David Gibbins - The Crusader's gold

“My apologies,” Lanowski said. “I didn’t count on a storm.”

“You gave us every warning,” Jack replied. “It was my call.”

Jack and Costas were sitting on the foredeck of Seaquest II, slumped against the port railing where the helicopter had winched them down with Macleod a few minutes before. The ship was maintaining position in Disko Bay about a mile west of the fjord entrance, and Jack could see the tip of the iceberg beyond the starboard railing opposite them. Even at this distance it was an awesome sight. He and Costas had been extraordinarily lucky that the berg had rolled a full 360 degrees, that the huge force of the storm had tumbled it back to its upright position and left it perched precariously on the outer rim of the threshold. The next time it rolled it would flip over and stay that way, crushing any remaining air pockets beneath hundreds of metres of freezing seawater.

Lanowski had been the first of the scientific team to reach them on the foredeck, joining the crew members who had guided down the helicopter winch and were now helping Jack and Costas to peel off their E-suits. They were quickly joined by Maria, whose look of relief turned to concern as she saw the blood on Jack’s thigh. The ship’s doctor was already on the scene, cutting away the bandage and spraying coagulant into the gash.

“It’s not as bad as it looks.” Jack winced as the medic applied a suture, then held up a bloody spear of ice. “Nature provided her own cold compress.”

“You were lucky,” the medic said. “It just missed the femoral artery.”

“It’s fantastic.” Lanowski was shaking his head and chuckling to himself, in a world of his own. “While you were away Inuva and I worked out where the 1930s expedition must have found the ship in the ice cap. Now I should be able to use my glacier-flow quotient to work out where the Vikings dragged the ship on to the ice for the funeral pyre. One of the tributary fjords to the north of Ilulissat, I’d say, where the ice cap is more accessible from the sea.” He pushed his glasses up his nose and peered at Jack. “Having such a closely datable horizon inside that berg is the greatest discovery of the whole expedition. It should provide independent corroboration for my flow theory, the first time we’ll be sure of the rate of ice discharge over the last thousand years. Well worth your efforts. Congratulations!”

“We’ve just found a Viking longship, man,” Costas said in exasperation. “One of the most sensational archaeological discoveries of all time. A little more exciting than the rate of glacial ice flow.”

Lanowski looked at him with unseeing eyes, his mind already far away in a world of figures and equations. He pulled out a pocket calculator and began furiously tapping at the keys, occasionally looking up and muttering under his breath. Costas shook his head in disbelief as the ungainly figure shuffled off without another word towards the deckhouse computer room.

“Talk about a one-track mind.”

“But a brilliant one.” Jack grinned at the dripping form of his friend. “That’s why we’re a team. I couldn’t do all that math.”

Jeremy appeared beside Maria, and she nudged him forward in front of Jack.

“We’ve translated the runestone that Kangia gave you, the one the Germans found in the crevasse,” he said diffidently.

“Brilliant. Let’s hear what you’ve got.”

“It’s west Norse, eleventh century, quite distinct from the runes used in England and Denmark at that time.”

“And?”

“His name was Halfdan.”

“We know. A veteran of the Varangian Guard in Constantinople.” Jack raised the object that had been resting on his knees, and Jeremy suddenly recognised it for what it was. He stared agape as Jack pointed to the runic inscription on the axe blade.

“Holy shit.” Jeremy suddenly forgot his restraint. “They’re identical to the Halfdan runes at Hagia Sofia in Istanbul.”

“He’s our man.”

“Tall guy, early middle age, long yellow hair and beard,” Costas interjected. “A little weatherworn and charred at the edges, but otherwise in pretty good shape for a guy who hasn’t moved for a thousand years. We’ve just met him, halfway to Valhalla.”

“Huh?”

Costas jerked his thumb towards the entrance of the fjord. “Inside the berg. He’s on ice. We were over the central burial chamber when it rolled. The funeral pyre must have been extinguished when the ship fell into the ice, and the flames only licked at the edges. My guess is that runestone was resting on his body.”

A crewman pushed past the others and handed Jack a piece of paper. He quickly read it and then stared into the distance, a smile flickering across his face. “I knew it!”

“What?” Costas asked.

“A hunch I had before our dive. A pretty wild hunch, so I didn’t share it. You remember the dendro date for the ship timbers, 1040 plus or minus ten years? For some reason all I could think about was Harald Hardrada’s escape from Constantinople. If the sagas are correct, it took place very close to that median date, in 1042.”

“And?”

“I asked the IMU lab to run a comparison between the timber fragments we got from the chain in Constantinople and the wood Macleod’s ice-corer brought up from the longship. The full checklist, species identification, tree-ring characteristics, fibre and cellulose specs.”

“Go on.”

“It’s not just the same species, Norwegian oak,” Jack said excitedly. “It’s incredible. It’s actually from the same tree. Planks cut radially from the same trunk.”

“Whoa. Steady on there.” Costas held one hand in front of him, trying to marshal his thoughts. “Let me get this straight. You’re suggesting that one of the ships Harald Hardrada used to escape from Constantinople with the princess and the treasure is the same ship we’ve just seen trapped in an iceberg off Greenland?”

Jack gave his friend an odd look and then started to nod.

“Of course.” Costas suddenly snapped his fingers and stared back at Jack. “The repair work on the hull.” He looked up at the others. “We found a section of planking which had been expertly replaced near the bow. It’s in the photographs. I assumed it was collision damage with ice or rock, but it’s exactly where the ship might have driven up against the chain across the harbour when they fled Constantinople.” He shook his head in disbelief and turned to Jack. “So if this is one of Harald’s ships, where’s the treasure?”

“They’re not exactly going to have put it in a funeral pyre,” Jack said. “And we don’t know the date when this happened. The Halfdan we saw was an older man, and he could have sailed here years after their Constantinople adventure, maybe seeking a new life for himself in the Greenland settlement. By then Harald would have been king of Norway and the treasure of his Varangian days secure in his stronghold at Trondheim.”

There was a percussive boom from the direction of the fjord, followed by an immense falling sound that reverberated across the still waters. Another giant slab of ice had calved off the iceberg, dropping out of sight into the depths and then emerging again like a surfacing whale to bob out into the bay.

“What about the longship?” Macleod jerked his head at the iceberg, a sense of urgency in his voice. “We haven’t got much time now. It’d be risky to go close again, but we could try another sonar scan.”

Jack lifted the axe from where it rested on his knees, twisting it until the sunlight sparkled off the gilding on the blade. He stared at it pensively for a moment and then looked at Maria, knowing they were both remembering their visit to the old Inuit the day before and her apprehension about Fenrir, the Norse wolf-god on the carved prow they now knew had been the spirit guardian of the longship.