The Crusader's gold jh-2

by David Gibbins

  “This is it.” Suddenly the white ice ahead of the borer gave way to a wall of ice as clear as glass, refracted deep blue as their headlamps shone into it. “Meltwater ice,” Costas said. “It’s the first we’ve encountered. This must be from one of those crevasses in the glacier Lanowski was on about.”

  He drove the probe forward another two metres until the clear ice was all round them, and then came to a halt. As the swirl from the water jet subsided, Jack realised they were over a dark mass just beneath the ice, and he could see it curving off to either side through the blue haze. He sank down to the floor of the tunnel for a closer look, his headlamp pressed directly against the ice.

  “Well, I’ll be damned.”

  “What is it?” Costas released his hold on the probe and dropped down beside him, their bodies up against each other in the narrow space.

  “Timbers,” Jack said excitedly. “A huge mass of them. It’s the side of a boat, a wooden ship. I can see rivets, rows of rusted iron rivets along planks. And the planks are overlapping, clinker-built. That does it. We’ve got ourselves a Viking longship.”

  “Awesome,” Costas said, his eyes glinting through his mask at Jack. “And they’re black, carbonized, just like the sample they analysed from the ice core. There’s charring across this whole section of timber. This boat burned.”

  “A burning ship on the ice,” Jack murmured. “Remember Kangia, his story of the ancient Inuit legend?”

  “It explains the clear ice that cocoons this thing, the image they got with the sonar,” Costas said. “It’s not just meltwater from a crevasse that filled up and froze. I think this boat was burning when it sank into the ice. The ice and snow falling on the timbers must have put the fire out pretty quickly, but not before the heat melted this cavity in the glacier.”

  “Before we pull out I want to get some sense of the dimensions,” Jack said.

  “The target point’s eight metres ahead. That should give you what you need. Once there I’m turning straight back.”

  Moments later Costas came to a halt again. The edge of a huge blackened timber had appeared on the left side of the tunnel, and he adjusted the course of the probe to avoid colliding with it. As they passed alongside they could see that it curved upwards, and was superbly carved with writhing animal forms and abstract interlinked shapes in a wide strip along the edge.

  “Urnes style,” Jack said excitedly. “Thank God Maria gave me a refresher course on Viking art last night. I’m certain this is Norwegian, a new style developed around the mid-eleventh century.” He rolled over and looked up through the ice where the timber extended above them. “It’s the stem post. Take a look at that.”

  Costas aimed his headlamp through the ice at the top of the timber. He let out a low whistle through his regulator as he saw the carving at the top, a dark shape frozen in the ice at the limit of their visibility, a snarling head with flattened ears that protruded at least a metre in front of the curved prow of the ship.

  “It must be Fenrir, the wolf-god,” Jack said in hushed tones, remembering Maria again. “He seems to be the guardian of this place.”

  As they flipped back over and progressed slowly forward, a fabulous image unfolded beneath them, as if they were floating over a full-scale diorama of a shipwreck in a museum exhibit. The image was stunningly clear, and on either side they could see for at least five metres until the ice became too blue. Some sections of timber were remarkably intact, others charred and crushed by the ice that must have fallen on the hull before the meltwater froze up and protected it. Jack took photographs continuously with the digital camera integrated into his helmet, murmuring the technical descriptions into the audiotape as each new element of ship structure came into view.

  “It’s classic west Scandinavian construction, completely consistent with the eleventh century,” he said after a few minutes. “More a deep-hulled, broad-beamed sailing vessel than the Hollywood image of a longship, but then you wouldn’t have wanted an oared warship out here. They were fine for skimming the waves at high speed and landing raiding parties, but they had a low sheerline and swamped easily in heavy seas. You wanted a ship that could transport people and supplies across the north Atlantic, sometimes spending weeks at sea.”

  “It’s been repaired,” Costas said, staring through the ice. “There’s a section near the bow where planks have been replaced, where the carpentry looks different. Maybe they hit an iceberg. And look, there’s an oar.”

  “It’s a steering oar, a side rudder,” Jack said, looking down at the perfectly preserved oar on the warped deck planking beneath them. “The Vikings didn’t have fixed rudders, so a broad oar was attached to the stern of the ship. It looks like this one was stowed inboard deliberately, near the bow, not the stern. This ship wasn’t at sea when it went down. And there’s more. Take a look at that. It’s incredible.”

  As they passed beyond the bow area they began to see shapes that were not timbers, but items which seemed to have been arranged in a pile leading up to a dark structure in the centre of the hull where the mast-step should have been. There were amorphous masses clearly identifiable as skins and furs, with wooden platters and utensils placed alongside. Costas quickly adjusted the setting as the ice-borer narrowly missed the top of a large pottery jar that lay shattered over the middle of the furs.

  “An amphora.” Jack picked up a rim shard which had come out in the meltwater and stowed it in his E-suit. “An east Mediterranean wine amphora, of the Byzantine period. In Greenland. It’s bizarre.”

  “I guess they had to keep warm in those cold Arctic nights,” Costas said. “Anyway, I thought the Vikings were beer-drinkers.”

  “Some of them were pretty widely travelled, remember, and must have picked up foreign habits.” Jack’s mind was racing, and he was beginning to think the unthinkable. “I may be wrong, but I’m wondering…” At that moment another object appeared inside the tunnel meltwater beneath them, a long wooden shaft with its head still embedded in the ice. Costas stopped the water jet to give the element time to melt more ice around the object, and Jack carefully drew it out and held it in the narrow space between them.

  “Holy shit,” Costas said.

  It was a huge, single-bitted battle-axe, hafted to a thick handle at least a metre and a half long. The head shone with gold and was embellished with ornate engravings on both sides.

  “It’s gilded,” Jack murmured, his voice hoarse with excitement. “That’s what preserved the iron from corrosion. Standard technique for making a weapon look like gold, but keeping it functional with the harder metal underneath.”

  “I’ve got symbols on my side of the blade,” Costas said.

  “So have I.” Jack turned his side flat so Costas could see. The surface was engraved with a large pendant shape that respected the lines of the axe head, a wide stem dropping to symmetrical extensions that filled the width of the metal above the blade. The outline form was simple but it was elaborately decorated inside, with swirling curvilinear designs and garish animal forms, most prominently the snarling head of a wolf at the apex of the shape. Jack pointed to a line of symbols just above the axe blade.

  “Mjollnir.”

  “What?”

  “The letters are Greek, but the name’s Norse. The most potent symbol of the Vikings, the invincible weapon of their greatest god, their one hope of defeating evil at the Battle of Ragnarok. Mjollnir, Thor’s Hammer.”

  “What’s the bird above it?”

  Jack peered closer. “I can’t believe I’m seeing this. It’s the double-headed eagle. One head signifies the old Rome, the other the new Rome, Constantinople. It’s the imperial symbol of the Byzantine emperor.” He paused, then looked through his visor at Costas, his eyes alight in wonder. “We’ve just found one of the most famous weapons in history, a battle-axe of the Varangian Guard.”

  “That makes sense. Look at these.” Costas twisted the axe round so Jack could see the other side.

  “Runes!” Jack’s heart was
racing, and he was sucking the oxygen hard from the rebreather. “And not just any old runes. I’m not an expert, but I know these like the back of my hand. They’re identical to the ones in the Church of Hagia Sofia in Constantinople. It’s the signature of Halfdan, the Viking who inscribed his pagan symbols into the holiest cathedral of eastern Christendom some time in the eleventh century.”

  “So we’ve found Halfdan’s war axe,” Costas’ voice was deadpan, but his expression was incredulous. “In an iceberg off Greenland. This guy sure got around.”

  “There’s one final thing I need to check,” Jack said. “There should be a simple mast-step and crossbeam in the centre of the hull, but instead it’s some kind of rectangular structure. I’ve now got a pretty good idea what it is, but I need to see it with my own eyes. Then we’re out of here.”

  “Roger that.” Costas reactivated the water jet and they began to move up and over the dark structure a few metres ahead of them. Jack held on to the axe for a moment, scarcely believing what they had found, and then fed it over his shoulder under the straps of his trimix cylinders, carefully pushing the shaft back until the gilded axe head was wedged safely away from his regulator manifold. He turned back and clasped both hands on the guide rail, watching closely as the edge of the rectangular structure appeared beneath them, and they began to see what lay inside, a shadowy, sepulchral form that seemed completely different from everything they had discovered so far. At the foot of the structure Jack suddenly saw another fantastic pile of artefacts, a gilded conical helmet on top of a coat of gilded chain mail, and below them a folded scarlet cloth with gold embroidery, evidently a cloak. Just as they were about to pass over the middle of the structure, Costas flipped the control handle and the probe came to a halt.

  “I’m getting a warning reading on the seismograph,” he said. “Probably just a wobble in the machine, but I need to stop to make sure.”

  Jack looked with sudden unease at the red light flashing at the bottom of the screen. He could sense nothing unusual, but the microfilaments trailing behind them seemed to flutter longer than usual after the water jet had shut off.

  “There’s definitely something going on,” Costas said.

  Just then there was a horrifying creaking noise, followed by a series of wrenching vibrations that set Jack’s teeth on edge and sent an uncontrollable tremor through his body. The water began to vibrate, until all he could see of Costas and the ice probe was a shapeless blur.

  “Holy Mother of God. We’re-”

  Costas’ words were drowned out by a terrible shrieking noise, as if they were being assailed on all sides by demented banshees. Splinters of ice began to shear off the tunnel walls, rocketing through the water like shrapnel. One piece wedged itself in Jack’s left thigh, slicing through the Kevlar exoskeleton like butter. All he felt was numbness, and he watched in shock as the water filled with swirling tendrils of red. Then there was a grating lurch and the ice probe went dead, its entire fore end crushed beyond recognition by a seismic shift in the ice.

  Everything went silent. Costas frantically tried to reactivate the probe, but to no avail. The space had become narrower, their bodies pressed against each other with hardly any room to move. Jack’s torso was twisted against the bottom of the tunnel, his face mask pressed hard against the ice above the mysterious rectangular structure embedded below them.

  As the probe was now dead, the only light came from their headlamps. With superhuman effort Jack managed to turn his head to peer back down the tunnel. What he saw confirmed his worst fear. The tunnel was completely cut off, sealed shut by some tectonic shift in the ice. The space they were in was only about a metre longer than their bodies, and was shrinking fast. Jack watched in horror as the water froze up around his feet. The icy brash that seemed to appear out of nowhere refracted his view into a kaleidoscope, with Costas fragmented into a thousand shapes and colours. Jack tried to move his hand towards his friend but there was already too much resistance. A terrible wave of certainty passed through him: they would be frozen into the ice before they were dead, a living nightmare of the worst kind.

  “We’re rolling!” Costas shouted. “Switch to trimix!”

  Jack had barely registered the movement, but it suddenly became huge, bigger than anything that had gone before, a gigantic lurching that shoved him into the brash against the tunnel wall. With all his strength he heaved his arm up through the solidifying slurry and reached for the valve under his helmet, feeling Costas’ hand trying to do the same. With agonising slowness he twisted it open while Costas shut off his rebreather, then Costas withdrew his hand and reached for his own valve. Seconds later the first bubbles of exhaust crackled through the brash, some pooling mid-water, trapped under the forming ice, and the rest erupting upwards to form a pocket of air against the tunnel ceiling. The pocket quickly enlarged as Costas began to breathe out, and Jack slowly rose into it as the berg rolled. The instant he broke surface the sheen of liquid on his mask froze, a mix of water and blood that gave his view a surreal tint. He was now almost completely immobile, unable to move his limbs, and with each breath the compression of ice against his chest made it harder to inhale. He knew he had only moments left. He strained to the right, but there was no way he could see Costas. The intercom indicator inside his helmet was dead, and all he could hear was the suck of his own breathing and a terrible tearing and grinding far away, the noise of titanic forces within the berg that had entombed them.

  As Jack began to black out, he glimpsed something on the ceiling of the air pocket, then realised it was a reflection of his own form on the ice. His breathing became shallower, quick and rasping, and he became light-headed, flitting in and out of consciousness as his body starved of oxygen. The form above him began to take on a wavering, unnerving shape, as if it were something more than just a reflection. Through the blood-streaked sheen of his mask he saw a flowing red robe where there should have been an E-suit, and instead of a diving helmet there was a bearded face framed by long golden hair. The eyes were dark shadows, sunk beneath the grey pallor of the face, but they seemed to be boring into him. In his delirium Jack saw one arm extended, a blackened hand shining with gold, beckoning him closer. Jack had found what he had been searching for, the ancient warrior who had passed out of time inside this ship, a wraith of Valhalla come to take him in his embrace. Jack shut his eyes on the image as a mighty crack rent the ice, throwing him far beyond the present into merciful oblivion.

  10

  The heavy iron door in the ancient castle shut silently behind the three men as they stood in the gloom of the passageway, their eyes gradually becoming accustomed to the thin light that glowed up from the stairway ahead. Wordlessly they donned the scarlet robes that had been left for them inside the entrance, tying the gold-embroidered cords at their waists and pulling the hoods over their heads, then they made their way in single file to the top of the stairs. Their movements had an effortless familiarity about them, as if they had been here many times before. They were far below the foundations of the castle, inside a secret domain hewn from the living rock in the days when the longships still ruled the fjords. For generations the only footsteps to echo in these passageways had been those of the brotherhood. As the three men began to descend, the damp rock seemed to exude an essence of the past, as if the porous limestone preserved within it the exhalations of their revered forebears, a commingling with the spirit world that seemed to draw them to the very gates of Valhalla itself.

  At the bottom of the stairs they entered a circular chamber, their inner sanctum. At first they were overwhelmed by the aura, dazzled by a dozen burning torches evenly spaced on pedestals around the edge of the chamber, the flames sending wisps of black smoke curling to the vaulted dome above. Then they began to make out the surrounding wall, an arcade of twelve pillars cut from the rock with an encircling passageway beyond. On each pillar was a fearsome battle-axe, girded to the rock with twisted thongs, the blades radiating the light in flashes of gold. Above each axe hun
g the chain mail and conical helmet of an ancient warrior, the visors with their empty eyes flickering in and out of shadow as the torchlight leapt up the wall. On the floor in front of the pillars stood twelve identical chairs, their heavy oak frames carved with swirling animal shapes and runic inscriptions, and in the centre of the chamber was a massive circular table, its timbers smoothed and blackened with age. Inlaid on the table was a twelve-spoked sun-wheel, continuing the symmetry of the room to a carved symbol obscured in shadow at the very apex of the design.

  The three men passed silently inside and took their places behind chairs at different points around the table, clasping their hands in front of them and bowing their heads before sitting down. All of the chairs were now occupied except one, directly opposite the entrance, the pillar behind it lit up by a double torch and the axe glinting as if it had been freshly sharpened.