I'd have got away with serving only six of those eight months, too, if I hadn't had that altercation with the crackhead on B Wing. No time off for good behaviour.
Once out, I made a vow never to let the blackness rise again. If I ever felt it welling up inside, I would simply remove myself from whatever situation was triggering it. I would walk away. All the fights I'd been getting into, the blackness was behind them. It was to blame. I had to contain it, corral my blind rage. It would do me no good.
Except now. Facing Hval the Bald.
Now, the blackness was my great ally. My secret weapon. My ace. It came, and I let it fill me. Consume me. Overwhelm me.
Five minutes later, our duel was over. Hval was on his hands and knees on the arena floor, and I stood over him, issgeisl raised. His head was bowed. Blood — his blood — matted his fur and covered the ice in congealing smears, bright red against the glittering whiteness. His breath rattled in and out, thickly, stickily. Punctured lung. He was a goner. We both knew it. Everyone in the cavern did. The frost giants looked on in appalled silence. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Bergelmir clasping his throat, aghast.
"Fancy that," I said, loud enough for all to hear. "The puny human won."
Then I brought the issgeisl down with all my might and lopped Hval's head clean off.
Eighteen
In the uproar that followed, two of the frost giants made the mistake of attacking me singly, bare-handed. While I was still armed with the issgeisl? When I'd already shown I was at least equal to one of them? Seriously? They learned their error the hard way.
After that, though, pretty much all of them bundled in on me in a huge mob, and I tried my best, but I was on a hiding to nothing. They disarmed me. Then they just started chucking me all over the shop, shoving me back and forth between them, roughing me up, punching, kicking. I pinballed around the cavern, and every way I went it was claws and teeth and flying furry fists and feet. Somehow I didn't blame them. I'd be pissed off too if some little pipsqueak came along and offed three of my relatives.
Bergelmir finally halted the fun with a loud roar. He ordered the frost giants to bring the human to him. I was dragged over and dumped in a heap at his feet.
"Remarkable," he said to me. "Hval is — was — one of our finest warriors. For him to fall to a mere human speaks highly of your prowess. Not in a long time have I seen such pure, perfect battle-frenzy as you have just shown. I am almost impressed. You didn't hesitate, either, when you had him at your mercy. Another man might have attempted to use Hval's life as a bargaining chip, to save his own."
"Wouldn't have worked," I managed to spit out, along with quite a lot of blood, and a molar. "Even if the idea had occurred to me, which it didn't."
"Odin did indeed find himself a valuable asset. Such a shame."
"I told you, I'm nothing to do with — "
"Yes, yes, I know," Bergelmir said with a dismissive wave. "You would have ended up fighting for him all the same. Odin has a way of winning everyone over to his cause sooner or later. An inspiring turn of phrase. An insidious charisma. All true warriors are drawn to him, even if it goes against their better judgement. Does his name not mean 'war fury'? Is it not his allotted role to preside over the Einherjar?"
"Come again?"
"The Einherjar. The Heroic Dead. The army he has been busy raising. Haven't heard the name before? The concept is strange to you? Oh human, how little you grasp of your situation!"
"I grasp that I'm not dead," I said. "I'm not a hero either."
"We could debate the latter. As to the former — well, perhaps you aren't, but it's a situation I'm about to remedy."
He held out a hand, and someone passed him an issgeisl.
"Get him into position," he instructed, and frost giants grabbed my arms and twisted them up behind my back, bending me over until my forehead was almost touching the floor.
"In recognition of your extraordinary defeat of Hval the Bald," Bergelmir said, "I shall make your execution as swift and painless as possible. You have won this leniency for the valour and brutality you have exhibited. Not only that, but you have won the honour of receiving the fatal blow from none other than myself. Few humans — "
"Look," I said, with feeling, "are you going to flap your lips all day or are you just going to get on with it? This is boring, and not very comfortable."
"You aren't even going to plead for your life? Beg like a dog?"
"What would be the point?"
"Truly, you are a credit to your species," Bergelmir said, and it sounded like he really meant it. "In other circumstances I might have been proud to know you. Very well…"
The issgeisl went up. I heard the swisshh it made as it rose through the air.
I'd been near to death in Afghanistan. A gnat's pube away from the Great Beyond. The medics told me it had been touch-and-go for a while when they'd got out to me and were patching me up in the field. Said they'd thought it was fifty-fifty I'd last the chopper ride back to Bastion. There'd been no tunnel of light then, no choirs of angels, no loved ones queuing up to usher me through the Pearly Gates. There'd been nothing except absolute nothingness.
So I wasn't anticipating any afterlife once that issgeisl fell. Just an end, that was all. A full stop rounding off the sentence of my life. I braced for the blade to descend.
That was when the shooting started.
Nineteen
Nothing quite like gunfire to bring instant chaos to any given situation. Within moments of the first salvo, everyone was charging around like headless chickens. I'd been immediately forgotten about. Frost giants were yelling, screaming, and Bergelmir was giving orders, shouting to be heard above the hullabaloo: "To the armoury! Take arms! We're under attack!"
Like, duh. As Cody might have said.
Bullets thunked into ice, gouging holes, shattering stalactites, ruining the smooth rounded contours of the cavern. Frost giants blundered into one another. Some let out cries of pain. Some fell.
One landed right on top of me, squashing me flat. I wriggled out from under the corpse, mostly to avoid being suffocated by the sheer bulk of it, although the blood gushing out over me from several bullet wounds wasn't much fun. Crouching, using the body for cover, I took stock of what was going on.
It was more or less what I'd guessed. Odin's forces, attacking. I counted a dozen men spearheading the operation, a first wave of assault sowing death and discord through the cavern. Kalashnikovs and SA80s barked in their hands. Heckler and Koch MP5 machine pistols stuttered.
Once this first lot had done their job, taking the frost giants by surprise, killing as many as they could and scattering the rest, a back-up squad of similar size stormed into the cavern. They fanned out into position, securing the site and checking that all the fallen enemy combatants were as dead as they appeared to be. Head shots accounted for the ones that weren't.
Among the second lot of soldiers I recognised Cy and Paddy. They spotted me at about the same time I spotted them.
"There he is!" Cy said, and he and Paddy rushed over.
"Jaysus, you're alive," Paddy said as they helped me to my feet.
"Don't sound so surprised," I said.
"We were taking bets," said Cy. "Looks like you owe me a fiver, Pads."
"The lad had faith," Paddy said to me. "I was of the view the frost giants would have done for you by now, but Coco Pops here thought different."