They came to a section where the roots were so dense they were forced to crawl again. The going was tough and filthy, but Drake put elbow before elbow, knee before knee, and encouraged the others to follow. When, at one point, even persuasion failed for Ben, Drake turned to bullying.
“At least the temperature’s dropping,” Kennedy muttered. “We must be going down.”
Drake resisted the standard soldierly reply, his eye suddenly caught by something revealed in the light of his torch.
“Look at that.”
Runes, carved into the wall. Odd symbols that reminded Drake of those that decorated Odin’s Shield. Ben’s choked voice echoed up the passage.
“Nordic runes. Good omen.”
Drake shone his light away from them with regret. If only they could read them. The SAS, he thought briefly, would have better resources. Maybe it was time to bring them in.
Another fifty feet, and the sweat poured off him. He could hear Kennedy breathing heavily and cursing that she’d worn her best pant-suit. He heard nothing from Ben at all.
“You ok, Ben? Got your hair tangled on a root?”
“Ha bloody ha. Keep going, you tosser.”
Drake continued crawling through the dirt. “One thing that worries me,” he panted between breaths, “is that ‘many traps’ thing. The Egyptians used to build traps, elaborate ones, to protect their treasures. Why not the Norsemen?”
“Can’t imagine a Viking thinking too hard over a trap,” Kennedy puffed back.
“Dunno,” Ben shouted along the line. “But the Vikings had great thinkers too, you know. Just like the Greeks and the Romans. They weren’t all barbarians.”
A few turns, and the passage started to widen. Another ten feet, and the roof vanished above them. At this point they stretched and took a breather. Drake’s torch picked out the passageway ahead. When he shone it on Kennedy and Ben he laughed.
“Shit, you two look like you’ve just risen from the grave!”
“And I guess you’re used to this crap?” Kennedy waved an arm. “Being SAS and all?”
Not SAS, Drake couldn’t shake the poisoned words. “Used to be.” He said, and walked ahead more quickly now.
Another abrupt turn and Drake felt a breeze on his face. A sense of vertigo hit him like an unexpected clap of thunder, and it was a second before he realised he was standing on a ledge, a cavernous drop below him.
An unbelievable sight greeted his eyes.
He stopped so suddenly that both Kennedy and Ben walked into him. Then, they too, beheld the sight.
“OMFG.” Ben spelled out the title of the Wall of Sleep’s signature track.
The World Tree stood before them in all its glory. It never had been above ground. The tree was inverted, its solid roots delved into the mountain of earth above them, held fast by age and surrounding rock formations, its branches golden brown, its leaves a perennial green, its trunk stretching a hundred feet down into the depths of a gargantuan pit.
Their path became a narrow staircase, cut into the rock walls.
“Traps,” Ben breathed. “Don’t forget the traps.”
“Screw the traps,” Kennedy voiced Drake’s very thought. “Where’s Goddamn light coming from?”
Ben looked from side to side. “It’s orange.”
“Glow sticks,” Drake said. “Christ. This place has been prepped.”
In his SAS days they would send men in to prepare an area such as this; a team to assess the danger and neutralize or catalogue it before returning to base.
“We don’t have long,” he said. His faith in Kennedy had just risen. “Come on.”
They descended worn and crumbling steps, the sudden drop always to their right. Ten feet down, and the staircase started to slope sharply. Drake stopped as a three foot gap opened up. Nothing spectacular, but enough to give him pause — because the yawning drop below became all the more apparent.
“Shit.”
He jumped. The rock staircase was about three foot wide, easy at play, terrifying when any misstep meant certain death.
He landed true and turned immediately, sensing Ben would be on the verge of tears. “Don’t worry,” he ignored Kennedy and concentrated on his friend. “Trust me, Ben. Ben. I will catch you.”
He saw the faith in Ben’s eyes. The absolute, child-like trust. It was time to earn it again, and when Ben jumped, then tottered, Drake steadied him with a hand on the elbow.
Drake winked. “Easy, eh?”
Kennedy jumped. Drake watched closely whilst pretending not to. She landed with no problem, saw his concern and frowned.
“It’s three feet, Drake. Not the Grand Canyon.”
Drake winked at Ben. “Ready, mate?”
Twenty feet more and the next gap in the staircase was wider — this time thirty feet, and spanned by a thick wooden plank that rocked as Drake walked it. Kennedy followed, and then poor Ben, compelled by Drake to keep his eyes up, to look ahead and not down, to study his destination and not his feet. The young man was shaking by the time he reached solid ground, and Drake demanded a brief break.
As they paused, Drake saw that the World Tree had spread so wide here that its thick limbs almost touched the staircase. Ben reached out reverently to stroke a limb that shivered at his touch.
“This is… this is mind-boggling,” he breathed.
Kennedy used the time to retie her hair and study the entrance above them. “So far, all clear.” she said. “I gotta say, on current form it sure as hell ain’t the Germans who prepped this place. They woulda ransacked it and burned it to the ground with flame-throwers.”
A few more gaps and they had descended fifty feet, almost halfway. Drake finally allowed himself to think that the old Vikings weren’t the equal of the Egyptians after all, and gaps were the best they could do, when he stepped on a rock stair that was in fact a cleverly fashioned section of hemp and twine and pigment. He fell, saw the endless drop, and caught himself by the fingertips.
Kennedy hauled him up. “Ass swaying in the breeze, SAS man?”
He scrambled back on to solid ground and flexed his bruised fingers. “Thanks.”
They proceeded more carefully, now more than halfway down. Beyond the empty expanse to their right the massive tree stood in perpetuity, untouched by breeze and sunlight, a forgotten wonder of olden days.
They passed more and more Viking symbols. Ben guessed the odd one. “It’s like a primordial wall of graffiti,” he said. “People just carving their names and leaving messages — early versions of ‘John was ‘ere!’”
“The cavern’s makers, maybe,” Kennedy said.
Drake tested another step, clinging to the cold rock-wall, and a deep grinding roar echoed across the cavern. A river of rubble fell from above.
“Run!” Drake cried. “Now!”
They pelted down the staircase, heedless of other traps. A gigantic boulder fell from above with a mighty roar, chipping off more ancient stones as it clattered down. Drake covered Ben’s body with his own as the boulder smashed through the staircase where they had stood, taking about twenty feet of precious steps with it.
Kennedy flicked stone chips off her shoulder, and regarded Drake with a dry smile. “Thanks.”
“Hey, I knew the woman who saved the SAS guy’s ass could outrun a mere boulder.”
“Funny, man. So funny.”
But it wasn’t over yet. There was a sharp twang and a thin but solid length of twine snapped across the step that separated Ben and Kennedy.
“Fuuuck!” Kennedy shouted. The length of twine had shot out with so much force it could easily have separated her ankle from the rest of her body.