Parnevik spoke from where he rested with his back against a tree. “Look, umm, you told me you’d seen the only known depiction of the Pieces in true arrangement. The painting once owned by John Dillinger.”
“Yes, but the thing went on tour in the ‘60’s,” Dahl explained. “We can’t be positive it hasn’t been copied, especially by one of these Viking history freaks.”
The professor was well enough to murmur: “Oh. Thanks.”
Full dark and a million stars twinkled overhead. Branches swayed and leaves rustled. Ben instinctively inched closer to Drake on one side. Kennedy did the same on the other.
Where Kennedy’s hip touched his own, Drake felt fire. It was all he could do to concentrate on what Dahl was saying.
“The Shield,” the Swede was saying, “is our last hope.”
Is she sitting this close on purpose? Drake wondered. Touching….
Christ, it was a long time since he’d felt this way. It took him back to when girls were girls and boys were nervous — wearing T-shirts in the snow, and walking their girlfriends round town on a Saturday afternoon before buying them their favourite CD and sharing popcorn and a straw at the cinema.
Innocent days, long gone. Long remembered and sadly lost.
“Shield?” He blurted into the conversation. “Huh?”
Dahl frowned at him. “Keep up, you thick Yorkshire bastard. We were saying that the Shield is the principal Piece here. Nothing can be achieved without it, since it gives the location of Ragnarok. It’s also made of different matter than the other Pieces — almost as if it has another part to play. An objective.”
“Like what?”
“Fuuuuuck,” Dahl said in his best Oxford accent. “Ask me one on sport.”
“Okay. Why the hell did Leeds United ever sign Tomas Brolin?”
Dahl’s face fell and then hardened. He was about to retort, when a peculiar noise shattered the stillness.
A wail. A moan from out of the darkness.
A sound that triggered primordial fear. “Christ alive,” Drake whispered. “What — ?”
It came again. A yowl, animal-like but throaty, as if from something big. It made the night crawl.
“You remember?” Ben said in a whisper stilted by terror, “this is Grendel’s country. The monster from ‘Beowulf’. There are still tales that monsters haunt this area.”
“The only thing I remember from Beowulf is Angelina Jolie’s arse,” Drake said fondly. “But then I suppose the same could be said for most of her movies.”
“Shhh!” Kennedy hissed. “What the hell is that noise?”
The howling came again, closer now. Drake tried desperately to distinguish anything through the darkness, imagining bare fangs exploding towards him, dripping saliva, strips of rotten flesh caught between their jagged teeth.
He raised his gun, not wanting to frighten the others but just too uncertain to take any risks.
Torsten Dahl levelled his own rifle. The fit SAS trooper unsheathed a knife. Silence gripped the night tighter than Gordon Brown had gripped the U.K. economy whilst wringing it dry.
A faint sound. A clunk. Something that resembled a light footfall….
But what kind of feet? Drake wondered. Human or…?
If he heard the clicking of claws he might well squeeze off his entire magazine in terror.
Damn those old tales.
The very ventricles in his heart almost exploded when Ben’s mobile phone suddenly exploded into life. Ben threw it in the air with shock, but then commendably caught it on the way down.
“Bollocks!” He whispered before realising he’d answered it. “Oh, hi Mum.”
Drake tried to quiet the thumping of blood through his brain. “Cut it off. Cut it off!”
Ben said: “In the loo. Call you later!”
“Nice.” Kennedy’s voice was remarkably calm.
Drake listened. The moaning came again, thin and anguished. Followed by a distant thud, as if the noise-maker had thrown a rock. Another weeping cry, and then a howl….
This time definitely human! And Drake exploded into action. “That’s Wells!” He raced into the dark, instinct sending him right to Mimir’s Well and stopping him at the rim.
“Help me,” Wells moaned, cracked and bloodied fingers reaching over the ragged edge of the drop. “Caught one of the ropes… on the way down. Nearly broke my arm. That bitch has… has to do more than that to kill… me.”
Drake took his weight, saving him from free-falling back into infinite night.
With Wells warmly wrapped and resting, Drake just shook his head at him.
Wells croaked: “I never meant to start a war… within the SAS.”
“That’s okay then, ‘cos Alicia and I no longer belong to the SAS.”
Beside him, Ben was questioning Parnevik as if nothing had happened. “You think the Shield is some sort of key?”
“The Shield is everything. It could be a key, but it’s definitely all we have left.”
“Left?” Drake repeated, raising an eyebrow. He focused on Ben’s I-phone. “Of course we do!”
Ben was a step ahead, Googling ‘Odin’s Shield’ at the speed of geek. The image that came up was small, but Ben zoomed in faster than Drake could even think. He tried to remember what the Shield looked like. Round, with a raised round centre, the outer rim sectioned into four equal parts.
Ben held the I-phone at arm’s length, letting everyone crowd around.
“It’s easy,” Kennedy said. “Ragnarok’s in Vegas. Everything’s in Vegas.”
Parnevik rubbed his chin. “The layout of the Shield indicates four separate parts surrounding an answer in the centre. You see? Let’s label them North, East, South and West so we know what were referring to.”
“”Neat,” Ben said. “Well, West is obvious. I see a Spear and two Eyes.”
“South is a Horse and two, um, Wolves, I think.” Drake squinted as best he could.
“Of course!” Parnevik cried. “You are right. Because East has to be two Valkyries. Yes? You see?”
Drake blinked hard to focus properly, and he made out what could be taken for warrior women sat atop a pair of winged horses. “Damn Starbucks!” He cursed. “A cafe with free Wi-Fi on every corner of the world except this one!”
“So…” Kennedy said haltingly, “no Shield shown on the umm, Shield?”
“Hmmm…!” The Professor studied hard, getting in Ben’s eye-line and receiving a friendly swat. “Can you zoom in a bit more?”
“Nah. That’s its limit.”
“I see no other markings in the Eastern section,” Dahl said from his standing position. “But North’s pretty interesting.”
Drake flicked his attention, and felt a rush of shock. “Christ, that’s the symbol of Odin. Three interlocked triangles. Same thing we saw down the well.”
“But what’s that.” Dahl pointed at a tiny symbol positioned at the bottom left of one of the triangles. When Ben zoomed closer they all exclaimed: “It’s the Shield!”
A confused silence reigned. Drake wracked his brain. Why had the Shield symbol been placed within the triangles? Obviously a clue, just not a clear one.
“This would be a lot easier on a bigger screen!” the Professor huffed.
“Stop whining,” Ben said. “Don’t let it beat you.”
“Here’s a thought,” Kennedy spoke up. “Could the triangles stand for something other than this ‘Odin’s knot’, or whatever?”
“A secret purpose for a mystical symbol attached to a God previously thought mere legend?” Parnevik scoffed. “Surely not.”
Drake rubbed his ribs where Alicia Myles had taught him that seven years without training took a heavy toll on your combat performance level. She’d humiliated him, but he took comfort in the fact that he was alive and they were still — just — in the game.