Nora stifled a gasp as the last of the wrappings fell away. On her workbench lay a flawless blade, looking as if it had been made a few years prior instead of over two millennia ago. Mandy peered over her shoulder and let out a low whistle.
The sword was just under two feet long, a type known as a Xiphos, with two curved edges that made it ideal for slashing in close range combat. This Xiphos was of exquisite craftmanship and, by Nora’s observation, still sharp. Running down the length of the blade was an inscription in a language she did not recognize. She would have to make a copy of it after she got the blade cleaned off. Not that there was much to clean.
There appeared to be very little corrosion on the leaf-shaped blade, probably due to its construction from bronze instead of iron. Still, even for a sword made of an enduring material, its preservation was remarkable. Nora peered at it, snatching up her magnifier to get a closer look at the inscription. While she could make out the etchings, she could not decipher them at all. Even the alphabet used was one Nora didn’t recognize.
Nora straightened from her inspection to find Mandy with one hip propped on the workbench, still watching her work.
“Any idea on this inscription?” Nora asked. “I don’t have a clue what alphabet this even is.”
Mandy shook her head, a few loose pieces of sleek hair falling across her face. “If you can’t figure it out, then nobody in this office is going to stand a chance. The report from the field said that nobody on the dig recognized the language either.”
Nora hummed in response and glanced back at the blade, itching to uncover its secrets and already mentally running through professionals in her contact list who might be familiar with the ancient language.
A drawl behind her snapped her from her reverie.
“I wonder what the board will think when you have to admit you can’t translate that inscription.”
Nora turned on her heel to find Leo looking down his nose at her with the same expression she pictured pinned to the dart board when she was persuaded to play a few rounds at pool night. Mandy rolled her eyes over his shoulder and Nora folded her arms.
“I’m too busy wondering if I’ll get an office all to myself when I do translate it,” Nora retorted.
Leo’s face purpled, and Nora resisted the urge to punctuate her statement with a rude hand gesture, remembering they were in a shared workspace. Still, all the workers around her kept their heads dutifully down, nobody willing to insert themselves into the workplace’s most notorious rivalry.
“People whose dissertations were published in the last decade don’t get private offices,” Leo sneered.
“We’ll see. Why don’t you just run along and play with your arrowheads and leave the translating to me?”
Leo scowled but turned and headed back to his own workbench.
“Ugh,” Nora groaned to Mandy once he was gone. “Why does he have to be such an insufferable fungus waffle, even in my moment of victory?”
Mandy waved her hand dismissively.
“He’s just jealous, and he can’t accept that you were clever enough to beat him out for the promotion when he thought he was sure to get it on pure seniority. Don’t let him distract you.”
Nora tried to take her advice. She and Mandy spent the rest of the morning trying to copy down the engraving as best they could while searching for a linguist who might be able to translate it for them. They didn’t make much progress. Nora found herself frustrated by the dead end and was anxious to move on to the next weapon to see if they might have more luck there.
Nora went through a similar process as with the sword, unpackaging it from the box. However, when she and Mandy went to move the long, slim bundle to the table, they almost dropped the weapon in surprise. It was heavy, far heavier than a spear of this size should be.
“What the heck?” Mandy said once they had hefted the bundle onto the workbench. “Have I been skipping too many Pilates classes or is that thing mammoth?”
“It’s definitely not just you.”
Nora hurried to put on her gloves and mask, wondering what could be making this spear so heavy. The heaviest weapons of these dimensions were usually only four pounds, but this had to be at least three times that weight.
As she pulled back the protective wrappings, it became apparent why they had been surprised by the weight. Traditional spears from this age, called dories were composed of long ash handles with iron blades at one end and counterbalancing spikes at the other. The spear lying on Nora’s bench, however, was made entirely of bronze. It was six feet long, and everything from its burnished handle to the leaf-shaped blade at its tip was crafted of solid metal. Nora’s heart pounded in her chest as she leaned in to examine the lethal looking spearhead the size of her hand.
Mandy’s voice came from over her shoulder. “Why would somebody make a spear completely out of bronze? Maybe it was for ceremonial purposes?”
Nora scrunched up her face. “You know I hate saying things were used for ceremonial purposes. It’s like admitting we don’t really know what they were for.”
“What about that artifact that was brought over a few months ago that you said was used for ceremonial purposes in an ancient fertility ritual?”
Nora snorted. “That was just because I couldn’t say the words ancient dildo to my boss with a straight face.”
“I can’t fault you there,” Mandy commented drily as Nora snatched up her magnifier to take a closer look.
“I don’t think it was ceremonial anyways. There are distinctive scratch marks up here by the blade. This thing has seen combat.”
