Chapter Seven
Step,
parry, thrust. One, two, three. Cai glanced over the top of his
shield at Brother Gareth, broke the rhythm of the drill and drove a
slicing stroke downwards. Gareth didn’t so much as blink. He spun
and knocked Cai’s blade aside.
“Good,” Cai gasped, gripped his sword hilt fast and carried
on.
That was the trouble. They were good now, his little band of
warriors. Cai had taught them everything he knew, and he couldn’t
take them further. Cai’s fighting skills were those of a
quarrelsome hillfort chieftain. They had served well enough in the
last raid, but what about the next? One, two, three… It was hard,
even with surprise attacks like the one he’d just launched on
Gareth and one-on-one test fights that came perilously close to the
real thing, to sustain his men’s concentration. Benedict no longer
joined them. No sign of Oslaf this morning either. Would they lose
momentum, one by one, fall under Aelfric’s influence and wait for
God to save them?
Gareth,
grinning, his hypochondria long since blown away in the pleasures
of action, jumped to one side, broke drill and made a sly jab at
Cai’s ribs.
“Good!” Cai said again, only just evading him. “Insolent,
but…very good.”
“No. No, no, no.”
Cai
jerked round, signalling Gareth to stop. From the shadows by the
wall, a lean shape was emerging, one hand impatiently extended. The
rest of the monks stopped their drill and turned to
watch.
For the
last few days, Fenrir had accompanied Cai to the training ground.
He’d asked to do so politely enough, and Cai had been content to
let him. Fen had been very different since their return from the
sea. His belief in imminent rescue had been destroyed. He hadn’t
spoken to Cai again about Sigurd or Gunnar—had barely spoken at
all—but his silences had been thoughtful, and instead of holding
himself proudly back from the daily life of the brethren, he had
started to appear amongst them, in the kitchen garden and at the
refectory table. He had gone out once with Benedict and the plough.
A few of the men recoiled from him, but those who knew and trusted
Cai took their cue from him, and carried on about their tasks while
their Viking enemy—now clad in a cassock, hard to distinguish from
one of their own number unless you looked into the amber-fire
eyes—began unprompted to work at their side.
In the
ruins where Cai trained his warriors, he’d remained on the
sidelines. Cai wasn’t sure why he’d wanted to come, but it meant at
least that he was within sight and out of trouble. And although for
the last week he’d barely opened his mouth, and not once laid hand
on him, still his presence was pleasing to Cai—a warmth like the
glow in the air after sunset, the promise of morning to come. Now
he was striding towards the gathered men, his passivity thrown
aside.
“No,” he repeated, taking Cai’s sword from him. “You hold it
badly. I’ve been watching you—trying to work out why. Now I
see.”
Cai
folded his arms. He was peripherally aware of murmurs from the
group behind him. A Viking in the vegetable patch was one thing.
Here in their midst with a sword in his hand, he was a bad memory,
a vision from nights of smoke, blood and fire. “Well?” Cai
challenged, making sure he kept himself between Fen and the others.
“Are you going to tell me?”
“Since it irks me beyond endurance to watch you, yes. Come
here.”
He stood behind Cai. It was the best position for correcting
grip, and Cai braced himself not to notice the heat at his spine.
He remembered a sea-fret breeze, and a promise—I would have made your blood sing…
“You think of it as a weapon. An object.”
“Yes. What else?”
“It is not,” Fen said. “Put your hand on mine.” Cai obeyed, and
instantly Fen lunged forwards, making the monks scatter. “There.
Did I move, or the sword?”
“I don’t know. Both of you.”
“Exactly. Both, and each as alive as the other. The blade is a
part of you.” Fen thrust again, bearing Cai forwards with him. This
time the action felt natural and easy, the leap of energy palpable
between man and sword, and no, Cai couldn’t tell which was
which.
“I’m not sure…” he gasped, “…I want my brethren thinking of
their weapons as part of themselves. We’re men of God.”
Fen handed the sword back to him but didn’t step away. “When
the vikingr next
come, do you think they will care? Go easy on you because you are
poor men of God, fighting against your will? Don’t hold it as if
you wanted to cast it away. Take the hilt in your palm as if it
were part of the bone running down from your elbow.”
“Like that?”
“Yes. It hurts me a bit less to see you, anyway. Show your
men.”
He
turned and made his way back to his seat among the ruins. He was
favouring his side again, and his final demonstration thrust had
made him go pale. Resisting the urge to run after him, Cai faced
the brethren, who were gathering round, interested to see what a
Viking had had to teach on the subject of dealing with
Vikings.
“Well,” he said reluctantly. “He’s right, isn’t he? We have to
go into battle as warriors, not monks, no matter how we would wish
to live the rest of our lives. Watch me. Take the hilt in your palm
like so—as if it were a part of you, an extension of your
bone…”
“And where will you be? When the vikingr next come?”
They
were descending the slope from the training ground. Cai had a
patient waiting for him in the infirmary, Fen a stint with Benedict
behind the plough. There was no reason for them to be lingering
here, taking the walk slowly, shoulder occasionally brushing
shoulder in companionable bumps. The morning sun was pleasant,
though, belying grey clouds gathering out at sea.
“I will be long gone by then. As soon as I can walk more than a
few fields’ length.”
“You can almost manage that now. And I’ve told you, you can
take Eldra, if you’re so anxious to be gone. A chariot horse is no
use for close fighting, not on this type of ground.”
“Very well, I will. If you’re so anxious to be rid of
me.”
They
stopped and looked at one another. Cai tried to interpret the
glimmer in Fen’s eyes. Was that suppressed laughter? “No. I mean, I
know you can’t stay here. But…”
“Caius! Brother Caius!”
Cai
turned in time to see Oslaf taking the steps from the main building
at a run. Oslaf’s skirts were flying, his face a colourless blank.
“Oslaf? What’s wrong?”
“Ben. Was he with you for drill practice?”
“No. He doesn’t come anymore.” Cai steadied Oslaf as the young
man halted in front of him. “Why? Can’t you find him?”
“He should be out in the fields, but the ox is still in her
stable. I haven’t seen him this morning at all.”
“All right.” As soon as the words were out, Cai knew that it
wasn’t. The ground seemed to shift beneath his feet, a shadow to
pass over the sun still struggling against the coppery eastern
clouds. “We’ll help you look. You run up to the infirmary, check
that he’s not there. Fen, will you go and look in the
barns?”
Cai set
off downslope again. Oslaf disappeared across the courtyard. Barely
five seconds later, Fen emerged from a gap between outbuildings and
fell back into step at Cai’s side. “You don’t think Benedict’s in
the infirmary.”
“No.”
“Or in the barns either.”
“No.”
“Where, then?”
Cai
couldn’t tell him. His mouth and throat were numb, as if he’d been
swimming in icy water. He could only keep walking. In the bright
sweep of open ground below, the newly rebuilt church shone
innocently under its thatch. A sanctuary, a place of rest and
prayer. Or so it had been, until Aelfric had opened up beneath it
the burning pit. He broke into a run.
He was
blinded from the sunlight, and his vision flashed red and green as
he stared around him in the shadows. The church was cool and
silent, the lull in the canonical tide between terce and
sext.
It was
also empty. His eyes cleared enough for him to be certain of that
much. The doors banged behind him, admitting a wash of clean air
and Fen, gasping for breath, one hand pressed to his
side.
“I couldn’t keep up with you.”
“Sorry.” Cai too was breathless, now he had time to think about
it. He leaned his hands on his knees, dizzy with relief. “I
thought… I don’t know what I thought. But he isn’t
here.”
Fen came
to stand beside him. Through the thump and rush of his own pulse,
Cai became aware of his stillness—his absolute, focussed rigidity.
The tension of a wolf scenting blood…
“Cai. He is.”
The
doors thudded open again, and this time stayed wide, each of them
caught and submissively held by one of the Canterbury clerics. In
the middle stood Aelfric, cutting out a thin, mean shape from the
brilliance behind him. Aelfric too scanned the church. “Brother
Benedict is missing,” he said harshly. “I will not have such
abandonment of discipline. Where is he?” His attention fastened on
Cai and Fen like a grappling hook, and he gestured to Laban to take
hold of Fen, who for once offered no resistance, falling back
against the wall. “You, physician—I’ve turned a blind eye to your
harbouring of this monster. His brute strength has its uses. But
don’t you dare bring it in here, with its heathen corruption. This
is holy ground.”
Cai began to chuckle. He couldn’t help it. He was still
elated, and Aelfric was so vile, so rich a contradiction of
everything Cai had been taught about his new faith. “Aren’t
we supposed to
bring them in here if we can? The corrupt heathens, so we can
convert them and…”
He faded
out. Aelfric wasn’t listening. Wasn’t looking at him either. His
gaze was suddenly fixed where Fen’s had been. Where a faint, slight
movement was now catching at Cai too, forcing him to look up—up and
up into the shadows of the roof space.
A human
shape was hanging from the rafters. Cai took this much in, and then
the sight and all it stood for seemed to rush to the far distance.
He whipped round, looking for a human face. Not Aelfric, not Laban.