Chapter Fifteen
“I would do it
again.”
Fen was beside him in the water.
Cai couldn’t remember him getting there. But here he was.
Vengeance. You will
have it one day, knee-deep in water and blood… “What?” he asked stupidly,
swaying.
“He was going to kill you.
I would do it again.”
“He was your brother. I…I
tried to tell you.”
“The madness of battle was
on me. I could only see you. I would cut him down again,
Cai.”
“I didn’t want that.” Cai
knew that was a lie as soon as it came off his tongue. What else
had he been asking Fen to do up on the rocks before this battle?
Why else had he run off, stinging with betrayal, when Fen had seen
the Torleik sail and hidden his face? “Forgive me. I wanted you at
my side. But not to…”
“I have killed my
brother.”
Cai followed him back to the
shore. He waited while Fen crouched once more by the fallen man.
Fen straightened out Gunnar’s limbs, brushed back the thick hair
from his face. In doing so he exposed the hole Blóekraftr had torn in Gunnar’s throat. He
twisted away, retching as if he would tear up his heart by the
roots.
Cai leaned over him, gripping his
shoulder, stroking back hair from a noble Viking face in his turn.
He wondered at the strangeness of it—one dead, one alive, one his
mortal enemy and the other so dear to him he could hardly breathe.
The entire world was becoming strange to Cai, seeming to lift
gently off its moorings, as the magical Druids of ancient times had
lifted the great stones for their monuments and sailed them away,
riding serenely cross-legged on their backs. Had that been a story
of Theo’s? No, of Danan’s, and she’d told it as truth, not a
legend.
Fen choked and moaned, and Cai
struggled back to himself. “Fen. My Fenrir.”
“I am all right.” Fen sat
up. He used the sleeve of his cassock to wipe his eyes and his
mouth. “Come on. We have to get back.”
“Why? It… It’s over, isn’t
it?”
“No.” Fen raised an
unsteady hand and pointed to the clifftop. Beyond it, a sullen
light was spreading across the sky. “They’re torching whatever’s
left standing up there. They’ll do it for vengeance even if there’s
nothing to take. If anyone’s still alive…”
“Oslaf.”
“What?”
“Benedict’s boy, the one I
sent home. He came back to help us. And Hengist and the
others…”
“Come on, then.”
“And I have to let Aelfric
go.”
Fen pushed stiffly to his feet. “Are
you insane?”
“Perhaps. But I don’t want
him trapped like a rat in there. I have to give him his chance,
even if it’s just to run away.”
“Cai, are you all right?”
Fen took gentle hold of him and surveyed him. “Did he hurt
you?”
“Who?”
“Gods’ sake… My brother. I
saw him strike at you. Where are you injured?”
“Nowhere. Nothing. Just my
arm, I think.”
Fen rolled back his cassock sleeve.
Only then did Cai realise that he was blood-daubed from elbow to
wrist, an axe-cut so deep across his forearm that bone gleamed in
the moonlight. The world drifted further still. “It isn’t bothering
me. We have to go.”
“I can tourniquet and bind
it.”
Cai smiled despite the wasteland
around them. “What the devil with?”
“I am girded with my
subligaculum. A Viking is trained not to soil himself in battle. It
is still clean.”
The smile became raw, sobbing
laughter. Cai closed his grip in the thick rope of hair at the back
of Fen’s neck. It was long enough for him to tie it back again,
like Gunnar’s, but finer, warm as lambskin. Cai turned him round,
away from the sight of the brother he’d slain. Fen was calm again,
back in his warrior’s skin, but tears were still carving white
tracks down the blood on his face.
“I love you,” Cai said
fiercely, still laughing. “I love that you would stand here and rip
up your undergarments to bind my wounds. But we don’t have time. We
must go.”
Their track back across the
battlefield was strewn with the fallen. The first two were Vikings,
one dead, the other locked in his body’s last suffering, and Cai
stood by dispassionately—serene on his floating Druid rock—while
Fen drew his knife and finished him off. And the third was
Wilfrid.
Cai drifted all the way out. He made
his physician’s checks, each in the right order. He felt for a
pulse, pressed his ear to Wilf’s chest and listened to the silence
that had taken up eternal residence there, held his palm over the
smiling lips and waited for the slightest warmth of breath. Fen
paced angrily up and down the sand, swore hoarsely for the warrior
goatherd, then stooped to draw his hood across his face.
“I wanted to train them,”
Cai said, his voice flat and grey. “I wanted them to be able to
fight and defend themselves. I never wanted this, though. There’s
nothing in the whole bloody world I could ever want this much.” He
stopped. There was something wrong with his cassock. It was heavier
on the left side than the right, its weight dragging at him. The
fabric seemed odd—stiff and damp. It didn’t matter. Fen grasped his
arm and they ran on.
Halfway up the cliff path, Cai began
to flag. He was drowsy, his legs going numb. Fen spun round to
catch him as he stumbled, and he caught his hand gratefully, but
then waved him back. “You go on. I need to catch my breath a
minute.”
“What’s wrong? You look
like death.”
“Nothing. A bit sick and
dizzy—damn arm’s still bleeding.”
“Let me bind
it.”
“Go on and help them. I’ll
be right behind you.”
Not far behind, anyway. Cai was sure
of that. Once the tide of weariness receded and he was in motion
again, he was certain he hadn’t let Fen get too far ahead of him.
It was just that the cliff path had doubled in length, and even
when he had toiled to the top of it, the monastery buildings were
so far away that he could hardly see them at all. Sulphur-coloured
clouds were blossoming over them, lit crimson from below. Before
Cai could work out what this meant, howls from the darkness to his
left drew his attention. He left the track and followed them. He’d
retrieved his sword but wasn’t sure he could lift it, so he
unsheathed the knife from his girdle belt instead.
A raider was rolling with Eyulf in the
remains of a barn, struggling to pin the lad down. Eyulf’s cassock
was already up over his thighs and he was shrieking like a pig at
slaughter. His assailant, intent upon his business, didn’t look up
at Cai’s approach. He made no sound as Cai’s blade sank between his
shoulders—dropped deadweight on top of his victim.
Cai dragged Eyulf out from under. He
wasn’t hurt, his linen cloth still in place, but he was hysterical,
clinging to Cai when he tried to turn and leave. Cai paused for a
moment, soothing him, then dealt him a judicious thump to the
jaw.
Cai tried to pick him up and couldn’t.
That kind of strength had departed from him. He had no time to
panic about it, though a kind of numb fear was spreading from his
deepest entrails out, so he adapted—dragged the unconscious body by
the shoulders instead, and buried him as deeply in the straw as he
could, praying he would have sense to stay hidden there when he
woke up. Then he continued on his way.
Yes, all his well-known tracks were
longer. There was time for dynasties to rise and fall, all the
little animals Leof had painted in Theo’s manuscript margins to
dance into the ark—not two by two, because Leof had never painted
two of anything—but as best they might, and procreate and
repopulate the world with exquisite hybrids and monsters, and Cai
saw all these things as he slowly closed the gap between himself
and the burning ruins. He had been away for a long time and was
returning to a transformed world. Something had happened there
during his absence. Addy had warned him that the Roman church would
rise. Perhaps the time had come, because there was Abbot Aelfric.
He was striding out undefended over open ground, and he was
carrying a burning cross.
His faith was repelling the demons,
just as he had claimed. Two of them were backing off before him,
cringing and bowing. He was blasting Latin anathemas at them, his
voice a buzzard’s shriek that reached Cai in tatters on the hot
wind.
No. Not demons—Vikings, and they were
not in retreat. As Cai watched, one of them darted behind Aelfric
and aimed a kick at his backside. Aelfric stumbled but marched on.
The raiders began a mocking dance around him, now keeping pace with
him, now trotting on ahead and resuming their mimicked gestures of
fear. One of them crossed himself, starting at the groin, and both
howled with laughter.
Cai couldn’t save him. In this world
where short roads extended forever, he couldn’t get near him in
time. He remembered Danan and the pyre, and for a moment was
tempted to join the bestial dance. Then pity awoke in him, and he
began to run.
He could pick out Aelfric’s
words now, rich with an inspired madness that might have made a
saint of him in a different world. Back, you heathen devils! Back to your
burning pit, in the name of Christ! He was flailing about him with the cross,
oblivious to the burning shards of it showering down onto his head.
The Vikings tired of the game. One of them shrugged at the other
and casually plunged his sword through Aelfric’s breast.
They would have taken Cai next, but
strange guardian spirits were emerging from the smoke. One of them
looked like a chimera of some kind, a four-footed beast with
slender forequarters and a huge rump. The creature split into two
and became Oslaf and Hengist, converging like furies upon the first
raider. Next came Fen, transfigured by firelight, nothing but long
strides and flashing blade as he bore down on the other Viking,
grabbed him by the hair—kin or no kin—and impaled him.
Aelfric was still alive when Cai got
to him. The lines of his life had been cut, but he was drifting.
Cai had seen it before in the mortally injured, this short time of
clear-minded waiting. He was lying on his back, starlight and smoke
reflecting in his eyes. When Cai dropped to his knees beside him