by K. T. Tomb
At the hotel, Lana got them checked in quickly and then jumped into the Land Cruiser to take the driver back to the rental car dealer. She paid for the two weeks rental, got the receipt for her expense report and went straight back to the hotel. It was a lovely place full of quiet, comfortable vistas in the public areas and cozy, well appointed rooms that boasted arctic climate control. The cold air was a welcome reprieve from the clammy climate that hung over the city. She sincerely hoped that it wasn’t like that every day. Luckily, this trip wouldn’t see them out in the field under the scorching desert sun; they were working out of Dr. Epstein’s warehouse which she was sure would be comfortable and air-conditioned since so many precious artifacts were being housed there.
Lana placed her laptop on the desk in her hotel room and turned it on. As soon as she was online she went to the last email she had received from a source in Oslo. The falcon, it seemed, wasn’t a statue at all; it was the decorative finial from a flagpole, similar to the standards the Roman Legion would carry at the head of the army when they were on the march. In fact, that was what they had though it was originally, especially since the gold quality had been tested and confirmed as Roman refined gold of the period. However, careful examination of the bird’s features showed that it wasn’t the eagle of the Roman Legion, but a falcon. The distinctive details in the feathers, the beak and the claws further suggested that it was Norse, even before they had analyzed the goldsmith’s marks. The falcon was a sacred bird to the Norse Vikings; they believed that the great goddess Freyja had a cloak of falcon feathers which made the wearer invisible and that the cloak had once helped Loki and Thor recover the hammer, Mjölnir, when it had been stolen. Her source also insisted that the finial was one of a set.
Lana powered down the laptop and closed it with a sigh. She was hungry and thought the others should be too, so she picked up the phone and called them both.
Chapter Three
Not one of his men saw when the arrow passed through Alaric’s neck. He made a gurgling sound and his horse came to halt, then he simply tumbled out of his saddle and fell to the ground. When Svein got to his side there was blood rushing from a wound in his neck and Jarl Alaric was already dead. He crouched down and looked around them, quickly scanning the tree line while he signaled to his men to dismount and prepare for attack. Svein searched the other side of the road looking carefully at the trees that lined it and then he saw the arrow buried deep in the bark of a nearby tree. He pulled it out and studied it. It was made of yew, not a common wood this far North and it was fletched with falcon feathers. The bow and the archer must have both been very powerful to shoot an arrow across the valley, straight through a man’s neck and lodge it firmly into a tree. Only one set of men were known to be capable of such feats; they were Freyja’s Furies, assassins from Scotland who often traveled the seaways from the south up through Scandinavia, attaching themselves to armed forces as mercenaries and plying their trade as killers.
“Jarl Alaric has been murdered,” Svein announced. “We are turning around and going straight back to Drammen.”
The Jarl’s standards were struck and the flagpoles stored, Alaric’s body was lashed to his horse securely and the entire retinue rode hard back towards home. They made it there before sunset and when his brother’s body was brought into the Great Hall on a makeshift stretcher, Ivor came out from the Jarl’s rooms hurriedly to find out what was going on.
He noticed the faces of the same men who had ridden out that morning with his brother and witnessed the somber expressions they all wore. When he looked past them, he saw the body lying on the wolf furs near the great fire. Gildi, Agartha and Thyri were already kneeling beside it; undoing the braids of his beard and combing the blood from his hair. Ivor found it strange how as dutiful as they all were not one of them shed a single tear.
“Freda!” he called out and waited for her to appear in the doorway behind the chairs of state. “Freda, your husband has been killed. Come and look at the body. You have to acknowledge him before the men may take him to be prepared by the völva.”
Freda stepped forward slowly, she was careful not to look into the eyes of any of Alaric’s warriors as she crossed the room to stand beside Ivor. She seemed to swoon a little at the sight of the body and his arm was ready to catch her and hold her up. She put an arm around his shoulder and nodded.
“It is him; this is my husband, Jarl Alaric of Drammen,” she said softly, and then she stepped back from Ivor and bent down on one knee before him with her head bowed. “Alaric has been taken into the Halls of Valhalla; Ivor is now the Jarl in Drammen. Hail him!”
When the men took Alaric’s body from the hall, Freda returned to her rooms and lay on her bed. It wasn’t long before the tears were heavy in her eyes and streaming down her face. She couldn’t believe her luck and her unborn child’s good fortune; and it wasn’t long before she was laughing hysterically. Those around her thought that she mourned for the loss of her husband but at the same time was happy that he had died a good death and had surely passed into the portals of Odin’s Great Hall. But Freda cried and then laughed in gratitude for her freedom.
I must be carrying a boon baby in my womb, she thought, perhaps I have been visited by the gods.
Ivor followed the stretcher to the home of the völva, where they placed Alaric’s body on a long, narrow table in a shed that was attached to the building. He took up knives and began to cut away his brother’s clothing. The men tried to take him away so that they could leave the medicine woman to do her work, but Ivor threatened them with the knife he held tightly in his hand. They turned and left him there to do what he felt honored his brother; after all it was not unheard of for a ruler’s successor to help with the preparation of the body. It was believed by some that the humility involved in preparing the body facilitated a complete transfer of power from the deceased to the new ruler and that there was a communion of their souls as the living performed those honors for the dead.
The next day, Ivor helped the medicine woman to carry the stretcher bearing Alaric’s body down the hillside to the edge of the fjord where the men took it from them and placed it on the pyre in the ship. They shoved it off from the pier and the current took it swiftly out towards the middle of the waterway. Ivor raised the bow to shoot the fiery arrow, but he could not set it loose. He handed the bow to Svein to fire the arrow but before anyone could stop them; Agartha, Gildi and Thyri stepped forward with their bows and arrows in hand. They lit their arrows from the torches and fired them out over the water, striking the ship and sending it up in flames. They were magnificent; everyone was admiring them in the torchlight. They had all been shield maidens before they married Alaric, women who were skilled and trained with weaponry and who went to fight in battles alongside the men. Their leather vests and britches glittered with brass buckles and iron studs, the swords that hung at their sides were as long and as sharp as any man’s and across their backs were slung the round painted shield of the Norse warrior. They stood there watching their husband’s funeral ship burn with a magnificent pride akin to that of goddesses. Freda could not bear to watch their pride for long; she turned away from the spectacle and returned to the Great Hall.
“Are you well, my love?” Ivor whispered to her, as he stood closely by her chair.
“Your child makes me ill, Ivor,” she replied. “I can neither eat nor drink too much at a time otherwise I vomit uncontrollably; and yet I am famished all the time.”
“You cannot be hungry if you are growing my son inside you,” Ivor said to her sternly. “He needs food to be strong.”
“So it is a son, is it?” she joked back at him. “I have to make do with broths and teas, sometimes I can eat fruits, but I cannot even stand the sight of meat. The völva cannot come to see me until after the moon is full because she has been attending to the dead but she sent some herbs that are helping with the nausea.”
“That is good then,” he said.
“Sit beside me, Ivor,” she sai
d suddenly. “Please. This is your chair now that you are Jarl.”
“No, Freda, you know the rules,” he replied. “You must sit here and rule this place as Alaric’s widow for one night; tomorrow will be soon enough for us to be seated here together as we should be.”
She smiled up at him but her attention was taken from his face by the striking of shields inside the hall. The three lesser wives were now entering the hall. Freda frowned openly at them. They were so magnificent in their fighting clothes; they were admired, respected and desired as shield maidens, what did she have to compete with that?
“Will you keep them as well?” she asked Ivor bitterly. “Will you want to try out Alaric’s other women?”
“Freda, do not talk like that. Why would I do that to you? When of all people, I know most how their addition to your home hurt you. What I have done to make you safe, I would do for no one else; remember that Freda. I doubt you will ever know how much I would do to keep us together and out of harm’s way.”
“What are you saying, Ivor?”
“I am saying that I will set them free tomorrow.”
At sunrise, Ivor was standing at the edge of the sacred river between two priests of Odin. He was not looking forward to stepping into the freezing water but it was what had to be done. He jumped in quickly and the others waded in and washed him from head to feet. When they were finished he was dried of quickly and briskly rubbed with rosemary, lavender and meadowsweet, to perfume his body and also to get the blood flowing again. When he was dressed, Svein placed the black wolf’s pelt of the Jarl across his shoulders and fastened it by its silver chain.
“Rule well, Ivor,” he said, then turned to the people present and shouted. “Hail, Jarl Ivor!”
“Hail, Jarl Ivor,” they replied.
Ivor mounted his war horse and led the procession to the center of the town at Drammen and paused so the people could see him.
“Hail, Jarl Ivor!” Svein shouted.
“Hail, Jarl Ivor,” they replied.
Ivor rode into the Great Hall on horseback, dismounted and sat on the throne on the raised platform. Again Svein made his announcement and as soon the men had finished their cheering, the feast began. When everything was progressing nicely, Ivor left the throne and sat at the head of the feast table. Freda sat to his left rubbing the tiny swell of her belly and below her at the table, now more appropriately dressed, was Agartha, Gildi and Thyri. She seemed happy tonight, not as sick or upset as she had been the night before; Ivor had held her in his arms and lulled her to sleep when the pregnancy pains had held her in their grip. It was clear that she had over exerted herself during the funeral.
“You are well my love?” he asked her quietly.
“I am better than I was last night, Ivor,” she replied.
“I notice that there is meat in your plate.”
“The medicine woman insisted that I must find the appetite for it. She said the pain is from my child telling me he wants to grow and there is no food for him to do so. She gave me some clear crystals, which she said she takes from the sea, to sprinkle on the food. It makes it tastier and also it keeps my stomach calm, so I am much better than I was last night.”
“That is good, Freda, you scared me terribly. Please, do not do it again.”
He smiled at her and she returned his smile, reaching for his hand under the table.
When the feasting was finished, the slaves came in with the mead and served the guests generously. Svein, his Captain, all the officers of his armies, the merchants, farmers and priests moved to the front of the room and stood before Ivor’s throne. One by one, they all pledged themselves to his service and wished him a long and successful rule. When it was just his warriors and his closest men who remained with him in the Great Hall, Alaric’s wives, the shield maidens, came before Ivor. Thyri, then Gildi and lastly Agartha knelt in front of the throne and promised themselves as wives and warriors to him. Ivor accepted their service as warriors but released them from their bonds of marriage.
“My warrior maidens, you were not justly treated as wives before and it was not something that you chose for yourselves. You are welcome to stay in Drammen in the protection of my court but you are now free women. If you stay here, you will be the personal guards of Freda, she is your kinswoman, a citizen of Oslo, but otherwise you may do as you please here. Go and choose new husbands whom you love and bear them many children.”
The three women were shocked and yet delighted at their Jarl’s words and quickly stepped back and rejoined the others in the room. Everyone knew that there was only one person left to present themselves to Ivor, and that was Freda, his predecessor’s wife. There was an eerie silence in the room as she walked from her bedroom door, into the Great Hall and to the step in front of Ivor’s throne; around her shoulders, she was wearing the grey wolf‘s pelt of the Jarlkona. When she stood before the new Jarl, she allowed his Captain, Svein, to remove the cloak from her shoulders and drape it respectfully over the empty chair on Ivor’s left hand side. Freda pulled at the buttons of her stomacher and undid the laces of the dress, allowing her garments to fall to the floor.
There was a gasp of surprise when the other courtiers caught a glimpse of her slightly rounded belly and her enlarged breasts. It was clear that she was pregnant, but how? Jarl Alaric had been impotent.
Freda kneeled on the lush furs before Ivor’s throne, and then she placed her head down to the step turning her head to the left. It was the submission of the old family; in which those left behind by a defeated or dead Jarl present themselves prone before the successor. In doing so, they make it clear that should the new ruler refuse to accept their fealty he may simply slay them.
Ivor stepped down from the throne, and picked up the cloak of grey wolf’s fur from the chair beside him. He spread it over Freda’s shoulders and helped her to her feet. When she was comfortably seated, he turned to the people in the hall and said loudly, “She is Freda, Jarlkona of Drammen. She is now my wife and she is carrying my child. If you truly love me, then you must love them both as well.”
At that moment, Svein signaled to two soldiers at the back of the room and they stepped forward carrying the standards of Drammen mounted neatly on the flagpoles with the golden finials. Ivor was not frightened to see those birds again; they were the bringers of his destiny. The men dropped the staves into holes place at each end of the platform. The falcons faced the hall so that the one that looked left faced Freda and the other faced Ivor.
“They are beautiful, my love,” Freda said, admiring them.
“They are more beautiful than you think but they will never be as beautiful as you, wife,” he replied smiling at her.
He was not afraid of the deeds those golden birds had been a part of; he had done what was needed, what no one else had found the courage to do all these years. They had played their part in his coup perfectly and the only other person in the world who knew what had happened in the forests near Sandefjord was on a ship back to Scotland with sacks full of good Roman gold. He would probably never have to leave his country to do such work again. It was as if he had been protected and made undetectable by Freyja’s cloak of falcon’s feathers. A single arrow had brought Alaric down, the archer had been able to identify his retinue because they carried the falcons in front of them, and he had singled him out by his black cloak. His death had been swift and honorable and necessary for their survival.
So, at the end of Alaric’s reign and the beginning of his, Ivor was not afraid of having the Falcons of Freyja perched before his throne; they had done their work well.
***
Dr. Epstein’s warehouse in Damascus was housed in a large industrial park on the south side of the city. When Chyna and the team arrived, he was standing outside the building waiting for them. They made their introductions quickly.
“It is an honor to finally meet all of you,” he announced, as he shook their hands in turn. “We’ve been really lucky with the excavation of this site, Miss Stone. A
lot of political aspects came into play very quickly and it’s important that I give you some of the background before we start.”
“Certainly, Doctor,” Chyna replied. “We are at your disposal.”
He led them directly into his office and closed the door behind him, then gestured for them to take a seat.
“Firstly, I was sorry to learn that your computers were lost by the airline, Oscar. I want to reassure you that the proper authorities have been alerted of it and everything is being done to locate them.”
“Thank you Dr. Epstein,” Oscar replied.
“That being said, let’s get down to it. The site at Hamah was slated for excavation by the Syrian government more than ten years ago when some shepherds in the area turned up a few bronze jugs near a cluster of hills. Preliminary searches found that the hills were actually burial mounds and the scientists were sure that a treasure trove of relics was most likely buried just beneath the surface of the land there. It was subdivided and completely fenced off, access was restricted but nothing further ensued.
“However, recent political activity in the nearby city of Homs prompted certain officials to fast track the site’s excavations and that’s when my team and I were called in. Apparently, we’re well known for our speed and accuracy in working sites located in tumultuous regions. At the moment, we believe that everything has been unearthed from the site and the excavation has been terminated for now. Unfortunately, the situation in Homs is escalating quickly. Everything that was found is here in this warehouse. It’s all been cleaned and dated but that’s about as far as my teams capabilities go; we are analysts not curators. So that’s where you and your team come in, Miss Stone. The item descriptions, age and photographs have been entered into a detailed database, the document you received was produced from it, but they now need to be categorized, catalogued and organized into a coherent exhibit for the National Museum of Damascus.
