The Ice King

by Michael Scott Rohan

  The shoulders lifted wearily, and she still didn’t turn around. ‘No thanks, Harry. ’Nother time. Sorry …’

  ‘Ee,’ said Harry, hopped off his perch and trotted over. He risked touching her shoulder, and felt it quiver under his fingers. She turned her head away sharply. ‘You all right, flower?’

  ‘No! Okay? Shit, will you just leave me alone?’ She whipped around to face him, and he was shocked speechless to see her eyes reddened and puffy over damp cheeks, the normally firm line of her mouth pursed up and trembling. It was like seeing a statue cry. ‘Just go’way, huh?’ Her head snapped back, her glass lifted and clanked down on the copper table-top, and she surged out of her seat so fast Harry skipped back like a scared sheep.

  ‘Ee, where’re you off to –’

  ‘Home!’ She yanked her anorak off the seat beside her, scooped the case that held her precious computer terminal off the floor beneath, and walked a little unsteadily to the door. The landlord winced as it crashed open against the panel, there was an inrush of cold damp air, and she was gone.

  ‘God!’ snorted the landlord. ‘Great heifer – what’s eatin’ her?’

  Harry, left staring, shrugged helplessly and strolled back to the bar. ‘Well, from what I ’eard she’s ’ad a dust-up –’

  ‘Stow it, Harry,’ said Neville sharply, and pointed out of the side window, into the pub car park. An incredibly muddy Range Rover had just pulled up.

  ‘Oops,’ said Harry, fishing for a cigarette. ‘Speak of t’devil –’

  A door banged viciously, and voices were raised under the window. Then Harry’s cigarette flared red in another blast of freezing air as Ridley and Hal Hansen stalked in. They looked almost as gloomy as Neville.

  ‘– an incredible waste of time,’ Hal was saying. ‘He must have done it deliberately! And when I get my hands on him – good evening, Fred! And Neville and Harry, too. Has Wilf Jackson shown up yet?’

  Neville shook his head. ‘Nope. Off on a field trip or something, wasn’t he?’

  Ridley and Hal exchanged glances. ‘Near sunset,’ said the policeman significantly.

  Hal stirred uneasily. ‘They should have been back before us. This weather would surely not stop Latimer’s truck – I hope they have not been stupid …’

  ‘Bit much t’ask wi’ Wilf, ain’t it?’ Harry joked, and was ignored.

  ‘Get some drinks,’ suggested Ridley. ‘And something to eat, for God’s sake. I’ll put out a call for them, just in case. But surely …’

  ‘Draugar …’ murmured Hal.

  ‘What?’ asked Ridley.

  ‘Maybe I should have warned them more clearly …’ muttered Hal. ‘But then they would not have believed the warning at all …’

  Ridley pounced. ‘Aye, Prof? About what? Drow-gar, what’s that then? Eh?’

  Hal shook his head irritably. ‘It’s something … years ago … creatures, I can’t …’

  ‘Creatures?’ asked Harry. ‘We got a circus in town or summat?’

  ‘Quiet! C’mon, Prof, spit it out!’ growled Ridley fiercely. ‘Never mind just getting it all academic-intellectual spick and span – people are dying, damn it, being murdered! And now you’ve even sent those poor bloody idiots off blind into God knows what danger –’

  ‘They are in no danger if they have done as I told them!’

  ‘Without knowing why? Look, I’m not asking you to commit yourself even –’

  ‘You are asking me to make a public fool of myself! If you think anybody would pay any attention to –’

  ‘Don’t worry about us, Prof,’ interrupted Harry. ‘Nev an’ me, we’ll just slope off down the bar if you want some quiet, like –’

  ‘No, stay, Harry,’ said Hal angrily. ‘We will try this out on you two, and let Mr Ridley see whether I am believed or not!’

  ‘I’m in no ’urry to laugh,’ said Neville quietly. ‘Not at either of you two.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Hal. He looked up and down the empty bar, and took a deep breath. ‘You understand, it is not that easy to explain … You know that last night Pru was attacked, most seriously – what you do not know is that I interrupted the attack, and encountered the attacker –’

  Neville’s round face set hard, and his eyes narrowed. ‘I wish I fuckin’ well ’ad!’

  ‘Oh no you bloody well don’t,’ said Ridley tersely, and began telling them about the encounter.

  ‘Running round starkers?’ breathed Harry. ‘Ee ’eck!’

  ‘Too much of an ’andful even for you, by the sound of it,’ grunted Neville. ‘So who’d you reckon she is? What’s ’er game?’

  ‘Scarpered from a bin or summat?’ suggested Harry.

  ‘He means,’ translated Ridley for a puzzled Hal, ‘is she an escaped lunatic? I almost wish she was. But we both saw –’

  The listeners fell silent as he went on, and at the end Neville let out a long slow whistle. ‘Bloody ’ell! Listen, I know I said I wouldn’t laugh or anything, but … you’re both grown men, you’re educated like, and ’ow you can sit there talking about ghosts, spooks, spectres, things as go bump in the night – it’s beyond me!’ He glanced across at Harry, who could only shrug. ‘Well, like the man said, I weren’t there, I’m not gonna open me mouth … But there’s more, is there? You think you know what she, it was?’

  Hal shook his head. ‘No, I do not –’

  ‘Then what was this morning all about?’ snapped Ridley.

  ‘A – a guess, a gamble – something I read many years ago – legends in the Icelandic sagas –’

  ‘Icelandic? You mean Viking?’

  ‘Well – yes, for these purposes. Something, some legendary creature that looked something like that …’

  ‘Uh-huh. And what else?’

  ‘Almost nothing – except that they were very dangerous – and connected somehow with graves. And I remembered how the Icelanders, like so many primitive peoples, thought of the grave as like a home, to be furnished – and I thought of the furniture that was so pointlessly taken …’

  ‘I see now,’ breathed Ridley. ‘And what were these creatures, you called them something, didn’t you …’

  ‘Draugar.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I remember little more – just that they were very hard to get rid of …’

  ‘Great,’ muttered Ridley with a twist of the mouth. ‘Horror films – ever go to one? No, you wouldn’t, of course. Load of old rubbish, but I used to quite enjoy ’em. They always have some wise old Professor Van Helsing turn up, a real occult expert who knows all the folklore and stuff about vampires or whatever. And all I’ve got is you. Any chance you could find out some more?’

  ‘Well – I do not have all my books here, you understand. I might have some general references, no more. I could find something in a good university library – York, perhaps, or Leeds – Tom Shippey is professor there, with McTurk and others, they would have the literary sources. But it would be faster if I could get through somehow to the computer at Rayner … Oh.’

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘We would need a suitable remote terminal, and an operator. Really, we need Jess, because she is also a folklore expert. But – as you know – we are not speaking at present, she and I. And I do not know where she is …’

  ‘We do,’ said Harry ruefully. ‘On ’er way ’ome …’

  ‘What? How do you know?’

  ‘You just missed ’er. ’Ere – not too ’appy – said she was off ’ome …’

  ‘Home? That tin trailer, in this?’ Hal seized him by the shoulders. ‘And you let her go?’

  ‘ ’Ere, listen, she’s a big girl now, she can do what she likes! Could you stop ’er? Any’ow, she’ll just ’ave ’opped on t’bus, they’re still running –’

  ‘Just,’ said Ridley. ‘If she changes her mind she won’t be able to catch one back. And a mile walk up to her trailer – All this when she knows there’re killers loose in the area – it’s no bloody wonder so many Yanks get murde
red …’

  Neville grinned. ‘Give ’er some credit, Inspector. She can look after ’erself.’

  ‘The number of times I’ve heard that!’

  ‘Normally it would be true,’ said Hal ruefully. ‘At least as well as most men can. But against this –’ He stood up stiffly. ‘I must go bring her back –’

  Neville pushed him down onto his stool. ‘ ’Ang about! The mood she’s in, you’d likely just push ’er the other way. Anyway, you need your dinner, and ’ere it is. I’m not doing anything, and all this supernatural crap’s got me baffled. So Harry ’ere can run me up in ’is old banger, and we’ll get ’er back if we ’ave to carry her!’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Hal, awkwardly. ‘I …’

  ‘You sit down an’ eat. C’mon, ’Ardwicke –’ Neville more or less frogmarched Harry through the doors, and as they closed his voice drifted back. ‘And whatever you do – don’t call ’er flower!’

  For a few minutes there was silence around the end of the bar. Hal obviously didn’t want to talk, and Ridley was quite happy to attack his dinner with concentrated force. Hal ate hungrily too, at first, but he slowed down until he was only pecking absent-mindedly at his food. ‘Van Helsing …’ he muttered. ‘Folklore … If something had happened here … Ridley!’

  ‘Mmmh?’

  ‘Do you know of any local history or folklore enthusiasts?’

  Ridley swallowed his mouthful. ‘No, but then I’m not a local man. Fred!’ He gestured to the landlord. ‘D’ you know of anybody around town who knows about local history, legends, that sort of thing?’

  The landlord scratched his head. ‘Can’t say as I do, now you mention it. Funny, that – think there would be, wouldn’t you? But then old Mr Braithwaite, he’d have covered all the ground too well, him as was vicar up at Oddsness. Fact, it was him had the place renamed Oddsness –’

  Ridley looked sardonically at Hal. ‘Thought you said that was a Viking name –’

  ‘Ah, well,’ said the landlord, ‘Oddsness, that was the old name, it seems, and he dug it up in the Domesday Book or some such place and had it put back. Folk had been calling it Turness –’

  ‘Which is also a Viking name,’ said Hal, surprised. ‘Thor’s Ness – for the Thunder God, the Friend of Men. Interesting … and this vicar …’

  ‘Ah, well, sir, he’s gone now, forty years gone, and he were close on ninety when he went – 1903 to 1950, he held that living as you could in them days. I can just mind him from when I was a lad – right old character, always ferreting out all the old family stories and scandals and who was related to who. Songs, too, even the ones the little girls used to sing at their skipping games. Seems he’d known that fellow who collected songs – Sharp, I think his name was. And the other one, who wrote the hymns as well, Vaughan Williams. See, it was mostly him as dug up the Odd Dance and got it restarted. Real scholar he was, Oxford man like yourself – said he was going to write a book, but he never did.’

  ‘But did he leave any notes – any papers?’ Hal demanded fiercely.

  ‘Wouldn’t know about that, sir. But there’s been two vicars there since, and the one now, Mr Thirkettle, he’s a no–nonsense type. Runs a youth club and teaches boxing. So I don’t suppose …’

  But Hal was already striding to the phone. Ridley glanced wryly at the landlord and set up another couple of pints. While they were filling he pulled out his radio. ‘Control? Ridley. Nothing new? No, nor me. But there’s a chance the dig mob might come up with something; I’m sticking round here to see – the pub, yes, I know, very convenient. But I want the patrols to keep an eye open for two of the dig types and their car – description follows. Green Toyota pickup, very dirty –’

  Hal’s conversation was animated but short, and he came back twisting his fingers nervously. ‘There are some old papers there, but not many. Just a box. This man Thirkettle knows nothing about them himself. There may be some older documents – I will have to see …’

  ‘Good God, you’re not thinking of trekking all the way out there in this weather? Probably be a complete waste of time!’

  ‘I agree – and we have none to spare. But I find I cannot sit still, not and worry about – never mind. I have got through worse in a Danish winter. I will not be long, an hour or two. If …’ He paused. ‘When Jess gets back, tell her to get onto the Rayner computer.’

  Ridley stared. ‘Rayner? In Texas? How?’

  ‘She will know. I will pay. I will start a search when I get back – meanwhile she can be raking through the databases for any local history and legend from this part of Yorkshire, perhaps run a theme and motive collation and analysis –’

  ‘Just a mo’, I‘m writing that one down. Greek to me.’

  ‘She will cotton on – is that an English expression? Oh, and she is to use the international link if she needs to. Excellent. Well –’

  Ridley plunged after him. ‘Hey, hold on, you slippery … That name you mentioned – dr-something – you still haven’t explained that!’

  ‘Draugar plural, draug singular – Satans, I cannot take the time now! Jess will get that for you too. From my Dr Van Helsing. Farvel saa laenge!’

  The snow had begun to cake around Jess’s boots the moment she stepped off the bus, and was soon soaking through. She plodded on, the terminal swinging on its strap and dragging painfully at her shoulders with every long stride. Shifting it from shoulder to shoulder didn’t seem to help; her right side tired more quickly, and she was beginning to get a stitch. If she could only put the goddam thing down, just for a minute – no chance. The terminal was guaranteed rugged, but snowdrifts hadn’t been mentioned and this was no time to experiment. So there was nothing to do but go stomping on and try to remember how it felt to have toes. And of course it didn’t help to reflect that she’d only herself to blame. Storming out like that was a kiddie trick. Not that she hadn’t been provoked, but why the hell sit weeping into her beer and then take off like a sulky teenybopper? Self-pity, that was all it was – coming down to a man’s level. And why refuse Harry, for crissake? He surely hadn’t meant anything, he was just trying to be kind in his blundering way. Just being male, was all. Not his fault.

  The cold gnawed at her lips, and her mouth tasted foul. Fatigue poisons, she thought, and spat with malicious accuracy at a shrivelled nettle drooping above the snow. Her boots were caked masses of ice by now, and she stopped to kick them clean. At least there hadn’t been another fall since last night, though there probably would be soon, as the sun set and the clouds came sweeping in off the sea. Still, here was the new access road to Temple Dell, and those were the trees of Temple Covert ahead; only a bend or two in the road to go, and then her field, the shabby comfort of her trailer, and a good hot drink. Not paradise – right now that was Berkeley, Cal., and a tequila sunrise in the shade – but near enough to get by.

  She stopped to think. In these conditions it might be quicker to take the new road up through the Dell site, cutting out one bend. And it would certainly be more sheltered, the way the wind was rising. She turned and began plodding up the slope.

  The way was quicker but steeper, and she was already breathing hard as she reached the trees. She did not want to linger in the wood; well as she knew it, from her time on the temple dig, it was an alien place under the snow and the dismal twilight, and she was disturbed by the wide gash made for the road and the power lines that ran alongside it. Large signboards flanked it, put up by the company the Ravensheads had brought in to landscape the temple site for opening to the public. But like it or not, she knew she would have to rest for a few minutes at least, and as she emerged into the temple clearing she looked for somewhere to sit.

  The Dell clearing was a wide uneven dip in the hillside, like a tilted bowl; on the downhill side it was more or less level, but on either flank it sloped steeply upward to a crest crowned with the trees of the covert. Towards the uphill end these thinned out, leaving a gap like the end of a horseshoe opening onto the bare hillside. The temple
itself lay directly below this, just where the slope flattened out, but it was almost hidden by the snow now. Towards the front of the clearing were some odd hummocks in the snow, spoil-heaps from the excavation, and a cosy-looking portable works hut put there by the landscapers – and irritatingly well padlocked. Jess found a tarpaulin folded across one part of the temple wall, kicked it back and slumped down on the patch of clear stone, easing the terminal gently down beside her. Gingerly she massaged her aching legs, and tried to ignore the chill creeping through her parka to the seat of her jeans. The wall was really too low to sit on comfortably, simply stone foundations for wooden walls like those of the oldest churches in Scandinavia. It might even have had the same rows of fantastically carved pillars, the strange roof of scale-like wood tiles, the same rearing dragon-heads on its gables. In this timeless white landscape it wasn’t too hard to imagine that – but it had all perished now, in a fire whose charcoal fragments she had dug out of this very ground, crumbling between her fingers as she worked. Jay had been with her then, quarrels forgotten in the excitement of discovery, and he had rebuilt the temple around her with the force of his enthusiasm, the sweep of his gestures, had made her hear the hiss and crackle of the flames, feel their heat – she shuddered. She could use some of the heat now. Hal, too, had brought things to life around her – but more slowly, more methodically, so that they rested on surer foundations; his fires burned darker but deeper, consuming the very heart of the wood.

  Jess shifted uneasily on numb haunches, but the ache in her legs was still too sharp to go on. Something was making her nervous – perhaps a certain sound half sensed, half felt in the instants when the wind dropped. She looked around at the deepening shadows, but nothing moved. And yet the sound had a continuous patter, like falling water … She looked up, and almost laughed. It was the continual faint sizzling of the small pylon that carried the famous power lines up across the site to Fern Farm and its tenant farms, the lines whose installation had uncovered the temple. But she still felt nervous; something more than the sound disturbed her, something intangible, a presence … Angrily she scanned the blank rows of trees. If some asshole was lurking in there, let him lurk; she wasn’t going back that way, and nobody could sneak up on her in an empty snowfield. She hauled herself upright, ignoring the ache, and rubbed her rear end vigorously to try and restore some circulation. She chuckled; it was the kind of thing a man was handy for. Jay would like it; he always had a kind word for her butt, how neat and bouncy it was. Hal never noticed – or never said anything much; he was too goddam prim for that sort of comment …