on the bridge spanning the crevasse. A quick glance over the edge showed me a sheer and apparently bottomless drop. I felt a wobble of vertigo. No handrail, no barrier of any kind, nothing to stop you slipping off the side and falling if you didn't watch your footing. Health and Safety would have had a stroke.

I took another step forwards, and the frost giants firmed their grips on their weapons and growled.

One of them had a fancier helmet and a more ornately engraved breastplate than the rest, marking him out as the commanding officer present, captain of the guard or some such. He came out a few paces from the gateway to challenge me, issgeisl to the fore.

"Aesir!" he boomed. "Halt. You are trespassing on sovereign jotun territory. It is prohibited. Take one step further and perish."

"Two points, sunshine," I said, ticking them off on my fingers. "One: I'm not an Aesir, I'm just your bog-standard mortal. And two: it's not really trespassing if you come in an official capacity, is it?"

The frost giant just snarled, revealing blunt yellow teeth.

"All right," I said, "I'm willing to concede on that. You say I'm trespassing, then I am. But I have business here."

"With who?"

"First off, can I ask your name?"

He looked startled. "My name is no affair of yours."

"Hear, hear!" agreed one of the frost giants behind him. "That's the way, Suttung, give him nothing."

I nearly snorted with laughter.

The captain of the guard, Suttung, wheeled round and clouted the other frost giant with the flat of his issgeisl blade.

"Dimwit!" he cried. "Next time think before you open your mouth."

The other frost giant, rubbing his head, took a moment to work out what he'd done wrong, then cringed with shame.

"Well now… Suttung, is it?" I said. "I was wondering if Bergelmir's in."

"What if he is?" Suttung puffed out his chest, hoping to regain some of the authority his subordinate had lost for him.

"I want a word with him. I'd like to parley."

"Parley?" Suttung frowned. "You come here with guns, yet all you wish to do is talk? Forgive me if I find that hard to believe."

"I understand your suspicion, but the guns are just a precaution. Face it, you wouldn't turn up on the doorstep at Asgard unarmed, would you? But look at us. Only six of us, and there's three times as many of you guys here and thousands more within those walls. We're obviously no threat. We'd be crazy to think we were. Therefore you have to accept that what I'm saying is true. It stands to reason."

Suttung tried to look sly and knowing, which for the average frostie did not come naturally. "This could all be some trick. Some clever ploy. Odin is a cunning one."

"Nah, you're thinking of Loki there, mate, not Odin. But it is on the All-Father's behalf that we've come. I'd very much like an audience with Bergelmir, in Odin's name."

"And what if mighty Bergelmir does not desire an audience with you?"

"Oh he will," I said. "Just give him this message. Tell him, 'Hval the Bald's a lot shorter than he used to be.' Coming from a human, that ought to tweak his todger."

Minutes passed. Then the frost giant that Suttung had sent off with my message returned, and not long after that the six of us were being escorted through Utgard. The city guard formed a tight phalanx around us, and every so often there'd be a spot of jostling, an "accidental" jab with an elbow, an attempt to trip one of us up with a carelessly trailing weapon haft. None of us rose to it, we kept our cool, and soon enough the frost giants got bored of trying to provoke us. It was no fun if we didn't react.

Utgard really was a marvel. I hated to be so impressed by it, but I was. The place had everything you might have expected to find in a medium-size metropolis, all the amenities — shops, workplaces, plazas, accommodation — and every last bit of it constructed from ice. Ice walls, ice windows, ice furniture, ice tools. I saw a fishmonger's shop, his goods laid out in front keeping fresh on ice trays. I saw jotun kids, tall as me, playing with dolls of ice. I saw municipal statues, ice sculptures far larger and more intricate than any I'd ever seen made by human hands. A snowball was lobbed at me, chips of ice scraped up off the ground and compacted together by some frostie showing off to his mates how much he despised anyone from Asgard. It stung, but I shrugged it off.

Finally we reached a citadel, a palatial igloo-shaped building whose sides were studded with millions of ice crystals, creating a dazzling diamante effect. Liberace and Dolly Parton would have felt right at home here. Inside there was more of the frou-frou architecture and design: spindly columns carved in rising spirals, skeletal staircases that curved and arched and seemed to have no purpose other than just to be there, and ceilings with shapes suspended from them that resembled either snail shells or, if you had a mind to it, dog turds. There were also large numbers of…

"Chops, what do you call those carvings on the walls?"

"Ice friezes?" suggested Chopsticks.

"I know it does, but — "

"No, friezes. Ice friezes."

"Ohhh."

"Quiet, humans!" barked Suttung. "No talking."

Some of the friezes depicted great jotuns throughout history, heroes and leaders in suitably noble and dramatic stances. Others showed frost giants and Aesir in battle. Still others were unflattering portraits of Jotunheim's Public Enemy Number One, Thor. Thor, very overweight, with boss eyes, man-boobs, and a tiddly little Mjolnir held at crotch level. Thor going toe-to-toe with some frost giant or other and looking like he was getting the worst of the fight, even though I was pretty sure he'd never actually lost any of his legendary clashes with the jotuns. Thor lying face down, comatose, surrounded by empty drinking vessels, with a puddle of what could only be urine seeping out from under him. It was a crude, tub-thumping display of propaganda; part of me wished Thor could be here to see it, and part of me was relieved he wasn't.

A throne chamber at the heart of the building was where Bergelmir was waiting for us. He was perched on a dais with wife Leikn by his side, and I could tell he'd thought long and hard about how he should be posed when we were brought in. He'd settled on Broodingly Contemplative — legs akimbo, chin on fist, free hand toying with an ice dagger.

The room itself was packed with frost giants, and our escort had to shove through the crowd to get to the dais. More frost giants entered behind us, and even more stood on the gallery that ran round the chamber at first-floor height. The mood was distinctly hostile, which was no big surprise, but I tried not to let it faze me. In prison I'd been good at defusing tension. I could surely put that same skill into practice here.

"Ah yes, you," Bergelmir said, glaring at me. "Give me one good reason why I shouldn't gut you with this knife, right here, right now, and strangle you with your own innards."

To judge by the mutterings all around, the frosties could give him several good reasons why he should.

"Yeah, nice to see you again too, Bergelmir," I said. "Glad you survived that glacier getting blown up."

"Don't try your blandishments on me, human scum. There's no love lost between us."

"Okay, so I admit we didn't part as the best of friends last time. But that wasn't my fault, really, was it? I didn't ask to fight a duel with one of you lot, and I certainly didn't expect to win."

"That you did win is all that's keeping me from ordering your immediate execution. Yours and your associates'."

"I appreciate it. To be honest, I've been counting on it. I sensed — and if I'm wrong about this, please say so — but I sensed that in some strange way, in spite of everything, you quite admire me."

Bergelmir laughed, once, sharply.

"Maybe not admire, then," I said, "but perhaps respect? By frost giant standards I did well. You people put a premium on courage in battle and ruthlessness, and that's what I showed."

"True," said Bergelmir. "I would go further and say you have a callous disregard for your opposition, and not only that but an insanity inside you that comes to the fore in combat. A blind berserker rage. Would you agree with such a description?"

"I might, at a pinch."

"Which makes you exceedingly dangerous, not least since you've aligned yourself with our longstanding adversaries the Aesir. And now here you are, in our very midst, surrounded, at our mercy. Hmmm. Would I be wrong in thinking this is a perfect chance to dispose of a very irksome enemy combatant? Whatever your aim in coming here and surrendering yourself to us, it seems too good an opportunity to pass up, eh?"

"He must die," Leikn hissed at her husband's ear. "They all must."

"It's a reasonable point, Leikn," I said, "and a fella should always listen to his missus." I looked back to Bergelmir. "My main objection is that you have no idea what I've come offering. Aren't you just a little bit curious to know what it is I'm after? I would be, if I was in your shoes. If you wore shoes. I'd be asking myself, 'What's this bloke want from me? He's put himself and a bunch of his pals at risk, knowing that even with guns they wouldn't last long against this many jotuns — so why? What's he up to?'"

"Why should it matter to me what you're up to? You're only human. Insignificant. I don't even know your name."

"Gid Coxall. There, now you do. Pleased to meet you."

"It makes no difference," Bergelmir said with a casual wave of the dagger. "You could be called Arsecrack Walrusbreath for all I care."

That raised a titter from the home crowd.

"The fact is," he went on, "while your audacity is to be commended, and your personal courage not in doubt, I have no interest whatsoever in anything you might have to tell me. All that concerns me is the manner of your death, which will be of my choosing."

He stood and made a gesture.

"Seize him! Seize them all!"

And before any of us could react, we'd been grabbed by the frost giants, and our guns had been taken from us, and our arms had been pinned behind our backs, and all of a sudden the situation wasn't looking too clever any more.