The Age of Odin - James Lovegrove [61]
Thor clapped me on the back, virtually knocking me off my feet. "Pay no attention to my elder cousin, friend Gid. Her asperity cloaks her true feelings."
"Which are?"
"Who can say? I'm sure she has some. Mine is the opinion that counts in these matters, and you can fight alongside me any time."
Flattered? I sort of was. I was definitely supposed to be.
Mainly, though, I was thinking, and not for the first time in my life, how fucking maddening women could be. Even goddesses.
No, especially goddesses.
Twenty-Three
"Sleipnir?"
"If I told you 'eight-legged horse that can fly,'" said Paddy, "what would you say?"
"A day ago I'd have said you might want to think about laying off the Guinness for a bit. Now, though..."
Paddy chuckled. Cy too. Tea had been made, and we were all sitting around waiting for the promised transport to arrive.
"Really?" I said. "An eight-legged horse? With wings? This I've got to see. Although" - having thought about it further - "it's going to have to be an enormous fucking horse to fit three trolls on its back. Or even one. You're pulling my plonker, aren't you?"
"Odin did have a horse called Sleipnir, back in the day," Paddy said. "Loki, his blood brother, was its mother."
"Hang on, did you say mother?"
"Bragi entertained us with a lovely long poem about it once. I think I can remember the basic gist of it. What happened was, this man, a stonemason, turned up offering to build a wall around Asgard, and the price he demanded was only the sun and the moon! And not just those, either, but also your lady over there, Freya. The Aesir wouldn't agree to his terms 'til Loki suggested they set some impossible conditions. The stonemason had to build the wall single-handed and must do it within the space of one winter. If he defaulted, they'd have the wall for free. Bear in mind, this was going to be a vast fortification all the way around Asgard, so the Aesir never thought he'd have it done in time. The stonemason said, 'Fine,' and rolled up his sleeves and set to work. He was a right big strapping fella, with a huge black carthorse to help him, and he toiled hard as can be all through the winter, and it began to look as if he might just meet the deadline after all."
"Oh, this is terrific," I said, settling back against a rock, cradling my steaming brew. "Paddy does Jackanory. Carry on."
"So the Aesir were naturally a mite aggrieved," Paddy continued. He loved to spin a good yarn. "Thanks to Loki they were on course to lose the sun, the moon, and a very beautiful Vanir goddess to boot. So they bashed him around a bit, as you do, and told him to fix things. Now, in case you don't know about Loki, here's the salient point. He's a shifty little devil. And that's no mere figure of speech. He can change his shape to become anything he likes. And what he did was he transformed himself into a mare, a very pretty one with a nice mane and fine fetlocks and a long swishy tail and whatever else it is a lady horse has that makes her attractive to the men horses, and he went off prancing up and down in front of the stonemason's carthorse, which was a stallion in the full prime of life, no gelding, if you catch my drift."
"I very much do."
"And the carthorse went tearing off after Loki in his mare form, and the stonemason was obliged to down tools and give chase, because the horse had been doing a great deal of the work for him, hauling boulders and the like, which he couldn't do himself. He ran after them for a day and a night, and finally