Читать книгу Tear Of The Gods - Alex Archer - Страница 9

After delivering his message, Zeke turned and took off at a run back across the camp. Annja made as if to follow, but then hesitated. Given his size, there was no way Craig would be able to match the younger man’s pace.

He must have guessed what she was thinking, for he waved a hand at her in dismissal. “Go on! Quickly, before he’s out of sight. I’ll meet you at the excavation,” he said with a chuckle.

That was all she needed to hear. Annja was five feet ten inches tall, with chestnut hair and amber-green eyes. She had an athlete’s build, with smooth, rounded muscles and curves in all the right places, and it took her only a moment or two to sprint along until she had the eager grad student back in her sights.

She kept her eye on Zeke as he left the camp behind and moved at a quick pace through the trees for about a hundred yards, following a path worn into the earth from the passage of the dig team over the past several days. Ten minutes later Anna emerged from the trees to find herself standing on the gentle slope of a small hill, the dig site laid out before her.

The site was roughly half the size of a football field and was located in a hollow between several small hills like the one she stood on. There were two significant features that set this particular valley off from dozens of others in the nearby area. The first was a large rock cairn that had been erected at the base of the slope on which she stood, its stone face now overgrown with moss and lichen but still recognizable for what it had once been. The second was the skeletal remains of an ancient oak tree standing near the middle of the site, a jagged black scar of a lightning strike clearly visible even from a distance.

Although Craig’s team had only been here a short while, Annja could see that they’d been busy. A grid had been laid out on the valley floor in colored string, dividing the space into individual sections that Annja knew from experience were roughly two feet square. Work had begun in several sections, with the top layer of the peat removed, revealing the rich substrata beneath. Sifting stations had been set up beneath canopies to the right of the grid and there was a plethora of shovels, rakes and handheld trowels scattered about.

Most of the team was clustered around a single grid square, obviously the location of their most recent find. Annja made her way down the hill and across the dig site to join them.

The smell hit her as she moved closer, the unmistakable scent of scorched earth that accompanied a peat bog of any decent age. She resisted the urge to cover her nose; the human body only recognized an odor in the first few minutes of contact, after that it was as if it didn’t exist.

Two grad students were on their hands and knees near the corner of the grid, using hand tools to clear the debris away from the blackened face that was peeking out of the peat. While this one wasn’t as well preserved as the others, the similarities were still obvious. It was clear that the four men had the same ethnic background; the prominent nose and high cheekbones were as easy to see in this specimen as they were in the others. And like the others, this head had been severed and lay by itself in the peat that preserved it.

Who were they? Annja found herself wondering. And what happened to their bodies?

It was mysteries like these that had helped her fall in love with archaeology in the first place. She couldn’t wait to get her hands dirty.

Craig finally caught up with them then, his face red and his chest heaving from his hike through the woods, but it did nothing to stem his enthusiasm for what they’d uncovered. Being the excellent teacher that he was, Craig let his people continue unearthing the find, guiding them with encouraging comments here and there rather than taking control of the process for himself as Annja knew others she’d worked with in the past would have done. It was what made Craig such a good student of archaeology; he cared more about the artifact and what it could tell them than the academic reputation associated with whoever unearthed it.

For the next two hours Annja lost herself in the simple joy of doing what she loved, helping Craig and his students excavate the mummified head from the peat surrounding it and then carefully packing it into a foam-lined carrying case for transport back to the campsite for further examination. Several of the students recognized her from Chasing History’s Monsters and it wasn’t long before she was surrounded by a small group of her own, dispensing advice and stories of former digs just as Craig was doing with the others a few yards away. It was such a welcome relief from the recent craziness in her life that Annja found herself relaxing for the first time in weeks and enjoying the simple pleasure that came from doing something you loved in the presence of others who felt the same way.

By the time dusk fell over the campsite, Annja felt like she’d been working with the team for weeks.

“Not a bad first day, huh?” Craig asked her as they helped the others cover the site with tarps to protect it in case of rain later that evening.

“It was wonderful, Craig. Truly,” she said with a smile. “Thanks for inviting me.”

He grinned. “Don’t thank me yet. You haven’t tasted what passes for cooking around here.”

Once they were finished at the dig site, Annja was introduced to Sheila James, a fellow American, who gave her a tour of the camp, showed her the tent she’d be using for the duration and introduced her to some more of the students over dinner that night.

Worn out from the hard work and the lingering effects of the jet lag, she thanked them all for their hospitality and headed off to bed.

Annja found herself walking in the woods beneath the silvery light of a full moon, though she knew she was not herself. The hand at the end of her arm was decidedly male. She was part of a group of four warriors carrying the body of a fifth on a funeral bier made of wood, fashioned together with rope and vines. Around her came a host of others, warriors mainly, but some women were scattered amid the company here and there, as well—all of them moving through the trees in a long, snaking procession. Torches threw flickering light across the scene, highlighting the faces of those around her, revealing the geometric designs painted on their faces in blue woad—whirls and spirals and circles that interlinked and crossed one another so that it was difficult to discern where one ended and the next began.

The body on the bier was that of a tall warrior with long red hair. He was dressed as he’d been when he’d fallen on the battlefield, his tunic and mail stained with blood, both his own and that of his enemies. His arms were folded across his chest, his hands grasping the hilt of the sword that he’d carried into battle, the blade broken off halfway down its length.

Annja’s eyes were drawn to the necklace of gleaming black the dead man wore around his neck. It was made from a substance that she couldn’t identify, at least not from this distance, and it reacted to the light the same way an oil spill does, reflecting myriad colors back at the viewer. She felt the need to reach out and touch it….

The moonlight suddenly grew brighter, breaking her reverie, and she looked up as the group emerged from the trees into the open. They stood upon the crest of a hill that sloped gently downward until it met the edge of a wide marshland. A spit of land jutted out into the bog for a short distance and a white robed druid stood upon it, waiting for them. Behind him a massive oak tree rose out of the depths of the bog, its branches spread wide, forming a living canopy over that part of the swamp.

The procession descended the hill. When they reached the narrow spit of land, the rest of the group came to a halt while Annja and the other pallbearers continued forward. The druid directed them to place the bier on the ground at his feet. They did so and then, as a group, stepped off to one side to wait for further instructions.

The druid raised his hands to the sky and began to chant in a deep voice, his words rolling out across the night air. The words were spoken in a language Annja didn’t understand—Welsh or Gaelic or some derivative thereof—but she was familiar enough with ancient burial ceremonies that she knew the general gist of it. The druid was asking for the blessing of the four elements and calling upon the gods to look with favor upon the one they were committing into their care that night.

When the chant was finished, four male prisoners were led forward from the rear of the procession. They were naked and bound at the wrists with thick hemp ropes. Their movements were sluggish, their expressions unfocused, and it was clear to Annja that they’d been drugged.

She understood why a moment later, when the first of them was made to kneel at the edge of the bog with his head resting sideways on the stump of a tree Annja hadn’t noticed before now. The man’s eyes roamed over them, seeing but not seeing, and the real Annja breathed a sigh of relief when it was clear that he didn’t understand what was to come. As if on cue, the druid approached the prisoner, a gleaming sickle-shaped blade in his hands. There was another chant, this one much shorter in length, and then that blade rose and fell in one swift, sure motion.

The druid turned to face the procession, the Roman’s severed head held aloft by the tangle of its own hair, and at the sight of it a shout went up from the rest of the onlookers. Inhabiting a body not her own, Annja found herself shouting along with the rest of them.

The cry was repeated three times—a ritual response, Annja realized—and then the druid turned to face the dark waters at his back. Another prayer flowed forth, a request to Arawn, god of the underworld, to accept the blood offering they were making on behalf of their slain chieftain, most likely, and then the slain prisoner’s head was flung outward into the night.

Annja heard the splash as it hit the water and watched as the bog swiftly sucked it out of sight.

The first prisoner’s body was dragged away and the second victim was brought forward. The ceremony was repeated, and then twice more with the final two victims. The stink of blood filled Annja’s nostrils by the time the druid was finished, so thick that she could almost taste it on the back of her tongue.

At a sign from the druid, she and the other pallbearers hefted the bier back up again. Following the druid, they marched out into the bog.

Much to her surprise the bog did not swallow them whole. Her feet instead found the hard surfaces of stones laid just beneath the waterline, a hidden walkway extending out across the marsh to the base of the sacred oak. They carefully placed the bier under the tree’s sheltering boughs and returned to the shoreline.

Annja and the rest of the pallbearers rejoined the main procession, leaving the druid standing alone on the small strip of land where the ceremony had taken place. As she watched, the high priest raised his arms toward the heavens and shouted in a voice full of power.

In the sky above him, thunder raged and lightning cracked, answering his call as the funeral bier of the last of the Iceni chieftains sank toward the bog’s heart.

ANNJA AWOKE WITH a start. Lightning flashed, lighting up the sides of her tent for a moment before the darkness returned to smother the camp in its embrace.

Just a dream, she told herself. Just a dream.

But dream or not, it took a long time for her to fall back to sleep.