Olaf’s hands touched the object and he found the surface cold and smooth. For the briefest of instants he felt his heart miss a beat—but he continued on. He attempted to lift the orb but found it too heavy for his expedition-weary arms.
“I’ll need help,” Olaf said.
“You,” Eric said, motioning to another man with his staff.
Gro the Slayer, a taller man with light yellow hair and pale blue eyes, took three steps forward and grabbed one side of the orb. Both men used their back muscles and lifted the orb to hip level, then stared at Eric.
“Make a sling from the tusked one’s skin,” Eric pronounced. “We will take it back to the cave and build a shrine.”
Without another word, Eric set off across the snow, leaving the others to tend to the discovery. Two hours later the orb was safely inside the cave. Eric immediately began planning an elaborate enclosure for the object he now believed had come directly from the gods in the heavens above.
ERIC LEFT OLAF and Gro to guard the heavenly body while he returned to the settlement on the coast for more men and material. Once there, he learned that a son had been born to his wife in his absence. He named him Leif in honor of the spring season, then left him with his mother to raise. With eighty more men and tools to excavate the cavern where the orb was hidden, he set off north toward the distant mountain. Summer was near and the sun was visible around the clock.
GRO THE SLAYER turned on his pelt bed then spat some loose fur from his mouth.
Rubbing his hand across the bearskin, he watched in surprise as the fur balled up in his palm. Then he stared at the orb in the dancing light of a torch placed in the wall.
“Olaf,” he said to the teenager sleeping a short distance away, “it is time to rise and face the day.”
Olaf rolled over and stared toward Gro. His eyes were red and bloodshot and his skin blotchy and flaking. He coughed lightly, sat upright and stared at Gro through the dim light. Gro’s hair had been shedding and his color was all wrong.
“Gro,” Olaf said, “your nose.”
Gro raised the back of his hand to his nose and saw the red of blood. More and more often he had found himself with a bloody nose. He reached down and tugged on a painful tooth. It came out in his fingers. He tossed it aside and rose to his feet.
“I’ll cook the berries,” he said.
Stirring the fire, he added a few sticks from their dwindling supply then retrieved a sealskin bag containing the red berries they boiled to make a bitter morning drink. Walking outside the cave, he filled a dented iron pot with water from the stream of a nearby melting glacier, then stared at the marks scratched on the wall outside the cave.
Two or three more marks and Eric the Red was due to return.
By the time Gro returned inside the cave, Olaf was standing, dressed in his lightweight leather pants with his shirt laid on a rock nearby. He was scratching his back with a stick, and the skin was flickering to the ground like the first light snow of a new winter season. Once the itching had subsided he slid his leather shirt over his head.
“Something is amiss,” Olaf said. “Both of us are becoming sicker as each day passes.”
“Maybe it is the foul air inside this cave,” Gro said quietly, placing the pot on the fire.
“I think it is that,” Olaf said, pointing to the orb. “I think it is possessed.”
“We could move outside the cave,” Gro said, “and erect a tent for living.”
“Eric ordered us to stay inside the cave. I fear if he returns and finds us outside we will feel his wrath.”
“I looked at the marks,” Gro said. “He is due to return in three sleeps—no more.”
“We could take turns watching for his return,” Olaf said quietly, “then hurry back inside before he catches us.”
Gro stirred the berries in the boiling water. “Sudden death or slow sickness—I think it best we avoid what we know will happen for what might or might not.”
“A few more days,” Olaf said.
“A few more days,” Gro said as he placed an iron dipper into the pot. He filled a pair of iron bowls with the berry liquid and handed one to Olaf.
FOUR MARKS ON the entrance of the cave later, Eric the Red returned.
“You have the racking cough,” he said as soon as he saw the condition of the men. “I do not want you to infect the others. Return to the settlement but take up residence in the log house to the north.”
Olaf and Gro set off to the south the following morning—but they never reached home.
Olaf went first, his weakened heart simply giving out three days after the start of the journey. Gro didn’t fare much better, and when he could walk no more he made camp. The furry beasts came soon after. What wasn’t consumed immediately was spread about by the carnivores until it was as if Gro had never existed at all.
AFTER WATCHING HIS two men disappear into the distance, Eric gathered the miners, engineers and laborers he had brought from the settlement. He cleared a spot in the dust on the floor of the cave and began sketching his plans with a stick.
The plans were ambitious, but a gift from heaven should not be treated lightly.
That day the first parties began to map out the cave. In time it would be learned that the cave stretched nearly a mile into the mountain and the temperature increased as the cavern ran downward. A large pool with freshwater was located deep inside, with stalactites descending from the ceiling and stalagmites rising from the floor.
Groups were sent to the coast to locate long poles of driftwood to construct a series of ladders up and down the passages, while others carved steps into the rock. Intricate doors were fashioned from slabs of rock that pivoted on balanced hinges to hide the object from others who might seek her power. Runic carvings and statues were hewn from the rock, and light was reflected from the few openings where fresh air entered the cave. Eric supervised the work from the settlement on the coast. He visited the site rarely, letting the vision in his mind be his guide.
Men came, worked, became sick and died, only to be replaced by others.
By the time the cavern was finished, Eric the Red had decimated his population base and the settlement would never recover. Only once did his son, Leif, see the glorious monument.
Eric ordered the entrance sealed, and the object was left for those yet to come.
PART ONE
1
LIEUTENANT CHRIS HUNTrarely talked about his past, but the men he served with had gathered a few clues from his demeanor. The first was that Hunt had not grown up in some backwoods hillbilly haven and used the army to see the world. He was from Southern California. And, if pressed, Hunt would volunteer he was raised in the Los Angeles area,not wanting to disclose that he grew up in Beverly Hills. The second thing the men noticed was that Hunt was a natural leader—he was neither patronizing nor put on an air of superiority, but neither did he try to hide the fact that he was competent and smart.
The third thing the men found out today.
A chill wind was blowing down from the mountains into the Afghanistan valley where the platoon under Hunt’s command was breaking camp. Hunt and three other soldiers were wrestling with a tent they were folding for storage. While the men were bringing the ends together longways, Sergeant Tom Agnes decided to ask about the rumor he had heard. Hunt handed him the side of the tent so Agnes could fold it into halves.
“Sir,” Agnes said, “rumor has it you graduated from Yale University—that true?”