Grendel's Curse

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.