Grendel's Curse

by Alex Archer

  “I’m sorry,” she offered, knowing it wasn’t enough.

  “What’s your interest?”

  “I don’t know. Not yet.”

  “But there’s something?”

  “There is.”

  “Right. And you’re not going to tell me what?”

  “Not until it makes more sense,” Annja said.

  “Okay, but you’ll call me about dinner?”

  “You know I will,” she promised, her mind already racing with questions. What was a pyrotechnics expert doing at Thorssen’s rally? Wasn’t it a coincidence that there should be an explosion while he was there, and despite the devastation the one person who should have been the target basically walked away unhurt? If he’d been trying to kill Thorssen he’d made a botch job of it, hadn’t he? An explosives expert who managed to basically leave his intended victim safe in what ought to have been the center of the blast zone—unless that was exactly where his expertize had come in... Could he do that?

  Of course he could, Annja thought.

  And from that, her churning thoughts extrapolated more questions. More what-ifs?

  What if the explosion at his factory was no accident at all?

  What if it was the tying up of a loose end?

  Could Karl Thorssen be that ruthless or was she making him into some sort of maniac that he wasn’t?

  A man who surrounded himself with dangerous substances all day treated them with respect; he didn’t make mistakes. He didn’t accidentally burn down his warehouse and himself with it. It was just too convenient.

  And it came back to fire.

  She hated that elemental force of nature.

  It was voracious. Unquenchable. Destructive.

  The more she thought about it, the more it felt as though Thorssen was the epicenter of this storm, and anyone who might have helped her grasp the truth of what was happening in this city was being taken care of permanently. First Mortensen, now Fenström, both in some way connected to Thorssen, both dead within days of each other, and then there was her own brush with Thorssen’s people, the big man and the silent one who’d gone out of the window. Being associated with Karl Thorssen was proving to be a bad thing for one’s life expectancy. The problem was the only man who could answer all of her questions was Karl Thorssen.

  Annja needed that interview, but how was she going to get it?

  21

  The sword had an identity of its own.

  It yearned to be set free. If Thorssen held Nægling up to the sunlight he could just make out a flicker of flame that ran along the sword’s edge.

  This was more than just a relic from a great past; this was a weapon of real power.

  It was more than he could ever have dreamed of.

  “Did you have to bring that thing to the breakfast table?” his mother asked as he placed the sword, safely wrapped once more, on the table between them. She had no idea what it was. He intended to keep it that way for now. Meal times were sacrosanct. Putting the sword on the table between them broke that pact, but that didn’t matter today.

  “Really? In the grand scheme of things is it important that I leave it in my den? I can take it back up there if the world will grind screeching to a halt. I wouldn’t want to be responsible for a global disaster. Stop the clocks!” He didn’t even try to mask the venom in his voice as he said it. His mother was beginning to irritate him. Just because he owed his life to her there was no reason why he should have to put up with her presence. He wouldn’t accept the harping and grousing from a member of staff, so why should he accept it in his own home?

  “I just thought—”

  “I know what you thought, Mother. You always think the same thing and use subtle put-downs and prods to manipulate me into doing what you want your good son to do. You’re just like everyone else in this damned world—you want something from me. Well, I’ve had enough of you, Mother.” He felt the dam threatening to burst inside him as the tirade built up, his lips twisting into a sneer until he saw the tears glisten in her eyes and pulled back from the brink.

  He wasn’t sure what was happening to him.

  It was a fight to regain control.

  He was always in control.

  That was how he lived his life.

  She didn’t deserve this. All she had ever done was want the very best for her boy.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, placing a hand on hers, but she pulled away.

  That hurt.

  He looked at the sword, but no matter how much he wanted to, he couldn’t bring himself to carry it up to the den. He wasn’t even sure that would make amends. “I’m sorry, Mother. You know the pressure I’m under with the election and everything. And the news...I don’t know if you saw, but Nils, a friend of mine...he was in that explosion at the fireworks factory. I’m sorry, it’s just all...” He let the sentence hang, knowing she wouldn’t punish him in the face of such loss. It went against every instinct she had for him.

  He was right; there was an immediate shift in attitude as she reached out to take his hand. “Oh, love. I didn’t know.... How horrible—first the archaeologist, now your friend. However must you feel?”

  The truth was he didn’t know how he felt. Feelings seemed so...inconsequential. Nothing mattered apart from Nægling.

  The thoughts raced through his head, pushing all other considerations to one side.

  It was so hard to hold on to himself when he so much as thought about the ancient blade.

  All he could think of now was how he would unveil it to the world.

  His pain at upsetting his mother was gone, quashed by Nægling.

  And then a stray idea crossed his mind: If only it had been me...if only I’d found it. If only the two halves were still separate...I could return them, put them back in the ground where they belong.

  But it was too late for that. If wishes were fishes, as his mother liked to say.

  The sword had somehow been reforged with its own magical fire—that same heat he saw rippling along its flawless blade—and even the memory of that fire was enough to send a surge of power through him. It filled him with more courage, more strength, than he could have imagined in his wildest dreams. He was like the blade, made whole by it.

  He kissed his mother, and rose from the table.

  “I’ll take it away,” he said, his skin crawling even as he made the promise he knew he’d never be able to keep. “Put the kettle on—I’ll tell you all about what’s going to happen today.”

  His mother nodded, grateful for the concession.

  He retreated to his den, making two calls. The first was to a man who’d come highly recommended from one of his university cronies. “And you have the necessary skills?” he asked. “The handle and binding have suffered considerable deterioration. It will need an entirely new hilt.”

  “I can do it,” the man assured him. “For the right price.”

  And that was what it was all about, wasn’t it?

  Nægling would look its best before revealed to the world. “I’m willing to pay more than you could possibly imagine, under three nonnegotiable conditions. One, the work is carried out today. Two, that it is done under my direct supervision. The sword is never to leave my sight. And three, that you are to speak of it to no one. Breaching any one of these terms will have consequences you would not want to incur. Believe me.”

  His second call was to the office, canceling all of his appointments for the day.

  Everything else he determined was inconsequential and could be dealt with by his staff.

  He turned on the TV.

  The assassin had called with a simple message. It had taken no more than two words to confirm that he had taken care of another problem—two words that said everything and yet nothing. It’s done. There were no better words in the world as far as Karl Thorssen was concerned.

  The news channel was still carrying footage of the fire, replaying the spectacular explosions as the fireworks went up. There was no sign of Tostig’s car in any of t
he footage, and any security camera would have gone up with the factory unit itself so there was nothing to come back on him. With that in mind, he enjoyed the show. High-pressure hoses jetted arcs of water over the blazing building without ever seeming to touch the flames. Three hours on, the fire showed no sign of abating. It would burn and burn, fueled by the combustibles inside.

  Watching on the big screen, he wished he could have been there in person to enjoy the assassin’s handiwork. The man was a maestro when it came to the act of killing. He wished he could feel the heat of the flames against his face as they grew out of control. He wished he could breathe in the acrid tang of gunpowder and blistered paint. He wished he could fan the flames, spilling them out across the open countryside.

  Thorssen hadn’t even realized that he’d picked up the sword again. He gripped it with both hands as though about to strike a massive blow.

  Flames licked the ancient metal, dancing along its edge. They crackled, looking to leap to anything that might feed its fire.

  He felt it burning inside him, too.

  Blazing.

  Was the sword causing it?

  Was the burning inside him igniting the sword?

  He was certain that they belonged together. Somehow, one fed the other.

  He walked down to the waiting Tesla. The sword was slung across his shoulder like some warrior of old striding out to the battlefield. He rested his prize against the passenger seat as he drove toward the sword smith’s. The ancient blade slid a couple of times as the car negotiated the many tight turns between his house and the city. He drove aggressively, accelerating into the corners and out of them, pushing the Tesla to the very limits of its endurance. On a normal day the journey would take the best part of an hour, today less then forty-five minutes.

  GPS steered him with its mechanical voice to the smithy.

  He only knew the man’s first name: Ulric. That was all he needed to know. He was more interested in his skill than being his friend. The smithy wasn’t at all what he’d expected—a cramped shed behind a run-down cottage on the opposite side of the city. Ulric’s expression went from mildly curious to rapt as he examined the sword.

  “Very nice, man, very nice indeed,” he said as he held the metal in his hand, turning the sword over and over again as he studied it.

  “How long will it take you?”

  “As long as it takes. Never rush a craftsman,” Ulric said. “First, I need to make a wooden grip to fit here.” He drew Thorssen in, pointing out the strip of metal between the guard and the pommel. “And because all of this is fused together I will need to make it in two parts, close it around the metal, then bind it in place. It all takes time if you want it done properly.”

  “I want it done perfectly,” Thorssen said.

  “As do I. A piece like this deserves nothing less. You can leave her with me if you have somewhere to be.”

  “As I said on the phone, three conditions. Break any of them, and there will be consequences. I will stay and watch. The sword will not leave my sight for a single moment. I will pay you half a million kroner for your skill and discretion. Do we have a deal?”

  While it wasn’t dollars, half a million kroner was a huge amount of money for a single afternoon’s work. How could he possibly say no?

  “Deal,” Ulric said.

  “The right answer. Had you said no I would have been disappointed and I don’t deal well with disappointment, Ulric, believe me. Actually, you don’t want to know how I deal with disappointment.” Thorssen laughed.

  22

  There was still no sign of Johan when Una Mortensen called to say that she was prepared to visit the barrow now. It wasn’t her day for people getting back to her. She still hadn’t heard from Roux, either, and the more his silence stretched on, the more worried she became. At first it had just been mild annoyance, but since she’d sent out her SOS, she’d at least expected the Frenchman to touch base. If he so much as smirked when he finally showed his face she’d read him the riot act. In fact, for him, it would be better if he turned up with a couple of broken legs and a big sign that said Sorry. Then maybe she’d forgive him.

  Meanwhile, Annja didn’t want to keep Una waiting. It must have been hard enough to muster the courage to go out to her son’s final site. Annja hoped the whole thing would be cathartic for her, but sometimes even the best medicine hurt to take.

  Annja tried calling Johan but his phone went straight to voice mail. The train tracks went through some pretty remote countryside between the capital and the second city, though, so there wasn’t anything necessarily sinister about his silence.

  Rather than try to find her way through the confusion of streets to Una’s small hotel, Annja arranged to pick her up close to the police station, which she knew she could find again.

  “This really is very kind of you,” Una said for the umpteenth time as she slipped into the passenger seat. “You didn’t have to.”

  “But I wanted to. Besides, if you’re right and he photographed the find, I want to see it.”

  “Do you think it might be important...even if it was destroyed in the fire?”

  Annja nodded. “Important enough to kill him for? Maybe.” And what she didn’t say was she didn’t think the relic was in the car when it burned. If Thorssen really was behind Lars Mortensen’s murder, then almost certainly his killer had recovered the artifact and delivered it to Mortensen.

  “So he could still become famous, then, even if it cost him everything?”

  Annja glanced across at the woman, but Una was staring out at the road ahead.

  Annja realized exactly where they were, and what the twist in the road up ahead meant in real terms: they were driving along the same stretch of road where Lars had died. Annja was angry with herself. She should have followed the alternative route to the site. She gripped the wheel tighter as they reached the spot. The verge was scorched black back to the dirt. The branches overhanging the road were shriveled and stripped of all vegetation. There was no mistaking the wounds of fire. Annja shivered, the memory of the car bright in her mind.

  Una stared straight ahead, deliberately avoiding so much as a glance toward the blackened ground.

  “We’ll drive back a different way,” Annja promised by way of an apology. Una said nothing. She didn’t need to.

  They drove the rest of the distance in an uncomfortable silence.

  The dig was just as quiet.

  There was a single car parked on the grass not far from the dark caravans and various tents. Annja called out as she clambered out of the car, but couldn’t see anyone. “Hello?” she called again, and was greeted by a distant shout. A moment later the girl, Inge, emerged from the main tent dusting her hands off on her trousers. She smiled when she saw it was Annja.

  “Oh, hey,” she said as they approached, with a wide, genuine smile despite the fact she obviously hadn’t expected any visitors. Annja noticed one of the curious slate tiles on the workbench through the tent flaps.

  “Inge, this is Una, Lars’s mother. Una, Inge was your son’s assistant.” The two women didn’t seem to know if they were supposed to shake hands, hug or merely stand there. In the end Inge lurched forward a little clumsily and hugged the old woman. “Where is everyone?” Annja asked.

  “It’s just me for the moment, I’m afraid. No one’s decided what’s happening yet, so while they talk about what they want to do with the site I’m just keeping things secure, doing a bit of tidying up, you know, for Lars.”

  Annja appreciated that the girl felt the loyalty to her old professor to stick around and do the day-to-day minutia necessary to keep the site viable. “I’ve brought Una here to show her what Lars was doing, give her a peek at his last work and collect his stuff. We won’t get in your way.”

  The girl paused, obviously unhappy with the thought of them removing anything from the caravan. “What kind of stuff?”

  “His clothes, a few bits and pieces. Nothing to worry about. It’ll save people sending it on
afterward when they clean the caravan out,” Annja replied, avoiding any mention of the laptop. No point in giving the girl an excuse to say no. If it came up later, they could say that they took it with the rest of his personal belongings, no need to make a big deal out of it.

  “Should be fine,” Inge said. “The door’s locked now. I’ll let you in.”

  “It’s no problem,” said Annja, already starting to walk back toward the caravan. “The key’s in the same place, right?”

  “Er, yes,” Inge said, starting to follow them.

  “I’ll make sure I lock up, then we’ll come and find you and you can give Una the full guided tour.”

  “Okay, sure, come and find me,” Inge echoed, and shuffled back a couple of steps, not wanting to leave them alone.

  Annja waved to her after she’d rescued the key from under the brick, to show her she didn’t need to worry, and opened the door.

  Someone had been inside the caravan since Annja had last been there.

  It was instinct. There was nothing to suggest it, or at least nothing obvious, but Annja knew as soon as she put the key in the lock someone had been inside. The place gave off a vibe. She realized that it was the rock itself; it had been moved. There was a dead patch of grass a few inches away from where she’d picked up the key this time. She walked back down the couple of steps and kneeled beside the indentation.

  “What is it?” Una asked.

  “Someone’s moved the stone,” she said, keeping her voice low.

  There were any number of rational reasons why someone would need to go inside the caravan. Maybe it had been Inge herself, looking for notes or instructions amid his clutter. Maybe she’d needed a telephone number or something else about the dig. All of Lars’s paperwork was still inside, after all. She had every right to be in there, even if it was only for something as stupid as using his kettle....