Well, don’t blame me for being attractive. Demons are, for the most part. Besides, it wasn’t as if the competition was especially tough. Sweaty, hairy warlords with no polish and no address, whose idea of a good time was to kill a few giants, wrestle a snake and then eat an ox and six suckling pigs without even taking a shower first, whilst belching a popular folk song. Of course the ladies gave me the eye. A bad boy is always appealing, and I’d always had a silver tongue.

One of Freyja’s handmaidens seemed especially taken with me – Sigyn, a motherly type with a soupy expression and a not-unpleasant figure, which she hid under a series of demure floral housedresses. Even Thor’s wife, Bright-Haired Sif, wasn’t entirely immune to my charm, which ran more to witty conversation than merely hitting things, a welcome change in Testosterone Central.

Nevertheless, I began to sense that tensions were running against me. I’d been with the Old Man some time by then, and I still had to prove my worth to him. Not that he’d said so in as many words, but there was a kind of chill in the air whenever he and I were alone, and I sensed that sooner or later he would start to put the screws on me. Besides, we’d had trouble from the North: the Rock Folk had attacked us twice; first taking the lower flanks of Asgard’s mountain, where there was a flat ledge on which they could build and shelter, then by flinging huge rocks at us by means of giant catapults.

This was a first for the Rock Folk; we knew they were excellent builders, carving great halls from the mountains, but we’d never seen them build engines before, or come at us in such numbers. Odin guessed that there must be a new warlord on the scene, maybe working with Gullveig-Heid, with aspirations of godhood. The Ice Folk were also restless – they often were in summertime – and had moved down from the Northern lands to gather on the outskirts of Ironwood. From Asgard, they looked like packs of wolves circling; wary at first, awaiting their opportunity. But Odin knew the Ice Folk to be more of a threat than they appeared. Many had fragments of rune lore bartered from the renegade Vanir, and they were masters of shapeshifting, often travelling in wolf, bear or eagle Aspect. They were less organized than the Rock Folk, living in smaller communities, often warring among themselves, but if at last they had decided to put their rivalries aside, as the Aesir had done with the Vanir . . .