Crusader Gold

10

The heavy iron door in the ancient castle shut silently behind the three men as they stood in the gloom of the passageway, their eyes gradually becoming accustomed to the thin light that glowed up from the stairway ahead. Wordlessly they donned the scarlet robes that had been left for them inside the entrance, tying the gold-embroidered cords at their waists and pulling the hoods over their heads, then they made their way in single file to the top of the stairs. Their movements had an effortless familiarity about them, as if they had been here many times before. They were far below the foundations of the castle, inside a secret domain hewn from the living rock in the days when the longships still ruled the fjords. For generations the only footsteps to echo in these passageways had been those of the brotherhood. As the three men began to descend, the damp rock seemed to exude an essence of the past, as if the porous limestone preserved within it the exhalations of their revered forebears, a commingling with the spirit world that seemed to draw them to the very gates of Valhalla itself.

At the bottom of the stairs they entered a circular chamber, their inner sanctum. At first they were overwhelmed by the aura, dazzled by a dozen burning torches evenly spaced on pedestals around the edge of the chamber, the flames sending wisps of black smoke curling to the vaulted dome above. Then they began to make out the surrounding wall, an arcade of twelve pillars cut from the rock with an encircling passageway beyond. On each pillar was a fearsome battle-axe, girded to the rock with twisted thongs, the blades radiating the light in flashes of gold. Above each axe hung the chain mail and conical helmet of an ancient warrior, the visors with their empty eyes flickering in and out of shadow as the torchlight leapt up the wall. On the floor in front of the pillars stood twelve identical chairs, their heavy oak frames carved with swirling animal shapes and runic inscriptions, and in the centre of the chamber was a massive circular table, its timbers smoothed and blackened with age. Inlaid on the table was a twelve-spoked sun-wheel, continuing the symmetry of the room to a carved symbol obscured in shadow at the very apex of the design.

The three men passed silently inside and took their places behind chairs at different points around the table, clasping their hands in front of them and bowing their heads before sitting down. All of the chairs were now occupied except one, directly opposite the entrance, the pillar behind it lit up by a double torch and the axe glinting as if it had been freshly sharpened.

The hooded figure seated to the left of the empty chair stood up slowly and raised his right hand, revealing a deep scar that ran across his palm. He spoke in English, his voice gravelly and deep. “Herr Professor. Your Excellency. Mr. President. Welcome. The felag is nearly complete.”

He sat down and placed his left palm on the table. On his index finger was a luminous ring, a twisted band of gold with a signet, its surface impressed with a linear symbol similar to the runes on the chair behind him.

“For thirty generations now we have kept the fire of Thor burning for the return of our king,” he said. “Now the forces that would destroy us again threaten the sanctity of the felag. We will unleash all the powers at our disposal to safeguard our treasure, to find our inheritance from the king of kings.” He gestured towards the empty seat beside him. “But before the council we must complete our circle.”

A hooded figure emerged from the dark recess of the passageway behind the empty chair. In the flames of the double torch his robe seemed ablaze, glowing with the deep orange of a hearth. His hands were clasped in front of him and his face was concealed inside his hood.

“You have carried out your appointed task?”

“It has begun.”

“Come forward.”

The man stepped out beside the pillar until he was level with the axe, its shimmering blade only inches from his head. He raised his right hand to his face, pulling his hood back slightly to reveal his pallid skin and thin lips. A jagged white scar ran across his cheek from his eye socket to his chin.

“You are sworn to avenge your grandfather, our thole-companion who last occupied this chair,” the man at the table said. “The blood feud will not end until the last of our enemies are dead. You will seek to know what they know and extinguish their knowledge with them. You will exact terrible vengeance. You will honour the felag and earn your place at this table.”

The man beside the pillar drew his finger hard down the scar on his cheek, wincing slightly. He bowed towards the table, and the shadow of a smile passed across his lips. The eleven others watched as he turned to the axe. He raised his right palm to the blade and drew it down sharply, pressing hard into the steel until his blood welled out. He reached his bleeding hand down into his robe and pulled out a golden ring, identical to the one worn by the man at the head of the table, then walked forward and sat down. The others raised their hands in unison, revealing identical rings and scarred palms.

A channel of fire suddenly ignited under the table, lighting up the symbol in the centre. Around it the flames shone through the embedded glass that made up the sun-wheel, an orange light that pulsed over the hooded figures to the wall beyond, illuminating the axe blades and the empty helmets in a flickering orange glow. They had been joined by the spirits of the departed felag, the sacred fellowship, warriors called from their eternal feasting in Valhalla once again to occupy their armour in readiness for battle.

The symbol was their tree of life. Seven-branched, it would light their way until the final showdown at the end of days, when they would at last wield battle-axes shoulder to shoulder with their king.

The twelve hooded figures all reached forward until their rings touched, the blood of the one anointing the others, dripping in rivulets down their sleeves and over the symbol in the centre of the table. When their fists were all touching the figure who had spoken first spoke again.

“Hann til ragnaroks.”

Jack seemed to be waking into his worst nightmare. He first realised he was conscious when he recognised the sound of his own breathing, a rasping, sucking noise followed by the rush of exhalation from his regulator exhaust. He gradually became aware of his body, the dull ache of the six-month old gunshot wound in his side and a sharper pain in his leg. He seemed to have been in limbo for an eternity, hovering between a dream world and some kind of reality, but as he opened his eyes and saw the digital time display inside his visor he realized it had only been a few minutes. The view beyond seemed pure hallucination, a kaleidoscopic pattern drawn in tendrils of red. He shut his eyes and instantly confronted another image, one etched on his mind. The wraith-like form of a man was laid out in front of him, as if Jack were floating above his own shrouded body entombed in the ice. The image receded as he seemed to float higher above it, bringing an overwhelming, narcotic sense of relief, but something within him was fighting desperately to pull back, as if the image of his own death were his only lifeline.

The rushing sound of his exhaust became a bubbling ferment and then a high-pitched hiss. Jack opened his eyes and saw a diagonal line running across the centre of his visor. He realised he was lying half in and half out of the water and that the view he had seen a few moments before was his headlight refracting through a slurry of brash interspersed with his own blood. The lamp now shone above water and he could see a wall of ice only inches from his face. Cautiously he turned his head to the right, angling his lamp until he could see the length of his body. He was inside a cavity about the size of a small car, the upper part an air pocket created by his exhaust. Instead of the smooth surface of the tunnel created by the ice-borer, the walls were jagged and fractured, great slabs of ice that seemed to have compacted violently together. Some of the slabs were cloudy and others nearly transparent, creating the illusion that the chamber extended off in fissures and tunnels around the white ice.

For a fleeting moment Jack’s mind wandered again and he felt cocooned and safe, as if the chamber that had opened up and protected him from the crushing impact of the ice would be his ultimate salvation. Then reality kicked in and he felt a cold dread. Somehow the ice had cracked as the berg rolled and he had been given a reprieve, but it could only be temporary. As more water was displaced by his exhaust he could feel the slurry of brash around his lower body thicken, immobilising his legs. To his horror he realised he was being frozen alive all over again, only this time there would be no quick end, but a long, lingering agony half in and half out of the air pocket, as his breathing gas gradually expended and he suffocated in his own exhaust.

A noise crackled around his head and jerked him back to life. The intercom whined and then settled to the sound of grunting and straining. It seemed unbelievable, little short of a miracle. “Jack, can you hear me?”

“Costas.” Jack’s voice sounded peculiar, oddly distant to his own ears, and then he remembered the trimix contained helium. “Where the hell are you?”

“I can see you, but you can’t see me. Try to turn over. You have to get yourself out of the water, otherwise we’ve had it for good this time.”

Costas’ voice was a reassuring measure of reality, calm despite the desperate situation. Jack marshalled all of his energy and heaved himself up on his elbows. He could swivel his torso slightly to the right and his arms were free, but his feet and lower legs were nearly frozen into the ice. It was like fighting against clinging mud, and each time he pulled he only seemed to embed himself further.

“It’s no good,” he panted. “I can barely move my legs.”

“Can you reach your cylinder pack?”

“Just.”

“Okay. Pull out that axe and lay it on the ledge beside your head.”

Jack did as he was instructed, laboriously extracting the wooden haft of the axe hand over hand from where he had slid it behind his cylinder straps. He could scarcely register what he was holding, a Varangian battle-axe from a Viking longship, a discovery that now seemed pure fantasy. By the time he had finished withdrawing the axe the surface of the slurry had frozen solid around his waist, and the moisture in his exhaust had caused a sheen of ice to form over his visor.

“I can’t see any more,” he exclaimed, trying to remain rational, to stave off panic. “The pressure’s going to build up in here now that there’s no more water to displace, and the moisture from my exhaust is freezing my upper body too. This could be over quicker than I thought.”

“Lie back and push the shaft of the axe as far as you can above your head. The ice-borer’s embedded in the cavity, and I can see the filaments of the coil frozen in the ice below you. If we can reactivate the battery then we might be able to melt you out.”

Jack held the bit of the axe and pushed it as far as he could along a shelf of ice that angled slightly upwards above the slurry. At first he felt no resistance, but at the limit of his reach the base of the haft hit something solid.

“Okay. That’s it,” Costas said. “Now try about six inches to your left.”

Jack strained again and prodded the haft along. Suddenly he felt something depress, and a green aura became visible through the ice on his visor.

“Good. You’ve done it. The main element of the corer was crushed when things went haywire back there, but the coil is operated from a separate battery pack that looks intact. All we have to do now is wait.”

“How are you doing?” Jack spoke as he slumped back, forcing himself to think beyond his surroundings.

“Just great. Trapped in the Ice Age. Follow Jack Howard and see the world.”

“Seriously. I can’t see you.”

“At first I couldn’t work it out. If the berg had flipped we’d be hundreds of metres deep, crushed to oblivion. Then I saw the ice probe and realized. We’ve rolled a full three hundred and sixty degrees and come back upright again. Whatever force was behind this thing made the berg somersault right over on the threshold. My guess is it’s still stuck on the outer edge of the sill, but has slid down deeper than its original position. My depth gauge reads one hundred and twenty-three metres, just about the limit for our trimix gas. If the berg was floating out to sea it would have flipped again and we’d be way beyond that depth, gone for good. That could happen any time.”

“A reassuring thought.”

“Before we rolled. Did you see what I saw?”

“It was Halfdan. The guy whose runes are on the battle-axe. We were directly over the bier in the centre of the longship, where his body was meant to be burnt. We must be the only people alive to have seen a Viking warrior in the flesh. Fantastic.”

“Yeah, fantastic. It spooked me. Let’s hope we’re not joining him.”

“Got any plans?”

“Let’s do this step by step. The first thing is to get thawed out.”

In the lull that followed, Jack noticed the utter stillness of the berg, broken only by the noise of their breathing, in contrast to the deafening cacophony of a few minutes before as the ice sundered and cracked. Somehow the stillness accentuated the sepulchral quality of the chamber and brought home the full enormity of their situation. They were trapped deep inside an iceberg, hemmed in by a million tons of rock-hard ice, at the limit of their survivable depth and with every prospect of a fatal tumble into the abyss. Jack began to feel unnerved, and as he stared at the ice only inches from his head he began to feel the old claustrophobia nagging at the edges of his consciousness. Lurking beneath the surface was a fear that he would be gripped by panic, as had so nearly happened when Costas had kept him going in the tunnels of Atlantis six months before. He knew Costas’ banter had kept his mind focussed, that his friend knew him too well, and he forced himself to concentrate on little things, on the small steps that might eventually lead to their salvation.

“I’ve got movement,” Jack said. “I can move my feet.”

“Excellent. Try to swivel round in my direction.”

The sheen of ice on Jack’s visor was beginning to drip away, and he could now see the slurry more clearly. The coil of microfilaments from the probe was doing its work, and the surface was beginning to liquefy. He arched his back and flexed his legs, causing a stab of pain and a sudden spasm of shivering. For the first time he inspected the injury in his left thigh, the embedded spear of ice just visible through the rent in his E-suit. The ice had numbed most of the pain and staunched the bleeding, but even so the blood loss had left him dangerously vulnerable to the cold. He heaved himself sideways, pulling his legs out of the water and hauling himself as far as he could go up the shelf, then wiped his visor and looked into the jagged wall of ice that had lain behind him.

The sight that confronted him was surreal. He could see Costas, yet it was an image that defied sense. He seemed to be lying within easy reach, yet was separated by a wall of transparent ice. With each tiny movement Costas seemed to fragment into myriad shapes, refracted through numerous planes in the ice. Jack suddenly caught sight of Costas’ face, the yellow helmet at first appearing grotesquely elongated but then compressing to some semblance of normality.

“I’m about a metre from you,” Costas said. “When I recovered consciousness I was floating in a fissure. I tried to reach you, but this is how far I got. I’m as near as I can get to being frozen without actually being solid. It’s all meltwater ice, from that crevasse above the longship. It should be easier to hack through than glacier ice. How are you with an axe?”

Jack suddenly saw a ray of hope. “You know, it’s my main occupation during the off season when I disappear into the woods. When I tell everyone I’m writing. It makes me forget all this.”

“Good enough. Let’s see what you can do. If you can break through, then the water from your side should get in and do the trick. The coil won’t melt glacial ice, but it should keep this slush liquid. There’s about a six-inch air pocket around me from my exhaust.”

“Where does the rest go?”

“Fissures and cracks above me. This ice may look solid, but it’s really a mass of fallen slabs.”

Jack rolled over until he was lying face-down on the shelf. With his left hand he gripped the ledge to prevent himself from slipping into the slurry, and with his right hand he reached up and grasped the axe. He let himself go, sliding into the brash until he was kneeling on the bottom with the surface at waist level. He wrestled to remove his fins, drawing them up on their retaining straps behind his calves, then pulled the axe down with both hands and swivelled it so the bit was above him. Standing in the slurry, his tall frame bent low under the ceiling, he would have just enough room to wield the axe in short spans, though each heft would require extra effort as he struggled to maintain balance and momentum.

“Here goes.” He placed the axe blade on the ice just above water level in front of Costas’ face and took a short swing. The blade was dull but the metal still had the strength of a thousand years ago, and it was the force of impact rather than the cutting edge that mattered. As the bit struck it broke off a shard of ice and sent tiny fracture marks in a web from the point of impact, reducing his view of Costas to a meaningless mosaic. “I can just do it,” Jack panted. “Six inches less space and I wouldn’t have the momentum.”

Slowly, deliberately, he began to hack at the ice, each blow striking off another shard, and each swing sending a jolt of pain through his leg. With the additional strain of holding up the weight of his cylinder pack above water, the exertion soon started to tell, and he began to breathe his trimix at an alarming rate. He tried to ignore the digital readout inside his visor and focus on the task at hand. He was deploying a standard woodsman’s technique, cutting a wedge above and below his baseline. As each wedge deepened he struck off larger chunks from the space between, extending the hole until it was only inches from Costas and almost wide enough for him to get through.

As he lined up for the critical blow his legs suddenly buckled under him and he slipped back into the slurry, dropping the axe. He realised that he had not simply lost balance: he had been toppled by some greater force. He righted himself and saw the surface of the water shaking violently, and heard distant groans and cracks. Suddenly the water began to rise, and Jack saw a dark fissure opening in the ceiling of the chamber.

“The air pocket’s going,” he exclaimed. “It’s escaping upwards.” He heaved the axe out of the slurry and flung it against the cut one more time, but to no avail. “The hole’s already under water. I can’t get any momentum.”

He slid back against the back wall of the chamber, the axe hanging from his hand, and watched helplessly as the water level rose above his visor and reached the ceiling. Less than a minute after the crack had appeared, all that was left was the tumult of bubbles cascading upwards from his own exhaust, and that quickly dissipated through the crack after each exhalation. The temperature readout on his visor had dropped to -2 degrees Celsius, below the freezing point of the water. He realized with sickening certainty that the coil would never cope with the quantity of water now filling the chamber; only the lower portion around the filaments would remain liquid.

Brash began to form in front of his eyes. He felt the water stiffen around his arms and head. It was happening again, a hellish torment he was fated to endure repeatedly, a nightmare relived. He stared wide-eyed as the ice began to encapsulate him. He began hyperventilating, as if his body were willing him to suck away his last reserve of trimix and lapse into blackness, a merciful oblivion in the face of the lingering horror that lay ahead of him.

“Your oxygen! Cut your oxygen hose!”

The voice snapped him back into reality. He instantly realised what Costas meant. He dragged his left arm through the slurry and pulled out the knife he kept in a sheath on his chest, bringing the serrated edge up against the two hoses under his helmet. For an appalling moment he forgot which was trimix and which was oxygen, the narcotic effect of nitrogen at this pressure playing tricks on his mind. His head was nearly immobile and he was unable to see down to the hoses. He shut his eyes and resolutely grasped the left hose, bringing the blade to bear just under the point where it fed into his helmet.

“What’s left in your oxygen cylinder should fill the chamber long enough to clear the hole for another couple of blows,” Costas said. “But for God’s sake don’t breathe it. Eighty per cent oxygen at this depth would mean instant death.”

Jack slashed the hose and a huge geyser of bubbles erupted into the chamber. The water rapidly lowered to chest level and he heaved himself up again, the severed hose dancing and hissing in front of him. He pulled the axe out of the brash and aimed it at the hole. With all his strength he swung against the ice, causing a large chunk to break free. He could see Costas pushing with all his might against the remaining barrier. Jack frantically pulled the floating chunk of ice aside and aimed another blow. Just then the hissing of his oxygen hose faltered, and the water level began to rise again, inexorably. He had one last chance. He lined up above the fracture line where the chunk had broken off, then relaxed completely, his eyes glued on the point of impact. He swung the axe back and brought it forward with all his might, causing a spray of brash as the blade skimmed over the rising water and slammed into the ice. Then he slumped back and began to pant uncontrollably, sending geysers of bubbles out of his exhaust as the water rose and submerged him again.

The corner of a fin appeared out of the ice. Jack felt a nudge against his body. It had worked. Another chunk of ice floated past, and a large black form emerged beside him like an inquisitive seal. Costas’ eyes looked into Jack’s. “Am I glad to see you.”

“Thank God you lost weight,” Jack said weakly. “I didn’t book a double room.”

A spurt of red filled the water between them as Jack shifted in the confined space. “How’s the leg?” Costas asked.

“That’s the least of my worries.” Jack peered at the water level above them. “Your oxygen,” he said urgently. “Cut your hose and we’ll have a few more minutes.”

“No good,” Costas said. “My hose blew when the berg rolled. The shard of ice that cut it nearly decapitated me.” He struggled around until he was lying parallel to Jack, both of their heads now facing the ledge where the ice probe was embedded. The narrow confines of the chamber became even more apparent, barely large enough for the two of them festooned with all of their equipment. They were now completely submerged, slivers of ice from Jack’s efforts floating around them, and Jack could see the filaments from the coil tangled below. Costas leaned down to pull his fins up his calves and then hauled himself behind the probe. “It’s flashing amber,” he said. “The battery’s nearly dead. If we stick around here we’ll be on ice. Permanently.” He slid back down and struggled to remove something from the thigh pocket of his E-suit. “Here, hold on to this for me.”

Jack took it, then stared back at Costas. “C-4 explosive?”

“You got it. Always carry some in case of emergency.”

“You’re going to blow us up.”

“Beats the deep freeze.” Costas continued to delve in his pocket, then pulled out a miniature detonator transceiver. “I’m certain we’re inside the crevasse where Kangia and those Nazis saw the longship. The clear ice is meltwater that sealed up the crevasse. It’s weaker than the surrounding glacier ice, and fragmented when the berg shifted. We might be able to widen the crack. It’s the only chance we’ve got.”

“What’s our decompression status?”

“Not good. Our depth seems to be dropping. There must be an internal water level in the crevasse above us, below the level of the sea surrounding the berg. Somehow it’s filling up. At this rate we’ll be in the danger zone in less than five minutes.”

“That’s about how much trimix I’ve got left.”

“If we don’t freeze up first. With the coil dead the water’s already beginning to thicken. Time to get this show on the road.”

Jack shivered violently. The water was as cold as he had ever known, colder than the deepest ocean depths. There was another ominous creak in the ice, and the crack above them closed in perceptibly. Costas rolled over and looked up, panning his headlamp along the silvery shimmer of exhaust bubbles that lined the ceiling. “That’s not what I wanted to happen,” he said quietly. A brief high-pitched alarm sounded from the probe, and the amber light went dead. “Nor was that.” He rolled back and picked up the axe from the floor of the chamber, feeding it towards Jack. “You’ve got a longer reach than me. The crack’s widest above the probe. I need you to push the C-4 as high up as you can. It’s already armed.”

Jack held the brown packet in one hand and the haft of the axe in the other. Costas sank behind him and heaved up against his legs, forcing another pulse of blood from Jack’s thigh. Jack tried to ignore the pain and twisted his upper body so that his visor was up against the crack above the probe. With the rush of bubbles escaping through it he could only get a fleeting sense of its dimensions, but it was clearly a narrow chimney that extended high above them, a crack between the slabs of ice. He pushed the C-4 as far up as he could with his left arm, wedging it in the chimney. Then he pulled the axe up hand over hand and fed the wooden haft into the chimney, with Costas preventing him from sliding back. When he felt the haft meet resistance, he pushed up hard, dislodging the C-4 and thrusting it as high as he could into the chimney.

“Okay. That’s as far as I can go.”

Jack sank down beside Costas, and the two of them struggled against the freezing brash until they were as far away from the ice chimney as they could get, pressed against each other in the opposite corner of the chamber. Jack reversed the axe and fed it back under his straps, and both men reached down to slide their fins into place. Jack wrapped his arms tight around Costas, their faces pressed visor to visor. “Wherever we’re going this time, we’re going together.”

“Semper fidelis.”

Jack shook his head. “You never cease to amaze me. Latin too.”

Costas held up the transceiver between them. “Good to go?”

“Good to go.”

A violent tremor shook them, accompanied by a shrieking and tearing sound that set Jack’s teeth on edge. All around them the ice was a blur of vibration. The cacophony was rent by a deafening explosion and Jack felt his body pummelled as if by a thousand punches. He pressed his visor tight against Costas, protecting the vulnerable glass from the shards of ice that were flying around them. Almost simultaneously their headlamps burst and they were plunged into a bizarre, tremulous darkness, broken only by the blurry green of the digital readouts inside their helmets. Something huge thumped against Jack’s side and for an instant he felt he was about to be crushed, and then by a miracle it passed. He felt a rush of dizziness and realised they were tumbling, spinning round and round in a ferment of ice and water, utterly helpless as the crevasse rent asunder.

“We’re getting shallower!” Costas yelled. “For God’s sake don’t hold your breath. Your lungs would blow in seconds.”

Jack’s breathing began to tighten. In the swirling maelstrom there were no way-markers, no visual points of reference. He forced himself to concentrate on the digital readout inside his visor, his arms clinging tight to Costas and their legs intertwined. Jack could just make out a depth reading of ten metres, and they were rocketing upwards. The figures gave him something to grasp on to, and he was dimly aware that the danger of air embolism was compounded by the risk of the bends, of decompression sickness. They were coming up way too fast.

Suddenly they were on the surface. It was light again, a steely, crepuscular light, and Jack could see beyond Costas to an awesome world of blue. They were floating in a vast cauldron of ice, at least the length and breath of Seaquest II, with sheer white walls rising all around them. Jack felt dwarfed by the enormity of it. He arched his neck and looked at the source of light far above. It was a thin sliver of grey where the ice walls nearly joined, a first link to the world outside. The grey was streaked with black and light blue, and seemed to be rushing past at enormous speed.

“It must be one of those freak storms coming off the ice cap,” Costas said. “That’s what pushed the berg.”

“A piteraq.”

They clung to each other as they bobbed in the centre of the pool. Their decompression warning lights were flashing amber, indicating that they had pushed the envelope and were now in grave danger of the bends. Jack felt for any signs, a tingle in an elbow or a sudden surge of nausea, aware that the last six months away from diving might have reduced his resistance. He checked his trimix pressure gauge and saw the dial hovering at zero. “I’m out of air,” he said. “If there’s any more diving we’ll have to buddy-breathe.”

“Hook into me.”

Jack pulled the umbilical hose from the top of Costas’ cylinder pack and pressed the valve into an inlet under his helmet. With a sharp hiss his helmet filled up again with breathing gas, its makeup now close to atmospheric air as the computer adjusted the ratios to take account of their depth. Jack realised he had been running on empty, and he closed his eyes to concentrate on taking a few deep breaths.

“That should give us about ten minutes,” Costas said. “I’d prefer to spend it ten metres deep to increase the decompression margin, but we don’t have that luxury. We’ll just have to wing it.”

The movement in the water had died down dramatically, leaving the surface preternaturally calm after the tumult that had ejected them from the icy tomb far below. “The crevasse must have opened up when the berg moved, shattering all the meltwater ice inside it,” Costas said. “Then the walls closed in again as the berg encountered resistance, probably the seaward edge of the threshold.” He looked round again, the scene now eerily still. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this. Let’s keep together.”

As if on cue, the silence was rent by a shattering concussion, and ice and water disintegrated in another shuddering blur. Jack became aware of a curtain of ice falling around them, jagged spears that sliced into the water like shrapnel. He concentrated all of his energy on holding Costas tight, knowing that if the hose that was his sole remaining lifeline were to rip out he would drown. He flashed back to the body in the ice, to his hallucination, then woke to a worse reality. They were dropping with sickening speed, sliding down a whirlpool of grinding ice, as if they were being sucked back to the frozen warrior and the place that had nearly been their nemesis. The water was falling away so fast that they were dropping through air, suspended half in and half out of the water, tumbling weightlessly against the chunks of ice that were splintering around them. Costas pulled Jack closer, straining against the centripetal force of the whirlpool, and pressed his visor hard against Jack’s. “The water’s being sucked down as the crevasse opens,” he yelled. “Hold on tight. I might be able to reverse the flow.”

Suddenly the water billowed up around them and they were immersed deep within it. For a terrifying moment Jack felt the air crushed out of his lungs by some force that was working against the vortex, propelling them back upwards. Then they erupted out of the water, bouncing on a plume of brash that threw them high into the cleft above the cauldron. They crashed into a wall of ice and slid upwards, each scrabbling desperately with one free hand for some kind of hold. Then they began to slide back downwards, out of control, until they hit a ledge that held them precariously on the wall. As they crouched dripping together on the icy platform, the plume of brash and spray dropped back into the seething cauldron at the base of the crevasse far below them.

“What the hell was that?” Jack panted, peering down a sheer drop of at least thirty metres.

“The C-4,” Costas said exuberantly. “We were ejected from that chamber before I had a chance to blow it, but it came in useful after all.” He shoved the detonator transceiver into his thigh pocket. “Right. I’m cold and hungry. Let’s get out of here.”

“Better make it fast. Take a look at that.”

They peered down in horrified fascination at the ice chasm far below. It was beginning to narrow again, the walls compressing the slurry of ice and pushing it upwards. As the larger chunks were caught in the vise they exploded with a shattering resonance, sending lethal shards far up the crevasse. They knew that being caught in the maelstrom this time would mean instant death, their bodies shredded by the flying ice and then crushed as the crevasse caught them like a meat grinder. Relentlessly, terrifyingly, the gap was closing in on them, advancing like some living thing, its deadly maw spewing a geyser of splintering and shattering ice, moving with alarming speed up the cleft even in the few moments they had been watching.

“This is it,” Costas yelled above the din. “No second chance this time.” They swivelled on the ledge and faced upwards. The skylight at the top of the crevasse was about fifty metres away, rushing streaks of grey now clearly visible on a background of blue. Suddenly the clouds parted and a dark shape appeared, blotting out the cleft, a blinding spotlight aimed directly at them. Then it veered away violently, trailing something that streamed out behind and whipped over the crack.

“It’s the Lynx,” Costas shouted excitedly. “They’re trying to drop a winch.”

“I told them to stay away. They’re pushing their luck against that wind.”

“They could hardly do nothing.”

“There’s no way they’ll get that cable down here. They must be waiting, hoping we can get to the entrance of the crevasse.”

Jack glanced down. The gap was now terrifyingly close, no more than twenty metres below them, the shards of exploding ice almost reaching the ledge. He looked up again. The crevasse was glassy smooth, offering no handholds. The euphoria at seeing the helicopter suddenly turned to cold dread. It was another nightmare, a return to his brush with death years before in the flooded mine shaft, where the end of the tunnel had been in sight but no matter how frantically he tried to swim for it he seemed to stay the same distance away.

Jack suddenly felt as if he were being pressed into the wall. He looked up again, then it dawned on him. “The crevasse. Isn’t it supposed to be vertical?”

“Holy shit. The berg’s rolling!”

There was a huge lurch and everything went still. The cleft had seized up, no more than ten metres below them. Through the skylight they were looking directly at the promontory where they had visited the old Inuit the day before. Jack found himself thinking that it was going to be a perfect day, that the wind was leaving the land washed in sparkling light. Then he felt the dread again. They had to reach the crack or they would die. When the berg rolled again the skylight would drop underwater, taking them into the abyss as it toppled off the threshold, sealing their fates in an instant.

“The axe!” Costas shook him. “The axe!”

Jack snapped back into reality. With his left arm still around Costas, he reached back and drew the axe from its straps. His hand was sticky with blood where it had brushed his thigh and the axe nearly slipped away, saved only by Costas’ iron grip. They dangled the axe together down the slope, then flung it in a wide arc to lodge in the ice ahead of them.

“It’ll hold,” Jack panted. “Pull yourself up.” He tensed his body, his fins still planted on the ledge but his elbows and knees ready to find any undulation in the ice, anything that might stop him from sliding. They heaved up on the haft, then shook it frantically until it was loose. For a few seconds they would be totally without anchor, held only by the tension of their bodies against the ice. Costas looked Jack full in the eyes and nodded. Jack let the axe slide down again and heaved. It arched overhead, skimming the back of the crevasse, then slammed into the ice a metre and a half ahead of them. As Jack craned his head up to free the axe for another blow, he saw a black-clad diver dangling from a cable no more than a hundred metres beyond the berg. He realised that the noise he was hearing was the din from the Lynx’s twin turboshafts.

There was another lurch, and a rumble from the cleft behind them. The noise of the helicopter was drowned out by an immense creaking in the ice. The walls of the crevasse narrowed. The axe was poised but there was no more room to swing it. Another lurch brought up a surge of brash from the cleft, washing over them, then everything happened at once. The skylight was lost in a foment of water, a sucking whirlpool that rose up towards them, and suddenly they were sliding uncontrollably, plummeting towards the skylight as it angled into the abyss. Jack hit the incoming seawater with an immense crash, the axe trailing behind him, then was pulverised by the force of the water cascading down from the maw of the crevasse. The icy brash that had so nearly been their nemesis pushed them out of the berg, ejecting them in a frenzied tumble just as the walls of ice crushed together and sealed the crevasse for the last time.

It was not over yet. Jack saw a vast wall of sculpted white advancing on them, extending as far as he could see in every direction. Already the crevasse was far below, marked only by a trickle of bubbles rising up the side of the berg, framing the black immensity of the abyss. As the berg rolled, Jack had the illusion that he was rocketing upwards, yet his body told him exactly the opposite. “It’s pulling us down,” he yelled to Costas, his voice contorted. “Inflate your suit and swim for it!”

Jack pressed the inflator and began to fin hard, his left arm gripping Costas’ shoulder. His depth readout showed they were hardly moving at all. They were still in the grip of the berg, being sucked down. He looked up and saw the sun shimmering off the waves, tantalizingly close. He felt the cold again in the pit of his stomach. Having survived the iceberg, they were about to die within sight of the surface. This could not be happening. He began to hyperventilate, to outstrip the oxygen remaining in Costas’ cylinder. His breathing began to tighten.

“I’m ditching your tanks.” Costas was breathing heavily, a great plume of bubbles encircling his exhaust, and he finned furiously as he disconnected Jack’s redundant hoses and flipped the quick-release buckle on his cylinder packs, sending the oxygen rebreather and the console backpack with its empty trimix cylinders plummeting into the depths. “I’m doing the same to mine,” he panted. “We’ve only got about a minute’s air left anyway and it isn’t doing us any good. Get ready to disconnect your hose. Stop finning now and when I say so take five deep breaths.”

“I’m holding on to you,” Jack said, his breath coming in short gasps. “If you go down, I’m going with you.”

Costas disconnected his rebreather and it dropped out of sight. With his left hand he flipped the quick-release on his backpack and held it in place, and with his right hand he found the disconnect to the hose under his helmet. Already they were plummeting down, sucked deeper and deeper by the rolling iceberg, their chances receding with every metre they dropped into the abyss.

“Now!” Jack took five deep breaths, then yanked the umblical. Simultaneously Costas released his hose and backpack. With Jack’s left arm on Costas’ shoulder, they began to swim determinedly upwards, taking wide, hard strokes with their fins, Jack still clutching the axe in his right hand. For a few moments he felt fine, his bloodstream brimming with oxygen, and he remembered to breathe out as he ascended. Then the effort of their escape began to take its toll, and he felt the first niggle of discomfort. They were rising steadily, a metre every couple of seconds, but they were still more than twenty metres from the surface. Any letup in their finning and they would be dragged back down again. Jack started to suck on empty, his lungs instinctively heaving for more air, drawing the last dregs out of his helmet.

His legs, starved of oxygen, began to falter. He was beginning to black out, overwhelmed by exhaustion. He was not going to make it. He stopped clawing his way upwards, and in a last conscious act struggled to free himself from Costas’ grip, seeing his friend still going strong, desperate to give him some chance of reaching the surface alive.

Suddenly he felt an odd sensation, a jolting weightlessness. He had stopped finning but was still being impelled upwards. He was dimly aware that the berg had stopped moving. By instinct he found the dump valve to release air from his suit and stop himself from rocketing upwards. Then he was on the surface, blinded by the light. He unlocked his helmet and ripped it off, gasping over and over again in the cold fresh air, his entire being focussed on replenishing his life force. As soon as he could, he swivelled round and scanned the waves, shielding his eyes against the glare. After a few anxious seconds he caught sight of a tousled head bobbing in the waves about ten feet away.

“You okay?” he gasped.

“Well, at least that little swim solved our decompression issue.” Costas’ voice sounded strange after the intercom, adenoidal with the cold. He was facing away from Jack, seemingly oblivious to their surroundings, completely focussed on two gauges that he was holding out of the water. “But there’s a small discrepancy in the readouts. It’s incredibly annoying. I need to do a little tinkering.”

Jack managed a small smile. He leaned his head far back, letting the evening sunshine play on his face. He could hear the helicopter above him and heard the splash as the rescue diver dropped into the sea. He cracked open one eye and saw the glinting golden blade in the waves beside him, the prize he had refused to let go. Suddenly their extraordinary discovery in the berg came flooding back, and a burst of adrenaline rushed through him. He shut his eyes, his mind now coursing with excitement. A wave washed over him, a cleansing jolt of cold that left lines of salt water trickling over his lips. It tasted good.