Brothers of the Wild North Sea (32 page)

Eldra’s hoofprints lay crisp on the damp sand. A direction would be easy, though the great, bounding distance between each set of prints told Cai he might have a long walk. And where would Fen have taken her? Back to the monastery and the infirmary there, if he had any sense. But the deep-gouged marks were headed south, so unless he’d doubled back among the dunes…

The four-time drum began again. It was so faint that Cai briefly wondered if Eldra’s prints had somehow retained their sound and were echoing it back to him. The uncertain moonlight was illuminating a thin stretch of the strand, the place where the incoming tide was sweeping up the beach. The percussion gained a dimension—a wild splashing, flying hooves cleaving water—and out of this premonitory sound-ghost came a shape, a moonlit vision of a man on horseback. Fen was coming back.

He was riding unburdened. Cai began to run towards him. It was too soon for him to start demanding where he’d put poor Danan, if she was dead or alive, but he raised a hand and hailed him. Alive or dead, Fen had tried to save her. Had come tearing to the rescue when Cai had given up on him, had been stupid enough for one instant to think himself abandoned. His heart leapt. “Fenrir! Fen!”

Fen didn’t slow. He and Eldra swept past him, Cai getting one more glimpse of that mad, beautiful smile. Then Fen bore back on the reins, his obedient warhorse once more responding, beginning the battlefield manoeuvre she’d learned with Broc’s chariot behind her and had used tonight to let her master get behind Danan, scoop her up and go. It was a trick to rescue comrades cut off by a skirmish. Broc also used it to round people up.

The horse was rushing down on him. Cai stepped back, already knowing it useless, trying to get out of her track. Fen was leaning forwards past her shoulder, one arm stretched out. “Blood and sorrow, monk,” he cried, his rich voice cracking with laughter. “Your turn now!”

“Don’t you bloody dare.” Cai backed up further, hands raised defensively. Once more Eldra passed him, but slowing now, turning neatly to cut off his retreat. “Fen—I am serious. You are not carting me off like a damn bag of flour… Fen! Do
not
!”

“Save your dignity, then. Jump.”

There was one moment when Cai could do it. The villagers were roaring with laughter. If he glanced at them, took the time to tell them to shut up and be about their business, he would miss this ride. And he didn’t want to. Even less than being borne off from the scene like a struggling sheep by this insane Viking did he want to be left behind, alone on the sand. He seized Fen’s arm. Fen hoisted him and he leapt. He landed with a ball-jarring thud across Eldra’s rump and almost slid off over her tail. He seized Fen’s belt and hung on.

Fen took off with him into the night. Cai wrapped his arms round his waist. He had no idea of where they were heading but he didn’t care—closed his eyes and pressed his brow to Fen’s shoulder to increase the feel of the unknown. Let Eldra bear them off into the void. Theo had said the earth was round, but that was hard to believe on a north-lands beach, where the moonlit horizon stretched out forever on a pure, empty plane. Let Fen drive Eldra on and on, and perhaps they would hurtle off this world’s edge. Leave behind the place where it was possible for good human creatures to set an old woman to burn, where knives of guilt pierced Cai for not having somehow taught them better, as if not only Fara’s monks but her villagers too were burdens on his soul… “No!”

Fen spared a hand from the reins. He rubbed his fingers over Cai’s tight-clenched knuckles. “No what?”

“Don’t stop. Take us away.”

“Too late, beloved. We’re already here.”

To come from a gallop to a dead stop was also a battle manoeuvre, and Eldra was good at it. She propped her forelegs and commenced a graceful skid, and for the second time that night Cai was hurled down from horseback and into the dark. This time he landed in soft sand. He scrambled to his feet in time to see Fen make an elegant warrior’s dismount and pat Eldra’s neck as if she’d done him proud. He was smiling broadly—beginning to shake with laughter.

“Fen, you…you
arse
!” That was no good. Cai’s own voice quivered. He tried to find the fury that should have been burning him up. “You arrogant Viking savage! How dare you sweep in and grab a…” He floundered for words, then took inspiration from his damp, sand-covered cassock. “A man of God, as if he’d been nothing but—”

“A shrieking virgin nun? That’s what you think of us, isn’t it?”

“Oh—and that’s wrong? A slander upon your good name?”

“Not at all. But not me. Not the Torleik. We only take such plunder as will be useful to us, and I chose to take a fine man.”

Cai stared at him. He hadn’t heard
Torleik
in some time now. He’d been starting to think those ghosts were laid for Fen, exorcised by newer, brighter experience. He hadn’t heard that proud, easy
we
that told him where his Viking’s blood loyalties still lay. His own blood chilled. But Fen gave him no more time to think about it. Chuckling, he advanced across the sandy crater in the dunes. “Look at you, my man of God—all on fire with outrage, your hair in spikes. You have seaweed in it.” He reached out as if to pick some out, then gave Cai the lightest shove, just enough to tumble him backwards. Cai took the opportunity and seized Fen’s jerkin as he fell, dragging him down on top. They crashed together into the sand, laughing and scuffling.

“Puppies!”

The voice stopped Cai between one playful punch to Fen’s ribs and the next. He flipped over, dumping Fen off him. Extricating himself, he pushed up onto his knees. “Danan?”

“Puppies,” she repeated sadly. “Supposedly men, and yet—puppies in a basket. It isn’t enough, you know, Caius of Fara.”

She was perched comfortably atop the dune. Her hands were folded in her lap, as if she’d come here and settled down to watch a show. Cai undid the grip Fen was trying to fasten on his girdle. “Let me go, you fool. Danan—are you all right?”

“She’s fine,” Fen answered for her, giving up and helping him to his feet. “I don’t know how. But there’s not a mark on her. She’s a salamander, or a witch indeed.”

“That can’t be.” Cai ran up the dune and knelt beside her. “Danan, my lady. You might think you aren’t hurt, but you’ve been breathing smoke. And—you’re burned, or scorched at the least. You must be.”

She sighed. Without warning she hitched up her skirts and stuck out her bony legs. “See for yourself, physician. If it will make you feel better. Your tame raider swept me off in time.”

“Impossible.” Cai inspected the gnarled toes with their goat’s-hoof nails, the ancient, calloused feet. He shot a glance at Fen. “And believe me, I wish the bastard was tame. I don’t understand this. Your lungs should be burned. You were lifeless on that pyre when I got there.”

“It seems not.”

“I called to you. Why didn’t you show me you were alive?”

“Perhaps I was not.”

He sat up. She seemed to read his bewilderment and have pity on it, or on something about him—reached forwards and brushed one hand across his hair. “Don’t let it tax your brains, boy. Perhaps I was feigning. Your villagers were strange tonight—perhaps it seemed best to me not to provoke them.”

“
Strange…
” Cai shook his head. “I never saw them like that. How could it happen?”

“Because they have no leader.”

“Nonsense. People shouldn’t need a leader to be good. Decent, at least.” Cai resumed his examination of the thin but healthy limbs, the flesh that should have reeked of smoke and charring but didn’t. The old woman’s skirts smelled a little of fresh comfrey leaves and bedstraws, and that was all. He knew what was coming next and didn’t want to hear.

“In a perfect world—that of Theodosius—that is true. He was perfect in his way. You are grossly imperfect…” She waited till his eyes met hers in sarcastic acknowledgement. “And better suited to your times.”

“Why does it have to be me?”

She shrugged. “Why should it be anyone? You are right. People shouldn’t need a leader. But where there are men who would lead them astray, they do. Addy hoped…”

“You do know him, then? When did you last see him? What did he hope?”

“So many questions. You exhaust me.”

“I’m sorry. But—”

“I must go. I have herbs to gather. I was interrupted, if you recall.”

“Where was Aelfric keeping you, Danan?”

“Somewhere dark and silent. Don’t scowl, boy—I found it restful.” She shook off Cai’s restraining hand and stood up. “Ah, wait. In return for this rescue, I will give you something—you and that redheaded beast. Come here, both of you.”

Fen left off checking Eldra’s limbs and came to kneel at Cai’s side. His expression was mild, as if he’d never rode up and down a beach roaring and swinging an axe. “I don’t understand how it is, old salamander,” he said, “but I am glad you’re unharmed.”

“Unharmed?” She gave him a cuff to the face. Cai flinched—anyone else would have drawn back a stump—but Fen only beamed. “I shall bear the mark of your knee in my arse to the grave.”

“There was no time to stop and help you to a more maidenly posture.”

She broke into wheezing, rasping chuckles. “Maidenly! Well, I’ll forgive it in the circumstances. Now, where is the damn thing…?” She dug like a weasel into a pocket of her skirts, threw out a half-eaten apple and a barley ear, then extracted a long red ribbon. “There. Do you know what this is?”

Cai did, but was too taken aback to say so. Fen, less inhibited, took the worn length of silk between his fingers. “Yes. Our custom is the same. This is for handfastings.” Silent laughter shook him. “I’m honoured, lady, but perhaps I’m too old for you. And my preference lies elsewhere.”

“Yes. Even my Caius here had a few girls before he was certain, but you…you knew.”

That silenced both of them. Fen lowered his gaze, and Cai took his hand. He’d grown used to having secrets pulled raw out of his head, but the process was new to Fen. Cai wanted to tell Danan to leave him be. There was something painful in the thought of Fen, young and far away from him, yearning from the first awakening of his flesh for other men.

He held tighter, and Danan nodded approval. “Aye, that will do.”

“What will? Danan, what are you up to?”

“It will help you. You must lead, and you will be the better for a good man at your side.”

Light dawned on Cai. His mouth dropped open. “Oh, God. Danan, no. Look, he
is
at my side. He doesn’t want—”

“Who says I don’t want?”

Cai started. Fen was still holding the ribbon. He looked at Cai with fire and cloud-swept moonlight lighting up the amber of his eyes. “Who says I don’t?” he repeated, turning his hand in Cai’s grasp so that their fingers meshed. “What better? It will bind us closer than brothers.”

The secret of the book is in the binding.
Cai stared at the ribbon drifting in the offshore wind, coiling as if with a life of its own. It felt like an answer, or part of one, but it faded as he tried to follow it. Why did it leave him so chilled?

“A battlefield marriage, Fen?” he said faintly, rubbing the strong fingers between his own.

“Many such have been made. And, if it fails to suit, it’s only for…”

“Only a year and a day. I know.”
But it will suit. That’s what makes me afraid. I will be here on my knees, asking for its renewal, every year and a day for the rest of my bloody life.
“Aren’t we already closer than brothers?”

It wasn’t the right question. The moon-clouds won out over the fire. A sorrow whose depths Cai now knew he had barely comprehended darkened Fen’s gaze. “Please. Let her make us so.”

Cai raised their joined hands. He hoped there was nothing for him to say as part of the rite. His throat was closed, an aching pressure of tears building up behind his eyes. And Danan, after examining both of them with a solemn anxiety Cai had never before seen her display, bound the ribbon once around Fen’s wrist.

“Solstice to solstice, hand to hand, from blood-mother earth to the heart of man…”

Cai closed his eyes. He tried to let his doubts go, to lay them on the warm night wind that was stirring his hair, pushing the wool of his cassock against him in all the places where he longed to be touched. If Fen wanted this, then what
could
be better? The ritual words, older by far than monastery stones or even the hillfort’s walls, rolled out around him.
Bud into bloom, bloom to decay, round the great track for a year and a day…
Danan’s voice altered, losing its rasp of age and smoke. It gave Cai a vision of oak saplings springing up, each on its own side of a stream. Winter passed, suns and moons, and in the heat of summer each tree leaned across the stream and enmeshed its young foliage with the crown of its brother. More summers, more winters, more suns and moons, and the two had grown together, their great trunks fused, the stream parting now to flow round them.
Hand to hand and pledge to pledge, from home and hearth to the bright world’s edge…

Danan stopped. When Cai opened his eyes, he half-expected to find a priestess of the Druids before him. They had not all been slaughtered or driven back to their mountains by the Romans, and she had sounded so young. But there was only an old woman, looking scorched now after all. She sat down suddenly on the sand. “No.”

She hadn’t completed the loop of the ribbon around Cai’s wrist. She let it go, and it drifted from Fen’s like a trace of blood in the water. Fen picked it up and offered it to her. “Go on, old woman.”