The Age of Odin - James Lovegrove [137]
The tank was now perched on the brow of the rise overlooking the castle, with the scattered corpses of trolls around it and behind. It sent a second shell scudding through the air towards the building. I heard the whizz-shriek of the projectile coming in to land, followed by the chunky wallop of masonry shattering.
Then Fenrir itself was the one to suffer. The C-4 in the engine room did its stuff. The tank lurched upwards and bulged outwards at the same time, slumping straight back down onto the snow. It came to rest at an angle, both tracks askew, wheels out of alignment like bad teeth. Its armour stayed largely intact, but many of the rivets had popped and the steel plates didn't mesh as neatly as before.
A second, louder explosion, this one external, saw Fenrir's head shear sideways off its neck. The control cab came to rest canted at a forward angle, like a sleeping drunk's.
All four gun turrets were still operational but the mega-tank itself was driverless and going nowhere. Its artillery barrels were fully extended, but without anyone to fire them they were as useful as a eunuch's dick.
Thor appeared moments later, leading Skadi, Freya, and his brothers. Between them they mopped up the gunners, whose fighting spirit had pretty much deserted them now that they were stuck defending a dead duck. Mjolnir cracked the turrets open like steel piñatas, and Freya mercilessly despatched the men inside.
A cry of victory went up, begun by the Aesir and echoed by the mortal troops over by the castle.
Knowing something they didn't yet, I was in no mood for celebrating.
I felt even less like it when Backdoor emerged from the woods.
Alone.
Fifty-Seven
We built a funeral pyre through the night and set it alight at sunrise.
Odin's body was laid out on a raised wooden platform, a bier, and beneath it logs and branches were stacked up and doused with engine oil.
He looked at peace, lying on his back, hands clasped on his chest. His hat was placed over his belly to hide the bullet holes. Frigga lovingly arranged his hair so as to cover his lost eye.
"He was always so self-conscious about that," she said, to anyone and no one. "He didn't like it being obvious, what he'd sacrificed in order to gain knowledge." A bitter laugh. "I can't see why, since we all knew. But vanity was among his shortcomings. The least of them, but there nonetheless."
To Thor fell the honour of igniting the pyre. There was no squabbling about this among the sons. All were aware that their father had had a favourite. It couldn't be helped. That was just how Odin had been - not always fair, not necessarily impartial - although none of them had ever for a moment doubted his love.
Thor carried a flaming torch to the pyre, and it was awful to see him weeping. So huge in stature, but stooped now, shrunken, humbled by grief, his beard silvered with tears. He touched the trembling torch to the wood, and fire leapt from the stacked lumber.
Huginn and Muninn had, until this moment, been stationed on the bier. I wouldn't have said they were actually in mourning for their master. They'd just hung about near his body, shuffling up and down beside it, as if at a loss for anything else to do. Sometimes they'd arch their wings and let out a doleful awwwrrkk! or preen each other as if for comfort.
Once the fire started, the ravens took to the air. They flew away like two black souls, disappearing into the redness of the cold, bloated new sun. I doubted we'd ever see them again. Odin had been concerned about who would feed them after he was gone, but they would fend for themselves. Without him animating them, lending them his voice and mind, they were nothing special now, just birds. Nobody else would have the same rapport with them as he did, so it was right that they go off and spend the rest of their lives doing whatever ravens normally liked to do.
The flames coiled up the logs, sparking and spitting. In no time at all they were crowding around the base of the bier. They surged onwards and upwards as though jet-blasted,