James Lovegrove - The Age Of Odin (15 page)

I'd ridden one of these things in Canada, and they were pretty straightforward to drive, although rear-heavy and liable to fishtail if you didn't keep your wits about you and a tight rein on the controls. I sped off across powder snow that was streaked blue and pink with shadows and dawn sunlight. With a hundred and fifty horsepower beneath me and the speedo nudging thirty, the castle soon receded behind me. I kept glancing over my shoulder but no doors or windows opened and nobody came charging out looking all startled and irate. Then, all at once, the grey walls and stout turrets were gone, swallowed by a screen of trees.

That was the easy part. Halfway to Bifrost, I swerved off the drive and made for the woods. Heimdall had claimed he wasn't bothered about who or what left the grounds of Asgard Hall, only who or what entered. But if somebody from the castle radioed him in his guardhouse and told him to halt the miscreant on the snowmobile coming his way, by any means necessary, then I'd be heading straight into Kalashnikov fire, and I had no great urge to do that. The plan was I would track perpendicular to the drive for a mile or thereabouts, then resume course until I arrived at the gorge, which I'd follow to where it shallowed out. It must do at some point. After that, I would navigate by the sun, bearing south until I hit a proper road. The tricky bit would be maintaining a more or less straight trajectory through the woods. The rest: piece of piss.

Trees whooshed by on either side. I assumed "posting" position, crouching with knees bent to absorb the juddering from the bumpy, uneven terrain. Snow fanned out behind, kicked up by the caterpillar tread. Blissful heat oozed into my hands from the grip warmers. I felt a flood of exhilaration. I'd done it! I'd escaped! And no one had tried to stop me or anything. A clean getaway with no interference, no collateral damage. I could hardly believe it. Shortly I would be back in civilisation, or what passed for civilisation round these parts. Road signs, fences, dry-stone walls, barns, farmhouses, and not a single self-styled "god" in sight. Gid Coxall was a free man again. And a man with a hell of a tale to tell, if he could only persuade the right ears to listen to it.

Something moved to one side of me. A corner-of-the-eye flicker: a white shape, darting between two trees.

Or not.

It was just a clump of snow tumbling from branches.

I roared on.

Something moved again, there to my right. I had the impression of size, bulk, a bent-over figure hurrying along, shambling but somehow still keeping pace with the snowmobile.

I slowed and stood up straight on the footboards, peering cautiously.

Just trees. Just snow. No figure anywhere. The lenses of the goggles, I told myself, were distorting my vision, creating peripheral phantoms. I hunched down and resumed original speed. The snowmobile's skis sliced smooth grooves. I'd covered my mile, I estimated. I executed a ninety degree turn, heading for the line of the gorge. The machine rumbled obediently. This was good. This was fun.

It reared up directly in my path - this thing, this shaggy white
thing
, ten feet tall.

Polar bear
, I thought, even as I yanked sharply on the handlebars to avoid collision. How or why a polar bear would be at large in northern England, I had no idea, but that was the only explanation that made sense. I caught fleeting glimpses of white fur, claws, teeth in a red, red mouth. Then the snowmobile tipped over. On its side it skidded along the ground, with me sliding helplessly in its wake, on my side too. It slammed into a tree belly first, and an instant later I slammed into it, putting a big dent in the engine shroud. The wind was driven out of me. I lay in a daze, tangled up with the snowmobile, wheezing.

Then I remembered.
Polar bear!
And I was up on my feet in a flash, and running, running, sprinting as fast as I possibly could, because
fucking polar bear!

And it was coming after me. Lolloping, galloping footfalls, gaining. I didn't dare look around.
Just move your arse, Gid
. I dug deep, pounding through the snow, which accumulated on my boots and made each step heavier than the last. Heimdall. That was my best chance. My only chance. Head for the guardhouse and hope - pray - Heimdall saw me coming and saw what was pursuing me and opened up with the AK and blew the beast to kingdom come. Otherwise I was bear breakfast.

But I couldn't outrun it. I knew that. Didn't want to admit it but I knew. The bear was right behind me now. Inches behind. I could hear its snorting breaths. Feel, even, the air it was displacing with its impetus, the pressure wave of its immense physical mass. And I was losing speed. My ankle was yelling in distress. My ribs were sending out the red alert.

A swipe from one paw clipped my calf and upended me. I crashed and rolled. The beast was on top of me. I looked up, and couldn't comprehend what I saw.

Not a bear.

Something else. I didn't know what.

But whatever it was, it was worse than any bear. Way worse.

Fifteen

Abominable snowmen.

They grunted and cavorted around me. Some prodded me with clawed fingertips. Others shoved their faces into mine and snarled. Worst. Halitosis. Ever.

I couldn't move. Spreadeagled on the floor of a huge ice cavern, with my hands and feet bound. Bound by manacles of ice. I'd been held down and water had been poured repeatedly over the ends of my limbs until it froze them to the spot, each under a small rough glistening igloo. The cold burned. If not for my gloves and boots, I'd have been suffering extreme frostbite by now, the kind that ends up costing you fingers and toes.

And still the abominable snowmen, the yetis, these oversized white-furred gorilla men, leered and stamped and yammered. I was some sort of trophy, something for them to crow over and beat their breasts about. A prize. An object of triumph and derision. One of them, to show his contempt, even squatted over me, spread his buttocks and farted full-on in my face - and if I'd thought their breath was bad, it was nothing compared to what came out the other end. I gagged for several minutes and believed air would never smell sweet again.

The whole situation was bizarre, deranged, beyond all normal parameters, yet oddly I was taking it in my stride. Maybe if I'd been thinking clearly I would have been able to see the sheer
wrongness
of it all, and then I would no doubt have begun screaming like a loon. But I was dazed and it all seemed like a bit of a dream, from the moment I trashed the snowmobile onward. Being carried for miles slung over the yeti's shoulders, bumping along across an arctic wasteland similar to the Canadian tundra in winter, descending through the terminus of a glacier into a network of ice tunnels and caves, entering this cavern with its strangely delicate-looking ribbed and scooped surfaces, being manacled with freezing water, the lot of it, nothing more than a fevered delusion.

All at once, the abominable snowmen stopped their gibbering and monkeying about. Someone had entered the cavern, an imposing presence whose arrival commanded respect and hush. I craned my neck. Another yeti. They were all of them tall, none less than ten feet and many taller, but this one the largest by far, fully twice my own height. The others parted ranks to let him through. He was obviously the CO here, the big cheese, the abominable snowman-in-charge. He hulked over to me, long arms swinging. He circuited my sprawled body a couple of times, appraising. Then he bent down and took a long, hard sniff, running his pug nose across me from top to toe, spending longest at my neck and groin.

"Good thing I remembered to shower this morning," I quipped.

The boss snowman acted as though I hadn't spoken. Raising his huge head, he poked me with a knuckle. He probed, soon finding where I had been injured. First my shoulder, still tender from the dislocation. Then his finger moved to my ribs, the broken pair, gentle at first, then digging firmly in. He might as well have been using an electric drill. I gritted my teeth. It took everything I had not to gasp and cry out.

Finally, he stood.

"Not in perfect condition," he said, "but fit enough. He'll do."

They could speak. The yetis could talk.

It was a hideous sound, like gravel and sand going round in a cement mixed, but it was still unmistakably speech.

"The stink of the Aesir is on him," the head yeti went on. "Odin has touched him. Frigga too, and the Valkyries. And the hated Thor."

Thor's name got the rest very worked up. They yowled and hooted in a cats' chorus of disapproval. The echoes batted around among the icy stalactites that hung from the cavern ceiling.

"He is one of their footsoldiers for sure," their leader declared, as the ruckus died down. "Hence we are more than justified in our treatment of him. So then, who will his punisher be? Who volunteers?"

Every hand in the room went up. "Me!" they all cried. "Me, great and fearsome Bergelmir! Pick me!" It reminded me of feeding time at the zoo.

Bergelmir, the boss, bared fangs in a broad yellow grin. "I can choose only one. Hmm. Which should it be?" He stroked the matted fur on his chest. "Hval the Bald," he decided. "You have fought bravely in recent times. You deserve this."

The chosen yeti jumped for joy. "Thank you, oh thank you, Bergelmir. I won't disappoint you. The human shall suffer, and suffer mightily."

Some of the others applauded, some just muttered sulkily at not having been the lucky candidate.

Me, I was not liking the sound of any of this, not at all. My dream wasn't going the way it ought to. Where was my lightsaber? Why did I have the horrible feeling that the part of me which kept insisting this wasn't a dream was right?

"Hang on," I said to Bergelmir. "'Punisher'? 'Suffer'? What have I done, exactly? There I was, minding my own business, riding along through the forest. Next thing I know, I'm the prisoner of a bunch of albino apes, and I'm -"

"Frost giants!" Bergelmir bellowed in my face, voice deafening. "We are frost giants, you insolent cretin, not 'apes'!"

"Oh. Okay. Beg pardon. My mistake."

"And as for what you have done - you have consorted with our avowed enemies. You are an ally of the loathed Odin, he who with his brothers slew my father Ymir. He who drowned all of my brethren in our father's blood, a gory inundation only I and my wife escaped. You are his lackey, and as such our vengeance against him and his relatives may rightly be visited upon you."

"Now hang on there a tick, sunshine," I protested. "I'm no ally of Odin's. Honest I'm not. As a matter of fact, I was leaving Asgard Hall when one of you ambushed me. I'm nothing to do with Odin or any of the Aesir. I just happened to end up at their place after a car crash, and I -"

"Silence!" Bergelmir boomed. "I have no wish to hear your lies. I couldn't care less what pathetic grovelling excuses you try to make. The Aesir's scent is upon you. You are marked with it. That is proof enough for me. For centuries the Aesir have hounded and plagued us. Thor, in particular, has been our most implacable foe. His hammer has stove in the skulls of more frost giants than can be counted. Now you must face the wrath of our race, we who were there long before the gods were born, we the descendants of Ymir, my father who was raised and suckled by the primeval cow Audhumla and from whose flesh and bones Midgard itself was formed."

Briefly an image flitted through my head: the valley Abortion and I crossed, the rocks that resembled the remains of a giant...

"But don't worry," Bergelmir continued, his voice softening ever so slightly. "We're not savages. We shan't simply kill you. That would be too crude. Unlike the Aesir, we still have some principles."

"Oh, that's good to hear," I said, dry-mouthed. Any last vague hopes that I was dreaming had vanished like Royal Navy ratings on two-day shore leave. I was here, in this cavern. The frost giants existed. And I was balls-deep in trouble.

"No," said Bergelmir, "you will face Hval the Bald in single combat. If he wins, you will be slaughtered and eaten."

"Terrific," I said. "And if I win?"

"You will be slaughtered and eaten."

I took this on board. "Doesn't strike me as very reasonable," I said.

Another crooked yellow grin from Bergelmir. "Reasonable? No. But, for us, immensely entertaining."

Sixteen

The frost giants shattered my restraints and hauled me to my feet, then retreated to the edges of the cavern, all except Bergelmir and Hval the Bald. Hval lived up to his name, in that the top of his head was completely hairless, although everywhere else he was as fur-covered as the rest of them. Bergelmir clapped his hands, and a female frost giant appeared carrying handweapons, an identical pair of them.

"Thank you, Leikn my dear," Bergelmir said to this floppy-breasted hideosity. His wife.

The weapons looked like an amalgamation of quarterstaff, spear and axe. Nearly eight foot long, they had a thin pointy blade at one end and a flat cleaver-like blade at the other. And they were made out of glass or perspex. Or so I thought until one was placed in my hands.

Ice. They were carved, or moulded, or sculpted, or whatever, out of
ice
.

Well, that's not going to last long, is it?
I thought, tapping the axe end of mine experimentally against the cavern floor.
Shatter at the first impact
.