Free Promise: Caulborn #2 by Nicholas Olivo Page A

the foot traffic to get my bearings. To the right were the ticket counters and a set of turnstiles that led to the other wings of the museum. To the left was a member services desk and the corridor that led to the food court, gift shop, planetarium, and whatever the current special exhibit was. I wove between a few groups of people and finally made it up to the ticket counter. I purchased a ticket to the Norse Viking Treasure exhibit and headed down the corridor. The smell of cheeseburgers and fries wafted over to me as I passed the food court, and my stomach rumbled. I ignored it and continued on. Business first, food later.
    I headed to the left at the end of the corridor and made my way up two flights of stairs. Banners depicting a knarr ship sailing against a pink and purple sunset had been hung at intervals along the walls, and a museum employee at the top of the stairs was handing out devices with a pre-recorded audio tour to interested patrons. I accepted one, put the ear buds in and made my way through the doors to the exhibit.
    The doors opened on a foyer that held several large murals of Viking life. There were pictograms of sailing, hunting, and what I could only assume was burning, pillaging, and looting, based on the crudity of the stick figures. The Vikings may have been a hell of a seafaring people, but painting was not their thing. I joined a group of other museumgoers that moved from the mural room into another large room, this one lined with eight-foot-tall movie screens. A series of photographs of the Norwegian coastline cycled across the screens, and I pushed the play button on my audio tour device.
    I half expected to hear something like, “Hi, this is Troy McClure. You might remember me from such science exhibits as ‘A Deadly Attraction with Magnets’ and ‘Nikola Tesla: Where’s my pigeon?’” Instead, a generic male voice actor that tried to sound dramatic, but only succeeded in sounding like it was taking itself too seriously, came through the headphones. “The Norse Coastline,” he announced, as if reading the sign above the photos. There was a pause. “The Norwegian coastline is dotted with fjords and stretches for 16,000 miles. This beautiful land was once home to some of the fiercest raiders in history—the Vikings.” The narrator’s voice dropped a bit as he tried to put dark emphasis on the words. “In these halls, you will see hallmarks of Viking culture and history. Who were these men who pillaged the British Isles? Where did they come from, and more importantly, what stopped them?”
    There was a ding in the audio, indicating I should stop the track and move to the next exhibit. I followed a group of people into an adjacent room, this one housing various Viking artifacts. There were knives, pottery, coins, and weapons. My artificial tour guide told me that the Norse got their clay from the British Isles as there were no clay deposits where they came from. I pressed the Stop button.
    There was another room with more Viking paraphernalia, but my patience was wearing thin. As fascinating as the history and details of Viking culture were, I had come here to find a treasure chest. I walked past a bunch of other patrons that were looking at some intricately carved urns and pushed through another set of doors. Two eight-foot-long sarcophaguses stood in the center of this room, propped up so their occupants were nearly standing.
    Several people around me who were similarly equipped with the overly dramatic narrator were nodding as they listened to their headphones. I sighed and pressed the Play button, fast-forwarding until he announced. “The Viking Mummies.”
    “The Viking funeral pyre is the stuff of legends. Many proud warriors who fell in battle were sent on to Valhalla after their bodies had been placed on funeral pyres. However, the Viking warriors you see before you were discovered in a hidden chamber on a small island off the coast of Iceland. Archeologists estimate they