David Gibbins - The Crusader's gold

“Holy shit,” Costas said.

It was a huge, single-bitted battle-axe, hafted to a thick handle at least a metre and a half long. The head shone with gold and was embellished with ornate engravings on both sides.

“It’s gilded,” Jack murmured, his voice hoarse with excitement. “That’s what preserved the iron from corrosion. Standard technique for making a weapon look like gold, but keeping it functional with the harder metal underneath.”

“I’ve got symbols on my side of the blade,” Costas said.

“So have I.” Jack turned his side flat so Costas could see. The surface was engraved with a large pendant shape that respected the lines of the axe head, a wide stem dropping to symmetrical extensions that filled the width of the metal above the blade. The outline form was simple but it was elaborately decorated inside, with swirling curvilinear designs and garish animal forms, most prominently the snarling head of a wolf at the apex of the shape. Jack pointed to a line of symbols just above the axe blade.

“Mjollnir.”

“What?”

“The letters are Greek, but the name’s Norse. The most potent symbol of the Vikings, the invincible weapon of their greatest god, their one hope of defeating evil at the Battle of Ragnarok. Mjollnir, Thor’s Hammer.”

“What’s the bird above it?”

Jack peered closer. “I can’t believe I’m seeing this. It’s the double-headed eagle. One head signifies the old Rome, the other the new Rome, Constantinople. It’s the imperial symbol of the Byzantine emperor.” He paused, then looked through his visor at Costas, his eyes alight in wonder. “We’ve just found one of the most famous weapons in history, a battle-axe of the Varangian Guard.”

“That makes sense. Look at these.” Costas twisted the axe round so Jack could see the other side.

“Runes!” Jack’s heart was racing, and he was sucking the oxygen hard from the rebreather. “And not just any old runes. I’m not an expert, but I know these like the back of my hand. They’re identical to the ones in the Church of Hagia Sofia in Constantinople. It’s the signature of Halfdan, the Viking who inscribed his pagan symbols into the holiest cathedral of eastern Christendom some time in the eleventh century.”

“So we’ve found Halfdan’s war axe,” Costas’ voice was deadpan, but his expression was incredulous. “In an iceberg off Greenland. This guy sure got around.”

“There’s one final thing I need to check,” Jack said. “There should be a simple mast-step and crossbeam in the centre of the hull, but instead it’s some kind of rectangular structure. I’ve now got a pretty good idea what it is, but I need to see it with my own eyes. Then we’re out of here.”

“Roger that.” Costas reactivated the water jet and they began to move up and over the dark structure a few metres ahead of them. Jack held on to the axe for a moment, scarcely believing what they had found, and then fed it over his shoulder under the straps of his trimix cylinders, carefully pushing the shaft back until the gilded axe head was wedged safely away from his regulator manifold. He turned back and clasped both hands on the guide rail, watching closely as the edge of the rectangular structure appeared beneath them, and they began to see what lay inside, a shadowy, sepulchral form that seemed completely different from everything they had discovered so far. At the foot of the structure Jack suddenly saw another fantastic pile of artefacts, a gilded conical helmet on top of a coat of gilded chain mail, and below them a folded scarlet cloth with gold embroidery, evidently a cloak. Just as they were about to pass over the middle of the structure, Costas flipped the control handle and the probe came to a halt.

“I’m getting a warning reading on the seismograph,” he said. “Probably just a wobble in the machine, but I need to stop to make sure.”

Jack looked with sudden unease at the red light flashing at the bottom of the screen. He could sense nothing unusual, but the microfilaments trailing behind them seemed to flutter longer than usual after the water jet had shut off.

“There’s definitely something going on,” Costas said.

Just then there was a horrifying creaking noise, followed by a series of wrenching vibrations that set Jack’s teeth on edge and sent an uncontrollable tremor through his body. The water began to vibrate, until all he could see of Costas and the ice probe was a shapeless blur.

“Holy Mother of God. We’re-”

Costas’ words were drowned out by a terrible shrieking noise, as if they were being assailed on all sides by demented banshees. Splinters of ice began to shear off the tunnel walls, rocketing through the water like shrapnel. One piece wedged itself in Jack’s left thigh, slicing through the Kevlar exoskeleton like butter. All he felt was numbness, and he watched in shock as the water filled with swirling tendrils of red. Then there was a grating lurch and the ice probe went dead, its entire fore end crushed beyond recognition by a seismic shift in the ice.

Everything went silent. Costas frantically tried to reactivate the probe, but to no avail. The space had become narrower, their bodies pressed against each other with hardly any room to move. Jack’s torso was twisted against the bottom of the tunnel, his face mask pressed hard against the ice above the mysterious rectangular structure embedded below them.

As the probe was now dead, the only light came from their headlamps. With superhuman effort Jack managed to turn his head to peer back down the tunnel. What he saw confirmed his worst fear. The tunnel was completely cut off, sealed shut by some tectonic shift in the ice. The space they were in was only about a metre longer than their bodies, and was shrinking fast. Jack watched in horror as the water froze up around his feet. The icy brash that seemed to appear out of nowhere refracted his view into a kaleidoscope, with Costas fragmented into a thousand shapes and colours. Jack tried to move his hand towards his friend but there was already too much resistance. A terrible wave of certainty passed through him: they would be frozen into the ice before they were dead, a living nightmare of the worst kind.

“We’re rolling!” Costas shouted. “Switch to trimix!”

Jack had barely registered the movement, but it suddenly became huge, bigger than anything that had gone before, a gigantic lurching that shoved him into the brash against the tunnel wall. With all his strength he heaved his arm up through the solidifying slurry and reached for the valve under his helmet, feeling Costas’ hand trying to do the same. With agonising slowness he twisted it open while Costas shut off his rebreather, then Costas withdrew his hand and reached for his own valve. Seconds later the first bubbles of exhaust crackled through the brash, some pooling mid-water, trapped under the forming ice, and the rest erupting upwards to form a pocket of air against the tunnel ceiling. The pocket quickly enlarged as Costas began to breathe out, and Jack slowly rose into it as the berg rolled. The instant he broke surface the sheen of liquid on his mask froze, a mix of water and blood that gave his view a surreal tint. He was now almost completely immobile, unable to move his limbs, and with each breath the compression of ice against his chest made it harder to inhale. He knew he had only moments left. He strained to the right, but there was no way he could see Costas. The intercom indicator inside his helmet was dead, and all he could hear was the suck of his own breathing and a terrible tearing and grinding far away, the noise of titanic forces within the berg that had entombed them.

As Jack began to black out, he glimpsed something on the ceiling of the air pocket, then realised it was a reflection of his own form on the ice. His breathing became shallower, quick and rasping, and he became light-headed, flitting in and out of consciousness as his body starved of oxygen. The form above him began to take on a wavering, unnerving shape, as if it were something more than just a reflection. Through the blood-streaked sheen of his mask he saw a flowing red robe where there should have been an E-suit, and instead of a diving helmet there was a bearded face framed by long golden hair. The eyes were dark shadows, sunk beneath the grey pallor of the face, but they seemed to be boring into him. In his delirium Jack saw one arm extended, a blackened hand shining with gold, beckoning him closer. Jack had found what he had been searching for, the ancient warrior who had passed out of time inside this ship, a wraith of Valhalla come to take him in his embrace. Jack shut his eyes on the image as a mighty crack rent the ice, throwing him far beyond the present into merciful oblivion.