“Hello?” I said. For a moment there was nothing, just the wind, but then I heard it again. It might have been an animal, injured perhaps. I decided I couldn’t just walk away, so I went down the steps leading into the bunker and stepped in. It was damp and cold and rather musty, and it took me a minute or two to adjust to the light. When I did, I saw Percy framed against the opening out to the sea. He was lying on one of the slabs and wasn’t moving. I hurried toward him, stumbling on something, his bicycle, as I went. There was blood everywhere, all of it gushing from a wound in his side. “Percy!” I said. “Can you hear me?” His eyelids fluttered slightly, then opened, but I wasn’t sure he could really see anything. “It’s Lara. I’m going for help.”
“Lara,” he gasped.
I cursed when I realized my cell phone was dead, not that I would know whom to call. “Hold on, Percy,” I said. “I’ll be back very soon.”
As I turned to go he grabbed my arm with astonishing strength and pulled me down toward him. He tried to speak but I could hear nothing and I tried to pull away. “Let me go, Percy. You can tell me later. I’m going to find a doctor.” He was going to bleed to death very soon if I didn’t get help very fast.
“Before he went mad,” Percy said in a kind of gasp, holding my arm in a vicelike grip.
“What did you say?”
“Before he went mad,” Percy repeated, but then his eyes shut. I tried to pull away again, but as I did so more blood, and maybe some of his insides, poured out of the wound. In vain I tried to pry his fingers off my arm.
“Bjarni the Wanderer,” he gasped. There was this kind of gurgling sound in his chest.
“Bjarni the Wanderer? Is that what you said?”
“Hid the chalice…”
“The what?”
“In the tomb of the orcs,” he said, and then Percy died. Or rather, Magnus Budge did.
Chapter 7
Our hardy band of travelers, now reduced to four, and pursued relentlessly by Goisvintha’s father Theodoric, fled south, the path of least resistance, I suppose, but one that led straight into the territory of the caliph of Muslim Spain. Desperate for provisions, Bjarni and Oddi attacked a merchant’s retinue in the dead of night. Taken by surprise, some fled, and some were killed by the three Vikings. One, obviously the leader, fought Bjarni for some time and would not yield. Finally Bjarni gained the upper hand, and the man fell to the ground, Bjarni raised his axe, intending to deliver the final blow. The man said nothing. He did not beg for mercy. He did not cry out in fear.
Bjarni lowered his weapon. “You are a worthy opponent,” he said to the man. “I will not take your life, and I would appreciate it if you would extend me the same courtesy. I will take only what we need from this wagon of yours, and be on my way.” With that he turned his back on the man, a gesture that some would say was foolhardy, but in a short time Bjarni, Oddi, Goisvintha, and Svein the Wiry disappeared into the darkness, unfortunately straight into a military encampment. Soon after that they were on a forced march toward Cordoba.
It would be fair to say that Bjarni, Oddi, and Svein, and even possibly Goisvintha would have been amazed by what they saw as they made their way across the countryside. By the early days of the eleventh century, Spain was surely the most sophisticated place in Europe. Aqueducts crisscrossed the country, the remarkable irrigation systems ensuring orchards and grain fields aplenty. The towns would have been simply extraordinary. Cordoba, the seat of the caliph, was certainly a most impressive place. There were fabulous mosques, gardens, fountains, hospitals, great libraries, magnificent palaces, public baths. Houses were well-kept and flowers, trees, and shrubs bloomed everywhere, most of which Bjarni would never have seen before. And wonder of wonders, the streets were not only paved, but lit and patrolled. Remember, the streets of Paris were not paved until the thirteenth century, those of London, the fourteenth. To Vikings accustomed to the stone houses of Orkney, and the muddy, dangerous roads of the territories they knew so well, Cordoba must surely have been astonishing.
Bjarni and the others were brought before someone he knew must be important, and he thought they all would die. Now Vikings were well known in Spain. They were a nuisance most of the time, and a great deal of trouble some of the time, and indeed were called madjus or “heathen wizards.” Vikings had sacked Lisbon, Cadiz, and even Seville in the ninth century, until eventually repulsed by the highly organized army and navy. Muslim Spain had never really been good hunting for the Vikings, but they would still have been considered a threat. There would be none feeling too kindly toward Bjarni and his friends.
But then a voice was heard from the back of the room. There was much consternation in the group at the words. “This captive may not be a man of the book,” the voice said, by which he meant a Muslim, a Christian or a Jew, “but he is a man of honor. He spared my life, and I would ask that his life and that of his companions be spared in turn. ” Bjarni must have looked in surprise at the man he had almost killed, now resplendent in silk.
So Bjarni and his tiny retinue were set free. But Bjarni would have to carry on alone.
Who would kill a poor sod, a harmless dreamer like Percy Bicycle Clips? Or Magnus Budge, or whoever he was? He’d always be Percy to me, an unusual little man pedaling furiously toward what he hoped would be salvation. And not just kill him, but stab him over and over again, then leave him to bleed to death, his eyes to cloud over, his breath to come in gasps, as the last of his life oozed from him, alone on a cold concrete slab.
Trevor Wylie I could almost understand. I wouldn’t go so far as to say he deserved it or anything, but he did, I suppose, make a credible murder victim if one might be permitted to put it that way. But not Percy Bicycle Clips.
I was very glad I hadn’t mentioned a name when I pounded on the door of the nearest house I could find to get help for Percy, help that even then I knew was too late. That meant that when I was interviewed by the Northern Constabulary both in their squad car and later that evening in Kirkwall, I had not had to explain the name Arthur Percival when in fact all of the corpse’s identification proclaimed him to be Magnus Budge. No doubt they would have found that a little odd. Even I found it so. As it was, I was just a tourist who had happened upon a grisly sight while hiking around the World War Two bunkers on Hoxa Head. Everyone was terribly apologetic that such a dreadful thing had happened to a visitor. They kept telling me that violent crime was very rare.
I believed them, not that it helped much. Somehow, de spite the fact he’d lied about his name, and had not been very forthcoming on any subject of interest to me, I’d come to regard him as, if not a friend exactly, someone I was fond of in a rather peculiar way. It’s not everybody who can make a tour of the Neolithic interesting, even for somebody like me, who is inclined to like just about anything about the ancient past. When I’d seen the old house with the man in the wheelchair, I’d really hoped I would find Percy before I left so I could tell him about it. I wasn’t sure what he meant by The Wasteland, the maze, the wounded king, but if he thought salvation lay there, then I wanted to make sure he’d seen what I had.
Everyone was, of course, exceptionally nice to me. My jacket had been splattered with blood, and carried the bloody imprint of Percy’s fingers on the sleeve. The soles of my shoes were caked in both mud and blood. I kept telling everyone I was fine, but I couldn’t stop shivering. I could not understand why they kept the station so cold. They plied me with enough sweet tea to float an ocean liner, but it didn’t help much. They even sent a squad car to Mrs. Brown’s guest house to pick up some clean clothes to replace the ones they had to take as evidence. I have no idea what Mrs. Brown thought of this at the time, but she was more than solicitous later. The police told me I might get my clothes back but it wouldn’t be for a while. I said I never wanted to see them again.