The Age Of Odin aog-3 Read online

In the dark column-like spaces between the trees, pairs of eyes blinked alight. Peering at us. Dozens of them. Yellow in the snowlight. All around.

  And now I could make out puffs of exhalation beneath each pair of eyes.

  And now the silhouettes of the wolves themselves. Ears pricked. Heads high. Stock-still.

  They were waiting, too.

  For what?

  A shimmer of movement atop the rocks, and into sight loped a wolf, larger than any of the others, padding proudly to the summit of the outcrop and taking up position there. A grizzled alpha male, leader of the pack. Imperious on his vantage point, like a Roman emperor at the Coliseum, presiding over the Games. His the decision who lived, who died, and how, and when.

  I hadn't the wherewithal to do anything but peer bleakly up at him and hope for mercy. As if that was even a remote possibility.

  The snow dwindled away to a few meagre flecks and wisps, and then all at once the clouds above parted and a ferociously bright full moon shone down. Its glow drenched the glade like brilliant water, and everything came into detailed, pristine relief. I could see the wolves, the dark and light shades of their pelts, their skinny legs and muscular flanks. I could see the rugged ribbed bark of the pine trunks. I could see the diamond-field sparkle on the surface of the fallen snow. I could see it all with a clarity I'd never known before. It was as though up until this moment I'd never really looked at anything, glancing at the world without taking any of it in properly. Now a veil had been lifted. Everything had meaning and purpose, right down to the tiniest item. The individual hairs on the wolves, each needle on the trees' snow-bowed branches, the speckling of white on the alpha male's muzzle — nothing was there without a reason. Everything belonged. Even me and Abortion.

  I realised then that I was about to die. Why else this flooding of my brain, this overwhelming tide of sensory input, if it wasn't my final moment? A revelation at the very fag end of life. A brief, parting gift of insight to make up for three and a half decades of muddle and incomprehension.

  The alpha male lifted his head. He opened his maw. He let rip with an almighty howl, a great cascading, crescendoing ululation.

  To me, looking up from below at an acute angle, his jaws framed the moon and were gaping wide enough to swallow it, as though it was some sort of celestial dog biscuit. The optical illusion was perfect. All it would take was for those two sets of wickedly serrated teeth to snap shut and the moon would be gulped and gone and nights would be empty and black forever after.

  The howl was an instruction. An invitation.

  Thumb down from the emperor.

  The wolves around us padded out from the trees, into the glade.

  Time to die.

  Four

  Not that I was prepared to go out meekly. Neither was Abortion.

  We tottered upright together. We were weaponless. We were shagged out. But we had our fists, our feet. Our teeth too, if need be. The army had spent time and money teaching us hand-to-hand combat. Not much use against wolves, perhaps, but better than nothing.

  Instinctively we positioned ourselves back to back, to cover each other. The wolves closed in, forming a tight ring around us. A couple were wagging their tails, others had their tongues lolling out, and I thought to myself, Tossers. This is all a bit of fun to you, isn't it? You big bunch of bullies.

  Righteous indignation gave me focus. And fire.

  "All right, Abortion," I said over my shoulder, "you take the dozen on the left, I'll handle the dozen on the right."

  "My left or your left?"

  "Does it matter?"

  "Fair point. What about the big bastard on the rock?"

  "Prize. For whoever finishes off their lot first."

  "Gotcha."

  "One thing, though. I can't quite figure it out. Is this situation something the universe wants for us or not?"

  "The universe," Abortion admitted, "is sometimes a bit of an arsehole."

  "That's what I thought. Consider me enlightened, O Master."

  "Better late than never."

  One wolf came at me. It was a feint. A quick nip at the air in front of my knee, then the wolf backed off.

  Another darted in from the side, and I turned and bellowed — "Yaahhh!" — which seemed to intimidate the thing. It retreated, curling its rump round.

  I should have known that I was just being set up. A third wolf darted in from behind and bit my leg. Fortunately its teeth latched onto my jeans, not the leg itself. The wolf bent its back and tugged, growling, and I swung round and gave it a thump on the snout. It yelped and let go.

  I heard Abortion shouting, "Go on, you fuckers, gerron out of it!" He was aiming kicks left, right and centre at the wolves. None of his shots actually connected but they were enough to see off his attackers and hold them at bay. For now.

  But the wolves were getting bolder by the second.

  Two sprang at me at once, and more by luck than anything I managed to grab one of them by the forelegs, mid-leap, and swing it like an Olympic hammer against the other. Both rolled in the snow in a heap, then disentangled themselves and started snarling and barking at each other.

  Before I could regain equilibrium another wolf leapt, crashing into me. Next thing I knew, I was on my back and staring up into the beast's face. Gust of foul breath. Glint of triumph in yellow eyes. Then the wolf lowered its head, teeth bared, lunging for the throat.

  How I got my arm in the way, I wasn't sure, but I did. Instead of soft, tender neck the wolf buried its fangs in bony, sinewy wrist. The pain was excruciating, but all I could think was: It's only my wrist. As long as that's getting bitten, not my throat, I'll live. This was the kind of calculation I was reduced to making. The wolf could gnaw my hand off, but that was a survivable wound. If it kept me alive a little longer, okay by me. Any loss was acceptable, even part of a limb. That was how much I didn't want to die.

  The wolf's jaws bore down. Pressure mounted. I felt something splinter and crack in my wrist. Worse, heard it.

  Then: Abortion to the rescue. He appeared beside me and, without pausing, without hesitation, rammed a thumb into the wolf's eye. The eyeball burst wetly open. The wolf screeched and let go of my arm. Half blinded, the beast danced away, rubbing at the empty socket with a frantic forepaw.

  "Reckon that makes us even," Abortion said with a grin -

  — and then a wolf pounced onto his back and buried its fangs in the side of his face, while another sneaked between his legs at the same time and bit upwards.

  Abortion didn't even have a chance to scream.

  The wolf on his back peeled half his face away with a single, twisting wrench of its head. The other yanked down, tearing off the crotch of his trousers and much of what lay within. His blood sprayed me like rain. He stood there twitching spastically, one cheek and ear gone, his groin a ragged ruin. His eyes rolled upwards. He let out a zombie-like moan, a tragic, pointless sound.

  Then other wolves were on him, six, seven of them. He crumpled under their weight, collapsing like a demolished factory chimney. The rest of the pack dived in. There were ghastly moist noises of crunching and feasting. Abortion's booted feet juddered, then lay still.

  I watched, dazed, appalled. Then self-preservation kicked in and I rolled onto my belly and started crawling away, hauling myself through the snow by elbows and knees. With the wolves preoccupied with their kill, if I could get to the trees… maybe find a broken-off branch to defend myself with… or else find somewhere to hole up where the wolves wouldn't be able to reach me…

  The alpha male planted himself in my way.

  He was wilier than the others. He wouldn't be distracted by the presence of an easy meal. Nor was he about to let the pack's second victim escape scot-free.

  His eyes were full of nothing but cold greed as he stalked towards me.

  I struggled up onto my haunches to greet him. My hand was hanging off the end of my arm at an ugly angle, and blood was pouring from deep teeth marks. My ribcage was like a corset of fire. M
y skull throbbed. This would all be over very soon, I knew. Big old Mister Wolf here wasn't one to muck about. I was as done as a Christmas turkey.

  A thread of drool twinkled in the moonlight.

  I thought about Gen, and about Cody. Mostly about Cody.

  Cody — the only thing in my life I was genuinely, unambiguously proud of. The only thing I hadn't messed up. At least, not as badly as I'd messed everything else up.

  I wished he could know how sorry his old man was. How much I would have loved to be a dad worthy of him. How great I thought he was.

  "Come on then, you furry wanker," I told the wolf. "Get this over with. Just make it quick."

  The alpha male tensed. I could see him eyeing up which part of me to go for. All set for the kill.

  Then his head cocked. His eyebrows arched quizzically. He glanced to the side.

  A moment later, I heard what he'd heard.

  A mechanical buzzing.

  Like a chainsaw, but lower, deeper.

  Coming from the depths of the forest, but growing in volume rapidly.

  All of a sudden a patch of snow at the alpha male's heels erupted, with the crack of a gunshot. The wolf leapt to one side, alarmed.

  Someone rode into the glade on a snowmobile. In the blaze of its headlight I caught a silhouetted glimpse of the rider: goggles, fur-trimmed parka hood, long hair trailing from beneath a helmet. And a hunting rifle, held one-handed. The snowmobile slewed to a halt, and the rider swung the gun down, sighted, and loosed off another round at the alpha male. He, however, was already on the run, skedaddling for the cover of the trees as fast as his legs could carry him.

  Some of the pack were sensible enough to follow their leader's example, but others, although startled by the snowmobile's roar and the rifle reports, were reluctant to abandon the tasty snack that was Abortion's corpse. The snowmobile rider levelled the rifle at them and picked off three in swift succession.

  Two more snowmobiles arrived in the glade, and the riders joined in the gunplay, taking potshots at the pack. The remaining wolves finally saw sense and scattered, but several more perished before they could get out of range. The slaughter couldn't have lasted more than half a minute, but it was brutally efficient, and in all a good fifteen of the animals were despatched to wolf heaven. Grey bodies littered the clearing, pelts reddened with their own blood and Abortion's, and as I surveyed the carnage — ignoring as best I could the mangled remains of my friend — I thought good riddance.

  The first snowmobile rider dismounted, shouldered the rifle, and strode over to me. A woman. I'd guessed that already from the hair. The gait confirmed it. She was stocky, sturdy, with a confident posture. I gazed dumbly up at her.

  She pulled down the scarf that covered the lower half of her face and demanded, "Are you all right?"

  I replied, "Honest answer? No."

  Then passed out.

  Rocking. Jolting. The blare of a two-stroke engine drilling my eardrums.

  I was lying sideways across the saddle of the snowmobile. The woman was leaning across me to hold the handlebars, gripping me in place with her thighs.

  Not dignified. Or comfortable. Or even the remotest bit arousing.

  But I passed out again before I had the chance to grumble about it.

  The snowmobile halted. Engine off.

  Voices.

  "Who is this?"

  "We found him out in the woods. There were two of them. Wolves got the other."

  "He's in a bad way."

  "Sharp-eyed as ever, Heimdall."

  "All that blood."

  "It may not all be his."

  "I'll radio the castle, get them to bring down a stretcher."

  "Good idea."

  "Think he can be saved?"

  "How should I know? Not my department. But if you ask me, this one looks pretty resilient. I don't think he's a candidate for Hel."

  Hell? I thought. I should damn well hope not.

  Then again…

  A stretcher came. I was hoisted onto it. People carried me across a bridge, a wooden one. I heard their footfalls tramp resoundingly on planks. I felt weirdly snug and warm, detached inside myself, like I was in a cocoon. Things that were happening to me seemed to be happening to someone else. I was merely along for the ride. A curious bystander. Intrigued to see where this was going, how it would all pan out.

  My bearers crunched over snow. Above, branches of some huge tree passed, so thickly interwoven they blotted out the stars. Then there were lights, windows that glowed a deep buttery yellow. Walls of ancient stone towered. Turrets, battlements reared against the night sky.

  Ah, I thought.

  There was only one place this could be.

  I'd made it.

  Abortion — God rest his dope-addled soul — hadn't, but I had.

  Asgard Hall.

  Five

  It wasn't me that trod on the Improvised Explosive Device, it was someone else. My oppo, Private Davies. I had no memory of the event itself. I could remember everything leading up to it, and fragments of what came straight after, but simply nothing about the actual kaboom. Total blank. Perhaps the morsel of grey matter on which it was recorded happened to belong to the small section of my brain that leaked out through the hole in the side of my head. Gone for ever. And better lost, I'd say.

  We were foot-patrolling through a remote village not far from Sangin in Helmand province. Six of us on a routine little meander. The village wasn't a hotbed of insurgency or militancy. Not according to the intel, at any rate. Supposedly friendly, and nothing we'd seen so far had given us cause to doubt that. Usual deal for an Afghan village. Flyblown, dust-ridden. Low drab houses in walled compounds. Market area with stalls with corrugated iron roofs. Goats a-go-go. The smells of cooking flatbread, standing water, open-air latrines. No women out and about, only the men, and plenty of kids: skinny little things darting this way and that, yelling, with the brightest of eyes on them, the liveliest of smiles.

  A bunch of them knew the drill. They came up to us, holding out battered old packs of Wrigley's Extra which they expected us to buy off them for fifty Afghanis apiece or, better yet, one US dollar. They'd probably been given the chewing gum by the last patrol to pass this way. It was daylight robbery, and we, like mugs, dug in our pockets and paid up, because local economy, spirit of entrepreneurialism, hearts and minds, all of that. And because why not? It wasn't these nippers' fault that British troops were on their turf, was it? They weren't Taliban, were they? None of them was called Bin Laden. So why not be nice and give the saucy tykes something to smile about?

  In every eager little face that peered hopefully up at me I saw Cody. He was seven by then. Seven years old, and I'd barely seen him. Maybe spent a year with him all told, in the breaks between tours of duty. Every time it looked like I might be getting a decent dollop of home leave, weeks if not months to spend with wife and son and try and be a family unit with them, boom, along came another compulsory call-up and I'd be off back to Hell Manned, back to Camp Bastion and the tents and dust and heat and mess cuisine and my trusty SA80 and the same old army bollocks all over again.

  Letters, photos, emails, phone calls, a few minutes of webcam interface here and there, these were a substitute for the real thing — for contact — but not enough. As each tour stretched on, one after another, I could feel it slipping away, what lay between me and Gen, what lay between me and Cody. My two main relationships, cracking apart slowly in different ways. Gen becoming cooler towards me by degrees, more distant. Couldn't blame her for that. Cody becoming blanker, less comprehending. Couldn't blame him for that either. He was just losing a sense of who I was, what I meant to him, this man he called Daddy but barely saw, this man who wasn't like most of the other kids' daddies, daddies who dropped them off and picked them up, daddies who were home in the evening and at weekends to play footie with them and read them stories and kiss them goodnight. His daddy was a ghostly, uncertain presence, a voice, a pixel-blurry face who sounded like a Dalek,
a signature on a card. A stranger.

  So those Afghan kids, I loved to meet them and at the same time it broke my heart. Set me longing for home, pining for my crappy two-up-two-down on the estate near the barracks. Where Cody was. Gutted that I couldn't simply walk into his bedroom any time I liked, with its Star Wars wall border and SpongeBob duvet cover, and find him there messing about with his action figures. Couldn't snuggle up on the settee next to him and endure Toy Story for the kazillionth time or tootle along playing Mario on the Wii with him. The only times I truly resented the army and the government's muddy justifications for keeping us overseas engaged in this spurious conflict with no fixed goal — Enduring Freedom my arse — were whenever I was presented with some reminder of how I wasn't on hand to watch my boy growing up, how I was missing out on those milestones like his first day at school, his first wobbly tooth, his birthdays, Christmases, all that.

  Thank God, or maybe Allah, that the village children had left us alone by the time Ivor "Biggun" Davies stepped on that IED. We were making our way back to the Land Rovers, ready to return to forward operating base. The village had checked out, all well, no insurgents lying in wait, no Taliban or Al Qaeda lurking under the beds, just a normal innocent speck of civilisation baking in the gravelly grey foothills of the southern Hindu Kush. We followed the track back to the main road and our waiting transport, Biggun and me on point -

  They told me afterwards that Biggun was catapulted a full twenty-five feet into the air. Came down minus both legs, intestines trailing behind him like a kite's tail. Me, I was hurled aside smack dab into a wall. Another of our unit was blown clean out of his boots. Literally, he landed on his backside with his socks on, assault boots standing where he'd left them. He was unharmed. The other three likewise. Perforated eardrums was maybe the worst any of them suffered.

  Bomb Disposal examined the site later and figured out that the IED had, as was typical, been cobbled together from all sorts of handy household items. The trigger was made from two hacksaw blades, treading on which completed a circuit that ignited the blasting cap, while the principal component was a common-or-garden pressure cooker packed with TNT. It was a fragment of steel from the pressure cooker that punched a hole in my skull and nearly killed me. Domestic shrapnel.