Another spinetingling collection from the prolific pen of R L Fanthorpe! The Frozen Tomb: Unliving and undying she waited in a casket of ice. Sleeping Place: His thin lips curled back to display rows of sharp, white teeth. Strange Country: "What is he doing there? How could he escape?" Cry in the Night: The wolf cry sounded strangely human in the darkness... The Thing from Boulter's Cavern: Inhuman survivors of a weird, ancient race lived on in the labyrinth. The Coveters: "Greed is a psychic disease...maybe it has a psychic cure...?"
Release date:
October 29, 2015
Publisher:
Gateway
Print pages:
107
* BingeBooks earns revenue from qualifying purchases as an Amazon Associate as well as from other retail partners.
“Unliving and undying she waited in a casket of ice.”
IT was snug and warm in the survey hut. This was something of a paradox. The survey hut itself was well inside the Arctic circle, and all around its ice-covered, insulated timbers a savage northern winter raged like some animate and evil entity. With teeth of ice and furious ethereal fingers, the blizzard tore its way across the frozen wastes. Inside the survey hut there was a radio, and the rather incongruous strains of a trad band boomed out. The band were broadcasting somewhere in New England, a carrier wave was hauling their music across two thousand miles and more of land, sea, ice, snow frost and emptiness …
They were a pretty mixed party as they sat listening to that trad band. There was James Boyne, a bearded Irish giant. For that matter, they were all bearded, but Boyne had been bewhiskered before the expedition had set out. There was Ivan Raleigh, thin, dark and intense, with something of an air of mystery hanging over him. Ivan Raleigh was the kind of man to keep his own counsel.
Lex Turner was as garrulous as Raleigh was quiet. Turner was big, broad-shouldered, beefy, friendly almost to the point of vulgarity. He was an extrovert, and a likeable extrovert He was also an American. Gustave Hamilton was inclined to be plump and inclined to be pompous. He was not plump to the point of obesity, neither was he pompous to the point of being an unbearable, crushing bore. Maybe it was because he knew he was inclined to run to fat that he watched his weight, maybe it was because he knew he was inclined to be pompous that he watched his character. They were a pretty fair cross section of the human race; they were rational, normal human beings. Because of this, and because they realised that even a saint would get on his companions’ nerves, probably to a greater extent than the rest of mortals, they took care to oil their social wheels as efficiently as possible … It is not easy to live in close proximity with other men for great lengths of time. It is not easy to share the rigours and the hardships of even a modern survey team without certain friction. But recognising the existence of the perils upon which the social ship can flounder gives the ship a better chance of survival. James Boyne, the bearded Irish giant, was one of those men who have the knack of being interesting without appearing as a kind of walking encyclopaedia. Boyne was a scholar, but he was more than a scholar, he was an applied scholar. Not for Big Jim those snippets of useful information filed away in odd alcoves of the mind. Not for him those maddening miscellanies of strangely interesting facts. Boyne was always out to find the gestalt of knowledge. He was a philosopher as well as a general researcher. He worked well with Lex Turner, the Yank. Lex had energy and vitality in almost frightening proportions. He was a go-getter, but the world has need of go-getters, they prevent stagnation. Lex could take one of the new facts which James Boynes’ scholarship and philosophical logic had dug out, having taken it Lex would pursue it, he would make a project of it, and would bring back anything he found to Boyne. They would spend hours discussing it; when they had analysed it and dissected it as far as it could be dissected Boyne would come up with some new line of enquiry which he would throw, like some metaphorical ball, back to Lex Turner. Turner would catch at it like an enthusiastic terrier and worry it until he had exhausted all those possibilities, and that information, too, would come back to Boyne; the whole process would be repeated until between them they had all the information, and the relative background to the information, and above all, the meaning behind that particular piece of knowledge.
James Boyne had recently got his hands on to a pair of ancient Icelandic documents. They had been left with him by a previous member of the survey party who had gone on to another base. They had originally been bought more as souvenirs than because of their historical interest. This was just the kind of thing into which Boyne and Turner liked to get their metaphorical teeth.
In the Arctic night outside, the blizzard raged.
Automatic geological equipment and meteorological equipment was doing its work. There was nothing much for the men to do except fight off boredom at this particular stage. When the weather broke they would have to work like beavers, but for a few hours, probably for a few days, there wasn’t a great deal that they could do in the big outdoors. Boyne was going through the medieval Icelandic manuscripts.
“I think I’ve got it at last, Lex, if you like to just come and check the translation.”
“You’re the scholar,” rejoined Turner, “but I would certainly like to go through it.”
He and Boyne re-checked the document. Boyne’s typewritten translation lay beside it. Lex read it through with avid interest. It was a pretty long piece of work; it looked like the end piece of one of those Icelandic sagas which are so well known to any student of Nordic and Icelandic literature. It appeared that one Bjorn the Sea Wolf, a Viking Chief, had fallen in love with the Princess Elkira of Norway. In the true style of the romantic ballad he had kidnapped the not-altogether-unwilling Elkira under the very nose of her father, Urgal of Norway, known as the Northern Bear. The said Urgal, with typical Nordic fury, had then pursued the Princess and her Viking lover who had fled towards the north. A great storm had arisen, swirling the huge ‘bergs in the sea as though they were twigs in an inland torrent. Bjorn, the fearless Viking sea wolf, had pressed ever onward to the north. Urgal, savage king, had stood and cursed the sea for delaying his pursuit. The sea gods, angered at the king’s curse, had whipped up the storm into even more demoniac fury, intending to destroy the puny mortals who rode upon the freezing surface of the mighty deeps …
Bjorn the Viking, gallant and chivalrous, in a way that must have delighted the heart of the medieval minstrel who sung of his ‘derring-do’, stood upon the prow of his narrow ship and called to the gods of the sea. He had made a deal with the dark powers of the depths, offering to give himself as sacrifice, if they in turn would promise to land the Princess upon some further shore, safe from her father’s wrath, and safe from the raging of the deep. There had been a temporary lull in the storm, as though the sea gods were giving Bjorn the Sea Wolf their answer, and so, sword in hand and armour on his back, the Viking chief had plunged into the foaming depths, never to be seen again. A miraculous calm had fallen upon the sea, the wind Was hushed, and the waves had steadied down until all that water was as calm as a mill pond.
Urgal, the Northern Bear, ordered his men to row after the Viking ship where the figure of the Princess could be seen, looking down into the depths into which Bjorn the Sea Wolf had vanished in order to save her life. Urgal’s ship had suddenly struck a submerged berg. There was the shattering, grinding tear of tortured timber and then Urgal and his men went down into the depths to join Bjorn the Sea Wolf.
The gentlest of breezes arose and Elkira’s long boat was carried as though on the bosom of some marine god, until it rested gently upon a warm, soft shore, hidden, like a pearl in an oyster, amid the lands of snow and ice. There the Princess landed and lived, until, tiring of life, she died of a broken heart, mourning for Bjorn the Sea Wolf. As though repenting of the violence with which they had absorbed Elkira’s lover, the sea gods floated her body from the shores of the warm, soft land into the very heart of the territory of the frost giants. Here they laid the beautiful Elkira in a casket of ice, made for her a frozen tomb, and there she sleeps until the Twilight of the Gods and the end of Time.
“Quite a touching story,” said James Boyne as the American finished reading it.
“Yes, it is in a way,” said Lex, “I like these medieval ballads, but I wish those guys had heard of the happy ending habit!”
“Yes, I think it would have been an improvement,” agreed Boyne, “This rather infantile fascination with tragic endings that seems to be such a trend in modern literature rather bores me. They may disguise it under the name of Realism, but it’s only a kind of psychopathic morbidity when all’s said and done.”
“I didn’t know that modern literature interested you very much,” said Lex.
“I can truthfully say,” said the Irishman, “that everything interests me …”
“Maybe that’s what makes you such an interesting character yourself,” grinned the Yank.
“Thanks for the compliment,” smiled Boyne. “I’m going to put through an enquiry on the short wave to see whether the British Museum know anything about any of these characters.”
“Is there any chance that they would,” asked Lex.
“Oh yes, the history of the period is pretty well known, even though a lot has been sung and told in song and fable so often that its outlines have grown a bit misty.”
“What’s your opinion of the document, then?”
“Well, frankly,’ said Boyne, “I think it’s completely phony.”
“Completely?” asked Lex.
. . .
We hope you are enjoying the book so far. To continue reading...
Please log in to recommend or discuss...
