Page 1 of Odin

ONE

The sundial in the courtyard greeted Freyja like a nightclub bouncer that wasn't sure she was well dressed enough for tonight's crowd, but was forced by necessity to let her pass anyway.

The feeling was mutual.

The weird, ornate metal sculpture that made absolutely no sense to her, all twisted and jagged, yet somehow able to tell the time. When it wasn't covered in snow, of course. It was supposed to be summer. The archaeology team had already gone up into the mountains to start the dig early, what with the early snowmelt leaving the site bare, but now if it was snowing again, who knew whether they'd be digging or coming back?

Not that she should really be worried about them – they had gear that was rated for Mount Everest, so a small snowstorm in the Jotunheimen Mountains wouldn't be a problem. Karl didn't let a little thing like a blizzard send him home early. The guy was as obsessive about archaeology as her dentist brother was about flossing.

And this time, Karl had already made a discovery so great, they'd called in a helicopter recovery team, which was almost unheard of. Karl insisted a helicopter was only used as a last resort, because of the carbon emissions from the flight and global warming and all, yet he'd called for this one.

Had he really found his iceman? The holy grail of every ice archaeologist?

Saint Nik would be frothing at the mouth if he had. The shirt he'd found last season was nothing compared to finding the shirt's owner still frozen inside it.

Well, she'd soon find out, when the helicopter arrived.

"We will find it, and we will need you," Karl had said before leaving, like it was some kind of prophecy.

Freyja snorted, just like she'd done then. Prophecies were the stuff of fantasy novels about chosen ones and boys becoming heroes. Not for disgraced doctors who'd never work in a hospital again.

She dug out her phone, wanting to check the message from Lara again. Maybe she should go inside, instead of waiting out here in the cold for the helicopter to arrive.

The phone network access had improved since her last trip up here. Two bars instead of one, though it might drop to zero again if Karl's snowstorm crossed the mountains to here. Her predecessor had told stories about the blizzards up here. Apparently the poor woman had been snowed in for a month when she'd been caught here in an early autumn blizzard. The lab might only be a fifteen minute walk to town in normal weather, but the town may as well be as far away as the moon once the snow started to stick. Or worse, turn to ice.

Funny, that ice was both her bane and her reason for being here at Icelab.

A bog body. An ice mummy. And she'd be the first person to actually see it in its entirety...

All right, maybe Karl's excitement and stubborn certainty had infected her, just like that new virus spreading through so many major cities. She was safer up here, in this isolated laboratory, than back at the main university campus. But if this discovery was so important, surely there should be a team, not just her. What if she did something wrong and damaged the body?

Karl would never forgive her. The academic community would never forgive her. They still hadn't forgiven her for the mistake she hadn't actually made with a patient, almost three years ago, and no one would listen to her now whether it was her fault or not.

Freyja swallowed. One corpse had ended her medical career, but this body might be her redemption. Sure, it was Karl's discovery, but this stranger in the ice could be her salvation. Or...something, at least, to rebuild her career on.

Now she just had to hope he'd been dead for a few centuries, at least, and wasn't some Nazi who'd been running away from the trial for his horrible war crimes.

Then again, if he was a Nazi, no one would care if she made any mistakes dealing with the body.

But he also wouldn't be as big news as Karl was hoping for.

He might not even be a he. Maybe it would be an ice woman.

Take that, scientific community, she thought to herself. What would all those old male academics do if they discovered their holy grail was actually a woman? They'd lose their minds.

An ice mummy, even. Freyja grinned. She'd be calling it that until proven otherwise, and maybe even afterwards. After all, a man mummified in the ice was still a mummy.

She glanced at her watch. She hoped the helicopter would hurry up – she was supposed to video call her mother this afternoon. She'd thought she was running late, but it looked like the chopper wasn't even here yet.

The thumping sound of the blades hit her first – a visceral heartbeat that her own ribs vibrated along with. Only it wasn't coming from the mountains, but from the other direction entirely. What the actual fuck? Had the helicopter not even made it to the dig site yet? Maybe it would've been faster to send the packhorses. Then again, the weight of that much ice would be too much for a horse, surely.

Hence the helicopter was the only option.

The helicopter that was definitely coming in to land, blowing snow around like it was trying to blast the dirt off the buildings. Even Freyja had to duck back under cover, taking shelter in the lee of a wall that bore a warning sign in three languages, only one of which she was fluent in:

Beware rotor downwash. Do not pass until helicopter has landed.

There was a red line marked on the sign that was hidden somewhere under the layer of snow. Though once the helicopter was done sandblasting (snowblasting?) the place, maybe she'd learn where the line was so she could stay behind it.

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