The Age of Odin - James Lovegrove [150]
"For a while, after I got dropped from the army, something was missing. Not the piece of my head that I left in Afghanistan. Something deeper, essential. A purpose. I lost that and had nothing to replace it with. Coming here was about getting a second chance, but turns out it was also about reconnecting with who I am - who I'm supposed to be."
She didn't comment, didn't tell me to stop droning on and shut up, so I carried on.
"I fight. I kill. I'm a man of war. I'm not particularly proud of it, but I'm not ashamed of it either. Plenty of soldiers hate war. Most, I'd say. It scars them, fucks them up for life. But they fight anyway, because they're brave and because it's expected of them. And I'm no less fucked up than anyone. You should see some of the nightmares I have. Wouldn't wish them on my worst enemy. But my one advantage is that I know that, come what may, I have an aptitude for soldiering. I know I do it well, better than anything else. That - what's the word? - mitigates things for me. Makes it easier to put up with the rest of the shit that comes with the profession. Life hasn't given me a better alternative, so grin and bear it, eh?"
Her head snugged into the contours of my neck. Her shoulder pressed against my pectoral. Her hair smelled faintly, deliciously, of pine forests and ozone.
"And I'm not scared," I said. "Even if we lose to Loki - which we won't - I can accept it. I won't mind dying if it means I've done my bit trying to foil his plans. Bullying bastards like him can't be allowed to go unchecked. They have to be challenged, faced down, given a damn good slap if that's what's required. And above all else I know that this is the upside of me being such a full-on battlefield hardcase. I can use it in the name of what's right. Cloud, silver lining. I've been gifted with the ability to kick arses and the good sense to know which are the arses needing to be kicked. And that's... Freya?"
My only answer was a soft snore.
I smiled to myself. A Vanir goddess needed her beauty sleep as much as the next person.
I did something then that I never thought I'd do with Freya. Tenderly, I kissed the top of her head. She stirred, mumbled what might have been a complaint, then settled down again.
The wind hissed.
The castle slumbered.
It was a good night.
The best.
Sixty-Three
Screams broke the dawn hush.
I snapped awake and was on my feet in a moment. Freya was up too, and already at the room's empty socket of a window. She was staring out towards Yggdrasil, where the commotion was coming from. Low grey cloud carpeted the sky, hazing the World Tree's uppermost branches. There'd be snow soon, lots of it.
"What's going on?"
"Deserters."
"What! No fucking way."
"Look."
Over by Yggdrasil, frost giants were milling about in a cluster, very busy. There were men among them. Uniformed. Ours. They were the ones screaming. Protesting. Pleading.
"Shit," I breathed. "How can you be sure they're deserters? Couldn't the frosties have just captured them?"
"Without a firefight? Without any of us hearing gunshots? I don't think so. And why else would anyone have left the castle, if not to desert?"
She was right, damn her. I gauged the range from us to the World Tree. Too far. The frost giants were armoured. Our rifles were no good. We couldn't help. All we could do was watch as a couple of the frost giants picked up the first of the men by his arms and raised him high. Then in a series of quick, brutally decisive movements they pinned him to Yggdrasil's trunk, skewering ice daggers through his wrists and calves. He howled and roared in hopeless torment. The other men were dealt with in the same way, until all of them, eleven in total, were impaled on the tree.
Their grisly task completed, the frost giants disappeared back into the forest. One of them turned towards the castle before he left. Even at a distance I recognised the posture, the air of pompous authority. Bergelmir.
"They came to us in the