I wanted to look at it, but dared not take the boot off, or remove the bindings, for I knew it would swell like a dead sheep's belly and that would be that. Instead, I stood in the stream and felt the cool water soak into my boot and wash round the throb of my foot.
A bird whirred and insects hummed as we followed the stream, straight towards what appeared to be a vertical wall of exposed rock. The stream curved round and disappeared and I heard the distant splash of water from a fall. The heat was crippling and there was no air at all, for all we were near water, just a strange stillness. Even the plagues of insects had vanished.
Steinthor and Bagnose appeared as we came up, so nonchalant that we all relaxed, for they swaggered out openly, as if there was no danger.
`They went in about two hours ago,' Steinthor said, wiping his streaming face with a cuff. 'They camped at the foot of those steps last night and spent most of the morning cutting what tall trees they could find to make a bridge at the top. Then they went up.'
We all saw the steps, rough-cut in a half-spiral up one side of the gulley. I started for it and something smacked wetly on my bare forearm. I rubbed it absently, then noticed it was water, but gritty.
I looked up at a strange, brass-coloured sky and wished my father with us, for he knew weather better than anyone and this was nothing I had seen before. I have experienced it twice since, trading down the Black Sea and again in Serkland.
Einar left a dozen men at his back and led the rest of us up the steps. At the top, with room for only one or two, we found it was an outcrop, round which the stream bent. Below, spilling from the far wall, was where the stream began, in a waterfall, whose spray was wonderfully cooling.
Spanning the gap between the outcrop and a wide ledge was a rickety bridge of warped timbers, the wood Vigfus and his men had been cutting. On the ledge beyond lay a scatter of bones around what appeared to be three or four sapling stumps, emerging out of the rock.
Steinthor grinned at our confusion, for he had crept up this far and worked it out. `Grave robbers from before,' he said, pointing. 'Look—those were spears, weighted to shoot upwards when that area was stepped on. Right up the crease.'
`Traps,' Einar said and the word was passed down the line on the stairs, from head to head like a leaping spark. 'And traps,' he added loudly, to take the sting out of it, 'mean treasure.'
He strode out on to the timber walkway, took three swift steps and was on the ledge, moving cautiously to where the spear-stumps remained. Ketil Crow followed and the next man, the ever-jesting Skarti, paused nervously, eyeing the chasm under the rickety timbers and the unknown dangers of the ledge beyond. The sweat trickled down between the old pox lumps of his face.
We all waited patiently. Since Vigfus's men had all made it, it seemed to me there was little danger left, but there was also no harm in letting someone else go first. When Skarti reached safety, turning with a grin of relief, we all cheered him.
On the ledge, which was broader and wider than it looked from the level of the stream, about another dozen of us congregated; the rest remained on the steps. A wind breathed and sighed up the gulley, rustling the tinder-dry brush, bringing a welcome coolness.
There was an entrance, blocked once by masonry, which now lay in thick chunks. Illugi Godi picked one up, turning it in his hands. It had symbols on it, or the remains of them. There were more symbols, age-worn, on either side and, with surprise, I saw they were truncated Latin—I knew the words Dis Manibus, recognised ala and started to work out the others.
`That big turd with the Dane axe,' Steinthor said, indicating the masonry chunks. 'He can use the blunt end, too.'
I remembered the yellow beard, the grin, the axe, and shivered.
`They call him Boleslav,' Steinthor went on. 'Saxon, I think. Tough, though. Carved his way through this
. . . stuff.'
`Roman,' Illugi Godi said. 'I have heard of this. They make a gruel and plaster it on like daub, but it sets hard as stone.'
`What are the markings?' demanded Einar and winced as a sudden flurry of wind blew dust at us.
Illugi shrugged. 'Warning? Curse? A request to knock? I can hardly even try to work out what is in pieces.'
`Latin,' I offered, running my fingers over the sigils. 'They say this is the tomb of Spurius Dengicus, khan of the Kutriguri. Carried here to be buried under the eye of Rome by his brother, Rome's friend, Ernak.'
`Spurius Dengicus? That's Roman, not Hun,' said Eyjolf, whom everyone called Finnbogi, since he was from those lands.
Illugi, who knew a few things himself, answered: 'They gave him a proper name for his tomb, doing honour as befits his status. But no respectable Roman family would want their name associated with a steppe lord, so the Roman chiefs found a family that had died out, only the name remaining.
`So it is that all adopted Romans are called Spurius,' he finished.
And so it was. Nowadays, of course, anyone who is considered a shifty lot, not quite what he claims to be, is called Spurius in the Great City.
Ànything else we should know?' demanded Einar, with a pointed look at Illugi. Ànything that will actually help us, that is?'
I frowned and traced the worn letters. `There's something about not disturbing his rest,' I offered.
With perfect timing, there came a distant wail from inside the dark opening, a wolf of a sound that set everyone's hackles up. Men backed away; even the ones on the step heard it.
Òdin's arse,' snarled Bagnose suddenly, `what is happening to the sky?'
Most of it seemed to have gone, eaten by a towering wall of darkness. Even as we looked at it, yellow lightning flickered and the wind rushed at us, like the fetid breath of a dragon, lashing us with a stinging rain filled with grit.
`Thor's goats' arses, more like,' shouted Steinthor above the sudden roar of wind. Men yelled and huddled. Those on the lower steps started to go down, those higher up pushed those behind.
`There's no shelter there!' bellowed Einar above the sudden howling swirl of the wind. Ùp here, into the rock.'
They staggered up and Gunnar Raudi, with Ketil Crow, bent to hold the timber frame, frantic—as were we all—that it would topple, or be swept away and leave us stranded up here. Thunder cracked; the yellow heavens roiled and Illugi Godi stood upright, staff in one hand, both arms upraised.
Àll-Father hear us!'
`Move your fucking fat arses!' screamed Ketil Crow as men stumbled up the steps and across the ledge and into the dark opening like a line of frenzied ants.
Àll-Father, hear us. Send your winged ones to bind the wounds of the sky. Ask Thor why he rides his goat chariot over us. Lift us from this field of battle . . .'
A man, caught off-balance by the wind, shrieked his way into the chasm, disappearing beneath the waterfall.
Àll-Father . . .'
`Save it, godi, no one is listening to you,' snarled Einar and spat into the dust and mud-brown sluice of rain. 'Run, if you value your life.'
And I ran, limping, heedless of the pain, into the dark opening of the tomb.
Inside, someone had sparked up a torch, but the band huddled as close together as possible in the half-light of a stone passage, shivering, wet, cold in the sudden chill of stone. There was a taste of old dust and bones in my mouth.
`Well done for the torch,' Einar panted, coming up with Ketil Crow and Gunnar Raudi, the latter hauling the rickety timber bridge after him. We paused, all sweat and gleaming eyes in the dark, as another of those low, mournful moans drifted up from the light at the other end of the passage.