The Age of Odin - James Lovegrove [122]
The door slammed. The limo revved and reversed rumblingly along Bifrost. At the far end of the bridge it U-turned and tore off down the road, snow spewing from its tyres. We watched its taillights fishtail into the dark, two red eyes shrinking 'til they were gone.
"Baseball metaphor," I said, as the echoes of its engine noise faded. "Anybody here speak baseball? Because I'm drawing a total blank."
The Aesir and Vanir, however, weren't up for a laugh. They turned and wandered away in dribs and drabs. Freya was one of the first to go. As she passed me, she said in a conspiratorial murmur, "Pity. It would have been a good, clean kill."
I winked, but she pretended not to notice.
Forty-Nine
Soon there was just me left, and Heimdall. I went and checked on him. He was sitting in the doorway of his guardhouse and looked better than he had a few minutes earlier. Starting to recover from the effort of blowing the Gjallarhorn, which was now back hanging on the wall.
"All right?"
Heimdall gave a weary nod. "In a way, I'm relieved," he said. "Ragnarök has begun. Finally it's begun. The onus of knowing that it was coming, knowing that one day it would fall to me to announce it - this sat heavily upon my shoulders. But now the moment has come and gone, and I feel... uplifted. How strange."
"It's not so strange. Nothing worse than the wait before an action. You're dreading what's ahead and you're glad when it all finally goes off."
"True."
"So what happens next? What's the order of play? When do the actual hostilities commence? Any idea?"
Heimdall shrugged. "Loki will marshal his forces and attack at some point in the near future. I'm listening out for it even now. As soon as I detect enemy activity, however faint and remote it is, I will raise the alarm. As yet, I've heard nothing untoward."
"Well, he's only just left, hasn't he? Let's give the bloke a chance to get his act together. You're sure you're going to be okay?"
"I think so."
I said goodnight and made my way back along the drive towards the castle and the cabins beyond. Bed beckoned. Some kip was definitely in order. There wouldn't be much of it in the days ahead, I imagined.
Along the way I caught up with Bragi, who was straggling behind the rest of the Aesir. He was a slow walker, the head-down, trudging type. I fell in step.
"Few days back, that thing about the poem..." I said to him. "Sorry about that. I shouldn't have slagged you off."
He gave a not-to-worry shrug. "I have a thick skin, Gid, as a poet must. How else can he survive the jeers and insults that sometimes greet his work? If there's anyone whose feelings you should be concerned about, it's Loki. You were unwise to antagonise him, you know. He is not one to be trifled with."
"Who was trifling? I meant to kill the fucker stone dead. How was I supposed to know a bullet in the chest would only piss him off?"
"Perhaps no one anticipated you would take such precipitous action."
"Even so, it's like there's a bunch of rules here I don't understand, probably because nobody's seen fit to tell me what they are. I mean, you're gods, but you're not immortal, but you can't die 'til the time comes for you to die. Have I got that right?"
"More or less."
"Well, how does that make sense?"
"It makes sense if you stop thinking of us as deities as such."
"And what do I think of you as instead?"
Bragi frowned deeply, looking inward. "Odin would explain this far better than I."
"Have a go."
"We are... myths. Do you understand what I mean by that?"
"Stories."
"If you like. Bigger than that, but yes, basically stories. We are created things, fabrications, and we're aware of it. We know full well where and how we originated. We are incarnations of the tales that