Brothers of the Wild North Sea (18 page)

“I retract my curse on Gunnar.”

“That’s good. I don’t know much about cursing, but Danan says they can come back and strike you.”

“Danan?”

“A friend of mine. You’ll meet her.”

“Ah. A girl.”

Cai bit back a smile. There, on the crest of the furthest dune he could see, a female figure was standing, long grey hair blowing in the wind. Had she been there all along, watching over the beach and everything that had played out there today, or had Cai’s naming just conjured her up? “No. Very much not a girl.”

“I understand now. About Gunnar.”

Cai didn’t prompt him. He let Eldra run on in silence, and the next time he looked Danan was gone.

“I have been here long enough to know…you have no treasure in Fara, secret or otherwise.”

“I did try to tell you. My abbot Theo thought there was something too. Believe me, I’d have handed over anything we had to stop the raids.”

“So Sigurd will have taken the Torleik men to raid elsewhere in search of it. But my brother would have come back anyway. You understand nothing about him. No puny Christian could. He had a warrior’s heart. He could lift a sword as soon as he could walk. He never ceased in slaying and striking from that moment on.”

He sounds lovely.
Cai kept that thought to himself. Fen was shivering now, a tense vibration where he was pressed against Cai.

“So he would have come for me. There is no doubt. I am still here, trapped among you paltry excuses for men, and therefore… Therefore Gunnar is dead.”

Cai took the reins in one hand. Blindly he put the other one down, seeking Fen’s head. It was lowered, pressed to his knees. This time Fen didn’t push him away.

“Listen,” Cai said. “I can’t be your lover. But I won’t be your captor, either.” He ran a rough caress over the bowed skull in its hood. “Once you’re well, I’ll help you leave here. You’re not my prisoner anymore. I’ll help set you free.”

Chapter Seven

Step, parry, thrust. One, two, three. Cai glanced over the top of his shield at Brother Gareth, broke the rhythm of the drill and drove a slicing stroke downwards. Gareth didn’t so much as blink. He spun and knocked Cai’s blade aside.

“Good,” Cai gasped, gripped his sword hilt fast and carried on.

That was the trouble. They
were
good now, his little band of warriors. Cai had taught them everything he knew, and he couldn’t take them further. Cai’s fighting skills were those of a quarrelsome hillfort chieftain. They had served well enough in the last raid, but what about the next? One, two, three… It was hard, even with surprise attacks like the one he’d just launched on Gareth and one-on-one test fights that came perilously close to the real thing, to sustain his men’s concentration. Benedict no longer joined them. No sign of Oslaf this morning either. Would they lose momentum, one by one, fall under Aelfric’s influence and wait for God to save them?

Gareth, grinning, his hypochondria long since blown away in the pleasures of action, jumped to one side, broke drill and made a sly jab at Cai’s ribs.

“Good!” Cai said again, only just evading him. “Insolent, but…very good.”

“No. No, no, no.”

Cai jerked round, signalling Gareth to stop. From the shadows by the wall, a lean shape was emerging, one hand impatiently extended. The rest of the monks stopped their drill and turned to watch.

For the last few days, Fenrir had accompanied Cai to the training ground. He’d asked to do so politely enough, and Cai had been content to let him. Fen had been very different since their return from the sea. His belief in imminent rescue had been destroyed. He hadn’t spoken to Cai again about Sigurd or Gunnar—had barely spoken at all—but his silences had been thoughtful, and instead of holding himself proudly back from the daily life of the brethren, he had started to appear amongst them, in the kitchen garden and at the refectory table. He had gone out once with Benedict and the plough. A few of the men recoiled from him, but those who knew and trusted Cai took their cue from him, and carried on about their tasks while their Viking enemy—now clad in a cassock, hard to distinguish from one of their own number unless you looked into the amber-fire eyes—began unprompted to work at their side.

In the ruins where Cai trained his warriors, he’d remained on the sidelines. Cai wasn’t sure why he’d wanted to come, but it meant at least that he was within sight and out of trouble. And although for the last week he’d barely opened his mouth, and not once laid hand on him, still his presence was pleasing to Cai—a warmth like the glow in the air after sunset, the promise of morning to come. Now he was striding towards the gathered men, his passivity thrown aside.

“No,” he repeated, taking Cai’s sword from him. “You hold it badly. I’ve been watching you—trying to work out why. Now I see.”

Cai folded his arms. He was peripherally aware of murmurs from the group behind him. A Viking in the vegetable patch was one thing. Here in their midst with a sword in his hand, he was a bad memory, a vision from nights of smoke, blood and fire. “Well?” Cai challenged, making sure he kept himself between Fen and the others. “Are you going to tell me?”

“Since it irks me beyond endurance to watch you, yes. Come here.”

He stood behind Cai. It was the best position for correcting grip, and Cai braced himself not to notice the heat at his spine. He remembered a sea-fret breeze, and a promise—
I would have made your blood sing…

“You think of it as a weapon. An object.”

“Yes. What else?”

“It is not,” Fen said. “Put your hand on mine.” Cai obeyed, and instantly Fen lunged forwards, making the monks scatter. “There. Did I move, or the sword?”

“I don’t know. Both of you.”

“Exactly. Both, and each as alive as the other. The blade is a part of you.” Fen thrust again, bearing Cai forwards with him. This time the action felt natural and easy, the leap of energy palpable between man and sword, and no, Cai couldn’t tell which was which.

“I’m not sure…” he gasped, “…I want my brethren thinking of their weapons as part of themselves. We’re men of God.”

Fen handed the sword back to him but didn’t step away. “When the
vikingr
next come, do you think they will care? Go easy on you because you are poor men of God, fighting against your will? Don’t hold it as if you wanted to cast it away. Take the hilt in your palm as if it were part of the bone running down from your elbow.”

“Like that?”

“Yes. It hurts me a bit less to see you, anyway. Show your men.”

He turned and made his way back to his seat among the ruins. He was favouring his side again, and his final demonstration thrust had made him go pale. Resisting the urge to run after him, Cai faced the brethren, who were gathering round, interested to see what a Viking had had to teach on the subject of dealing with Vikings.

“Well,” he said reluctantly. “He’s right, isn’t he? We have to go into battle as warriors, not monks, no matter how we would wish to live the rest of our lives. Watch me. Take the hilt in your palm like so—as if it were a part of you, an extension of your bone…”

“And where will you be? When the
vikingr
next come?”

They were descending the slope from the training ground. Cai had a patient waiting for him in the infirmary, Fen a stint with Benedict behind the plough. There was no reason for them to be lingering here, taking the walk slowly, shoulder occasionally brushing shoulder in companionable bumps. The morning sun was pleasant, though, belying grey clouds gathering out at sea.

“I will be long gone by then. As soon as I can walk more than a few fields’ length.”

“You can almost manage that now. And I’ve told you, you can take Eldra, if you’re so anxious to be gone. A chariot horse is no use for close fighting, not on this type of ground.”

“Very well, I will. If you’re so anxious to be rid of me.”

They stopped and looked at one another. Cai tried to interpret the glimmer in Fen’s eyes. Was that suppressed laughter? “No. I mean, I know you can’t stay here. But…”

“Caius! Brother Caius!”

Cai turned in time to see Oslaf taking the steps from the main building at a run. Oslaf’s skirts were flying, his face a colourless blank. “Oslaf? What’s wrong?”

“Ben. Was he with you for drill practice?”

“No. He doesn’t come anymore.” Cai steadied Oslaf as the young man halted in front of him. “Why? Can’t you find him?”

“He should be out in the fields, but the ox is still in her stable. I haven’t seen him this morning at all.”

“All right.” As soon as the words were out, Cai knew that it wasn’t. The ground seemed to shift beneath his feet, a shadow to pass over the sun still struggling against the coppery eastern clouds. “We’ll help you look. You run up to the infirmary, check that he’s not there. Fen, will you go and look in the barns?”

Cai set off downslope again. Oslaf disappeared across the courtyard. Barely five seconds later, Fen emerged from a gap between outbuildings and fell back into step at Cai’s side. “You don’t think Benedict’s in the infirmary.”

“No.”

“Or in the barns either.”

“No.”

“Where, then?”

Cai couldn’t tell him. His mouth and throat were numb, as if he’d been swimming in icy water. He could only keep walking. In the bright sweep of open ground below, the newly rebuilt church shone innocently under its thatch. A sanctuary, a place of rest and prayer. Or so it had been, until Aelfric had opened up beneath it the burning pit. He broke into a run.

He was blinded from the sunlight, and his vision flashed red and green as he stared around him in the shadows. The church was cool and silent, the lull in the canonical tide between terce and sext.

It was also empty. His eyes cleared enough for him to be certain of that much. The doors banged behind him, admitting a wash of clean air and Fen, gasping for breath, one hand pressed to his side.

“I couldn’t keep up with you.”

“Sorry.” Cai too was breathless, now he had time to think about it. He leaned his hands on his knees, dizzy with relief. “I thought… I don’t know what I thought. But he isn’t here.”

Fen came to stand beside him. Through the thump and rush of his own pulse, Cai became aware of his stillness—his absolute, focussed rigidity. The tension of a wolf scenting blood…

“Cai. He is.”

The doors thudded open again, and this time stayed wide, each of them caught and submissively held by one of the Canterbury clerics. In the middle stood Aelfric, cutting out a thin, mean shape from the brilliance behind him. Aelfric too scanned the church. “Brother Benedict is missing,” he said harshly. “I will not have such abandonment of discipline. Where is he?” His attention fastened on Cai and Fen like a grappling hook, and he gestured to Laban to take hold of Fen, who for once offered no resistance, falling back against the wall. “You, physician—I’ve turned a blind eye to your harbouring of this monster. His brute strength has its uses. But don’t you dare bring it in here, with its heathen corruption. This is holy ground.”

Cai began to chuckle. He couldn’t help it. He was still elated, and Aelfric was so vile, so rich a contradiction of everything Cai had been taught about his new faith. “Aren’t we
supposed
to bring them in here if we can? The corrupt heathens, so we can convert them and…”

He faded out. Aelfric wasn’t listening. Wasn’t looking at him either. His gaze was suddenly fixed where Fen’s had been. Where a faint, slight movement was now catching at Cai too, forcing him to look up—up and up into the shadows of the roof space.

A human shape was hanging from the rafters. Cai took this much in, and then the sight and all it stood for seemed to rush to the far distance. He whipped round, looking for a human face. Not Aelfric, not Laban. They wouldn’t do. The third of the clerics, a Roman called Marcus, had sometimes seemed less sombre than the rest. Cai seized his shoulders. “Keep Oslaf out of here.”

“Which… Which one is Oslaf?”

There are so few of us, and you are our masters. How can you not know our names?
Cai shook him. “Benedict’s friend. The young one. God, ask anyone—just keep him away!”

Marcus stumbled out. Now that Cai had done that one vital thing, the distance closed, sweeping his next duty in on him. With it came hope, stabbing and hot. Hangings didn’t always work. Knots slipped, men were incompetent. Drops were too short to crush the trachea and break the neck. For as long as Cai had known him, Ben had never been the most deft or thoughtful of men. He was a ploughman. A staunch-hearted warrior when forced, and by nature a lover. All the actions of his hands had tended to life, not death. “I have to get him down!”

He’d used the pulpit, the makeshift stairs and platform where Theo had nine times out of ten laid aside his sermon, folded his arms and addressed them agreeably, man to fellow men. He’d kicked it aside with great force. Cai dragged it upright from the place where it had fallen and pushed it back into place. He clambered up its steps, sick fear slowing him, filling his limbs with lead. The pulpit wasn’t tall. Nor was Cai, especially—not by contrast with Ben, who’d been able to stand here, string himself up, and…

“I can’t reach him.” He tried anyway, leaning far out over the pulpit’s edge, grabbing a handful of Ben’s cassock and pulling him into his arms. He could only stretch as far as Ben’s hips. He took hold, desperately trying to lift him, to relieve the pressure on his neck. “I can’t reach him. I can’t get him down.”