The tank was now perched on the brow of the rise overlooking the castle, with the scattered corpses of trolls around it and behind. It sent a second shell scudding through the air towards the building. I heard the whizz-shriek of the projectile coming in to land, followed by the chunky wallop of masonry shattering.
Then Fenrir itself was the one to suffer. The C-4 in the engine room did its stuff. The tank lurched upwards and bulged outwards at the same time, slumping straight back down onto the snow. It came to rest at an angle, both tracks askew, wheels out of alignment like bad teeth. Its armour stayed largely intact, but many of the rivets had popped and the steel plates didn't mesh as neatly as before.
A second, louder explosion, this one external, saw Fenrir's head shear sideways off its neck. The control cab came to rest canted at a forward angle, like a sleeping drunk's.
All four gun turrets were still operational but the mega-tank itself was driverless and going nowhere. Its artillery barrels were fully extended, but without anyone to fire them they were as useful as a eunuch's dick.
Thor appeared moments later, leading Skadi, Freya, and his brothers. Between them they mopped up the gunners, whose fighting spirit had pretty much deserted them now that they were stuck defending a dead duck. Mjolnir cracked the turrets open like steel pinatas, and Freya mercilessly despatched the men inside.
A cry of victory went up, begun by the Aesir and echoed by the mortal troops over by the castle.
Knowing something they didn't yet, I was in no mood for celebrating.
I felt even less like it when Backdoor emerged from the woods.
Alone.
Fifty-Seven
We built a funeral pyre through the night and set it alight at sunrise.
Odin's body was laid out on a raised wooden platform, a bier, and beneath it logs and branches were stacked up and doused with engine oil.
He looked at peace, lying on his back, hands clasped on his chest. His hat was placed over his belly to hide the bullet holes. Frigga lovingly arranged his hair so as to cover his lost eye.
"He was always so self-conscious about that," she said, to anyone and no one. "He didn't like it being obvious, what he'd sacrificed in order to gain knowledge." A bitter laugh. "I can't see why, since we all knew. But vanity was among his shortcomings. The least of them, but there nonetheless."
To Thor fell the honour of igniting the pyre. There was no squabbling about this among the sons. All were aware that their father had had a favourite. It couldn't be helped. That was just how Odin had been — not always fair, not necessarily impartial — although none of them had ever for a moment doubted his love.
Thor carried a flaming torch to the pyre, and it was awful to see him weeping. So huge in stature, but stooped now, shrunken, humbled by grief, his beard silvered with tears. He touched the trembling torch to the wood, and fire leapt from the stacked lumber.
Huginn and Muninn had, until this moment, been stationed on the bier. I wouldn't have said they were actually in mourning for their master. They'd just hung about near his body, shuffling up and down beside it, as if at a loss for anything else to do. Sometimes they'd arch their wings and let out a doleful awwwrrkk! or preen each other as if for comfort.
Once the fire started, the ravens took to the air. They flew away like two black souls, disappearing into the redness of the cold, bloated new sun. I doubted we'd ever see them again. Odin had been concerned about who would feed them after he was gone, but they would fend for themselves. Without him animating them, lending them his voice and mind, they were nothing special now, just birds. Nobody else would have the same rapport with them as he did, so it was right that they go off and spend the rest of their lives doing whatever ravens normally liked to do.
The flames coiled up the logs, sparking and spitting. In no time at all they were crowding around the base of the bier. They surged onwards and upwards as though jet-blasted, roaring through the wooden latticework on which Odin lay and latching greedily on to his clothing. As his corpse began to roast, Frigga fell to her knees with a hoarse sob of anguish. Sif and Freya went to her side and caressed her shuddering shoulders. Everyone else dropped their heads, and embers and smoke rose spiralling into the sky.
Some time later, when the fire had begun to ebb, Bragi announced he was going to recite a memorial ode. Nobody groaned, as was usually the case when a Bragi poem was in the offing. A respectful hush fell.
Eyes red-rimmed, he began. The poem was short, to the point, and rather touching.
As the sun rises, another sun sets.
You shone a light. Now a darkness descends.
Odin, All-Father, in woe and regret
Your soul to High Heaven we humbly commend.
You were the sly one, the wily one, wolf.
You learned and, in learning, learned pain -
A pain that you shared with none but yourself.
Your wisdom you put to good gain.
You were the war god, the furious cry,
The patron of warrior lust,
Looking with favour on those who would die
For causes both noble and just.
Your judgement might waver, your temper might flare,
You were often aloof and apart,
But never in doubt — and beyond all compare -
Was the stoical strength of your heart.
O father, my father, All-Father, you fought
With bravery here, and you won.
And now we whose lives your self-sacrifice bought
Will continue the work you've begun.
This, as your body succumbs to cremation,
We solemnly, dutifully, fiercely maintain -
That Asgard, our home, our snow-fastened nation,
Shall never be conquered while Aesir remain.
"And Vanir!" Freya shouted.
"And us!" added one of the troops, and others agreed. "Yeah! And us!"
All at once a great massed chorus of devotion and loyalty rose up. I would have joined in, except for the fact that Odin wasn't the only one who had died defending Asgard last night and this rankled with me. Baz's body still lay out there with Fenrir, and was he getting the state funeral, the poetic oration, the pomp and circumstance, the standing ovation? Not a bit of it.
Baz wasn't Odin, of course, and his death wasn't nearly such a big deal, certainly not as far as the Aesir were concerned. Odin had been the main man, the commander in chief, the guiding light, top of the pyramid. Baz had been just another footsoldier; a pawn, not a king.
But he would still be missed, and in a way it was even worse that he'd lost his life stopping the mega-tank, because Asgard wasn't his native soil. There'd been far less at stake for him personally, meaning he'd given up more.
Backdoor'd told me how it had happened.
"Stuck his neck out too far," he'd said. "We were placing the charges on the cab of that thing, and I told him to be careful, keep low. I told him. But he just didn't listen. Leaned out. Got just inside the arc of fire from one of the turrets. Got ripped apart."