Brothers of the Wild North Sea (38 page)

Cai squeezed his arm. “You did right. The village… Is it still standing?”

“More or less. And the men and women left when you told them to. They are grateful for their survival. That’s why Godric came up here to help us. He seems a changed man.”

Cai chuckled. “You should have checked his rump for the mark of Barda’s sandal. This is good, Fen—all the things you’ve done. I am grateful too. And I have to get back to work.”

“Worry about that when you can walk a straight line on your own.”

“But…who is looking after the sick men? Where are they?”

“It was a sharp fight, beloved. Sometimes it happens this way. There were only survivors, who got away with scratches, and…”

“And the dead.” Cai swallowed. Fen’s arm went powerfully tight round his waist, and he braced himself not to huddle into his embrace, plead exhaustion and be taken back to the world behind the willow screen, where sickness had shielded him from all the things he didn’t want to know. “Will you help me down to the churchyard?”

“Can you walk that far?”

“I don’t know. But I have to see.”

Five new mounds beneath the hawthorns. Cai, who had managed the walk but poured out the last of his strength, asked which one was Wilfrid’s and knelt beside it. This was the season when the yarrow’s long flowering made its blossoms significant and lovely on the open turf. Most of the summer’s colour was fading back to green and tawny gold, but the yarrow shone bright on this overcast day, its tough, aromatic heads like a sprinkling of snow. It had feathery leaves. Crushing one between his fingers, Cai breathed in the scent of its oil, counting off its medicinal properties in his head to ward off newer knowledge. Fevers, bleeding, healing—one, two, three. It was no good. Marcus, Demetrios, Wilf. “Who else?” A cold pain struck him. “Not Eyulf.”

“No. No, we’ve kept him away from you because he would have leapt on you like a dog and pulled out your stitches. One of these is Aelfric’s. Your brethren wouldn’t have him down in the crypt with Theo, and I thought him better out here.”

“He’d have thought so too,” Cai said dully, “at the very end. And the other?”

“Brother John died too.”

“John? He shouldn’t have been fighting. He was broken. He was…”

“I know. The noise scared him and he ran. It was a night when fighting was safer than trying to hide.”

Cai choked faintly. “Much good that did Aelfric. Much good it did any of us.”

Fen came to stand beside him. Cai rested his head against his thigh, and Fen roughly stroked his hair. “Much good it ever does. But what is the choice?”

“I thought you lived for the battle.” Shame burned through Cai as soon as the words were out. “Forgive me. God, forgive me, Fen—your brother. Where does he lie?”

“I have to tell you about Gunnar.” Again came that caress. Cai closed his eyes, surrendering, listening. “In the Dane Lands we are brought up to love whatever is strongest. So I loved my brother—without question, although he was savage, rapacious, so full of greed and bloodlust he wanted to swallow the whole world. A few months ago, he deposed old Sigurd. He took the Torleik for his own—violated all our laws of clan and rightful succession.” Fen let go a painful breath and knelt stiffly at Cai’s side. “Still I honoured him in death. Your brethren helped me. We placed him and the other
vikingr
fallen in the ship they left behind, and we torched it and cast it out to sea.”

Beyond the grey clouds, the rain beginning to patter onto the fresh graves, Cai could see it. Viking burials were legend along the north shore. That beautiful boat, her final cargo laid out on her deck—the night, and the hungry flames reflecting off the water… “I grieve for you. Your love for him was more than the worship of brute power.”

“That love has died in me. The decision to leave me here was his. He knew that I was still alive. He told the crew my injuries were hopeless and ordered them to leave. I was Sigurd’s other heir, his only rival. He seized his opportunity. It’s raining, Cai. Let me take you back.”

“Wait. How do you know this? About Sigurd and what Gunnar did to him—what he did to you?”

“One of the Torleik fallen spoke to me before he died.”

Fen stopped short. They were shoulder to shoulder, and Cai felt him swallow the rest as if it had been a stone. He sought Fen’s hand blindly, wondering at its chill. “What more do you have to tell me?”

“Nothing of significance. Come back with me now. You’re cold.”

“No—
you
are. Fen—your brother abandoned you here, but the waves didn’t get you. I did. I’ve lived at your side. I eat with you, breathe with you. I can feel whatever you’re trying not to tell me now, bottled up inside you like water behind a dam.”

“You feel too much.” It was a low growl, and Fen turned to him, his grip closing hard. “What more would you have of me? Your brethren are dead here. If you want more bad tidings, we lost half our grain and all the beasts we’d hidden in the caves.”

The news almost distracted Cai. His mind tried to seize the new problem—their reduced numbers, how far the food that remained could be spread amongst those left alive. “I can weather all that,” he said grimly. “Did the
vikingr
take the animals?”

“No. Wilfrid was so eager for the fight that he didn’t pen them in properly. They escaped.”

“Then the goats will probably make their way home. And we might be able to round up the sheep. Yes, we can weather that—no thanks to you, shepherd.” Cai laid a tender hand on Wilfrid’s grave. “Now tell me the rest.”

“When Gunnar took over from Sigurd, it threw the tribe into chaos. They fought among themselves until half their warrior chieftains were dead, and when the rival clans who live in the marshlands around knew their weakness, they moved in. They are besieged. They have no winter stores, and now—with Gunnar gone—they have no leader. Caius, beloved—”

“Quiet. I’m tired now. Please take me back.”

Cai knew how to make a man love him. The mechanics of desire were simple. Theo had taught that plainly, to men thrown together night and day, most of them healthy and young. They could and did operate without permission from the mind or soul. A monk could be as devoted as he wished, and still be plagued by them, and it was not a source of shame. Control them as best you can—cold plunges, meditations, prayer—but all can still be lost. Even when the mind says no and means it, the flesh can have its way.

Fen’s mind was certainly saying no. His mouth too, until Cai had clapped a hand across it. Fen had left him alone until darkness fell, and then he had come as always since the raid, to sleep beside him, warm him, make sure he came to no harm in the night. And Cai had seized him and begun to change his body’s no to yes. Cai knew men’s flesh and how it worked—knew this one best of all.

Fen fought his way out from under. He took hold of Cai’s shoulders and dumped him down onto the bed. “What are you doing? Don’t make me hurt you!”

“You are going back to them.”

A terrible silence, Fen’s eyes blazing down into his. “Caius. Stop.”

“The next time we meet could be on a battlefield. Why the hell don’t we start now?”

He smacked Fen hard across the face. Other demons could be called up too, and this one lived close to Fen’s surface. He wasn’t a tolerant man. The trick worked instantly—Fen cuffed him back. He had laughed until he wept when Cai had told him the doctrine of turning the other cheek. But he wasn’t the same creature who had been marooned here in the spring. His eyes filled with tears. “Stop this.”

Cai dragged him down into a kiss that tasted of blood. There was the surge of his erection. Even unwilling, Cai could command his body. Perhaps the soul would follow. “You are going home. Why? They betrayed you.”

“My brother. Not my whole clan. They are starving, diseased. I can’t abandon them.”

“I can’t let you go.”

“Then come with me. Leave your brethren behind and sail with me. Can you?”

Cai stopped struggling. He lay still, his breath coming in great gulps. The prospect unrolled itself before him. At first it felt like an answer. He could taste the salt now, hear the rush of the wind as it had sung to him on their way back from Addy’s island. It wouldn’t be easy. He would be a Christian among hostile strangers, lucky to escape with his hide. But to be on shipboard with Fen, perhaps with one of those great dragon heads dipping and rising with the motion of the prow…

Leaving his brethren behind. Oslaf and Eyulf and the rest of them, the little community that had been smashed to pieces again and again, this time almost to oblivion. The men who looked to him to lead them, flawed though he was.

For many years now, Cai had thought of himself as a grown man. He had left his father’s kingdom and come here, stiff with pride and independence. He had trained an army, fought and killed with them. He had taken a lover, in the teeth of hellfire doctrine and the religion he had vowed to serve.

But he had been a child. Adulthood didn’t lie in action, or the assertion of his will. It was here in this moment. Fen couldn’t have imposed it upon him more deeply.
Forget them so you can be with me…
Impossible. But Cai had asked that very thing of him.

Cai grew up fiercely, gasping at the pain of it. Fen was still holding him fast at the focus of that merciless gaze, making him see. No nobility, no fire. Just the slow, cold dawning of realisation. He had taken the men of Fara into his hands, and now he couldn’t let them fall. “Go and look in the box in that far corner.”

“What?”

“Just go and open it. I had Oslaf bring it up from the cellar, after you had talked to me by the graves and I knew what you were going to do.”

Fen detached himself stiffly from their embrace. After a moment he returned, his expression wondering. In his left hand he clasped the magnificent helmet Cai had found on the beach and hidden away from them both. “You told me this had been lost.”

“I picked it up from the beach that night. I put it away in a box in my infirmary.”

“Well, I could have used it before now, you idiot.”

“I know. I couldn’t bear the sight of it.” Despite his words, Cai took the beautifully worked thing from Fen, and when his lover knelt beside him, carefully drew it down over the shining red hair. “There. Now you look as you did when I first saw you. How you’ll look when you become a stranger to me again.”

“Cai, don’t.” Fen’s voice cracked, giving the lie to the blank ferocity of the helmet’s mask. “Take it off me, for God’s sake.”

“All right.” Cai obeyed him. “But when you go, you will have that, and your shield and your sword.” He buried his fists in Fen’s hair. He drew his head down, barriers of resistance dropping inside him.

Fen kissed him with a tenderness that was new, even after all their exchanges. “Forgive me, Cai. I swear I will come back to you.”

“Don’t make any promises. You don’t know what you’ll find there.”

“Nothing like you. Not ever.”

“And…” Shifting, Cai took his weight more thoroughly, welcoming the blossom of pain in his side. “Understand me, love. You have to go now.”

“What? No. I will wait till you’re well. Till the rebuilding is done and you have some defences against—”

“Listen. I can behave myself like a good soldier—a good monk, a good leader, whatever kind of man I’m meant to be. I can do that, maybe for a day, maybe two. More, if I have to. But if you drag out your leaving any longer than that…”

“Don’t.” Another of those kisses, lingering, deep. “Oh, don’t.”

“If you drag it out, I’ll fall. I’ll weep at your feet in front of the very men I have to lead.”

“You know,” Fen said hoarsely, “making my decision wasn’t hard—not once I’d seen I had to. No, it was easy, because I pushed it away and made it little. I told myself I wouldn’t leave for weeks—and it wouldn’t really matter even then, because I would come back. I’d promised you that. Already in my mind I
was
back.”

“And I won’t let you promise.”

“No.”

“Won’t let you push it away.”

Fen’s expression didn’t alter. But two hot splashes hit Cai’s face—just two, as if all the grief in the world had been distilled into them. The tears of a Viking warrior.

Cai wrapped his arms around him. That wasn’t enough, and he lifted his thighs, groaning, and embraced him that way too. Fen’s hard shaft pushed into the crease of his body, ploughing in tight behind his balls, the dear familiar trackway. Cai nodded, pressing consent to Fen’s face and neck in mute kisses. Yes. Fen smelled of apples—he must have been helping to store the crop they had left up in the drying lofts. His skin was warm as if printed with the memory of sunlight, and Cai’s ailing flesh yearned and opened to the sheer health and strength of it, starving for his heat. “Yes. Push in.”

“Not like this. I’ll get something.”

“No. No wheat oil, no butter filched from Hengist’s kitchen, no flax.” They’d tried all of those and managed on less—on seawater, sweat, spit. “Not now. There isn’t time.”

Fen froze for an instant, confusion palpable. “No time? You want me to leave so soon as—”

“No, you idiot. I mean I can’t wait for you.”

“Oh…”

“What do you do to me? Don’t let me come on my own, empty and alone like this.”