Grendel's Curse

“I am Beowulf,” he declared.

2

It was a long night and a longer morning.

She stayed with the rescuers, helping the weak and wounded. Annja pulled at the broken stones, heaving them aside. She heard cries all around her. She couldn’t stop. She couldn’t allow the horror of the moment to really take root in her mind. Right now people needed her.

Chaos quickly gave way to at least the semblance of order as the paramedics and firemen worked, directing the rescue efforts. To her left three men labored hard, lifting a huge slab of masonry off the legs of a man who wouldn’t be walking again for a very long time, if ever. Shock rendered him silent. The rescue workers talked to him constantly, telling him how well he was doing, telling him to hang in there, telling him to be strong, that he was almost out, but not once telling him that everything would be all right. There was a reason for that. The woman beside him was beyond help. He clung to her hand. He must have known.

Annja moved on to where she could be of more use.

A medic crouched over a man who’s silver hammer on a chain had torn open his throat, giving him a crude tracheotomy.

She recognized Micke’s cameraman. He stood aloof from the destruction, taking it all in with his lens as though the camera gave him the right to separate himself from the dead and the dying, to simply watch and record the tragedy rather than be a part of it. She wondered how he could stand there and do nothing, but she didn’t wonder for very long. He was coping with it the only way he knew how: documenting it. There was no telling what his camera might pick up that they would miss because they were too wrapped up in the immediacy of the moment, unable and unwilling to just take a step back and look.

The worst of it, though, was the smell—that slaughterhouse mix of burned meat and fecal matter that came with death.

So she lost herself in the simple act of trying to help.

Annja was among the last to leave the theater, covered in plaster dust and blood. She must have looked like a ghost emerging from the darkness into the bright sunlight. It could just as easily have been midafternoon as dawn; the sky was blue, without a cloud, the air so fresh in her lungs it stung. They were supposed to be breaking ground in Skalunda in a few hours. There’d be no beauty sleep today.

A stone-jawed policeman came across and started talking to her in rapid-fire Swedish. She didn’t understand a word and just shrugged. “I’m sorry. American?”

He switched to flawless English. “Before you go, we need your contact details so we can be in touch to take a statement.”

“Of course,” Annja said. “I’m staying in a hotel downtown.” She pointed toward the hulking shape of her hotel towering over the skyline. It was impossible to miss.

“If you could give your details to the officer.” He nodded toward an intimidatingly blonde Amazon of a woman with a pistol strapped on her hip and a peaked cap. She was busy taking details from a line of shell-shocked people. Surreally a radio played in the background, a pop song she didn’t know taunting the world to come on and do its worst. She couldn’t help but think it had.

Annja joined the line to give her contact info, and then wandered the empty streets toward her hotel, a lost girl in a strange town. She felt her cell phone vibrate in her jeans pocket. When she took it out she saw she had seventeen missed calls, all of them from the same New York number: Doug Morrell, her producer on Chasing History’s Monsters. Seventeen calls meant he’d obviously seen the news about the explosion at Thorssen’s rally and put two and two together. She answered with a not-quite-breezy, “Doug!”

“Annja! I thought you were dead. Answer your damned phone next time, would you? I’ve been calling and calling. We saw footage of the explosion. Tell me you weren’t there.”

Doug was a decent guy, if young, blunt and not all that interested in life outside of ratings. She liked him as much as it was possible to like a self-obsessed Ivy League charmer like Doug, which in truth was often just enough to get her to agree to things against her better judgment. He knew it and she knew it. And he liked her just enough in return to at least make the lies and manipulations sound plausible. It wasn’t quite a meeting of minds, but in TV terms it was positively synergism.

“Right in the middle of it,” she replied, just how lucky she’d been registering as she said it.

“Are you okay? I mean...stupid question...but you know? Two arms, two legs, no bonus bits or bits missing? Every bad word I’ve ever said, every time I’ve conned you into doing something you didn’t want to do—”

“Don’t go saying anything you’ll regret, Doug. You know, the kind of stuff that can be used in a court of law.” Annja laughed. It was a slightly frazzled laugh. “Because, believe me, I’ll certainly hold it against you.”

“Okay, good point. You sure you’re in one piece?”

“All fingers and all toes in place.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“Okay, I believe you. So, now we’ve got the mild hysteria out of the way—see what happens when you don’t answer your phone?—time for the million-dollar question. Micke had someone in there filming the rally, right?” He paused for a beat, judging her reaction, then added, “Don’t get me wrong. It’s a tragedy.”

“It is.”

“But you have to admit it’d make great television. An episode on the greatest Norse hero of all, a myth that has continued to fascinate us over the centuries, tied in with the assassination attempt on one of the most charismatic politicians of recent times?” She could hear him marveling at the serendipity that had dropped this in his favorite reporter’s lap. “It’s pure television gold. I can see it already, can’t you?”

Ratings.

It was always about ratings with Doug when it came right down to it.

That wasn’t fair, and she knew it. The man who had been terrified when she didn’t answer, that had been the real Doug Morrell; the man who wanted the gory details caught on film, that was the TV producer and they were different beasts. It was only now that Doug was sure she was safe that he let that beast out. It was only natural that he did. “Gold,” she agreed, halfheartedly.

“Anyway, kiddo, you sound bushed. What is it, one, two in the morning?”

She looked at her watch. It was closer to 5:00 a.m. and she could smell the hit of cinnamon in the air from a nearby bakery. The Swedes loved their cinnamon buns; it was as close as they came to a societal addiction.

“Five.”

“You should be in bed. You’re breaking ground tomorrow, right? Don’t want you looking like you’ve gone ten rounds with...well, I was going to try and be clever and name some female boxer, but you get the idea. Beauty sleep. That’s an order.”

“You ever notice you only tell me what to do when there’s an ocean between us, Doug?” Annja laughed. “But just this once I’ll be good. I’m too tired to argue.”

His voice changed. “I’m glad you’re okay, Annja. When you weren’t picking up...”

“I know,” she finished for him. She couldn’t deal with mawkishness at 5:00 a.m., not that she was a big fan of it at any other time of day. She walked the rest of the way to the hotel, noting that it was still bright out, and had been for hours. This whole land of the midnight sun thing was a bit unnerving. In the height of the summer it was dark for no more than three hours a night, and if you went far enough north, to the Kebnekaise massif, you could watch the sun approach the horizon, then just rise again without ever disappearing from sight. As it was, the distinct lack of darkness as far south as Gothenburg was enough to turn a light sleeper into an insomniac and have them climbing up the hotel wall.

An early-morning tram drove by on its way to one of the suburbs. The only passenger had her head resting on the window, still half-asleep. Annja waited for it to rumble off down the street before she crossed the road to the hotel.

The night porter smiled at her as she crossed the marbled foyer and made for the bank of elevators, and her waiting bed. She saw herself in the mirrored elevator doors. It was a wonder he wasn’t reaching for the phone to call for the cops.

* * *

TWO HOURS OF restless sleep later, breakfast skipped, Annja was on-site waiting for Karl Thorssen to grace them with his presence.

There was always something special about that first day on a dig—a sense of anticipation and hope that was almost palpable. Right up until they broke ground, anything was possible.

This was no different.

Beowulf’s barrow.

Was the Geatish king interred here?

What, if anything, would they find down there?

Annja grinned despite herself. She wouldn’t have traded this part of her life for anything.

Usually the locals were fairly dour and uninterested, but this time it was different. This wasn’t just some plot of land where a Roman villa had supposedly stood. This was part of legend. Their legend. Beowulf was more than Gustavus Adolphus, the father of modern warfare; he was their King Arthur. Slayer of dragons.

She couldn’t help but think that whatever they found in the barrow had the power to make or break a part of the nation’s psyche. What if the bones were deformed or stunted? What if they extracted DNA that proved that he wasn’t Swedish at all? She thought of Thorssen driven to apoplexy by the imagined discovery his racially pure hero was nothing of the sort, and smiled. There would be a beautiful irony in that.

Annja shielded her eyes against the sun.

The site was already a hive of activity.

Given the attempt on Karl Thorssen’s life last night, it was hardly surprising the press had turned out in force to cover the ritual breaking of the ground. There were local dignitaries, too, businesspeople who provided financial muscle to Thorssen’s campaign and, giving their teachers the runaround, a group of schoolchildren who seemed to be everywhere at once, grinning and giggling and pretending to be ancient heroes with invisible swords fighting equally invisible dragons. There were half a dozen television presenters speaking to cameras, each offering a version of the same report. How Thorssen had survived the attempt on his life, how the crowd had gathered for this historic event, how Thorssen was writing his own legend and how the upcoming election promised to be a closely contested thing with a groundswell of support for the right-wing politician in the wake of last night’s tragedy.

“Quite a turnout,” Johan Cheander said, his camera on his shoulder and scanning the crowd of faces. She couldn’t see Micke. Johan was good. He didn’t need telling what might make useful footage. Just like the night before, his camera was documenting it all down to the last detail. They’d work out what they needed later.

“You’re not wrong,” Annja agreed, pointing to the black Mercedes coming across the grass toward them. It wasn’t designed for off-road. She’d half expected Karl Thorssen to arrive by helicopter. That seemed like the kind of over-the-top entrance he’d have enjoyed. No doubt he’d discharged himself from the hospital, telling the nurses he couldn’t miss this moment for the world. It was the kind of thing that would make good press whether it was true or not.

The sight of the man getting out of the car with one arm in a sling, his rock-star face battered and bruised with any number of minor cuts and abrasions, left him looking like the wounded warrior he wanted to be. The cuts stood out against his pale gray skin. He saw someone he recognized in the crowd and raised a hand in greeting. It took him a second to muster his strength and don the mask of charming affability he’d need to get through the morning, but Annja noticed the occasional wince as he moved, and that he bit on his bottom lip every time the pain threatened to get too much.

Maybe I’m being too hard on him, she thought, watching him press the flesh.

Last night had clearly taken it out of him, but Karl Thorssen wasn’t about to be denied the spotlight by something as trivial as an assassination attempt.

That spoke volumes about the man.

Reporters jostled for position as he moved toward the podium that had been set up for the speech, their microphones pushed toward the front. Some were already calling out questions before he reached the lectern. He gave them time to settle down while he gathered himself. He really was good at this kind of thing, playing to the crowd. He wasn’t there to address the locals or the schoolchildren. He was talking to everyone on the planet—or as much of it as the news channels would reach. In a viral world that was everywhere there was a screen, a cell phone, a tablet or a laptop. News spread now like it never had before. The reach of microblogging sites was insidious, immense and instantaneous, turning everyone into an on-the-spot reporter. Nothing went unseen. Especially not something like this. Karl Thorssen was a political animal. This was his stage.

He looked up at her and seemed to smile—a smile that was for her and her alone. But of course it wasn’t; it was for the cameras.

“Ten bucks says the first words out of his mouth are about politics and have absolutely nothing to do with archaeology.”

“I’m not taking that bet,” the cameraman said. “Might as well just give you the money.”

“Ah, you take all the fun out of life.”

“So I’ve been told.”

Annja had heard enough of Thorssen’s rhetoric last night. She didn’t need to hear any more of it. Instead, she drifted off toward the archaeologists’ tents to the side of the dig site. They were more her kind of people. Of course there were plenty of archaeologists out there who didn’t think the same of her thanks to the sensationalist nature of many of the segments on Chasing History’s Monsters.

“Enjoying the circus?” Annja said, moving over to join a small huddle of archaeologists who were intent on something. The nearest looked up. There was a flicker of recognition, but he said nothing. The joys of syndication. No doubt the show was on some obscure cable channel over here.

“Just waiting for the clowns to turn up,” his friend said.

“Don’t worry, they’re here.” Annja grinned.

“Thought I heard the natives getting restless.”

“Thorssen’s just gearing up to do his thing.”

“Good,” the quiet one said. “The sooner he’s done, the sooner we can get on with our job.”

“Just consider yourself lucky you’re getting to do this at all. We’ve been trying to get permission to crack open the barrow for years, but have been blocked at every turn. I don’t know how Thorssen pulled it off, but the guy’s got friends in high places.”

“Or some very incriminating photos, more like,” the quiet one said, this time with a wicked grin. He stood up and brushed off his hands on his jeans. “You know how it is with the rich and famous—they operate in a different world to the rest of us mere mortals. Lars,” he said, holding out his hand to Annja.

“Annja,” she said, taking it. She felt the distinctive calluses of someone used to working the dirt.

“Ah, Ms. Creed. I thought I recognized you.”

“Occupational hazard.”

“Word came down from on high that you’d be doing a feature on the dig.”

“On high meaning Thorssen?”

“On high meaning our benefactor, yes. I’ve been told you’ve got the run of the place,” he said. He didn’t sound happy about it, either.

“It’s not every day we break open the tomb of a legendary king. It’d be great to get some footage of you guys at work.”

“And in return he gets more publicity for his controversial cause. I guess we know who you sold your soul to, Ms. Creed.”

Annja took the jibe in the spirit it was intended. She wasn’t about to defend her producer’s deeply ingrained commercialism, but he was right—assuming the segment was edited together in his favor, they were providing Thorssen with yet another mouthpiece to spread his message. Luckily for everyone, Annja got to do the final edits on her segments. “There’s nothing in my contract that says he gets a second of airtime,” she said. “I’m not here for the politics—after all, the show’s not called Chasing Modern Politicians, is it? Our viewers don’t care about immigration or racial segregation unless we’re talking about soldiers from the Holy Roman Empire. Give me a good old-fashioned monster hunt any day of the week. I leave the politicking to serious journalists.”

Lars seemed to like that answer.

She tried to remember his surname. She had it written on a card in her pocket, but could hardly take it out and check.

Lars...

Lars...

Mortensen.

That was it: Lars Mortensen.

“So, what’s your deal with Thorssen? He just letting you in on the action out of the kindness of his heart?” she asked.

“Hardly.” Lars grunted. “He wants first look at everything we uncover, and any broadcast or press release has to have his name slapped right across it.”

“It’s all about the glory for him,” one of Lars’s companions explained, joining them. “The more press he gets, the more he gets to play the benevolent champion of Middle Sweden, the more people will lap up his stupid politics and buy into his send-them-back-home promises. Makes me sick just thinking about it.”

He was right; Thorssen’s rhetoric was the sort that resonated with certain segments of society whenever there were open borders and high unemployment; the flow of people toward a better life was always one-sided, and with any one-sided narrative it was easy to spin it negatively.

“Well, how about we get one over on him by having you give me a call before anything comes out of the ground, then technically you’re not breaking your promise to Thorssen. Saves him getting his hands dirty, too.”

“Oh, I’m sure he’s quite happy to get his hands dirty,” Lars said, though the kind of dirt he meant had nothing to do with the rich soil of the dig site.

Annja glanced across at Karl Thorssen, who was on the podium now, hands braced on either side of the lectern as he leaned forward. His hair fell across his face. He didn’t brush it aside for the longest time, then made a show of biting back the pain when he did. It was quite the theatrical performance. He spoke slowly, enunciating each syllable so no one would miss a word.

“Today is a landmark day for this proud nation of ours. Today is a day we embrace the past. Today, as we drive the shovel into the ground to turn the earth, we are forging a connection with the land of our forefathers. Think about it. As we open the barrow we are digging through the same ground they strode upon. The same earth. We are tapping into the magic still latent within that soil. Heroes walked upon this land, the greatest of which lies buried beneath it. The past and the present are separated by a few feet of dirt. Think about it.” His voice carried across the quiet crowd. They were obviously doing what they were told. There was an intensity to his voice that demanded it.

Listening to him, she realized Karl Thorssen was a believer; every word that came out of his mouth, he meant. Yes, it was theater, but weirdly that didn’t make it any less real.

Believers were always the most dangerous men in her experience. It didn’t matter who did the actual dirty work, just so long as it got done. She’d already seen that Thorssen had an army dedicated to his cause.

“Ah, my minute in the sun,” Lars said, picking up a pristine shovel that had been leaning against a couple of crates of equipment. “Time to put on a smile for the cameras.”

Annja studied his face as Thorssen drove the shovel into the yielding dirt, rested his foot upon it, then pushed down. Not once did he wince or show any sign of physical discomfort. Putting on a brave show for the world? she wondered. Or letting the mask slip to show who you really are?

It was impossible to know one way or the other.

Thorssen turned over the soil to cheers and applause from the small crowd. The cameras had their sound bite and their visual leader for their news segments; his job here was done. He bowed his head, raised a hand in thank you and farewell and allowed himself to be helped back to his car.

A short while later he was driven away, and people were left milling around asking what, if anything, would happen next. It didn’t take long for the children to grow restless, several of them deciding that rolling like logs down the hill was a good idea. Their teachers had trouble corralling them, but eventually they were herded onto the waiting coach and whisked away.

The reporters, who only a few moments before had been pressing their microphones forward trying to catch every word Thorssen said, had their backs to the barrow and were doing their final pieces to camera, telling their viewers what they’d just seen and why it was so significant. Fifteen minutes later it was a ghost town. The TV crews had packed away their equipment and driven off in a convoy. Now that Thorssen was gone the barrow was back to being a grassy hill. They’d return if and when evidence was unearthed that Skalunda Barrow truly was the last resting place of Beowulf. Until then, story filed, they’d forget all about it as soon as the next piece of news broke.

“How about I make myself useful?” Annja asked as Lars and his team started to unpack rolls of plastic sheeting from their van. He doled out instructions to others, surprisingly in English rather than his native Swedish, which led her to think that it was for her benefit. He had everything under control, but Annja never was one for being a spectator.

“It’s fine, we’ve got it covered. Unless you fancy a shift with the shovel?”

Annja laughed, assuming it was a joke. Dig sites used mechanical diggers these days to scrape the surface back and mark out the trenches for excavation, not teams of slave labor with shovels. She looked around for the digger, but there was no sign of one anywhere.

“So when is the digger arriving?”

“Digger? You’re looking at him.”

“Are you serious?”

“Sadly. Yes.”

“What? Why?”

“Red tape. We could only get approval to excavate if everything was done by hand—minimal impact on the environment, every single sod replaced as close to its current position as is humanly possible.”

“Wow. Better grab a shovel, then. We’re going to be at this for a while.”

“Tell me about it,” Lars said. “It’ll take us a day to clear out what a backhoe could do in half an hour. But in this as in the rest of life beggars can’t be choosers. Lucky for you I’ve enlisted half of the horticultural department from the university to do the grunt work. Let the big strong farm boys do the backbreaking stuff.”

“Nothing wrong with a little extra muscle.” She held out her hand. “Pass the shovel.”

Lars handed her the shiny new shovel Thorssen had used to break the ground.

“Where do you want me?”

“Over there, we’ve marked out a trench where, according to geophys results, we believe the entrance to the barrow lies. Have fun.”

Annja hefted the shovel onto her shoulder, but before she walked off to lose herself in some good old-fashioned manual labor, she asked, “Do you really believe he’s down there?”

“It’s been a long time, and there’s no way of knowing for sure, but yes. I wouldn’t be getting involved in this unless I thought that there was the realistic chance of finding something.”

“That’s not the same as saying you think we’ll turn up Beowulf’s bones. We’re talking fourteen hundred years for grave robbers, looters, despoilers, defilers, never mind treasure hunters, and heaven knows what else to come along and plunder the barrow.”

“That’s always a risk,” the archaeologist agreed. “We won’t know until we’re inside. Just as we won’t know if this is the tomb of Böðvar Bjarki—the Norse warrior king from the Saga of Hrólf Kraki, for instance, whose story mirrors the legend of Beowulf in many significant areas. We know it was from Geatland that Böðvar arrived in Denmark, and moreover, that upon his arrival at the court there, he killed a monstrous beast that had been terrorizing the court at Yule for two years, not unlike Grendel. Of course, there’s no evidence as to whether Beowulf was real or not, but his character from the poem does fit seamlessly into the context of his society and Germanic family tree.”