‘I’ll have words with my scriptwriters.’ He made sure the doors were secure, then saw that Tova was still pressed against them, curled up in a tight ball. ‘Tova, are you okay?’ he asked, worried that she had been hit.
Nina joined them. ‘Tova?’ She crouched beside the older woman, who was trembling. ‘It’s all right, we’re safe for now.’
Tova reluctantly lifted her head. Her face was tightly drawn, as she struggled to stop herself from crying. ‘I – I’m sorry, but . . .’ She swallowed, trying to lubricate her fear-dried throat. ‘I am scared! Everyone is trying to kill us, but you do not seem bothered!’
‘Oh, believe me, I’m bothered,’ Nina assured her.
‘But you do not show it!’
‘You get used to it after a while.’ Eddie reached down to help her up.
Tova stood. ‘I do not want to get used to it,’ she said quietly. ‘This is not what I want to do.’
Eddie and his wife exchanged concerned looks, then Nina saw something in the torchlight. In the back of one door were two slots down at knee level – and in each was one of the sun compasses. After releasing the lock, they had fallen down through the door’s innards so they could be collected. ‘Looks like we might need these again,’ she said, picking them up and letting the magnetised discs clap back together.
Kagan straightened, eyeing a ragged bullet hole beside his head. ‘You okay?’ Eddie asked.
‘Yes, but . . . that was close,’ he said. ‘We must go. They will blow up these doors soon enough.’
‘Yeah.’ The Englishman crossed to Berkeley, who was still lying on the floor. ‘All right, arsehole,’ he said, hauling him to his feet, ‘let’s move.’
‘They were shooting at us!’ Berkeley said in shrill outrage. ‘They could have hit me!’
‘Oh, you noticed?’ Nina replied scathingly. ‘These are the people you’re working for, Logan. You really know how to pick ’em.’ He opened his mouth to object, but she had already raised a warning finger. ‘Shut up. We don’t have much time.’
She turned her light down the tunnel. The floor and walls were stone, braced by thick logs. More broad beams supported the ceiling, but from the amount of dirt that had fallen on to the paving slabs and the shrivelled roots clawing down from above, it was clear that the sheer weight of the soil and trees concealing the Viking hall had taken its toll over the centuries.
But that it was here at all was incredible. Despite the adrenalin and fear running through her, Nina felt an undeniable thrill of discovery as she led the group deeper into Valhalla.
26
‘So,’ said Eddie as they advanced down the tunnel, ‘what are we looking for?’
Even with her misgivings, Tova was still a professional. ‘According to the mythology, there is a large main hall roofed with golden shields. I would say it is the most likely place to find anything.’
Ahead, the entrance tunnel ended at a junction, new passages heading left and right. ‘Which way?’ asked Kagan.
Tova shook her head. ‘I do not know.’
‘Nor do I,’ admitted Berkeley.
Nina glowered at him. ‘Colour me surprised.’
Eddie produced a flashlight, and shone it down the right-hand passage. ‘We should’ve brought that chainsaw.’ Gnarled roots hung down to the floor like a curtain, one of the ash trees above having broken through the ceiling beams. ‘Let’s try the other way.’
The group went left. A low doorway led into a side room, but Nina’s torch beam revealed only mouldering sacks covered in dirt. Whatever supplies the Vikings had left behind had long since rotted or been consumed by burrowing animals and insects. A short way on, the tunnel made a sharp turn to the right – and Eddie, leading, stopped immediately after rounding it. ‘Buggeration. Don’t think we’ll get through this way.’ The ceiling had collapsed, broken beams jutting from tons of fallen soil. More ash roots clawed their way into the space.
‘There is something up there,’ Kagan said, pointing. Eddie moved the beam to find the remains of a large bird near the top of the dirt pile.
‘It is an eagle,’ said Tova, dismayed. ‘It must have come in through a hole looking for food, and been trapped.’
Nina felt brief sympathy for the majestic predator, but it was not the only thing caught in the tunnels. ‘We’ll have to go back. Come on.’
They quickly retraced their steps. Eddie glanced towards the entrance. The mercenaries had wisely decided not to try to force open the doors again, but he knew that Hoyt’s next attempt would involve explosives. ‘We’ll need to snap off some of those roots so we can get through,’ he said as they continued. ‘Kagan, give me a hand. Berkeley, you can make yourself useful too.’
‘Why should I help you?’ the American whined.
‘’Cause I’ll beat the shit out of you if you don’t.’
Berkeley blanched. ‘Since you put it like that . . .’
Tova took Eddie’s torch as the three men reached the roots. Berkeley broke off a few smaller branches, while Eddie and Kagan concentrated on one of the larger limbs. They both had to strain, but with a splintering crack it broke away. The gap it left was not wide, but Eddie was able to squeeze through to yank at the thinner obstructions beyond. He tossed the broken roots aside and hunched lower. More dried talons scratched at him as he forced his way past, but he was soon through. ‘There’s another corner,’ he announced, illuminating the passage beyond as Nina started to follow. A short walk to the left turn, and: ‘This way’s clear.’
‘Can you see anything?’ she called.
‘Looks like more rooms and tunnels off to the side. This place’d better not be some sort of maze.’
Tova sounded uncomfortable, and not solely because she was pushing through the roots behind Nina. ‘Some of the descriptions of Valhalla say it is surrounded by a labyrinth.’
‘Hopefully not the euhemeristic ones,’ said Nina, joining her husband. Tova emerged, followed by Berkeley and finally Kagan. The Russian was about to continue down the passage, but Nina held up a hand. ‘I don’t like the sound of that.’ Distant shouts came from the entrance; from their tone not pain or warnings, but orders.
‘Then we’d better shift,’ said Eddie, setting off. ‘Tova, where’s the route to the eitr pits most likely to be?’
‘At the centre,’ she said. ‘If Valhalla was built like a traditional Viking hall, its ceiling would be highest there. The main hall has a ceremonial function; that is where it will be.’
‘So it’ll be on our left,’ said Nina. The left wall of the long tunnel appeared unbroken, in contrast to the several exits on the right. At its far end was another T-junction. ‘And we know how big the barrow is, so . . . it’s got to be round that next corner.’
They hurried down the passage. Nina was first to reach the turn, going left. ‘This must be it!’ she cried.
‘Yes, it has to be,’ Tova gasped in agreement. Berkeley was equally impressed.
About forty feet away, another tunnel heading east intersected the one they had entered. Facing it in the left wall was a set of large double doors, framed by elaborately carved oaken pillars. Other doorways on the opposite side of the passage led into more small rooms, but the group ignored them as they made their way to the majestic entrance.
Eddie looked down the broad eastern passage. ‘They closed that off deliberately,’ he said, playing his torch beam over a sturdy barricade blocking the tunnel. More roots had wormed through the ceiling beams, loose earth piled at the barrier’s foot.
‘That would have been the main entrance,’ said Tova. ‘They must have closed it up when they buried the hall, so the only way in was through the death-barrier.’
‘And the only way to get through that without being killed was with the compasses,’ added Nina, holding up the two discs. ‘They wanted to make sure that only people they considered worthy – true Viking warriors on their way to Ragnarök – could get in.’
‘So does that make us Vikings?’ Eddie asked with a grin as th
ey reached the doors. ‘I mean, you have got red hair . . .’
Nina smiled back, then examined the carvings. ‘These are beautiful,’ she said, admiring the workmanship. Intertwining patterns of leaves, branches and what appeared to be snakes – or a snake, singular, she realised as she followed the seemingly endless curves of the stylised reptile’s body – ran up the pillars. Above the doors, the lintel was decorated with representations of horsemen, longships – and at the very centre, a face. A bearded man, features partially concealed behind his helmet’s faceguard.
Tova saw it too. ‘Is that . . . could that be Odin?’
‘I think it could be,’ Nina replied. The stern visage, a deep scar running down over one closed eye, glowered down at them as if challenging them to enter the room beyond.
Berkeley had momentarily forgotten his status as a prisoner. ‘There’s much more detail than I would have expected,’ he opined. ‘And the helmet seems like a more elaborate version of the Ringerike find, so yes, undoubtedly someone of very high status. Wouldn’t you agree, Dr Skilfinger?’
‘Yes, yes, I . . .’ Tova began, before trailing off and giving him an odd look. Nina also shot him a disapproving glare.
‘Okay, so it’s a nice antique,’ Eddie said impatiently. ‘But is it likely to be booby-trapped?’
‘I would not think so,’ said Tova. ‘The death-barrier was the trap – anyone who passed it would be assumed to be a warrior, and so worthy to enter.’
All the same, the Englishman shooed the others back and lifted the corroded iron latch at arm’s length. But there was no rattle of deadly mechanisms from the other side. He cautiously opened the door. His torch revealed shapes in the darkness beyond, faint glints of metal reflecting back, but nothing moved. ‘Odin sesame . . .’ he said, pushing harder.
The oak door swung wider, revealing the chamber beyond.
The great hall of Valhalla.
Nina and Eddie panned their lights around the room as they entered, the others close behind. As Tova had suggested, the vaulted ceiling was high, a good forty feet above the floor at its peak. But unlike the passages outside, there was more to the roof than simple dark wooden beams. ‘Wow!’ Nina said, awed, as her flashlight beam was reflected back at her with a much warmer tint. ‘Look at that.’
‘Amazing!’ Berkeley said, staring in wonder. The entire ceiling was covered by overlapping golden plates, the effect resembling a snake’s scales. Each plate was at least four feet in length and nearly as wide.
‘It is as the poem Grímnismál described it,’ Tova told them, wide-eyed in wonderment. ‘A roof made of golden shields – and look! The rafters are like the shafts of spears.’ Unlike the squared-off, axe-cut beams in the tunnels, these had been carved into more rounded cross-sections.
Eddie lowered his torch to illuminate tables and benches, the source of the metal gleams draped over them. ‘Looks like chainmail,’ he said, going to the nearest table.
Tova joined him. ‘They are called byrnies – shirts of chain armour. Also just like Grímnismál!’
Kagan moved deeper into the room, but almost stumbled over something. Nina shone her light down at his feet. ‘Good thing you didn’t kick it too hard, or you might have needed a tetanus shot.’ The obstruction was a large double-bladed axe, the head speckled with rust.
‘They’re all over the place,’ Eddie reported, sweeping his beam across the flagstones. The floor was noticeably cleaner than outside, the golden scales on the roof holding back the soil, but it was instead strewn with straw . . . and discarded weapons: knives, swords, axes and even spears. More such items lay on the tables. ‘Christ, so they just chucked the stuff down wherever and hoped that the sword fairy’d pick up after them?’
‘Like you and your socks,’ Nina joked. Taking care not to step on anything, she headed down the great hall. The room was well over a hundred feet long, and almost three quarters as wide. As she advanced, she spotted something on the far wall. ‘Tova, look at this.’
The Swede joined her as they approached a stone dais, on which stood three ornate thrones, dark carved oak decorated with silver and gold detailings. But it was not the chairs that had caught the attention of the archaeologists; rather, what was on the wall behind them. More runes were carved into granite slabs, around them running a now familiar symbol: the snaking form of Jörmungandr, the Midgard Serpent. ‘What do they say?’ Eddie asked.
Tova examined the inscriptions. ‘These are definitely very old, from possibly as long ago as AD 200. It is the early runic alphabet of twenty-four characters, not the sixteen from after AD 800. Let me see if I can translate them . . .’
‘Actually, I may be able to speed things along,’ said Berkeley haughtily. He raised his tablet computer, only to flinch as Eddie pointed the Wildey at him. ‘Whoa, whoa! It’s a translation app. It’s a lot faster than doing it the old-fashioned way.’
‘For you, perhaps,’ said Tova, offended.
Eddie looked at Nina, who shrugged. ‘We know his program works, otherwise he wouldn’t be here,’ she pointed out.
‘Don’t try anything,’ Eddie rumbled as he ushered Berkeley to the dais.
Now it was the rogue archaeologist’s turn to take offence. ‘I’m as interested in this as anyone. Well, okay, maybe not you. Although I have no idea what you’re interested in. Apart from swearing and violence, obviously.’
‘Hegelian dialecticism, mate,’ the Yorkshireman replied, to Berkeley’s surprise. ‘All right, see if your iPad can do better than a real person.’
Still aggrieved, Berkeley switched on his tablet and brought up an app before aiming its camera at the runes. Nina sidled up to her husband. ‘Since when are you interested in Hegelian dialecticism?’ she whispered.
He chuckled. ‘Since never – I don’t even know what the fuck it means. It was a question on Jeopardy, that’s all.’
Nina sighed. ‘For one brief moment, I thought I’d got you interested in philosophy. Oh well . . .’
‘Look at this,’ said Tova. She indicated part of the runes. ‘These do describe the route to one of the eitr pits, I have read that much already.’
‘I agree; these are definitely directions,’ Berkeley added. Nina went to him and regarded his tablet’s screen. The app was similar to programs she had used herself; the user photographed ancient text, and it employed pattern recognition algorithms to identify words, which were then translated into English. The computer was working through the runes line by line. Such software lacked nuance; the translations were blunt and often awkwardly phrased, and could not compete with the work of a human expert, but were effective enough at uncovering the gist of the original text. ‘Almost a step-by-step guide. Look, here – it starts by telling you to travel across Bifröst and back down the river to the lightning lake.’
‘But are those the directions to the eitr pit the Soviets already found, or the other one?’ Nina asked.
‘I don’t know yet. It’ll take a while for it to translate the whole thing.’
Eddie glanced back towards the entrance. ‘Yeah, you just take your time, mate. No rush.’
‘I think I can be faster,’ said Tova. She was examining one of the blocks of runes, running her finger over the ancient text – but rather than doing so line by line, she was skipping quickly through it, picking out key words. ‘I know where these directions lead.’
Nina and Berkeley hurried across to her. ‘Where?’ Nina asked.
Tova tapped on one particular word. ‘Here. This says “Helluland”. It is the Old Norse name for—’
‘Baffin Island!’ Berkeley interrupted. He raised his tablet and took a snapshot of the text. ‘Of course, it makes sense. There’s archaeological evidence that Vikings had reached there even before Leif Erikson. Tanfield Valley, Kimmirut—’
Tova shot him an annoyed glare. ‘Those finds are not conclusive. But . . .’ she read on, ‘this may help confirm them. The runes say where to land on Helluland, and from there,’ excitement filled her face, ‘it tells us t
he way to Jörmungandr’s western lair!’
‘That is what I feared,’ said Kagan. He strode to the group of archaeologists, and before anyone could react snatched Berkeley’s tablet from his hands and dashed it to the floor. The screen cracked, shards of glass scattering.
‘Hey!’ Berkeley protested. ‘What – what are you doing?’
‘My job.’ The Russian shoved the two women aside, Berkeley already having retreated in shocked fear, and drew his gun. ‘Get back.’
Nina grabbed the startled Swede and pulled her away as Kagan aimed at the carved runes and fired at almost point-blank range. Gritty splinters spat at them as the bullet shattered a palm-sized chunk of the ancient stone. ‘Jesus!’ Nina yelped. ‘Why the hell did you do that?’
‘This is the best way to make sure that nobody finds the eitr,’ Kagan told her. ‘We destroy the runes and the sun compasses. That way, nobody will be able to follow the path of the Vikings.’
Nina interposed herself between him and the carved text. Kagan lowered his gun, but did not put it away. ‘And you’re going to do that by shooting them to pieces?’
‘We have no explosives, so it is either that or hit them with axes. And we do not have much time – Hoyt and his men will soon blow up the gate. Now move.’
‘But this is Valhalla!’ Tova protested. ‘It is the most incredible Norse site to be discovered in centuries. Nina, you can’t let him destroy it.’
‘I don’t intend to,’ Nina assured her.
‘You must,’ Kagan insisted. ‘You are the director of the IHA – you know what is at stake here! This is a matter of global security, not archaeology. We have to destroy the runes. Quickly!’
Nina looked to her husband for support, but he shook his head. ‘Sorry, but he’s right. We can’t let Hoyt get hold of this shit. It’s too dangerous.’
‘Dammit, Eddie!’ she cried. ‘If we translate the runes, we give Unit 201 a chance to use Thor’s Hammer on the eitr and neutralise it!’
That gave Kagan pause for thought, but Eddie was unswayed. ‘And if it doesn’t work, they’ll nuke the fucking place! That’ll do a world of good for global security, won’t it? Especially if it turns out the other pit’s in Norway or Scotland, or even the States.’