Chapter Fourteen #2
bay, like fox cubs in holes, his men were waiting. They were men
he’d trained and put there himself, and just now they were waiting
for a signal that was never going to come, not from the lump of
dune sand or stone wrapped up in its cassock and rocking, the only
living thing about it its bright hair. Cai turned his back. He
wanted to spit out the terrible snake-venom taste from his mouth,
but he was afraid to find out that he could never rid himself of
it. He controlled his breathing, the heave in his lungs that wanted
to burst into sobs or retching.
He mustn’t break the skyline. He had
rehearsed all this—his own track down from the defile to the place
where he would be able to see Fen, ready and waiting in his
appointed foxhole. Only the smallest change was needed. He made one
last check of his sword belt with cold, steady hands. Then he ran
silently down the track. Instead of turning right he ducked into
the dune grass at his left, found Fen’s empty place and slipped
into it. He was the son of Broccus, the scion of a race that had
been dealing with barbarian invaders for seven hundred years.
Goths, Vandals, Huns—fireside tales around the hillfort’s hearth,
of noble Roman emperors beating back the alien hordes. Even as a
child, Cai had believed maybe one word in ten. Maybe one in a
hundred now. But one in a hundred was better than nothing, now that
he was left with nothing, and he could assess the moment to strike
as well as any other man. He had to believe that.
Here came the boats. He leaned
forwards, crouched in readiness. God, they were beautiful—fine
beyond the craftsmanship of any western shore dweller, Saxon or
Roman. The plain, strapping ugliness of the men who poured out of
them was almost a relief. They were huge for the most part, jerking
Cai back into his flesh in visceral fear of them. There were a
handful like Fen, lean and graceful as they saw to their anchorage
and leapt over the prow, but for the most part they were the men of
their legend, hairy great axe-swingers, thick manes drawn into
plaits or horses’ tails, bulky shoulders straining leather
jerkins.
Not afraid, and not in any hurry. They
grinned as they waded in from the boats, took a moment to splash
one another and bark cheerful insults back and forth. Darkening the
monastery, muffling the bell, had been good strategy. These men
thought they were coming to claim an empty rock. “Geiri, you son of
a goat. If I’d had to share that oar bench with your great farting
arse for one more league…”
Cai shook his head, as if he could
rattle the understanding out of his ears. Fen had taught him too
much. He didn’t want to know about these brutes, their discomforts
or their humanity. “I could drink a river. I’m sick of the taste of
my piss.”
“Hogni started drinking his
before we ran out of water!”
A roar of laughter. Cai squeezed his
eyes shut. He fought the urge to ball up. He’d only met his Vikings
in combat until now. It was easy to hate with a bellowing axe-man
roaring down on you. How Fen had hated every living Christian at
Fara, until one of them had cared for him! The laughter rolling up
at Cai was rich and familiar. It could have been Fen’s.
When Cai looked again, the world was
in darkness. Briefly he wondered if he’d wished himself blind as
well as deaf, and had his prayer granted. The moon was gone, a
great black cloud whose advance Cai hadn’t seen devouring her whole
from the west. Down on the beach, the raiders were cursing, blaming
one another for failing to notice the weather. One of them was
calling for a light.
“Bring the torches from the
ships.”
Cai clutched hard at the roots of the
seagrass. This changed everything. Many torches, casting flaring
firelight up the flanks of the dunes, would expose the monks in
their hiding places as the dull moonlight could not. Fen’s
stratagem of waiting, the moment he and Cai had worked out so
painstakingly when enough of the Vikings would be clustered
together in the defile—all that would fall apart. One torch,
though… Cai knew how one torch in blackness could blind you before
it began to help you out, how it cast everything beyond its own
nimbus into a void.
He took Fen’s plans and snapped them,
crumbled them to dust, mentally brushed his palms together and cast
off their ashes into the wind. Cai would give the signal on his own
judgement now. The lighting of the first torch would save them.
There was no moon now—in the dunes nearby he could hear someone
panting in panic at the lack of it, and sent out a silent plea to
him to wait, have faith, to believe—but the raiders’ first torch
would show them to one another, light up their target before they
themselves could be seen. In its way it was perfect. Better than
any tactic of Fen’s. Cai could be better without him. He could
survive.
He was sobbing when the torch flared
up, but so deep down inside himself that it didn’t matter. So dryly
that it didn’t blind him, and the leap of battle fever in his blood
came at the moment when his heart would have shattered. He felt
nothing.
His men were waiting, terrified in
darkness. Fen wasn’t in his appointed place and neither were the
damn Vikings. Cai had to make his move, and now. To make it strong
and good. He sprang upright. He flung a hand into the air and
loosed a cry his father would have been proud of, a bestial howl
that brought the monks leaping out of their holes as if stabbed.
For a second it could all have gone to hell. They staggered on the
dune slopes, discomposed, black rabbits as likely to run for cover
as to fight. But Cai yelled again, this time pointing to the
clustering men on the beach. They were shielding their eyes,
blinking—too dazzled to see what creature was shrieking in the
night above their heads. Cai seized his moment, and the warrior
monks of Fara attacked.
They blazed in on their wave of
surprise, and it took them further than Cai could have dreamed.
What warriors he had trained! Wilf took the first kill, goatherd
turned berserker, lashing about him with his broadsword as if born
to the trade. Feint, parry, thrust—he dropped his target with the
gawp of astonishment still on his handsome Viking face. Gareth
rushed in after him.
Demetrios the Greek, leaping about
like a deranged mechanical scarecrow, forgetting every damn thing
Cai had taught him but somehow making progress anyway, staying out
of reach of returning strikes. Yes, they were fine. Cai, wading in,
had an instant to love and admire them. The torch was out, knocked
to sputtering death in the wet sand, but the moon had emerged
again, just enough for Cai to see, and what the hell had he been
thinking—of course the torch would go. He sent a prayer to the
ancient hillfort goddess of the moon for her mercy. For not letting
him dump his dearest friends and brethren into the battle in the
pitch dark, to flail around as they might. So much for Cai as a
strategist. Fen would have stopped him—would have known.
Desperately Cai plunged between
Brother Cedric and the axe slicing down on him, deflecting it with
the hilt of his sword. Cedric grunted, needing no second
invitation. He jabbed as Cai had taught him, straight into the
raider’s undefended gut.
They were outnumbered. Without
Fen, it mattered. The Vikings were regrouping, working out that
they hadn’t been leapt on by demons but by men—men in skirts, the
puny castrated Christians who fell like wheat to their scythe. The
first of them who took the time to draw in breath for laughter
regretted it—Cai dived in past his unready shield and ran him
through. He spun to face the next. This one was not laughing. His
face was a blur in the moonlight, great thick plait unwinding as he
whipped round for his opponent. He was lean and massive, copper
gleaming dully in his hair. He focussed on Cai—God, amber eyes,
cold as death—and snarled. “Blóe ok sorg!”
Cai lost peripheral vision. There was
a tunnel, and he was rushing through it. The sounds of battle
around him faded out. He raised his shield just in time for the
whole weight of the Viking’s sword to crash down on it. The raider
followed up with an axe-blade swipe that nearly tore the shield
from Cai’s hand. Something punched him in the ribs. Hot pain
consumed him, knocking him down to one knee in the sand. It was
only for a moment. Then the pain burned out in rage and hate, and
he surged up swinging.
He was back in the training yard
with Fen. Do
you ever hold back on me? Don’t you hold back on me!
Fen had sworn he
didn’t. Cai had believed him. But perhaps Fen couldn’t help
himself. Perhaps when it was flesh you had loved, you couldn’t
unleash your full Viking fury on it—not even to save it or teach it
to save itself.
This Viking didn’t love Cai at all. He
was bulkier than Fen, a fraction taller—otherwise his exact
equivalent, and Cai was learning the difference. His blade hit
Cai’s with the force of a rockfall. Muscles ripped in Cai’s
shoulders as he parried. He slipped away, got in one good stabbing
thrust. The raider growled and retreated a step. Cai went after
him. He would not allow himself to see how like Fen he was, so like
that he had to be kin. That he had to be…
The step back had only been to gain a
little space. Cai hadn’t even slowed him down. The great blade
flashed in the moonlight again and Cai flung his shield up—just in
time to catch a blow so fierce that it deadened his arm. The shield
flew from his grasp and landed in the sand. Cai spun away, the
swift dancer’s move that had saved him on the battlefield before.
It worked—the Viking cleaved the air an inch behind him—but
something was wrong. When he tried to recover, to whip back into
the gap he’d left and fight on, shield or no shield, his legs
wouldn’t carry him. He staggered. The beach beneath him, good firm
sand for a skirmish, gave a treacherous heave. It knocked him
sideways. Down on one knee again, he watched as if from five miles
out while the raider grinned, took a double-handed grip on his
sword hilt and prepared his final blow.
Time stretched and doubled back on
itself. Cai had been hearing—for some while now, if he thought
about it—a shockingly familiar voice. Familiar as the smile
lighting up the vulpine face of this warrior who was going to be
his death. Cai raised his sword one more time. He scarcely knew
why, except that he was his father’s son, and Broc would have had
an apoplexy to see him just kneeling here. The lively blade had
turned to lead, and he could barely lift it. He thrust away the
raider’s plunging stroke and rolled out from under the
next.
The voice rose again, breaking like
waves through the blood-beat in his ears. Cai was down, finished.
Bitter salt sand was in his mouth. He had no idea why he was
hanging on, deflecting his opponent’s frustrated strokes with his
sword and then—last helpless gesture—with his arm. No
idea…
Except that Fen was there. Fen,
hacking a path towards him through the heaving sea of bodies. The
voice had been his—roaring out threats and commands, orders to
regroup. He was laying about him with Blóekraftr, slaking the blade with Viking
blood. Cai twisted like a cat and got out of the way of his
assailant one more time. A cry of joy broke from him. Fen stopped
dead—homed in on the sound, shoved the last barricade of raiders
and monks aside—and came running.
Cai gave up the fight. It was
such a relief, blissful as climax in its way. He thudded down onto
the sand, air leaving his lungs in a whoosh. Blóekraftr swept over his head, a scythe
from heaven and hell. His assailant sprang back. Blade clashed on
blade as Fen leapt after him, and then the unique, dreadful sound
of flesh on flesh and bone. Hard-muscled impact and the snarls of
men shedding their human skins in bloodlust and desire to rip one
another apart.
Kindred flesh. On the edge of a faint,
Cai clawed back. He struggled to his hands and knees. Kindred bone,
kindred skin. Cai knew this—he knew Gunnar. Fen, his face a
frenzied blank, had gone beyond such knowledge. Didn’t recognise
his brother. Cai lurched up. He threw himself at the entwined pair.
“Fen, don’t! Don’t, in God’s name! It’s…”
One man fell. Blood staining his
vision like ruby-red glass, mind going dark, Cai lost track of
their differences, forgot that a cassock marked one and a
salt-stained leather jerkin the other. On a beach a thousand years
ago he had found Fen dressed in hides like this, his hair as wild
as Gunnar’s. He had found him dying. Which one was this on the
sand?
Gunnar. Gunnar, because Fen was
standing over him, sanity returning to his face.
Blóekraftr, scarlet from tip to hilt, was dripping in his hand.
Gunnar, because now Fen was dropping to his knees beside the
corpse, a cry like nothing Cai had ever heard before beginning to
rip from his lungs.
Cai’s training forced one last move
out of him. Fen’s back was unguarded. Scraping up his own sword
from the sand, he staggered round to defend him. But there was no
one there—no one who could make a difference anyway, not now. A
handful of the raiders were retreating, splashing their way back to
the boats. Others, who had reached the cliff path and found it
undefended, were clambering up there to finish their night’s work.
And the beach was littered with the fallen—some in Viking leathers
and hides, some in plain moonlit brown.
Fen was hunched over his brother.
After that solitary wail he had fallen silent. Cai didn’t know how
to touch him. He tried to stumble to Fen’s side, but his feet took
him into the water, as if in some way he could get clean of this,
clean and clear in the cold, redeeming sea.
The waves were marbled, veined with
black. Cai recoiled from the drifting pattern. Who had poured ink
into the lucid amber and polluted it so? He had a wild vision of
the monstrous squid Theo said he had seen on his sea voyage here,
and then a pure memory of Leof, poised in the scriptorium with a
freshly cut quill in his hand. And then he remembered that
bloodstains by moonlight showed black.
Cai leaned his hands on his thighs and
struggled to stay upright. He surveyed the scene around him—the
bodies, the scarlet-black tide. “Oh God,” he said brokenly. “Oh
Christ. No. Christ.”