The Valhalla Prophecy

24

‘There’s the lake!’ said Tova excitedly, looking over the helicopter pilot’s shoulder.

Nina, in the front passenger seat, had a better view. Blixtsjö was a zigzagging ribbon running through the tree-covered hills. They were approaching from the south, looking along its length — and she saw at once why the Vikings, and later the Swedes, had given it its name. From the summit of one of the hills below the aircraft, it would indeed resemble the shape of a lightning bolt. One of the nearby mountains also matched the description in the runes, its bowed summit appearing somewhat like a saddle.

She looked beyond the lake. The landscape rose higher, snow-capped peaks and ridges standing out between forest-filled valleys as far as she could see. It was a beautiful sight, but her appreciation was now far more archaeological than aesthetic. Hidden somewhere amongst the endless trees was Valhalla.

If they were right. They were following a route that had been pieced together from the deliberately incomplete writings on one ancient runestone, a few barely remembered scraps of information from another, second-hand recollections of Viking inscriptions that had been melted to glass over half a century earlier — and her husband’s recollections of what Natalia Pöltl had told him, also second-hand, eight years before. The pieces did seem to make up a coherent picture, but there were no guarantees that it was the correct picture…

She put her doubts aside. It was all they had, whereas Berkeley and Hoyt possessed both runestones, and in theory everything they needed to lead them to Valhalla. The disgraced archaeologist had already proven that he could follow the clues left by the Vikings; she had to take the gamble that Tova was as good as or better than her former IHA colleague. It was the only chance they had of finding Valhalla first — and with it, the location of the second source of eitr.

The helicopter descended. On the lake’s western bank was the little village of Blixtholm, and Nina saw a reception committee waiting on the frozen shoreline. ‘There are the snowmobiles,’ she said. ‘Remind me to thank Melinda for arranging everything so quickly.’

The pilot landed the chopper on the lake. The ice creaked loudly enough to be heard even over the noise of the rotors as it took the aircraft’s weight, but to the relief of all aboard it showed no sign of cracking. All the same, the four passengers collected their belongings and made their way to land with a degree of haste. The helicopter departed in a whirlwind of sparkling ice crystals.

While Nina, Tova translating, spoke to the man who had delivered the snowmobiles, Eddie went straight to a box amongst the gear waiting for them. ‘Remind me to thank Melinda,’ he said with a grin.

‘What is it?’ Kagan asked.

Eddie opened the box, which was covered with stickers denoting it a United Nations diplomatic package. Inside was a rectangular metal case about eighteen inches long. He lifted the lid to reveal a gleaming steel handgun, the long, thick barrel reinforced by a hefty rib along its top. ‘Oh yeah,’ he said with a Christmas morning grin. ‘It’s been a while.’

Nina let out a disapproving sigh when she saw the weapon. ‘Jeez. When did you get another one of those?’

‘Picked it up two months ago,’ Eddie replied, taking out the Wildey automatic and checking it admiringly in the morning sunlight.

‘And you didn’t tell me?’

‘No, ’cause I knew you’d throw a fit. I mean, I lost the last couple before I even had a chance to fire them.’

‘That’s not why I threw a fit, and anyway I didn’t throw a fit,’ she complained. ‘I don’t like you having them because firstly, they cost two thousand dollars and you keep losing them —’

‘See? Fit-throwing.’

‘— and secondly, it’s illegal to have them in New York City!’

Eddie pulled back the slide. ‘That’s why I kept it at work.’

She spluttered. ‘You — you kept a gun at the United Nations?’

‘It’s not technically part of the city, is it?’

Nina held a hand to her ear. ‘You hear that distant popping sound? That was Seretse’s head exploding. And for God’s sake, put it away before someone calls the cops.’ The helicopter’s arrival had inevitably attracted curious onlookers from the village. ‘If you lose that one, you’re never, ever having another, not at two grand a go. Seriously.’

Eddie grinned again, then slid one of the two magazines in the case into the pistol. The slide snapped back into place, chambering the first .45 Winchester Magnum cartridge. ‘I just got fed up with being caught out without a gun. If I’d put a couple of bullets through Hoyt when I had the chance, we’d all be a lot better off.’ He took a leather shoulder holster from the box and put the second magazine into a clip on one of its straps, then took off his winter coat to don it.

Kagan opened his own coat to reveal his SR-1. The Russian gun was considerably smaller than the Wildey. ‘You seem to like overkill, Chase.’

‘Overkill’s my middle name,’ the Yorkshireman replied.

‘No it isn’t,’ said Nina. ‘It’s Jeremy.’

He made a disgruntled sound. ‘Thanks for reminding me, Persephone.’

Tova gave her a look of surprise. ‘Your middle name is Persephone?’

Nina blushed faintly. ‘My parents were… well, obsessed with mythology. I’m lucky they didn’t call me Melpomene or Eris or something.’ The Swede laughed.

‘I suppose if I knew anything about Greek gods that’d be hilarious,’ said Eddie. He slipped the Wildey into the holster and put his coat back on over it. ‘Okay, I’m set. Everyone else ready to go?’

Kagan refastened his own coat. ‘Yes. But I would feel more confident if I knew exactly what we are looking for.’

‘I wish I could say,’ Tova told him. ‘All I know is that if my reading of the runes is correct, somewhere up the river from here, we will see Bifröst — the rainbow bridge to Asgard. But what that means, I do not know.’

‘I just hope we’ll know it when we see it,’ said Nina.

It did not take long to fix their gear to the back of the snowmobiles. Eddie switched on a GPS unit attached to the handlebars of his machine, then started the engine. ‘All right! Let’s give it some James Brown.’

‘What?’ said a puzzled Nina.

He put on a strained, rasping voice. ‘Yow! Take me to the bridge!’

Both Tova and Kagan remained mystified, while Nina rolled her eyes. ‘That was your best James Brown? I don’t feel good.’

‘Tchah! So, the plan — we just head north up the river until we see something that looks like it might be a rainbow bridge? And then we wander about until we find Valhalla?’

‘That’s pretty much it, yeah,’ Nina told him, feeling faintly absurd at hearing the vagueness of their mission put into words.

He shrugged. ‘It’s not exactly the D-Day landings, but… we’ve found stuff in the past with less to go on.’ He revved the engine, sending the snowmobile out on to the frozen lake in a spitting spray of ice. ‘See you somewhere over the rainbow!’

Eddie turned north, speeding towards the gap in the trees marking the mouth of the river. Nina, Tova and Kagan started their own machines and followed his trail.

The journey upriver was scenic… at first. Before long, though, the monotony of unbroken mile after mile of conifers became wearing. The chainsaw buzz of the snowmobiles’ two-stroke engines and the constant vibrations from the ice — which was far from smooth, the pressure ridges that had formed as the flowing water froze leaving it in places as striated as a washboard — also did nothing to ease the journey.

Nor did the group see anything that could possibly have been described as a rainbow bridge. They passed rocks and boulders of ever-increasing size the higher they rode into the hills, but none were large enough to span the river. Eddie gave one formation a hopeful look as he passed, but there was nothing of note about it. ‘Bollocks to this,’ he muttered, bringing his snowmobile to a stop and checking the GPS.

‘What is it?’ Nina asked, pulling up alongside him. Kagan and Tova followed suit.

‘Just seeing how far we’ve gone. Christ! Only thirty kays? Feels more like a hundred and thirty.’

‘It cannot be much farther, though,’ said Tova. ‘The runes said it was two days’ travel from the lake on foot. Even the Vikings could not travel very fast over land like this.’

Eddie took out a map and used the GPS coordinates to find their position. The river was now heading roughly north-west, towards the mountains forming the spine of Scandinavia. ‘Okay, in about ten kays the river forks, and the runes didn’t say anything about that, did they?’ Tova shook her head. ‘So if it’s here, we can’t be too far from it.’

‘Is there anything on the map?’ asked Kagan.

‘Just a big load of bugger-all. Nearest town I can see marked must be at least twelve kilometres from here. Looks like the terrain gets steeper, but there’s not that much detail.’ He folded the map again. ‘Worst comes to the worst, we can ride up until we hit the fork, then come back and see if we missed something.’

Tova looked downhearted. ‘I was so sure this was the right river, though.’

‘We’re not done yet,’ Nina reminded her. ‘Ten kilometres is a long way.’

Eddie rolled his buttocks from side to side on the saddle. ‘Yeah, especially on these bloody bumps. It’s like riding over the world’s longest cattle grid.’

‘If the Vikings could handle it, I’m sure you can too,’ Nina said with a grin as she set off again.

The juddering journey resumed. It did not take long for the explorers to see that Eddie’s reading of the map had been correct; the landscape grew steeper and more rocky, the waterway narrowing. They continued up it, at one point almost doubling back as they rounded a hairpin bend before curving back to the north-west. A couple of kilometres further, and the banks rose higher, turning the valley into a ravine. Nina caught up with her husband. ‘If the sides get much taller, we won’t be able to see anything,’ she called.

‘Yeah, I know,’ he replied, looking up at the overhanging trees before turning his gaze back to the ice ahead. ‘Whoa, slow down. There’s a load of rocks in the river.’ He eased off the throttle as the group approached a cluster of snow-covered shapes rising above the surface.

Tova also reduced speed, changing course to avoid the obstacles. ‘If the Vikings were on foot, they would have gone away from the river here. Perhaps we should do the same.’

‘Might be an idea,’ said Eddie. He craned his neck to check the ravine’s top. The western side was noticeably higher than the eastern. ‘Dunno if we’ll get the snowmobiles up there, though.’

Nina, however, was now looking ahead. ‘Guys! You think that might be our bridge?’

The others followed her gaze. Crossing the top of the ravine was a huge slab of rock, a chunk of mountain that had been torn away and carried downhill by a glacier in aeons past, before eventually being dumped when the ice retreated. Shaded stripes ran lengthways through it, the various strata exposed. Some of the layers glinted in the sunlight.

The snowmobiles stopped. ‘Yeah, it’s a bridge,’ said Eddie, ‘but it’s not a rainbow one. It’s a bit grey. Unless the Viking who made the runestones was colour-blind?’

‘I guess,’ Nina said, disappointed. ‘It’s quite pretty, though. There must be a lot of quartz in it to get that effect with the light.’

‘Damn, and I was hoping it was full of diamonds.’ He was about to set off again when he noticed Tova staring up at the slab with an expression that suggested she had someone’s name on the tip of her tongue but couldn’t quite remember it. ‘Tova? What’s up?’

‘The rainbow bridge,’ she said, more to herself than in response to his question. ‘No, Eddie is right, it is not a rainbow. It is, it is…’ She suddenly flinched, excited. ‘It is not a rainbow bridge! The translation, it is wrong!’

‘What do you mean?’ Nina asked.

‘The translation of the runestone — not just the one that was stolen from the museum, but many others. The description of Bifröst is usually translated as “the rainbow bridge”, which we think of as being many colours, yes? But there is another possible translation, which is… oh! What is the word in English?’ She frowned and closed her eyes, thinking hard. ‘The word, the word…’ She snapped them open. ‘Shimmering! It can also mean “the shimmering bridge”! The light changes as you look at it!’

Nina regarded the rock again. The quartz crystals indeed shimmered, reflected sunlight subtly shifting as she moved her head. ‘That would definitely fit. But if you’re right, and that really is Bifröst, then…’

‘Then Asgard is on the far side — and so is Valhalla!’ Tova cried in delight. ‘It is real, it is up there!’

Kagan was more sceptical. ‘We do not know for sure. You may be seeing what you want to see.’

‘I want to see a nice pub with a roaring log fire, but it’s not happening,’ said Eddie. ‘We’ve got to check it out, at least. If there’s nothing up there, we can just come back and carry on.’

‘Yeah, we need to look,’ Nina agreed. She brought her snowmobile around.

Although Kagan was still dubious, they headed back downriver to the foot of the ravine. Eddie took the lead, revving his engine in controlled bursts to bring his vehicle up the steepening slope. Nina, Tova and Kagan followed his tracks between the trees. The snowmobiles lurched and bumped over obstacles hidden under the snow. ‘Bollocks,’ Eddie said after fifty metres. ‘It’s getting really rocky. Probably a good idea to leave the snowmobiles and go the rest of the way on foot. If anything breaks, it’ll be an absolute pain in the arse to fix out here.’

Nina was feeling faintly seasick from being thrown about. ‘Yes, definitely,’ she agreed, stopping and dismounting with relief. She gazed back the way they had come as the others also switched off their engines. The frozen river weaved away into the distance until it was swallowed by the forest, the sun reflecting dazzlingly off the ice. The stillness and sudden silence made the starkly beautiful sight seem almost like a painting. There was definitely a mythical quality to the snow-draped landscape; she could easily imagine the Vikings of old marching through it.

But would they have been heading for Valhalla — a real, physical place, not just a legend? She looked up the slope. Nothing was visible but raw nature: trees, rocks, snow. If the great hall were here, it was well hidden.

‘Everyone ready?’ she asked, though addressing the question mostly to Tova.

The Swede nodded. ‘Yes. I cannot wait to see what we find! If the rock bridge really is Bifröst…’

‘Then let’s see if it is, eh?’ said Eddie as he took a backpack from his snowmobile and donned it. ‘What about you, Kagan? You don’t look too excited.’

‘My leg is hurt, so I had hoped not to walk very far,’ the Russian grumbled as he collected his own gear.

They proceeded up the hill. The going was slow, the thick snow and uneven ground making each step an effort. But before long they reached the top of the slope and the glistening slab of quartz came into view. Another few minutes, and they reached it.

Eddie assessed the bridge. ‘Shouldn’t be too hard to get across,’ he said, brushing away snow to check the rock beneath. The great span was shaped roughly like a spearhead, the narrow end on the far side of the ravine. ‘Seems pretty flat under the snow. Looks solid, too.’

‘I will let you test that,’ said Kagan, with a faint smile.

Eddie took a coiled rope from his pack. ‘Tie the end to that tree,’ he said, fastening one end around his waist and handing the other to the Russian. ‘And don’t use a bloody granny knot!’

The line was quickly secured. Eddie set out over the crossing. Nina watched his progress anxiously — the drop to the ice below was at least thirty feet — but despite a couple of heartstopping moments when he almost stumbled, he was soon on the other side. ‘Piece of piss!’ he called. ‘I’ll fix the rope so you can get across.’

With the guideline in place and pulled taut, the others quickly followed him. Nina, last to cross, surveyed her surroundings as she set foot on solid ground. ‘So, if that really was Bifröst we just crossed, then technically… this is Asgard. The home of the Norse gods.’

‘That is true,’ said Tova, thrilled at the prospect. ‘If the Old Norse myths are euhemeristic, then Thor, Odin, Loki, Freyja… they all came from here. This is the land from which they ruled.’

‘There’s not much to rule, though,’ opined Eddie. ‘Except pine trees.’

‘It might not always have been forest,’ Tova said, a little defensively. ‘There have been warmer periods in the past. It may once have been able to support farming.’

‘Tova, where do we go from here?’ said Nina, keen to move on.

The Swede checked her notes. ‘The runestone said, “Across, follow the stream to the falls.” There must be a stream nearby.’ She pointed ahead. ‘This way, I think.’

‘You’ve been right about these things so far,’ said Nina reassuringly.

‘So what are we actually looking for?’ Eddie asked as they began their trek into the forest. ‘Valhalla’s some sort of hall, but I doubt we’re going to find a building just standing in the middle of the woods.’

‘I do not know,’ admitted Tova. ‘It depends on how much of the Eddas are based on truth, and how much Snorri created himself, or took from sources that had already added their own details to the mythology. In the Poetic Edda, Valhalla is described as a hall with five hundred and forty rooms.’

‘Big place. The heating bills must be a bugger.’

She smiled. ‘In the Prose Edda, though, the huge golden hall that King Gylfi sees when he arrives in Asgard may be an illusion created to impress him. So there is no way to know what was real.’

‘Until we find it,’ said Nina. ‘But if the runestones were describing a real place, we can’t be far from it now. Is there anything else mentioned in the Eddas or other sources that might be useful? Like a landmark?’

‘There is a tree, or a grove of trees, called Glasir,’ Tova replied. ‘It depends on the translation whether it is just one tree or many. But Glasir is supposed to mark the entrance to Valhalla. There has been speculation that it is connected to Yggdrasil, the world-tree, which would make it an ash.’

‘So we just need to watch out for an ash tree, then,’ said Eddie. ‘Not that I know what an ash tree looks like. Anyone else?’ Nina and Kagan shrugged.

‘I do,’ said Tova, before adding, ‘I think.’

He smiled sardonically. ‘I’d look it up on my phone, but I don’t think I’ll get much of a signal out here.’

‘I think it’ll just be a case of “not one of these”,’ Nina joked, gesturing towards the conifers surrounding them.

Eddie grinned, then continued onwards. After a few minutes, he spotted something ahead. ‘Ay up.’

‘You’ve seen an ash tree?’ said his wife.

‘No, but that matches what Tova said, don’t you think?’ A hundred yards away, the forest was split by an ice-filled stream bed that had cut deeply into the ground. ‘What was the translation? Something about following a stream to a waterfall?’ Tova nodded.

‘The water is frozen, though,’ said Kagan as they approached. ‘Which way do we follow it?’

‘I’m not an expert,’ Nina said with gentle sarcasm, ‘but I’m fairly sure that water doesn’t run uphill.’ She looked up the slope towards the stream’s source. ‘Over there.’ In the distance between the trees, the group saw the rocky line of a cliff.

They followed the icy waterway. ‘Oh, that is beautiful,’ said Tova as they reached the cliff’s foot. There was indeed the base of a waterfall there, but like the stream it was frozen, cascading water turned to overlapping sheets of icicles.

Eddie was more interested in the surrounding rocks. The falls had cut quite deeply into the cliff, exposing step-like strata on each side. ‘Shouldn’t be too hard to climb up,’ he said, clambering on to the lowest level. ‘I’ll find a good route, then you follow me.’

He began his ascent. As he had predicted, it was not a difficult task; there were a few places where he had to haul himself up to higher ledges, producing grunts of exertion and muttered obscenities, but before long he was at the top. ‘Okay, it’s pretty straightforward,’ he announced. ‘Just watch out for that ledge about halfway up — there’s a lot of ice on it.’

‘Got it,’ said Nina, beginning her own climb. ‘What can you see up there?’

‘Loads of future Billy bookshelves. Which way are we supposed to go?’

‘The runes said to the summit,’ Tova called to him. ‘You must be close.’

‘All right. I’ll have a look around.’

‘Don’t get lost,’ said Nina.

He smiled, then disappeared from view. She kept climbing. It took her longer than Eddie to reach the top, taking care negotiating the ledge he had warned her about, but she pulled herself up on to level ground with nothing more than a slight shortness of breath.

She glanced down to see how Tova and Kagan were doing. The Russian was following the archaeologist, his injured leg only slowing him slightly. Beyond them, the stream had carved a path through the forest — providing another view back along the frozen river. If anything, the sight was even more captivating than it had been from the rock bridge.

Nina finally turned away, finding with mild surprise that her husband was out of sight. ‘Eddie? Where are you?’ The dappled light through the trees made his tracks in the snow surprisingly hard to follow.

‘Over here,’ came the reply from a dip about fifty yards away. She headed for it. Eddie came into view below as she approached its edge. ‘Have a gander at this.’

‘At what?’ she asked. There was nothing immediately unusual in sight; a large bowl-shaped depression had a long hump at its centre, snow-laden trees atop it. But his expectant half-smirk told her she had missed something. She followed his path down the slope, looking in all directions. Was there an opening in the ground, or a group of stones that might once have been part of a structure? Nothing presented itself—

The answer suddenly appeared with such obviousness that she couldn’t believe she hadn’t seen it immediately. ‘You got it now?’ Eddie asked.

‘Yeah, I got it,’ she said, laughing. ‘Talk about not seeing the wood for the trees.’

The forest surrounding them was made up entirely of evergreens — but the trees on top of the mound were devoid of leaves beneath their coatings of snow and ice. Wiry branches spread out to form roughly spherical shapes, in contrast to the distinctive cones of the conifers. ‘So you think that’s an ash tree?’ said Eddie.

‘I think that’s an ash tree,’ gasped Tova, hurrying up behind Nina.

‘An ash grove,’ Nina corrected. She counted at least a dozen of the interlopers. A few small evergreens had managed to take root amongst the group, but otherwise the ashes seemed to have been in possession of the hillock for a long time. ‘Is this it? Have we found Valhalla?’

‘I do not know. Come on, we must search!’ Tova rushed past Nina down the slope.

‘If there were any buildings here, they’re long gone,’ Eddie said as Nina followed the Swede.

‘I don’t think we’re looking for an actual building,’ she replied. ‘I think we’re looking for that.’ She pointed at the hump.

He was less than impressed. ‘You think that’s Valhalla? ’

‘No, but Valhalla is under it!’ said Tova. ‘The Vikings often put their dead in burial mounds — the largest in Sweden is called Anundshög, in Västmanland. It is big, over nine metres high.’ She led the way around the little hill. ‘Perhaps that is even where the name came from; “Valhalla” means “the hall of the slain”, but if whatever was built here was buried to hide or protect it, then it would have looked just like a burial mound.’

‘It’d match the runes,’ Nina noted. ‘They said Odin’s hall was now of the slain.’

‘You mean Valhalla might just be a nickname?’ Eddie asked dubiously.

Nina smiled. ‘You’ve heard of Emperor Caligula?’

‘The mad, pervy one? Course I have.’

‘Caligula was a nickname — it was a type of soldier’s boot. His real name was Gaius Germanicus.’

‘No wonder he changed it. But if this place was so important to the Vikings, why would they bury it? What were they trying to protect?’

‘The eitr,’ said Kagan as he caught up. ‘They were afraid of it, because they knew how deadly it was — but they also knew some people would still be crazy enough to look for it.’

‘That might be where the myth of Loki comes from,’ Nina said thoughtfully. ‘He was a Norse god like Thor and Odin, but he betrayed them and sided with the serpent and the wolf at Ragnarök. Maybe he was like Hoyt — he wanted to use the eitr as a weapon.’

‘So they hid the map to the eitr pits so that only Vikings they trusted would know how to find it?’ said Eddie.

Tova nodded. ‘The only time they would need it would be when Ragnarök was upon them.’

‘Kind of an “open in event of doomsday” thing?’

‘It’d explain why they went to such lengths to hide it,’ said Nina. ‘You don’t want your people deciding to go out there on a macho whim. If you think the Midgard Serpent’s about to surface, though, that’s when you gather the troops and follow the secret path to Valhalla. It’s a mobilisation point. Once you’re here, the next stop is the serpent’s pit — the source of the eitr.’

‘Novaya Zemlya,’ Kagan said. ‘Or… the other place. We have to find it — before Hoyt and Berkeley do.’

‘We’ve got to get inside first,’ Eddie pointed out. He looked up at the mound. ‘And we might have to do a lot of digging — this thing’s big, it must be at least forty feet high. We’ll need to find a door.’

Tova stopped. ‘A compass! Does anyone have a compass?’ Phones were produced in unison. ‘Ah, of course. But we should go to the west side of the mound. Which way is it?’

Eddie checked his compass app. ‘Keep going this way around it. Shouldn’t be far.’

‘Why the west side?’ Nina asked.

The Swede set off again, her pace quicker than before. ‘The entrance to Valhalla is supposed to be on the western side, guarded by a wolf.’

‘A wolf, eh?’ said Eddie, suddenly on alert and checking the surrounding forest. ‘Good job I brought the Wildey.’

‘I don’t think it’ll still be on guard after over a thousand years,’ said Nina. She now almost had to jog to keep up with Tova, who had picked up a stick and was scampering along the edge of the barrow, poking at the snow. ‘What are you looking for?’

‘They may have left a marker, even a runestone, just as they did in the Arctic,’ Tova replied. ‘Are we at the west side yet?’

‘Pretty much,’ Eddie answered.

‘Then there could be something that would show the way in. Help me look for it, please.’

The others joined in her search. Nina soon found something under the snow that seemed promising, but a tap with her boot revealed nothing more than a lump of broken wood. Disappointed, she continued around the mound. If Valhalla really was buried beneath it, it could be a very large structure: she guessed the barrow’s total length at close to three hundred feet. If there was no marker, then Eddie would be right — it would require a lot of digging to open it up…

She approached a tree, a small conifer rather than an ash. Its trunk was tilted at an angle, and as she drew closer she saw why: the ground dropped away on its far side, almost as if a trench had been cut into the earthen slope. She reached its edge and looked down into it. The overhanging tree, some of its roots exposed where the unstable soil had slid away, had shielded it from most of the snow.

Even though it was thickly carpeted with ice-crusted dead leaves and partially hidden by scrubby bushes, she could tell that the cutting, with its level floor and steep sides, was not natural.

A dark opening, about five feet high and framed by gnarled ash roots, lurked at its end. Her heart raced. ‘Tova! Over here — I think I’ve found it!’

The group hurried to her. ‘This must be it!’ Tova cried, hopping down on to the frozen detritus. She peered into the opening. ‘There is something back there — it may be a gate!’

‘Whoa, whoa!’ Eddie shouted as she moved to enter. ‘Hold on a minute!’

Tova stopped with a questioning look. ‘What is wrong?’

‘Don’t you remember? It had different names depending on what translation you read. One of them was a gate… and the other was a death-barrier! Don’t just run in there.’

‘I really wouldn’t,’ Nina added. ‘We’ve learned that the hard way. Eddie, you’ve got a flashlight, haven’t you?’

He climbed down into the trench and took a powerful torch from his backpack, then shone it into the hole. The beam revealed dirty, dull grey metal. ‘Looks like lead,’ he said, sweeping the light across its surface. More details appeared. The obstruction was one of a pair of double doors. A rough image of a wolf, head lowered aggressively, had been pounded into the lead. Lines of small holes ran across the barrier at head, stomach and knee height.

‘What are those?’ Kagan asked.

‘I dunno, but I’m not going to poke a finger inside to find out.’ He fixed the torch on a larger vertical slot in one of the doors, then raised it to illuminate its interior. ‘I think they’re made of wood — the lead’s just armour. I can’t see anything on the other side, though. It’s blocked off.’

Nina moved alongside him. ‘You know what would fit into that? The sun compass that was set into the runestone, if you turned it sideways on.’

‘“The two parts together brought, shall alone open the death-gate of Valhalla,”’ said Tova quietly.

‘The compass must be some sort of key. No idea how, but it can’t be a coincidence that it’s the right size. Eddie, let me have the flashlight.’

‘Careful,’ he warned as she took the torch and stepped closer to shine it into the slot. ‘You might set something off.’

‘I’m not going to touch it,’ she assured him, leaning as close as she dared to peer into the opening. As Eddie had said, the barrier was made of fire-hardened logs behind the lead sheathing. But there was more lead inside, plates of the dull metal on each side of the slot. The temptation was strong to prod one to see if it moved, but she resisted. ‘I think there’s a mechanism, but I don’t—’

She was interrupted by Kagan’s bark of ‘Quiet!’ The Russian turned, expression intense. ‘I can hear something. I think it is a plane!’

The others froze, listening. The snow-cloaked stillness of the forest surrounded them… then was broken by a harsh mechanical buzz.

Distant — but getting closer.

‘It’s not a plane,’ Nina whispered, trying to pinpoint its origin. ‘It’s too low.’

‘It’s coming from the river,’ said Eddie grimly. The hearing loss he had sustained from years of gunfire and explosions had affected his sensitivity to higher-frequency sounds, but the droning noise was all too clear. He jumped out of the trench and ran back up the slope towards the waterfall. ‘Come on!’

Nina and Tova followed, Kagan loping along as quickly as he could. The group reached the top of the cliff and looked back at the frozen river.

Several vehicles were racing along it.

Nina didn’t need binoculars to know who was in them. ‘It’s Berkeley and Hoyt,’ she gasped. ‘They’ve found us.’