The Age of Odin - James Lovegrove [54]
"Well, I can't say I'm not glad you did," I said. "And I'm looking forward to telling Freya how much I appreciate the trouble she's gone to on my behalf."
"I wouldn't bother if I were you, bruv. She didn't want to. Only agreed to 'cause Odin made her."
"Oh."
On that somewhat crushing note, the frost giants re-entered the cavern, all tooled up with issgeisls and more. They emerged from several of the surrounding tunnels like floodwater pouring in, a great shaggy white tide, all of them giving vent to a huge, massed battle-cry. Many, I saw, had put on pieces of armour - breastplates, greaves, helmets. Some carried shields, others had daggers, maces, and what I took to be throwing hatchets, a bit like tomahawks. Everything, of course, fashioned out of ice.
Bergelmir led the repulse. Leikn - Mrs Bergelmir - was right behind hubby. Odin's troops beat a hasty retreat, laying down suppressing fire as they went. They withdrew to the mouth of the tunnel they'd come in by, the one that led back to the outside world. Me, I was already well into that tunnel, Cy and Paddy hustling me along. Rearguards had been posted at all the junctions along the entry/exit route, and they waved us urgently on in the right direction. Guns jibber-jabbered behind us. I longed to seize a spare firearm and turn and have a crack at the frost giants myself, but I knew that the mission wasn't simply about that. Primary objective - me - had been acquired. Now the focus would be on a tidy exfiltration, with minimal casualties. No time for grandstanding or indulging personal beefs. Business, not pleasure.
We emerged from the terminus of the glacier into evening light. The sun hung red and heavy on the horizon. Waiting outside were Freya and Thor, and both looked pleased to see me, but only in the sense that, with me extricated from the frost giants' clutches, it meant the job had been successful.
"Everyone's coming out behind us," Paddy reported. "Including a pack of rather irate frosties."
"Excellent," said Thor. He drew his hammer from his belt and smacked the head of it into his palm. "Mjolnir is hungry to cave in jotun skulls."
"Get him to a safe remove," Freya told Cy and Paddy, with a flick of her fingers at me. "We'll hold off the giants in the meantime."
"Now wait a sec," I said. "I can fight too. I'm up for it."
She looked at the state of me, and her face said she disagreed. "The All-Father wishes you brought back safe and sound. He has entrusted me with responsibility for your welfare. If it were up to me, I'd have you on the front line risking your fool neck in the hope that you might get yourself killed and spare the rest of us a great deal of trouble and aggravation. In fact, if it were up to me, none of us would be here at all. But Odin has decreed, and his word is law. So go!"
"Come on, Gid," said Cy. "Let's do as she says."
As he and Paddy hauled me away from the glacier, I said, "She so fancies me."
They just laughed. "Dream on, bruv," said Cy.
From the shelter of a boulder of ice, a titanic chunk that had sheared off when the glacier last retreated and been left stranded a couple of hundred metres from its parent, the three of us watched the battle go down.
It was brief, as contacts with the enemy normally were in my experience. Once all of the troops were out in the open, they formed lines and waited for the frost giants to appear. They moment they did, the big bastards got raked with enfilading fire. They retreated quick-smart back into the entrance to the caves, where bullets kept them pinned in place. A few hatchets hurled out at the troops, but the throws fell short. It was more a gesture of defiance than a concerted offensive action.
Eventually the frost giants seemed to realise that, with their close-quarter weapons, they hadn't a hope of overcoming the long-range firepower