The Age of Odin - James Lovegrove [65]
"Trouble is, that isn't the brand of god that's wanted in the twenty-first century."
"Hasn't been wanted for a very long time," Odin agreed, sombrely. "We are, I don't deny, superannuated. A throwback. It is, some might say, a miracle that we're still here at all. But we are. And like it or not, we still have a role to play in the affairs of men. As long as we continue to exist, we can't help but do."
"Any particular reason why you decided to decamp from, I don't know, Scandinavia or wherever, to the north of England? Was that part of the downsizing too? A forced relocation?"
"Ah, Gid, who's to say we have relocated?"
"Well, haven't you? Asgard Hall is in the north of England, right?"
"You're thinking literally. Like a mortal. Which isn't your fault, of course. How else could you think?"
"Where is it, then? Don't tell me Scotland. I haven't had my vaccinations!"
"Just the north," said Odin. "The frozen north. Everywhere has a north, and where that north is, where the snow tumbles and the winds blow icy cold and the nights are long and dark and the wolves cry, that's where you'll find us. That's our natural habitat. Anywhere north."
I pondered this a while, and decided it made sense. Not a great deal of sense, but as much sense as anything else around here was making.
"All right," I said finally. "I think we've covered pretty much all I need to know. Just one last question. You've talked about a true enemy. One you're gearing up to fight with. That's what you're recruiting for, why you're offering blokes like me employment, the reason for the training and the troll catching and all of it..."
"Who," said Odin, anticipating where I was headed.
"Yes. Who. Who is it? Who's the enemy?"
"Better than telling you," he said, "when we get back to Asgard I'll show you. Or rather, the Norns will."
Twenty-Four
The Norns lived in a cottage on the opposite side of Yggdrasil from Asgard Hall. You couldn't see the castle from the cottage and vice versa. The World Tree blocked the view both ways. Odin and I headed straight there as soon as we got back on Asgardian soil, with a slight detour on the way so that I could visit Frigga for some running repairs. She changed my dressings, applied salves to my new injuries, dosed me up with some of that barely swallowable medicine of hers, and clucked and tutted a bit, telling her husband I was a man in clear need of rest. That wasn't on the cards, but I left feeling a great deal better than I had done. Right as rain and not as wet.
Cottage, as a matter of fact, was a generous description for the Norns' residence. Tumbledown shack would have been nearer the truth. Slates were missing from the roof, sometimes so many in one spot as to leave gaping great holes in its pelt of snow. Broken windowpanes had been patched up with rectangles of fibreboard. The brickwork was cracked and flaky and in serious need of repointing. Ivy and Virginia creeper had the building in their clutches and seemed to be doing their level best to pull it down into the ground. The whole place was sagging and lopsided from threshold to chimney.
A gate, leaning off a single hinge, opened onto an unruly, overgrown front garden. There was a well in the middle of the lawn, an olde-worlde wishing well type of affair with a small peaked roof on top and a rusty bucket hanging from the handle. Looked like no one had drawn water from it in ages. The path up to the front door looked like no one had walked up it in ages either. It meandered, a curving line of smooth, undisturbed snow to the porch.
Odin was not happy. His mouth was pursed. Nervousness was coming off him like a bad odour. Every step closer to the cottage, he seemed to have to drag himself that bit harder along.
"What's up?" I asked. "Somewhere else you'd rather be?"
"Anywhere else," he replied. "I don't dread much, but I dread the Norns."
"But you're Odin. The All-Father. The big kahuna. You're in charge of the show. What's the problem?"
"All Aesir and Vanir fear the Norns. They are the Pronouncers, the