‘So they hid the map to the eitr pits so that only Vikings they trusted would know how to find it?’ said Eddie.
Tova nodded. ‘The only time they would need it would be when Ragnarök was upon them.’
‘Kind of an “open in event of doomsday” thing?’
‘It’d explain why they went to such lengths to hide it,’ said Nina. ‘You don’t want your people deciding to go out there on a macho whim. If you think the Midgard Serpent’s about to surface, though, that’s when you gather the troops and follow the secret path to Valhalla. It’s a mobilisation point. Once you’re here, the next stop is the serpent’s pit — the source of the eitr.’
‘Novaya Zemlya,’ Kagan said. ‘Or… the other place. We have to find it — before Hoyt and Berkeley do.’
‘We’ve got to get inside first,’ Eddie pointed out. He looked up at the mound. ‘And we might have to do a lot of digging — this thing’s big, it must be at least forty feet high. We’ll need to find a door.’
Tova stopped. ‘A compass! Does anyone have a compass?’ Phones were produced in unison. ‘Ah, of course. But we should go to the west side of the mound. Which way is it?’
Eddie checked his compass app. ‘Keep going this way around it. Shouldn’t be far.’
‘Why the west side?’ Nina asked.
The Swede set off again, her pace quicker than before. ‘The entrance to Valhalla is supposed to be on the western side, guarded by a wolf.’
‘A wolf, eh?’ said Eddie, suddenly on alert and checking the surrounding forest. ‘Good job I brought the Wildey.’
‘I don’t think it’ll still be on guard after over a thousand years,’ said Nina. She now almost had to jog to keep up with Tova, who had picked up a stick and was scampering along the edge of the barrow, poking at the snow. ‘What are you looking for?’
‘They may have left a marker, even a runestone, just as they did in the Arctic,’ Tova replied. ‘Are we at the west side yet?’
‘Pretty much,’ Eddie answered.
‘Then there could be something that would show the way in. Help me look for it, please.’
The others joined in her search. Nina soon found something under the snow that seemed promising, but a tap with her boot revealed nothing more than a lump of broken wood. Disappointed, she continued around the mound. If Valhalla really was buried beneath it, it could be a very large structure: she guessed the barrow’s total length at close to three hundred feet. If there was no marker, then Eddie would be right — it would require a lot of digging to open it up…
She approached a tree, a small conifer rather than an ash. Its trunk was tilted at an angle, and as she drew closer she saw why: the ground dropped away on its far side, almost as if a trench had been cut into the earthen slope. She reached its edge and looked down into it. The overhanging tree, some of its roots exposed where the unstable soil had slid away, had shielded it from most of the snow.
Even though it was thickly carpeted with ice-crusted dead leaves and partially hidden by scrubby bushes, she could tell that the cutting, with its level floor and steep sides, was not natural.
A dark opening, about five feet high and framed by gnarled ash roots, lurked at its end. Her heart raced. ‘Tova! Over here — I think I’ve found it!’
The group hurried to her. ‘This must be it!’ Tova cried, hopping down on to the frozen detritus. She peered into the opening. ‘There is something back there — it may be a gate!’
‘Whoa, whoa!’ Eddie shouted as she moved to enter. ‘Hold on a minute!’
Tova stopped with a questioning look. ‘What is wrong?’
‘Don’t you remember? It had different names depending on what translation you read. One of them was a gate… and the other was a death-barrier! Don’t just run in there.’
‘I really wouldn’t,’ Nina added. ‘We’ve learned that the hard way. Eddie, you’ve got a flashlight, haven’t you?’
He climbed down into the trench and took a powerful torch from his backpack, then shone it into the hole. The beam revealed dirty, dull grey metal. ‘Looks like lead,’ he said, sweeping the light across its surface. More details appeared. The obstruction was one of a pair of double doors. A rough image of a wolf, head lowered aggressively, had been pounded into the lead. Lines of small holes ran across the barrier at head, stomach and knee height.
‘What are those?’ Kagan asked.
‘I dunno, but I’m not going to poke a finger inside to find out.’ He fixed the torch on a larger vertical slot in one of the doors, then raised it to illuminate its interior. ‘I think they’re made of wood — the lead’s just armour. I can’t see anything on the other side, though. It’s blocked off.’
Nina moved alongside him. ‘You know what would fit into that? The sun compass that was set into the runestone, if you turned it sideways on.’
‘“The two parts together brought, shall alone open the death-gate of Valhalla,”’ said Tova quietly.
‘The compass must be some sort of key. No idea how, but it can’t be a coincidence that it’s the right size. Eddie, let me have the flashlight.’
‘Careful,’ he warned as she took the torch and stepped closer to shine it into the slot. ‘You might set something off.’
‘I’m not going to touch it,’ she assured him, leaning as close as she dared to peer into the opening. As Eddie had said, the barrier was made of fire-hardened logs behind the lead sheathing. But there was more lead inside, plates of the dull metal on each side of the slot. The temptation was strong to prod one to see if it moved, but she resisted. ‘I think there’s a mechanism, but I don’t—’
She was interrupted by Kagan’s bark of ‘Quiet!’ The Russian turned, expression intense. ‘I can hear something. I think it is a plane!’
The others froze, listening. The snow-cloaked stillness of the forest surrounded them… then was broken by a harsh mechanical buzz.
Distant — but getting closer.
‘It’s not a plane,’ Nina whispered, trying to pinpoint its origin. ‘It’s too low.’
‘It’s coming from the river,’ said Eddie grimly. The hearing loss he had sustained from years of gunfire and explosions had affected his sensitivity to higher-frequency sounds, but the droning noise was all too clear. He jumped out of the trench and ran back up the slope towards the waterfall. ‘Come on!’
Nina and Tova followed, Kagan loping along as quickly as he could. The group reached the top of the cliff and looked back at the frozen river.
Several vehicles were racing along it.
Nina didn’t need binoculars to know who was in them. ‘It’s Berkeley and Hoyt,’ she gasped. ‘They’ve found us.’
25
Tova stared at the convoy in dismay. ‘It — it might not be them,’ she said, with very little conviction.
‘No, it’s got to be,’ Eddie growled. He counted seven vehicles: two snowmobiles in the lead, followed by a trio of large 4x4s, and another pair that took him a moment to identify as icerunners — two-seaters resembling steroidal bobsleds, driven by noisy pusher propellers on their tails. ‘Nobody else’d come out here in force like that.’
‘Damn you, Logan,’ Nina snarled. Even if the off-roaders only had four occupants each, that still meant they were facing at least eighteen people.
They watched as the vehicles headed for the ravine. Rather than halt so their passengers could reach the rock bridge on foot, however, they continued on through the narrow valley, the roar of engines echoing from its sides.