The Age Of Odin

Sixty-Five

The snow and the din of battle prevented us from hearing it until it was almost on top of us. It descended through the cloud cover, pushing out a great grey blister in the overcast's underside before bursting through. The size of a naval frigate, it was suspended in the air by ten gimbal-mounted fans, each at least twenty metres across. Its prow was peaked and its aft bulbous, and its hull boasted dozens of multidirectional automated machine guns which swivelled and traversed impressively. The name Nagelfar was painted along its keel in ten-foot-tall capitals, and as it swept overhead, passing across the castle, its fans chopped spirals in the falling snow, leaving white vortices in its wake.

Everyone stopped in their tracks and stared up at it. You couldn't not. For a time the battle halted as the immense vessel sailed over. Its shadow brought temporary respite from the blizzard, although the downdraught from its fans kicked up so much of the fallen snow that a whiteout followed immediately afterwards. When that had cleared, the thing could no longer be seen, although the dizzying drone of its engines could still be heard.

I dashed for the battlements and sprinted around to get a view of where the aircraft had gone. Freya met me as I stood gazing out.

Nagelfar was coming to rest beside Yggdrasil, not far from the slumped hulk of Jormungand and the scattered wreckage of Sleipnir, and within sight of the gutted Fenrir. It dwarfed them all, even the World Tree. It settled on its undercarriage like some leviathan queen taking her throne. The fans slowed and the fog of loose snow they'd thrown up from the nearby trees drifted down to earth.

Doors slid open all along its hull and ramps unfurled, telescoping out to touch the ground. Familiar shapes appeared in the doorways: the bulky outlines of tanksuits. They started down the ramps, and as they emerged into the daylight I saw they weren't quite the JOTUNs and SURTs I remembered. They trundled rather than walked. In place of legs they now had wheels, three on each side in triangle formation, yoked by caterpillar tracks. The heads were better armoured, sunk into the humps of the shoulders so that they protruded less, and instead of faceplates there were now visor slits. I recalled Mrs Keener on Bifrost saying that the tanksuit designs had been given an overhaul and an upgrade. Here, then, were the Mark II versions. Looking even deadlier and more fit for purpose than the originals. Oh happy day.

They rolled towards the castle, a good fifty of them all told, swishing through the slush and mud left behind by the frost giants' tramping feet.

I looked at Freya.

"You know I said Loki won't win?"

She nodded.

"I may have changed my mind."

Luckily, she thought I wasn't being serious.

I totally was.

Quickly as they could, Vali, Vidar and Tyr clambered inside our low-tech tanksuits, while Skadi was tasked with the mission of going to the troll pens and letting the unsanitary beasts loose.

Odin's sons battered their way through the frost giants to engage with the oncoming JOTUNs and SURTs outside. At the same time Skadi abseiled off the battlements on a rope, snapped on her skis, and scooted off. The frost giants, meanwhile, redoubled their efforts. The appearance of Nagelfar on the scene gave them an added boost, not that they really needed it. They'd already been shitting on us. Now, with Loki's third big monster-machine freshly arrived, they were shitting on us from an even greater height than before. Our forces were divided. We were taking flak on two fronts. The frosties scented just how badly we were in trouble and fought harder than ever to take the castle.

Vali, Vidar and Tyr did their very best out among the tanksuits. The JOTUNs and SURTs took a pasting. Improved or not, they met their match in the form of three righteously pissed-off gods in gnome-made iron outerwear. The tanksuits bundled in with their freeze rays and flamethrowers firing full throttle, and the Aesir knocked them back. It was a thing to see — a tanksuit spinning helplessly through the air, whacked clean off its wheelbase by a swipe from a clunky, metal-sheathed arm. One JOTUN got pounded into the ground, almost literally. Bashed on the bonce repeatedly until its wheels were submerged in the muddy soil. A SURT ended up so dented and misshapen, it was barely recognisable. The man inside was presumably no better off.

Then the trolls entered the fray. At least, most of them did. A couple showed more sense than I'd have credited a troll with and hurried off into the forest, avoiding the battle altogether. The rest, however, true to form, headed right into the midst of the fighting. Because the JOTUNs and SURTs looked to be the nastiest players on the pitch, naturally the trolls went for them rather than Odin's sons. Bursts of flame scorched the trolls' bodies, and subzero beams zapped them, and some fell, but the others piled on into the tanksuits, batting them aside, clobbering them, picking them up and tossing them around.

For a few minutes — a few brief, precious minutes — it looked like the battle outside the castle might just go our way. Between Odin's sons and the trolls, the JOTUNs and SURTs had their hands full. They were taking casualties by the truckload. Their superior firepower (and icepower) wasn't getting them anywhere. They'd come on like a tsunami, only to crash against a granite cliff of resistance, that shuddered from the shock but withstood.

Their actions became hesitant, unsure. I could imagine the operators inside yelling like crazy into their comms sets, asking one another what the hell was going on, how come these motherfuckers weren't breaking like they should, why were three low-rent Iron Man knockoffs and a bunch of jumbo-size caveman-type goons getting the better of the might and majesty of US military knowhow? On paper this should have been a rout. So how come the tanksuits were taking all the punishment instead of dishing it out?

I allowed myself to believe that we did stand a chance after all, that Vali, Vidar and Tyr — with the trolls' help — were going to swing things in our favour. The blizzard was dwindling, too, which was also to our advantage. Maybe, maybe…

Then Nagelfar itself got involved, and that was the tipping point. The decisive moment. The final, fateful turning of the tide.

The automated machine guns on its hull swung into play, strafing the battleground. Their accuracy wasn't pinpoint, but damn well as near as. The trolls were first to take the brunt of it. Laser dots suddenly speckled them, like a fluorescent dose of the measles, and then pieces started flying off their bodies. They jerked and flailed, disintegrating under a hail of sabot-cased flechette rounds.

"Christ…" I groaned.

The guns then turned their attention on Vali, Vidar and Tyr. The gnomes' suits of armour stood up to the onslaught. The iron shells became peppered with pockmarks. The flechettes weren't penetrating, but the guns fired so thick and fast, and their volleys were so fiercely concentrated, that their targets were scarcely able to move. In fact, it was all the three gods could do just to stay upright.

This allowed the dozen remaining tanksuits to close in and blast away at them point blank, unimpeded. Ice and flame together battered the gnome armour's surfaces. Superheated and supercooled in several places at once, iron cracked and ruptured. Tyr was the first to die. The tanksuits peeled his armour off him in fragments, exposing him bit by bit to their weapons. It was dismal to watch, and just as dismal to see the same being done to Vali in turn.

Vidar managed to stumble away while his brothers were getting the freeze/burn treatment. He made it back to the castle with the armour falling off his body at every footstep, crumbling away in chunks and flakes until it was just a trail of scrap metal behind him in the snow. His strength was nearly gone as he threw himself across the threshold of one of the breaches. Almost immediately he was in the clutches of frost giants, who hauled him off somewhere, recognising him as a prize, a captive worth taking while he was in no fit state to resist.

Freya and I were still up on the battlements, and by this time I was becoming resigned to the inevitable. So, it seemed, was she. I didn't even bother checking via the walkie-talkie to see how the fighting was going in the castle itself. I didn't want to know. Besides, I could tell by the sounds of battle, or rather the increasing lack of them; gunfire was becoming sporadic and petering out. And now frost giants could be heard singing. An unholy racket, more football terrace chant than actual melody, drifting across the roofless turrets and tumbledown walls. I couldn't make out the words but their sense couldn't have been clearer: face it, losers, we've won.

"Freya…"

"Gid." She gripped my arm, tight. "You did your best. Never doubt that. No one could have done more." Her eyes sparkled like frost under lamplight.

"But we — "

"We tried. But it is Ragnarok. It isn't called the Doom of the Gods for nothing. Victory was never going to be easy."

She was planning on saying more, but frost giants had found us. They approached from both sides along the battlements, much as had happened at Utgard. Freya and I checked how much ammunition we had left — enough for a last little burst of mischief — and then turned back to back.

"Meet you in Gimle," she said over her shoulder.

"Sure thing," I replied. "I'll be the one with the red carnation in my buttonhole and carrying a copy of the Times." Then to the frost giants I said, "All right, boys. Come and have a go if you think you're hard enough."

They sneered, snarled, and charged.

They were just metres away when clusters of brilliant little laser dots painted the battlements between them and us, swirling on the snow-capped stonework. Wisely, they halted. The laser dots then swept upwards to mark Freya and me.

I braced myself, but no flechette rounds came. The message was clear. Don't move a muscle, or they'll be cleaning you up with a mop and bucket.

As we stood there pinned in place, a fur-clad figure exited Nagelfar and strode towards the castle, passing briskly between the last few JOTUNs and SURTs, which backed away respectfully.

"Well, howdy there," the figure called up, reaching the base of the castle wall. "And how're you two doing this fine day?"

"Smashing," I said. "And you?"

"Oh now, let me see. Almost all of the folks I hate the most are now dead. Me and my jotun buddies appear to have conquered Asgard. And Midgard's official biggest pain in the bee-hind is currently stuck with more laser sights trained on him than a sow's got teats."

Mrs Keener beamed at me, happy as a bride on her wedding day.

"All in all, I'd say I'm just peachy, wouldn't you?"