Denmark, 1047

King Trond rose from his great chair as Holger entered the room. In his hunter-green cloak and sturdy staff in hand, the white-bearded king cut an imposing figure “Welcome my fellow; With the events of the past few days, I’m sure you know why I’ve summoned you,” said the King, leader of the Vlad tribe of Vikings.

“Yes sir, I believe I do,” replied Holger, nodding at the gleaming silver bowl on the table beside the king. “It is time to secure the Spirit Chalice.”

“That’s right. I’ve held off the past few days to see if the Noro would bypass us on their march north. But clearly that is not to be.”

King Trond paused, studying the young man before him. “I have ordered an evacuation by midday tomorrow. As part of the preparations, I direct you to remove the Spirit Chalice from the longhouse and hide it from the enemy.

The King looked down a moment before resuming, “As you are well aware, to protect our community through these difficult times, the Chalice must remain within the village bounds. Do you understand?”

“Yes sir, I do.”

The King’s summons was no surprise to Holger. As Community Protector, he was responsible for safeguarding the Spirit Chalice

His responsibilities extended to other tribal treasures, none of which required the special treatment of the Sprit Chalice to be buried inside enemy lines.

The legend of the Spirit Chalice, set down long ago, was battle-tested. Time and again, villages under attack and occupation had ultimately survived by hiding the silver goblet under the noses of their enemy.

“Then go forth to protect the Chalice,” said the King. “Report back tomorrow morning. Understood?”

“Yes, sir!”

As Loreli prepared dinner that night, Holger sat at the cookhouse table considering the options for hiding the Spirit Chalice.

The village proper was far too risky. That left the surrounding community forest land. But the forest presented its own problem: how would the Vlads ever find the chalice buried deep in the vast forest. They would need clues to guide them.

That afternoon Holger walked out of the village with the chalice in a sack slung over his shoulder. Busy preparing for evacuation, villagers paid him no notice.

From hunting trips, he had a few places in mind. The first was a clearing near the intersection of two forest paths. Upon inspection Holger concluded it was not sufficiently hidden.

The second location was at the other extreme: an overgrown and barely recognizable spot between two large boulders.

The third site proved the winner. A grassy glade at the base of a towering rock cliff. Excavating a hole should be easy in the soft soil. And the rock cliff made an ideal clue.

Selecting a level spot, Holger pulled out his broad hunting knife and started digging. When the hole was three feet deep, he switched to gloved hands to level a flat bottom.

Picking up the sack, he carefully lowered it into the hole. After filling it and covering the surface with dead leaves, Holger stood for a time, softly reciting the Vlad prayer, “Bless our spirit; may it live here until we return.”

As he headed home, Holger’s thoughts turned to the next challenge: creating the clue to help the Vlads find the Silver Chalice. The clue must be findable, durable, and most importantly, decipherable only by Vlads.

The solution came to mind as he trudged across the field bordering the village. He would carve a runestone, a memorial stone common among Viking villages. But his would not be an ordinary runestone. It would be designed to deceive.

To the average villager, the stone would be a prominent memorial to the besieged Vlad village. But a close observer would find a second inscription: two lines at the bottom of the stone, partially hidden in the grass. Written in an obscure Vlad dialect, it laid out the Treasure Hunt clues.

Returning in mid-afternoon, Holger found villagers in a frenzy of evacuation preparations. No one noticed him grabbing his shovel and heading for the field behind his longhouse to look for a suitable stone.

Four hours later, with King Trond’s deadline drawing near, Holger stood in the field inspecting his handiwork. Some villagers on the nearby path probably wondered why he wasn’t at home preparing for evacuation.

Holger knelt down for a final look at the runestone. How long before someone found the clue and followed it to the Spirit Chalice? One year? Five years? 10 years?

1728

“Ma, the wind just knocked over the old runestone,” announced Jurgen, slamming the door closed behind him. Outside, the storm howled; “I’ll set it back up tomorrow.”

“Just leave it,” said his mother; “We’ve plenty to do besides that.”

Myrna knit a few more stitches then stopped, “Now that you mention it, why don’t we just leave it like it is on the ground. It’ll make a fine stepping stone into the garden.”

Jurgen protested. “But Ma, you can’t read it now. It’s facing down on the ground.”
“Oh, that doesn’t matter; the stone is so old, nobody can translate it anyway.

Jurgen knew arguing with his mother was futile especially in the middle of a storm, “Okay”

“You wait, my boy. It’ll make a nice stepping stone.”

2024

Soren was surprised when he struck something at such a shallow depth. He’d started on the new archaeological site and wasn’t expecting to find anything this shallow. A clang of shovel on rock. Probably just country rock buried shallow, he thought.

But the further down he went, digging carefully around and atop the stone, the less it looked like country rock. Instead, it appeared to be a runestone, one of the inscribed Viking memorials found across Scandinavia?

Soren knelt at the edge of the pit and brushed away the remaining soil. A large flat stone emerged, shaped and carved. A runestone.

Less than a foot down, and there was an oddity: the stone was lying face-down in the dirt, hiding its inscription from view. Soren had never heard of a face-down runestone. With his tools Soren began digging around the edge of the stone, then pried it up to photograph the inscription.

While clicking images, he noticed another oddity about the stone: it had not one but two inscriptions. In addition to the usual, centrally-placed inscription, a small, two-line message was inscribed at the bottom of the stone in a different runic dialect.

What the hell?

Soren put the runestone back in place and tidied up the site before heading home. After dinner, Soren sat down to translate the inscription. The main part was easy: a lament for the besieged Vlad village, conveyed in common runic. But when he reached the unusual inscription at the bottom of the stone, he stalled out. Just two lines, but a dialect he’d never encountered.

Searching online proved futile. He needed help. That meant Kermit Toth, his old grad school buddy who’d become the recognized expert on obscure Viking dialects. Soren composed the message, attached the photos, and hit Send. Within two hours cane Toth’s reply, tagged, “Surprise.” Clicking it open, two bold-faced words jumped out at Soren. Treasure Hunt. “You’re not going to believe this, old buddy” wrote Toth, “But you found a clue to a Treasure Hunt.”

Confused, Soren read Toth’s translation, SC by high rock in forest, Across field to trail to tall F tree. Buried at clearing S of rock.

Ah-ha!

SC had to be Spirit Chalice, a Viking relic frequently turned up in archaeological digs. The chalice was believed to protect community spirit alive during times of war and pestilence. But as Soren knew, there was a catch to the legend. For the Spirit Chalice to work, it had to remain within tribal boundaries during an enemy attack.

In this case the Vlads found no safe hiding place within the village itself, and so turned to the community forest, necessitating the clue.

He set out at first light, heading for the one location he thought he recognized in the clue: the high rock in forest. He’d hiked past it many times. He found it in short order, sheer granite rising 50 meters or more from the forest floor. Probably much the same as it appeared 1,000 years ago. Thank God for geologic time.

Soren was making his way toward the cliff base when a large hole in the ground halted his progress. About 1.5m square and 1m deep. Freshly dug. Soren felt a frisson of fear.
What the hell?

He thought about his boss, who knew zilch about all this – the runestone, the clue to the chalice, now this. A freshly-dug, empty hole where the chalice was supposed to be. Why the hell didn’t he just tell Martens when he found the runestone?

*****
The white-bearded old man appeared in Soren’s dreams two nights later. In a dark green coat, a sturdy walking stick in hand, the old man glared at Soren. “I retrieved the Spirit Chalice to protect it from your greedy hands,” he said in a guttural voice. “It was hidden for the Vlads to find; not you or anyone else.”

The dream ended when Soren’s phone buzzed. 5:50 a.m. The caller ID said, Martens. “Hey Soren, sorry to bother you at this hour” Marten said, “But I just got a call from the Reka police. A woman brought in an old chalice that she found in a field near the R7.”

“A chalice in a field?”

“Right. And since you’ve been working with runic lately, I wanted to let you know. She came across it on her morning walk; says she’s sure it wasn’t there yesterday. She thinks it might be Viking.”

Soren thought of the freshly dug hole in the forest. And the fact he’d told his boss nothing. He wasn’t about to now. “First I’ve heard about it, but I’ll check with my sources.” he said.