Chapter Eight
He was
swimming. It might have been for minutes or for years. His sense of
time had gone down with the coracle, shattered to
shards.
No. Not
even swimming, not anymore. His arms were numb. He was clutching a
spar from the wreckage. Each wave drove him under for longer, left
him less time to suck lungfuls of air in between. He was starting
to like the submersions. It was quiet down there, out of the shriek
of the wind, the brutal chaos above. Down there was a memory, one
that branched off from reality and blossomed on its own. Down there
he hit the sands again with Fen, and this time no guilt about Leof
rose to stop him, because Leof knew all, understood all, forgave
all, and was no more likely to condemn him than the sun or the
marram grasses waving over his head. Down there Fen’s arms closed
round him, and even better than the sweet rush of hunger and
release was the reality of that body on his, as if all his life his
flesh had yearned for this brother, this counterpart, a missing
piece of himself at last returned to him.
The
memory-dream was waiting. The spar became an obstacle to it, a
grudging barrier, and he started to push it away.
A wall
sliced down into the water barely a foot from his skull. By
lightning flash and tarnished light, Cai saw it—a timber wall,
curved and glistening. A voice close to his ear said, “No, you
don’t,” and a hand locked into the back of his shirt.
A huge
strength hauled him upwards. No more tender than the waves had
been, it dragged him over the top of the wall, bruising his ribs
and hips. A boat, Cai realised, when he was more in than out of it,
and the strength let him go, dumping him onto its deck. He landed
facedown and lay still.
A boot
promptly shoved at him. “Physician!”
He kept
his eyes shut. He was done for, his lungs flooded. The deck beneath
him heaved, and he rolled with it, nothing more than flotsam on the
tide.
“You! Caius! Dead or alive?”
He got
his head up, coughing and choking, and shoved onto his arms.
“Dead.”
“Get your arse up off that deck and help me anyway.”
The next
flash revealed a Viking in the prow. He was soaked and resplendent,
his jerkin and leggings clinging to him, cassock discarded God knew
where. With one hand he was clutching the mast of Fara’s only
sailboat. He was holding the other out to Cai. “Come on! Help me
raise sail.”
“Sail…” Cai grabbed him and hauled himself up. “You can’t. Not
in this.”
“How do you think I got out here?”
That
smile could dazzle the lightning. His fingers were locked round
Cai’s arm, a hold that would never grow tired. “You came after
me.”
“What?”
Cai
repeated it, yelling through the spray. “You came after me. In a
storm.”
“Call this a storm? Torleik babies sail their coracles through
worse than this.” Again, that flash of a grin. “Having said that,
grab the rope. We might get the chance at one run.”
“To shore?”
“No. We’ll never make it. That island, the long, low one to the
east.”
Cai
shielded his eyes to look. Another wave tipped the boat through the
height of its mast, but Fen rode out the lurching movement easily,
holding Cai fast. By harsh copper light he made out the shape on
the horizon. “Not there. That’s East Fara. There’s no safe
anchorage—just rocks.”
“Maybe not for fisherman
monks.” Fen tossed him the rope that would haul up the boat’s
ragged sail. “I am a Viking. And we have no choice.”
He was right. Cai backed off with the
rope. The boat’s next lurch knocked his feet out from under him,
and the sail unfurled as he slithered aft, instantly snapping
belly-tight with air. Fen ran back to join him, and together they
wrenched the canvas round far enough to reap the gale without
capsizing, to find and ride the angle of the wind. The boat jerked
forwards twice, like Eldra impatient of her harness, then shot
through a gap in the waves.
Fen roared with laughter. Cai joined
in. Fear fell away from him, dirty old clothes he had no use for
anymore. Fen had come out for him, out through the storm, and the
upshot of it all—life or death, the future Cai had spent all his
life grabbing after, striving to control—didn’t matter. He was here
in Fen’s moment, tearing through the lightning, and all would be
well.
All would be well.
Belief sprang up in
him. It was nothing like the faith he had been taught. Wild and
hot, it had as much to do with the sea as his salvation from it.
Depended on nothing—held no God outside himself accountable. He
didn’t have to reach for it at all. It was simply here, like the
seals and the birds and the storm. Like Fen. It burned and hurt,
then leapt up high like fire and made him laugh still louder,
hauling on the rope, his hands working so close to Fen’s that when
the flicker of sheet lightning came, he couldn’t tell which pair
was his own.
It sustained him even when the boat’s
keel struck off the rocks that guarded East Fara. A stretch of
beach he hadn’t known was there gleamed briefly beyond them, and he
joined frantically with Fen’s efforts to guide them there, to fly
them to it while the wind ripped the sail from the mast and the
boat heeled over. All would be well… The words were ringing in his
head when the boat ran aground, smashing to a halt, pitching him
over her prow into the dark.
“Caius. Cai!”
Hands were shaking his shoulders. He
was propped against a rock. Every bone in his body felt bruised,
and it was easier to stay under. To sleep. One of the hands—and he
knew them, was beginning to know their touch better than his
own—delivered a smart slap to the side of his face. Fen. Cai
surfaced, gasping, ready to hit him back.
He was waist-deep in water. Fen must
have dragged him this far ashore, far enough out of the roaring
surf to set him down. The black rocks rose all round him like a
jagged, burned-out forest. Waves were crashing to oblivion on their
spines, rushing between them. A huge foam-topped crest heaved up
out of the dark as he watched, the tempest hungry for their lives
even now. Fen hadn’t seen it. He was leaning over Cai, holding him
out of the water. Cai didn’t bother to try and warn him. He got his
feet beneath him—surged up, grabbed Fen and shoved him ahead of him
up the beach.
Neither had much running left in him.
Up ahead was a crescent of rocks whose outer edge was turned to the
storm-driven tide. A wave broke over it just as Cai and Fen fell
into its sheltering curve, but it would do. The wind howled a
little less fiercely there. The sea still stretched out its paws,
but couldn’t drag them back. Sand was piled up here, strange
rippled structures marked with kelp and a million fractured
shells.
Cai pulled Fen out of the storm. They
dropped to their knees, huddling against the rock. This time when
Fen’s mouth sought his, he turned to him with a cry of joy and
relief. Fen had been right—his blood was singing already, so loud
the angels must hear. His skull banged off stone, and he reached up
through exploding stars to grab anything he could of the Viking’s
hot muscle and bone. Fen resisted him, tearing back to arm’s
length, far enough to see him. “Caius.”
“My wolf from the
sea.”
“Yes.”
“You came for
me.”
“Well, none of your other
lily-arsed brethren would do it. They saw you, and they ran around
like headless chickens, but…”
“They’re not sailors. They’re
not…” Not
you, Cai
wanted to finish, but his throat had seized up.
“Not pirates. Not
vikingr.”
Cai nodded. Like their shelter,
it would have to do. Another wave broke, spray arcing high, landing
with a seething crackle all around. Fen’s mouth was salty with it
when it next landed on Cai’s, and he moved like the thunder,
bearing Cai down onto the sand. But Cai was full of newborn faith
and certainty. He rolled on top, pinning him, and Fen looked up and
whispered, “There you are,” as if in recognition. As if at the end of a long,
lonely wait.
Cai shuddered. He straddled Fen’s
thighs and ran a hand down over his stomach, over the hard plane
that rippled and arched to find his touch. Fen was erect beneath
the leather thong of his leggings. He moaned when Cai freed him,
sea-chilled fingers clumsy on the lace. His cock lifted stiff and
full into Cai’s grasp, a vision seared into Cai’s brain by the
lightning. In the green-flashing darkness that followed, Cai
plunged down on him, shifting to allow him access in return. He
buried his face on the side of Fen’s neck. That great, strong hand
was on him now, between their bodies, undoing him.
There—flesh to flesh, Fen letting go
only long enough to grab him by the backside, hauling him into
place. Bucking up as if he meant to dislodge him, at the same time
holding him tight enough to keep him there forever. Gasping, Cai
thrust back, for the first time in his life with all his strength.
Leof would have broken beneath him. Fen only shouted in pleasure
and rose up to meet him again. After one more kiss and shove of his
tongue beneath Fen’s ear, Cai sat up to get his back into the
rhythm, laying hold of both of them. He fastened a fierce grasp on
Fen’s shoulders. The heated length trapped against his belly
hardened still further, summoning his own to one last delicious
stretch, a storm to match the tempest around him gathering in his
spine.
“Fen!” he yelled, and in
the next lightning flash saw him, face wild with consummation, all
the amber in his vulpine stare turned silver. Climax started, a
surge too huge to sustain, and Cai let go, surrendering to the
inner leap.
Fen curled up from beneath him and
seized him tight into his arms. They thudded down together onto the
sand, wrestling in feral joy. The wind shrieked unheard. High above
them in the tormented night, the moon sailed clear out of the
clouds.
Pater Noster, qui es in
caelis…
Cai twitched and stirred. His face was
buried deep in Fen’s shirt, and if that was Abbot Aelfric, they
were both in trouble now.
Sanctificetur nomen