The Age of Odin - James Lovegrove [36]
"To be honest," said Cy, "I was itching to take a swing at him. He'd been riding me all week, calling me lazy and sloppy and slow. Finally I cracked... and Thor schooled me, like I knew he would. But not before I got in a few good licks."
"Yeah, you looked pretty tasty from what I saw," I said, miming jabs.
"Learned to box down the youth centre when I was a kid. Won a couple of junior amateur belts. Coach reckoned I had what it takes to turn pro. Would have too, if I'd been able to keep out of trouble back home."
"Trouble?"
"Only 'cause the gangstas on our estate kept getting all up in my face, giving me shit, dissing my mum and that. Fucker that cut me up, he fancied himself this big ghetto drug-lord, had all the bling, the pimped car, everything, and he'd been after this girl who was my girl, Tanya, and Tanya wasn't having none of it, so he blamed me for that and went for me one morning. Lay in wait in the stairwell outside my mum's flat and hacked me with a machete as I came out to go to school. I wasn't carrying or nothing. Still, I learned him never to do that again."
"You got the better of a guy with a machete, and you were unarmed?" Cy kept going up and up in my estimation.
"Yeah, well, funnily enough the fuzz didn't see it that way, did they? On account of all I got was a slashed-open face, whereas him - he doesn't look anything like he used to any more, and doesn't think straight or talk so good any more either."
"Fair's fair," I said. "He asked for it. I'm Gid, by the way. Gid Coxall."
"Yeah. Cy. Cy Fearon."
Other introductions followed. The Irishman was Colm O'Donough, although everyone called him Paddy because, well, why wouldn't they? Next to him was a chunky chap with a handlebar moustache. He answered to Ian Kellaway, or "Backdoor" Kellaway if you preferred, and his greeting was to hold up one hand, thumb and little finger extended, heavy metal devil's horns fashion.
"'Backdoor'?" I said. "Should I ask?"
"It's 'cause I'm crafty," Kellaway replied. "Sneaky. In all sorts of ways."
On my right was a Yorkshireman, Tim Butterworth, whose nickname was Baz for no reason I could see other than it started with the same letter as his surname. On the other side of Cy sat a quiet-spoken mixed-race Asian who was Dennis Ling, although he'd been rechristened Chopsticks. Apparently because it was the only tune he could play on the piano, although I doubted that was all there was to it.
I got to know a little about them over the course of the meal, their back stories, their reasons for being at Asgard Hall. Cy had wound up in 2 Para but unfortunately for him it turned out that taking orders wasn't his strong suit, and after a couple of years he and the regiment agreed to go their separate ways. O'Donough had been in the Grenadier Guards, Kellaway the Light Infantry. Butterworth had been a Marine, and Ling was TA but had seen combat in the Middle East owing to our government's sheer desperation to boost front-line troop numbers. O'Donough and Kellaway had both been called up so many times they'd come down with battle fatigue and burnout.
Butterworth, meanwhile, had been officially diagnosed with PTSD after an incident in Iraq when he and his squad were ambushed and captured by insurgents, who'd then set about decapitating their prisoners one after another and videotaping the executions for the internet, or maybe simply so as to have something fun to watch of an evening when there was bugger all else on the telly. American Marines had come to the rescue, in time to save Butterworth but none of his comrades.
"The fundy-jundies forced me to watch as they carved my mates' heads off with a ceremonial sword as long as your arm," he said. "And I'd have