The Age of Odin - James Lovegrove [125]
"Who have no respect for one's dignity," Thor said, rubbing his buttock in memory of some wound inflicted once upon a time.
"Then we need to patrol this crossing-point," I said. "We site a round-the-clock watch here."
"You think they'll come over again?" said Cy.
"Maybe not. It was a precision strike, a one-off. If I were them I wouldn't hit the same place a second time. But they're not me. They're probably a lot swankier and cockier than me, and they might think if they've got away with it once they can get away with it again, and come in deeper this time. Let's play on that. Let's give them an incentive. Commit a dozen men, and one of Odin's sons - Vali, say - with one of the special pieces of kit the gnomes made for us. Let's see how that pans out."
It panned out pretty well - for us. Two days later the commando unit sneaked in over the border again, at dawn. We'd set up the appearance of basic guard duty near the intersection, a pair of two-man tents whose occupants kept watch on four-hour rotating shifts, not varying their routine one iota. Loki's men tiptoed through the grey light, combat knives drawn. Throat-slashing was on their minds. Easy kills.
Then they were strafed with gunfire from a secondary encampment hidden on high ground further into our territory, and while they were scrambling to their fall-back positions Vali came stomping onto the scene.
The gnomes had provided us a half-dozen suits of armour made of iron, according to the specifications I'd provided. These were no match for the enemy's tanksuits in terms of firepower, mainly because they had none, but they were at least their equal in bulk and density. Each of the contraptions weighed an ounce or so shy of a ton and stood nine feet from boot to head, with a barrel body some fifteen feet in circumference. Only a warrior god could wear one. Only a warrior god had the strength to move the legs with his legs and manipulate the arms with his arms.
Vali, strapped inside the armour, bore down on the startled commandos. They rattled away at him with submachine guns but couldn't put a dent in his inch-thick ironclad hide. Then he was on top of them and started side-swiping them with the armour's fists, which were solid, cannonball-like clubs. Bodies flew. Skulls were crushed.
The remaining commandos saw sense and beat a hasty retreat towards Svartalfheim, but treetop snipers picked them off as they ran. Not one of them made it safely out of range.
"And that, ladies and gentlemen," I said, from an obs post overlooking the kill zone, "is how you do that."
It was a good start. We'd field-tested the gnome-built armour and it worked. Slow and clunky, but it did the trick. And we'd convincingly repulsed a covert attack. Score one for the home side.
But other cross-border raids came from Niflheim and Muspelheim. Commandos darted in and blew shit up. Our painstakingly laid ammo dumps went up in smoke one after another, and there were low-level skirmishes all round the perimeter of Asgard, often costing us lives. We were being pinpricked left, right and centre. We could sustain it for the time being, and gave back as good as we got. But it was obvious this repeated harrying was all part of a softening-up process, designed to wear down our reserves little by little, and our resolve.
One thing we learned about the bad guys. With any we killed, inspection of the bodies consistently revealed no uniform insignia and no dogtags. These, then, weren't legit soldiers; they were mercs. We weren't fighting GI Joe but Blackwater or ArmorGroup or some other private military contractor, and somehow that made it better. Rather than being ordinary, straight-arrow, regular-army types who'd enlisted with the noble intention to defend their homeland, these were men who'd signed on the dotted line specifically to take part in war. Just like us. Level playing field, as it were. Each side as dirty as the