Brothers of the Wild North Sea (34 page)

“The best way to deal with my kind, I promise you.”

“Don’t…” Whipping round, Cai blocked three rapid feints. He did it well, but the fourth brought
Blóðkraftr
’s tip to his throat, and he froze, gasping.

“Don’t what, monk?”

“Call yourself that.
My kind
.”

“Don’t tell me with one breath to be what I am, and with the next forbid it.”

Up on the wall, Eyulf uttered a long, dismal groan. Instantly Fen put up his sword. Cai swallowed. A delicate stinging told him the blade had just broken his skin. Marcus had leapt up onto the remains of a parapet and was gazing off to the horizon, shielding his eyes against the sun.

“Marcus,” Cai called, not taking his gaze off Fen’s. “What can you see?”

“I’m not certain. There’s a fret, and… Wait. I see sails.”

“What shape are they? How many?”

“Square. Five. No, seven. No—oh,
Domine adiuva me
…”

“Marcus?”

“Yes?”

“If you see more than seven, kindly keep it to yourself.”

Marcus remained silent. Cai straightened up. He sheathed his sword and turned to the white-faced men dropping their drill postures and looking out to sea. “Brethren of Fara!” One by one they fixed their attention upon him. He felt it like separate weights, barbs sinking into his flesh. “How many times have we seen Viking fleets on their way to the fishing grounds north of here? And even if it isn’t so—even if they’re bound for shore—it’s broad daylight, and they’re a long way out. When have we ever had this much warning? Every man here knows his task.” No one stirred a muscle. Eyes fixed unblinkingly on him, as if he on his own could make the nightmare disperse. “What’s wrong with you? Come on!”

Fen touched his shoulder. The caress was hidden, warm, the press of a palm to his spine. “Fear wipes men’s minds,” he said softly. “Fear can drag them to hell even faster than Aelfric would want.”

Cai took one long breath. “Wilfrid,” he began, if not with kindness, then calmly at least. “Don’t be afraid. You know the men appointed to you. Take them now, and herd the goats and the sheep into the caves at the foot of the cliffs. Gareth, you and Cedric tell the villagers to do the same, then help them pack what they can carry and send them on their way inland. They should head towards Traprain Law—my father might take them in, if worst comes to worst. Hengist, have your men carry all our grain, our fruit and salted meat into the cellars. And you, Marcus, stop gawping and do as you’ve rehearsed—gather all our weapons at the armoury and see they’re clean and ready. Well, what are you waiting for? Go!”

They turned and filed out. Even Eyulf knew his place in this emergency and ran off after Hengist to help carry the grain. Cai looked after them. There was order and purpose in their departure. He didn’t fool himself that it weighed in the balance against seven or more Viking sails—the fret had closed in now, sealing him off from the truth—but he’d done what he could. In the silence of the drill yard, the sea wind moaned. “I’ll go and fetch Dagsauga and the ox calves. If I set off with them now, I might get them to safe pasture by dusk. Do you think Eldra will be of any use to us?”

“In a foot battle? No. I could do some damage, but they’d cut her out from under me.”

Oh, you assume you’d be riding?
But there was no point in challenging Fen’s arrogance there, not having been on the receiving end of those battlefield horsemanship skills. “I don’t want to use her like that.”

“Neither do I.”

“Then can you take her out to the fields beyond the Coldstream ford—you know, the place where we…”

“Er, yes.”

“And take the farm ponies on leading reins. The further we spread our assets around…”

“Yes. And yes, I will come back.”

Cai flinched. “I never asked that.”

Fen stepped up close to him. He brushed one fingertip across the tiny cut on Cai’s throat, then passionately took his face between his hands. “Your eyes ask it. Your bloody beautiful mouth asks, in all the words you don’t say, every time you look at me. Caius—you and your brethren took me in. You saved my life. You could have tied me up in a wickerwork boat and shoved me out to sea, but you didn’t. You gave me food, clothing, work to do. My own kind abandoned me. Who am I going to fight for, if these sails don’t pass by?”

Cai unfastened his sword belt. He couldn’t bear the dragging weight of it round his hips. He struggled out of it and dropped it on the turf. He’d have torn a strip off another man for treating his weapon so, but he was blind with tears. He had cut Fen too—a thin red line across his cheek only now starting to bleed. He leaned his brow against Fen’s, and Fen took hold of the hair at his nape and held him strongly. The wind spiralled up from the cliffs—a raider’s wind, inshore, rich with scents of autumn. It vortexed around them where they stood motionless, a season’s first leaf-fall blowing in its wings.

Chapter Fourteen

One man too many. It was better than one too few, but Cai couldn’t work it out. The night had come down black and hard, and in his urgent tracks from lookout posts to armoury to storerooms, he didn’t have time to worry too much about the unknown figure. It was quick and thin, familiar somehow in the glimpses he had of it. Only when Cai rounded the stairwell of a firelit corridor and crashed right into the fragile shape did he realise. He snatched back the cassock hood before the stranger could try to dodge past him. “Oslaf!”

“Yes. Forgive me, Cai.”

Forgive him? Cai could have kissed him. He still looked frail, but a few weeks of his grandmother’s care had taken the death-shadows from his eyes. “What in God’s name are you doing here? Why have you been hiding from me?”

“My brother came back from shepherding with tales of a fleet on the horizon. I had to come. I was afraid you’d pack me off home.”

“No, not this time. We need every man we can get. Are you strong enough to lift a sword?”

“I think so.”

“Go and find Fen and make sure. He’s down at the armoury. He’ll put you through some drills.”

“They are certainly coming, then?”

“We still don’t know. At nightfall they were still a long way out, but…”

“Caius?” That was Gareth. He was such a changed man from the night of the first raid, when an axe through the shoulder had driven out all trivial fears of the flesh from him. He was pale now, but Cai noted with gratitude his soldierly bearing. He came up close before he spoke, kept his voice low. “Cai, Brother Fen says we should make ready. The tide has turned. The Vikings are making for land.”

Cai had to conduct himself at least as well. He braced against the painful leap of his heart. “Understood. Go at once and give the signal.” He turned to the boy. “Oslaf, I’m sorry. We don’t have time to make a warrior of you just now—will you go and help Hengist guard our stores?”

“Whatever you command. But I wish I could have fought with you.”

“I know. And you will again one day. But you’re too dear to me, for Benedict’s sake and your own.”

Cai watched him dart off. From the newly built bell tower, a low, insistent tolling began. The bell was new too, or newly purchased—a tradeoff from the smith at Berewic for part of their rich apple crop and some mead. Cai had watched his brothers proudly lift it into place only the week before. Had these things been done just in time for hell and death to rise up out of the waters and knock them back down? At least the upper level of the church had been built in willow and daub, not stone. That would save them some trouble next time.

He caught that grim thought on the hoof. Fen had been right about fear and its power to distort the mind, and Cai wasn’t immune. Cedric was waiting in a doorway, watching him for his cue. Curtly Cai gestured him to be about his business, and strode off to find his own.

The bell rang softly, its tongue muffled up in a sack. The strangled note of it lent a dreadful tension to the night, pulsing out across Fara’s dark, huddled buildings. Only a few lanterns shone from windows on the landward side, casting a fitful light on Cai’s path as he made his way to the cliffs, one man then the next running out at the signal to join him.

The sea bells…
How Cai had made them ring that first night, screaming out the monastery’s whereabouts to any ship not yet come in to land! And even the second time, how they had left all their lights burning, a gesture of defiance before they had joined the attack… Not this time. Not this time. More men poured in from their posts around the buildings, and Cai fell back, making room so they could run with him in the shadows. Only the monks of Fara would hear this bell, would see these lights. From the seaward side, Fara would be only a cluster of ruins, the burnt-out husks from the last raid. There was just an outside chance that the blanket of night would shield them, and the fleet pass by.

Fen stepped out to meet them in the place where the track turned to a narrow defile at the top of the cliffs. His hair had grown long enough to drift in the night wind. Cai had faced him half a year ago in this very place—had for one instant met those eyes, which took fire into themselves when there was none, and kindled fires in Cai that would burn him to ash before they died. He took up a stance of soldierly respect in front of Cai—a deputy to his commander—and one look at him told Cai the truth. “They are coming.”

“Yes. Only two ships, thank the gods, but putting in hard and straight for us.”

Cai drew a breath. He looked at Fen, one eyebrow on the rise. They shared the silent thought. Only two? That was the difference between an immediate wipeout and a decent fight. Two might almost be enjoyable.

He saw the same idea flashing round the brethren waiting behind Fen, drawn up in orderly fashion, their skirts hitched into their girdles, weapons ready. “Gentlemen of God,” Cai called to them. “Each
vikingr
ship bears about twenty men, and none of them are passengers. We are thirty. We can do it, but not a man here is to relax. I want stealth, brutality and a most unchristian attitude from all of you. Is that understood?”

It wasn’t the time for a battle cheer. Cai saw it coming and hushed it, grinning. “Later. When we’re bearing down on them like skirt-wearing demons from Abbot Aelfric’s hell. Now get into your places, and wait for Fen’s signal and mine.”

The raiders would make landfall in the bay below the cliffs. Cai knew that from bitter experience. It was the natural place, the beach sloping smoothly there, offering easy anchorage, a fast run in to shore. On a dark night like this, only the thinnest waning moon to light their way, the broad white sands would gleam temptingly, and there beyond them Fara’s great rock—a desirable stronghold, inhabited or not.

Cai signalled his division of the men off to the left. Fen was crouched at the top of a whinstone outcrop. He had already directed the brethren under his command to their hiding places among the dunes to the right. The bay might be wide and hard to control, but it could be used as a trap, with men positioned correctly in places leading up to the defile. Timing would be crucial. Fen knew more about that than Cai did—he and Cai had agreed, just the night before in a brief interval of their loving, that he would give the sign.

Cai clambered up the rock and knelt beside him, taking care not to break the skyline. “Do you see them?”

“Yes.” Fen gave him an odd, amused sidelong glance. “How do you not?”

Cai looked again, this time following the set of Fen’s shoulders and head. A cold thrill seized him, a mix of nausea and excitement. It was like learning to see the passage of a serpent through water, a creature he’d been taught was only mythical. And, as Fen said, now he’d got the trick of it, how could he not? Two great vessels, their lines like water, like billowing sails. They forged a path along the troughs of the waves, the diagonal drift of the tide. Their uplifted prows bore bestial heads—one a square-mouthed dragon, gaping, crudely hewn, the next a spiral of surpassing beauty with a swan’s head at its centre. Their timbers fanned out from these delicate points to broad, sturdy hulls. Cai had never seen his enemy, not until he was face-to-face, breath to breath, locked in bloody combat. He had never really seen the ships. “They’re beautiful.”

But Fen had turned away. He had slumped down against the rock. His fist was clenched tight around the hilt of his
Blóðkraftr
sword, his knuckles white and stark.

“What is it?” Cai whispered, ducking down beside him. “Is your belt loose?”

“No. The first boat—does it have a wolf’s-head prow?”

“No. A dragon, I thought.” Cai risked another glance. “I don’t know, though. A godless heathen beast of some kind—I can’t tell.”

“It’s a wolf. The sail bears the signs of the Torleik.”

“Is it…? Do you think they’ve come for you at last? To rescue you?”

Fen shook his head. “Not in that kind of battle array. And the second boat, the beaked dragon…”

“I thought that one was a swan.”

Fen chuckled painfully. “That one belongs to the Volsung. Vicious bastards who pirate with us in the summer, then steal our damn cattle all winter. This is a raid, not a rescue.”

“Fen—what are you going to do?”

Their gazes locked. “I never thought I’d see that sail again.”

Cai put a hand on his shoulder. “
Fen.
”

He struggled out from under Cai’s grasp and crouched a few yards away, hunched up, hair concealing his face. And in that moment Cai’s world, from church to dunes, from turf to cloud-shadowed sky, fractured and began to crack apart. He had asked. He hadn’t understood how a loyal Viking, with ideas of brotherhood higher and nobler than any Cai had attained about God, could change sides to fight alongside a foreign monk. Even if they were lovers—even if they had lain in the fragrant barn last night and sworn to one another blood faith till they died, even if Fen had done that while he was coaxing one last come from Cai’s exhausted flesh, and Cai had given it back to him in the teeth of ecstasy.
Yes, yes, yes.
Still Cai had asked him.
Where will you be? Which side?
And Fen had answered, and Cai had believed.