Page 30 of Odin

Sibyl coughed. "Well, that's the thing about ice archaeology. The ice melts and refreezes, depending on the weather each year, so while some things stay frozen pretty much from the moment they hit the ground, other things melt out, or get moved, depending on what the ice does. So if something falls into a glacier, it's likely to get crushed by all the ice moving over the years. Sure, it's slow, but that's a lot of pressure. Even modern bodies don't last long, or so I've heard. Whereas if a shirt falls off a sled into the snow, like the tunic Nik found, and almost instantly freezes, and it stays there like that for a couple thousand years, the first time it defrosts...well, it's like when you freeze food. It stays fresh."

"So, you're saying the ice in his clothes melted, and they wore out, but then the ice froze around him again?" one of the men asked.

"Yes, but..."

"That's not possible," Freyja interrupted. "Human flesh is every bit as fragile as clothing. Sometimes even more so, depending on what bacteria is present. If we had bones encased in fragments of clothing, that would make sense. Or leather clothing, protecting the body, maybe. But for the clothes to completely disintegrate and leave the body intact...that's just not possible. Now, if the body was buried naked..." She took a step closer, so she could see the body that she couldn't quite believe lay on the trolley, like it had never gone missing at all.

Which made no sense. She'd seen the empty trolley. Olaf had seen the empty trolley. He'd even picked up the spear, which this body was holding across his torso, like some medieval knight with a sword. Not that it hid much, him being naked and all. The weapon between his legs looked more impressive, especially given how cold it was in here. When he was alive, women must have absolutely flocked to his bed, with a cock that big. One of Olaf's ancestors, for sure.

She knew she should grab a pair of gloves, so she didn't risk contaminating the body. But she had to touch it with her bare hands, to know it was real, and not a hallucination.

Freyja reached out, her fingers hovering over the spear, then moving down, past his private parts, to...wow, he still had hair on his legs. Sling a towel around his waist, and he might have been Thor, just stepped out of the shower.

Finally, she lowered her hand, resting her fingers on his calf, which seemed safe enough. She was surprised at how cold he felt, then mentally shook herself. This was an ice mummy that had lain in the ice for hundreds of years, before arriving here in the lab fridge...well, she wasn't exactly sure when he'd arrived here, seeing as this was the first time she'd actually seen him, in the flesh, so to speak, instead of encased in ice, but in order to stay so well preserved, he'd have to have been somewhere cold in the interim.

She wanted to ask him where he'd been. What sort of life he'd lived, before he ended up in the ice, but mostly...where he'd disappeared to over the last week. She wanted to look him in the eye, and tell him he was as fucking selfish as Amal.

So without really thinking about it, she moved along the trolley, so she was level with his head. Automatically, she reached for his throat, to check for a pulse. She wasn't surprised she didn't feel one. It was silly she'd even bothered to check. Someone this cold was definitely dead.

She took a deep breath, fixed her gaze on his face and said...

"Oh fuck. Olaf?"

THIRTY-SIX

"Who's Olaf?"

"Oh, he was the maintenance man here. He didn't even last a day."

"Is working here that bad?"

"No, he arrived at work, only to get a message that his wife had been in an accident, so he had to go to hospital. A rock climbing accident, where she'd fallen and broken her arm, and she needed surgery. So he went to hospital to hold her hand and take care of her and stuff, except one of the nurses caught this virus. You know, the one everyone's going crazy about right now, but she didn't know she had it, so she gave it to...well, pretty much everyone. Olaf. Olaf's wife, plus a whole lot of other staff and patients. So they quarantined the whole hospital. And just when you think they're finally going to be allowed to go home...Olaf gets sick. Really sick. Like, complications with the virus and gets sent to Intensive Care sick. So his wife's the one holding the phone, sending messages to the lab group chat. I checked this morning, and it looks like he's finally been allowed to go home, but no way has he been cleared as fit for work. Especially a physical job like maintenance. But the thing is, you can't fire someone for getting infected, and the university can't hire someone new to replace him, even if Karl weren't up in the mountains. So Olaf is the maintenance man we don't have. We have his uniforms, his security pass...pretty much everything, except the man they're meant for."

"Does he look like Olaf?"

"How should I know? I never met him. But he's wearing Olaf's uniform, with his name on it, so it's safe to say they're the same size."

"So why didn't you tell her?"

"Because there never seemed to be a good time to tell her my last memory from more than a thousand years ago was having my heart cut out by a witch who put a spell on me, before burying me alive."

"That's...that's your last memory? Not the things Erik said about me?"

"Erik was a bag of wind who loved to talk, even when any sane man had stopped listening. I refused to break bread with him, for I knew I would never keep the food down. A cup of spiced wine from his healer was all the hospitality I could stomach in Erik's hall. Unlike some."

"There was a reason for it, I promise you."

"Of that, I am certain."

"I was trying to poison Erik's sons. Like he'd killed my family, I wanted him to suffer, too. Before I killed him."

"A pity you did not succeed."

"I do not know whether I did or not. The poisons were ones that act slowly, over several days. By the time the sons died, we were already cursed."

"Have you heard anything of Erik since you have awoken?"

"Only his witch, and the abomination. Her wolf man."

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