The Book of Doom - By Barry Hutchison Page 0,27
their shouting now barely audible over the cries of their kinsmen.
Roaring, Angelo smashed both enormous fists down on to the floor. The ground quaked, yet more Vikings fell, and for the first time since they had been erected, the walls of Valhalla began to tremble.
Over the sounds of the screaming and the roaring, Zac heard another sound. It was a high-pitched whistling, like something slicing through air. He looked up to see one of the shields from the ceiling zipping towards him, and leaped sideways in time to avoid being sliced cleanly in two.
With a metallic ba-doing, the shield embedded itself several centimetres into the stone floor. It was a decorative piece, too large for even Odin to wield in battle, and as Zac looked up he thought he saw Herya scuttling away from the space where the shield had been hanging.
Cupping his hands round his mouth, he shouted to the Valkyrie lurking somewhere above. “Oi, watch out! That nearly hit me!”
Another shield began to fall. It flipped over, mid-plunge, and landed face down on the stone right beside Zac. The clang rang out like the tolling of a church bell. The echo lapped the hall half a dozen times, before fading away.
“And again!” Zac shouted. “What are you doing? Trying to kill me?”
Zac felt a gust of warm breath breeze over him. Angelo had turned away from the Vikings and now stood glaring down at him, shoulders hunched, fists clenched.
“Oh... hi,” Zac offered as brightly as he could. The fire danced higher in the demon’s hollow eye sockets. It opened its wide jaws, and Zac saw something spark at the back of the cavernous maw.
He swore then, loudly and creatively, but the words were drowned out by the crackling of the flames from Angelo’s throat. Zac dived and tucked himself in behind the upright shield just as the inferno hit. He felt the metal go red-hot; coughed as his lungs filled with the tang of fire and brimstone.
There was a hiss from the floor. Zac looked down to see drops of molten gold pooling together on the cool stone. He looked up. The flames were still licking over the top and round the edges of the shield, melting his defences away.
“Stop!” he wheezed. “Angelo, stop.”
But Angelo was no longer listening, because Angelo was no longer there. Only the demon remained, scaly and sizzling and – Zac hated to use the word – hulking.
Gold flowed in rivers round his feet. The shield was little more than a gleaming wafer now. Zac’s time was up.
“DRAGON!”
The word raced round Valhalla, deep and booming and oh-so-very angry. With a whoosh of inrushing air, the fire stopped.
A moment later, what was left of the shield became a shimmering sludge on the floor, and Zac saw a demon turn to face a god.
Odin was standing at the far end of the long wooden table, axe in hand, several centimetres of snow piled up on top of his helmet. His white beard was dark with soot, but his expression was darker still. He flipped up the patch with the surprised eye drawn on, revealing a fourth and final patch beneath. The eye drawn on this one scowled furiously, with flecks of red painted at the centre of the pupil.
With one hand he swung the axe down on the table. The wood split along its entire length, and the two halves fell neatly in opposite directions. Odin began a slow march along the newly formed path, and with each step the god took, Zac felt his ears go pop.
“I welcomed thee into my home, Dragon, and you repay me thus?” Odin growled. He ground his teeth together and tiny blue sparks spat from his mouth. “You attack my Viking brothers. You destroy the Great Table.”
“Um, actually, I think that was you, Allfather,” whimpered a voice from somewhere beneath a pile of groaning Vikings. “To be fair.”
“And you defy the all-powerful Odin,” continued the god, ignoring the interruption. “Here in Valhalla. Here in Asgard, you defy me!”
Odin was halfway to the demon now. The handle of the axe creaked as he tightened both hands round it. “I, who have slain giants in my sleep. I, who created all of Midgard from the blood, bones and flesh of my fallen enemies.”
He stopped just a few metres away from the monster. “I, who has a dirty great axe and a very short temper.”
The few Vikings who were still intact and fully operational gave a cheer at that, but it was