It took less than an hour to round up everything that they'd need for their assault, from civilian attire to sidearms and grenades. The football was the hardest to find. The six of them who were going out with the ball changed quickly in a shed, layering stolen weapons and borrowed clothes over top one another. Only Jones, Morita, and Howlett stayed in what passed for their uniforms; Jones and Morita because they stood out as foreigners too easily, and Howlett to make an even three-on-three match. They went over the plan again as they made their way up the road to the line of trees that separated Ayrens from the next town, where the Germans were definitely building something up. The town had been abandoned, save for the large, brown building to the east. A high fence had been constructed around it, with the only visible gate right at the front doors, and guarded by several men.

The firing team stayed low in the trees, while without preamble Loki kicked the football high into the air toward the direction of the town, far enough away to be seen by the guards, but not obviously appear as a threat. As Loki and Pinkerton jogged out toward the ball, they were met with confused shouting in the distance, but they ignored it, pretending to be too involved in their game. One by one, the other four ran out to re-join the game, while German guards continued to shout.

They played the game like they meant it, stealing the ball from one another and falling in the snow, paying no heed to the German shouting as it eventually died out. Slowly, they inched the game closer and closer to the fenced building, letting the ball go out a bit too far, and then not quite bringing it all the way back.

When they got about fifty feet away, the Germans began shouting at them again. They kept their rifles down, and even started to step away from their posts. Finally, the ball was kicked too far away again, and one of the Germans hesitantly kicked it back at them. The next two times the ball got away in their direction, one of the Germans reacted in kind, and returned the ball to the game. The third time, two of them put down their rifles behind the fence and carefully jogged out to join the game. Sides hesitantly reshuffled, allowing the two new players to be on the same side. Before too long, three more joined in, making an almost even five-on-six match that everyone seemed absorbed in. Loki carefully checked to make sure there wasn't anyone else hidden at the guard post, and kicked the ball as hard as he could, sending it flying over the fence and well beyond it. Before the Germans could see where the ball had gone, everyone else chased after it, while the three still in the trees finally made their presence known. At the first clear shots, they took out the German guards and followed the rest behind the fence, helping to lock the gate behind them.

They could hear others rushing out to the gate, and quickly picked up the discarded weapons as their own. Rogers strode over to the front doors and pulled them open, throwing a grenade in and stepping aside to get out of the blast path. Shouting on the inside was met by a quick explosion and screaming, and then another grenade, just for safe measure. After that one blew, Rogers led the squad in. Their orders were to avoid taking out civilians, but there didn't appear to be any civilians, at least on the ground floor. The squad all spread out, clearing the ground floor before the crew inside could even regroup and form a defence. Once the floor was clear, Rogers pointed at the four men on the south side and motioned for them to check the upper floors, while he led the other four to look for any cellars.

The Germans hadn't been expecting an attack, and the whole assault was over in less than twenty minutes. They didn't find any French civilians, but they did find more weapons and ammo than any of them knew what to do with, and outside something that looked suspiciously like a mass grave.

"Take what you need. Perce, rig this place to blow," Rogers said as he reluctantly led the men back inside, looking around to be sure nothing was missed.

"Yes, sir," said Pinkerton. He jogged ahead and went to go see what useful items he could find.

The building was old, and probably went through a dozen different uses before the Germans got to it. There wasn't much on the top floors, and even after going around the outer perimeter, no-one found anything looking like it might be a cellar. Not caring enough and too eager to leave, everyone quickly loaded up on all the grenades and ammo they could before getting out to let Pinkerton set up his explosives.

Loki had told the mayor they'd be out of his town by midday. It was quarter after two by the time they made their way back into Ayrens. Surprisingly, the mayor was standing on the street, overseeing the dressing and packing of ten horses. More surprisingly, Remy was absent. None of the horses looked particularly bred for riding, and all had the massive, sturdy build of plough horses, but they allowed themselves to be saddled so Loki assumed they had all at least been broken. He singled out the largest of the team and took it by the reins, pulling its face down so Loki could inspect it. It may have been a plough horse, but it was calm and didn't seem to object to anything that was going on around it.

"They'll do," Loki said, turning toward Pierre and nodding graciously. "Thank you."

Pierre nodded in turn. "Good," he said before turning away and leaving again.

Loki moved over to Bruttenholm and led him to one of the smaller horses. "Please tell me you've ridden," he said.

"I could," Bruttenholm started, suggesting that if he did, it would be a lie.

Loki fought the urge to roll his eyes. "The horse will know where it's going. Don't try to steer unless you need to. Don't pull on the reins unless you need to stop. Don't kick unless you need to run. Hold on with your knees, and for the love of all that is sacred, don't fall off," he instructed. Before Bruttenholm could protest, Loki took his cane and bullied him up onto the saddle, helping him get settled. At once, the horse started to move nervously, but Loki pulled down on its reins and held tight to the saddle, steadying it. "It knows when you're nervous. Don't be nervous," he said.

He tied Bruttenholm's cane to the saddle and went off to help the next person. Surprisingly, Dugan also knew what he was doing and was helping others up as well, giving them similar sets of advice. Between them, it took less than ten minutes to get everyone mounted.

"Horses, huh?" he asked, watching Loki take the biggest one for his own mount, trusting it to be the only horse that could support the weight of him and his pack.

"Oh, yes," Loki said. "I was riding before I could walk."

Dugan didn't quite seem to believe him as he took his own mount, but let it be. Loki looked at him, almost surprised at how comfortable he seemed in the saddle.

"How long for you?" Loki asked.

"We didn't get a proper car on the farm until I was ten," Dugan answered, kicking his horse in its flanks to start it moving down the road. The rest quickly got the hint and started to follow.

Loki nodded and turned back to Rogers. "Sir, permission to scout ahead," he said.

Rogers looked down at his horse, settling in to get comfortable with the way it moved. "Yeah," he said.

Casting a wicked smirk to Dugan, Loki cracked his reins and took off at a run, with Dugan close at his side almost at once. They left the village behind, riding easily over the snowy fields to the west. There was nothing as far as they could see, with open farmland stretching clear to the horizon, broken up only by occasional lines of trees. Running the horse as he was, Loki longed for a bow. He hadn't thought to miss the hunt, but riding with a friend at his side, the hunt was all he could think of. When movement caught his eye off to the north, Loki reached for his sidearm.

"What do you want for dinner tonight?" he asked, slowing only slightly.

"Oh, I don't know. I'm thinking maybe a big, juicy ribeye. Mashed potatoes. Gravy," Dugan said, almost wistfully. He finally looked over to Loki, watching him slowly draw his sidearm. "Wait, what?"

"How do you feel about venison?" asked Loki. Turning toward the deer and bringing the horse back to a run, Loki lined up his shot. He'd never fired a gun from horseback, and supposed he probably should have expected the animal to panic when he pulled the trigger. He struggled to calm it as it reared up, kicking and crying out loudly.

"Did I at least hit it?" Loki asked, pulling hard on the reins and focusing more on not falling off than anything.

Dugan shielded his eyes and looked off to the north. "I don't know."

Once Loki managed to calm the horse, making a mental note to find a bow if he wanted to shoot from horseback ever again, he rode north with Dugan close behind.

"Well, I'll be damned," Dugan said as they drew closer to the buck that lay dead in the snow. He looked back to where they had been when Loki fired, and back to the deer as it bled out from its neck, calculating the distance. He pointed back over his shoulder, back toward the direction they'd come from. "I think there was a stream back there a ways."

Loki nodded and jumped down off the horse. He quickly gathered up the deer and frowned at the weight his horse was already carrying. Not sure what else to do, he tied the deer down on top of everything else, and took a few long moments to focus his magic toward something he'd only ever tried a few times before. He rarely bothered to construct a full shape change, electing for the simpler magic that changed his skin and little else, but he feared the horse might collapse under him otherwise. He could feel everything inside him shift as he made himself be human, rather than just appear as one. It was oddly uncomfortable, and he didn't quite seem to move right as he climbed back into the saddle. He felt too light and too small. But the horse took his weight, as well as everything else he had packed onto the animal, and didn't immediately attempt to buck him off.

"Lead the way," Loki said, once he was sure everything had worked. He realised he suddenly felt the cold, and huddled up into his coat to ward off the chill in the air. He'd known was cold was abstractly, and once thought he'd even experienced it. But riding a horse across a frozen French field was suddenly something new entirely; bitterly unpleasant in a way that made his entire body want to lock up. If not for the sake of the horse, Loki wouldn't even be experiencing it now at all.

He followed after Dugan to the stream, wasting no time in gutting, skinning, and cleaning the deer when they got there, while Dugan went off again to find somewhere less out in the open to camp. By the time he got back, and Loki was done with the deer, the rest of the squad were catching up with them, just as evening began to fall.

"Thought you guys were going scouting," Rogers said.

Loki looked up at them, still cleaning himself off. "We did. And we scouted dinner," he said, nodding toward the butchered deer tied to the back of his horse. "And a place to camp for the night. About another mile west."

Rogers nodded while Loki got up. He checked to make everything was secure before taking his mount again.

"Good job," Rogers offered.

The shelter Dugan had found was a small farm house, empty and abandoned. But it had a hearth and a place to tie the horses, and was dry inside. Loki broke apart anything not immediately useful and used it to build a fire so he could cook the deer and warm up the house. Bruttenholm joined him inside, while everyone else undressed and groomed the horses under Dugan's lead out in the barn. Bruttenholm watched quietly while Loki managed to settle some of the venison on the grate over the fire, leaving the rest on the jacket he never returned once they got back to Ayrens. With the meat slowly cooking, Loki pulled out his bayonet and started using it to scrape off the pelt, hoping to preserve it well enough to keep along with the antlers.

"Are you really going to take those all the way with you?" asked Bruttenholm, watching him as he worked.

"I'll send them back once we get to London," Loki said, eager to unload the trophies he'd been carrying along with him the entire time.

"Send them back?" asked Bruttenholm cautiously.

Loki pushed his spectacles up the bridge of his nose and nodded. "Maybe not through the post, but yes. And I believe we only have a short way to go. It shouldn't be too much of a burden."

He wiped his bayonet onto his trouser cuff and resumed scraping the pelt, careful to avoid cutting through it. While he and Bruttenholm sat in silence, several of the others began filtering in, bringing the preserved fruits and vegetables given to them by the mayor of Ayrens. It was not, despite what Loki had asked for, enough to get them to the coast, but with the meat from the deer it would stretch to get them there.

"I just put that on," Loki warned as Morita reached for a piece.

"Oh." Morita recoiled quickly and opened a jar of some sort of dark preserve as he sat down on the floor by the fire. "Hell of a day, huh?" he asked, picking out some of the sticky jam with his fingers.

Loki laughed quietly. "Could have been worse," he pointed out.

When he finished scraping off the pelt, he hung it over an open door and returned to check the meat on the fire. Deciding it was done enough to be safe, he began handing it out to make room for a bit more to go on, intending to cook it all and hoping the cold weather would keep it from going off before they reached the coast. Everyone ate greedily with their fingers, passing around the jars brought in.

"You do a lot of hunting, Olson?" Rogers asked, licking some jam from his thumb.

"I grew up in a hunting village," Loki said. "I only came to New York in thirty-nine."

Even in the dark, he could see Rogers trying to piece that together with everything else he already knew. Loki knew it had been a mistake to give the year, even if it had been correct for this particular holiday of his. He had left Asgard in the Midgardian year of 1939, but he knew it would eventually give him away one way or another. He finished the rest of his venison in one bite, hoping to detract any more questions. It worked, and soon the conversation turned to the usual topics of women no-one was having sex with, and beer no-one was drinking.

One by one, everyone eventually drifted off to sleep, while Loki stayed up to finish cooking the deer, and to ostensibly keep watch. Once he finished, he wrapped the meat back up in the first clean-looking sheet he could find and fed another table leg to the fire before settling in for the night.

It was a rare clear day as they rode across more endless farmland for the fourth day since leaving Ayrens. Their path had begun to cut more northerly as they hoped to find an unoccupied village at a decent crossing point. Little about the landscape had changed for days, giving the rather bleak impression that they hadn't actually gone anywhere. As they rode, Loki's thoughts began to drift, and before he knew it, he was starting to fall behind until he rode next to Bruttenholm toward the rear. Loki looked over at him, trying to decide if he truly wanted to know the answers to the questions on his mind.

"Do you know any stories about Asgardians coming to Midgard?" he asked.

Bruttenholm looked at him, obviously confused. "A great deal," he said.

Loki shook his head. "Not gods. Just... Asgardians." He thought on that for a moment, and realised his error. "I suppose we're all gods to you." He frowned and tried to think of the best way to frame his question.

"I'm afraid I don't know the difference," said Bruttenholm. Loki thought it was odd that he looked almost pleased to not know the difference, but he imagined it must be rare for him to learn new things after being declared an expert.

Loki let himself smile, glad to teach him.

"It's a title, bestowed by the Allfather, on the judgement of certain tasks. Gods of the hunt do not control the hunt, but are the realm's most skilled hunters. Others are given in mockery. A god of festivities for a drunkard who never leaves the mead hall, unless it's to go to the feast hall," Loki explained. He looked over to Bruttenholm, remembering something said during one of their first meetings. "You called me a chaos god. Not only have I put considerable energy into avoiding having any title bestowed upon me, but that is not a title given on Asgard."

"Rasputin's ritual was to summon chaos gods," Bruttenholm explained. "If you were summoned, then you were meant to be there."

Loki frowned. If Bruttenholm spoke the truth, then any fool summoning chaos gods could summon him at any time, and it was not a prospect Loki looked forward to. Especially if it meant godhood, and the responsibilities that came with it. He wasn't even sure he knew what it meant to be a chaos god, but he knew he didn't want it.

"And who determines such things?" he asked.

Bruttenholm shrugged meekly. "That, I'm afraid I couldn't tell you."

Loki frowned even more and dismissed the whole thing as nonsense. If no-one bestowed the title, then it simply couldn't belong to him.

"So. Stories of Æsir coming to Earth," Bruttenholm said thoughtfully after a moment.

"I suppose Vanir as well," Loki amended. "He could have been Vanir. Likely a warrior, I would think."

Bruttenholm looked up suddenly, some spark of recognition lighting up in his eyes. "Yes! The warrior who stayed," he said a bit too excitedly, causing him to almost slide off his saddle. Loki reached out to steady him, not wanting to see him crushed before he gave his insight. Bruttenholm laughed as he resettled in his saddle and shook his head. "There is a story, yes. Often thought to be more of a fairy tale than mythology, since it first appeared in Spain, several centuries after the Viking era."

Loki waited impatiently, trying to prompt him without actually saying anything. "Yes?" he said, failing.

Bruttenholm tapped his mouth with his fingers as he thought. "The story goes that there was a warrior; perhaps a member of Odin's Einherjar, or maybe a Berserker, who came to fight a battle on Midgard. When the armies retreated back to their own realms, this warrior stayed behind, choosing a life of peace to a life of war. It's said that he broke his magic staff into three pieces, and scattered them across the realm so no-one would ever find them again."

Loki sat stiffly in his saddle, feeling like he'd been slapped in the face. "Berserker," he confirmed, knowing the sort of staff they used; one of the few forbidden items in the palace's vault that Loki was all too glad to ignore. He had enough of his own rage and anger, and didn't need anyone else's added to it. "But they haven't been sent to Midgard since..." He took a moment to think back on history lessons he'd done his best to forget. "Jötunheimr. The war with Jötunheimr. That's when he deserted."

"Who?" asked Bruttenholm cautiously.

Loki jabbed his thumb back over his shoulder. "This whoreson back in Ayrens. I may have assaulted him," Loki said, not entirely proud of that. "Several times. He annoyed me."

"You think one of the men in that village was an Asgardian Berserker?" asked Bruttenholm.

Loki shrugged. "He wasn't human. I know that much for certain." He found himself growing angry all over again, wishing he had throttled the life from the man while he had the chance. At least then he might have felt better.

He rode in silence after that, pulling his coat around him and telling himself that the cold didn't bother him. While he was able to shift back during the nights, he still worried he might cripple his horse if he didn't shift his entire body to the frail form of a human. It was a body he hated, and living in it he couldn't see how the humans got anything done. Everything was exhausting and demanding, and what would have been a simple task otherwise often left him feeling sore and wasted. Even riding horseback across relatively even terrain was tiresome in this form, and Loki could not wait to be rid of it forever.

Worst of all, he hated the cold. The novelty had worn off in the first ten minutes. Four days later, it was all he felt; a bone-numbing chill that would leave for nothing. He couldn't imagine how humans managed to survive their winters, if this was what they had to survive them with.

As dusk approached, they could smell the sea in the wind. They'd skirted around countless villages as they crossed France, but they'd need a village eventually if they hoped to cross the channel. The tricky part would be finding one that wasn't occupied.

"Olson. Dugan," Rogers called from up front.

Loki brought his horse to catch up with Rogers, along with Dugan. They were the best riders in the squad, and already knew their orders before Rogers even spoke.

"I think we're getting close. Go up ahead a few miles and see what you can find," he said.

Loki buttoned up his coat and tried to pull the high collar around his face before breaking his horse into a run, but the wind only pulled it right back down again. He tried to ignore it, but it was too much. The cold stung his face and the wind bit and tore at him in ways he hadn't experienced since hunting polar bear with Thor on Niflheimr. Hoping his horse could take it, Loki shifted back, using Dugan's distraction on riding to cover the gap between bringing his natural body back and changing his skin to only look human. His horse felt the change, but though it protested and tried to buck, its back at least didn't break. But like this, everything felt cool and comfortable. The wind was still sharp, but it didn't bite like it had before. Finally, Loki felt right.

He and Dugan rode toward a low line of trees.

"How far should we go?" Dugan called out.

Loki wasn't even sure they were going in the right direction, and wished dearly for a map. He lifted himself higher in the saddle and tried to see over the horse and the trees ahead.

"See what's beyond-" he started, before the world was suddenly pulled out from under him. He was thrown violently forward, away from the horse and into the ground, unable to stop himself from falling. He could hear his horse crying out and thrashing somewhere behind him, while Dugan shouted in alarm, but didn't quite register any of it while he lay stunned in the snow.

As he tried to pull himself up, Dugan rushed down to his side, holding his hands out like he wasn't sure what to do.

"Oh thank God, you're alive," he said.

Loki felt like his face had been split wide open, and when he saw the blood in the snow, he wasn't surprised. "What the fuck was that?" he grumbled breathlessly, trying to stop the blood that poured from his nose and split upper lip.

He looked back to see the trough he'd cut in the snow, more ten feet long, with the horse the same length back from that. It lay thrashing on the ground still, kicking its legs and failing to regain its footing. Something about it seemed off, but for the moment, Loki couldn't tell what it was.

"Make sure it isn't lame," Loki said, trying to hold his face together with both his hands.

Dugan hesitated, still looking at Loki like a stunned owl before he got up and nodded. Loki ignored him and focused instead on his face, not taking much time at all to determine that he had broken his nose in the fall. Looking up again at the blood-spattered and marred snow, he realised that had he not changed to avoid the cold, the fall would have killed him instantly. As he fell onto his back to breathe, he heard Dugan fire off two rounds before everything fell unnaturally silent.

"Gopher hole, it looks like," he announced bleakly, walking back.

Loki sat up again to see him bending to pick something up from the ground, but his sight was too blurred to see it properly. He waited silently, debating trying to set his nose himself while Dugan came back.

"You are one lucky son of a bitch, you know that?" he said, handing Loki his miraculously-unbroken spectacles.

"I don't feel like it," he said.

He tried to put the spectacles back on with one hand, but the curved ear pieces were difficult to settle easily. Once he got them on, he ignored the hard pressure on his nose and looked back at the horse, dead and lifeless in the snow.

"I liked that horse," he said, taking a moment to wonder if he had only imagined not being able to see it clearly before.

Beside him, Dugan laughed incredulously. "You almost get yourself killed, and you complain about the horse," he said, offering his hand out.

Loki sighed and took Dugan's hand, trying not to pull him clean off his feet as he got up. They made their way back, Loki staggering and still in a daze as he walked. He looked down at his kit, still on the horse's saddle and tried to sigh through his nose, only to choke.

"You okay?" Dugan asked, looking back in concern.

Loki shook his head and took off his spectacles again. "No," he said, handing them over. Before Dugan could ask what was wrong, Loki pressed the heels of his hands on both sides of his nose and set it with a loud crunch. He could hear Dugan groaning beside him, ignoring it while he made sure he'd actually be able to continue breathing.

"Was that necessary?" asked Dugan sickly.

"Yeah," Loki said with a nod. "Yes, that's better."

He took his spectacles back and frowned down at the dead animal on top of half his kit. Not sure what else to do, he uncinched the saddle. With Dugan's help, he pulled it out from under the horse along with his kit, though he wasn't sure what to do with it from there. He just stared blankly down at everything, with the deer antlers poking out of his pack and the rifle with a brand new bend in its barrel.

"Okay, you're in outer space right now. I'm relieving you of command," Dugan decided.

"What?" Loki asked distantly.

He looked up at Dugan, not sure he was able to make that decision. Though he figured it shouldn't be surprising. It was probably more surprising that he was alive at all, let alone able to form words. Rather than fighting it, he let himself be put onto Dugan's horse, hoping it didn't decide to fall out from under him as well. He watched blankly as Dugan gathered up everything, shouldering Loki's pack and strapping the rest wherever it would fit on his own horse. Leading the horse by the reins, Dugan began walking back the way they came. They met back up with the squad as the sky grew dark, but even without light to see by, Loki could hear the confusion in Rogers' voice.

"What happened?" he asked. There was a ripple of murmurs from the rest of the squad as they all shifted uneasily.

"Horse threw him," Dugan said. "Horse is dead. Honestly not sure about Olson. He's pretty out of it."

"I'm fine," Loki said thickly. He'd stopped bleeding, but it still caked his throat and face, threatening to choke him.

"Did you find anything?" Rogers asked.

"Nothing. We didn't get very far, though."

"All right. Then we'll keep going until we find something," Rogers decided.

Dugan let go of the reins and walked back and tapped Morita on the thigh. "Go ride with him. Make sure he's all right," he said.

Nodding, Morita slid down off the saddle and walked up to Loki. Not even wanting to deal with arguing, Loki pulled his feet out of the stirrups and slid as far back onto the saddle as possible, letting Morita take the front. He wondered, as they started moving again, if the horse really had fallen into a gopher hole, or if it had failed to take his weight. If it had been the first, and Dugan's horse had found the hole, their squad would be missing a member, surely. If not, it was Loki's error that had cost them a horse. Sighing and not wanting to think about either possibility, Loki leaned gingerly against Morita's back, careful not to actually press any of his weight down.

"You okay back there?" Morita asked, looking back awkwardly.

Loki nodded. "I'm fine. Not the first time I've been thrown from a horse," he said.

He couldn't see the dubious look he was surely receiving, but he knew it was there all the same.

"Don't go falling asleep on me. I don't want you falling out of the saddle as well," Morita warned.

Loki grumbled in reply, but said nothing.

They rode until they found a small village, several hours after the sun had set. It was Dugan and Barnes who scouted ahead this time, much more slowly than on the previous scouting trips. They came back quickly, bearing news of a fishing village as of yet untouched by the war. At the edge of town, they were met by a small group of curious civilians. Between Jones and Rogers explaining the situation, sticking with the story of escorting an injured doctor to England, and now having a soldier injured from being thrown from his horse, they were quickly led to several houses, while their horses were led away to be cared for. Once inside, Morita bustled Loki over to the fire, only then seeing the actual damage from the fall.

"Jesus Christ, did you land on your face?" he asked, wetting a handkerchief from his canteen and using it to clean up some of the blood.

"I think I might have, yes," Loki said.

Morita very carefully started unbuttoning Loki's coat, seeming almost like he was afraid to disturb him.

"Okay, none of your weird tough guy thing right now. Be straight with me. Where does it hurt?" Morita asked, pressing his fingers into the back of Loki's neck.

Deciding it would be in his best interest, Loki sighed and played along this time.