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Grendel's Curse
Alex Archer


A sword of legend in the hands of an extremist…Skalunda Barrow, Sweden, has long been rumored to be the final resting place of the legendary Nordic hero Beowulf. And there's something of Beowulf's that charismatic and zealous right-wing politician Karl Thorssen wants very badly. Intent on getting his hands on the mythical sword Nægling, Sweden's golden-boy politico puts together a team to excavate the barrow. A team that American archaeologist Annja Creed manages to finagle her way onto. She wouldn't miss this possible discovery for anything.With Nægling at his side, Thorssen could be invincible…a Nordic King Arthur. What his followers don't know–and Annja is beginning to suspect–is just how far Thorssen will go to achieve his rabid amibitions. When Thorssen marks Annja for death, she quickly realizes that this is much more than a political game. And the only way to survive is to match Thorssen's sword with her own.







A sword of legend in the hands of an extremist…

Skalunda Barrow, Sweden, has long been rumored to be the final resting place of the legendary Nordic hero Beowulf. And there’s something of Beowulf’s that charismatic and zealous right-wing politician Karl Thorssen wants very badly. Intent on getting his hands on the mythical sword Nægling, Sweden’s golden-boy politico puts together a team to excavate the barrow. A team that American archaeologist Annja Creed manages to finagle her way onto. She wouldn’t miss this possible discovery for anything.

With Nægling at his side, Thorssen could be invincible…a Nordic King Arthur. What his followers don’t know—and Annja is beginning to suspect—is just how far Thorssen will go to achieve his rabid amibitions. When Thorssen marks Annja for death, she quickly realizes that this is much more than a political game. And the only way to survive is to match Thorssen’s sword with her own.


Could it really be Nægling?

Thorssen reached out to touch the fabled blade, closing his eyes to truly experience the feel of the silver sword against his skin.

It felt alive to his touch.

“Does Creed know what was found?” Thorssen licked his lips. He knew what he was looking at. He’d grown up with the legend of Beowulf’s broken sword—the great blade that had slain the dragon but broken in two because of the sheer force that the warrior had used to deliver the fatal blow.

“Impossible to say.”

Thorssen liked that about Tostig. He never guessed, he never speculated, he just assessed a situation quickly, calmly, and responded to the information he had at his fingertips.

“Then we assume that she does.” Thorssen picked a shard of debris from the edge of the blade with a carefully manicured fingernail. The corrosion flaked away to reveal the still-shining metal beneath.

It wasn’t as though they could just ask Creed if she knew what had been unearthed. It was a case of damned if they did, damned if they didn’t.

“There is only one way we can be sure she won’t cause trouble,” Tostig said. He never threatened, he simply floated the idea, knowing Thorssen spoke the same language: the language of death.

“Take care of her.”


Grendel’s Curse






Alex Archer













Contents

Prologue (#ubfda61e7-007a-5038-8baa-9fc9a1f230a7)

Chapter 1 (#u80ce72f1-a5e3-58d6-b71c-1ab4cd3e7f9e)

Chapter 2 (#u9841c514-a9db-51b9-abc4-c3d6567a6f10)

Chapter 3 (#u549b9fa1-61f5-5dcf-af31-8014eda4b6e8)

Chapter 4 (#u162b3d5d-6f37-5bf4-8ac4-e9e9c2a9b797)

Chapter 5 (#ud63d6f78-6250-5dc9-b794-a27495644fda)

Chapter 6 (#u5e76cb21-4142-53d7-beda-f90dd4a8b0d8)

Chapter 7 (#ufa7071e6-5d46-515c-8e71-9e327bc17607)

Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 29 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 30 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 31 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 32 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 33 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 34 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 35 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 36 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 37 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 38 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 39 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 40 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 41 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 42 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 43 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 44 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 45 (#litres_trial_promo)


Prologue

Fiery brands had been driven into the earth to create a path of light from the settlement on the hill to the barrow that would serve as his final resting place.

Tonight there was one more legend to dine with the dead heroes in Valhalla.

Tomorrow there would be one less hero to stand against the creatures of the dark.

Every single one of them, every man with his head bowed low, every woman with her tearstained cheeks, every child wondering how the world could still go on without him, would have killed for the honor of carrying his bier down the path of light.

The clan kings led the procession, followed by his thanes and the men of the Wulfings. He had been one of them and yet he had been more than all of them put together. Skin may wrinkle and bones crumble, but the tales wrapped around the old man were an armor death could never pierce. The stories of his life and the great battles that finally brought peace to the land would live on in the hearts and minds of all of them.

And as the day came and the flames from the path of light turned to ash, the winds would scatter his stories across the world and thus his legend would spread. The path of light was a long and winding walk, but those who walked it now would have traveled to the ends of the earth if he needed them there, such was their love for the man.

The sky glowed red in the east, heralding the sunrise.

Now was the time to say goodbye to their king as he began his final journey—his greatest quest of all—from this world to the next.

His mortal remains would be kept safe, held inside the burial chamber they had constructed deep inside the great barrow that had been built to honor him. He would remain there until the end of time, watching over them, still clad in his armor, his twin swords that had been so much a part of his life at his side. They would whisper, of course, that he would rise again at the time of their greatest need. There was comfort in such thoughts. The mourners had shifted earth to build the great mound; they had carried stone to form to chamber. A few had even stripped the carcass of the great beast he had slain and who in turn had slain him, and used her scales to line the chamber where his body would lie in wait for Ragnarök. Once it was sealed and the earth spilled down over its entrance, no living soul would set foot inside the barrow again.

The clansmen carrying the bier bearing the old war wolf’s body paused on the threshold, the sun rising before them. Birdsong filled the morning. There was happiness in it, as though the creatures of the forest and field had come to praise the dead man. The mourners gathered around the bier, one last chance to say their farewells before his body disappeared inside the earth.

A small boy went inside first, his tiny fist clenched around the brand taken from the path of light. He lit the way for those to follow through the low tunnel as it curved and curved again before opening out into the heart of the barrow.

The air was damp and rich with the smell of earth. The light from his torch flickered in the draft, causing the scaled walls to shimmer and shine with iridescent blues and greens. It was hard to believe such beauty could come from such a dangerous beast, but that was the very nature of the dragon. Even in death it was as beautiful as it was terrible. Her flesh had been consumed at his mourning feast, her bones used to fashion tools and weapons for his thanes; her greatest treasure, though, her scales, were his and always would be, shining that last glorious light upon the hero who had slain her.

The boy could not take his eyes from the old war wolf’s corpse as they laid him down.

The dead man was dressed in battle-scarred armor. It had been forged, so the legend went, by none other than Wayland Smith. His helmet was placed at his feet, but only when the bearers moved aside were the two blades he had carried in life placed upon his body. There was Hrunting, the thruster, an iron sword with ill-boding patterns wrought into its blade. It had been with him in the mere when he faced the monster and her vile kin. And beside it lay Nægling, the nailer, old and gray but for the jewels studding its hilt. It lay in two pieces now from where it had failed him at the last, broken on the scales of the dragon even as its tip slipped through to end her life.

The last man to enter the barrow carried the dragon’s poisonous horn that had delivered the fatal blow. He lay it at the old war wolf’s feet while around him the few gathered began to sing the song of mourning.

It was time to seal the barrow.

Beowulf was dead.


1

Karl Thorssen took to the stage like a god. Not just any god, an angry Norse god of old, with flowing blond locks cascading down his back. The silver hammer of Thor was just visible beneath the V-neck of his shirt.

He was met by thunderous rapture.

The assembly didn’t just clap, they stamped their feet, they chanted, they yelled his name over and over and over until it rose into a mindless crescendo. There was something else in the chant, too, words she didn’t understand, as the room filled with noise. “Quite some welcome,” Annja Creed said to the man beside her.

Thorssen stopped center stage and held his arms aloft.

He closed his eyes, threw his head back and embraced the adoration.

It was more like a rock concert than a political rally, she thought, half expecting to see Queens of the Stone Age or Queensrÿche come striding out behind him. The room had that kind of vibe. Alone, each and every one of the people gathered in the theater might have been the nicest person in the world, but together like this the mob took on its own personality. It gave her the creeps. Annja had seen enough fanatical evangelists whip up this kind of fervor in the faithful to know it wasn’t exactly healthy outside of a sports arena, and even then that was more gladiatorial than devotional. The comparison was good, actually. There was something almost religious in this, too. Even his stance mimicked the familiar iconography of Jesus on the cross, suffering for our sins.

Only, Karl Thorssen wasn’t suffering in the slightest.

Here, in front of these people, he really was the god they were looking for. That was the only way of describing it.

On either side of the stage Annja marked two thickset men, both in matching dark suits, starched white shirts and pencil-thin black ties. They couldn’t have been more conspicuous. They were just another aspect of Thorssen’s carefully manufactured persona. SAPO—the Swedish Security Service—had officers in the hall, but they didn’t stick out like a sore thumb. Annja had made six of them in the crowd, watching, waiting. This pair waiting in the wings were purely for show. Thorssen wanted people to see them. He wanted people to know there had been threats on his life, but no amount of intimidation would stop him from standing up to be counted. That was the kind of man he was.

She’d only been in town for a couple of days and she already knew that much about him—and it wasn’t all down to her inherent distrust of politicians, either. The man was headline news. The tabloids loved him. The broadsheets loved to hate him. The people, she was quickly coming to realize, worshipped him. Even from down in the mosh pit she could feel the magnetic pull of his aura. The man radiated that magical X factor stars needed to really shine. A bit like Roux, really. That old rascal had a certain something. Right now, that something was probably a big pile of chips on the table in front of him, given that the last she’d heard from him he’d muscled into a high rollers’ tournament in Stockholm, part of the most popular poker tour. As for Garin, he’d no doubt found some expensive toys to buy, fast cars to race or faster women to chase. She hadn’t heard from him in over a month. That usually meant he was up to no good, but then, wasn’t he always?

One of the men nearest Annja was close enough for her to make out the edge of a tattoo of Thor’s hammer creeping out from beneath his collar. No doubt the room was filled with similar tattoos and necklaces. The hammer was a common enough branding for fascists in Sweden.

“What does the banner say?” Annja asked the man beside her. Micke Rehnfeldt was an old-school political journalist, the kind of guy not afraid to get his hands dirty if it meant getting to the truth. Thorssen was the current object of his affection. He was producing a television program about Thorssen and his proposed excavation of the Skalunda Barrow down in Årnäs. That was why Annja had made the trip to Gothenburg. How could she not? It wasn’t every day the burial mound of a legend was excavated, and that was exactly what Beowulf was. A legend. The Geatish king who had rid the land of demons and dragons in one of the oldest sagas of its type. So while he wasn’t a monster, he was still the perfect subject for a segment on Chasing History’s Monsters.

“Svensk Tiger Ryter? It means the ‘Swedish Tiger Roars,’” Micke said. “It’s a play on the old ‘En Svensk Tiger.’ You’ve heard that before, right? It’s like the ‘Loose Lips Sink Ships’ thing the Brits used to say. It’s from an old propaganda poster that warned Swedes to be wary of foreigners during the Second World War.” Annja didn’t see the link so Micke spelled it out for her. “See, tiger is, well, a tiger.” He mimed creeping about like a wild animal, and then grinned sheepishly. “Obviously, but in Swedish the verb tiga, which is the root of tiger, means to keep silent. So ‘En Svensk Tiger’ could mean either Swedish Tiger or Swede Keeps Silent.”

“Ah, clever. A line deeply rooted in the suspicion of foreigners. Class act.”

Micke nodded. “No kidding. Thorssen’s party is emerging as the major force in right-wing politics over here. I don’t know how aware you are of the situation in Europe, but he’s riding a wave of support that is washing across the continent.”

“I’ve heard bits and pieces, it’s hard not to.”

“It’s only natural. When the economy is in trouble and money is tight, people always blame the foreigners for coming in and taking either jobs or putting pressure on state services. It’s the easiest thing to do, blame the outsiders rather than face up to the bad decisions they’ve made along the way.”

“And I’m sure it doesn’t hurt that he looks like Adonis’s only slightly uglier little brother.”

“People will swallow anything a pretty face tells them,” Micke agreed.

Sociopolitical stuff wasn’t Annja’s field of expertise, but they seemed like a reasonable set of assumptions given everything she knew about human behavior.

“Anyway, interesting place for a first date,” she joked, grinning wryly.

“Hey, never let it be said I don’t know how to show a girl a good time,” Micke countered with a grin of his own. It was easy to like him. He had to raise his voice to be heard over the chanting. “Seriously, though,” he said, “Thorssen’s interested in Beowulf. He’s one of the driving forces behind the excavation of the mound. I can think of plenty of reasons why, but rather than just tell you, I thought it’d be better for you to see it firsthand—it’s always more impressive that way.”

Even with him half shouting Annja could barely hear him above the clamor of the audience. The front few rows had long since stopped applauding, she realized. While most of the room was filled with supporters and fanatics, the front three rows consisted of journalists representing the world’s press. She recognized a few faces from Prague, Hyderabad and Paris, but could not put a name to any of them.

“Welcome, my friends,” Thorssen began, his words easy, conversational. Annja was relieved to hear he was going to speak in English; her Swedish was limited to saying “thank you” and she’d only learned that a few hours ago. There was more applause. Thorssen gestured for quiet, and within a few seconds the theater was silent.

He had the crowd in the palm of his hand.

“This is the first day. This is a day of new beginnings. This is the day that we claim back our country. This is the day when the Swedish Tiger roars!” On cue the audience roared its approval.

Thorssen smiled.

Annja didn’t like the man’s smile; it was condescending and self-satisfied. It was the kind of smirk she felt compelled to wipe off a face.

“For too long now we’ve allowed ourselves to be invaded by foreigners...foreigners who have been permitted to stay here, to draw from our state and live in comfort without giving anything back. We allowed them to bring with them their own customs, and have tacitly accepted their beliefs. And if we speak up, anything we say is seen as racist, oppressive, against their freedom. I’m all for freedom, and believe me, my friends, I am no racist. I do not differentiate one man from another by the color of his skin or the God he worships. But the plain unassailable fact is these people do not belong here. We’re a small country. A few years ago we were under ten million, now there are over twelve million people here. We don’t have oil like the Norwegians or the British. We cannot support every asylum seeker who comes here. We’ve been the guilty conscience of the world for too long. Like it or not we have to start thinking about ourselves for once.”

Another round of applause rang out.

Thorssen was preaching to the converted and they were lapping up his sermon.

The huge screen behind him changed to show an aerial view of Skalunda Barrow.

“I am sure some of you recognize this place.” There was a murmur through the hall. Things were about to get interesting. “And even if you don’t, you’ll know the name. This is the Skalunda Barrow, believed to be the final resting place of our greatest hero, the old war wolf himself, Beowulf.” The screen shifted to show twin swords in place of the burial mound: Hrunting, given to Beowulf by Unferth for the fight with Grendel, and Nægling, the magical blade he claimed from Grendel’s cave, having defeated Grendel and Grendel’s mother. “He is a true symbol of our heritage. A warrior. A dragon slayer. He killed the enemies who threatened our land...just as the foreigners threaten it now.” Annja couldn’t quite believe what she’d just heard. Surely it had to be a language thing? A misinterpretation? But the level of sophistication in the rest of Thorssen’s language suggested not. “Now is the time for a new Beowulf to arise! Now is the time for someone to drive the dragons from our land!”

Some of Thorssen’s acolytes seemed to be on the verge of losing themselves in rapture. They were rocking back and forth on their heels, murmuring, “Yes. Yes. Yes.” Only the front few rows seemed to be immune to the craziness. Karl Thorssen was none-to-subtly calling for the people to rise up against immigrants and drive them out of the country.

“Surely this has to be against the law? This is nothing short of inciting racial hated,” Annja said, shaking her head. Her companion didn’t hear her. He was engrossed by the reaction of the crowd, and pointing his cameraman to where he should direct his focus.

Thorssen had adopted the pose again, clearly enjoying the adoration.

She noticed one of the securing men sprang into action, making his way down the side of the stage into the crowd. He’d obviously seen something he didn’t like. Maybe one of the great unwashed wasn’t towing the company line? She scanned the crowd looking for signs of dissent, but everyone seemed to be equally enthralled, waiting for the mothership to beam them up to a racially pure nirvana in the stars.

He pushed his way through the faithful, moving his way toward the back doors.

Curiosity might have killed the cat, but it still hadn’t managed to kill Annja Creed, though not for want of trying. She gave Micke a nod indicating where she was going, but his attention was already elsewhere. He was wrapped up in his own work, making sure the whole thing was captured on camera for his documentary. There was no denying that it would be good television.

Without another word Annja worked her way through the crowd, until she reached the door, and followed the guard out.

The tattooed man didn’t even notice that she was following him.

Once the doors closed behind her Annja should have been isolated from the noise of the auditorium, but she wasn’t. It was replicated by a large flat-screen television and sophisticated sound system broadcasting what was going on inside the theater.

Halfway down the red carpet, the bodyguard caught up with the man he’d spotted in the crowd. Annja was too far away to hear the exchange, but it was obvious from their body language that it was hostile in the extreme. His fingers dug into the guy’s arm as he twisted him around. He said something—the vehemence behind his words translated even if the words didn’t. The man didn’t back down. Far from it, he pushed himself up into the guard’s face and snarled back, feral, spitting full in the middle of his face and cursing him. Annja saw the scar on his cheek. The guard shoved him away and he went stumbling back two steps, reaching out for a handrail to catch his balance before he fell.

The guard grabbed him again.

“Everything all right here?” Annja asked, walking up behind them.

“Keep out of this,” the bodyguard growled. Charming soul. “This has got nothing to do with you.”

Annja wasn’t big on talking with bullyboys, but wasn’t about to leave the man to his not-so-tender mercies. “Look, this doesn’t have to be nasty.”

The man took her intervention as his cue and pulled free of the guard’s grasp, running for the door. The guard didn’t stop him. He was looking at the screen over Annja’s shoulder as the backdrop behind Thorssen changed. The image of the two blades had been replaced by one of a painted Beowulf standing over what was obviously supposed to be Grendel’s mother, the hero holding his sword aloft in victory. It wasn’t subtle. But nothing about Karl Thorssen was.

The camera shifted focus, settling on Thorssen. The politician raised his arm, echoing the image on the screen. It was a carefully choreographed move. He was fully in control, playing the crowd until a sudden explosion of noise erupted—through the doors, from the sound system, from the walls around her. The entire framework of the theater trembled, and then the stones themselves seemed to cry out as the building twisted and buckled.

The cheers mutated into screams.

Suddenly people charged through the doors, desperate to get out of the auditorium. Smoke and rubble filled the air. Nowhere was safe. Not in there. Not out here in the vestibule. She looked for the scar-faced man—the bomber? Was that what had happened here?—but he was gone, swept up with the tide of people and carried away with the stampede as they surged toward the street. Smoke. Sprinklers. Sirens. Chaos. Annja pressed herself against the wall to let the flood of people past; she couldn’t swim against it. Panic drove people from the theater, but not everyone was so lucky. She could see the screen behind the stage with the image of Beowulf battered and bloody in his chain-mail armor, sword aloft, but beneath it, where Grendel’s mother had been, there was only rubble and bodies.

“Micke!” she cried. There was no way he could have heard her but that didn’t stop her calling out his name. She scanned the faces desperately, looking for her friend, not wanting to look toward the bodies for fear of seeing him there.

And then she saw him giving instruction to his cameraman. He was pointing at the stage where Karl Thorssen lay. That was the money shot. In all this devastation, the man who would be one of those angry Norse gods of old lay battered and bleeding as two plainclothed SAPO operatives climbed onto the stage, trying to find a path through the rubble to get to the politician. It was an iconic moment. It would be shown on every television set in the world. It would be talked about for weeks. Thorssen rose from the ashes shakily, bruised and bloodied, like the heroic figure on the screen behind him. He breathed in deeply, savoring life amid all of this destruction, and turned to look directly at the camera.

“I am Beowulf,” he declared.


2

It was a long night and a longer morning.

She stayed with the rescuers, helping the weak and wounded. Annja pulled at the broken stones, heaving them aside. She heard cries all around her. She couldn’t stop. She couldn’t allow the horror of the moment to really take root in her mind. Right now people needed her.

Chaos quickly gave way to at least the semblance of order as the paramedics and firemen worked, directing the rescue efforts. To her left three men labored hard, lifting a huge slab of masonry off the legs of a man who wouldn’t be walking again for a very long time, if ever. Shock rendered him silent. The rescue workers talked to him constantly, telling him how well he was doing, telling him to hang in there, telling him to be strong, that he was almost out, but not once telling him that everything would be all right. There was a reason for that. The woman beside him was beyond help. He clung to her hand. He must have known.

Annja moved on to where she could be of more use.

A medic crouched over a man who’s silver hammer on a chain had torn open his throat, giving him a crude tracheotomy.

She recognized Micke’s cameraman. He stood aloof from the destruction, taking it all in with his lens as though the camera gave him the right to separate himself from the dead and the dying, to simply watch and record the tragedy rather than be a part of it. She wondered how he could stand there and do nothing, but she didn’t wonder for very long. He was coping with it the only way he knew how: documenting it. There was no telling what his camera might pick up that they would miss because they were too wrapped up in the immediacy of the moment, unable and unwilling to just take a step back and look.

The worst of it, though, was the smell—that slaughterhouse mix of burned meat and fecal matter that came with death.

So she lost herself in the simple act of trying to help.

Annja was among the last to leave the theater, covered in plaster dust and blood. She must have looked like a ghost emerging from the darkness into the bright sunlight. It could just as easily have been midafternoon as dawn; the sky was blue, without a cloud, the air so fresh in her lungs it stung. They were supposed to be breaking ground in Skalunda in a few hours. There’d be no beauty sleep today.

A stone-jawed policeman came across and started talking to her in rapid-fire Swedish. She didn’t understand a word and just shrugged. “I’m sorry. American?”

He switched to flawless English. “Before you go, we need your contact details so we can be in touch to take a statement.”

“Of course,” Annja said. “I’m staying in a hotel downtown.” She pointed toward the hulking shape of her hotel towering over the skyline. It was impossible to miss.

“If you could give your details to the officer.” He nodded toward an intimidatingly blonde Amazon of a woman with a pistol strapped on her hip and a peaked cap. She was busy taking details from a line of shell-shocked people. Surreally a radio played in the background, a pop song she didn’t know taunting the world to come on and do its worst. She couldn’t help but think it had.

Annja joined the line to give her contact info, and then wandered the empty streets toward her hotel, a lost girl in a strange town. She felt her cell phone vibrate in her jeans pocket. When she took it out she saw she had seventeen missed calls, all of them from the same New York number: Doug Morrell, her producer on Chasing History’s Monsters. Seventeen calls meant he’d obviously seen the news about the explosion at Thorssen’s rally and put two and two together. She answered with a not-quite-breezy, “Doug!”

“Annja! I thought you were dead. Answer your damned phone next time, would you? I’ve been calling and calling. We saw footage of the explosion. Tell me you weren’t there.”

Doug was a decent guy, if young, blunt and not all that interested in life outside of ratings. She liked him as much as it was possible to like a self-obsessed Ivy League charmer like Doug, which in truth was often just enough to get her to agree to things against her better judgment. He knew it and she knew it. And he liked her just enough in return to at least make the lies and manipulations sound plausible. It wasn’t quite a meeting of minds, but in TV terms it was positively synergism.

“Right in the middle of it,” she replied, just how lucky she’d been registering as she said it.

“Are you okay? I mean...stupid question...but you know? Two arms, two legs, no bonus bits or bits missing? Every bad word I’ve ever said, every time I’ve conned you into doing something you didn’t want to do—”

“Don’t go saying anything you’ll regret, Doug. You know, the kind of stuff that can be used in a court of law.” Annja laughed. It was a slightly frazzled laugh. “Because, believe me, I’ll certainly hold it against you.”

“Okay, good point. You sure you’re in one piece?”

“All fingers and all toes in place.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“Okay, I believe you. So, now we’ve got the mild hysteria out of the way—see what happens when you don’t answer your phone?—time for the million-dollar question. Micke had someone in there filming the rally, right?” He paused for a beat, judging her reaction, then added, “Don’t get me wrong. It’s a tragedy.”

“It is.”

“But you have to admit it’d make great television. An episode on the greatest Norse hero of all, a myth that has continued to fascinate us over the centuries, tied in with the assassination attempt on one of the most charismatic politicians of recent times?” She could hear him marveling at the serendipity that had dropped this in his favorite reporter’s lap. “It’s pure television gold. I can see it already, can’t you?”

Ratings.

It was always about ratings with Doug when it came right down to it.

That wasn’t fair, and she knew it. The man who had been terrified when she didn’t answer, that had been the real Doug Morrell; the man who wanted the gory details caught on film, that was the TV producer and they were different beasts. It was only now that Doug was sure she was safe that he let that beast out. It was only natural that he did. “Gold,” she agreed, halfheartedly.

“Anyway, kiddo, you sound bushed. What is it, one, two in the morning?”

She looked at her watch. It was closer to 5:00 a.m. and she could smell the hit of cinnamon in the air from a nearby bakery. The Swedes loved their cinnamon buns; it was as close as they came to a societal addiction.

“Five.”

“You should be in bed. You’re breaking ground tomorrow, right? Don’t want you looking like you’ve gone ten rounds with...well, I was going to try and be clever and name some female boxer, but you get the idea. Beauty sleep. That’s an order.”

“You ever notice you only tell me what to do when there’s an ocean between us, Doug?” Annja laughed. “But just this once I’ll be good. I’m too tired to argue.”

His voice changed. “I’m glad you’re okay, Annja. When you weren’t picking up...”

“I know,” she finished for him. She couldn’t deal with mawkishness at 5:00 a.m., not that she was a big fan of it at any other time of day. She walked the rest of the way to the hotel, noting that it was still bright out, and had been for hours. This whole land of the midnight sun thing was a bit unnerving. In the height of the summer it was dark for no more than three hours a night, and if you went far enough north, to the Kebnekaise massif, you could watch the sun approach the horizon, then just rise again without ever disappearing from sight. As it was, the distinct lack of darkness as far south as Gothenburg was enough to turn a light sleeper into an insomniac and have them climbing up the hotel wall.

An early-morning tram drove by on its way to one of the suburbs. The only passenger had her head resting on the window, still half-asleep. Annja waited for it to rumble off down the street before she crossed the road to the hotel.

The night porter smiled at her as she crossed the marbled foyer and made for the bank of elevators, and her waiting bed. She saw herself in the mirrored elevator doors. It was a wonder he wasn’t reaching for the phone to call for the cops.

* * *

TWO HOURS OF restless sleep later, breakfast skipped, Annja was on-site waiting for Karl Thorssen to grace them with his presence.

There was always something special about that first day on a dig—a sense of anticipation and hope that was almost palpable. Right up until they broke ground, anything was possible.

This was no different.

Beowulf’s barrow.

Was the Geatish king interred here?

What, if anything, would they find down there?

Annja grinned despite herself. She wouldn’t have traded this part of her life for anything.

Usually the locals were fairly dour and uninterested, but this time it was different. This wasn’t just some plot of land where a Roman villa had supposedly stood. This was part of legend. Their legend. Beowulf was more than Gustavus Adolphus, the father of modern warfare; he was their King Arthur. Slayer of dragons.

She couldn’t help but think that whatever they found in the barrow had the power to make or break a part of the nation’s psyche. What if the bones were deformed or stunted? What if they extracted DNA that proved that he wasn’t Swedish at all? She thought of Thorssen driven to apoplexy by the imagined discovery his racially pure hero was nothing of the sort, and smiled. There would be a beautiful irony in that.

Annja shielded her eyes against the sun.

The site was already a hive of activity.

Given the attempt on Karl Thorssen’s life last night, it was hardly surprising the press had turned out in force to cover the ritual breaking of the ground. There were local dignitaries, too, businesspeople who provided financial muscle to Thorssen’s campaign and, giving their teachers the runaround, a group of schoolchildren who seemed to be everywhere at once, grinning and giggling and pretending to be ancient heroes with invisible swords fighting equally invisible dragons. There were half a dozen television presenters speaking to cameras, each offering a version of the same report. How Thorssen had survived the attempt on his life, how the crowd had gathered for this historic event, how Thorssen was writing his own legend and how the upcoming election promised to be a closely contested thing with a groundswell of support for the right-wing politician in the wake of last night’s tragedy.

“Quite a turnout,” Johan Cheander said, his camera on his shoulder and scanning the crowd of faces. She couldn’t see Micke. Johan was good. He didn’t need telling what might make useful footage. Just like the night before, his camera was documenting it all down to the last detail. They’d work out what they needed later.

“You’re not wrong,” Annja agreed, pointing to the black Mercedes coming across the grass toward them. It wasn’t designed for off-road. She’d half expected Karl Thorssen to arrive by helicopter. That seemed like the kind of over-the-top entrance he’d have enjoyed. No doubt he’d discharged himself from the hospital, telling the nurses he couldn’t miss this moment for the world. It was the kind of thing that would make good press whether it was true or not.

The sight of the man getting out of the car with one arm in a sling, his rock-star face battered and bruised with any number of minor cuts and abrasions, left him looking like the wounded warrior he wanted to be. The cuts stood out against his pale gray skin. He saw someone he recognized in the crowd and raised a hand in greeting. It took him a second to muster his strength and don the mask of charming affability he’d need to get through the morning, but Annja noticed the occasional wince as he moved, and that he bit on his bottom lip every time the pain threatened to get too much.

Maybe I’m being too hard on him, she thought, watching him press the flesh.

Last night had clearly taken it out of him, but Karl Thorssen wasn’t about to be denied the spotlight by something as trivial as an assassination attempt.

That spoke volumes about the man.

Reporters jostled for position as he moved toward the podium that had been set up for the speech, their microphones pushed toward the front. Some were already calling out questions before he reached the lectern. He gave them time to settle down while he gathered himself. He really was good at this kind of thing, playing to the crowd. He wasn’t there to address the locals or the schoolchildren. He was talking to everyone on the planet—or as much of it as the news channels would reach. In a viral world that was everywhere there was a screen, a cell phone, a tablet or a laptop. News spread now like it never had before. The reach of microblogging sites was insidious, immense and instantaneous, turning everyone into an on-the-spot reporter. Nothing went unseen. Especially not something like this. Karl Thorssen was a political animal. This was his stage.

He looked up at her and seemed to smile—a smile that was for her and her alone. But of course it wasn’t; it was for the cameras.

“Ten bucks says the first words out of his mouth are about politics and have absolutely nothing to do with archaeology.”

“I’m not taking that bet,” the cameraman said. “Might as well just give you the money.”

“Ah, you take all the fun out of life.”

“So I’ve been told.”

Annja had heard enough of Thorssen’s rhetoric last night. She didn’t need to hear any more of it. Instead, she drifted off toward the archaeologists’ tents to the side of the dig site. They were more her kind of people. Of course there were plenty of archaeologists out there who didn’t think the same of her thanks to the sensationalist nature of many of the segments on Chasing History’s Monsters.

“Enjoying the circus?” Annja said, moving over to join a small huddle of archaeologists who were intent on something. The nearest looked up. There was a flicker of recognition, but he said nothing. The joys of syndication. No doubt the show was on some obscure cable channel over here.

“Just waiting for the clowns to turn up,” his friend said.

“Don’t worry, they’re here.” Annja grinned.

“Thought I heard the natives getting restless.”

“Thorssen’s just gearing up to do his thing.”

“Good,” the quiet one said. “The sooner he’s done, the sooner we can get on with our job.”

“Just consider yourself lucky you’re getting to do this at all. We’ve been trying to get permission to crack open the barrow for years, but have been blocked at every turn. I don’t know how Thorssen pulled it off, but the guy’s got friends in high places.”

“Or some very incriminating photos, more like,” the quiet one said, this time with a wicked grin. He stood up and brushed off his hands on his jeans. “You know how it is with the rich and famous—they operate in a different world to the rest of us mere mortals. Lars,” he said, holding out his hand to Annja.

“Annja,” she said, taking it. She felt the distinctive calluses of someone used to working the dirt.

“Ah, Ms. Creed. I thought I recognized you.”

“Occupational hazard.”

“Word came down from on high that you’d be doing a feature on the dig.”

“On high meaning Thorssen?”

“On high meaning our benefactor, yes. I’ve been told you’ve got the run of the place,” he said. He didn’t sound happy about it, either.

“It’s not every day we break open the tomb of a legendary king. It’d be great to get some footage of you guys at work.”

“And in return he gets more publicity for his controversial cause. I guess we know who you sold your soul to, Ms. Creed.”

Annja took the jibe in the spirit it was intended. She wasn’t about to defend her producer’s deeply ingrained commercialism, but he was right—assuming the segment was edited together in his favor, they were providing Thorssen with yet another mouthpiece to spread his message. Luckily for everyone, Annja got to do the final edits on her segments. “There’s nothing in my contract that says he gets a second of airtime,” she said. “I’m not here for the politics—after all, the show’s not called Chasing Modern Politicians, is it? Our viewers don’t care about immigration or racial segregation unless we’re talking about soldiers from the Holy Roman Empire. Give me a good old-fashioned monster hunt any day of the week. I leave the politicking to serious journalists.”

Lars seemed to like that answer.

She tried to remember his surname. She had it written on a card in her pocket, but could hardly take it out and check.

Lars...

Lars...

Mortensen.

That was it: Lars Mortensen.

“So, what’s your deal with Thorssen? He just letting you in on the action out of the kindness of his heart?” she asked.

“Hardly.” Lars grunted. “He wants first look at everything we uncover, and any broadcast or press release has to have his name slapped right across it.”

“It’s all about the glory for him,” one of Lars’s companions explained, joining them. “The more press he gets, the more he gets to play the benevolent champion of Middle Sweden, the more people will lap up his stupid politics and buy into his send-them-back-home promises. Makes me sick just thinking about it.”

He was right; Thorssen’s rhetoric was the sort that resonated with certain segments of society whenever there were open borders and high unemployment; the flow of people toward a better life was always one-sided, and with any one-sided narrative it was easy to spin it negatively.

“Well, how about we get one over on him by having you give me a call before anything comes out of the ground, then technically you’re not breaking your promise to Thorssen. Saves him getting his hands dirty, too.”

“Oh, I’m sure he’s quite happy to get his hands dirty,” Lars said, though the kind of dirt he meant had nothing to do with the rich soil of the dig site.

Annja glanced across at Karl Thorssen, who was on the podium now, hands braced on either side of the lectern as he leaned forward. His hair fell across his face. He didn’t brush it aside for the longest time, then made a show of biting back the pain when he did. It was quite the theatrical performance. He spoke slowly, enunciating each syllable so no one would miss a word.

“Today is a landmark day for this proud nation of ours. Today is a day we embrace the past. Today, as we drive the shovel into the ground to turn the earth, we are forging a connection with the land of our forefathers. Think about it. As we open the barrow we are digging through the same ground they strode upon. The same earth. We are tapping into the magic still latent within that soil. Heroes walked upon this land, the greatest of which lies buried beneath it. The past and the present are separated by a few feet of dirt. Think about it.” His voice carried across the quiet crowd. They were obviously doing what they were told. There was an intensity to his voice that demanded it.

Listening to him, she realized Karl Thorssen was a believer; every word that came out of his mouth, he meant. Yes, it was theater, but weirdly that didn’t make it any less real.

Believers were always the most dangerous men in her experience. It didn’t matter who did the actual dirty work, just so long as it got done. She’d already seen that Thorssen had an army dedicated to his cause.

“Ah, my minute in the sun,” Lars said, picking up a pristine shovel that had been leaning against a couple of crates of equipment. “Time to put on a smile for the cameras.”

Annja studied his face as Thorssen drove the shovel into the yielding dirt, rested his foot upon it, then pushed down. Not once did he wince or show any sign of physical discomfort. Putting on a brave show for the world? she wondered. Or letting the mask slip to show who you really are?

It was impossible to know one way or the other.

Thorssen turned over the soil to cheers and applause from the small crowd. The cameras had their sound bite and their visual leader for their news segments; his job here was done. He bowed his head, raised a hand in thank you and farewell and allowed himself to be helped back to his car.

A short while later he was driven away, and people were left milling around asking what, if anything, would happen next. It didn’t take long for the children to grow restless, several of them deciding that rolling like logs down the hill was a good idea. Their teachers had trouble corralling them, but eventually they were herded onto the waiting coach and whisked away.

The reporters, who only a few moments before had been pressing their microphones forward trying to catch every word Thorssen said, had their backs to the barrow and were doing their final pieces to camera, telling their viewers what they’d just seen and why it was so significant. Fifteen minutes later it was a ghost town. The TV crews had packed away their equipment and driven off in a convoy. Now that Thorssen was gone the barrow was back to being a grassy hill. They’d return if and when evidence was unearthed that Skalunda Barrow truly was the last resting place of Beowulf. Until then, story filed, they’d forget all about it as soon as the next piece of news broke.

“How about I make myself useful?” Annja asked as Lars and his team started to unpack rolls of plastic sheeting from their van. He doled out instructions to others, surprisingly in English rather than his native Swedish, which led her to think that it was for her benefit. He had everything under control, but Annja never was one for being a spectator.

“It’s fine, we’ve got it covered. Unless you fancy a shift with the shovel?”

Annja laughed, assuming it was a joke. Dig sites used mechanical diggers these days to scrape the surface back and mark out the trenches for excavation, not teams of slave labor with shovels. She looked around for the digger, but there was no sign of one anywhere.

“So when is the digger arriving?”

“Digger? You’re looking at him.”

“Are you serious?”

“Sadly. Yes.”

“What? Why?”

“Red tape. We could only get approval to excavate if everything was done by hand—minimal impact on the environment, every single sod replaced as close to its current position as is humanly possible.”

“Wow. Better grab a shovel, then. We’re going to be at this for a while.”

“Tell me about it,” Lars said. “It’ll take us a day to clear out what a backhoe could do in half an hour. But in this as in the rest of life beggars can’t be choosers. Lucky for you I’ve enlisted half of the horticultural department from the university to do the grunt work. Let the big strong farm boys do the backbreaking stuff.”

“Nothing wrong with a little extra muscle.” She held out her hand. “Pass the shovel.”

Lars handed her the shiny new shovel Thorssen had used to break the ground.

“Where do you want me?”

“Over there, we’ve marked out a trench where, according to geophys results, we believe the entrance to the barrow lies. Have fun.”

Annja hefted the shovel onto her shoulder, but before she walked off to lose herself in some good old-fashioned manual labor, she asked, “Do you really believe he’s down there?”

“It’s been a long time, and there’s no way of knowing for sure, but yes. I wouldn’t be getting involved in this unless I thought that there was the realistic chance of finding something.”

“That’s not the same as saying you think we’ll turn up Beowulf’s bones. We’re talking fourteen hundred years for grave robbers, looters, despoilers, defilers, never mind treasure hunters, and heaven knows what else to come along and plunder the barrow.”

“That’s always a risk,” the archaeologist agreed. “We won’t know until we’re inside. Just as we won’t know if this is the tomb of Böðvar Bjarki—the Norse warrior king from the Saga of Hrólf Kraki, for instance, whose story mirrors the legend of Beowulf in many significant areas. We know it was from Geatland that Böðvar arrived in Denmark, and moreover, that upon his arrival at the court there, he killed a monstrous beast that had been terrorizing the court at Yule for two years, not unlike Grendel. Of course, there’s no evidence as to whether Beowulf was real or not, but his character from the poem does fit seamlessly into the context of his society and Germanic family tree.”

“Seamlessly? It doesn’t exactly fit the poem, does it?”

“In terms of what we actually know, it’s difficult to say anything with certainty. The poem may have been composed as an elegy for a seventh century king like Böðvar, corrupting his name over time, but there’s little surviving evidence to indicate who it was actually written about, much like King Arthur. It’s a legend. And with all poems of the time, it has evolved with the telling and retelling. We have no idea who the original author was. Indeed, there’s as much as three hundred years between its composition and the oldest surviving manuscript, which remains unnamed. The poem itself wasn’t called Beowulf until the nineteenth century. Indeed, from the 1700s it was known as Cotton Vitellius A.XV, after Robert Bruce Cotton, the manuscript’s owner, and there was no transcription of it until 1818.”

She had heard much of this before, but Lars’s passion when he started in upon the subject close to his heart made every word fascinating.

“The burial rites described in Thorkelin’s Latin transcription bear a strong resemblance to evidence found at the Anglo-Saxon burial site at Sutton Hoo. Likewise Grundtvig’s Danish translation and Kemble’s subsequent modern English version echo the same funereal rites.”

“But wasn’t Beowulf’s body burned in a funeral pyre on a boat?” Annja recalled having read several retellings of the story as a child long before she’d ever encountered a direct scholarly translation. The image of the burning boat was always one that had stuck with her. If she closed her eyes she could see the flames and feel their heat on her skin. Fire.

“You are correct. The image of the Viking funeral boat sailing out ablaze does provide for a much more dramatic conclusion to the tale. Though I truly believe there has to be a reason why the site of Skalunda has become so intrinsically linked with everything we believe to be true about our hero. Stories don’t endure without a grain of truth to them, do they?”

It was a question she couldn’t answer, but she wasn’t entirely convinced by his reasoning. Yes, it made sense that the poem would have been changed over time. The only extant copy of the original showed at least two authors, and the story itself was riddled with dichotomies of paganism versus Christianity, which supported the notion that each subsequent teller of the epic tale had added their own beliefs to the core story, but was burial really a part of Nordic culture of the time?

“Well,” she said wryly, “the answer’s only a backbreaking dig away.”


3

They had been at it until well into the night, working in shifts and stopping occasionally for food, but now that the sun had finally set and everyone had been sent home, Lars could savor the scene. It was real. It was happening. After all of the paperwork, all of the begging, all of the disappointments, they were finally here, digging down to what could well be the biggest discovery of his lifetime.

He allowed himself a small smile.

Putting the dig together had been a herculean task, and while they were still a long way from finding anything, the sense of satisfaction he felt surveying the site couldn’t be denied. They could make do without the backhoes and all of the other machinery. It was all about what was down in the ground now. The team had spent most of the first day clearing the ground, cutting and rolling away a strip of turf a few inches deep to reveal the undisturbed soil beneath, then marking it so the sod could be relaid exactly where it had been. It had taken hours of painstaking work, but the students had put in a full shift, cutting out a trench almost six feet deep, three wide and fifteen long.

It had been a good day, and they’d ended it with a ritual wetting of the site, sharing a beer while they cleared the equipment. It had been one of the students who’d come up with the idea to have that beer out of an old horn, each taking a sip and passing the horn around the circle until it was empty. It was a nice ritual, and very in keeping with the nature of the dig. Then they’d taken a few shots to immortalize their handiwork for posterity, each of them standing beside the deep trench, beer horn in hand. They were all part of this great work, and for him there was no real difference between the workers and the queen. They were all in it together.

Bellis had taken a handful of the team who were bunked up in one of the caravans and headed into town in search of a bar, joking, “Tonight we drink, for tomorrow we dig!” It wasn’t exactly a war cry, but then, they weren’t going to war so it didn’t need to be.

The trailers were still in darkness.

A series of solar-powered garden lights lit up the trench.

Lars sat on the pile of turf that had been carefully set aside in numbered rolls and lit a cigarette. He breathed deeply, savoring the smoke before blowing it out in rings. He’d spent most of the day watching other people work. He was still full of energy and itching to play his part in the excavation. He knew that he wouldn’t be able to rest until he had at least got a little dirt under the fingernails. That would make it all seem real. That was just the kind of man he was.

He stubbed out his cigarette and went over to the main tent. The plans were laid out on the central table along with the geophys readings. He’d studied the information diligently and knew it like the back of his hand. The geophys readings were a little more complicated than the ones he was used to looking at; normally they would cover a flat stretch of a field while these ones were trying to plot the three-dimensional shape of the mound itself. He never tired of looking at those images. He’d watched the technicians with their equipment, taking carefully measured steps as the made their readings, one pace after another until they built up a picture of the shape beneath the ground. It was inspiring.

There was every chance that the body—if it had ever been there—would have been placed in a cavity, and sooner or later that would have collapsed in on itself, which meant they would have to deconstruct the entire barrow in the hopes of finding the remains. This wasn’t a quick two-week job. They could be here for the best part of a year or more painstakingly going over the ground before they found anything exciting.

Initial ground surveys suggested there was a change in the minerals in the mound, not much farther into it than they already were.

It could be nothing, but the shadow those minerals presented looked too uniform to be a natural phenomena.

Lars Mortensen had spent most of his adult life on digs like this. He knew not to make assumptions when it came to shadows on scans and what they might turn out to be, but he couldn’t help himself. He felt that itch just beneath his skin and it had to be scratched. An hour of digging, maybe two, and he’d break through far enough to at least make a reasonable guess as to what the curious shadow-shape was if not know for sure.

He picked up the heavy-duty lantern. Lars angled the beam directly at the scar in the side of the mound as he started to walk toward it. As the light played across the rich soil he thought he saw something glinting in the exposed earth. He swung the lantern, causing the light to roll, and again something caught the shifting light for a moment but no more. He played the light across it again, and again until he was sure he’d identified the source.

He assumed it was a shard of quartz that would have been barely visible as the team had worked in the setting sun, but it was worth investigating if for no other reason than satisfying his curiosity.

Lars set the lamp down on the edge of the trench so that its light filled it, and jumped down. It felt good to be right in the heart of it. He unhooked the trowel from his belt and knelt with a mixture of awe and excitement, placing his hands flat on the dirt. He almost imagined he could soak up everything this land had seen over the fourteen hundred years it had sheltered the hero. And for as long as his hands pressed into the earth he felt connected to each and every one of those years.

The glimmering caught his eye again. He knew it would be something and nothing, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that the single tiny reflection was calling to him like a beacon in the dark.

He ran a finger over the soil, sending a few tiny crumbs of earth tumbling away.

It wasn’t a tiny fragment of quartz or feldspar trapped in the exposed crust, that much was obvious. It was bigger than that.

He set the trowel aside and pulled out a brush. He knew it was clean. He’d cleaned it meticulously in preparation for the dig. He always did.

He gave the surface the lightest of touches with the tip of the brush, testing how easily it crumbled, if in fact it did.

He brushed aside more particles of earth while pressing his free hand a few inches below the gleam so he could catch every fragment that fell. It took time to reveal that the tiny reflection had come from something much larger than he could have reasonably expected.

With each brushstroke he revealed a little more of the gleaming surface, and the more dirt he brushed away the fiercer the gleam shone, taking on a peculiar blue-green iridescence in the beam of the high-intensity lamp.

He completely lost track of time while he worked.

Eventually he revealed its edge but carried on working around it, trying to find out just how big it was in the hope that it might give him a clue as to its purpose. The color reminded him of an oyster shell, but if that’s what it was, then it came from the biggest oyster he’d ever seen, and then some. It took time, but gradually Lars cleared away the dirt enough to make out that it was the size of a dinner plate. He brushed away a little more dirt until it was clear that there was a second one overlapping the first like a gray slate roof tile that had lost most of its luster, but there were still flakes that gleamed with that iridescent blue-green.

He wiped the brush free of dirt before slipping it back into his tool belt, and then reached for his trowel again. He ran its point along one of the exposed edges, working it slowly beneath the lip of the plate. He pressed gently on its handle with his free hand, testing its resistance before he even tried to work it loose, but even as he applied the slightest pressure it started to shift. He felt his heartbeat quicken as he fought back the rising mix of hope and panic. He had to stop himself from dropping his trowel to put both of his hands on the plate, but all of those years of discipline and training kept him from moving too quickly and damaging the artifact.

He had secured his trowel in place. As he did, he felt the plate shift, grinding grit between it and the overlapping second one. He relaxed his grip slightly and it started to ease ever so slightly out of the position it had been locked in for centuries.

He felt it give, just a touch, and then suddenly it came free from its neighbor.

It was heavier than he had expected, despite being wafer thin.

The edge bit into one of his fingers, slicing it deep and clean, like a freshly sharpened blade. His blood smeared across the surface of the strange artifact. He had no idea what it was—some kind of armor?

He was almost reverential as he lifted the find. He turned it over in the light to better look at both sides of it. The underside had none of the brilliance, even faded, of the topside. Lars reached up and placed it carefully on grass beside the lamp, intending to clamber out of the trench, and store the strange plate in the main tent, detailing its discovery and protecting the site from damp or moisture before turning in, but he didn’t do any of those things. Instead, he knelt back down in the dirt to examine the raw patch of earth he’d just exposed, curious to see if the plate was merely some decorative facing, or if he’d uncovered something more interesting.

He changed the angle of the lantern’s beam, shining it down on the newly exposed surface.

There was nothing there.

There was no earth, no stone behind where the tile had been.

Instead, there was a void beyond it.

He played the light inside, straining forward without resting his weight on the edge as he tried to peer down into the hole, but his own shadow made it impossible.

Instead, Lars reached inside, fumbling in the darkness.

His fingers touched nothing but air while the razor-sharp edges of the wafer-thin plates still in situ snatched and sliced at his sleeve, cutting into the fabric as easily as if it was paper, not heavy-duty cotton, as he withdrew his hand.

He reached in again, risking some of his body weight on the plates in front of him, and this time his fingertips brushed against something cold. He couldn’t reach it properly, though, whatever it was. He withdrew his arm carefully, painfully aware of just how impossibly sharp the exposed edge was even after all this time.

He tried the lantern, but again it failed to shed any illumination on what was down there, despite the fact that he knew there was something to see.

It could be nothing, of course—a piece of rock that had collapsed from the ceiling and fallen away into the air pocket, or part of another layer of lining in the barrow. It was unlikely, yes, but not impossible.

Lars tried to work the second plate out of place to make the hole wider. This time he only succeeded in gashing his hand on its edge.

Gritting his teeth, he tried again, leaning on the wafer-thin plate as he pushed down. It fell and was gone before he could stop it, falling into the air pocket and slicing through his hand as it went.

Lars fished a handkerchief from his pocket and wadded it up around the cut to stem the flow of blood. It was going to need stitches, but it could wait.

He shone the flashlight down through the enlarged aperture, revealing a mound of loose earth and, in the center of it, an uneven shape that lay partially exposed. Soil had fallen through the overlapping cracks in those strange plates to rain down on the treasures below.

He played the light around the confines of the chamber, surprised by how large it actually was—certainly considerably bigger than would have been necessary to house a single body, no matter how legendary the corpse. Colors and shapes reflected back at him as he realized that the whole of it was lined with those peculiar plates. That in itself could prove to be a major discovery.

His blood dripped into the burial chamber.

His handkerchief was soaked with it.

His hand stung as he tried to move it, but that was not going to stop him from being the first man to lay his hands upon the treasures of Skalunda Barrow in fourteen hundred years.

Lars lowered the flashlight inside, clearing away enough dirt to wedge it in place so that it lit up the tomb. The extra space he’d opened up meant he could lean in with his good hand and grasp the tantalizingly close shape in the dirt. His fingers scraped across it at first, before he managed to grip the treasure. Dirt flaked away at his touch, exposing rust-pitted iron.

It was almost as if the treasure sang to him.

Even in that instant, heart hammering, he still had the presence of mind to retrieve his brush and dust aside the accumulated debris of countless lifetimes to reveal the crusted metal rather than just tear it free of its earthly prison. He couldn’t reach in far enough to clear it all. He knew he ought to wait for the team to reassemble in the morning, and clear away more of those peculiar plates to get proper access to the barrow, recording everything as they went—everything photographed and logged—but knowing and doing were two very different monsters.

Lars slipped the brush back into his belt.

This is an archaeological dig, not a treasure hunt, he told himself, but that didn’t stop that familiar need-to-know hunger from pulling at him. It was why he did what he did. It was why he always knew he was going to make this discovery himself.

He wiped the sweat away from his forehead, trapped in indecision.

After what felt like an eternity he reached in and took hold of the pitted metal.

It was heavy.

Much heavier than he thought it would be.

As he lifted it, the piece of metal broke in two.

He cursed himself, certain that he should have left well alone, followed procedure and photographed it in situ first, but it was too late to stop now.

He gently removed the artifact from its resting place. He needed to use his free hand to support it as it came free of the ground. His blood smeared against the rust. He ignored the pain from more cuts from the razor-sharp plates as they bit deep in his flesh, and reverentially placed it on the ground beside him.

Lars checked the edge of the long piece of metal in the light. Where he thought it had broken in his hands, he saw the edge, too, was encrusted with rust for that to be the case. The edge was corroded, the rust all the way through it.

It made no sense at all.

His blood filled the pits along the length of the metal. The corrosion, he saw, was cracking where it had soaked up the moisture. It appeared to be blistering. He applied the slightest of pressure with the tip of his finger, and a flake of rust broke away. It took him a moment to understand what he was seeing, but when he did, he couldn’t quite believe his eyes. Far from being rusted through, the corrosion was more like a protective shell that had formed around the metal. Beneath it he saw a patch of silver metal that couldn’t possibly be as pure as it seemed. Lars picked and pulled urgently at the crust until he’d freed enough of the scab to be sure this was no ordinary twisted lump of metal he’d unearthed.

In less than a minute he exposed the impossibly gleaming sword. And he was in no doubt that was what he’d found. A sword, or part of one.

He scrambled back to his feet and looked inside the ocular again, seeing the unmistakable outline of the second piece of the sword lying just out of reach. So close and yet so frustratingly far away from his questing fingers. Still, he tried to get it, earning another deep cut for his pains, this one on the ball of his shoulder as he’d leaned in too far.

His only option was to go down through the opening, but he couldn’t do that while the razor-sharp edge was exposed so he slipped off his jacket, folded it double and laid it over the strange plate for protection. He had to use his injured hand to support himself as best he could—and it hurt but it was a pain he’d gladly suffer if it meant he could retrieve the rest of the sword. He bit back a scream of agony as blackness threatened to overwhelm him, his head dizzy with pain from the pressure he put on it. There was blood everywhere, smeared handprints all over the dig site and the opening that he’d have to explain in the morning. Still, it would all be worth it, he was sure of that. This sort of find came along once in a lifetime if you were lucky.

Lars Mortensen was lucky.

He dropped down into the tomb itself. It had filled in with sediment and landfall over the centuries. All that remained of the hero’s tomb was this air pocket; the rest of it was buried under more earth. He saw an edge of stone and realized it had to be the corner of the bier the warrior king’s corpse had lain on. He cursed himself for a fool; his presence here could be doing untold damage to the relics beneath him, but that didn’t stop him from crouching to dust away the layer of muck that crusted the second piece of metal before he worked it clear.

He weighed it carefully in his hands.

This sword killed monsters and dragons, he thought, and started to laugh slightly hysterically. Even if he didn’t believe the more fantastical elements of Beowulf’s story, there was no doubting the fact that the sword in his hands had taken lives.

He shivered and, taking care not to cut himself again, set the second part of the broken sword down beside the first. Then he tried to get a better look at the strange plates that tiled the wall of the tomb. They were unlike anything he’d ever seen before. He had no idea what they were and couldn’t wait to get them to the lab for testing. The light seemed to reflect eerily from some of the plates where they weren’t crusted and gray, giving the burial chamber a peculiar inner glow. There was no doubting this was the tomb of a hero. The effort that must have gone into fashioning the plates—never mind the genius that had preserved them for an eternity, keeping their edges sharp—was so far ahead of its time it was frightening. This was the work of a civilization that had marauded halfway across Europe, of course. Whatever the Romans achieved, the Vikings matched in their own way.

Lars clambered out of the tomb, savoring the invigorating air as the wind swirled around the mount. He’d never felt more alive in his life. This moment, right here, right now, was why he lived and breathed.

He knelt beside the two parts of the broken sword. It was impossible not to jump to conclusions, but he so desperately wanted to jump: he knew what he’d found. Even with the covering of an age of decay he knew what lay beneath the crust; this was a sword that had been broken centuries before, letting down its wielder when he needed it most. This sword could only be Nægling, the blade that had failed Beowulf even as he’d slain the dragon in its lair.


4

He couldn’t sleep.

Lars Mortensen had taken the pieces of the broken sword back to his caravan and cleaned more of the corrosive grime from the blade.

He had a decision to make and he had to make it quickly.

There was no doubt in his mind what he had in his hands, and the ramifications that went with the find.

This was why Karl Thorssen had wanted first look at any finds.

Nægling.

It was iconic.

It was exactly what he needed to tip the balance of the upcoming election in his favor. It was a symbol of everything Sweden had once been—a land of heroes, a land of kings, a land of purebloods and warrior spirits. He could see Thorssen holding it above his head, issuing the challenge to his opponents, rallying his followers.

And that was the last thing he wanted.

How could he possibly let something so culturally significant, something so historically important, be used for Thorssen’s fascist agenda?

He’d been prepared for the discovery of an empty tomb, even the decayed remains of a long-dead warrior, but not this, he realized. Despite everything he’d never really believed Beowulf existed. Who fought monsters and dragons in the real world? No one. But here was the evidence of the man if not the legend, right here on his workbench.

Nægling.

It was one thing to have Thorssen’s name attached to a discovery, like some benevolent shadow-figure lurking in the background, a man whose money had made it possible, but it was quite something else to present him with Nægling knowing what he would do with it.

Lars had been on any number of digs over the years, and seen all kinds of finds, but not once had he encountered a find where the years of accumulated grime and decay had fallen away to reveal perfection. Cleaned up, the blade looked as though it had only gone into the ground yesterday.

It was nothing short of miraculous.

But miracles came at a price, didn’t they?

He lit another cigarette. Smoking didn’t steady his nerves, though. It wasn’t some magical cure-all. But it gave him something to do with his hands while he obsessed over the ethics of what he was considering. He’d discovered the sword alone. It wasn’t cataloged. No one had witnessed it. There were no photographs. There was nothing to say it had ever been in that hole. He could pretend it had never been found. He could take precautions to make sure it never fell into Karl Thorssen’s hands.

He wasn’t a doctor; he hadn’t taken some form of Hippocratic oath to always present the truth to the world. Sometimes not knowing was better, wasn’t it? In this case, given the choice of Thorssen using the blade as a focal point to rally his troops, turning himself into a modern-day Beowulf, surely it had to be, didn’t it?

Lars lay in his bunk watching the hands on the clock move impossibly slowly, thinking about all of those immigrant families whose lives would be turned upside down if a man like Thorssen actually rose to power. He thought about the time machine that people often conjectured about when it came to Adolf Hitler, and if they would go back to before his rise in power and kill him if they could. This was his time machine moment. He knew that.

Daylight was already here. It was never far away at this time of year. He still didn’t have a solution. All he could do was turn the same things over in his mind.

He needed to get out of there.

The glimmerings of an excuse formed in his mind: he could tell them that he’d tried to open up the tomb himself because he was impatient, and even go so far as to admit a little glory hunting, before he stopped himself. It might cost him his job on the dig, maybe even his tenure at the university if word got out, but it would deflect attention from the truth. He just needed to make the sword disappear, and for that to happen he needed help.

But he had no idea who he could trust.

* * *

ANNJA SLEPT LIKE the dead.

Even the insistent beep of her alarm clock didn’t rouse her until it had escalated to the point where the guest in the room next door was banging on the wall. She killed the alarm and lurched out of bed. She sat on the edge of the mattress, knuckling sleep out of her eyes. She didn’t exactly feel bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. She’d set her phone to silent and turned off the vibrate function before hitting the sack last night, knowing that someone in New York was bound to forget the time difference and wake her up. The first thing she did was check for missed calls.

Five were showing, from two numbers.

Doug Morrell had called four times.

The fifth was from a number she didn’t recognize. It had a Swedish prefix, meaning it originated inside the country.

She wandered across to open the curtains while she checked her voice mail.

Looking out on the unfamiliar city she was left with a strange sense of dislocation. It took her a moment to realize which hotel room she was in, in which city; there had been so many over the past few years that it wasn’t always easy to tell one from another as they all sort of blurred together.

Annja yawned.

“Hello, Annja? It’s Lars. Lars Mortensen. We met at the dig today. You said you wanted to take a look at anything we found....” There was a long pause, like the speaker didn’t really want to go on and was fighting himself. She half expected him to hang up. She checked the cruel red glow of the time on the alarm clock while she listened to his mumbling. It was only a little after five, but the room was filled with bright daylight. The city was waking up slowly, too. “I’ve found something,” he said at last. “And I don’t know what to do with it. Can you call me when you get this, please? I need to talk to someone and I’m not sure who I can turn to so...you’re the lucky winner of tonight’s lottery. Oh, right...it’s early... Sorry if I woke you.” She couldn’t help but laugh at the halfhearted apology that ended the call. The message was time coded at 4:32 a.m. It was a ridiculous time to phone anyone.

So what had driven him to call at 4:32 rather than just wait for her to arrive at the site at 8:00 a.m. like the rest of them?

There was only one way to find out.

Annja hit redial and called him back.

“Annja?”

“Hi, Lars, thanks for the wake-up call,” she said. “It’ll cost you a decent cup of coffee.”

“Sorry. I—”

“Couldn’t wait to talk to me? I have that effect on men. Well, once in a while, anyway. What’s on your mind?”

“We’ve found something.”

“You mentioned. You don’t sound thrilled. It’s not a clay pot, I take it?”

“No. It’s not. But it’s best you see it for yourself and make up your own mind, rather than me just tell you what I think it is. Can I meet you somewhere?”

“Now that’s what I call an offer you can’t refuse. When and where?” There was something about his voice...he sounded agitated. It took her a second to realize he was on the move. She heard a car door slam on the other end of the line.

“There’s a café,” he said. “Does a decent breakfast.” He reeled off directions to a place down by the central station. “As soon as you can make it.”

“Give me an hour,” she said, despite the fact the address was only a couple of streets away. It wouldn’t take long to get showered and dressed; she’d just put her wet hair up and head out. She didn’t worry about makeup and making herself presentable; she was very much a take-me-as-you-find-me kind of woman.

“Let’s double down, last one there buys breakfast,” she said.

“You’ve got a head start,” Lars said, his voice a little more relaxed at least.

“Of course I have, no one said I had to play fair. See you soon,” Annja promised, and hung up.

He hadn’t spelled it out, but he didn’t need to.

He wasn’t happy about whatever it was he’d found.

They’d only opened the ground a few hours ago; what could he possibly have unearthed in that time that had him so conflicted?

She thought about calling Johan, but the cameraman wasn’t going to thank her for waking him this early so she decided to let him sleep in.

It was only when she was heading out the door that she knew what had been bothering her: why meet at a café? Any find would still be at the site, surely?

What are you up to? Annja wondered, walking out into the early morning to the chorus of traffic sounds, schoolkids and commuters.

* * *

HIS HAND WAS in agony.

Lars slid into the driver’s seat of his car.

He had done his best to apply a field dressing and bind it up once he’d rinsed it in half a bottle of Evian water, but the blood still oozed from the wound and his was getting light-headed from the blood loss and lack of food. He needed to get it seen to but he couldn’t waste time with hospitals until he had done something with the broken sword. No one ever died from a cut hand, he told himself, refusing to think about septicemia and all of the bacteria that could have been festering down in that hole. First matter of the day was getting Nægling out of Thorssen’s reach; he’d worry about his hand and his shoulder and all of those little cuts after that. He was banking on Annja’s connections to get the broken sword out of the country until the election was over and it was no use to the politician. What happened after that was a bridge to be crossed when they came to it.

He couldn’t even say why he trusted her, but he did. It certainly wasn’t because of the quality of her TV show; that was pure unadulterated drivel for the most part. But while those around her showed no discernible ethics she’d not resorted to their cheap tactics. That was something, wasn’t it? It suggested a level of investment in the subject. It wasn’t just about making history sexy; it was about getting to the truth. He liked that about her. She wasn’t a sensationalist, and right now a level head was exactly what he needed. It almost didn’t matter if she looked at the sword and decided it wasn’t Nægling. It had been found in the barrow where the legends insisted Beowulf had been buried; people would believe what they needed to believe. It was Nægling if they wanted it to be Nægling.

More than anything, he wished they’d refused Thorssen’s money and found some other way to finance the dig. He wished he’d ignored the man’s promises to use his connections to secure the hitherto impossible permissions and just continued to bang his head against that metaphorical brick wall.

He looked at himself in the rearview mirror.

Lies. All lies.

He wouldn’t have traded the discovery for anything in the world. The only thing he really wished was that it wasn’t “dirty,” and Thorssen’s involvement made it feel dirty. “Beggars can’t be choosers,” he said to the man in the mirror, but even he didn’t believe him. He’d made a choice. He’d always known Karl Thorssen’s agenda; he’d just chosen to ignore it to get what he wanted out of the deal with this particular devil. It was only now that he was regretting it, because the sword so obviously served Thorssen’s agenda.

Which was why he was considering this plunder, faking an empty tomb rather than deliver the fabled sword into Thorssen’s hands. It was better to look like a fool than feed a fascist.

The two shards of the broken sword were on the backseat in a black garbage sack. It wasn’t the noblest manner of transportation, but it hid the contents from casual view.

He felt the slick, blood-wet bandage on his hand sticking to the leather of the steering wheel.

He’d already taken more painkillers than he should have, but they weren’t dulling the pain.

He pulled up onto a grass verge to check the dressing.

There was nothing he could do with it except unwrap it, teasing the gauze away from the bloody cut before it clotted into the wound, and wrap it again, hoping that would help. He could see the bone and the white of shorn ligaments where the strange plate had sliced clean through the heel of his hand. No wonder it hurt.

He switched on the radio but the news bulletin was still full of talk and speculation about the bombing at Thorssen’s rally and the last thing he wanted to do was think about Karl Thorssen so he turned it off again.

The roads were almost deserted, which was unsurprising given the hour and the remoteness of the barrow. He had been driving for another ten minutes before he noticed the car in his rearview mirror. It held back at first, but slowly closed the gap between them.

Lars Mortensen tried to concentrate on the road opening up before him, but he could only think about the car chasing him on the road behind.


5

Lars Mortensen slammed his foot down on the gas.

He really didn’t like the fact the car was riding his tail so hard; it was stupid and dangerous. If the joker wanted to pass, he should just pass. Conditions were good, the road wasn’t wet, and like most roads in Sweden it was wide because they were designed to be able to function as emergency runways for planes during wartime should the need arise. He knew the road well enough; there weren’t any tricky bends up ahead. He gestured in the rearview mirror for the guy to pass, but he didn’t: he just tucked in a foot or so behind Lars’s fender and gassed his engine intimidatingly even as Lars accelerated.

He watched the needle on the dial climb.

The sound of the engine changed as he shifted gears.

The black car behind maintained the same far-too-close distance.

There were two men in it, both staring straight ahead fixatedly. Staring at him. It wasn’t just his imagination; he could feel the heat of their eyes burning into him. It didn’t matter how hard he pushed the car, they maintained that same intimidating gap. This wasn’t just a couple of guys being jerks, either. Were they part of Thorssen’s mob? Was that it? Did he somehow know Lars was trying to spirit away his treasure?

Or was that just paranoia talking?

He took his foot off the accelerator and allowed the car to slow down slightly.

He didn’t want to hit the brakes—yet. Doing that would cause his lights to flare and tip his hand. Better they think he’s just a slow or erratic driver.

They slowed their pace to match his.

He gripped the wheel tighter. The pain in his hand increased fourfold with the added pressure. The salt from the sweat in the palm of his hand worked its way into the wound, stinging. He gritted his teeth against the swell of agony as his vision swam. He refused to black out, fighting to stay focused as he let the car drift toward the side of the road.

The engine began to strain, whining because it was in the wrong gear, threatening to stall out. He pushed in the clutch and it quit complaining, then slammed on his brakes, forcing the car behind him to pull out and maneuver around him or crash. It slid past at speed, the passenger glaring across at him as it did. The driver cut right across Lars’s path, forcing him to slam on the brakes again or plow into the side of them.

Thinking fast, he rammed the gearshift into reverse and tried to get out of there as the passenger door opened. His tires screeched, spitting rubber, and the engine stalled out. Lars twisted the ignition key, jamming down on the gas, only for it to sputter and die again.

The passenger walked toward him. He didn’t run. He was a brick wall of a man in a dark suit, a clone of every villain from every bad movie Lars had seen in the movies, but no less intimidating for it.

He leaned in and tapped on the window, his signet ring rattling on the glass.

Lars couldn’t move.

He couldn’t even check if the car doors were locked.

He was frozen in place by fear. There wasn’t a single muscle in his body that would obey him. It was all he could do to breathe.

It was the pain that finally broke through to end his paralysis. He turned the key over again, shaking like a leaf. The tapping was more forceful the second time it came and he heard a muffled, “You don’t want to do that, Mr. Mortensen,” as he fumbled with the key again. “Open up.”

Reluctantly, Lars opened the window a crack. It wasn’t exactly meeting the goon halfway, but he hoped it’d buy him a few seconds to think.

“Leave the key alone, Mr. Mortensen,” the goon said, leaning in close to the cracked window. By repeating his name he was laying down a none-too-subtle hint that he knew exactly who Lars was and what he was doing. “I think it might be a good idea if you turned around and went back to the site, don’t you?”

“Who are you?” Lars said. It came out more as a plea for knowledge than a demand.

“It doesn’t really matter who I am, does it? All that matters is that you don’t do anything stupid. Stupidity can be very dangerous for your health, Mr. Mortensen.”

The car started suddenly, catching Lars by surprise. His hands had been working at the key without him thinking about it.

“Don’t,” the goon said. One word, filled with menace.

That one word said it all.

Lars threw the car back into gear and stamped the gas to the floor, sending his car lurching back.

“You don’t want to do that,” the goon called out, still calm, still full of menace.

That was when Lars realized the driver hadn’t been sitting by idly twiddling his thumbs—even as he tried to peel away from the makeshift roadblock the driver of the black car floored the gas, fishtailing around in a crazy hand-brake turn, and rammed him full-on.

The impact threatened to drive Lars off the road.

The engine grunted and died.

The windshield shattered, showering Lars with fragments of glass.

His hands moved frantically, but he couldn’t get the car moving again.

“I asked you not to,” the goon said. There was a gun in the guy’s hand and it was pointing straight at Lars’s face. They were no more than three feet apart. There was no way he could miss. “I’m done asking.”


6

The café was nice enough, hand-painted forest scenes on one wall, a rather Rubenesque nude reclining on another. It took Annja a while to recognize the full-figured beauty was actually the woman behind the counter. She smiled as she ordered her latte, admiring anyone who could put themselves out there like that. There were other pictures and hand-painted signage promising forty blends of coffee and a vast array of unhealthy eating options. She refused to give in to temptation, no matter how good the pastries looked. It was too early for anything apart from toast.

There were three other couples in the place, and one lone diner. Lars had not arrived yet.

Some sort of soft jazz hummed in the background, perfectly in keeping with the boho-chic furniture.

Annja checked her watch. Not much time had passed since Lars’s call. She took a seat by the window to wait.

And wait.

She didn’t know any of the tunes, and couldn’t read the newspaper on the counter, so all she could do was people watch as customers came and went, ordering their nonfat skinny lattes and caramel mochaccinos to go.

She could have stayed in bed for another hour, she realized, polishing off the ice-cold dregs in her cup. She wasn’t impatient, but it didn’t take that long to get from the dig site to town. Forty minutes tops. And he’d already been on the road. Of course she was assuming he’d been at the site when she’d called him. It had been ninety now, if the clock on the wall was anything to go by.

She decided on a refill and a cake, and promised herself she’d give Lars another half hour, and then she was off to the site to see what what was going on.

Annja finally decided she should call him, just to be sure she hadn’t gone to the wrong café. The city was full of them, after all. Though surely he would have called her....

She punched in his number.

“What is this, treat ’em mean, keep ’em keen, Lars? I’m here. Where are you? Call me, okay?” she told his voice mail. “I’m on my second cup of coffee and I’m about to gorge myself on cake. This isn’t good. There’s only so much temptation I can resist. If I put on twenty pounds, you’ll pay—just remember that.”

She hung up and put the phone on the table in front of her.

“Boyfriend trouble?” the owner asked, offering a sympathetic smile.

“Nothing that a slice of carrot cake won’t fix,” she said.

“That’s lucky, then, considering,” the owner said, putting a hefty slice of carrot cake on the table in front of her.

Annja jammed her fork into the middle of the carrot cake and pulled it apart.

“That’s the spirit,” the woman said, and left her to it.

Annja smiled. If it had been a date she’d have been out of there an hour ago. Work was different. So she waited, concentrating on the carrot cake, which had just the right amount of sweet to take her mind off being stood up.

The pleasure was interrupted when her phone began to vibrate against the tabletop. The screen lit up with Lars’s number in the middle of the display.

Annja picked it up and, without missing a beat, said, “You get lost?”

There was a long silence before a slightly accented male voice spoke. “Who is this, please?”

Annja gave her name without thinking. “Who is this?”

“This is the police, Miss Creed. Are you a friend of Mr. Mortensen’s?”

“Not really,” she said. “I’m doing a segment about the dig that Lars...Mr. Mortensen is working on.”

“Dig?”

“Yes, the archaeological dig at Skalunda. You might have seen it on the news last night? Karl Thorssen broke the ground? I was due to meet Lars this morning.”

“Where are you at the moment?”

“I’m in a coffee shop in Gothenburg, down by the station. Why?” She struggled to remember what it was called, then spotted the name of the place on top of the printed menu that stood upright in front of her. She had been staring at it for the past half an hour but it had not registered.

“Café Skalunda,” she said. Even when she had been making her way there she had not realized that it bore the same name as the barrow. She smiled despite herself. She really was in a world of her own.

And then alarm bells started to ring inside her head. Why did the police want to know where she was? She was about to ask the officer why he was ringing her on Lars’s phone when he hung up.

She stared at the phone, trying to understand what had just happened.

Was someone pranking her?

Had something happened to Lars?

She redialed the number. It went straight to voice mail.

That made even less sense, unless the caller was going through his call log to reach out to people, but why would he do that?

As she stared out through the window she saw a car drive past; it was moving much slower than was necessary. Maybe they were lost, or maybe they were looking for something. Or someone. And maybe she was overreacting, but she knew to trust her instincts and her instincts screamed that something was off about the whole thing. She needed to get out of there.

Annja pulled some cash from her pocket, held it up for the woman behind the counter to see, then left it on the table. She took one more bite of carrot cake as she stood up, and mimed that it was good. The woman behind the counter smiled.

She thought about heading back to the hotel room, but it wasn’t as if she’d find any answers there. Walking out of the door, she sent a text through to Roux, telling the old man she thought things were about to get interesting. When that was away into the ether, she called Micke’s cameraman.

“Johan,” she said as a sleep-thick voice grumbled, “Hello?”

So much for being wide awake and ready to rumble.

“Time to get your groove on, sunshine. Action stations. I’ll get the car and meet you at the front of the hotel in twenty minutes.”

“Twenty minutes?”

“There’s an echo.”

“It’s unholy o’clock—where on earth are we going this early?”

“The dig.”

“The dig?”

“Yep. Might be good to get a few shots in the early-morning light.”

“Rubbish. You’re up to something, aren’t you, Annja? Micke’s warned me about you.”

“Busted,” she said.

“It’ll cost you breakfast,” Johan said.

Breakfast, it seemed, was the global currency of early-morning wake-up calls.


7

Johan stood on the street corner, beneath the hotel’s awning.

She pulled up at the curb.

A couple of times on the walk to the underground parking lot Annja had caught herself looking back over her shoulder. She couldn’t shake the feeling that she was being watched. She knew it was down to the car that had cruised by the café earlier. Some would have called it paranoia, but for Annja—after everything she’d been through since Roux and Garin came into her life and she first put Joan of Arc’s sword into the otherwhere—there’d been no such thing. It was like it had become a finely honed survival instinct. She knew when to act. And when something bad was happening, she wasn’t going to sit around and wait to find out what, or just how bad, it was.

She had two options. One, drive out to the dig and start looking for Lars. Someone ought to know where he was. Two, call the police and find out why they’d called her on his phone—if they had.

“So what’s the panic?” the cameraman asked as he climbed into the passenger seat. He’d stowed his gear in the trunk.

She pulled away from the curb. “I want to check up on Mortensen now,” she said. “Something’s not right.”

“Color me intrigued. Love at first sight? A tender moment shared across some decaying old bones?”

“He rang me this morning, early.”

“A booty call? I like it. The boy’s got style.”

“That he might have—but he stood me up for breakfast.”

“Ah, a woman scorned, I get it.”

“Nothing so clandestine. He said that he had found something, and then he doesn’t show up? Seems odd to me.”

Winding their way toward Skalunda, Annja saw the glow of red taillights as cars braked and slowed. Odd. She craned her neck and saw a plume of black smoke in the distance followed by a flame that rose high above the roofs of the cars in front of them.

Nothing was going to be moving for a while.

“Keep an eye out,” Annja said. “I’m going to take a look at what’s going on up there. Slide over. If the traffic starts to move, pick me up as you drive by.” She slid out of the car, but before she closed the door she added, “I’ll even let you put the radio on if you like.”

“Too kind,” Johan said, with just the slightest trace of sarcasm in his voice.

She smiled sweetly at him.

Almost every car in the lineup in front of her had the driver’s side window wound down, the drivers craning their necks to try and see what the holdup was. A few of them spoke to her as she walked past, not that she understood what they were saying.

It was only as she rounded a bend that had been obscured by thick foliage that she saw the burning car.

Firemen were battling the blaze, struggling to bring it under control before it spread to the vegetation and flamed into a full forest fire. Branches all around the verge had been doused with water but they were still blackened and shriveled from the heat.

A shift in the blaze revealed that the car on fire was a Volvo. There was something familiar about it; but just about eighty percent of cars in this country seemed to be Volvos. Next she noticed a bumper sticker on the back fender proclaiming Archaeologists Do It Down and Dirty. She quickened her pace, reluctant to break into a run, but dreading what she already knew deep down was the truth. An accident would explain so many things, including why the police would call her on his cell phone.

A policeman barked at her, waving her back.

She feigned ignorance, and continued to approach the scene.

He repeated his warning. She reached inside her back pocket for her press pass to offer as some kind of identification, not that she expected it to grant her access to the scene, but it was worth a shot. She held it out like a shield until she was close enough for him to see what it was, hoping he’d think she was a cop.

“Anyone hurt?” she asked, still moving toward the car. She looked around, hoping she’d see Lars wrapped in a blanket, being attended by a paramedic. There was no one.

“The car was already on fire when we got here. Anyone inside didn’t get out. We couldn’t get near it until the fire crews arrived a few minutes ago.”

“But an officer...” She was about to say called me, but then decided against it. There was only one car here, and his partner—another statuesque blonde woman—was working with the firefighters against the blaze. She couldn’t see into the smoking car, but it was obvious that if it was already on fire when they’d rolled up, there was no way they could have got Lars’s phone out of there. It would have melted in the fireball.

That meant that the call hadn’t come from the police, and she’d been right to get the hell out of that café.

A gust of wind took hold of the fire, bringing it roaring back to life. As the flames shifted she caught a glimpse of the windshield. It had shattered, but she saw the shape of a man behind the wheel.

“There’s someone in there!” Annja cried, running toward the car.




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