The Twelfth Ring (Noah Larsson Book 1)

by Sam Clarke

Viggo had witnessed the whole ceremony (for lack of a better word) and high-fived me, as if I had reached an important milestone. Isabelle was being sworn elsewhere and I could only imagine how jealous she must be, my witness was Viggo, hers Sesame.

  The beauty of the Sicilian coastline soon made me forget the blandness of my oath. Marco lowered the anchor at regular intervals to give us the chance to go for a swim. My father spent the morning working on the letter, but joined us in the afternoon. I was having an awesome time doing all the things we had never had a chance to do together: dive-bombing, swimming, snorkelling, playing water polo and generally joking around. For the first time in my life, I felt as if I was his priority. We were larking about on the paddle board when Viggo, phone in his hand, leaned over the side of The Pearl. ‘Magnus, it’s Professor Kasper Harket,’ he shouted.

  ‘I’ll call him later,’ replied my father, trying to shake me off the paddle board. ‘This afternoon, I’m officially on holiday with my son.’

  ‘It’s about Jörmungand,’ yelled Viggo.

  My father let go of the paddle board. ‘Jörmungand?’

  ‘Who the hell is Jörmungand?’ I asked.

  ‘A mythical serpent featured in Norse mythology. He’s the king of sea serpents,’ said my father, taking a few strokes towards The Pearl.

  I thrust my paddle in the water and jumped off the board. ‘So much for being on holiday with your son!’

  He turned around with a guilty look. ‘I won’t be long. Trust me.’

  I did, and in less than an hour we were back at the marina. I was choking on my own rage. I couldn’t believe that he had cut our afternoon short to go and visit Professor Harket’s archaeological dig on the outskirts of Caltanissetta. My father and Harket, a professor of Viking and Medieval Norse Studies at the University of Oslo, shared a common obsession for Jörmungand, the Midgard Serpent. Sicily had been ruled by the Normans for decades and Harket spent his summers digging up various sites. One of his students had uncovered a very detailed stone carving of Jörmungand and, as luck would have it, we happened to be in Sicily at the same time. My father sheepishly climbed into the taxi that would drive him to Harket’s dig. ‘Ariel and I will be late,’ he said. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow. Why don’t you guys go out for a nice meal? I’ll buy. Miguel, are you sure you don’t want to come?’

  ‘Positive, a nice meal beats Jörmungand any time.’

  My father waved us goodbye, but I stuck my hands in my pockets and made a point of looking the other way.

  #

  I was so furious that I barely touched my dinner. Miguel, on the other hand, devoured his main, polished off my plate and proceeded to stuff his face with an array of Sicilian desserts. At home, he raided the medicine cabinet for indigestion pills and retired to his room to sleep it off. With the roof terrace off limits, Viggo, Isabelle and I had to settle for the internal courtyard. He unloaded the van and placed the contents by the stone well. Three yellow cylinders, approximately thirty-five centimetres tall and with a beak-shaped protuberance at one end, escaped one of the dive bags. I picked one up and pretended to spray it under my armpits. ‘Giant-sized deodorant? Hairspray?’

  He laughed and reclaimed the cylinder. ‘Not even close. Mini scuba tanks. They’re pretty handy. If your equipment fails, you stick one of these babies into your mouth and swim to the surface.’

  Isabelle appeared carrying some floor cushions and a citronella candle. I couldn’t decide if she wanted to keep the mosquitos at bay or put Viggo in a romantic mood, but the candle failed on both counts. We made ourselves comfortable and Viggo cracked open a bottle of beer, I reached for one too.

  ‘Dude, I’m not sure your father would approve.’

  I shrugged. ‘He can legally adopt the sea serpent for all I care.’

  The whole scene would have been a lot more dramatic if I could have actually opened my beer, but the twist cap kept on slipping through my fingers. Viggo took another swig from his bottle. ‘Don’t be bitter. Kasper Harket is a cool dude. Whenever I visit his digs, I think about switching to archaeology and ditching everything else.’

  Isabelle gasped. ‘Are you thinking of going back to uni and leaving Magnus?’

  She could be so predictable. If Viggo abandoned my father without taking any foolish vows, he could be romantically available for years to come. ‘I will have to at some point,’ he said. ‘I must finish my degree. Magnus made it clear, he would have me as his… helper, as long as I promised to complete my studies.’

  I marvelled at my father’s unusually responsible approach. He had clearly given Viggo’s future some thought, I wondered if he had ever done the same with mine. Isabelle pressed on. ‘You should definitely go back to uni, Viggo. And put together a career-plan.’

  ‘I already have one.’

  I gave up on the beer. ‘You do?’

  ‘Yeah, I’ll get my degree and come back and work for Magnus.’

  ‘As what?’ asked Isabelle contemptuously. ‘A squire? Surely you don’t need a degree for that!’

  His expression suddenly changed. For a moment, I thought that she had hit a raw nerve. ‘Quiet,’ he whispered. He blew the candle out and pointed at the house. A shiver ran down my spine. Someone had broken in. Light beams were dancing around the ground floor like lights in a cheap school disco – not that I had seen any other types. We frantically surveyed the courtyard for a way out that wasn’t there. The internal garden was only accessible via our kitchen’s back door and, aside from the one belonging to our house, was enclosed by solid walls. We crouched behind the well. ‘Where’s the sat-phone?’ I asked.

  ‘In the house, recharging,’ said Viggo, desolately scanning our open-air cell. He rubbed the side of his face, where some stubble had begun to sprout, and looked up to our bedroom’s window. The light came on – the intruders had made it to the first floor. He reached for the handgun at the back of his cargo shorts, checked the magazine, clipped it back into place and removed the safety catch. Isabelle and I were too nervous to protest. ‘I’ve got to go in,’ he said. ‘Miguel’s alone.’

  ‘I’ll come with you.’ The firmness in my voice didn’t extend to my shaky legs.

  He shook his head. ‘Too dangerous. You must get in the well.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Dude, it’s the safest place!’

  ‘Maybe,’ I conceded, ‘but you can’t go alone, they’re too many!’

  He didn’t disagree and re-checked the gun instead. Isabelle pulled me back. ‘Let him go, Noah. My father needs him, you’d just be in his way.’

  Viggo leopard-crawled over the flagstones and returned with a dive bag. ‘Listen to me,’ he said, ‘I will lower you into the well with the mini-tanks, your masks and an inflatable buoyancy aid. Keep the mini-tanks in your hands and the masks on your heads. If you hear voices, dive under and stay there as long as you can. If the intruders shine their torches down, don’t panic. If you’re deep enough, they won’t be able to see you.’ He threw me a nylon rope. ‘Double-knot it around your waist. You’ll go first.’

  I grabbed his arm. ‘I’m coming with you, whether you like it or not.’

  ‘Dude, you can’t,’ he whispered. ‘She’s claustrophobic. She’ll need you down there.’

  He turned to Isabelle, cupped her face between his hands and dried her tears with his thumbs. His tender attitude sent her into a romantic trance.

  ‘Princess, look at me,’ he said. That wasn’t difficult, she hadn’t been able to look at anything else since he had started fiddling with her face. ‘The well will be a bit scary, but you’re strong, you can handle it. All you have to do is sit tight, be quiet and conserve your energies. I’ll come and get you as soon as it’s safe.’

  The well was covered by a wooden lid that folded down the middle. We slid it off and stared into nothingness. Viggo nodded in my direction. I was as ready as I could be. I flung my legs over the side and began to abseil towards the depths of the earth. My feet hit the water and I instantly wished for a wetsuit
, it was much colder than I expected. The well was roughly a metre wide, its sides coated in green slime. Within minutes, Isabelle was next to me, holding the inflatable buoyancy aid. Up above, Viggo replaced the lid. I switched on my mask’s LED torch and let my eyes adjust to the dim light. Isabelle’s teeth were already chattering. Her fingers stroked the side of the well. I had to take her mind off the enclosed space. ‘You like Viggo a lot, don’t you?’

  ‘That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,’ she scoffed, way too defensively.

  ‘C’mon, I see the way you look at him…’

  I hoped that discussing Viggo would distract her from our predicament. We had been in the well less than a few minutes and the cold was already seeping through my bones.

  ‘I guess he’s… um… very gentle on the eye,’ she said, stating the absolute obvious. ‘Not so much on anything else.’

  I couldn’t fault her description. ‘He’s a nice guy, a bit clumsy sometimes.’

  She nodded, or maybe she shivered from the cold. ‘What do you like about Cressida?’

  What a good question. I didn’t know her that well and I wasn’t too sure. ‘She’s very pretty and—’

  A gunshot shattered the quiet of the night and silenced a chorus of crickets. Isabelle dug her fingernails deep into my palm, I was too shocked to complain. Two more shots followed. The sound of unfamiliar voices reached our ears. Unexpectedly, she hugged me. ‘You have been a fairly good friend, Noah Larsson,’ she whispered.

  Unbelievable, the worst moment of our lives and she had carefully avoided using a superlative. Nevermind, we had more important things to do, like saving ourselves. I awkwardly returned the hug and opened the valve of the floating aid. The deflating hiss reminded me of my mother’s kettle. We popped the mini-tanks into our mouths, lowered the masks, switched off the LED torch and sank below the water edge.

  #

  The intruders’ light beam pierced the water like a one-eyed monster, but we handled it incredibly well. Nothing puts you in line like a string of gunshots. The mini-tanks had a limited supply of air, so I was pretty relieved when darkness returned.

  We quietly ascended, re-inflated the buoyancy aid, clicked on the torch and, for a while, waited in religious silence. We were shivering badly and I wasn’t sure how much longer we could endure the well’s unforgiving temperature. If our bodies couldn’t replenish the heat that was being lost, hypothermia would set in. I checked my watch, we had been in the water for over an hour. Isabelle broke the eerie silence. ‘He’s a sweet guy deep down, isn’t he?’

  I presumed she was still talking about Viggo. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Sometimes, when I look at him, I feel… I don’t know… it’s such an overwhelming sensation… and his eyes… Magnus has nice eyes too… actually you too… you all have the same eyes… the same shade of blue… eyes are the mirror to the soul… do you think that Viggo and Hope have… you know…’

  Oh God! One of the tell-tale signs of hypothermia is mental confusion. Her candid confession was a clear indication that her brain was beginning to lose its bearings. Intruders or not, I had to get her out of the well as soon as possible. I looked up, but all I could see were slippery stones and couple of… handles? About a metre above my head, a rudimentary T-bar had been screwed to the side of the well. I shone the torch up and noticed some more, spaced at irregular intervals. They must have been part of a basic access ladder. I interrupted her ramblings. ‘I think I found a way out, but I need to step on your shoulders.’

  She stared back with a calm expression, as if I had asked her how many sugars she wanted in her tea. ‘Sure,’ she said, managing to slur the four-letter word.

  I swam behind her, counted to three, pushed her down with all my strength and jumped on her shoulders. She kicked upwards in a mixture of shock and survival instinct and propelled me out of the water. My outstretched arms were just about able to grab the T-bar at the first attempt. My feet scraped and slipped against the slimy stones, but I was able to heave myself up. I silently thanked Ariel for all those push-ups, there was no way I would have been able to hold my body weight when I first set foot on Valhalla. I climbed the metal handles at top speed, constantly afraid that they would collapse under my weight and throw me back in the freezing well. My feet touched the ground. I let out a sigh of relief. I glanced at the house. Everything was still. Too still. No lights, no sounds. The place seemed deserted. By the dive bags, coiled on one of the flagstones, was the nylon-rope. I had no time to lose – I had to get Isabelle out before she became too unresponsive. I secured the rope around my waist and dropped the other end into the well. ‘Tie it around you, let me know when you’re ready.’

  ‘Done,’ she replied after an eternity.

  I heaved with every muscle in my body and managed to haul her onto the first rung. Using the rope as a safety line, she climbed the rest of the way and made it out of the well in one piece. We were shivering badly, but being out of that dark, wet dungeon had re-energised us. Her eyes gravitated towards the house. ‘I think they’ve gone,’ I said.

  We were both terrified but, being British, I could conceal my feelings better. Self-denial is a bit of a national trait. We tiptoed into the silent kitchen. Isabelle flicked the light switch. The ground floor was exactly as we left it, not a speck of dust out of place – whatever the intruders were after, they knew where to look.

  ‘I’ll get us some towels,’ said Isabelle. She stepped out of the kitchen, gasped and clasped her hand to her mouth. I rushed over. Viggo lay slumped at the bottom of the stairs. The deep cut on his forehead had begun to coagulate, but his left arm was bleeding profusely. I tried to remember one of my mother’s many lectures on what to do in a medical emergency, but my mind was blank. I knelt beside him and placed two fingers on his neck.

  ‘Is he alive?’ mumbled Isabelle, hand still covering her mouth.

  ‘I think so, I’ve got a pulse.’

  She was impressed by my medical skills, which said it all about her state of mind. I found some clean dish towels in the kitchen and pressed them to the wound to stem the blood.

  ‘Shouldn’t you give him mouth to mouth or something?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m not going to kiss him unless I absolutely have to, but if you want to, be my guest.’

  She blushed, he stirred. Slowly, he opened his eyes and blinked at the unfamiliar surroundings. He sat up and rested his back against the wall. It took him a few seconds to register the pain in his arm. ‘I think I’ve been shot.’

  I couldn’t dispute his diagnosis. ‘We need to get you to a hospital.’

  He lifted his injured bicep closer to his face and calmly examined his bullet wound. ‘No need, I’ll be fine.’

  ‘You’ve been shot!’ I yelled in a high-pitched voice which was too embarrassing for words.

  ‘Dude, chill! You sound like a girl! The wound is superficial, it’s just a deep graze.’ He tested the arm’s mobility and grimaced. ‘I need to call Magnus, they took Miguel.’

  ‘What?’ I screeched, in the same high-pitched voice. ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know, we didn’t exactly sit down for tea!’ He rubbed his eyes. ‘I remember being shot and falling backwards. Next thing I knew, the two of you were hovering over my face.’ He sighed. ‘Can you get me a phone? I really need to call Magnus.’

  I handed him the Iridium. He dialled my father and delivered the bad news. Well, sort of, he avoided any mention of his wound. ‘What do you want us to do?’ he asked, receiver pressed to his ear. My father barked some instructions at the other end. ‘Fine. See you in two hours.’

  Isabelle, face streaming with tears, collapsed on a chair. Crying girls have a paralysing effect on most guys. It’s not that we don’t care, we just don’t know what to do, in particular if we’re out of tissues, which I was. I waited for Viggo to say something, but he was too absorbed in his wound. I drew a breath and forced myself to speak. ‘It’s OK. We’ll find Miguel, you’ll see.’

  She was too sm
art to believe me. She sobbed louder. Viggo got to his feet and elbowed me softly with his good arm. ‘Why don’t you give her… you know… a hug?’

  Wonderful, he was still convinced that we secretly fancied each other and was under the illusion that my hug could somehow make her feel better. She surprised me by spontaneously launching herself into my arms and I couldn’t fail to notice the pool of snot that was beginning to collect around her nostrils. ‘Don’t let him see me like this,’ she whispered. ‘My nose is dripping.’

  Her warm breath tickled my ear. I would have enjoyed the sensation a lot more if she hadn’t wiped her nose against my shirt. When she released me from her snot-infested embrace, I changed into dry clothes and hunted around for the first-aid kit to dress Viggo’s wounds. Thanks to mum’s extensive training, I had developed bandaging skills worthy of an Egyptian embalmer.

  ‘I don’t want to scare you,’ said Viggo, popping a couple of strong painkillers, ‘but we’re not safe here. Until Magnus and Ariel get back, we should get to the busy, touristy area and stay in full view. Crowds will minimise chances of the attackers trying anything funny. We have no idea what we’re dealing with, keep your eyes peeled.’

  CHAPTER 30

  Licata’s busiest area turned out to be incredibly quiet. Given the late hour, most restaurants were closing and the more resilient nocturnal crowds were heading for clubs that wouldn’t allow minors through their doors. Being fifteen is a bit of a limbo, children look at you as if you are an adult and adults look at you as if you are a child. You belong neither here nor there. We had been refused by the umpteenth closing restaurant, when I noticed a movement out of the corner of my eye. ‘I think we’re being followed,’ I whispered. ‘Two guys with Marine haircuts.’

  Viggo didn’t turn. ‘Damn it, some of Miguel’s abductors had buzz cuts. In here, quick.’

  He pushed us through the doors of the nearest hotel. It was a small building and the number of brass plaques outside the entrance vouched for its quality. The duty-manager of the Italian Boutique Hotel of the Year came to greet us or, rather, to stop us. His receding hairline was in stark contrast with the handlebar moustache that sat on his upper lip. ‘May I help you?’ he said, with his chin in the air.