The Valhalla Prophecy (42 page)

“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 first, they cost two thousand dollars and you keep losing them—”

“See? Fit-throwing.”

“—and second, 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 onto the frozen lake in a spitting spray of ice. “See you somewhere over the rainbow!”

Eddie turned north, speeding toward 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 chain-saw 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 northwest, toward 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 kilometers from here. Looks like the terrain gets steeper, but there’s not that much detail.” He folded the map again. “Worse 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 kilometers 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 northwest. A couple of kilometers farther 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 eons 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 gray. Unless the Viking who made the runestones was color-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 colors, 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 skeptical. “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 yards. “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 was 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 heart-stopping 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.”