Crusader Gold

by David Gibbins

  “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 hung 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 inscript
ions, 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.

  The hooded figure seated to the left of the empty chair stood up slowly and raised his right hand, revealing a deep scar that ran across his palm. He spoke in English, his voice gravelly and deep. “Herr Professor. Your Excellency. Mr.

  President. Welcome. The félag is nearly complete.”

  He sat down and placed his left palm on the table. On his index finger was a luminous ring, a twisted band of gold with a signet, its surface impressed with a linear symbol similar to the runes on the chair behind him.

  “For thirty generations now we have kept the fire of Thor burning for the return of our king,” he said. “Now the forces that would destroy us again threaten the sanctity of the félag. We will unleash all the powers at our disposal to safeguard our treasure, to find our inheritance from the king of kings.” He gestured towards the empty seat beside him. “But before the council we must complete our circle.”

  A hooded figure emerged from the dark recess of the passageway behind the empty chair. In the flames of the double torch his robe seemed ablaze, glowing with the deep orange of a hearth. His hands were clasped in front of him and his face was concealed inside his hood.

  “You have carried out your appointed task?”

  “It has begun.”

  “Come forward.”

  The man stepped out beside the pillar until he was level with the axe, its shimmering blade only inches from his head. He raised his right hand to his face, pulling his hood back slightly to reveal his pallid skin and thin lips. A jagged white scar ran across his cheek from his eye socket to his chin.

  “You are sworn to avenge your grandfather, our thole-companion who last occupied this chair,” the man at the table said. “The blood feud will not end until the last of our enemies are dead. You will seek to know what they know and extinguish their knowledge with them. You will exact terrible vengeance. You will honour the félag and earn your place at this table.”

  The man beside the pillar drew his finger hard down the scar on his cheek, wincing slightly. He bowed towards the table, and the shadow of a smile passed across his lips. The eleven others watched as he turned to the axe. He raised his right palm to the blade and drew it down sharply, pressing hard into the steel until his blood welled out. He reached his bleeding hand down into his robe and pulled out a golden ring, identical to the one worn by the man at the head of the table, then walked forward and sat down. The others raised their hands in unison, revealing identical rings and scarred palms.

  A channel of fire suddenly ignited under the table, lighting up the symbol in the centre. Around it the flames shone through the embedded glass that made up the sun-wheel, an orange light that pulsed over the hooded figures to the wall beyond, illuminating the axe blades and the empty helmets in a flickering orange glow. They had been joined by the spirits of the departed félag, the sacred fellowship, warriors called from their eternal feasting in Valhalla once again to occupy their armour in readiness for battle.

  The symbol was their tree of life. Seven-branched, it would light their way until the final showdown at the end of days, when they would at last wield battle-axes shoulder to shoulder with their king.

  The twelve hooded figures all reached forward until their rings touched, the blood of the one anointing the others, dripping in rivulets down their sleeves and over the symbol in the centre of the table. When their fists were all touching the figure who had spoken first spoke again.

  “Hann til ragnarøks.”

  Jack seemed to be waking into his worst nightmare. He first realised he was conscious when he recognised the sound of his own breathing, a rasping, sucking noise followed by the rush of exhalation from his regulator exhaust. He gradually became aware of his body, the dull ache of the six-month old gunshot wound in his side and a sharper pain in his leg. He seemed to have been in limbo for an eternity, hovering between a dream world and some kind of reality, but as he opened his eyes and saw the digital time display inside his visor he realized it had only been a few minutes. The view beyond seemed pure hallucination, a kaleidoscopic pattern drawn in tendrils of red. He shut his eyes and instantly confronted another image, one etched on his mind. The wraith-like form of a man was laid out in front of him, as if Jack were floating above his own shrouded body entombed in the ice. The image receded as he seemed to float higher above it, bringing an overwhelming, narcotic sense of relief, but something within him was fighting desperately to pull back, as if the image of his own death were his only lifeline.

  The rushing sound of his exhaust became a bubbling ferment and then a high-pitched hiss. Jack opened his eyes and saw a diagonal line running across the centre of his visor. He realised he was lying half in and half out of the water and that the view he had seen a few moments before was his headlight refracting through a slurry of brash interspersed with his own blood. The lamp now shone above water and he could see a wall of ice only inches from his face. Cautiously he turned his head to the right, angling his lamp until he could see the length of his body. He was inside a cavity about the size of a small car, the upper part an air pocket created by his exhaust. Instead of the smooth surface of the tunnel created by the ice-borer, the walls were jagged and fractured, great slabs of ice that seemed to have compacted violently together. Some of the slabs were cloudy and others nearly transparent, creating the illusion that the chamber extended off in fissures and tunnels around the white ice.

  For a fleeting moment Jack’s mind wandered again and he felt cocooned and safe, as if the chamber that had opened up and protected him from the crushing impact of the ice would be his ultimate salvation. Then reality kicked in and he felt a cold dread. Somehow the ice had cracked as the berg rolled and he had been given a reprieve, but it could only be temporary. As more water was displaced by his exhaust he could feel the slurry of brash around his lower body thicken, immobilising his legs. To his horror he realised he was being frozen alive all over again, only this time there would be no quick end, but a long, lingering agony half in and half out of the air pocket, as his breathing gas gradually expended and he suffocated in his own exhaust.

  A noise crackled around his head and jerked him back to life. The intercom whined and then settled to the sound of grunting and straining. It seemed unbelievable, little short of a miracle. “Jack, can you hear me?”

  “Costas.” Jack’s voice sounded peculiar, oddly distant to his own ears, and then he remembered the trimix contained helium. “Where the hell are you?”

  “I can see you, but you can’t see me. Try to turn over. You have to get yourself out of the water, otherwise we’ve had it for good this time.”

  Costas’ voice was a reassuring measure of reality, calm despite the desperate situation. Jack marshalled all of his energy and heaved himself up on his elbows.

  He could swivel his torso slightly to the right and his arms were free, but his feet and lower legs were nearly frozen into the ice. It was like fighting against clinging mud, and each time he pulled he only seemed to embed himself further.

  “It’s no good,” he panted. “I can barely move my legs.”

  “Can you reach your cylinder pack?”

  “Just.”

  “Okay. Pull out that axe and lay it on the ledge beside your head.”

  Jack did as he was instructed, laboriously extracting the wooden haft of the axe hand over hand from where he had slid it behind his cylinder straps. He could scarcely register what he was h
olding, a Varangian battle-axe from a Viking longship, a discovery that now seemed pure fantasy. By the time he had finished withdrawing the axe the surface of the slurry had frozen solid around his waist, and the moisture in his exhaust had caused a sheen of ice to form over his visor.

  “I can’t see any more,” he exclaimed, trying to remain rational, to stave off panic. “The pressure’s going to build up in here now that there’s no more water to displace, and the moisture from my exhaust is freezing my upper body too.

  This could be over quicker than I thought.”

  “Lie back and push the shaft of the axe as far as you can above your head. The ice-borer’s embedded in the cavity, and I can see the filaments of the coil frozen in the ice below you. If we can reactivate the battery then we might be able to melt you out.”

  Jack held the bit of the axe and pushed it as far as he could along a shelf of ice that angled slightly upwards above the slurry. At first he felt no resistance, but at the limit of his reach the base of the haft hit something solid.

  “Okay. That’s it,” Costas said. “Now try about six inches to your left.”

  Jack strained again and prodded the haft along. Suddenly he felt something depress, and a green aura became visible through the ice on his visor.

  “Good. You’ve done it. The main element of the corer was crushed when things went haywire back there, but the coil is operated from a separate battery pack that looks intact. All we have to do now is wait.”

  “How are you doing?” Jack spoke as he slumped back, forcing himself to think beyond his surroundings.

  “Just great. Trapped in the Ice Age. Follow Jack Howard and see the world.”

  “Seriously. I can’t see you.”

  “At first I couldn’t work it out. If the berg had flipped we’d be hundreds of metres deep, crushed to oblivion. Then I saw the ice probe and realized. We’ve rolled a full three hundred and sixty degrees and come back upright again.