The Bones Of Odin (Matt Drake 1) (7 page)

“They didn’t build ‘em very well?” Kennedy smiled. Drake noted with relief that she seemed fully focused on the job at hand.

“Lots of
underground
activity in ancient days. And then these three ‘royal’ mounds. In the nineteenth century they were named after three legendary Kings of the House of Yngling - Aun, Adil and Egil - one of Scandinavia’s most renowned royal families. But - ” he paused, enjoying himself, “it
also
claims that the earliest mythology and folklore had the mounds
already there
- and that they were ancient tributes to the earliest –
original -
three Kings - or
Gods,
as we would know them now. That’s Freyr, Thor and
Odin.”

“Random input here,” Kennedy said. “But have you noticed how many references to biblical stories we keep getting from all these ancient stories.”

“They’re
Sagas.
” Ben corrected her. “Poems. Academic scribblings. Something that might be important - attached to the mounds are dozens of references to the Swedish word
falla,
and
manga fallor -
not sure what that means. And, Kennedy, didn’t I read somewhere that Christ’s story was very similar to one involving Zeus?”

Drake nodded. “And the Egyptian God, Horus, was another forerunner. Both were Gods that supposedly never existed.” Drake nodded towards the three royal mounds standing prominent against the flat landscape. “Freyr, Thor and Odin, eh? So who’s who then, Blakey? Eh?”

“Not a clue, mate.”

“Worry not, munchkin. We can torture the information out of those villagers if need be.”

They proceeded past the burial mounds, playing the part of three weary tourists for the benefit of watching eyes. The sun beat down hard on their heads and Drake saw Kennedy break her sunglasses out.

He shook his head.
Americans.

Then Ben’s phone rang. Kennedy shook her head, already bemused by the frequency of family contact. Drake just grinned.

“Karin,” Ben said happily. “How’s my big sister?”

Kennedy tapped Drake on the shoulder. “Lead singer in a band?” she inquired.

Drake shrugged. “Heart of gold, that’s all. He’d put himself out to do anything for you without complaint. How many friends or colleagues have
you
got like that?”

The village of Gamla Upsalla was picturesque and clean, a few streets of land-locked, high-roofed buildings, all hundreds of years old, well-preserved and sparsely populated. The occasional villager regarded them with curiosity.

Drake headed for the church. “Local vicars are always helpful.”

As they approached the porch, an old man wearing ecclesiastic robes all but ran them down. He paused in surprise.

“Hej. Kan jag hjalpa dig?”

“Not sure about that, mate.” Drake gave his best smile. “But which one of them mounds over there belongs to Odin?”

“English?” The priest spoke the world well, but struggled to understand.
“Vad? What? Odin?”

Ben stepped forward and drew the vicar’s attention to the royal mounds. “Odin?”

“See.” The old man nodded. “Yes. Umm.
Storsta . . .”
He struggled to find the word. “Big.”

“The biggest?” Ben held his hands wide apart.

Drake smiled at him, impressed.

“Figures.” Kennedy started to turn away, but Ben had one last question.

“Falla?
” He mouthed wonderingly at the vicar, and exaggerated a shrug.
“
Or
manga fallor?”

It took a while, but the answer when it came, chilled Drake to the bone.

“Traps . . . many traps.”

NINE

GAMLA UPSALLA, SWEDEN

Drake followed Ben and Kennedy towards the largest of the royal mounds, making a play of adjusting the straps on his backpack so that he could calmly survey the area. The only cover was about a mile beyond the smallest barrow, and for a second he thought he saw movement there. Quick movement. But further scrutiny revealed nothing more.

They paused at the foot of Odin’s barrow. Ben took a breath. “Last one to the top’s gonna get some shit on my Facebook page!” he cried out, setting off in a hurry. Drake followed more serenely, and smiled at Kennedy walking just that little bit faster than him.

Underneath, he started to grow more and more agitated. This did not sit well with him. They were hopelessly exposed. Any number of high-powered rifles could be tracking them, crosshairs steady, just awaiting the order. The wind whistled loudly and snapped at his ears, increasing his sense of exposure.

It took about twenty minutes to gain the top of the grassy knoll. When Drake reached it, Ben was already sitting down in the grass.

“Where’s the picnic hamper, Crusty?”

“Left it on your buggy.” He looked around. Up here, the view was breathtaking, endless green rolling fields, hills and streams everywhere, and purple mountains in the distance. They could see the village of Gamla Upsalla spreading out to the city boundaries of new Upsalla.

Kennedy stated the obvious. “So I’m just gonna say something that’s been bothering me for a while. If this
is
Odin’s mound, and it hides the World Tree - which would be a killer discovery - why hasn’t anyone found it before? Why would we find it now?”

“That one’s easy.” Ben was tying back his unruly locks. “No one has thought to
look
before. Until the Shield was discovered a month ago, this was all a dusty legend. Myth. And it wasn’t easy connecting the Spear to the World Tree - now called
Yggdrasil
almost universally - and then to Odin’s brief nine days there.”

“And - ” Drake interjected, “this tree ain’t gonna be easy to find, if it exists. They won’t have wanted any old bastard stumbling on to it.”

Now Drake’s mobile started to ring. He glanced at Ben in mock seriousness as he picked it out of his backpack. “Jesus. I’m starting to feel like
you
.”

“Wells?”

“Ten man team at your disposal. Just say the word.”

Drake swallowed his surprise. “
Ten
man. That’s a big team.” A ten man SAS team could take out the President in his oval office, and still find time to star in the new Lady Gaga video before heading home for tea.

“Big stakes, so I hear. This thing’s escalating by the hour.”

“It is?”

“Governments never change, Drake. Slow to start, and then eager to bulldoze their way in, but scared to finish. If it’s any consolation though, it’s not the biggest thing going on in the world at the moment.”

Wells’ statement was designed to be tackled like a lion tackles a zebra and Drake didn’t disappoint. “Like what?”

“The boffins at NASA just confirmed the existence of a new super-volcano. And . . .” Wells actually sounded apprehensive, “it’s active.”

“What?”

“Slightly active.
Slightly.
But, think, the first thing you imagine when you mention a super-volcano is - ”

“- the end of the planet,” Drake finished, his throat suddenly dry. The coincidence was that Drake had now heard that phrase
twice
in as many days. He watched Ben and Kennedy tracing the mound’s circumference, kicking grass, and felt a deep-rooted fear like nothing he’d ever experienced.

“Where is it?” he asked.

Wells laughed. “Not far, Drake. Near where they found that Shield of yours. It’s in Iceland.”

Drake was about to bite for the second time, when Ben shouted,
“Found something!”
in a high-pitched voice that showed his naivety, as it travelled far and wide.

“Gotta go.” Drake raced over to Ben, casting about as best he could. Kennedy was also looking around, but the only activity they could see was in the village.

“Keep it down, mate. Whatcha got?”

“These.” Ben dropped to his knees, and brushed away tangles of grass to reveal a stone slab about the size of an A4 piece of paper. “They line the entire perimeter of the mound, every few feet, in rows from the top to about halfway down. Must be hundreds of them.”

Drake peered closer. The stone’s face was badly weathered, but had been partially protected by the over-growing grass. Its surface bore some kind of marking.

“Runic inscriptions I think they’re called,” Ben said. “Viking symbols.”

“How the hell do
you
know?”

He grinned. “On the plane I checked out the shield’s markings. These are similar. Just ask Google.”

“Kid says there are hundreds,” Kennedy drawled, looking around the steep, grassy hillside. “So what? Doesn’t help.”

“
Kid
says it might do,” Ben said. “We need to find the runes associated with what we are seeking. The rune for spear. The rune for tree. And the rune for - “

“Odin,” Kennedy finished.

Drake had an idea. “I’m betting we can use line of sight. We all need to see each other to know it’s worked, right?”

“Soldier’s logic,” Kennedy laughed. “But worth a try, I guess.”

Drake was itching to ask her about ‘cop’s logic but time was slipping away. Other factions were coming and surprisingly absent, even now. They all started kicking the grass from each stone, scurrying around the green knoll. At first it was a thankless task. Drake made out symbols that looked like shields, crossbows, a donkey, a longboat, then -
a spear!

“Got one.” His low pitched voice carried to the other two, and no further. He sat down with his back-pack and organized the supplies they’d bought during their taxi ride through Upsalla. Torches, a big flashlight, matches, water, a couple of knives he’d told Ben were for clearing debris. He’d received an
I’m not that bloody gullible
look, but their need was more imperative than Ben’s unease right now.

“Tree.” Kennedy fell to her knees, scraping at the stone.

It took Ben ten more stressful minutes to find something. He paused, then retraced his recent steps. “Remember what I said about how Tolkien based Gandalf on Odin?” He tapped the stone with his foot. “Well, that’s Gandalf. Even has a staff. Hey!”
Drake watched him carefully. He had heard a grinding sound, like heavy shutters rasping open.

“Did you cause that by stepping on the stone?” He asked carefully.

“Think so.”

They all looked at each other, expressions flickering from excitement, to worry, to fear, and then, as one, they stepped forward.

Drake’s stone gave slightly. He heard that same grinding sound. The earth in front of the stone sank, and then the depression ran away around the mound like a turbo-charged snake.

Ben shouted: “There’s something here.”

Drake and Kennedy tracked around the sunken earth to where he stood. He was crouching down, peering into a crack in the ground. “Some kind of tunnel.”

Drake brandished a torch. “Time to grow a pair, people,” he said. “Follow me.”

****

The moment they were out of sight, two radically different forces started to mobilise. The Germans, content until now to lay low in the sleepy town of Gamla Upsalla, geared up and started to follow in Drake’s footsteps.

The other force, a contingent of troops from the Swedish Army’s Elite Forces - the
Sarskilda Skyddsgrupen
or SSG - continued to watch the Germans, and discussed the odd complication proposed by the three civilians who had just descended into the pit.

They would need to be fully debriefed. By any means necessary.

That is, if they survived what was about to come.

TEN

THE PIT OF THE WORLD TREE, SWEDEN

Drake stooped. The dark passageway had started as a crawl-hole, and was now less than six feet high. The ceiling was rock and dirt, and riddled with big, dangling loops of over-growing grass they had to chop out of the way.

Like tackling a jungle, Drake mused. Only underground.

Some of the tougher vines, he noticed, had already been hacked apart. A shaft of unease ran through him.

They came to a section where the roots were so dense they were forced to crawl again. The going was tough and filthy, but Drake put elbow before elbow, knee before knee, and encouraged the others to follow. When, at one point, even persuasion failed for Ben, Drake turned to bullying.

“At least the temperature’s dropping,” Kennedy muttered. “We must be going down.”

Drake resisted the standard soldierly reply, his eye suddenly caught by something revealed in the light of his torch.

“Look at that.”

Runes, carved into the wall. Odd symbols that reminded Drake of those that decorated Odin’s Shield. Ben’s choked voice echoed up the passage.

“Nordic runes. Good omen.”

Drake shone his light away from them with regret. If only they could read them. The SAS, he thought briefly, would have better resources. Maybe it
was
time to bring them in.

Another fifty feet, and the sweat poured off him. He could hear Kennedy breathing heavily and cursing that she’d worn her best pant-suit. He heard nothing from Ben at all.

“You ok, Ben? Got your hair tangled on a root?”

“Ha bloody ha. Keep going, you tosser.”

Drake continued crawling through the dirt. “One thing that worries me,” he panted between breaths, “is that ‘many traps’ thing. The Egyptians used to build traps, elaborate ones, to protect their treasures. Why not the Norsemen?”

“Can’t imagine a Viking thinking too hard over a trap,” Kennedy puffed back.

“Dunno,” Ben shouted along the line. “But the Vikings had great thinkers too, you know. Just like the Greeks and the Romans. They weren’t all barbarians.”

A few turns, and the passage started to widen. Another ten feet, and the roof vanished above them. At this point they stretched and took a breather. Drake’s torch picked out the passageway ahead. When he shone it on Kennedy and Ben he laughed.

“Shit, you two look like you’ve just risen from the grave!”