Page 19 of Thor

God, she needed to get her head checked out. Good thing she was headed for civilisation. If she'd imagined a night like last night while sharing a tent with Jorunn, she wouldn't have known where to look this morning. Not to mention Jorunn would likely have teased her mercilessly, before asking for details about her hot dream guy.

"How long until we reach town?" Sibyl asked Jakop, as he strapped her swag back onto a packhorse.

"If the worst of the weather has blown over, and the snow stays on the other side of the mountains, we should have you back at the university labs before sundown," Jakop said.

Sibyl breathed a sigh of relief. "So we won't be freezing our butts off in tents again tonight?"

Jakop frowned. "If you were cold, you should have said something. I have extra blankets in one of the saddlebags."

Now he told her. "I was fine," she said.

He nodded. "There's enough hot water for one more cup of coffee, if you want it before we go."

Even if she was crazy, she wasn't silly enough to turn down a hot drink, so Sibyl downed her coffee while Jakop finished loading the horses.

Today her head wasn't anywhere near as painful as yesterday, and she even managed to dismount and walk some of the way beside her horse, as the narrow track widened enough to allow it.

They'd left the bone-chilling wind on the other side of the mountain, so the final leg back to the lab seemed almost balmy compared to yesterday. Sibyl began to wonder if she'd dreamed the cold, too.

When they arrived at the university's converted warehouse that doubled as both laboratory and accommodation facilities, Sibyl helped Jakop carry the boxes of artefacts into the lab. It was too early in the season for the lab manager to be in residence – she spent most of the academic year at the main university campus, and only came up here later in the summer, Lara had said – so Sibyl would be the sole university staff member here. That meant not having to share any of the lab equipment, plus having her pick of the rooms, instead of being stuck in the overflow bunkroom like she had when she'd first arrived.

Food wouldn't be a problem, either, Lara had told her. The cafeteria had a massive walk in fridge and freezer, full of frozen meals in case the team had to evacuate because of bad weather. Jorunn had teased her that she'd better get used to eating pickled herring, just like the Vikings, because that's what most of the supplies were, but a quick peek in the freezer told Sibyl that while the fridge might have a plentiful supply of fish, the freezer had a much wider selection. Sibyl had her eye on a frozen pizza, if she could work out how to turn the oven on in the adjoining ultra-modern kitchen.

Maybe she should have worked a few more shifts in Tacey's café back home – then she'd know how to use all that equipment. Then again, Tacey's oven had been bought from a decommissioned bakery, and it showed, while this thing wouldn't have looked out of place on the International Space Station.

"I'll just finish unloading, and then I'll take the donkeys home. They've earned a stay in the stable. I'll call you when we head back up the mountain, so you can return with us," Jakop said.

Reluctantly, Sibyl put the pizza back in the freezer. "I should help with that." She followed Jakop outside, to where he was already leading the horses...no, wait, he'd said they were donkeys...to an outbuilding on the edge of the compound.

He undid the straps on a plastic barrel and carefully carried it into the shed.

"What's in those, and why aren't they going into the lab with everything else?" Sibyl asked.

"These are the refuse capsules, and you don't want them in your nice, clean laboratory. When we have a full truckload, I call the waste facility to come and pick them up. You'll want them well away from the main building, in case any of them leaks."

Sibyl stared at the barrels Jakop was rapidly lining up along the wall. "And by refuse, you mean...?"

"Any waste from the expedition. You're camping in a national park, and the rules are that you must carry all waste out with you. Food scraps and packaging from the kitchen, empty bottles, plus the tanks from the bathroom."

Sibyl backed away. "Which ones are the toilet tanks?" Not that she wanted to get near any of them, but...

Jakop laughed. "The heavy ones that I'm handling with the most care. Don't worry. They froze solid before I loaded them, and they're still mostly frozen. It's not until we get some really warm weather and it all starts to melt that you might have a problem. Or I will, for you'll be back in the camp, digging up history, before you know it."

She sure hoped so.

"Anyway, I won't take any more of your time. See you in a week or two, when I'm due to do another supply run. Call me if you need anything," he said.

She waved goodbye and headed back inside. Pizza was calling, followed by Thor's hammer.

TWENTY-THREE

Sibyl set her laptop up on a table in the cafeteria, and was deep in a journal database search for suitable tests to perform on medieval weapons when the timer for the pizza went off.

Most of the non-destructive testing involved x-ray imaging of some sort or another, though for some of the more detailed tests, she'd need specialist equipment only found in a large hospital or industrial testing facility. Something to ask Karl or the laboratory manager about when they were all in the lab together again, Sibyl decided.

She'd also managed to book a doctor's appointment at the local medical centre, but as the earliest they'd had available was still several days away, she didn't need to worry about that yet.

She reached for another slice of pizza, only to realise she'd polished off the whole plate. Huh. She couldn't remember the last time she'd eaten a whole pizza. Back home, she'd always had a few slices leftover for breakfast the next day.

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