“The boy is very impatient,” Frithfroth said.
“You’re not wrong there,” Vivienne assented.
“His blood runs hot-too hot. It boils and rises to his eyes in a mist. When it leaves, it leaves him empty, so empty. I have seen men chase after such heat. I hope it will not be his ruin.”
“Tell us what happened, Frithfroth. How Ni?ergeard fell, if they could not take the Langtorr.”
As an answer, Frithfroth crossed over to one of the tapestries hanging at an angle. He pushed up a corner to show a dark archway. He slipped through it and the tapestry fell back to its skewed position. Freya and Vivienne traded apprehensive looks, and then Vivienne crossed over and pulled back the thick woven cloth.
Swallowing hard, Freya ducked under the faded cloth, which smelled of rot and mold. Descending a curved stairway, the two women gradually lowered themselves into the thick, sharp smell of death that seemed to rise up in a cloud around them. They blocked their noses, but it crept into every breath they were forced to take. It stung their eyes and made their skin crawl. It was like a slap in the face.
“This was our last defense,” Frithfroth said, apparently oblivious or immune to the stench. “After finding Ealdstan departed, Godmund grew desperate. He spouted betrayal, deceit, perversion.” The staircase wound down and then opened into a wide, semi-spherical room. It was aglow with hundreds of silver lamps arranged along walls and pillars. The light that shone from them fell upon four concentric circles, each with a low stone slab cut to contain a man, but rising only a couple inches in height off the ground.
There were one hundred and five sleeping spaces arranged in four concentric circles-seven in the inner ring, twice that in the next, and doubling again and again in the next two rings. A circular dais was raised in the centre, and on it, a stone throne.
“This is the Sl?pereshus-the Chamber of the Sleepers,” Frithfroth said. “These are the elite of all of the sleepers in this isle. Their deeds are celebrated in myth and legend. Over fifty from the fields of Agincourt. Nearly thirty from the first crusade. One dozen and two from Horsa’s men, and seven knights of the table. All of them surrounding the hero who wore a dragon’s helm. Sleeping all not just for the nation’s greatest need, but for Ni?ergeard’s.”
However glorious it sounded and once may have looked, it was a slaughterhouse now. The biers were covered with the mangled remnants of the bodies they once held in state. The skin and flesh were beyond decay-black and leathery in some instances, or already decomposed. Bones could be seen, but not the clean, white bones in movies and on TV-these bones were brown and corrupted, with leathery flesh still hanging on to them. Forms could really only be made out by the clothing and armour that the bodies once occupied. Some heads appeared to be absent. Some biers only bore a shattered weapon or a broken shield.
Horrifically, perversely, the ground was moving. Maggots, insects, and some reptiles could be glimpsed in Frithfroth’s lantern light and the large flashlights that Freya and Vivienne carried. The dead bodies had apparently presented enough nourishment to produce a macabre ecosystem, a carrion food chain in the Langtorr’s cellar.
Freya gasped when she saw all the crawling nasties that swarmed the floor and raised an arm to prevent Vivienne from walking past her. Vivienne tensed and they stood there, a few stairs up, where nothing, they hoped, could crawl up to them, as Frithfroth unheedingly navigated the large room. He wove in and out of the biers, uncaring of the creatures that scuttled across his feet or clung briefly to his cloak. He went to the far wall where an iron hook was mounted, on which was hanging a horn. He raised an arm to it, as if he were reaching out and touching it with his missing hand.
“He blew this horn to wake them. When the knights awake, they are not like the city’s guards-they are mortal, and thus able to vanquish the yfelgopes permanently.
“Yes, he blew the horn, and it will never sound again, for there will not be any to hear it. They rose and went forth to battle, striking at the heart of the enemy, beyond the once-high walls of this city. It should have been a charge to victory, to a glorious routing of the enemy, but the unimaginable happened-the greatest war band ever seen in these isles was withstood.
“They fought for days without a one of them falling. The bodies of their slain enemies mounted higher and higher, and became their fortress. They fought along its walls and built them higher, bulwarked with more of their foes.
“And then one of our own fell. He was brought back here and laid to his final rest, arising again only when his body is made whole in the final judgement. But his absence in the line of defenders gave a hold to the relentless storm to wear away at those on either side of him. And more fell, over time, and more. They, too, were brought back. Those that remained standing-standing and fighting for almost a year now with no rest-renewed their resolve and fought harder and more cunningly than any in history. But no man is perfect-all falter. I myself watched from this very tower as the last three valiant knights fought in a whirlpool of enemies, each taking many blows that would have laid a mortal man senseless. Then they, too, were taken.
“All that remained was the hero of the dragon’s helm. They disarmed him, cut him so that no muscle moved any bone, and then divided him up amongst themselves so that each could have a talisman to show their defeat of the greatest hero in the western kingdoms. Two had his jawbone, many had his teeth, the fingers of his hands, so, too, the bones of his shins. .”
Frithfroth started back toward the stairs, through the bodies and writhing shapes on the floor.
“Those left in Ni?ergeard could only watch in dread. Godmund had armed the citizenry and given them all instruction, but when the army of the enemy marched upon us, they did not last an hour.
“Kelm himself claimed the dragonhelm. And once he had, he threw it over the Langtorr wall just to spite. I recovered it and moved it here.” He indicated a silver helmet traced with gold that lay on the throne in the centre of the dais. It had a winged dragon mounted on it, its arms and legs clutching at the sides, its wings joining around the back.
Frithfroth said no more and did not move away from the throne’s side.
“All right, well,” Vivienne said. “I believe I’ve got a fairly clear idea now of what happened here. Freya, would you agree?”
Freya nodded. “Yep. No questions here. Maybe a few later, but, um. .”
“Good Frithfroth, keeper of the Langtorr,” Vivienne began in an officious voice. “May we, by your leave, obtain freedom to walk these halls?”
Frithfroth blinked. His brows contracted and his mouth twitched open. For a brief moment Freya saw the man he used to be, before Ni?ergeard fell. It passed, and the old man’s face slackened and his eyes turned to stare into the distance. He bowed his head, however, in response to the formal request.
Vivienne tugged at Freya’s shoulder and the two women made swift but careful tracks back up the stairs.