Brothers of the Wild North Sea (11 page)

He didn’t look up as the door thudded closed. He couldn’t pull his attention away from the man on the bunk. Was he gone? After taking from his satchel a piece of obsidian glass, Cai held it over the pallid mouth. He couldn’t detect a rise and fall in the Viking’s chest, and he didn’t want to touch him again, to feel beneath his week’s growth of soft beard that fine skin. He waited. After long moments, a faint cloud appeared on the glass.

Cai got up. There was a bucket of water in the cell already, and a pile of clean rags. He remembered now putting them in here when he’d been treating the others after the fight. He washed his hands, scrubbing them afterwards with the essence of sage and lavender Danan had taught him would help kill invisible sources of infection before surgery. He had perhaps half an hour before the effects of the poppy wore off. He drew up a stool by the cot. “Stay asleep for your own good, demon. I am going to save you. Or kill you, and I don’t care much which.”

The sword wound was deep. Dark blood rushed from it when Cai pulled back the Viking’s leather jerkin. The bedframe was soaked with it, a black pool spreading on the floor. Another sign of life, Cai noted bitterly, stemming the tide with rags. Pulse after pulse of it, the heart still beating out the dance somewhere within that elegant chest, with its ribs sprung as beautifully as timbers in the keel of a longship.

Stitching wouldn’t be possible yet—the edges of the wound were ragged and too far apart. Cai couldn’t remember twisting the blade as he’d dragged it back, but perhaps he had. He’d never been confronted with his own battlefield handiwork before. Quickly he soaked the cleanest of his rags in the solution of sage and lavender, wadded them up and began to pack them into the gaping hole. Blood welled up immediately around them. He grabbed a dry cloth and pressed that on top, then another. Both bloomed crimson, like the poppies that opened in one sunny hour around Benedict’s barley fields and faded as fast. Cai needed an extra set of hands. For want of them he began to unfasten the rough hemp girdle round his waist, then stopped. The Viking’s own belt would do better. Three inches wide and secured on his lean belly by a savage-looking wolf’s-head buckle, it would hold the bandages in place, and Cai could tighten it hard enough to hold pressure on the wound.

He undid the belt. The buckle was cleverly forged, the mechanism of it belying the crude silver wolf. Hands slipping on blood, he tried to tug the leather strap free, but it was caught behind the young man’s back. Cai reached under him and lifted his hip.

The Viking stirred. It was much too soon for the effects of the poppy to have worn off, but he was built like a young oak tree, his vigour manifesting in every line of his body. Nevertheless he was blind. Cai knew that when the amber eyes opened and searched for a focus, their pupils immense in the lamplight. Quietly, hampered by the rattle in his throat, he asked a question.

Cai almost understood him. The language was like trying to look round a corner in his mind. Theo had taught that the narrow sea between here and the Dane Lands had once been dry, nomad hunters following the herds freely across it, bearing their words and ways with them.

Where am I? Who is here with me?

Cai ignored him. He ripped the sheepskin hook that secured the belt at the back, jerked it up far enough to cover the wound and drew the strap tight through the buckle. The Viking arched and groaned. Blood gleamed on his lips. The words came again, two out of five familiar to Cai’s ears.
Who is here with me? Who?

Cai sat back. He folded his arms and pushed his hands into the sleeves of his cassock. He wanted to stroke the dying man’s hair back off his brow. He wanted to lean over him, ease his head up and cushion it on his arm. He clenched his fingers tight round his own wrists to hold himself still—he wanted to kiss this enemy’s bloodstained mouth, hold him and bear him gently into death.

Who is with me?

“Gunnar,” Cai said softly. He clutched his arms harder, holding himself fiercely still. “I am here with you. Gunnar.”

The Viking took a fever from his wounds. Despite Cai’s herbs and hand-washing, poisons had entered his blood. By morning, although breath was still rasping in and out of his lungs, his skin was dry and papery, burning beneath Cai’s touch. The fire inside released a terrible last strength in him, and he lashed out howling at Cai, knocking a flagon of water from his hands, then lurched upright on the bunk to seize poor Oslaf, the only one of Cai’s brethren who had consented to enter the quarantine cell, let alone help.

Cai scrambled up off the floor. He detached the hand that had clenched on Oslaf’s robe, narrowly avoiding a blow from the other. The Viking was flailing around for his sword, now safely stowed away in the armoury.

“Stop it,” Cai ordered. “Oslaf, fetch me the straps from the surgical tables.” He held the young man down by brute force until Oslaf returned, then pinned one wrist long enough to secure it to the frame of the bunk. Oslaf nervously did the same on the other side. The Viking thrashed on the bed, his eyes alight with delirium and hate. He fought his bindings wildly, then suddenly collapsed, expression draining from his sweat-soaked face to leave it serenely beautiful once more. Cai straightened up, breathless. “Best strap his ankles too. I’ve packed that wound as best I can, but it’ll open up if he thrashes round too much.”

Oslaf nodded. The raider was still wearing his hide boots and thick deerskin leggings. Cai could have stripped him down while he slept the night before, and for any other sick man he’d have done it—washed him, tended unflinchingly to the inevitable bodily mess of near-death injury. Cai was ashamed of himself for leaving him dressed and filthy, but Benedict’s words had twisted together with his own loathing. To save the brute’s life was one thing. He couldn’t treat him as he had John or Wilfrid, men who had deserved from him a brother’s tenderness.

He helped Oslaf tie the straps over the leggings, then glanced up at the younger monk. “Thanks. You should go now, though. Don’t make Benedict angry with you.”

“It might be too late for that. I know what you told me—that I ought to play the game, but…” Oslaf paled, absently patting the Viking’s ankle as if he had been a friend. “I’m not sure it is one anymore. Ben won’t let me near him.”

“But last night…”

“He pushed me away. Sent me off to pray with the others.” Tears suddenly clouded Oslaf’s gaze, and he put out a hand to ward off Cai’s sympathy. “Do you think he’ll live, then? This demon of yours?”

“I don’t understand how he’s still alive now.”

“My grandmother used to say the hair saps strength in fever. She cut mine off when I was ill.”

Cai looked at the raider’s sweat-darkened mane. “That’s nonsense, though, isn’t it? A superstition.”

“Well, I’m alive. His hair looks the most living thing about him now.”

It was true. The tangled curls seemed to have a vigorous existence of their own, glowing rich russet in the delicate early light filling the cell. “All right. It might be worth a try. I’ll go and find some shears. Will you stay with him till I get back?”

Cai made his way quickly down to the barn where Brother Petros had kept his shears and shepherd’s crooks. He tried not to look about him. The barn was silent now, cobwebs already drifting from its timbers. The Fara flocks were out at emergency pasture under the care of any brother who could be spared to tend them. Aristocratic Petros, so disgusted at first at the task allotted him, had developed a fierce pride in his shepherding skills. His shears were hanging where he’d left them, gleaming and sharp. He’d branched out into barbering too, standing grimly smiling in the courtyard as his brethren had filed up for their monthly haircut. A sense of unreality washed through Cai still when he thought of that night, the first raid, the holes it had torn in the world. He took the shears and hurried back out of the barn.

The infirmary was quiet when he got back. Too quiet—nobody propped on an elbow to gossip with his neighbour in the next bunk, none of the usual demands for his attention. The door to the quarantine cell was shut. Oslaf was in the main ward, eyes downcast, washing bottles with ferocious concentration.

Cai didn’t bother to question him. He swept through the ward. Thrusting the door wide, he saw just what he had expected—Abbot Aelfric, crouching over the Viking’s bunk, beaklike face avid. Cai drew breath to yell and lost it as a grip closed on him from behind. “Ben,” he gasped, trying to twist round. “What is he doing? Let me go.”

Benedict shook his head. “Be silent. The abbot must talk to his prisoner.”

“His… Ben, for God’s sake.”

“He isn’t harming him. Be still.”

Cai twisted like a wildcat, but there was no shifting Benedict’s grasp once it had closed. Involuntarily he began to listen to the abbot’s voice. It was low, almost tender—a litany of soft-voiced Latin. “What do you want? What do you want, boy?”

He was using the respectful
vultis
, not
vis
. And the Viking was awake again, his eyes wide and lucid. Aelfric’s hands were on him. Their movement was caressing. For a moment Cai wondered if he’d been wrong about the carrion bird from the south. Was Aelfric offering help to the injured man—soothing him with that touch?

“
Quid vultis, puer?
”

Cai shook himself. Aelfric had been half out of his wits before the raid, and now—now he was quite insane. He had brought his madness here into Cai’s domain, for God alone knew what vile purpose. His grasp on the Viking wasn’t kindly. He was putting pressure on his wounds. And the boy was lying silent in his effort not to weep.

Cai had a pair of freshly sharpened shears in his hand. He tossed them aside before he could use them. Fists were better than blades, and an elbow to Benedict’s gut best of all. Ben doubled up with a grunt, and Cai sprang forwards, seizing Aelfric by the hood. “Let him be, you savage bloody buzzard. Leave him alone!”

Aelfric snapped upright. He was thin but powerful and his backhanded slap made Cai’s nose sting. “How dare you?” he snarled. “Brother Benedict, restrain him. I will have the secret of Fara from this demon if I have to tear it out along with his teeth.” He rounded on the Viking again. “What do you want? What are you and your legion of infidels raiding for?
Quid vultis?
”

Not the polite form. The plural. Cai broke into bitter laughter. “You fool, Aelfric. There is no secret. That was poor Theo’s dying dream. Who told you about it?”

Benedict hung his head. “I won’t have anything more to do with this,” he muttered. “Not for either of you. I can’t.” He turned away. Aelfric shrieked his name, but he ignored it, blundering out through the ward.

The outer door banged shut behind him. Once more Cai hauled Aelfric away from the Viking’s bunk. Aelfric struggled, and Cai, sickened, drew back a fist and knocked his abbot down with a punch straight out of Broc’s muddy barnyard.

Aelfric sprawled on the flagstones. His mouth opened and closed like that of a fresh-landed cod. Before any sound could come out of it, Cai interrupted, so low and soft that Aelfric blanched still further. “Leave my friends alone, scarecrow. My enemies too, for that matter. If there’s any torture to be done around here…” He paused, glancing at the helpless man strapped to the bunk. “I’ll do it myself. For a start, I know better than to interrogate a prisoner in a language he doesn’t understand. Now get out of my ward.”

Aelfric almost choked. “Yours?” He staggered to his feet. “This place—the whole of Fara—is mine now, by God’s decree. I can have you banished with a word.”

“Say it, then.” Cai brushed dust off his cassock. He didn’t care anymore about this monster, or the one on the bed. He was tired and lonely, and wanted only to be back in Leof’s arms among the sun-warmed grasses of the dunes. “Say your word, and defend Fara yourself next time the raiders come. Otherwise leave me alone.”

A silence fell in the little room. Cai didn’t look, but he heard the retreating slither of the abbot’s robes on the flags. Aelfric didn’t slam the outer door as Ben had done. He left it contemptuously wide, as if to let all the winds of heaven come and chill the sick men behind him.

Cai went and closed it. He glanced around the ward to check that no one had taken harm from the draught or needed his immediate help. He waited briefly, meeting each pair of wide eyes in turn, to see if anyone had anything to say for himself on the subject of wolves in the fold. Then he returned to the quarantine cell.

The Viking was sobbing. He would have done anything to prevent it, Cai saw—had already bitten his lip raw. His eyes were tight shut, his face a bone-white mask. His chest jerked in helpless spasms. Tears had carved tracks across his cheekbones, pale in the blood and dirt.

He was trying to curl up around his injury. Quickly Cai unfastened the straps round his left wrist and ankle to allow it. The Viking struggled onto his side. He turned his face to the bare timbers of the bunk, his heavy sheaf of hair falling to shield him. Rough, unstoppable sounds came from beneath it.

Cai’s throat ached as if he’d suddenly swallowed scalding water, and he knelt by the bunk. “I’m sorry,” he said, his own voice hoarse and strange to him. “I know you don’t understand me. I’m sorry. Let me see to your wound.”

“I do understand.”

Cai jerked back. He sat on his heels, wondering if the clear Latin declaration had come from somewhere else. “What?”

The Viking shoved his hair back with a shaking hand. “I do understand,” he repeated, gazing bleakly straight into Cai’s face. “I speak Latin. I was taught it by a slave monk in my lord Sigurd’s kingdom—the only thing you puny Christians are good for.”