Chapter Four #2
to save you. Or kill you, and I don’t care much which.”
The sword wound was deep. Dark blood
rushed from it when Cai pulled back the Viking’s leather jerkin.
The bedframe was soaked with it, a black pool spreading on the
floor. Another sign of life, Cai noted bitterly, stemming the tide
with rags. Pulse after pulse of it, the heart still beating out the
dance somewhere within that elegant chest, with its ribs sprung as
beautifully as timbers in the keel of a longship.
Stitching wouldn’t be possible yet—the
edges of the wound were ragged and too far apart. Cai couldn’t
remember twisting the blade as he’d dragged it back, but perhaps he
had. He’d never been confronted with his own battlefield handiwork
before. Quickly he soaked the cleanest of his rags in the solution
of sage and lavender, wadded them up and began to pack them into
the gaping hole. Blood welled up immediately around them. He
grabbed a dry cloth and pressed that on top, then another. Both
bloomed crimson, like the poppies that opened in one sunny hour
around Benedict’s barley fields and faded as fast. Cai needed an
extra set of hands. For want of them he began to unfasten the rough
hemp girdle round his waist, then stopped. The Viking’s own belt
would do better. Three inches wide and secured on his lean belly by
a savage-looking wolf’s-head buckle, it would hold the bandages in
place, and Cai could tighten it hard enough to hold pressure on the
wound.
He undid the belt. The buckle was
cleverly forged, the mechanism of it belying the crude silver wolf.
Hands slipping on blood, he tried to tug the leather strap free,
but it was caught behind the young man’s back. Cai reached under
him and lifted his hip.
The Viking stirred. It was much too
soon for the effects of the poppy to have worn off, but he was
built like a young oak tree, his vigour manifesting in every line
of his body. Nevertheless he was blind. Cai knew that when the
amber eyes opened and searched for a focus, their pupils immense in
the lamplight. Quietly, hampered by the rattle in his throat, he
asked a question.
Cai almost understood him. The
language was like trying to look round a corner in his mind. Theo
had taught that the narrow sea between here and the Dane Lands had
once been dry, nomad hunters following the herds freely across it,
bearing their words and ways with them.
Where am I? Who is here
with me?
Cai ignored him. He ripped the
sheepskin hook that secured the belt at the back, jerked it up far
enough to cover the wound and drew the strap tight through the
buckle. The Viking arched and groaned. Blood gleamed on his lips.
The words came again, two out of five familiar to Cai’s
ears. Who is
here with me? Who?
Cai sat back. He folded his arms and
pushed his hands into the sleeves of his cassock. He wanted to
stroke the dying man’s hair back off his brow. He wanted to lean
over him, ease his head up and cushion it on his arm. He clenched
his fingers tight round his own wrists to hold himself still—he
wanted to kiss this enemy’s bloodstained mouth, hold him and bear
him gently into death.
Who is with me?
“Gunnar,” Cai said softly.
He clutched his arms harder, holding himself fiercely still. “I am
here with you. Gunnar.”
The Viking took a fever from his
wounds. Despite Cai’s herbs and hand-washing, poisons had entered
his blood. By morning, although breath was still rasping in and out
of his lungs, his skin was dry and papery, burning beneath Cai’s
touch. The fire inside released a terrible last strength in him,
and he lashed out howling at Cai, knocking a flagon of water from
his hands, then lurched upright on the bunk to seize poor Oslaf,
the only one of Cai’s brethren who had consented to enter the
quarantine cell, let alone help.
Cai scrambled up off the floor. He
detached the hand that had clenched on Oslaf’s robe, narrowly
avoiding a blow from the other. The Viking was flailing around for
his sword, now safely stowed away in the armoury.
“Stop it,” Cai ordered.
“Oslaf, fetch me the straps from the surgical tables.” He held the
young man down by brute force until Oslaf returned, then pinned one
wrist long enough to secure it to the frame of the bunk. Oslaf
nervously did the same on the other side. The Viking thrashed on
the bed, his eyes alight with delirium and hate. He fought his
bindings wildly, then suddenly collapsed, expression draining from
his sweat-soaked face to leave it serenely beautiful once more. Cai
straightened up, breathless. “Best strap his ankles too. I’ve
packed that wound as best I can, but it’ll open up if he thrashes
round too much.”
Oslaf nodded. The raider was still
wearing his hide boots and thick deerskin leggings. Cai could have
stripped him down while he slept the night before, and for any
other sick man he’d have done it—washed him, tended unflinchingly
to the inevitable bodily mess of near-death injury. Cai was ashamed
of himself for leaving him dressed and filthy, but Benedict’s words
had twisted together with his own loathing. To save the brute’s
life was one thing. He couldn’t treat him as he had John or
Wilfrid, men who had deserved from him a brother’s
tenderness.
He helped Oslaf tie the straps over
the leggings, then glanced up at the younger monk. “Thanks. You
should go now, though. Don’t make Benedict angry with
you.”
“It might be too late for
that. I know what you told me—that I ought to play the game, but…”
Oslaf paled, absently patting the Viking’s ankle as if he had been
a friend. “I’m not sure it is one anymore. Ben won’t let me near
him.”
“But last
night…”
“He pushed me away. Sent me
off to pray with the others.” Tears suddenly clouded Oslaf’s gaze,
and he put out a hand to ward off Cai’s sympathy. “Do you think
he’ll live, then? This demon of yours?”
“I don’t understand how
he’s still alive now.”
“My grandmother used to say
the hair saps strength in fever. She cut mine off when I was
ill.”
Cai looked at the raider’s
sweat-darkened mane. “That’s nonsense, though, isn’t it? A
superstition.”
“Well, I’m alive. His hair
looks the most living thing about him now.”
It was true. The tangled curls seemed
to have a vigorous existence of their own, glowing rich russet in
the delicate early light filling the cell. “All right. It might be
worth a try. I’ll go and find some shears. Will you stay with him
till I get back?”
Cai made his way quickly down to the
barn where Brother Petros had kept his shears and shepherd’s
crooks. He tried not to look about him. The barn was silent now,
cobwebs already drifting from its timbers. The Fara flocks were out
at emergency pasture under the care of any brother who could be
spared to tend them. Aristocratic Petros, so disgusted at first at
the task allotted him, had developed a fierce pride in his
shepherding skills. His shears were hanging where he’d left them,
gleaming and sharp. He’d branched out into barbering too, standing
grimly smiling in the courtyard as his brethren had filed up for
their monthly haircut. A sense of unreality washed through Cai
still when he thought of that night, the first raid, the holes it
had torn in the world. He took the shears and hurried back out of
the barn.
The infirmary was quiet when he got
back. Too quiet—nobody propped on an elbow to gossip with his
neighbour in the next bunk, none of the usual demands for his
attention. The door to the quarantine cell was shut. Oslaf was in
the main ward, eyes downcast, washing bottles with ferocious
concentration.
Cai didn’t bother to question him. He
swept through the ward. Thrusting the door wide, he saw just what
he had expected—Abbot Aelfric, crouching over the Viking’s bunk,
beaklike face avid. Cai drew breath to yell and lost it as a grip
closed on him from behind. “Ben,” he gasped, trying to twist round.
“What is he doing? Let me go.”
Benedict shook his head. “Be silent.
The abbot must talk to his prisoner.”
“His… Ben, for God’s
sake.”
“He isn’t harming him. Be
still.”
Cai twisted like a wildcat, but there
was no shifting Benedict’s grasp once it had closed. Involuntarily
he began to listen to the abbot’s voice. It was low, almost
tender—a litany of soft-voiced Latin. “What do you want? What do
you want, boy?”
He was using the
respectful vultis, not vis.
And the Viking was awake again, his eyes wide and lucid. Aelfric’s
hands were on him. Their movement was caressing. For a moment Cai
wondered if he’d been wrong about the carrion bird from the south.
Was Aelfric offering help to the injured man—soothing him with that
touch?
“Quid vultis,
puer?”
Cai shook himself. Aelfric had been
half out of his wits before the raid, and now—now he was quite
insane. He had brought his madness here into Cai’s domain, for God
alone knew what vile purpose. His grasp on the Viking wasn’t
kindly. He was putting pressure on his wounds. And the boy was
lying silent in his effort not to weep.
Cai had a pair of freshly sharpened
shears in his hand. He tossed them aside before he could use them.
Fists were better than blades, and an elbow to Benedict’s gut best
of all. Ben doubled up with a grunt, and Cai sprang forwards,
seizing Aelfric by the hood. “Let him be, you savage bloody
buzzard. Leave him alone!”
Aelfric snapped upright. He was
thin but powerful and his backhanded slap made Cai’s nose sting.
“How dare you?” he snarled. “Brother Benedict, restrain him. I will
have the secret of Fara from this demon if I have to tear it out
along with his teeth.” He rounded on the Viking again. “What do you
want? What are you and your legion of infidels raiding for?
Quid
vultis?”
Not the polite form. The plural. Cai
broke into bitter laughter. “You fool, Aelfric. There is no secret.
That was poor Theo’s dying dream. Who told you about
it?”
Benedict hung his head. “I won’t have
anything more to do with this,” he muttered. “Not for either of