The Age Of Odin

Seventy

There was a twinkle in Cy's eye as he spoke.

"Yes, I was the one fucking with you, not Backdoor," he said. "It was me. Me, the black guy. Just because someone's black don't mean he's above suspicion. In't we supposed to be colour-blind these days? Positive discrimination's as bad as the negative kind. No reason to think my skin tone makes me whiter than white."

He chortled at his own wit.

"Mrs Keener hired me to be an agitator," he went on. "To be a — how'd you put it, Mrs K?"

"A destabilising influence."

"That's it, a destabilising influence. Just to make her victory that bit more likely. Sow a little uncertainty here, start a little infighting there, classic psy-ops stuff. It wasn't hard to get recruited to Odin's army. No one was exactly vetting us, were they? You turned up, you were in, that was more or less it. Odin was grateful just to have the warm bodies. My job, my real job, once I'd joined up, was to gain someone's confidence, someone influential. Get close to them, then keep them off-balance, off their game."

"If the head's unsteady, the whole body wobbles," said Mrs Keener.

"Me," I croaked. "I was the head."

"Got it in one," said Cy. "I wasn't going to try for Odin himself. Too big a target, and too remote. Hard to get his trust, harder still to manipulate him. So I started on Thor. Kept challenging his authority, antagonising him, pissing him off. Not a painless tactic on my side, but it seemed the way to go… until you came along. Soon as I met you, I knew you were the one. You had that take-charge look about you. You were a newcomer, but you were going places. Plus, we had similar backgrounds, we were on the same wavelength. We had a bond going from the start. You liked me. That made you the perfect mark."

"The perfect chump, more like."

"Same difference. Look, d'you really want me to spell out everything I did, how I made it all work? Because it feels like I'm monologuing here, and I know you've got stuff you'd much rather be getting on with."

I was about to tell him that he could happily shut up because I wasn't interested in hearing anything more that came out of his lying fucking gob.

But then I spotted something out of the corner of my eye.

Movement.

On top of one of the castle turrets.

A figure making stiff, halting progress across the damaged roof up there.

A man, searching for a vantage point, a direct view of the scaffold.

A man with a rifle.

I directed my gaze back on Cy. Kept my expression as straight as I could. Poker face on.

"No, you go right ahead," I said. "Spill it all. I know you're dying to. Explain to everyone how clever you are and how stupid I've been."

Bergelmir gave a growl. "Must we do this? The day's wasting, and I yearn to plunge this blade into the killer of my wife."

"Just a few minutes more," Mrs Keener said to him soothingly. "My boy Cy hoodwinked Gid in fine style, and it's only right he gets his chance to gloat."

"Yeah," Cy agreed. "Why not? So I made myself your right-hand man, Gid. Your sidekick. Robin to your Batman. We had those chats about my childhood and my poor old granddad getting irradiated and losing his memory. Which, by the way, was all true. I might have embellished the tough-upbringing stuff a little, for added authenticity. But the basics is all real."

"You were never in the army, though, were you?"

"Nope, that I did make up," he admitted.

"You referred to your granddad as a squaddie. That should have tipped me off. No one who's actually been a squarebasher uses the word squaddie. Only the tabloids do."

I darted a glance to the castle. The man with the rifle was settling himself down on a flattish section of the roof, taking a sniper's prone stance. Nobody but me appeared to have noticed him. The crowd had their backs to the castle, and their attention, anyway, was focused on the drama unfolding on the scaffold. And everyone on the scaffold had their attention focused on me and Cy.

How long this state of affairs would continue was unclear, but I would try and keep it going long enough for the rifle man to line up his shot and take it.

I knew who he was now. I'd recognised him by the white bandage around his head.

Heimdall.

Risen from his sickbed. Recovered from the injuries inflicted on him from afar by Jormungand. Tooled up and out for blood.

He'd been overlooked. Mrs Keener had presumed he was out of action for the duration and had not bothered to post a guard over the field hospital. She'd been overconfident. It was a lapse, and now she was going to pay the penalty.

"Okay, so I did slip up there," Cy said. "But not too badly, and in every other respect I was flawless. Starting the firefight in Utgard, that was my first big win. Chopsticks died, and your plans for an alliance with the frosties were scuppered."

"You could have got yourself killed too, though," I said.

"No chance. Mrs Keener had given me an emergency code phrase, something I could say that'd let the frost giants know I was under Loki's protection so they wouldn't touch me. An oath sworn on Ymir's bones. Whenever a frost giant hears 'by Ymir's bones,' he's got to pay attention and respond."

"It's true," said Bergelmir. "A jotun must always attend carefully to any plea that invokes my father."

"Then by Ymir's bones, cut me down from here," I said.

"Within limits," Bergelmir added with a grim laugh.

"That was my Get Out Of Jail Free card," Cy said. "Only, I didn't have to play it because Sleipnir turned up in the nick of time. Chopsticks's death started the rot. You were rattled, and the other guys began to wonder about your leadership abilities. So I just had to keep needling and gnawing at them. Poor old Backdoor was the easiest to get a rise out of. Closet racist. You learn to recognise the type. They don't need to say anything. You can just tell. I knew he'd blurt out something nasty eventually, and I knew it would piss you off and drive a wedge further between the two of you. You already had him in the frame for what happened to Chopsticks. Now you were completely convinced he was the bad banana in the bunch. It meant you were constantly looking over your shoulder at him and your head wasn't fully in the game."

My arms had begun to ache from taking the weight of my body. My head was aching too, with the knowledge of how Cy had played me and used me. The fucker. He'd get his.

I dared to check on Heimdall again. He was sighting carefully. I hoped he was as good a shot as Freya. I suspected he might be.

"Baz buying it on top of Fenrir, that was just my good luck," Cy went on. "You blamed Backdoor for that when he hadn't done nothing. It was just like he said: Baz's own fault. An accident. Casualty of war."

"And Paddy. Your argument with him. You weren't trying to talk him out of deserting, were you? You were talking him into it."

"Give the man a big hand. Paddy was in two minds about quitting when he came to me. Wanted my opinion. Wanted to be given a reason to stay. He was surprised when I told him I thought bailing was a good idea."

"But he left angry at you."

"Only 'cause I wouldn't join him. I said I respected you too much to abandon you in your hour of need."

"Ha ha."

"Yeah. He didn't like being made to feel more ashamed of himself than he already was."

"Didn't stop him going, though."

"I told him I thought he had a fair chance of making it. It was the encouragement he needed. He went and rounded up some others, some kindred spirits. He believed me when I said the frost giants would definitely let them through. We all know how well that went."

"Right under my nose all along," I said. "You. It was you. I could kick myself."

"Yeah, you could, if your legs wasn't all tied up."

"Don't be upset, Gid," said Mrs Keener. "There's a noble tradition in Asgard of people being blind to treachery in their midst. Odin held me close to his bosom far longer than he oughtta have. It was his fatal flaw."

"Plus," said Cy, "I'm good. I have a knack for subversion, it seems."

Mrs Keener was beaming with pride. "Yeah. I wish I could say I taught Cy everything he knows about fifth-column work and deviousness and being the joker in the pack, but I can't. The kid's a natural. Soon as I found him I knew he was my guy."

"How did you find him?" I asked. "Want ad? Open audition?"

"Weren't hard. I'm Loki. I have an instinct, an affinity, for shady characters. I can sniff them out a mile off. Washington's full of 'em, I don't need to tell you that. I'm in my element there, like a hog in a wallow. But I'm drawn to them wherever I go, and Cy so happened to be visiting the States not so long back. Florida, wasn't it?"

"Disneyworld," said Cy. "Orlando in the snow in't much fun, but they're offering great package deals. Not enough people going through the turnstiles, 'cause of the weather."

"And there I was too, shilling for the Sunshine State's tourist board. 'The citrus fruits may be frozen on the trees, but come to Florida anyway. The attractions are as great as ever.' Cy was there when I was doing a press tour at the House of Mouse, in the crowd. I was shaking hands with Mickey and Donald, but I was aware there was somebody nearby who I felt could be very useful to me. I had my secret service detail take him to one side, and the rest is history."

"What did she bribe you with?" I asked Cy. "Please don't tell me it was just money."

"'Course it was money," he sneered. "What else is there worth having? Masses of money. Tons of it, taken from some billion-dollar black budget slush fund. Money that means I can get my mum off the estate and have a car that'll make the drug pushers' cars look like Volkswagen fucking Beetles. Money that'll make me better than them, better than types like the bastard who gave me this." He gestured at his scar. "Money that'll give me a decent life and keep the authorities off my back and stop me ending up just another broken-Britain waster with no prospects and nothing to show for myself. Lottery-win money, in return for a few weeks' work, a bit of play-acting. 'Hell yes,' I said. Didn't even have to think twice about it."

"A condo in Miami too, don't forget that," said Mrs Keener.

"Yeah, my very own place in the sun. For when the Fimbulwinter's over and the climate goes back to normal. US citizenship thrown in as well. Everything, Gid. The total package. The boy from Bermondsey, all set to start a new life as a high-roller in America, a player. Sweet."

"You must be so proud of yourself."

"Oh, I am, mate, trust me."

"But it's tainted money. Blood money. You'll never enjoy spending it."

"Who the fuck are you to judge me?" he spat. "What'd you come here for, if it wasn't to earn cash for killing? If that in't blood money, I dunno what is."

"I'm a soldier. It's what I do. You're a bottom-feeding scumbag. There's a difference."

"Yeah? Well, if so, I'm a scumbag who's standing here a free man, on the winning side, while you, soldier boy, are stuck there like a fly in a web, waiting to have your fucking lungs pulled out. So much for principles, eh? Where's that got you?"

"Really!" said Bergelmir with an exasperated grunt. "Isn't it time the bickering ended and we got down to business?"

"Bergelmir has a point," said Mrs Keener. "Much as I love the sight of two grown men waving their manhoods at each other, I think we need to carry on with the show. There's folk here standing in the cold who want this to be over with. Let's not keep 'em on tenterhooks any longer."

"At last!" Bergelmir took up position behind me.

I peered up at the castle.

Come on, Heimdall, get a bloody wriggle on. Now or never.

"You're the famous chatterbox, Gid," said Mrs Keener. "No parting words? No last pearls of wisdom before the knife goes in?"

"Yeah." I was looking at the Norns. As one, Urd, Verdande and Skuld turned their heads towards the castle and back again. They knew. Their shared secret smile told the tale.

"Go on, then. Enlighten us all."

"Don't miss, Heimdall."

I didn't say it loud. If his ears were back to their usual, ultra-sensitive selves, he would hear me, and if they weren't, it didn't matter.

Lines of puzzlement creased Mrs Keener's forehead, rapidly morphing into ridges of surprise as the truth dawned and her eyebrows went up.

Then a bullet smacked into her face, and she had no forehead at all.