"You were so easy to sneak up on," Freya said.
"Was I?" I had to admit the way she'd completely blindsided me was somewhat embarrassing, and I couldn't even blame my knackered ear. She'd come from the right. I should have heard her and hadn't. Talk about stealthy.
"Very easy. Were you a rabbit, or an enemy sentry, your blood would now be reddening the snow."
"Then I'm glad I'm neither of those. Look, will you put that thing away and let me get up?"
"I don't know. Ratatosk, what do you think?"
She was talking to the squirrel, and bugger me if it didn't pause from its tittering for a moment, as if considering, then delivered a stream of chirrups and chitters by way of a reply.
"He thinks," said Freya, "that you're ill-mannered and obnoxious but, after all, only a human and we should take that into account."
More squirrel chatter.
"And he says if you agree to apologise to the World Tree for besmirching it with your waste product, all will be forgiven."
"I say sorry to the tree, and everything's hunky dory again?"
"That's it."
"And you promise you'll put that knife away?"
"Certainly."
"Then you have yourself a deal." Granted, a cockeyed deal with a knife-wielding woman who talked to squirrels, but a deal nonetheless.
Freya got up, slipping the blade into the scabbard on her belt. I stood, brushed snow off me, then bowed my head, solemn as a churchgoer.
"Yggdrasil," I said, "I sincerely regret what I just did. I peed on you, and that was wrong and thoughtless of me. I should have known better. Maybe you could use the moisture and the ammonia to help you grow? Just a thought. But I'll never do it again. All right?"
The "All right?" was directed at Freya, but the tree seemed to think it was being addressed and ought to respond, so it shook its branches.
No, obviously it didn't. A stray wind came in out of nowhere, puffed against Yggdrasil and made all of the leaves shiver, releasing a fine dusting of snowflakes on our heads. That was what happened. The tree wasn't fucking answering me, like something out of an Enid Blyton book. That would have been absurd. It was a random coincidence, nothing else. A gust of wind. On a night as breeze-free and still as any I'd ever known. But still, just the wind.
Ratatosk the squirrel seemed satisfied, at any rate, and scampered off into the upper branches.
"So what brings you out here?" I said to Freya. "Why aren't you inside in the warm, partying with the others?"
"I could ask you the same."
"Not my thing, really." Not these days, not any more.
"Nor mine. I prefer not to gorge and guzzle. My pleasures are simpler, purer. The majesty of a night sky, for instance, and the knowledge that live prey awaits me out in the woods."
"You're going hunting?"
She nodded.
"For what?"
"Deer, rabbit, fox… Any wild game I can find. I'm not picky. The odd human occasionally."
"You're joking."
"Perhaps," she said in a way that implied she was. "I caught you, didn't I?"
"True." I was embarrassed enough by that to want to change the subject, so I jerked a thumb in the direction the squirrel had gone. "Anyway, what's up with Ratatouille there? It's dead of winter. Shouldn't he be hibernating and keeping his nuts warm?"
"Ratatosk is no ordinary squirrel," Freya said. "He keeps Yggdrasil free of worms and pests. Normally that's the Norns' job but they're exceptionally busy right now so Ratatosk has pitched in to help."
"Do I count as a pest? Was that why he was so peeved?"
"Very much so."
I was hoping for a flicker of amusement from her at the very least, but there was nothing.
"And who are these Norns?" I said. "Odin mentioned them earlier."
"Three women you really don't want to meet," Freya said. "The Three Sisters know our fates — our futures, our destinies — and it isn't always wise to learn where you're going in life before you get there."
"Oh. No, I suppose it isn't."
She looked at me sidelong. "May I say something, Gideon?"
"Please. Gid."
She shrugged. Made no difference to her. "I find you hard to fathom. You affect nonchalance about everything, yet clearly you are a man of passion."
Was this a come-on? Was Freya flirting with me? I didn't think so, but decided to take an approach as if she was. What did I have to lose?
"I am," I said, "beneath this unflappable exterior, a smouldering volcano. Tap into me and you'll see. Watch the lava flow out."
I added a wink. Few women could resist cheeky chappie Gid with his charm firing on all cylinders.
Freya, it turned out, was one of the few.
"Do you not see," she said, untouched by the waves of sheer sexual magnetism washing over her, "that we are engaged in a vital enterprise here? Nothing less than the fate of the Nine Worlds depends on us."
"Yeah, does it?"
"Of course. Yggdrasil is dying. Do you realise what that signifies?"
I glanced up at the intricate weave of branches. "Looks fine to me. In tree-mendous shape, in fact."
She snorted. Jokes, even the lamest ones, didn't work on her. Seriously hard to crack, this woman, and I was beginning to wonder why I was bothering. Other than she was just plain gorgeous, supermodel-standard, and oh, that arse of hers, and nobody ever said that Gideon Coxall didn't set his sights high. Aim high, and if you failed, you still failed better than if you aimed low and failed.
"Do not be deceived," Freya said. "Yggdrasil may look strong, but it is old, so old. The World Tree has been standing since the dawn of time, and its ancient boughs are tired and its aged trunk is hollow. Those ruptures on its bark, those patches that look as though it has exploded from the inside out? See? Those are cankers. Disease. And sometimes, in storms, battered by winds, you can hear it groaning horribly, in agony. When Yggdrasil falls…"
She shuddered. Faltered.
"But it must not fall," she said. "If it does, all is lost."
"What all?"
"Everything. The Nine Worlds. Destroyed. Utterly."
"Maybe a decent tree surgeon…"
"Oh, forget it!" she snapped, scowling. "You do not understand. You cannot hope to, with a mind as limited as yours. You are as blinkered as any mortal I have met, Gid Coxall. Here, you are being given the opportunity to take part in the most important conflict there has ever been — the only conflict that has mattered or will matter. You have come because fate has decreed it. You are one of the few, the chosen. You are being offered honour and glory the likes of which most men would sell their own mothers for. Yet all you do is snipe and wisecrack and bluster. Ignoring self-evident truths proves nothing except that you are ignorant."
And with that, she stomped off towards the forest.
I didn't take too kindly to being barked at, even if the person doing the barking was, ahem, far from a dog. I raced after her and, abandoning all caution, grabbed her by the arm.
She froze, and out of the corner of her mouth hissed, "Unhand me. Unhand me, or I will unhand you."
"No, you just listen to me a moment, Freya…"
"I'm serious." Her palm was resting on the hilt of her sheathed knife. "If you do not remove your hand from my arm this instant, I will cut it off and leave you to bleed to death in the snow."
I yanked her around to face me.
There was a metallic scrape, and an inch of knife blade shone in the starlight.
"You clearly do not value your life," she said.
"No," I said, "what I value is straight talking, and ever since I arrived I've had none of that. It's all been 'Ooh, look at us, we're Norse gods, tra-la-la, we're immortal, we're going to war,' and I've had it up to here with that. I want the honest, unpolished truth. I want one of you, just one, to admit this is pure makebelieve. Poncing around with your myths and legends and your magic trees and your talking squirrels, when you all know deep down it's a load of bollocks. I don't believe in gods, and you people don't either, not really. You're playing a game. All of this, the medieval re-enactment banquets, the daft names, the props like Thor's hammer, it's all a game. Come on, admit it. I'm right, aren't I?"