CHAPTER 4
Mel and Janice spent the next few hours in each other's close company. After the hot coffee and the sponge cake had been consumed with great relish, they huddled up right next to the hopping elevator where they laughed a little, kissed a lot and shared all sorts of increasingly outrageous theories as to why the presumed Amazon Yannberah would have joined up with Xena and Gabrielle on their way north.
As dinner time approached, they strolled down to the inn's restaurant to get a good table before the evening rush. Janice's wet clothes had dried sufficiently for her to wear her good shirt once more. Even better, she had donned her beloved fedora though she wasn't going to step outside of the inn. When she felt Mel's eyes land on the dark-brown headwear, she reached up to run a finger along the rim. " 'Cos it makes me look like a movie star, that's why," she replied to pre-empt the question that hadn't even been asked yet.
On their way down the staircase, they were still exchanging theories albeit of a less outrageous nature than earlier. It might have appeared like a waste of time for the uninitiated, but they had often achieved important breakthroughs from ping-ponging ideas around.
There was always a snippet of progress to be gained from even the craziest idea, and at present, Janice's theory of Yannberah perhaps being of Celtic blood and that the two warrior women had perhaps gotten to know each other when Xena had been in Britannia to meet Queen Boudicca didn't seem too farfetched.
---
The dish of the day was something called kåldolmer that neither Mel nor Janice understood a single syllable of. Worse, Mrs. Lindholm couldn't translate it. The penetrating scent - or stench, according to Janice - of cooked cabbage that wafted out of the kitchen eventually revealed what kind of dish it was. Instead of experimenting with something that would undoubtedly be a shock to American stomachs, they ordered sausages in home-made pepper sauce with a large helping of mashed potatoes on the side.
One of Mrs. Lindholm's local helpers soon came out with the beverages. Mel offered the young fellow a smile as he put down the slender glasses of beer they had ordered; his face turned tomato-red at the attention, and he hurried away double-quick. She and Janice had both sprung for the local draft beer, and the tiniest of nips was taken to sample it just in case it would be too much for her. The aroma was different to American beer, but it was rich and seemed to have a good aftertaste so she wasn't too displeased with her choice.
Before the food had been put on the table, Hanne Nielsen and Ellen Chrone entered the restaurant. The two young students wore their Sunday finest like the dinner was to be held at a royal palace and not a traditional village inn far out in the countryside. When they spotted Mel and Janice sharing a table like always, Hanne offered them a wave before she leaned in to whisper something to her friend.
Noticing it, Mel let out a short grunt before her eyes zipped down to study the highly fascinating tablecloth. "Oh, dear. Despite our efforts of remaining low key, I do believe we've been made, Jan. Hanne and Ellen have done quite a lot of whispering whenever they've looked at us."
The event involving the students had taken place behind Janice's back - literally and metaphorically - so she hadn't seen it. "So? If it means I can finally hug ya, squeeze ya and kiss ya in public, I'm all for it," she said before she took a long swig of the beer.
Mel's eyes briefly grew wide behind the horn-rimmed frame's lenses. After adjusting her glasses twice in rapid succession, she squirmed one way, then the other while letting out a mumbled "Please, Jan… not here…"
"I know, I know. I need to save it for when we're alone. And I will. But only because I love you," Janice said while casting a longing glance at the kitchen in the hope of seeing their food get brought out before she wasted away to mere skin and bones. There was nothing in the pipeline, so she took another swig of her beer instead.
"Thank you, dear. Oh… Hanne is coming this way. I think she wants to join us."
"Let her. Shooing her away will only worsen the whispers," Janice said and finally glanced over her shoulder.
The student's expression was as friendly as always as she approached the table. Once she got there, she put her hand on the backrest of the chair next to where Janice sat. "Doctor Covington. Miss Pappas. May Ellen and I sit at your table for dinner?" she said in her best school English.
"Why, certainly, Miss Nielsen. There's plenty of space for you," Mel said and removed a few items from the tabletop so there would be room for two more settings. "I hope the miserable weather this morning hasn't given you a head cold?"
"Oh no. We're fine, thank you. So are the boys," Hanne said and sat down next to Janice. "But Professor Granfeldt is still poor. I've heard he's begun to cough a great deal more now. Doctor Ingemann is with him as we speak."
Mel's expression grew concerned upon hearing the potentially worrisome news. "Oh, dear… Jan and I spoke to him this afternoon. He seemed tired but was more or less his old self. Why, I certainly hope he'll pull through-"
The chat was interrupted by Mrs. Lindholm who strode over to the table carrying no less than four plates on her strong arms. "Så! Nu skal herskabet bare se her! Så' der mos og tykke pølser i hjemmelavet pebersovs. Velbekomme!" she said before she realized the visitors wouldn't understand any of it. Her eyes grew wide for a moment before she turned to Hanne. "Frøken Nielsen, vil De ikke være så venlig at oversætte… mit engelsk er frygteligt."
"Jamen, selvfølgelig, Fru Lindholm," Hanne said with a smile. Once the expert cook had returned to the kitchen, Hanne pointed a slender index finger at the steaming-hot mashed potatoes, thick sausages and the home-made pepper sauce on the four plates. "Your dinner is served," she said with a grin - as a response, Janice laughed out loud and grabbed her cutlery.
---
Ellen Chrone had joined them before long; the two students had chosen the dish of the day rather than one of the other items on the menu, but while the explanation that kåldolmer was a seasoned, minced pork patty pressed into an oblong shape and wrapped in shreds of cooked cabbage made it sound better, it didn't exactly improve the smell. The young ladies greatly enjoyed the dish which once again proved that hardly anything was as individual as taste.
Mel was shocked to see Hanne and Ellen drink bottled beer, and even more shocked when she was told that although the law prevented restaurants from selling draft beer to anyone under twenty-one, it said nothing about selling or drinking bottled alcoholic beverages - Janice just grinned at her partner's inherent decency and her Southern manners.
---
Hanne and Ellen each chose an eighth of a honeydew melon with a few sprinkles of icing sugar on top for dessert while Mel had asked for another slice of the lemon-flavored sponge cake. Mrs. Lindholm had given her one of 'those' looks because, like pancakes for breakfast, nobody but nobody ate afternoon pastries for dessert at dinner time. The matron had eventually relented and had given Mel an extra-wide slice to keep the important guest satisfied.
"Doctor Covington," Ellen said as she dabbed her lips on a napkin after finishing her melon, "are you familiar with the local legend of the Valkyrie's Tomb?"
Janice's ears perked up at once at the possibility of exploring new legends and myths - especially of the ancient kind - so she leaned forward on her chair to face the young student who sat next to Mel. "Naw… that's news to me. Go on."
"Well, it's a very, very old legend. It's claimed that Odin's favored Valkyrie met her fate here and is buried somewhere on the grounds that we're excavating. She was supposed to have been buried with her winged horse, a great deal of weapons, and jars full of gold coins, silver jewelry and figurines made of amber and bone. Odin grieved over the loss and cast a spell of invisibility over the burial site that made it impossible to see for mortal eyes… but it's still there. Just hidden from us."
Looking thoughtful, Janice glanced over at Mel who offered her a nod in return - they both remembered certain passages from Gabrielle's Rhinegold scrolls that showed how much Odin cared for his Valkyries despite his apparent cold-heartedness. It was even well-documented that he favored one in particular, the ill-fated Grinnhilda. She had been at the heart of the entire Grendel saga that had later been rewritten as the epic Beowulf poem. That the poem had omitted all of Grinnhilda, Xena and Gabrielle's involvement in the tale was only to be expected given the patriarchal era it had been written in.
"So," Ellen continued, "when Professor Granfeldt found the third burial mound, we all thought that we had discovered the Valkyrie's Tomb, but… it was empty, as you saw. Oh, I know it's obviously just a myth, but my older brother is studying to be a folklorist at Aalborg University, and he has often told me that even the strangest or most outrageous myth has roots in reality."
"Quite. Doctor Covington and I can certainly attest to that," Mel said and adjusted her glasses - an image of the tomb in Macedonia flashed before her mind's eye.
"The Valkyrie's Tomb," Janice said and leaned back on the chair. Falling silent, she began to toy with the empty glass of beer that she had drained in five chugs to dampen the fiery effects of the home-made pepper sauce. Her gaze grew distant like she was trying to make sense of the vast, hopelessly confusing jigsaw puzzle that had slowly been revealed to them over the course of the past few days. So many clues, theories, suggestions and hunches pointed in so many directions at once it was impossible to get a clear picture, or even a clear sequence of events, of any of it.
Leaning forward, she looked at her three tablemates for a short while longer before she said: "Mel, what if the local legend started out with a collective memory of Yannberah's burial and grew from there? The feather-to-a-hen syndrome that Ellen pointed out this afternoon. It would explain several of the weird dead ends we've encountered."
Ellen blushed from the praise, and she found a very interesting spot on the tablecloth that she focused on. Hanne soon reached over to rub her friend's shoulder.
"Well, that theory certainly isn't without merit," Mel said after a pause to give it all some thought, "But a collective memory that has survived for nearly two millennia? I'm not sure, Jan. The professor told us how unstable this region was politically… no family would have been able to live here for twenty centuries. Don't forget the countless wars, frequent relocations at swordpoint and perhaps even slavery that must have taken place here."
Janice furrowed her brow; a moment later, she shrugged and fell back against the backrest. "Yeah. You're the voice of reason as always. Dammit. Another brick wall that we ran into face-first. Hell, I need to drown my sorrows… the next round of beer's on me. Anyone?" When all three of her tablemates shook their head, Janice shrugged again and got up from the chair.
---
One beer became two, then three, but because of the moderate amount of alcohol they contained, Janice's wooziness was still less than her disappointment that stemmed from not getting anywhere in the difficult case. The hands of time had moved around to nine thirty; Hanne Nielsen and Ellen Chrone had long since left the restaurant to go back upstairs to their rooms, and Mel tried to break the world record in the discipline known as yawns-per-hour. At present, she was busy with number nineteen and it seemed - from her bleary-eyed expression - there were plenty more to come.
Janice emptied the third bottle of the local brew before she reached out to give Mel's hand a squeeze. "Toots, why don't you hit the sack? You look beat."
"I am beat. I can't believe you're not tired after the hectic morning we had. What, with the professor being ill and all that."
"Eh. All in a day's work for us adventurers," Janice said and waved her hand dismissively. "Hell, I remember an early morning many years ago. It was up in British Columbia and the night had been real shitty. Me and Dad sorta wandered into a cave to get some rest. The bear who owned the cave got so P.O.'ed with us that he tried to take a chunk outta my butt. Dad and me ran for damn near a mile before we dared to slow down. And we could still hear the bear roarin' at us for disturbing him. So a hectic morning is nothing new to me."
"Janice Covington, you're in a category all of your own."
"And you've only just noticed?" Janice said with a wink.
Chuckling at the exchange, Mel took off her glasses to polish the lenses. She heard the door to the restaurant open and close but didn't think much of it before a new voice spoke up right next to their table. Sliding her glasses back up her nose, she looked up at Ulrikke Jensen who still wore her trademark uniform. The rain cape had presumably been left at the sentry box because it was nowhere in sight, and the green beret had been folded once and subsequently slipped in under the shoulder strap of her jacket. "Oh… hello, Olrickah," Mel said as she extended her hand for the traditional greeting.
Ulrikke soon put out her own hand to complete her part of the tradition. "Good evening, Miss Pappas."
Janice grinned as she reached up to shake hands with the buff guard. "Hi de ho, General Rikki. Nice to see ya." When the touch was decidedly icy, she hurriedly pulled back her hand and stuck it inside her leather jacket. "Damn, did we get rolled over by a glacier or something? How the hell can it be that cold in the middle of June?!"
Ulrikke shrugged. "This is a fairly average summer here, Doctor. Nothing particular about it except that it rains a little more than usual. The higher temperatures won't arrive until mid-July and into August. Then, we might reach as much as twenty-five degrees Centigrade… oh, that's right… you use Fahrenheit in the US, don't you? Sorry, I don't know how to convert the figure."
"Ah, it doesn't matter. Cold is cold and wet is worse. Say, you want a beer or something?"
"No thanks, but I was thinking about asking Svend-Aage if he had a bottle of bjesk around here that he might want to sell to me," the guard said and began to move over to the counter to see the innkeeper or his hard-working wife.
Mel took the opportunity to push back her chair. "Why don't you sit over here, Olrickah? I'm sure you and Jan have a host of tall tales you can share with each other. I need to get some rest or else I'll drop where I stand," she said before she leaned down toward her partner to deliver a message for her ears only: "Jan, when you do come upstairs, please keep your socks on in bed unless your feet are warm…"
"You betcha!" Janice said with a grin; she reached out to give Mel's hand and arm a little squeeze. She wanted to do a whole lot more than that, but understood that it would cause the more sensitive Mel emotional stress if she attempted to pull her down for a sizzling kiss. The sly smiles and looks they gave each other proved there would indeed be more once the curtains had been drawn.
Not too much time passed by after Mel had left before Ulrikke came back with a full bottle of bjesk and a pair of shot glasses. Similar to the bjesk Janice had sampled earlier, the new bottle had a bunch of an unidentified herb soaking in the clear spirits. "Here you go," the guard said as she sat down and filled Janice's glass.
"Thanks. Let's make the pig squeal," Janice said and chugged down the home-made spirits in one go. It wasn't the same blend as the first she had tried, but it had a pleasant aftertaste of dill, anise and something else as well. "Yeah, that's nice. Perhaps I oughtta buy a couple of bottles to take back home to the States. Say, Rikki, there's something I've been meaning to ask ya… how come you speak English so well?"
"I was married to a Tommy for a couple of years… you know, an English soldier," Ulrikke said and took another shot. "He came over in 'forty-five as part of Montgomery's army group that liberated Denmark. We were married in 'forty-six, but it didn't last. We weren't really compatible after all… and he was too much of a ladies' man to settle for one woman."
"Mmmm!"
"We were divorced in 'forty-nine, and he went back to England shortly after that," Ulrikke said with a shrug.
"Eh. No big loss. So is that an English uniform?" Janice said before she poured herself a new drink.
Ulrikke pulled out in the khaki-colored fabric like she was trying to look at it through a stranger's eyes. "No, it's a Danish infantry uniform from the war. I bought it in a… uh… overskudsforretning. A second-hand store for old military clothes?"
"A surplus store."
"Right. I wanted to join the Resistance during the war, but my local group commander didn't want any girls. He said we'd pose a safety risk because we might fall in love with one of those dashing Germans." Grunting, Ulrikke downed another shot of bjesk.
Janice shook her head. "Typical."
"After the war, I applied to join the Armed Home Guard when the corps was established in 'forty-seven, but my application was rejected. Because I was a woman. Eh, what can you do… you know?" Ulrikke said and poured herself a fresh drink.
"Jeez, that's the worst load of bull dung I've heard for a long while. I know those types of fellas well, though… oh boy, do I ever. Mel and I used to call it Operation Y-C-D-T… You Can't Do That! We had more than one run-in with those pencil pushers during the war." Janice let out a chuckle as she recalled some of the conversations she and Mel had had with various intelligence officers - they had all reacted with shock and horror at the notion of allowing two women to join the supply and logistics convoys that supported the GIs at the front.
Ulrikke furrowed her brow as she looked a little closer at the unusual woman she shared the table with. "How so? Weren't you archaeologists then?"
"Oh, we sure were… we were directly behind the front lines in some of the US campaigns in Western Europe. We helped museums restore their collections and things like that. Helped move priceless artwork back from bomb shelters once a town or a city had been liberated. That kind of stuff."
"Huh. I'm impressed. I was born in the wrong country," Ulrikke said and reached into a pocket to get the pack of Green Cecil cigarettes that Janice had bought for her the day before. A few shreds of tobacco needed to be pressed back inside the roll of paper on the cigarette she had chosen, so she tapped it against the tabletop before she lit it with a genuine American Zippo lighter. "Smoke?" she said and held up the pack.
"It's tempting, but no. I can't. I'm dying for one, but I can't. I promised Mel I wouldn't smoke." Janice chuckled as she remembered the conversation. "She said I tasted like an ashtray when she kissed me."
Pale-blue smoke rose silently from the glowing tip of the Cecil. The smoke went past Ulrikke's eyes that had narrowed slightly. A few moments went by before she broke out in a slow nod; then she took another puff and let the cigarette rest on the edge of the ashtray. "I knew a woman like you back before the war. A great gal and a really good friend. When she was found out, she had to move to another town. The pious just wouldn't leave her alone."
"Sons a'bitches," Janice said and downed the next shot in one go. Since the bottle of bjesk was already half-gone, she figured they might as well empty it completely - after all, Svend-Aage Lindholm had no use for a half-full bottle in his rack.
Nodding, Ulrikke took another deep puff of her Cecil before she knocked off the ash into the glass ashtray. "Agreed. What's the story between you and Miss Pappas, then? If you don't mind me asking."
"Oh, I don't. We met in Macedonia in nineteen-forty. Just before the Krauts got there," Janice said and cast a longing gaze at the cigarette and the smoke signals it sent out. "Yeah… I was digging for the Xena Scrolls but I needed help. So I wired for Professor Pappas… little did I know that Melvin Pappas had passed away. A couple of days later, his daughter Melinda showed up in my tent looking like the Goddamned personification of Aphrodite." Janice chuckled at the memory of the young and highly befuddled Mel Pappas arriving just when a couple of Smythe's thugs had decided to raid the master tent.
There were plenty of things from that expedition she couldn't tell Ulrikke without appearing like a nut job on the loose, but the positive outcome still overpowered the negative aspects of not only having faced off against Ares, but having a great deal of the recovered scrolls nabbed by the bumbling fool Jack Kleinman.
"And you've been together ever since?"
"Yeah, well… more or less, yeah. It took me a while to warm up to her at first," Janice said and poured herself another glass of bjesk. "I remember thinking she was the most annoying woman I had ever been around. That was because of her kindness and strict sense of morals. I was a wild one back then. Kinda rough around the edges, and… yeah. You know what I mean," she continued as she knocked down the spirits in one gulp.
Ulrikke chuckled before she drew the final puff of the cigarette and stubbed it out in the ashtray. "I think I do. Say… you want a night cap?" she said and held up the bottle that only had the bunch of herbs and a tiny amount of bjesk left in it.
"Naw, I better quit while I'm ahead… but, uh… wouldya mind if I kidnapped one of those cigs? I'll buy you a new pack tomorrow."
"Oh, you don't have to do that. Be my guest," Ulrikke said and retrieved her Zippo so it was ready.
After Janice had taken a Green Cecil and had tapped it against the tabletop to get all the tobacco lined up and in fine shape, the cigarette was soon lit and a column of pale-blue smoke rose toward the ceiling. "Hey, this is a fine cig," she said as she took the first deep puff. "Real nice. Great tobacco, great booze, great company. If the inn had a bouzouki band and we had a deck of cards, we'd be fixed for the rest of the night," she said which made the Cecil bob in the corner of her mouth.
"Well, it would be a game of solitaire because I'm off," Ulrikke said and pushed out her chair. "It's been a long day, and there's another one just like it tomorrow."
"Aw… already? Hell, it ain't even midnight yet!"
"True, but my watch starts at five thirty."
"Sonovabitch!" Janice spluttered which made a plume of smoke escape her mouth. She stared at the tough guard for a moment before she reached out to shake her hand. "In that case, General Rikki, I hope your night will be calm, quiet and refreshing!"
Ulrikke chuckled as she shook Janice's hand. "Thank you, Doctor. You too. Aren't you worried Miss Pappas will smell the smoke when you get upstairs?"
"Aw, Mel's gonna be fast asleep by the time I make it up there. Won't be a problem," Janice said with a cheeky grin. She nodded a goodbye as the guard pushed the chair back to the table and strode out of the inn's restaurant. Another deep puff of the Cecil followed before she knocked off the ash. "I hope," she said in a mumble as she cast a slightly concerned glance at the glowing tip of the cigarette.
-*-*-*-
Knock, knock - Knock! Knock! - Thump! Thump! Thump!
'Miss Pappas! Miss Pappas! Doctor Covington! You must come quick! Please, Doctor Covington! It's very, very urgent!' a male voice cried at the top of his lungs from somewhere beyond the locked door to Mel and Janice's room.
Janice, who had finally made it up to the bed not twenty minutes earlier, bolted upright at the hugely aggressive intrusion into her much-deserved sleepy state. A moment later, she wished she hadn't moved quite so quickly as the bjesk she had consumed caught up with her and gave her a thumping headache.
"What… the… hell…?" she croaked as she grappled for her wristwatch that she had only just taken off and put on the bedside table. When she finally snatched it, the room was too dark to see the hands even holding the watch right up against her eye, but she had a hunch not too much time had gone by since she had shed her clothes and jumped into bed with the sleeping Mel.
Thump! Thump! Thump!
'Doctor Covington! Miss Pappas! We're having a very bad crisis here! Miss Pappas, you must come quick!' the unknown man cried once more.
ZZZZzzzz… ZZ- "Whazzat?" Mel mumbled from her side of the bed.
"It's Henning again… I'm gonna make 'im wish he was never born, that sonovabitch," Janice growled as she swung her legs over the side of the bed. Getting up, she fumbled across the carpet in a semi-hung over, semi-sleeping state while wearing a strange get-up of olive-green socks, salmon-colored bloomers and her regular khaki undershirt that she hadn't bothered to take off. The nightly chill immediately nibbled at her bare legs, but there was no time for trifles of such a nature.
Thump! Thump! Thump! Thump!
'Doctor Coving-'
Janice unlocked the door and tore it open before the intruder would harm the woodwork for good by adding another of the supremely annoying thumps to it. "I'm here, for Chrissakes! I'm tellin' ya right now, buster, if ya keep up this kinda thumpin', ya gonna earn yourself a fat lip real soon! You hear me? This better be damn good!" she growled in a voice that had turned gravelly from the alcohol and the tobacco.
At least Henning Mikkelsen had the good grace to look as disheveled as Janice. His clothes were messy, his round glasses dripped with water and his hair lay flat against his scalp like someone had emptied an entire bucket over his head. "Doctor! Thank God I found you… we have a problem! A big, big problem!" he said as he clenched his wet fists to his chest like he was freezing. When he noticed the doctor wore even less than when he had woken her up the other morning when the professor had fallen ill, his cheeks exploded in a flurry of red.
In her bleary-eyed state, Janice failed to notice the details of Henning's puzzling wetness or even his blushing cheeks. "Hell, don't just stand there like a plucked turkey! What's the Goddamned problem?"
"Oh… oh, everything is… is… overflowing! It's very, very bad, Doctor… you must come quick!" Henning said, wringing his hands. Suddenly realizing he had used the wrong word to describe the critical situation, he stuttered and stammered to find the proper word - unfortunately, he ran out of time to correct himself before Janice had drawn a very deep breath:
"Overflowing?! You gimme a Goddamned mule kick of a headache 'cos something's overflowing? What is it, the bathtub? Why, I'm gonna tear ya a new one, bub! Goddammit, diddencha momma teach ya anything about life? If the Goddamned bathtub is overflowing, pull the Goddamned plug! Good night! And don't even think about thumpin' on the door again!"
Janice swung the door closed with great force, but Henning jumped forward to jam his foot into the rapidly disappearing opening to block it. The door smashed into his shoe with the strength of an industrial punching machine, and he couldn't hold back a wild yelp. Putting his hands on the edge of the door to release at least some of the pressure, he spoke into the two-inch crack: "No! No, Doctor! Not the bathtub… it's… it's… fl- flooding! Yes, it's a bad flooding!"
"I ain't got a damn clue wotcha talkin' about, buster… but I'd advise ya to get your foot outta the-"
"The blue presenning flew off! The… the… blue protective cover thing! There's a skybrud! Uh… uh… a cloudburst! Very bad! The extra news on the radio warned of flooding!"
Janice suddenly stood stock-still as the frantically delivered words were parsed by her tired, semi-boozed-up mind. Opening the door again, she stared at the blushing, frazzled student with eyes that grew ever wider as it dawned on her what he had been trying to say. "A cloudburst… and the blue tarp flew off… and there's a flash flood warning… oh, son of a bitch! Son of a Goddamned bitch!" she croaked before she let the door be and stormed back to the bed.
"Mel! Mel, wake up! And get up! We got trouble… we got bad trouble over at the dig," Janice cried as she whipped her arms down her shirtsleeves, jumped into her pants and stuck her socked feet into her boots. "Mel! Wake up! We gotta scramble!"
ZZZZZzzz- "Wha… what's going on- barbarians? Are the barbarians coming?"
"Whut? Hell, it ain't far off, Toots! The Goddamned burial mound is gonna get destroyed if we can't contain the water!"
After the last item of clothing had been put on, Janice ran over to the window to see for herself. The curtains were quickly pulled aside and the windows opened - the young student hadn't exaggerated as it was blowing a gale outside while the rains came down harder than ever. "Henning!" she roared as she slammed the windows shut once more. When he didn't reply, she hurried over to the door to deliver the message in person. "Henning, find Olrickah Jensen's room and wake her up! Now!"
"Ah, wh- who-"
"The security guard! On the double!"
"Y- yes, Doctor!" Henning said and hobbled away on a semi-numb and fully-squashed foot to carry out the task.
Janice ran back to Mel's side of the bed and reached down to shake her awake once more. "Mel! I'll be over at the mound… come as soon as you can!" As soon as she had received a groaning, grunting reply, she stormed out of the room.
Mel was literally left in the wake, and she could only shake her fuzzy head in surprise. That emotion soon changed into annoyance over the miserable weather and ultimately despair over the risk of potentially catastrophic damage to the ancient burial mound.
Once she had moved her legs over the side of the bed and had pushed her black, horn-rimmed glasses up her nose, she sniffed the air with a puzzled expression on her face. "Smoke? Cigarette smoke?" she mumbled before the need to hurry overruled the need for answers.
-*-*-*-
Janice had no time to be angry at the driving rain or the howling wind as she ran at full blast to get to the dig site. On her way there, she had to clamp a hand down onto her beloved fedora or else it would have been blown clear across the North Sea, the Atlantic Ocean and half way back to her home on 1281 Beech Lane in San Francisco.
She had barely set foot on the gravelly path at the white church before two things happened at once: one, the blue tarpaulin did its worst to spook her into nearly having a heart attack by performing an airborne assault from a hidden position up in the trees. Two, her boot slipped as she had to undertake an urgent evasive action.
The latter proved worse than the former when she stumbled and fell onto her side in the middle of the largest puddle known to mankind since the biblical Great Flood.
Cursing, growling and grunting, she got to her soaked feet and tried to round up the errant tarpaulin. Just when she thought she had a firm grip on the blue terror, a strong gust of wind caught it and ripped it from her hands. After roaring out her frustrations, she spun around and ran the rest of the way toward the dig site.
As she had feared following the loss of the protection provided by the blue tarp, the recently excavated area in front of the oak door had turned into a backyard swimming pool. Worse, it rained so heavily she could almost sense the rainwater rising above the pit's floor though the night was so black she could barely see a hand in front of her face.
The constant, heavy rain created by the cloudburst made so much noise it drowned out every other sound; the unpredictable gusts of wind that made the nearby trees sway dangerously tried to combat it by howling in several different keys at once, but even the whistling storm and the creaking branches were no match for the drops of rain that continued to fall from the sky like a ton of bricks.
"Sonovabitch!" Janice cried as she tried to wipe her face so she could see better. It was all to no avail as more rain soon splashed over the skin she had just cleaned off.
High above her, the cloudburst seemed to gain in strength which only added to the misery on the ground. With the soil already saturated from the weeks of rain that had preceded the disastrous event, puddles soon grew into lakes that were connected by creeks, streams or even rivers of varying width.
"Jan! Jan! Where are you?" Mel suddenly cried from further back on the gravelly footpath. A cone of light bobbed furiously as it cut through the darkness. The light was a good indicator of how much rain was actually falling from the sky - the individual drops were invisible and simply appeared like a gray curtain.
"Here! Here, Mel! Over by the dig!" Janice cried back. She still held onto her soaked fedora, but soon realized it was a waste of energy. Whipping it off, she temporarily unzipped her leather jacket so she could stuff the hat inside.
The cone of light changed direction and soon bobbed closer to Janice's location. The first thing out of Mel's mouth when she arrived and caught the first glimpse of the flooding was: "Oh, my goodness!"
'Hello! Is anyone hurt? Doc! Where are you?' Ulrikke Jensen shouted from a short distance away. The guard also carried a flashlight that bobbed up and down; she came from another direction compared to Mel.
"Not yet! We're over by the dig!" Janice shouted back, but she didn't expect her voice to carry that far considering the thunderous nature of the rain and the howling wind.
"Jan, what are we going to do?" Mel said as she shone her own cone of light down at the floor of the makeshift swimming pool. "The oak door won't last long against that kind of pressure… look!"
"I'm looking, all right… and I'm thinking… but Goddammit, I don't know what we can do!" Janice said and thumped a clenched fist against her thigh.
Although the actual level of standing water down in the pit wasn't as bad as the splashing had made it appear, the newly excavated floor was submerged in at least three inches of water. The sheet piling supporting the farthest end of the dig site had collapsed which had sent a landslide of mud and rocks over most everything down there.
Ulrikke Jensen soon joined them with all four dripping wet students in tow. The tough guard also shone into the pit and promptly let out a barked "For satan i hede, hule helvede da også!" that seemed to be a fire-and-brimstone sentiment shared by the other Danes there. "Doctor Covington… how can I help?"
"I don't know yet! Jeez, look at that door," Janice said and moved closer to one of the edges of the pit that were still held in place by the sheet piling. Leaning in, she was able to get a good look of the oak door leading to the chamber - it still held, but the ancient wood had begun to give in to the pressure. "It's already gaping. If it's forced fully open, the water's gonna sweep in like a Goddamned tidal wave!"
"Doc, I don't understand," Ulrikke said; she needed to shout to be heard over the pounding rain and the howling winds, "I thought you said the chamber was empty. What's the big deal if it gets flooded?"
"Olrickah, I can explain," Mel said and moved over to stand next to the guard so she didn't need to shout quite so much. "A flooding would destroy any archaeological evidence left in there. We need to be able to match the analysis data with the surroundings of the finds to give the artifacts their proper context-"
Ulrikke shook her head to interrupt Mel; the gesture sent even more water running down her face. "Forget it, Miss Pappas. All that goes way over my head."
"Well, all right, but-" Mel tried, but Ulrikke just shook her head once more which made Mel stop trying.
"Henning and Torben!" Janice barked as she spun around to face the students. "Hustle over to the open-sided tent and salvage everything we left there. The main catalogue is back at the inn, but get all the other reference works and those things. Yeah? You understand what to do? Get to it! Hanne and Ellen, once the major tent is empty, go through the smaller tents. Okay? Get the wet items back to the inn and have Lindholm turn on the central heating so we can get 'em dry. Okay, hustle! Hustle!"
The four students soon took off for the three tents. Like they had been told, Henning and Torben went for the open-sided one to rescue whatever they could carry. The two young ladies each dove into one of the smaller, closed tents to pick up all the items that were supposed to have been safe there.
"Doc!" Ulrikke said. "Doc, I'm no help here so I'll look for that damn tarp… I think I know where it ended up!"
"Great, General… we're counting on ya!" Janice said and gave Ulrikke a thumbs-up as a parting salute before the guard took off into the night. "Mel, I hate to say this, but we gotta get down there to plug the breach. We gotta build up a wall of mud or something to get the pressure off the door… yeah?"
Mel glanced down at the waterlogged floor of the pit; then she looked up at the black sky. "Well, if it can't be helped," she said and promptly jumped down into the pit. Large splashes flew the other way as she landed, and her boots and her heavy-duty, dark-brown overalls were soon soaked through at the ankles.
She hadn't had time to take her large leather bag with her, but she had managed to grab a smaller one made of canvas as she flew out of the door. Though the rain continuously tried its worst to soak everything through, the canvas bag was sturdy and would still protect any possible artifacts that would literally be unearthed by the monsoon-like conditions.
"Looks like Aphrodite and fights like Xena… that's my Mel Pappas!" Janice said with a strained grin. She remained up top for a moment longer while she eyed the remaining two sections of sheet piling. One seemed to hold, but the one on the left-hand side of the entrance had already moved an inch inward indicating it was about to give up the unequal struggle with Mother Nature. "Crap," she growled as she stepped into oblivion to jump the three feet down.
Coming to a splashing halt, she immediately began to scoop up large handfuls of mud that she threw closer to the door - there, Mel tried her hardest to literally slap it into shape as a makeshift dike. The two experienced archaeologists worked flat out to stop the inevitable tide from reaching, or worse, seeping past the oak door, but it soon dawned on them they were fighting a losing battle amid the incessant rain and strong winds.
"Damn! Damn, damn, damn… damn!" Janice growled as the latest armful of mud slipped through her fingers for the umpteenth time. "I'll bet that ol' bastard Ches Coyne is back home in San Francisco sippin' Merlot and laughin' his ass off at our expense! Goddammit, Mel! As soon as we see him, I'm gonna bop him over the head with the Goddamned Venus of Milo! Why do we always end up in this kind of crap?!"
"I don't know… keep digging… just keep digging…"
"I am digging, Goddammit! If I dig any further, I end up in Goddamned communist China!" Janice said with eighty percent of the front of her body covered in sticky, pale-brown mud. "We shoulda brought a couple-a hundred sandbags is what we shoulda done! I don't believe this crap!"
A drawn-out creak of wooden agony made both women look up in a hurry. A large branch connected to one of the trees that stood closest to the burial mound and the excavation pit was about to break off from the trunk. The wildly swaying branch was at least nine feet long and carried countless smaller twigs; the leaves that hadn't yet been blown off by the gusts were heavy from the rain and made the whole thing droop dangerously.
Janice had just opened her mouth to complain about Mother Nature ganging up on them when another gust of wind gave the affected tree another strong shaking - on the literal backswing, the branch snapped off the trunk with a loud crack. Howling, Janice dove for cover a split second before the severed branch smashed down across the edges of the open pit.
Though the wooden missile narrowly missed all of Janice's vital parts including her head, the quick dive resulted in a mud bath that didn't exactly improve her mood - nor that of Mel who caught the worst of the rebound as the splashes of mud surrendered to gravity and came down once more.
All that drama was bad enough already, but it was about to get even worse as the weight of the branch made the weakened section of the sheet piling collapse altogether. As the wall of saturated earth suddenly gained outward momentum, it sent a huge slide of mud, rocks, soil and what had to be a vast underground lake rushing all over the floor of the pit and the two women working there.
Mel had already drawn a deep breath to let out a shriek when an unnatural calm seemed to fall over her instead. The elements continued to rage with unabated force all around her, but she didn't seem to pay much attention to them - at least not compared to how she had reacted earlier. Her stance became purposeful and taut, and she sent a blue glare at the approaching mud like it had insulted her on a personal level.
As the landslide continued to sweep toward her and Janice, she moved with measured gestures and simply grabbed hold of the collar of Janice's leather jacket. In one, fluid motion, she opened the oak door to the burial chamber, shoved the stunned Janice inside, jumped in herself and slammed the door shut. It gaped at the base which allowed some water and mud to seep inside, but it was nothing compared to the ferocity of the raging elements just beyond it. Although she and Janice were trapped, they were safe for the time being.
Mel's face carried a mercurial quality as she helped Janice to her feet. She looked around the burial chamber like it had been a very, very long time since she had last set foot there. Her pale-blue eyes burned brightly with focus and intent as she stared at the square stones that formed the outline of the unused burial plot in the center of the chamber; then she looked up at Janice. "Are you all right?" she said in a dark, velvety voice that had lost its Southern accent.
"I dunno, Mel… I got mud where mud don't belong… and I think I broke my ass, too," Janice croaked as she rubbed that particular part of her. Then she noticed the change in her partner's voice. The flashlight had been lost in the confusion when half the tree had landed nearly on top of her, but she didn't need light to tell the difference in Mel's presence. "Mel?" she whispered.
"No."
"Xena… thank you," Janice continued in a voice that was heavy with reverence.
"Don't thank me yet. It might get worse before it gets better. So you found Yannberah's tomb," Xena said and looked around once more.
Janice tried to wipe her eyes free of the mud and water that continued to seep down from her soaked hair, but everything about her was wet to the core so there wasn't much she could do about the excess water. "Yeah… or what's left of it. It's obviously been looted. Who was she?"
"A warrior who traveled with us on the last part of our voyage here. We met her in Aquae Granni not too far from the Rhenus. In a Roman garrison-"
"Close to a hot spring?"
A crooked eyebrow was Xena's only reply, and it made Janice let out a snicker.
Xena moved over on the opposite side of the burial plot from where Janice stood. "To get up here, we had to ride for hundreds of leagues across land controlled by various warlords. Yannberah had the connections needed to avoid unnecessary bloodshed. Of course, Gabrielle and I could easily have fought our way through if it had come to that."
"But that would have worked against the purpose of your trip… to help King Wermund of the Jutes prevent a war…"
"Exactly."
"Yeah… but then Yannberah was killed on the last night…"
"Unfortunately, yes. Gabrielle covered all of that in her scrolls."
Janice's breath hitched and she stared wide-eyed at the ancient warrior in front of her. "What scrolls? We haven't found any scrolls… except a small fragment."
"Maybe you haven't looked in the right place yet," Xena said as a very faint, somewhat cheeky smile played across her lips.
"It's all gone, Xena… the chamber was looted! Wasn't it? It wasn't! Jumpin' Jehoshaphat, it's all still here!" Janice cried, whipping her arms in the air. The water that splashed out from her wet clothes created a disharmonic concert as it landed upon the soil inside the rows of stones that outlined the empty burial plot.
From one moment to the next, Mel's body lost its purposeful stance and turned limp; she tilted forward like she had suddenly forgotten about the concept of gravity. Falling to her knees - that landed on one side of the square stones - she put her hands flat on the soil inside the empty plot. The wooden creak that followed spelled out in two-feet tall block letters that there was indeed a place they hadn't explored yet.
"Mel! Mel! Goddammit, Mel, are you okay?" Janice said and rushed over to help the other half of her soul. She put a hand under the lanky Southerner's arms to get her into a more comfortable position, but didn't pull too hard in case she was hurting already.
"Why, I… I… where am I-" Mel said and fumbled with her horn-rimmed glasses while she attempted to regain her bearings. Though she turned her head to take in what she could of her surroundings, the dazed look upon her face proved she didn't see much of anything. "Oh… oh my goodness… I was… I was… back… Gabrielle?"
"No, it's Jan. I'll explain later," Janice said and assisted Mel in turning around so she could sit on the ground. While Mel slowly returned to the present, Janice hurried back to the supposedly empty burial plot and began to slam her bootheel down onto the dirt at various spots to test the ground's integrity. Everywhere she hit, a hollow thump and a large, wooden creak was heard. "I don't believe it… it's a false floor! I'll be a son of a- Mel… Mel, can you stand?"
"N- not yet…"
"Okay, don't try too soon. We got enough trouble as it is," Janice said and quickly moved down to rest on her knees outside the row of stones. "That's why those damn stones are so equal! They're not dug into the soil at all… they're standing on a wooden platform! Xena, you wily ol' Thracian…" she continued as she grabbed hold of the first of the stones to gain better access to the important parts.
---
Janice's hands and fingers had turned bloody after removing twelve of the heavy stones, but she wiped off the blood on her muddy pants - there was no time for little aches and pains like that. Sitting back on her thighs, she looked around for something she could use to scrape off the top layer of soil. The idea of using a square fragment that had broken off one of the stones she had just removed presented itself to her, and she jumped up to retrieve it.
The square fragment worked well as a makeshift shovel, and she had soon cleared a small section of the false floor. Like she had expected from the sounds produced by her boot, the underfloor wasn't made of sturdy oak but of fir: seven planks in total, each roughly six inches wide. Not all the wood that had been used had survived the two millennia unscathed, so she started wiggling the ones that appeared to be in the worst condition to get started on the next part of their seemingly never-ending saga.
Mel had finally recovered enough to join the activity. Staggering over to the false floor, she knelt opposite Janice's position and began to scoop up and throw away the soil that had blocked the new floor.
"Ah… hello, I'm Doctor Janice Covington. You're Melinda Pappas, right?" Janice said with a wink.
"Quite," Mel said and took a small break in her scooping to adjust her glasses.
"Just checkin'. You know, if anyone knew about your… uh… occasional head guest, they'd lock us up and throw away the key."
"Probably."
Janice's attempts at removing the most rotten of the fir planks was successful which revealed a black hole underneath. Spurred on by the victory, she moved onto the next one at once. "Did you see Gabrielle while you were there?" she said while she tried to wiggle the next plank free.
Mel continued to remove the dirt; she had started down the other end of the new floor and slowly made her way up to where Janice worked. Letting out a sigh, she briefly leaned back on her thighs while she tried to remember what had happened. "Yes. Joxer, too, I believe. We were walking across a meadow of some kind. I think we were in Greece, but I'm not too sure. It might have been elsewhere."
"Amazing," Janice said and let out a dark chuckle. The second plank was far more difficult to wiggle free than the first had been, and she nearly broke a finger trying to get it dislodged. "Ouch! Dammit, I didn't need that…" she said and waved the affected hand around. Instead of risking further injury, she took the first piece of wood that she had managed to get free and jammed it into the gap. The very first attempt to use it as a crowbar resulted in the first plank snapping in half - and the next plank hadn't even moved an inch.
Grunting, Janice was literally left holding the pieces. She looked over at Mel who adjusted her glasses as her only reply. Another grunt followed as Janice threw the two halves of the snapped plank over her shoulders and went back to doing it the hard way.
---
A short five minutes later, Mel scooped up yet another armful of the loose soil while Janice continued to let out a long sequence of unintelligible mumbles and grumbles at their slow progress.
After dumping the soil behind her, Mel needed a moment to catch her breath and to wipe her muddy brow with the back of her hand. She happened to glance over to the oak door where water and mud had begun to trickle in down at the lower edge. It seemed to run freely, but its speed wasn't critical yet. "Oh, Jan… look! We… we have a breach!"
"Sonovabitch!" Janice growled after whipping her head around to see for herself. Whipping it back to the cumbersome work she was in the middle of, she stared at the small gaps between the planks that led down into the real chamber below the false floor. "It's gonna be like a Goddamned leaky submarine down there if we don't stop that Goddamned mud from gettin' here!"
"I… I… don't know what we can do-"
"Paging Xena of Amphipolis! Paging Xena of Amphipolis!" Janice said in a surly tone before she focused on the false floor. After a few moments, she stopped trying to get the next fir plank free in case her hard work would only lead to the destruction of the priceless artifacts she hoped would await them down below.
"I… I have an idea!" Mel said and jumped up. Proving that her distant relative wasn't needed at all, she ran over to the door to assess the damage. Once there, a stroke of good fortune was finally awarded the tireless archaeologists when she happened to spot her long-lost flashlight. The tool had landed just outside the door, so it was an easy task - for once - to reach out and grab it. "Ha! Jan, we have our flashlight back!" she cried before she stuffed it down into one of the large pockets of her heavy-duty overalls.
"Great… how's that gonna help us now?" Janice said in a grumble.
Ignoring Janice's uncharacteristically foul mood, Mel hurried back to the pile of loose soil she had removed from the false floor. She scooped up as much of it as she could carry before she hurried back to the breach in the door. There, she dumped it all again and patted the surface to create an indoor dike. She was soon back at the pile she had created to repeat the task.
It only took Janice a few seconds to figure out what Mel was trying to accomplish with all her hurrying back and forth. It was also evident that more hands were needed for the task, so she jumped to her feet, scooped up an armful of loose soil and used it to plug the breach at the door.
Little by little, armful by armful, the indoor dike grew taller and wider - its construction meant that the relentless, seeping progress of the water and mud was finally halted. "Way to go, Mel!" Janice cried and wrapped an arm around her tall and horrendously filthy partner. "Excellent work… remind me to kiss you silly ten times in a row once we're done here!"
"Why, I'll certainly try!" Mel said and let out a slightly screechy laugh at the suggestion. Fumbling with the flashlight, she clicked the small button which allowed them to see what they were doing and how much work remained to be done.
Returning to the false floor, they resumed clearing as much as they could of the soil that covered the fir planks. Fifteen armfuls of dirt later - all of which went over to reinforce the makeshift dike - they leaned back on their thighs to behold the bare wood that had literally come into the light.
The cause for the easy release of the first section of wood and the difficulty in getting the rest free soon became apparent: in addition to having been rotten, the first plank was only half the width of the others. The rest were full-width planks that were seemingly quite healthy even after spending two millennia covered by soil.
Undaunted, Janice tried to get a better grip for a new attempt, but the stubborn plank of fir offered her nothing but a few splinters in her hand. Leaning back, she wiped her face on her sleeve - since both were equally filthy, that didn't bring her much, either. "Crap… I don't have a clue how we can get those planks to release, Mel."
"Might it be another ruse? How far do you suppose they extend beyond where the stones were laid out?" Mel said and shuffled off to the side to dig through the dirt at a spot she hadn't tried yet. When all she found was soil, she moved a few inches closer to the false floor itself to try again.
"How far? You mean… that we might be sittin' on 'em? Goddammit, I wouldn't put it past Xena to incorporate a trick like that," Janice said and shuffled around as well. Digging down into the soil, she was able to find the blunt end of the stubborn fir plank a good ten inches beyond where the stones that outlined the empty plot had originally stood. "Mel! You were right! Again! Find the other end of this one!" she cried as she ignored the pain that shot up from her injured fingers to grab hold of the coarse plank.
After taking a gander at where Janice had found the other end of the plank, Mel dug into the soil with similar success. "Yes! Yes, I have it… lift it up, Jan… try to lift it up…"
"Trying… trying… crap, it won't budge, the sonova-"
"Maybe if we tried to slide it away from the next one?" Mel said and changed her grip so she could do just that. "Easy… easy, Jan… yes, here it comes!"
With a ploppp, the fir plank finally gave up its pretenses of being stubborn and surrendered to the combined might of Mel Pappas and Janice Covington. As it was pulled away from the next plank, a few clumps of dirt fell down into the black hole that had been formed.
The pelting rain and howling winds that continued to hammer the world outside the relatively safe burial chamber drowned out the faint noise, but Janice was sure she had heard the clumps hit the real floor somewhere below meaning it wasn't too far down.
A sudden silence fell over the two archaeologists; they stopped working to look at each other through the orange-whitish cone of light that shone out of the flashlight. They had often been in similar situations in the past at dig sites around the world. They knew they were on the cusp of getting their hands on the grand prize that had eluded them so far.
Considering the rigidity and structural soundness of the fir planks they were dealing with, the risk of finding the real burial chamber looted once they made their descent into the black hole was near zero - the planks hadn't been touched since Xena and Gabrielle put them there two thousand years ago.
There would be new, irrefutable evidence down there that would cement Xena and Gabrielle's place in the Ancient World, Janice was sure of that. Perhaps they would even be able to provide enough actual, physical evidence to convince even the most stubborn of the last-remaining skeptics that Amazons had been real and not a mythical tribe. And with Xena's cryptic comment that Gabrielle had covered it all, there would be new scrolls for Mel to work her magic on.
Nodding thoughtfully as the tension mounted exponentially, Janice began to dig into the soil to find the bottom end of the next plank of fir so they could get that one out of the way as well; on the opposite side of the false floor, Mel mirrored her partner's actions.
*
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