The Valhalla Prophecy

35

Orbach lowered his rifle. ‘Good shot,’ Lock told him. ‘Now keep moving.’ He pointed to a nearby crystal span that angled upwards. ‘That way.’

Nina was still above the pair. She brought her Kalashnikov around, but from her current position couldn’t see them through the serpentine columns. ‘Oh my God, Logan!’ She looked back at the other archaeologist. ‘Logan, can you hear me?’

He was still for a moment, then slowly raised his head. ‘Nina, I…’ he gasped, blood oozing from the side of his mouth. ‘I’m sorry, I… I messed up. But at least… I can do this.’

With his dying breath, he stretched out a trembling arm — and pushed the steel canister over the edge.

The heavy container plunged down the shaft—

It hit a damaged crystal lancing across the cavern about ten feet above Eddie. Glassy splinters showered over him, but the metal vessel didn’t fall any further, wedged into the broken surface.

‘Eddie!’ Nina shouted from high above. ‘It’s Thor’s Hammer — get it to the eitr!’

He searched for a way to reach it. A pillar rose at an angle close to the canister. Weaving around the pools of eitr bubbling up through the rubble, he headed towards it.

Lock had also seen Thor’s Hammer fall. ‘Dammit!’ he snarled, pausing midway through his climb to another ascending spar. ‘Orbach, don’t let him reach that cylinder! Take him out!’

Orbach stopped and looked down the shaft, finding that Eddie was partially obscured behind a damaged spire. He put down the eitr, propping the sealed container against a stubby spike jutting from the span beneath his feet and backing up to find a clear line of fire.

He only had to move a couple of metres to get an unobstructed view. The SIG locked on to its target…

The crunch and scrabble of running footsteps came from one side, above him.

Orbach looked up — as Kagan leapt from a higher crossing to slam down beside the eitr canister, AK-12 in one hand.

The mercenary whirled—

Kagan was quicker.

The Kalashnikov’s thudding bark echoed through the shaft, a burst of bullets stitching bloody rents across Orbach’s torso. The spasming American fell over the edge back into the cavern below. The point of a stalagmite was waiting for him, the man’s agonised scream cut short as he was impaled on the ragged spike.

The Russian turned, drawing back one foot to kick the eitr into the pit below—

A single gunshot came from behind him.

Kagan let out a startled gasp, shock blotting out the pain of the bullet that had just ripped into his back. The AK fell from his hands and dropped down the shaft. He tried to complete his movement, to send the eitr over the edge… but his body would not cooperate. His knees buckled, and he slumped across the top of the spar, legs hanging over one side. The canister was just out of reach, and the mere act of reaching for it shifted his balance, the weight of his lower body slowly dragging him over the edge.

Lock jumped back down and advanced on him, faint wisps of smoke still streaming from the barrel of his handgun. ‘You made the same mistake Chase did in ’Nam, my friend,’ he said smugly. ‘The guy giving the orders — you thought he never gets his hands dirty, huh? Afraid not.’ He reached the fallen Russian. ‘And you want to know something else, Kagan? Back in Vietnam, you went to all that trouble to find out what you could about the eitr from that girl — but there was nothing to learn!’

Kagan forced out words, tasting blood. ‘What… do you mean?’

‘The BSA had already secretly taken samples from her before she even left Germany, but the results were worthless. We didn’t find out anything about the nature of the eitr from her… but we used Slavin to make you think that you could. She was just a decoy, a way for us to learn about your lines of research.’ Lock leaned closer, gloating. ‘You exposed Unit 201 for nothing! I just wanted you to know before you died — payback for all the trouble you caused me in Washington, you bastard.’

And with that, he raised his boot to Kagan’s head, about to shove him over the edge—

‘No!’ Nina cried. She had moved across the shaft to get line of sight on Lock below, emerging from cover by one of the light globes. The surprised American raised his gun, but Nina had already lined up her AK-12…

She fired — just as Lock jinked sideways. The single bullet shredded his left sleeve, a small puff of blood amongst the torn material. Lock barked in pain, but the wound was only superficial.

And the charging handle of Nina’s gun had locked back with a sharp clack. She had used most of the AK’s ammunition fighting the wolves, and now the rifle was empty.

Lock recovered from the shock of his injury. He took aim at her, a tight smile of triumph twisting his face—

Nina kicked the light globe like an oversized football, sending it sailing across the gap at Lock.

He fired. The bullet punctured the inflated latex sphere, but cracked against the cluster of LEDs and batteries at its heart rather than continuing through. Before he could react, the deflating globe hit him and knocked him back.

He gasped in sudden fear as he lost his footing — and fell.

The drop was only eight feet, on to a narrower span below. He clawed desperately for grip to save himself from another, deadly plunge, but was forced to let go of his gun. The weapon spun down the shaft and vanished into the glutinous void.

Kagan’s slide continued inexorably, the Russian’s grip faltering. ‘Grigory!’ Nina called, scurrying to a position where she could jump to reach him. ‘Hang on, I’m coming!’

‘No…’ Kagan growled. His waist was now over the side, only his hold on the edge of the crystal keeping him from falling. ‘I am… gone. But so is… the eitr!’

‘Don’t!’ shouted Nina, but too late.

Kagan dug the nails of his left hand into the scabrous surface and lashed with his right at the container of eitr. His fingers just caught it, jarring it loose from where it had been wedged — but the movement cost him his life. He slipped and plummeted without a sound, hitting the eitr lake with a flat splash and vanishing for ever beneath the oily liquid.

The canister wobbled… then tipped over the edge—

Its strap caught on the crystal spike.

Nina and Lock were both frozen for a moment, staring at the steel cylinder as it swung above the cavern — then they burst into motion, Lock dragging himself up to reach it from below as Nina dropped the empty AK-12 and leapt across to the span from which Kagan had fallen.

Eddie reached the canister containing Thor’s Hammer. He had heard the gunshots from above and was filled with fear for his wife, but he could do nothing to help her. Instead, he picked up the heavy steel container and jumped back down to the unstable island of rubble, debris crunching and shifting beneath his feet.

There was a handgrip set into a recess in the lid. Holding the cylinder as steady as he could, he clenched his fist around it and twisted. A moment of worry as it refused to move, then he felt the seal give as he applied more force. Still unscrewing the lid, he made his way to the broken shoreline.

At first he thought that the level of the eitr had risen, but then he realised that the smashed crystal remnants on which he was standing were sinking into the ooze. Black boils swelled all around him, threatening to burst. ‘Let’s fucking get this over with,’ he muttered, coughing as the acrid vapour rising from the lake stung his nose and throat.

Another turn — and the lid came free.

He tossed it aside, seeing what was inside the canister for the first time. Article 3472 — Thor’s Hammer — was, like the substance it was intended to counter, a thick black slime, a new and even more foul odour coming from it. Eddie recoiled; while the fumes from the eitr might not be lethal, he had no idea if the same was true of its counter-agent.

The rubble shifted beneath him, the liquid lapping closer to his boots. He took a step back, supporting the container with both hands. No time for speeches, or even smart-arse comments: he knew what he had to do.

With a grunt, he lobbed Thor’s Hammer into the eitr.

The container flipped over as it arced down towards the heart of the lake. The black fluid sluiced out. The effect was immediate as it splashed into the eitr, a sizzling reaction sending up bursts of steaming vapour. A moment later, the canister hit the surface with a wet smack and sank out of sight…

The eitr immediately began to change.

A swirling, churning whirlpool of froth erupted where the cylinder had landed, and around it the glistening black oil turned a dull, sickly grey, the metamorphosis sweeping outwards.

As it reached the base of the great crystals, they too changed. Black scales turned grey, then flaked and crumbled, stress fractures stabbing upwards through the dark spires. One spar, angling almost horizontally from the surface until it hit the cavern’s far wall, collapsed into the lake of ooze with a thunderous boom. Whatever else Thor’s Hammer was doing to the eitr, it was clearly also affecting the crystals that had grown from it, removing the slight flexibility in their structure that had allowed them to curl and zigzag up the shaft like serpents — and without it, the huge natural formations were unable to support their own weight.

More crystals splintered with gunfire cracks as the discoloration seeped upwards. Eddie saw that his position was more dangerous than ever, any doubts disappearing when one of the light globes floating on the eitr ruptured as the sizzling froth ate through it. ‘Oh, fuckeration!’ he yelped, jumping back from the lake’s edge as it crumbled and sank into the slime.

He ran for the crystal that Lock had used to make his ascent, hoping it would survive long enough for him to follow the American’s route upwards — but swerved as he spotted his Wildey. The rubble beneath it was being eaten away by the chemical reaction spreading through the eitr, and the toxic substance was surging up from below, about to swallow the weapon—

Eddie snatched up the gun just before the liquid claimed it. ‘No you fucking don’t!’ he gasped, changing course back to his escape route and pounding up it as fast as he dared. The span shifted under his weight, pieces shearing away where it scraped against other crystals below it.

Nina made an awkward landing, having to drop to all fours to keep her balance on the crystal bridge. She gripped it for a few seconds until she had stabilised, then looked down to locate Lock and the eitr canister.

The latter was still swaying from the jutting black spike, the green LED glowing. Lock was below it, standing on another span and reaching up for his prize—

Still on her knees, she lunged just as he clamped his hands around the sides of the cylinder and jerked it upwards to flick it free. She grabbed the strap as it fell away — but was now caught in a tug of war against a much stronger and heavier opponent. And Lock had secure footing, while she was unbalanced, arms outstretched as she struggled to keep her knees on the crossing’s upper facet. She pulled as hard as she could, trying to snatch the canister from Lock’s grip…

It wasn’t enough.

A sharp yank from below tipped her forward — and for the second time in mere minutes an awful shock of fear slammed her heart as she fell.

She screamed — only for it to be cut off as she slammed to a joint-straining halt.

The strap had caught again, this time over the top of a cluster of larger spikes stabbing out from the flank of the crystalline span. They creaked alarmingly, black turning almost to white as fracture lines formed, but held firm. She was dangling just a couple of feet from Lock, but while he was standing firm on the narrow crossing, there was nothing below her except the now-seething surface of the eitr lake. Eddie must have used Thor’s Hammer, she told herself as she glanced down, but that gave her neither help nor comfort.

She looked back at Lock. He was still gripping the inverted canister with both raised hands, but with Nina’s entire weight now pulling against it was straining to keep his hold on the slick metal. If he let go, Nina would drop to her death — but he would also lose the eitr sample.

If he leaned across to kick Nina loose, however, the container would drop neatly back into his arms as she fell…

Lock had realised this too. His knuckles whitened as he tightened his grip on the stainless-steel cylinder, then he hesitantly lifted one leg to check that he could maintain his balance — before lashing out.

The toe of his boot hit Nina’s calf. She imprisoned a cry behind clenched teeth, squeezing her hands more tightly around the strap. Another blow, this one less painful, but Lock was already lining up for a third strike. She looked up. The strap was bunched up in her grasp. She jerked one hand, clamping it back around the tough woven nylon and pulling herself upwards by a few inches.

Lock redirected his attack as Nina dragged herself up by another palm’s-width. His boot cracked viciously against her ankle, her own sturdy Arctic footwear saving her from an agonising injury. Even so, she still squealed in pain as she dragged herself higher once more.

‘God damn it, woman, you don’t know when you’re beaten,’ he growled. ‘Just give it up!’ He struck again, this time landing a solid hit on her shin. Nina shrieked, the muscles in her hands burning as she clutched her lifeline. ‘The eitr’s mine!’

He pulled back his leg for the last time—

Nina strained to pull herself another few inches up the strap — and to Lock’s surprise let go with one hand. ‘You want it?’ she gasped, stretching out her arm towards the eitr canister. ‘Take it!’

She jabbed her forefinger at the latch button. There was a click, the green LED turning red…

The lid released.

‘No!’ Lock cried — then his voice became a gargling scream as the container’s deadly contents gushed over his face, his skin blistering and his nostrils and mouth filling with the black poison. He thrashed in mindless agony, globules of eitr flying from his dissolving flesh—

One of them hit Nina’s left cheek.

It was only the tiniest drop, but it still felt as if she had been stabbed by a red-hot needle. A new terror filled her as she realised what had happened — but she had no time to react as Lock let go of the now empty container.

She plunged—

Strong hands seized her wrist.

‘Gotcha!’ Eddie yelled.

Lock let out a final choking wail. Most of the eitr had now run off his face, exposing the ruination it had wrought. Both his eyes were gone, black-tainted blood oozing from their sockets where the caustic toxin had dissolved the soft tissue. The flesh on his cheeks had almost liquefied to expose teeth and bone beneath. Bubbles gurgled from his throat… then he keeled over, tumbling back down the shaft to hit the seething froth filling the bottom of the cavern with a sizzling splash.

Eddie hauled Nina up, her feet gratefully finding purchase. ‘You okay?’

‘Yeah, but—’

‘Great, now fucking run!’ He hurried up the slope, pulling her behind him. ‘Kagan’s goop worked, but all the fucking crystals are melting! They’re going to collapse!’

She looked down — and wished she hadn’t as she saw a wave of diseased grey seeping up the crystalline pillars after them like ink through tissue paper. The smaller spars within the cavern were already breaking apart and falling back into the lake; the thicker structures snaking towards the surface could not be far behind.

A nightmare ascent followed. Every step was a strain as the pair clambered up the steep spans, switchbacking from one side of the shaft to the other as they hunted for navigable routes through the vertical maze. Nina spotted Berkeley’s body as they passed, but there was no time to acknowledge his redemption and sacrifice.

Instead, she followed Eddie upwards, climbing and jumping between the crystal bridges. The cracks and booms from below grew ever louder as more of the eitr formations were destroyed by Thor’s Hammer. Fractures scythed through the crystals around them—

Eddie abruptly stopped and shoved Nina against the rock wall, shielding her with his own body as one of the thinner of the great serpents disintegrated and plummeted past them, cascading debris smashing crossings as it fell. He looked up to see that the collapse had torn away almost a quarter of the winding pathways above. ‘Shit! If another one goes like that, we’ll never reach the top!’

‘I can see the ropes,’ Nina said, narrowing her eyes against the glare of the sky. They were about fifty feet from the lip of the shaft, the lines placed by Lock’s team dangling over its edge.

Eddie scanned their surroundings. ‘That way,’ he said, pointing at one of the surviving crystals. They made their way around a ledge, then scrambled up. The span trembled underfoot, echoing snaps reaching them from below as more spires crumbled. ‘Nearly there!’

They leapt across a gap to the final span, the ropes hanging tantalisingly above its top. Escape was in sight, but now Nina remembered that there was another danger waiting for them. ‘How long before the missile gets here?’

Eddie glanced at his watch. ‘Fuck! Two minutes, if that!’

‘You’re faster than me — get to the radio and tell the Russians. Don’t worry about me.’

‘Sorry, love, but that’s my job!’ He reached the ropes, then stopped and waited for her to catch up. ‘Come on, come on!’ he said, holding one out to her. ‘Grab it, quick! The crystal’s about to—’

A colossal boom came from far below.

Nina dived, grabbing the rope—

The remaining crystals lurched, then plunged down the shaft in unison as their corroded bases finally gave way, breaking apart as they smashed against each other. Even the sections that had spiralled up the walls and bonded with the blackened stone were scoured away by the falling debris, leaving only a vertical drop into the bowels of the earth.

Long seconds passed before the pounding clamour finally began to fade. Dust swirled around the shaft… and then, coughing, two figures painfully dragged themselves up the ropes on to the steep incline above. ‘Oh my God,’ gasped Nina. She wanted nothing more than to sit down and rest, but knew she had to keep going. ‘Are you all right?’

‘I’ll live — but only for about a minute if we don’t call Moscow,’ Eddie replied, grimly hauling himself onwards. The slope became shallower. They let go of the ropes and ran for the surface, feet like lead. ‘You know,’ he gasped as they scrambled up the final few yards, ‘if Tova’s got any sense, she’ll have buggered off in the chopper already.’

‘Yeah, but I hope she left us the radio,’ said Nina. The lip of the pit came into view as they both emerged into the light, the snow-topped runestone beyond. A gap had opened in the clouds, weak sunlight finding its way through, but her eyes were locked on the nearby helicopter. ‘Thank God! Tova!’

Eddie ran ahead of her. ‘Radio!’ he yelled as Tova peered out of a cabin window. He waved furiously for her to open the hatch. ‘Radio, radio! Radioradioradio!’

She opened the door and jumped out, the gun still in one hand — and Kagan’s satellite transmitter in the other. ‘Eddie, Nina! What happened!’

‘Just turn on the radio!’ the Englishman shouted as he pounded through the snow. By the time he reached her, she had done so. He snatched the unit from her. ‘Hello, hello!’ he said into it. ‘Can you hear me? It’s Eddie Chase — we used Thor’s Hammer, we’ve neutralised the eitr! Abort the missile!’

Nothing for a few seconds, then a voice replied — in Russian. ‘What the hell’s he saying?’ panted Nina as she arrived.

‘I dunno!’ Eddie turned to Tova. ‘Do you?’ She shook her head. ‘For fuck’s sake! English, nyet Russkie!’ he told the radio. ‘Abort! Abortski!’

His wife clutched his sleeve. ‘Uh, Eddie…’

‘What— Oh, fuck.’ He looked around to see a small black dot against the grey clouds to the north-east.

Small… but growing.

‘It’s the missile,’ Nina said in disbelief. ‘Oh God, it’s here!’

Eddie tried the radio again. ‘English, English! Er… Anglijski!’ he said, dredging up something from his limited knowledge of the Russian language. ‘Speak bloody English, and abort the missile!’

Nina held him tighter. ‘It’s too late.’ The dot was still growing. A faint jet-engine shrill became audible over the wind. She exchanged a last look with her husband. ‘Eddie, I love—’

The missile suddenly angled steeply upwards, disappearing into the overhanging cloud layer. ‘What happened? Where’s it going?’ she asked.

‘They aborted it!’ Tova cried with an astonished smile.

Eddie’s expression told Nina that was not the case. ‘It’s going up — so it can drop straight back down into the hole.’ As if in response, the missile reappeared through the gash in the clouds as it kept climbing… then reached the top of its arc and rolled over to make a final plunge to earth.

He shouted into the radio once more, gripping it so tightly that its casing creaked. ‘The eitr’s been neutralised, Thor’s Hammer worked — I repeat, Thor’s Hammer worked! Abort the missile!’ The cruise began its vertical descent. ‘Abort the missile! Jesus Christ, abort the fucking missile! Come on, you stupid beetroot-eating bastards, abort—’

The pale grey pencil of the Kh-102 rocketed towards them—

And exploded.

Nina shrieked, thinking that the nuclear warhead had detonated — then realised that if it had, she would not still be there to have the thought. ‘Whoa, cover!’ Eddie yelped, grabbing both women and pulling them against the helicopter’s fuselage as smoking debris showered over the plateau.

The missile’s burning engine and warhead, the heaviest parts of the weapon, continued on their final course and plunged into the opening. Further crashes and explosions echoed up from below as they hit the collapsing remains of the serpentine crystal pillars.

Smaller chunks of debris smacked into the chopper, denting aluminium and cracking Perspex. Then the metal hail stopped, the explosion’s echoes fading to leave only the ever-present moan of the wind.

The Englishman peered cautiously at the pit. Dark smoke had replaced the pale steam rising from the gash in the earth. ‘Buggeration and, well, you know,’ he said, moving into the open. ‘That was too bloody close.’

Tova gazed wide-eyed at the scene. ‘Is it safe? The nuclear bomb — if it exploded, won’t it…’

‘We’re okay,’ Eddie assured her. ‘The missile blew up, not the warhead. It’s down in the pit somewhere — hopefully at the bottom of a big pool of slime where nobody can dig it up.’

‘And what about the eitr? Did Thor’s Hammer work?’

‘Yeah.’ He gave the Swede a smile. ‘Ragnarök’s cancelled. We killed your Midgard Serpent, and didn’t even get poisoned by it. So we came out of it better than Thor. Didn’t we, love?’

He addressed that last to his wife, but got no answer. ‘Nina?’ he said, looking back at her.

Her face was turned slightly away from him. There was no relief or triumph in her expression, just a stricken horror. ‘Eddie, we… we didn’t get all of the eitr.’

He moved closer, feeling a rising sense of dread even without knowing why. He had never seen such a look on her face before — but he had seen it on others, in combat. It was the realisation of the trapped, of the wounded… of someone who knew they were going to die. ‘Nina,’ he said, now fearful. ‘What is it?’

Nina looked straight at him. On the pale skin of her left cheek was revealed a small red mark, as if she had been burned by a flying ember.

But there had been no fires in the pit.

Her voice quavered as she spoke. ‘When I poured out Lock’s eitr—’

‘No, don’t,’ Eddie begged her. If she didn’t say the words, it might not have happened…

But she continued, tears swelling in her eyes. ‘I got… I got splashed. It was only a drop, but… oh, God.’ What remained of her resolve crumbled. ‘Oh my God,’ she gasped, her voice breaking.

Eddie moved closer, but Nina backed off, turning her reddened cheek away from him. ‘Don’t touch me,’ she whispered. ‘There could be more of it on me, I might be… contaminated.’

He reached out, desperate to comfort her, to feel her skin — but stopped short, letting his shaking hand slowly fall. ‘Nina…’

‘We need to get out of here,’ she forced herself to say through her tears. She opened the helicopter’s hatch and climbed inside.

Eddie stared after her, for a long moment unable to move. Tova spoke, but he didn’t register her words. ‘I’m fine. Let’s go,’ he said in gruff automatic reply, taking the gun from her and stepping away to let her board the aircraft.

Hoyt’s mocking words returned to him. Just can’t protect your women, can you, Chase?

He looked back at the pit — then emptied the weapon at the sneering ghosts above it with a roar of fury and despair.