Chapter 2 #2
great square sail, pregnant with that breeze. In front of
it—impossibly clear to him just for an instant—rode a dragon’s
head.
They would continue by. They were out
of season. Even Theo had agreed on that, the wisest man Cai knew.
Fara held nothing for them, not so much as a woman, a jewelled
altar cross or a chalice of gold. Cai’s heart ached for the
villages further north, and for the hundredth time he wished
monastic life would stretch to a fast-paced horse such as his
father kept. He would fling himself onto it and ride, ride faster
than any damn Viking could sail to give warning to…
The clouds shifted. The sea at the
foot of the cliffs was suddenly revealed. Cai shrank back from the
window, a choked cry dying in his throat. It wasn’t the sail on the
horizon he needed to fear. It was the great dragon-prowed longship
that had come in vulpine silence to the very shores of Fara. She
was moored, rocking. Her crew was no longer aboard. That meant they
were somewhere between the rocks and the meadows at the edge of the
cliff.
And that meant in turn that Cai had a
minute. No horse, no real hope—just bare feet and a dead run. He
seized his cassock and dived into it, pulling it hard over his
head. He wouldn’t have spared the instant for that, except that he
could fight better dressed than naked, hide up his sleeve any
weapon he could find. Harsh laughter burned in his chest—a weapon?
He’d be lucky to find a big enough chunk of rock in this sheepfold,
this beautiful, soft-bellied refuge for peace-loving
men.
A rock would have to do. Cai shot into
the passageway and began to pound on Benedict’s door. Only a
horrified silence answered him, and Cai knew what that meant. Two
naked lovers jolting upright in bed, paralysed like fox cubs in a
den. “Ben! It’s me, Cai. Vikings!”
Another silence, probably of disbelief
this time. Cai banged his fists off the woodwork again, and
Benedict pulled the door open, his face sleepy and colourless with
fright. Behind him, Oslaf was scrambling upright, shielding himself
with a discarded cassock. “Vikings? Cai, it’s too—”
“I know it’s too damned
early! Just wake up the others. And send Oslaf to get Theo.
Now!”
Cai tore off down the stairs. Moss
slithered under his bare soles, but he was faster like this than in
his cumbersome sandals. The air hit his lungs, full of nighttime
sweetness. Had he really just seen a longship still rocking from
the exit of her crew? The dream of the wolf-man had felt more real.
Rounding the corner of the main hall, he saw that the refectory was
empty, all his brethren gone to their rest.
The church was made of wood frame,
wattle and daub. Only the tower at the end was built of stone, to
support the bell. Twenty yards of turf divided the church from the
hall, a patch of ground Cai flew across without looking back. There
was no point. He’d heard the first shouts, and the air he was
hauling into his lungs was no longer pure but tainted by acrid
smoke. Cai felt a flash of love for the drab little building
hunched beneath its thatch, an affection he’d never known on
freezing mornings, shivering his way through dawn prayers. He ran
through the nave, his shadow leaping round him as the flame from
the sanctuary candle danced, grabbed hold of the bell rope and
began to pull with all his strength.
The bell rang out into the night. Its
voice seemed weak over the roar of Cai’s blood in his ears, a
whisper when he wanted it to scream. He counted off the tolls. One
dozen, two. He wouldn’t be allowed much longer. Something thudded
onto the roof, like the landing of a heavy bird, the sound followed
instantly by several more. The door flew open. Cai tensed to run,
but he wasn’t worth the confrontation. The soft thumps he’d heard
overhead had been firebrands, and the figure in the doorway only
paused long enough to toss another inside, this one landing almost
at Cai’s feet.
The thatch was dry as dust after a
rainless spring. The brands on the roof burned straight through.
The timber rafters caught alight, one beam crashing down to cut off
Cai’s route to the door. Dropping the bell rope, Cai leapt out of
range of the sparks. The tower had one window, little more than a
hole in the wall to let in light. It would have to do. He jumped,
grabbing at the sill, got his head and shoulders through and
tumbled out onto the turf.
Straight into the path of his first
Viking. Cai had a moment to be glad he’d drawn a short one, and
startled him by his sudden appearance. He got an impression of
animal skins—of a twisted, grinning face beneath a cap-like
helmet—hair in a great, thick braid, and then the firelit flash of
an axe. He twisted aside, and the blade which would have split his
skull in two bounced off the tower wall instead, flying from its
owner’s grasp.
Cai forgot he was a monk. He grabbed
the Viking’s plait, whipped him around and smashed his face into
the stonework. He didn’t stop to look at the result—let the limp
body fall and snatched up the axe.
He was his father’s son. Broc had been
pleased with his prowess. It was part of the old man’s rage upon
Cai’s defection—to lose a warrior child. But Cai hadn’t cared about
his father’s fights, had gone in swinging at his side only from
habit and lack of choice. He cared now. He began to run. “Leof!
Leof!”
Predictably, Theo and Leof were
defending the scriptorium. Cai cannoned into the blazing room,
whose parchments and vellums were already burning, the desks
knocked to the ground. Leof was grabbing armfuls of books off the
shelves, clutching them like children to his chest. A huge shape
emerged from the flames, rumbling with laughter, and seized him by
the hair. Leof howled but hung on to the books, and Cai solved the
problem for him—this one—with a well-aimed slice of the axe,
catching the vast raider just at the base of the skull, the gap
between his helmet and tough leather jerkin.
“Leof,” Cai gasped. “Get
out of here, beloved. Just run.”
“I can’t! I must help
Theo!”
“I’ll help him.
Run!”
Too late. Three more raiders poured
into the red-black chaos. Cai didn’t take a moment to
think—launched himself at them, blood like fire in his
veins.
He didn’t stand a chance. He hacked
and grabbed, gouged and bit like the beast he was beneath his
robes, but the flat of a blade slapped his face and he went down.
Through a roaring wind he heard Theo, who was yelling back in Latin
at grunted demands from the Viking holding him at sword point. Cai
didn’t understand. His darkening mind tried to grasp at the words,
forge from them a chain of sense to pull him back to the
surface.
Stop this! Stop it.
There’s no secret here, no treasure. We have nothing!
Stop!
Theo fell silent. Cai struggled over
onto his back, and Leof dropped down beside him—limp, discarded, a
wheat sheaf tossed on the threshing-room floor. One side of his
beautiful face was nothing but blood.
Cai surged to his feet. He locked his
arm around the nearest Viking’s neck—braced and pulled as Broc had
taught him. A terrible, glorious crack of bone rewarded him. His
victim fell. Cai whirled to find the next and hit him square on, a
roaring, stinking fury in leather and fur. Huge hands clenched on
him, a grip beyond evasion. Expecting nothing but a sword through
his guts, not caring when it came, Cai fought. The Viking bore him
backwards through the flames. For a moment there was a mad beauty
to their dance. The burning spaces of the lovely room whirled past
Cai’s fading vision. He had only ever seen it lit by sunshine,
brilliance cloud-muted, coolly reflected from the sea. Rippling
patterns of sun on golden sandstone…
The lead was melting in the panes.
When Cai and the Viking hit the eastern window, the rough glass
cracked. This was Theo’s window, from which he’d kept a benign
father’s watch over his realm. The only large one in the place—it
burst outward, hurling Cai into the dark.
There had been nights—just a couple,
when joining his father’s revelries had been easier than hiding
from them—which might explain such an awakening. There was a body
under his. It was large and smelly, clad in animal hides. There
seemed to be a lot of blood and hair. The halfwit Eyulf was sitting
nearby, rocking himself and keening.
The body he was lying on was cold. Cai
lurched up. Eyulf gave a squawk and hurled himself into his arms,
his cries turning to crowing laughter.
“Eyulf, the kitchens,” Cai
muttered—all the poor lad understood, and usually enough to send
him on his way. But Eyulf clung. Struggling to sit upright, Cai
looked around him. He was on the rocks below the scriptorium.
Around him, mist and smoke were drifting in pallid dawn light. He
couldn’t see more than a few yards into the miasma. There were
smells in it he recognised and didn’t want to, smells that caught
in his throat and made him gag with horror. Burned sheepskin—no,
burned vellum, subtly different. Behind it, under it and running
through it like a shriek was charred flesh. He tried to push Eyulf
off him. One of his arms was reluctant to work, though, and every
bone in his body hurt.
He’d fallen from the scriptorium
window, five men’s heights above. Pieces of the thick, cloudy glass
were shattered in a wide fan around him. He’d survived because he’d
landed on the huge, fur-clad body of his assailant.
Voices echoed in the mist—a rattle of
angry Greek, and then a great ploughman’s shout. “Demetrios?
Demetrios! I can hear Eyulf. This way.”
Cai waited. Eyulf had him pinned, and
anyway he couldn’t summon up the will to move. If he moved, memory
would come. For now he was only a part of the rocks, barely more
alive than the crushed flesh and bone that had broken his fall. His
lungs filled with pale grey fog. He tried to let it into his mind.
He tried not to breathe.
“Caius? Oh, God be
praised—Demetrios, Caius is here!”
“He knew it. He said so.