I lay, hands up behind my head, palms flat, pushing. Nothing. My feet were on something solid. I brought my knees a little way up, hard up against the roof of the shaft until I felt them puncture and bleed to try and shove against the obstruction—and found nothing beneath my feet.
I blinked away sweat and gasped and tried to think. It bent. Of course it did. It turned from an angled shaft to a straight one.
I wriggled, legs lowered, felt them slide down and was just sighing with relief when I realised that if it angled down it was a sheer drop. At which I shot forward, ripping the skin from the palms of my hands, straight down, crashing into something that seemed soft, though the hard edges of it cracked my head and an already battered elbow.
There was a choking dust, too. I couldn't breathe; it was smothering me. I thrashed, then lost the last of my courage and, gibbering and choking, floundered out of what I thought was a bed and tumbled, this time on to something hard.
I saw light then, but it was inside my head, and when I eventually groaned upright and felt the place that hurt, it came away sticky. But I was breathing, though I could taste the swirling dust still.
I hauled myself together, along a ladder, it seemed. The torch was still attached, mercifully, and both knife and firestarter were in my boot. Using the firestarter in the dark was no problem and the first brief spark was so bright in that place that I saw, at once, that I was on an ore-track, the 'ladder' being wooden rails.
The next spark, then the next and the dried mosses caught into faint pinprick embers. I blew, slowly and carefully, nurtured it into a flame, fed that to the torch and, suddenly, I had light.
I was in a square chamber. I had fallen maybe ten feet and what I thought had been a bed was the metal-edged forge, the soft landing being the remains of charcoal ash, now settling slowly. I was black with it.
There were barrels and, next to them, a sagging table with dust-shrouded tools. The ore-tracks I lay on stretched ahead and behind, into darkness both ways, half buried in rubble spill. An old shovel lay discarded on them.
I got up, wiping the sweat from my eyes, torch held high. The forge still had the bellows, but when I touched them, they sighed to dust. The anvil, however, was what caught my eye. It was layered with dust and cobwebs, at least as heavy as two Skaptis and rusty. But it had a split in it, deep as the first joint of my finger, across its width.
I spat dust out and moved to the sagging table, passing the barrels and seeing the dark contents spilling from two of them. I bent and sniffed, tasted iron: they were filing and discards. The other had held sand. On the other side of the table was a stone tub which had, presumably, held water for quenching.
The tools seemed to be the sort of thing you would have in a forge: hammers, pincers, mallets, all cobwebbed and rusting. And, on the wall above, something that gleamed.
I moved the torch closer and saw a ledge hewn out of the rock. Above it was a long, single string of runes. I couldn't read them and the thought struck me that it was strange that a Northman could read Latin, but not runes.
In the ledge lay what appeared to be a batten of wood, seemingly oiled and fresh. It had a squarish head, with two bright rivets holding a nub of shining metal, a thumb-length sticking out of the wooden shaft and neatly sheared off. I didn't touch it—after the bellows had fallen apart, I didn't want to touch anything. I was sure the rubble spill had come from the roof; the sheer weight of that place pressed on me.
But it was more than that. There was something about that piece of wood that kept me from touching it, that was strange and Other and I could not work it out.
In the end, though, I picked up a heavy hammer, rusted iron with an iron shaft, too. Having a weapon made me feel better. What good it would do against the fetch of a dead woman was another matter.
I backed away, considering, trying to orientate myself so that, when I chose a route out of that room, I wasn't heading off down into some labyrinth of forgotten and dangerous mineworkings, but towards that barred door.
I was still trying to work it out when the torch guttered and my heart nearly stopped. I looked wildly at it, but it was nowhere near burned down. I held it up; a breeze caressed it and I cursed myself for a ninny and followed where the breeze was coming from.
The door, when I finally saw it, was almost an anti-climax. The bar was stiff and I had to force it up with the hammer until it finally toppled out. Then I shoved, heard shouts, saw a sliver of light and then fingers curling round the exposed edge of the door.
With a wrench and a shower of dust, it racked open, spilling sunlight into the shaft. I shuffled out, my breeks manacling my ankles.
Valknut loomed up, Bodvar and the others behind. They stopped, recoiled, stared. Then Valknut seemed to sag, wrapped his arms round himself and reeled away. Bodvar pointed, his mouth working.
Scared witless, I whirled round in case something was creeping up, but there was nothing. I heard them gasp and wheeze and choke and, with a sudden burst of fury and shame, realised they were helpless with laughter.
It took them ages to recover and my sulking only made it worse. Bodvar actually volunteered to reclimb the hill to get the others because, he said later, he'd have burst from laughing.
Valknut later admitted he'd thought it was a black dwarf stumping out to tell them all to piss off, his hammer at the ready, and had nearly wet himself with terror. The relief when he saw who it was made him laugh all the more.
I saw the funny side. Eventually. The door opens and there is a boy, naked but for his boots, his breeks tangles round his ankles, black with charcoal dust, streaked white with sweat runnels and blood . . . I would have hooted, too.
I was still like that an hour later––though my breeks were up and the sun a lot less warm, so that I was shivering and goose-bumped. I needed water to wash, but there was none spare for that, so I stayed black and gave everyone a fresh laugh.
Einar nodded appreciatively, as if he knew what I had done. Ordinarily I would have swelled with proud delight at this, but there was too much doom about Einar now for me to hold him in such esteem.
More torches were lit and I led them, less four to guard the open door, back to the forge room, Hild staggering at my side. Martin kept darting eagerly ahead, just like the dog Einar had made him, tangling his leash and making his keeper, Skapti, curse.
We crept in and I showed them what I had found: the forge, the bellows, the barrels and the table.
Both Illugi Godi and Martin the monk dropped to their knees, to the astonishment of all––what could have made that pair worship together? They, too, were astonished, not realising what the other had seen.
`The spear,' Martin breathed reverently. 'The spear . . .' He couldn't say anything else, just sat with his hands clasped and prayed.
`That?' queried Ketil Crow. 'There's only a shaft.'
Ìt is—was—a Roman spear,' Martin said, his voice filled with awe, then he bowed his head and actually sobbed. 'But the pagan devils have removed the long metal point, steeped in the blood of Christ. May God punish them all.'
Ketil Crow, with a scornful look at the weeping monk, stepped forward, making to pluck the spear-shaft from its ledge. Illugi Godi's voice was booming loud when he roared: 'Stay!' He pointed to the rune line. À
runespell. A new one. A new runespell.'
That stunned us all. Valknut dropped to his knees and bowed his head at the enormity of it.
There were few runespells. Odin himself, who had hung nine days on the World Tree, had only ever learned eighteen, as Illugi now reminded us.
Ànd had a spear thrust into his side, too,' Pinleg growled pointedly to Martin. 'But at least he got Knowledge out of it.'