Chapter Fifteen #2
and eased him off the ground, he smiled. “You, abomination? Still
alive?”
“Yes. Why did you do
that?”
“My faith is strong. I set
out to fight the demons with my holy fire.”
Cai shifted him to ease his breathing.
He took a thin strand of hair out of Aelfric’s eyes. “You did it.
They’re gone.”
“Don’t humour me,
abomination. But it was worth a try.”
Cai looked down at him in surprise.
Aelfric’s spirit was in motion again now, beginning its
departure.
“Yes,” he said honestly. “I
suppose it was.”
“My faith is strong, but…
Caius, is that God?”
“If you are seeing him—yes.
Don’t be scared.”
“Seeing him?” Aelfric’s eyes widened, and he broke
into a wide and dazzled smile. “I have been wrong. Wrong about so
many things. Ask the old witch to forgive me.”
He was gone. Cai let the empty shell
of him go. He stood up, wondering vaguely once more at the wet,
heavy tug of his robes. Fen was there in front of him, propping up
Hengist, who had trained well enough in the drill yard but turned
primrose green in the wake of his first kill. “Fen, mind your
back.”
“It’s all over. Those two
were the last of them.”
Cai looked around. From the burning
heaps of rubble, men were emerging, running towards him. Seeing who
was there and who was missing, frantically counting the gaps, Cai
felt the chasm open under him, the gap between joy and unbearable
grief. He jumped as someone took his hand. “Oslaf—what are you
doing? Get up.”
The boy was kneeling at Cai’s feet. He
kissed Cai’s palm, filthy with blood as it was. “Can you be our
abbot now? Really, now Aelfric is dead?”
Cai pulled his hand away. “No! It
doesn’t work like that. And…” He looked into the ring of faces
gathering round him. They were marked with soot and bruises. Some
still looked terrified, some triumphant. All they had in common was
their focus on him, and a burning trust that melted his last grip
on the world. “Why would you want me to? I’ve done nothing but lead
you into danger. Wilf is dead on the beach down there because of
me—God knows who else.”
Hengist stepped forwards. “We know
about our dead, Cai. It would have been all of us if not for
you.”
“Who else? Tell
me.”
“Demetrios, also on the
beach. Aelfric’s man Marcus, though he took three raider devils out
with him. And—”
“Stop it.”
Cai touched his numb lips. Had he said
those words? No—he’d have heard the grim tally out to its
end.
Fen had come to stand in front of him,
gesturing the others back. His firelit gaze raked Cai over. “Stop
it. There’s something wrong. What is it, Cai?”
“Nothing. My arm,
maybe.”
No. More than that. If he traced his
steps back to the beach, let his fading spirit slip between the
corpses of his brethren to the place where he’d battled with
Gunnar, he could remember. A blow to his ribs. Just a punch, he’d
thought at the time, and wounded men had often reported that to
him—a short-term ignorance of their damage, as if the flesh when
given too much pain all at once simply thrust some of it aside,
laid it away to understand later. Not a fist. A blade. Cai was
pleased to have worked this out. He couldn’t have Fen looking at
him like that, not with such terror dawning in his eyes.
“It’s here,” he said,
finding the rent in his cassock. “I don’t think it’s much,
but…”
Fen caught him as he dropped.
The turf and the burning sky exchanged places, and he was floating,
the earth and Fen’s arms pillowing him. He was stronger than he’d
given himself credit for—even now he was aware, although it was
like watching and hearing it all through thick fog. Fen laid him
flat, easing his head down carefully. That was his last gentle
gesture. He tried to haul Cai’s cassock up by the hem, but it had
tangled and caught on something. Swearing, he grabbed the cloth at
Cai’s waist and ripped. The homespun wool was tough and did not
give easily, but Fen turned it to cobwebs, tearing it apart over
the wound. Cai’s body jerked as Fen leaned close, cleaning away
enough blood to see. He tried to keep still. The pain was finding
him now, though, bearing down on him like a vikingr horseman. He cried out, one hoarse
yell.
“Help him! You, whatever
you are called—Odleaf… And you, Cook—find me some wood, something
to carry him on. Get him to the infirmary.”
“The infirmary burned down,
Brother Fen.” That was poor Hengist. Cai wanted to tell Fen to stop
snarling at his friends—that there was no need, no hurry. No point.
He stared up into the circle of faces now drifting above him like
scared clouds. He couldn’t speak. Fen’s hand came down hard on top
of the gaping hole in his side. He went pale at the action, and Cai
grabbed his wrist, making him press tighter.
“But all his things…” Oslaf
leaned over him, shivering. “His cabinet and his medicines—I took
them out. I carried them off and hid them in the
cellar.”
Fen’s fist shot out. It closed in the
neck of poor Oslaf’s cassock. “Well, go and fetch them! Wait. You
used to help him doctor people, didn’t you? What does he
need?”
“Sheep gut. Suture. And
something to pack the wound. Oh, and it must be washed—he always
made me boil the water first. And some of the poppy, to help with
the pain.”
Cai groaned. Between them they would
kill him here, if he wasn’t dead already. He wanted to let go, but
it was just too damn annoying to hear them. He made a sign to Fen
to raise him, and he dragged himself up far enough to speak,
clinging to the strong arm. “There’s no time to boil…bloody water!
Sutures and a needle—now!”
He fell back. Fen’s expression was
almost comical, caught in transition between fear and hope. Cai
began to hope himself. The wound was bad, but it was blood loss
that had been bringing death in on him with soft-footed tread. If
it could be stopped now… Oslaf had flown off like a well-aimed
spear into the night. Cai stroked Fen’s face, leaving a crimson
trail. “Press harder with your hand. Push some cloth in and press
harder.”
Fen obeyed, his grimace making it
easier for Cai to bear the new rush of pain. A time passed,
measurable only in the thud of Fen’s heart where Cai was leaning on
his chest. Then the circle broke apart as Oslaf came shouldering
back through. He was clutching Cai’s leather medical bag. “Hold
him, Brother Fen. I’ll give him the poppy to calm him, then I’ll
stitch him up myself. I’ve watched him do it often enough. I
can—”
“Give me the bag.” Cai
thrust out a hand for it. He had no doubt that Oslaf could learn to
do it, but his first few tries would be cross-stitch, just as Cai’s
had been. Danan had made him practise on a dead sheep. “I said give
it to me!”
“You can’t do this
yourself.”
“Maybe not. Maybe I’ll…die
while you argue about it.”
He snatched for the bag again. This
time, to his relief, Fen caught it and dumped it on the ground
beside him. “What do you need?”
“The sheep gut and that
bone needle. Thread it for me. Prop me up.”
Gunnar’s blade had sliced him cleanly.
He managed the first four stitches himself, his jaw clenched, head
arching back onto Fen’s shoulder. Blood flowed over his hands, and
Oslaf, sobbing, kept wiping enough of it away for him to
see.
“Don’t cry, stupid boy.
You’ll have to be doctor here if this doesn’t work, you hear me?”
That hadn’t helped—Oslaf wept harder. “You’ll know more than I did
when I started. Fen, lift me up a bit more. I can’t—”
“Oslaf, give him the
poppy.”
“What? No. It’ll make me
incapable.”
“I see how this is done
now.” Fen, still propping him, reached round and took the needle
from his hand. It was slick with blood—Cai couldn’t hold on to it.
He opened his mouth to protest, and the neck of a glass vial
slipped between his teeth. Oslaf, still weeping but surprisingly
strong, held his mouth open and tipped the oily, bitter liquid down
his throat.
Stupid boy. You’ve given me too
much. But the
truth was that Cai didn’t know how it was meant to feel. He’d never
used it on himself. He’d seen his patients drift off smiling in the
drug’s embrace, and he’d wondered, but the stuff was too precious
for experimentation. Oslaf sat back, watching anxiously. Cai wanted
to tell him there was nothing to worry about. He wanted to tell
Fen, now drawing the edges of his wound together and neatly
punching the needle through, how brave and beautiful he was. How
quick to learn…
Cai turned his head and whispered it
to him, ending it with a kiss, and Fen gave a kind of sobbing
chuckle Cai could feel through his spine and kissed him back,
roughly, not taking his eyes off his work. “Good stuff that old
witch brews up for you, isn’t it? Lie still.”
Cai wanted nothing better. Fen had
kissed him, here in front of everyone. Fen had come to rescue him
from Gunnar—chosen him, and the horror attendant on that choice
slipped away from Cai, just as every bad thing was slipping away.
Even the pain was becoming a sweet fire. He hid his face against
Fen’s neck so no one could see that the next punch of the needle
through his flesh was a pleasure to him, a shattering relief. He
was in Fen’s hands. Fen was stitching him together—drawing the dark
down around him in warm, beating wings—making him whole.