Page 7 of Odin

While the pizza was cooking, she made herself a coffee and jotted down some notes for the media release she intended to draft today.

The body had been found at the same site as that tunic Nik Fridolfsen found last year. This time, it was one of the Harald Medal winners who'd made the discovery. She thought Karl had said her name was Lauren, but it had been hard to make out. She'd have to look that up. He'd said something about a Viking weapon they'd found, too, which might have belonged to the ice mummy. Then finish up with some sort of statement wondering what stories the mummy might tell if he could talk, but with all the fancy equipment here in the lab, maybe he'll still be able to yield some interesting stories about his life and death, a thousand years ago.

She still had a few minutes, so she brought her laptop back to the cafeteria and started writing while she ate her pizza. By the time she was done – including adding Jorunn's name to the article, not Lauren – the last couple of pizza slices were as cold as the snow outside, so she stuck them in the microwave to reheat while the emailed her press release to the department's PR officer, back at the main campus.

Freyja wasn't the only one working on the weekend – Ingrid emailed back, saying she'd forwarded the press release to all the local media companies, and she'd come up on Monday with one of the university photographers to take some pictures. Oh, and the police would be coming, too. Nothing to worry about – just standard procedure when a human body was found.

Would that be convenient?

Freyja's heart sank into her slippers. The last time she'd had to talk to police about a body, she'd become the headline in the following day's newspaper. This time...

Freyja swallowed. Maybe having pizza for breakfast hadn't been the best idea after all.

No, she swore to herself. This time would be different. This body was supposed to be here. The discovery of the century, Karl had said, and she'd believed him. Nothing would go wrong this time.

She'd run standard scans on Monday morning, and by the time the police arrived, she'd have concrete evidence to prove she hadn't been anywhere near the man when he died. Hadn't even been born.

Karl said the mummy was a Viking, and his hunches were usually right. He'd hired her to do his forensic work, despite knowing all about her background. In fact, he'd hired her because of it. So if he trusted her with his greatest discovery...she trusted him to know what he'd discovered.

Something the police couldn't possibly arrest her for.

Because this body was exactly where it was supposed to be right now, and nothing untoward was going to happen to it.

NINE

Odin had never seen a longhouse like it. Everything was made of stone and metal, with hardly any wood and no straw to be seen. Not even on the floors!

No signs of life, either. No livestock and only two people – himself, and the lady who'd taken him to her bed last night. A lady who had no servants, no thralls...yet she commanded a hall so huge it would have awed even Jarl Erik.

She had no need for him to hunt, for she had cold storage rooms filled with foodstuffs that ranged from jars full of fish through to rare delicacies he'd never heard of. Enough to feed an army.

She owned more clothing than most people wore in a year, folded into a chest on wheels, yet there was an entire store room filled with more – most of it made to fit men of his size. Though he did not feel the cold, after whatever spells Erik's witch had worked on him, it was unseemly to wander around without clothing, so he took one of the stoutly woven tunics from the store room, only to discover that the tunic had been sewn to a pair of equally stout trousers.

He had to climb into the whole ensemble from the waist, but it fit surprisingly well – like it had been made for a man of his stature. A man named OLAF, or who served someone by that name, if the letters on the breast of the strange tunic were to be believed.

There were countless boots, too, made of a substance he took for thick, hardened leather, but he had never seen a hide like this before – all fastened together in one piece, with no stitching. It beggared belief, even as he held one in his hand. Stranger still, they were made to the shape of his right foot and his left, so they fitted perfectly when he put them on.

She had no need for food or hides, and water flowed from spouts throughout the building, in a most miraculous manner. He'd heard tales of such things happening in cities far to the south, but to see it here, with his own eyes...this land he'd awoken in was wondrous indeed.

His lady had supplies enough to last her through this winter, and the next, but there was one thing she lacked: a man to protect her, and her property.

Despite his failures in the past, protection he could provide.

Except in all her wealth, something else was lacking: weapons. In all the chambers in her huge longhouse, he could not find so much as an axe for chopping wood, or a spear for catching fish. Most strange. Unless the warriors she intended to clothe and feed brought their own weapons with them...

Odin shook his head as he continued his survey of her domain.

She had several large stillrooms, with metal tables and shelves full of glass bottles filled with liquids he could not identify, even when he read the labels. Not a leaf or a blossom in sight, either, which was strange, though it might be because it was winter. He was no alewife or healer, so he could not be sure.

Tucked between the stillrooms was a scriptorium, with shelves of books, but no scribe. One book lay on the vacant desk. The words on the cover read:

ICELAB MAINTENANCE MANUAL

Odin picked it up and thumbed through the pages. The words were far less ornate than the books he'd seen before, and much easier to read as a result. There were pictures, too, but these appeared to be sketches of real things within the building, like the box on the wall with the mysteriously blinking red light. Apparently, if he pressed several of the buttons, the box would be armed.

Was this why he'd found no weapons? Were the boxes weapons? Perhaps magically firing arrows or poison or releasing a plague of vipers or...

No, he would not play with things he did not yet understand. First, he would complete his survey of her domain. Then, he would read the book. Then, when he knew all he could know about this place, then he would arm what defences she had, so that he might better protect her.

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