Digging for Dead Kings

I used my good knife to scratch at the side of the barrow, just to the right of the arch where I had sat. "Only the dead enter a tomb by the front door," the snake had said, so I made my own door, cutting the turf away in sheets until I reached close set flintstones, bonded with packed soil.

I used the point of the knife to lever out blocks, not caring that the good iron dented, the tip blunted and snapped off. I piled up stones behind me, grey and white. With a great moaning gasp, the side of the hill suddenly crumbled, the flints rolling inward, and I fell inside after them.

It was very dark within. I used my tinder to light the stub of a candle I had pinched from the alehouse in Telbridge Hearth so very long ago. It spat at me until it had rid itself of the river water, then burned with a steady orange light.

I was in a tunnel, barely tall enough for me to kneel. It curved around and down, clockwise around the inside of the barrow. Behind me, the stars burned like silver daggers pressed into the velvet sky.

I began crawling on my hands and knees with the candle held out in front of me like a talisman. The air washed over me, then back in, as though the tomb, stoppered for so long, was awakening to its first stale breaths. My candle fluttered, like my soul.

The tunnel grew narrower as I crawled deeper and I had to go down on my elbows, wriggling like a worm. I sensed the weight of rock over my body. I could see only a few feet ahead of me. Sweat trickled into my eyes and I could not reach my face to wipe it away. My arms were pinned out in front of me, like a diver, deeper and ever deeper, ten thousand years in the dark.

Claustrophobia overwhelmed me, my breathing, ragged, panting and panting and trying to scream, but no breath would come, there was no air, there was no air.

The candle slipped from my fingers and rolled away into the dark. I struggled after it, fully stretched out, panting and panting, little shallow breaths, so loud, so close. How long would it take to die like this, wedged head first in a pipe? Something inside my head broke and I started wriggling backwards up the tunnel, but the point of my knife was caught between two stones at my hip, and there was no way to reach it and no way to free it. I was fully stuck. I could no longer move forward or back. My heart was hammering, the pain of it was too much to bear. These smooth stones right in front of me were the last things I would ever touch.

Then the tunnel opened, just a little, as though inhaling, and I began to slide, down and down, round and round, over the shiny stones, and I fell out face first into a larger space.

I lay in the absolute dark, panting. The stale air was like cool water. I stretched out my arms and felt nothing holding me, no weight of rock inches from my nose. I stretched my arms to the side and this time my fingertips brushed something hard and warm and mushy. I flinched away, then leaned over and felt for it again. It was my candle. The wick had broken, but I dug out a new one, and in a minute I had it alight once more.

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I was in a chamber, as wide and tall as the barrow mound, though I could not guess how far down I had come. Treasure was stacked around the edges, golden cups and copper axes. Chain mail and rotten leather. Banners hung like crumbled cobwebs. The floor sloped downwards, down towards the middle of the room, where a deeper pit had been dug. I inched forward, knowing already what I would see there.

The dry corpse lay stretched in the pit, the flesh black and shiny over the bones, the eyes closed and sunken. It wore an iron crown on its head, the leather of its armour was cracked and disintegrating. In its hands, it clutched a dagger.

I knew what I had to do, though I did not wish to do it. I sat on the edge of the pit and lowered myself in. My legs brushed up against the leathery black corpse skin. My feet crunched in pieces of I-did-not-know-what. I reached for the white dagger and brushed it with my fingertips. As I did so, the wavering candlelight made it look as though the dead fingers tightened around the blade. I froze. The tight skin on its side was pressed against my legs in the narrow pit. Its hollow face was three feet from mine.

Slowly, oh so slowly, I began undoing the fingers, smallest first. The skin was hard and slippery and blackened with age. I could feel the finger bones popping and cracking inside, the awful leathery skin splitting and the fibrous flesh squashing around like stuffing. Slowly I teased those awful fingers open until the dagger lay loose on the thing's chest, then slowly, so slowly, I lifted it and took it in my hand.

It was incredibly light. The handle was white metal and carved in a hollow spiral that reminded me of the path I had taken into the mound. The blade was untarnished, even after so many years and it shone in the candlelight. There was a channel on each side to let the blood out. It was the most beautiful knife I had ever seen. That it had been buried here in the dark for so long was a crime, an unforgivable offence against art and nature.

There was a small sound, a tiny crackling sound, and the fingers began to curl up again towards where the dagger had been. The hands moved just a little and found nothing there. Then it began to stir. Little movements at first, a twitch of the lip, a spider-like twitch of the blackened fingers, a pop, pop as the neck suddenly snapped from side to side.

I flattened myself against the side of the pit, but there was nowhere to go. The arms stretched up and began thrashing. The thing began moaning and wailing like a babe crying for its dolly, the shrivelled head snapping from side to side, the jaw working. I pressed my own good iron dagger into the creature's hands, folding the fingers back together around the handle, stroking the eyeless face.

"Here, here, take it," I crooned. "Sleep now, little one. Sleep my baby," but the creature was still moaning and writhing.

And suddenly words came into my head, and I spoke, and I don't know how I knew the words, but I knew them.

"The dawn, she waits in the summer lands and the night 'neath the shiftless sea,

It is not yet time for you to rise,

To stir your bones and claim your prize,

Not time to smite thine enemy

Ere that dawn comes, come take your rest,

Clutch your blade unto your breast,

Sweet king beneath the barrow lands,

Come dream long dreams, 'till you are free"

Slowly, the Wight settled, pulling my iron dagger down onto its chest. Its cries became quieter. I stroked the leathery head, the words still coming out of me from I don't know where. "Shhhh now, sleep. It is not time yet for you to waken. You have your blade, all is well. The great enemy will fail, the land is safe, sleep now precious king beneath the hill. Sleep."

At last it lay still. Slowly, carefully, I climbed out of the pit, leaving the Wight lying there, but I was not done yet. There was one more job to be done, the hardest of them all.

The Snake had been very clear what I must do once the blade was in my hands. To claim my prize, I had to die.