Grendel's Curse

“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.”