The Age of Odin - James Lovegrove [109]
I scanned both ways. There were watchtowers positioned at intervals all along the battlements, and other sets of steps that gave access up here. Already I could see sentries venturing out from the next watchtower but one, heading for us. There'd be more joining them before too long. I imagined Bergelmir had been informed by now that the delegation from Asgard had, for reasons best known to themselves, betrayed his trust and gone rogue. He'd be hopping mad and sending out every armed man he had with orders to bring back our cocks on sticks.
We had minutes left, if that.
I looked out over the battlements' sharp crenellations and saw a sight that gladdened my heart. But only a little.
The Valkyries were skimming towards us across the ice on their snowmobiles. They'd be at the stronghold's edge in seconds.
Thing was, we were two hundred metres up, and they were down there, and a crevasse yawned between us and them.
The Valkyries were coming to the rescue, but there wasn't actually anything practical they could do to get us out of this shitstorm.
Forty-Three
The good news - there was some - was that Sleipnir's rotors were starting to turn. Jensen and Thwaite must have clocked our predicament and recognised that an emergency airborne exfiltration was our best and probably only hope.
The downside of the good news was that it would take time to get the Chinook in the air. Wokkas couldn't just spring up from a standing start. Engines had to cycle, everything had to be running smoothly and all tickety-boo before a great goliath like that could lift off. The bigger the aircraft, the more of a warm-up it needed to get going. However frantically the pilots were prepping in the cockpit, Sleipnir could not be rushed.
Steady on, said those slowly speeding up rotors. All in good time. I'm going as fast as I can.
"Not fast enough, you bugger," I growled under my breath.
"Gid!" Paddy called out. "I'm dry. What're the options?"
"This way. We make for the gate."
We scuttled along the battlements, arriving at the first watchtower at roughly the same time as the sentries from the next watchtower along did. Basically it was a covered platform that jutted out from the wall, over the crevasse. There, we and the two sentries engaged. Backdoor's Browning burped its last, killing one of them. I snatched up the dead sentry's issgeisl and ran it through his mate, who looked startled, as if he couldn't work out how a human could handle a frost giant handweapon so well.
"I had practice," I told him, and the issgeisl made a great wet slurp as I yanked it out of his belly, taking some of his innards with it.
On we went. The Valkyries were directly beneath us, shadowing our progress on their snowmobiles. Rendezvousing with them at the gate was the only strategy that made any sense, but while they'd have no trouble getting there, we had a gauntlet to run. Plus, Suttung and his guardsmen were right on our tails.
Awesome.
But seeing as the only alternative was to surrender, and the frosties were hardly in a mood for taking prisoners, what else could we do?
Another pair of sentries blocked our path, and a quick check confirmed what I feared. Everyone was out of ammo. Backdoor's pistol shot had been our collective last.
I took point, meeting the first sentry with my issgeisl already swinging. He parried with his broadsword, then aimed a thrust at my chest. I sidestepped and brought the issgeisl's axe end up between his legs.
His eyes bulged, his face registered stunned amazement, and then came a scream that would have made even Germaine Greer wince in sympathy. Frankly my next blow, using the spear end to slit his throat from ear to ear, was an act of compassion.
The second sentry was on me before the first had fallen. He chopped at me with his tomahawk, and I only avoided radical facial rearrangement by bending backwards like a contortionist. I collided with the rim of the battlements, completely off-kilter, in no fit state to block or duck his follow-up shot. His look said it all. A-ha!