the smoke before blowing it out in rings. He’d spent most of the day watching other people work. He was still full of energy and itching to play his part in the excavation. He knew that he wouldn’t be able to rest until he had at least got a little dirt under the fingernails. That would make it all seem real. That was just the kind of man he was.
He stubbed out his cigarette and went over to the main tent. The plans were laid out on the central table along with the geophys readings. He’d studied the information diligently and knew it like the back of his hand. The geophys readings were a little more complicated than the ones he was used to looking at; normally they would cover a flat stretch of a field while these ones were trying to plot the three-dimensional shape of the mound itself. He never tired of looking at those images. He’d watched the technicians with their equipment, taking carefully measured steps as the made their readings, one pace after another until they built up a picture of the shape beneath the ground. It was inspiring.
There was every chance that the body—if it had ever been there—would have been placed in a cavity, and sooner or later that would have collapsed in on itself, which meant they would have to deconstruct the entire barrow in the hopes of finding the remains. This wasn’t a quick two-week job. They could be here for the best part of a year or more painstakingly going over the ground before they found anything exciting.
Initial ground surveys suggested there was a change in the minerals in the mound, not much farther into it than they already were.
It could be nothing, but the shadow those minerals presented looked too uniform to be a natural phenomena.
Lars Mortensen had spent most of his adult life on digs like this. He knew not to make assumptions when it came to shadows on scans and what they might turn out to be, but he couldn’t help himself. He felt that itch just beneath his skin and it had to be scratched. An hour of digging, maybe two, and he’d break through far enough to at least make a reasonable guess as to what the curious shadow-shape was if not know for sure.
He picked up the heavy-duty lantern. Lars angled the beam directly at the scar in the side of the mound as he started to walk toward it. As the light played across the rich soil he thought he saw something glinting in the exposed earth. He swung the lantern, causing the light to roll, and again something caught the shifting light for a moment but no more. He played the light across it again, and again until he was sure he’d identified the source.
He assumed it was a shard of quartz that would have been barely visible as the team had worked in the setting sun, but it was worth investigating if for no other reason than satisfying his curiosity.
Lars set the lamp down on the edge of the trench so that its light filled it, and jumped down. It felt good to be right in the heart of it. He unhooked the trowel from his belt and knelt with a mixture of awe and excitement, placing his hands flat on the dirt. He almost imagined he could soak up everything this land had seen over the fourteen hundred years it had sheltered the hero. And for as long as his hands pressed into the earth he felt connected to each and every one of those years.
The glimmering caught his eye again. He knew it would be something and nothing, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that the single tiny reflection was calling to him like a beacon in the dark.
He ran a finger over the soil, sending a few tiny crumbs of earth tumbling away.
It wasn’t a tiny fragment of quartz or feldspar trapped in the exposed crust, that much was obvious. It was bigger than that.
He set the trowel aside and pulled out a brush. He knew it was clean. He’d cleaned it meticulously in preparation for the dig. He always did.
He gave the surface the lightest of touches with the tip of the brush, testing how easily it crumbled, if in fact it did.
He brushed aside more particles of earth while pressing his free hand a few inches below the gleam so he could catch every fragment that fell. It took time to reveal that the tiny reflection had come from something much larger than he could have reasonably expected.
With each brushstroke he revealed a little more of the gleaming surface, and the more dirt he brushed away the fiercer the gleam shone, taking on a peculiar blue-green iridescence in the beam of the high-intensity lamp.
He completely lost track of time while he worked.
Eventually he revealed its edge but carried on working around it, trying to find out just how big it was in the hope that it might give him a clue as to its purpose. The color reminded him of an oyster shell, but if that’s what it was, then it came from the biggest oyster he’d ever seen, and then some. It took time, but gradually Lars cleared away the dirt enough to make out that it was the size of a dinner plate. He brushed away a little more dirt until it was clear that there was a second one overlapping the first like a gray slate roof tile that had lost most of its luster, but there were still flakes that gleamed with that iridescent blue-green.
He wiped the brush free of dirt before slipping it back into his tool belt, and then reached for his trowel again. He ran its point along one of the exposed edges, working it slowly beneath the lip of the plate. He pressed gently on its handle with his free hand, testing its resistance before he even tried to work it loose, but even as he applied the slightest pressure it started to shift. He felt his heartbeat quicken as he fought back the rising mix of hope and panic. He had to stop himself from dropping his trowel to put both of his hands on the plate, but all of those years of discipline and training kept him from moving too quickly and damaging the artifact.
He had secured his trowel in place. As he did, he felt the plate shift, grinding grit between it and the overlapping second one. He relaxed his grip slightly and it started to ease ever so slightly out of the position it had been locked in for centuries.
He felt it give, just a touch, and then suddenly it came free from its neighbor.
It was heavier than he had expected, despite being wafer thin.
The edge bit into one of his fingers, slicing it deep and clean, like a freshly sharpened blade. His blood smeared across the surface of the strange artifact. He had no idea what it was—some kind of armor?
He was almost reverential as he lifted the find. He turned it over in the light to better look at both sides of it. The underside had none of the brilliance, even faded, of the topside. Lars reached up and placed it carefully on grass beside the lamp, intending to clamber out of the trench, and store the strange plate in the main tent, detailing its discovery and protecting the site from damp or moisture before turning in, but he didn’t do any of those things. Instead, he knelt back down in the dirt to examine the raw patch of earth he’d just exposed, curious to see if the plate was merely some decorative facing, or if he’d uncovered something more interesting.
He changed the angle of the lantern’s beam, shining it down on the newly exposed surface.
There was nothing there.
There was no earth, no stone behind where the tile had been.
Instead, there was a void beyond it.
He played the light inside, straining forward without resting his weight on the edge as he tried to peer down into the hole, but his own shadow made it impossible.
Instead, Lars reached inside, fumbling in the darkness.
His fingers touched nothing but air while the razor-sharp edges of the wafer-thin plates still in situ snatched and sliced at his sleeve, cutting into the fabric as easily as if it was paper, not heavy-duty cotton, as he withdrew his hand.
He reached in again, risking some of his body weight on the plates in front of him, and this time his fingertips brushed against something cold. He couldn’t reach it properly, though, whatever it was. He withdrew his arm carefully, painfully aware of just how impossibly sharp the exposed edge was even after all this time.
He tried the lantern, but again it failed to shed any illumination on what was down there, despite the fact that he knew there was something to see.
It could be nothing, of course—a piece of rock that had collapsed from the ceiling and fallen away into the air pocket,