The Age of Odin - James Lovegrove [55]
Ten minutes later Thor was back, with an air of satisfaction about him. His hammer was coated with blood-clotted fur. His right arm was splashed red up to the elbow.
As the punchline to the whole joke, grenades were tossed into the cavemouth. Whump, crump, kerr-asshh, the roof came down, a section of the glacier collapsed in on itself, and the frost giants were sealed inside.
Or maybe not.
"Ah, they'll dig their way out in a day or two," Paddy told me. "That's if they don't have an emergency back-route escape tunnel somewhere further up the glacier, which they probably do. They're not dumb, those big fellas, appearances to the contrary. Bit like Cyrus here. To look at him you'd think there wasn't a single thought going on in that head of his, but I know there's a brain buried somewhere deep within. Or at least, I'd like to think so."
"In't it Irishmen who are supposed to be thick?" Cy retorted. "Did you hear the one about the Irish pilot who crashed his helicopter? He got so cold he turned off the fan."
"Our reputation for stupidity is a terrible calumny against the nation that gave the world Yeats, Joyce and Wilde."
"And Riverdance," I said. "Don't forget Riverdance."
Paddy gave a sorrowful shake of the head. "There, I admit, we have much to atone for."
We reconvened with the rest of the troops, and a quick head-count confirmed that no human lives had been lost in the course of Operation: Get Gid The Fuck Out. I was relieved and delighted. I'd have felt like shit if someone had made the ultimate sacrifice just to save my wretched skin. It was bad enough that a few of the guys had received injuries during the fighting, although luckily nothing more severe than cuts and scrapes, sustained mostly due to grazing themselves on rough ice.
A fresh set of clothes was found for me - snow-pattern gear like everyone else was wearing. Turned out my own kit was more or less in tatters, which in all the excitement I hadn't realised. Torn to shreds by frost giant claws and general abuse and wear and tear over the past day.
Dressed like the rest, I joined them on the yomp back to Asgard Hall. We hiked with the sunset at our backs, on through the dark, until around midnight Freya called a halt and proposed we bed down until daybreak. Sentries were posted on two-hour watches, bedrolls were produced, and rations of bread, beef jerky, salted cod, power bars and drinking water were doled out. Under the stars, I tried to sleep, but for once in my life couldn't. My mutant super power - the ability to nod off at the drop of a hat, any time, anywhere - had deserted me. My mind was full of racing thoughts, too many to process easily. Foremost among them was the knowledge that everything I'd agreed to myself must be absolute bollocks was, in fact, true. I'd been held captive by frost giants. Creatures from fantasy, from medieval myth, and they were fucking real. I'd seen them with my own eyes. Conversed with them. Had the shit kicked out of me by them. Smelled them, for Christ's sake. They couldn't have been more real if they'd had a factory stamp on their backs stating that they were a real product of Realness Incorporated, makers of real things that are, in reality, real.
In which case, how much else here was actual-factual? Were there truly trolls as well? Gnomes? Was that big fat oaf Thor over there, on his back snoring like a chainsaw, genuinely the Norse god of thunder? Was Freya a goddess? She sure as hell had the looks for it. Was Odin, all said and done, everything he claimed to be? The Odin? Was Asgard Hall the Asgard?
I still clung to the notion that there was, to coin a phrase, a rational