Daniel handed Swi?gar’s shield back to him as Freya quickly wiped as much of the blood as she could from her face. It was thick and brown and sticky. She wiped her hands on the cold wall, trying not to touch her school clothes.
They all advanced up the tunnel to where Ecgbryt’s victims lay in a mangled heap. Using the blade of his axe, he nudged the bodies apart from each other. “Yfelgopes,” Ecgbryt said, “of a kind-yet I have never seen a sort as twisted before.”
In the light of the torch, they could see the creatures clearer. Their skin was pale, almost milky white. Dark, ghastly blue veins showed through the thin skin. All were mostly naked, but their groins and upper legs were covered with rough black skins tied together with a tough, stringy material that looked like animal hide or maybe dried entrails. Parts of the creatures’ torsos were tattooed or stained, but not with patterns or designs. Blotches and irregular stripes were simply dyed a deep solid black or brown. Freya took a few steps backwards and looked away, disgusted.
“Did you say ifel-gop-es?” Daniel asked.
“It is a name we give to all the twisted ones who live in the deep underground,” Swi?gar said. “But I’ve never seen one with such a face.”
The faces were terrifying. Daniel shivered as he leaned forward for a closer view of one of the corpses. Its eyes were very far apart and its nose was snubbed. Its gaping mouth showed small, needlelike teeth.
“But . . . they’re human, aren’t they?” Freya asked, almost surprised. “They acted like animals, but . . .”
“Aye, they’re human,” Ecgbryt answered her. “But nearly as foul as a man can go. Nearly. Look at this.” He tapped his axe against the yfelgop’s dead hand. The thing was wearing some sort of glove made of bone, the fingers of which protruded beyond its own. The ends had been filed sharp. “A strange weapon,” Ecgbryt commented.
“Aye,” agreed Swi?gar. “Bring a head,” he said after a moment’s pause. “And a hand,” he added finally.
Ecgbryt raised a corpse by its thin hair and began chopping at it. “It’s unhappy work for my axe, though-and what I wouldn’t give for something to wipe my blade against.”
Freya stood hunched over, suddenly feeling very cold and very, very afraid. “Daniel,” she said in a whisper. “What’s going on?”
Daniel watched as the knights heaped the dead bodies on top of each other and cleaned their weapons. He could feel his blood pump through his body, charged, as if every cell was filled with electricity. His head spun as a wave of euphoria washed over him.
He had never felt this way in his real life. They had been attacked, and the knights, because of their weapons and skill, had saved them all and come away without a scratch.
“I don’t know what’s going on,” he said. “But I’m getting one of those swords.”
2
They walked for some time, tense and wary, alert to the slightest sound that might give away the presence of something following them. Swi?gar walked in front this time, his spear at the ready and torch held high. Ecgbryt walked behind them, which Freya thought just as well since even thinking of the hideous head and ugly dangling hand tied to Ecgbryt’s belt made her stomach turn over.
“Where are we going again?” Daniel asked.
“Ni?ergeard,” Ecgbryt answered in a voice strong with pride. “It is a vast holding beneath the skin of the earth. Its boundaries are not marked, and it sits upon the gates of three hidden worlds. It is the grandest of all earthly cities, yet known to only a few. Its dark spires are seen only by those who are great and dream of a larger greatness.”
“It’s an underground kingdom?” Daniel asked with awe.
“It would be,” the knight behind him replied, “but there is no king or queen to rule it. It is governed by Modwyn the Fair and overseen by Ealdstan the Long-Lived.”
“Who are they?”
“Modwyn is Ni?ergeard’s ward-able and cunning. Ealdstan is very old and very wise-the oldest and the wisest, in fact. By now he would be almost seventeen hundred years old, I suppose. It was he who laid us to rest, as he did the others.”
“Others?” Daniel repeated, his voice rising. “There are more like you?”
“Aye. There are sleeping knights tucked away up and down the isle. A mighty force, all lying in wait.”
“Waiting for what?” Daniel asked.
Ecgbryt considered the question for a moment. “For the greatest battle in history. More than that, I cannot say. Ealdstan may wish to tell you more.”
“Ealdstan,” Freya repeated the name to herself.
“Now,” said Swi?gar. “We have told you much about our world, and now we would know about yours. What is life like on the surface in this century?”
Freya glanced at Daniel, unsure how to respond. “It’s hard to say. We don’t really have anything to compare it to.”
“It’s pretty busy,” Daniel said. “At least, that’s what everyone says about it. There’s a lot of bustle and hurrying everywhere.”
“Busy is good,” said Ecgbryt. “Idleness is the cause of a great many ills, especially in great ones and rulers.”
“I don’t think that’s a problem,” said Freya. “The government is full of people who work really hard.”
“What do you mean by ‘hurrying’?” Swi?gar asked.
“Well, lots of people are always going places. Like, to work, to the stores to buy things, to meet people . . . that kind of thing.
They’re always, you know, zipping around in cars and buses.”
“‘Cars’?”
Daniel felt awkward. He’d watched shows on TV and read in stories about people trying to explain modern life to aliens or time travelers or primitive savages or people like that, but he never thought that he’d actually have to do it himself. “Um . . . cars are like carts that move without horses. See, you put this sort of fuel into a machine that’s inside of it and, sort of, set fire to it-the fuel-and that makes it go. Buses are like that too, uh, but just bigger.”
He didn’t know what the knights would make of this explanation, but they seemed to accept it without any further questions.
He wondered if he should try to explain airplanes as well. He decided that might be too complicated.
“So traveling is easier, then?”
“Yes,” said Daniel. “Much easier. You can go anywhere in the world that you want to. Some ways of traveling are so fast that you can get clear to the other side of the world in a day. People have been everywhere in the world-including the highest mountain and the hottest desert. There’s nowhere in the world that hasn’t been discovered.” He paused again and wondered if he should tell them about people landing on the moon. That was probably too much.
“People can go anywhere,” Swi?gar said. “But are they where they want to be?”
“I suppose so,” said Freya. “I think most of them are, yes.”
“A lot of them aren’t, though,” Daniel said glumly.
“Swa swa,” said Swi?gar. “So, people can move about quickly. What else is new?”
Freya remembered a class project she had prepared about modern life. “There’s communication too,” she said. “We have phones and e-mail on computers, which means that you can talk to anyone anywhere in the world anytime you want to.”
“That truly is marvelous,” said Swi?gar, and Ecgbryt made an admiring noise. “What do people say when they talk across the world?”
“Um . . . not much, I suppose. But it means that you can keep in touch with your loved ones wherever they are. You can speak to them, even see them at the same time.”
“Ah, what a wonder that is. I would dearly love to see such a thing.”
“There’s information too,” said Freya. “We have machines so that you can find out about any book ever written or any person living or how things work or what happened in history -anything!”
“I remember,” said Ecgbryt, “that King ?lfred considered knowledge a valuable gift-one which he never denied any he thought worthy of it . . . That said, I can’t recall a time he refused teaching to anyone who asked it from him.”