Chapter Six #4
love. Had he dragged Fen the last few yards off the beach, or had
he succumbed to the Viking’s grip? He couldn’t remember, and it
didn’t matter now. Fen rolled on top of him, and that was a
first—that full weight, a man of his own size and strength pinning
him down. He moaned in fear and pleasure, turning his face to find
the rough kiss he’d broken off before.
Fen met him hungrily, tongue thrusting
deep. “Caius!”
Not like a sheep giving birth now. Now
the sound of his full name made Cai’s shaft lift still harder, as
if summoned by royal command. “Say it again,” he growled, biting at
the side of Fen’s neck.
“Caius. Caius. You fine
man… Lie on your belly for me.”
“Oh, God. No.”
“Are you afraid? Did Leof
never fuck you?”
Leof. Cai froze, clutching at Fen’s
shoulders. That ancient word fuck, the same in both their languages, rang in his ears. They
weren’t far from the place where Cai had last loved him. Just over
the dunes from here, the boy’s fine hair fanning out on the turf as
he lay down in surrender. “You know how you won’t let me say your
brother’s name?”
“What of it?”
“Don’t say his.”
“Why not?” Fen tugged at
the girdle of Cai’s cassock, then gave up on that and ran a hand
under its hem, his palm warm as life on Cai’s chilly thigh. “I can
do anything for you he did. More.”
“I don’t doubt it. He was
gentle. There was no fucking.”
“Pitiful. Wasn’t he
able?”
“Shut up.” Cai pushed Fen
off him. “He was… You’ve no idea what he was.” And the thing Cai
couldn’t forgive was not Fen’s ignorance but his own forgetting.
“He’s only been dead for six weeks. And your lot killed
him.”
“I told you, not the
Torleik.”
“I don’t care! You’re all
the bloody same to me!” Cai scrambled upright. When Fen reached to
grab him, he slapped him aside, the blow connecting this time, a
sharp crack. “I loved him. And now you’ve turned me into a beast
like yourself.”
Fen stared at him. Cai struggled to
read the changing lights in his eyes. Fires of lust were blazing
there—a heat to match his own—but what was the darkness behind? He
couldn’t have caused this creature serious pain. Not that kind—not
a raw hurt of rejection.
“I loved him,” he repeated.
“I shouldn’t have come here. Take… Take my horse. Take the damn
chariot if you want. You’re not my prisoner anymore.”
Fen stood up. He had consented to
being shaved once a week along with the Fara monks, and the mark of
Cai’s blow stood out clearly on his white skin, a crimson
handprint. Cai forced himself not to step back in fear of him.
Whatever barbaric world had spawned him, he was the prince of it—a
real one, unlike Cai, with his few muddy acres and his brawling sot
of a father.
He looked down on Cai from a pitch of
enraged royalty. “Your horse? You think I’d consent to take that
mongrel nag—or your father’s hay cart?”
“All right. To hell with
you. Don’t.”
“Do you imagine I offer
myself—my flesh, my manhood—without meaning? For a brainless fuck
on the sand?”
Cai swallowed hard. “How do I know
what you do? You’re my enemy. I should never have forgotten
it.”
“I would have made your
blood sing.”
Cai turned away blindly. He grabbed
the chariot’s rail and hauled himself aboard. He was shaking in
every limb, barely able to untangle Eldra’s harness. She didn’t
respond to his shout, as if holding opinions of her own about his
decision to leave, and for the first time he struck her—the
lightest sting to the rump with the loop of the reins, but enough
to make her start forwards, dancing in outrage. “Go on,” he called
again, voice breaking like a boy’s. “Get on with you.
Go!”
Fara was in sight before Eldra
slackened her pace. The stark outlines of the monastery—more than
half in ruins now—broke Cai from a trance.
He hadn’t meant to come so far. For
the last couple of miles, rage dying out of him, he’d known what he
was doing and let the horse thunder on anyway, hiding his thoughts
in the beat of her hooves. But he’d abandoned a wounded man.
Friend, enemy, lover—it didn’t really matter. He was a doctor, and
Fen had been under his care.
He turned Eldra and drove her back the
way she’d come, cold fear tightening his throat. If Fen had gone
into the dunes, Cai’s chances of tracking him in the soft,
windblown sand were slim. There would only be a gap in the world,
as Leof and Theo were now empty spaces to him. Cai didn’t feel as
if he could bear another hole. He was a cobweb already. The next
gale would blow him away. As he approached the place where he and
Fen had parted, he gripped the reins hard, legs weakening. He
didn’t know how it had happened, but if Fen was gone, Cai had lost
far more than a patient or a prisoner. The beach was empty. He felt
sick.
He could hear something. He pulled
Eldra to a halt and dismounted, this time forgetting to tie up her
reins. It was a kind of chanting, not melodious like Laban’s
plainsong but broken and rough. The sea fret was thickening now,
riding the incoming tide. Spectral figures danced in it, and Cai
shielded his eyes against the glare from the cloud-wrapped sun. Far
out in the water, just before the place where the beach shelved
down to unknown depths, a solitary human figure was standing. He
was breast-deep, his hands raised and pressed to the back of his
head in an attitude of prayer—or desperation, Cai realised,
beginning to run. The dark shape at the water’s edge was a
discarded cassock. Barely breaking pace, Cai hitched up and tore
off his own. The heavy wool would drag him under instantly once it
got soaked through.
He ran until the resistance of the sea
against his thighs became too strong, then arced forwards into a
dive. Waves slapped him hard in the face, and his lungs and gut
clenched at the chill, the implacable north-shores bite that never
eased, even in the heart of summer. Brine flooded his sinuses, and
he coughed and forced a rhythm on himself, four powerful strokes,
then a breath. Four and a breath, looking for his target each time
he surfaced. Expecting each time for Fen to be gone.
When he was close enough, he stopped
and trod water. Fen must be on a spar of sand—Cai was out of his
depth here, the riptide current tugging at him. He made one last
effort against it. “Fen! Fenrir!”
Fen didn’t move. Cai could distinguish
individual words now. Words for gods, and darkness, and revenge. He
covered the last space between them and seized Fen’s shoulder,
anchoring himself as best he could on the sand underfoot. “What are
you doing?”
Fen’s hair was slicked down, his eyes
wide and vacant. It took him a moment to focus, and when he did, an
expression of mild surprise crossed his features, as if he’d
encountered Cai unexpectedly in a corridor of Fara. “I am placing a
curse upon my comrades. They should have returned for me by
now.”
“All right.” A swell of the
tide tore at them, and Cai fought to hold him still. “But can’t you
do it from the beach?”
“No. The sea must bear my
vengeance away to those who deserve it. To Sigurd, to the Torleik
warriors who swore their loyalty to me. To… To Gunnar.”
“Don’t. You love your
brother.”
“You may say his name now.
He is nothing to me.”
“You don’t mean that.” Fen
was warm beneath Cai’s hands, his skin burning under the water’s
chill. “You’re feverish again. Come ashore with me.”
“I haven’t finished
cursing.”
“Well, you can do the rest
some other time.” Cai took his shoulders and turned him around.
“Come on.”
Cai got him back to shore with a mix
of persuasion and brute force. He was shaking with exhaustion by
the time he pushed him up the final rise of the beach. Eldra was
waiting patiently where he had left her. He paused for long enough
to dry Fen down a bit with one cassock and bundle him into the
other, then quickly got dressed himself. He climbed onto the
chariot’s board and hoisted Fen up after him. There was barely room
for a man to sit, but Fen didn’t fight when Cai eased him down so
he was huddled at his feet.
“You’ve undone all my good
work,” Cai told him, pulling the hood up over Fen’s
head.
“I don’t care.” Fen blocked
Cai’s next move, thrusting his hand away. “Don’t touch
me.”
“Very well.” Cai shook Eldra’s reins. She set off at a
smooth-running canter, as if aware of her precarious load. Cai
guided her onto the firm strip of sand between the high-tide
seaweed mark and the incoming waves. Soon this flat strand would be
under the water, but perhaps he would have time to get Fen home. He
didn’t really care about anything else. He didn’t want to think any
further than the next few yards of sand ahead of him, any deeper
than the warmth of Fen’s shoulder pressed against his thigh. Cai
had found him. He wasn’t drowned or lost. He was here, awkward and
fever-racked, simmering with almost-palpable rage. For the first
time in a month, Cai was happy.
“I retract my curse on Gunnar.”
“That’s good. I don’t know much about cursing, but Danan says
they can come back and strike you.”
“Danan?”
“A friend of mine. You’ll meet her.”
“Ah. A girl.”
Cai bit
back a smile. There, on the crest of the furthest dune he could
see, a female figure was standing, long grey hair blowing in the
wind. Had she been there all along, watching over the beach and
everything that had played out there today, or had Cai’s naming
just conjured her up? “No. Very much not a girl.”
“I understand now. About Gunnar.”
Cai
didn’t prompt him. He let Eldra run on in silence, and the next
time he looked Danan was gone.
“I have been here long enough to know…you have no treasure in
Fara, secret or otherwise.”
“I did try to tell you. My abbot Theo thought there was
something too. Believe me, I’d have handed over anything we had to
stop the raids.”
“So Sigurd will have taken the Torleik men to raid elsewhere in
search of it. But my brother would have come back anyway. You
understand nothing about him. No puny Christian could. He had a
warrior’s heart. He could lift a sword as soon as he could walk. He
never ceased in slaying and striking from that moment
on.”
He sounds lovely. Cai kept that
thought to himself. Fen was shivering now, a tense vibration where
he was pressed against Cai.
“So he would have come for me. There is no doubt. I am still
here, trapped among you paltry excuses for men, and therefore…
Therefore Gunnar is dead.”
Cai took
the reins in one hand. Blindly he put the other one down, seeking
Fen’s head. It was lowered, pressed to his knees. This time Fen
didn’t push him away.
“Listen,” Cai said. “I can’t be your lover. But I won’t be your
captor, either.” He ran a rough caress over the bowed skull in its
hood. “Once you’re well, I’ll help you leave here. You’re not my
prisoner anymore. I’ll help set you free.”