Day of the Vikings. A Thriller. (ARKANE) Read Free Page A

must be with all the facts and figures, but it wasn’t often that the curator got to hold forth to so many. Most people just wanted to see the longswords, and the bones of the decapitated Vikings held in the central exhibit, clearly the result of a massacre. British pride perhaps, fighting back against the widely held belief that Vikings raped and plundered with no defiance from the local population.
    Morgan was still examining the iron staff, so Blake pulled open the side door a crack, trying to catch a glimpse of the Neo-Viking group that the curator was escorting. There were several groups of other tourists in the exhibition hall, but the Neo-Vikings weren’t hard to spot. There were five men wearing rough-spun tunics over long trousers, wrapped round the middle with leather belts. They had fur skins over their shoulders, real ones by the look of them. Their faces were expressionless, even as they were shown the case of the Norse helmet and jawbone. One of the men wore a close-fitting tunic that revealed muscular arms, his left bicep tattooed with a raven in flight, its feathers entwined with rune letters. The man’s eyes darted around the room, taking in everyone’s position. He seemed strangely dissociated with what they were supposedly here to view.
    The group shifted as they moved to the next case, revealing a woman in their midst. She could have been anywhere between fifty and seventy, her features wrinkled but her skin glowing with an inner radiance. Her dark eyes were sharply focused on the curator, as if sucking his words into a bottomless pool. Her long gray hair was wound into a plait that hung down her back, with one blue streak that ran through it like the lapis lazuli jewelry held in the Egyptian rooms next door.  
    “The Neo-Vikings are here,” Blake said, turning back to Morgan with a smile. “They look pretty convincing, actually.”
    She looked up at him just as an explosion shook the building and the high-pitched shriek of the emergency alarms filled the air.  

Chapter 3

    THE EXPLOSION WAS COMPLETELY unexpected in this hall of ancient knowledge, but Morgan’s military training kicked in and she pulled Blake to the floor, under the protection of the broad table while the alarm shrieked around them. In these old buildings, the threat of falling plaster and stone could be worse than any initial damage. Part of her expected more explosions.  
    “I’ve got to go and help with the evacuation,” Blake shouted above the wail of the alarm and the screaming voices from the exhibition hall. “We’ve got to get everyone out of here.”
    He tried to get up, but Morgan pulled him back down.  
    “Wait,” she said. “In Israel, this kind of thing is part of our daily drill. You don’t run yet, because you could be running into something worse.”
    Her mind flashed to her days in the IDF: the bomb attacks she had experienced, the soldiers she had treated for PTSD … her father’s body blown apart by a suicide bomber, a sack of oranges spilled on the road amongst severed limbs.  
    There was something very wrong here. She checked her phone – no reception. Then she heard it. In between the rhythmic siren noise, it was quiet. The screams had been silenced.  
    “Listen,” she whispered. “Next door.”
    Blake cocked his head sideways. “Maybe the people have been evacuated?”
    “Stay there. I’m going to have a look.”
    Morgan scooted out from under the table and went to the door, pulling it open a tiny crack as Blake had done minutes before.  
    People lay on the floor, hands on their heads, while around the room, the Neo-Vikings stood with handguns drawn. The alarm suddenly stopped and the sound of smashing glass filled the room. There was a gasp from the floor.  
    “You can’t!”  
    A cry of pain followed as one of the men kicked the curator into silence.  
    Across the room, Morgan saw an older woman reach into a glass case. She lifted out one of the iron staffs and examined the