"Yeah, and look how far it got them."
"Which only makes it worse, dunnit? Now everyone's feeling even more trapped. Rats in a cage and that. No way out."
"How come this is news to me?" I said. "You've have thought I'd have picked up on it, wouldn't you?"
"Mate, no offence, but you're not exactly 'man of the people' these days. You're not in touch with the vibe. You hobnob with the Aesir, you give orders — whether you realise it or not, you've become officer class. So naturally no one's going to tell you the truth to your face now."
"Apart from you."
"Apart from me. And then there's laying into Backdoor like you did, tearing a strip off him at Odin's funeral…"
"Officer class again?"
"Well, that and you came across as a bit, sort of, I dunno…"
"Be gentle."
"Nuts."
"How nuts?"
"Nutty as squirrel shit."
I sat back and peered around the banqueting hall. People were hunched over their food, eating mechanically, subdued. Nobody looked like they'd slept much. Hollow eyes, taut faces. A few of them caught my gaze and glanced away immediately. Resentment I could have coped with, but they were just blanking me, as if there was a barrier between us and nothing to say that would penetrate it, nothing they could express in words.
It was time to take matters in hand.
I stood up.
"What're you doing, man?" Cy asked.
"Grabbing the initiative," I said, and strode to the top table, where the handful of remaining gods sat.
I rapped the table with a spoon until the already near-silent hall was completely quiet.
"Listen up, everyone," I said. "Going to keep this short. Short and as sweet as possible. Last night some men did a very foolish thing. One of them was somebody I considered a pal. If I'd had any inkling what he was about to do, I'd have talked him out of it. Failing that, I'd have beaten some sense into him. I realise what many of you are thinking. 'We're screwed. There's no point carrying on. We're all going to wind up dead. If the frost giants don't get us, Loki will. Might as well give up.' I'll tell you what. Not only is that bollocks, but if you allow yourselves to think that way, then we are screwed. Yes, we've had setbacks, and yes, I'll admit that the enemy do seem to have the upper hand. But I know something they don't and probably even you yourselves don't, and it's this. When the blue team has something worth defending and the red team doesn't, the blue team wins, hands down. Every time. Doesn't matter how many of them there are, how well supplied or not, how well armed or not, they always win. And we have something worth defending."
"Yeah?" shouted someone. "Such as what? A fucked old castle?"
There was a ripple of bleak laughter.
"Nine worlds," I said. "Not one. Not two. Not even three. Nine of them. And Loki will stomp all over the lot of them in his stiletto heels unless we stop him. You know what earth's been like since Mrs Keener got elected. Tearing itself apart, conflict on top of conflict, and her lording over it all, looking all kitten-cute and butter-wouldn't-melt. Imagine that times by nine. That is why we've plonked ourselves down here in this 'fucked old castle.' That is why we're going to keep holding it come hell or high water. Just to wipe the grin off her — Loki's — smug fucking face. So let's do this. Let's get out there and fight like we mean it. Let's Ragnarok and roll!"
No great rapturous surge of applause greeted the end of my little speech, but then I was hardly Winston Churchill and it was hardly "We shall fight them on the beaches…"
As I looked around the banqueting hall, however, nobody was avoiding my gaze any more. People were sitting up a little straighter. I'd knocked some of the despair out of them.
I prayed it would be enough.
Really, it had to be.
Before going outside to face the music once again, I paid a call on Frigga in the field hospital to find out if any of the injured was in a fit state to hold a gun.
Odin's widow shook her head sadly.
"Anyone who's here is too severely wounded even to walk," she said, nodding at the rows of mattresses on the floor and the men sprawled on them. She looked wrung out, empty, like a used juice carton. "I have helped them all I can, and now rest is the best cure they can hope for."
In one corner there were several bodies lined up head to toe, under blankets.
"And that lot aren't going anywhere," I remarked.
"Alas, no. Them I can do nothing further for."
"Heimdall? What about him? Any change?"
"See for yourself."
Asgard's gatekeeper lay with a bandage round his head covering wadding on both ears. He was so still, he could almost have been one of the nearby corpses. His chest moved up and down lightly, infrequently.
"The trauma is as much to his mind as his ears," said Frigga. "Sensory overload on an unimaginable scale. He ought to recover, but when, how soon — who can say?"
"And you?" I asked. "How are you bearing up?"
"I have never been so tired."
"I mean about Odin. Losing your husband."
"You are kind to worry, but I cannot think about that right now. Cannot afford to. I must be strong, for all our sakes. My own concerns must wait. Besides, I am accustomed to bereavement. It's become almost a way of life for me."
"I'm finishing this," I told her firmly. "I'm seeing it through right to the bitter end. For Odin. I owe it to him. If it wasn't for him I wouldn't be alive. He died saving me."
"That's my husband," she said. "That's him through and through."
"I just wanted you to know that."
"I'm grateful. And I wish you luck, Gid." Doubt clouded her wan, genial features. "I fear, though…"
I stopped her. "Uh-uh. None of that."
She stiffened, understanding, steeling herself. "Of course. There is always hope."
"That's the spirit," I said. "Always hope."
Because, I thought, when you're completely fucked, when your back's to the abyss and the hordes of Hell are closing in, when everything's stacked against you and you're down to the last dregs of your strength — hope is the only real weapon you've got.
Sixty-Four
The frost giants started their next round of assault not long after. They opted to go for the breaches again, charging at them in dense packs, flying-wedge formations, putting everything into it, hoping that sheer weight of numbers would carry the day. They threw themselves through the jagged gaps, often tripping over one another in their urgency and haste. We used grenades to hold them back, but they just kept on coming, some with half an arm blown off, others with their armour shattered and blood pouring from dozens of wounds, all undeterred. There was fire in their bellies. They were unstoppable. They waded among us, lashing out with their handweapons, taking bullets until they could no longer stand upright. Even when brought to their knees they refused to give up. Issgeisls and tomahawks swung and swung until the hands holding them were too weak to maintain their grip.
A Valkyrie copped it right in front of me. She was reloading her pistol when a frost giant reared up behind her. I didn't have a clear shot or I would have taken him out. The frostie clamped his hands either side of the Valkyrie's head. Whole chunks of him were missing. It wasn't clear how he could still be alive. Yet he was, and he still had enough strength in him to crush the Valkyrie's skull. She kicked out, raked his arms with her fingernails, but it was no use. The frost giant pressed his palms together, and her head was distended, impacting to a red-and-yellow pulp.