Chapter Sixteen #2
pulled out your stitches. One of these is Aelfric’s. Your brethren
wouldn’t have him down in the crypt with Theo, and I thought him
better out here.”
“He’d have thought so too,”
Cai said dully, “at the very end. And the other?”
“Brother John died
too.”
“John? He shouldn’t have
been fighting. He was broken. He was…”
“I know. The noise scared
him and he ran. It was a night when fighting was safer than trying
to hide.”
Cai choked faintly. “Much good that
did Aelfric. Much good it did any of us.”
Fen came to stand beside him. Cai
rested his head against his thigh, and Fen roughly stroked his
hair. “Much good it ever does. But what is the choice?”
“I thought you lived for
the battle.” Shame burned through Cai as soon as the words were
out. “Forgive me. God, forgive me, Fen—your brother. Where does he
lie?”
“I have to tell you about
Gunnar.” Again came that caress. Cai closed his eyes, surrendering,
listening. “In the Dane Lands we are brought up to love whatever is
strongest. So I loved my brother—without question, although he was
savage, rapacious, so full of greed and bloodlust he wanted to
swallow the whole world. A few months ago, he deposed old Sigurd.
He took the Torleik for his own—violated all our laws of clan and
rightful succession.” Fen let go a painful breath and knelt stiffly
at Cai’s side. “Still I honoured him in death. Your brethren helped
me. We placed him and the other vikingr fallen in the ship they left behind, and
we torched it and cast it out to sea.”
Beyond the grey clouds, the rain
beginning to patter onto the fresh graves, Cai could see it. Viking
burials were legend along the north shore. That beautiful boat, her
final cargo laid out on her deck—the night, and the hungry flames
reflecting off the water… “I grieve for you. Your love for him was
more than the worship of brute power.”
“That love has died in me.
The decision to leave me here was his. He knew that I was still
alive. He told the crew my injuries were hopeless and ordered them
to leave. I was Sigurd’s other heir, his only rival. He seized his
opportunity. It’s raining, Cai. Let me take you back.”
“Wait. How do you know
this? About Sigurd and what Gunnar did to him—what he did to
you?”
“One of the Torleik fallen
spoke to me before he died.”
Fen stopped short. They were shoulder
to shoulder, and Cai felt him swallow the rest as if it had been a
stone. He sought Fen’s hand blindly, wondering at its chill. “What
more do you have to tell me?”
“Nothing of significance.
Come back with me now. You’re cold.”
“No—you are. Fen—your brother abandoned you here,
but the waves didn’t get you. I did. I’ve lived at your side. I eat
with you, breathe with you. I can feel whatever you’re trying not
to tell me now, bottled up inside you like water behind a
dam.”
“You feel too much.” It was
a low growl, and Fen turned to him, his grip closing hard. “What
more would you have of me? Your brethren are dead here. If you want
more bad tidings, we lost half our grain and all the beasts we’d
hidden in the caves.”
The news almost distracted Cai.
His mind tried to seize the new problem—their reduced numbers, how
far the food that remained could be spread amongst those left
alive. “I can weather all that,” he said grimly. “Did the
vikingr
take the
animals?”
“No. Wilfrid was so eager
for the fight that he didn’t pen them in properly. They
escaped.”
“Then the goats will
probably make their way home. And we might be able to round up the
sheep. Yes, we can weather that—no thanks to you, shepherd.” Cai
laid a tender hand on Wilfrid’s grave. “Now tell me the
rest.”
“When Gunnar took over from
Sigurd, it threw the tribe into chaos. They fought among themselves
until half their warrior chieftains were dead, and when the rival
clans who live in the marshlands around knew their weakness, they
moved in. They are besieged. They have no winter stores, and
now—with Gunnar gone—they have no leader. Caius,
beloved—”
“Quiet. I’m tired now.
Please take me back.”
Cai knew how to make a man love him.
The mechanics of desire were simple. Theo had taught that plainly,
to men thrown together night and day, most of them healthy and
young. They could and did operate without permission from the mind
or soul. A monk could be as devoted as he wished, and still be
plagued by them, and it was not a source of shame. Control them as
best you can—cold plunges, meditations, prayer—but all can still be
lost. Even when the mind says no and means it, the flesh can have
its way.
Fen’s mind was certainly saying no.
His mouth too, until Cai had clapped a hand across it. Fen had left
him alone until darkness fell, and then he had come as always since
the raid, to sleep beside him, warm him, make sure he came to no
harm in the night. And Cai had seized him and begun to change his
body’s no to yes. Cai knew men’s flesh and how it worked—knew this
one best of all.
Fen fought his way out from under. He
took hold of Cai’s shoulders and dumped him down onto the bed.
“What are you doing? Don’t make me hurt you!”
“You are going back to
them.”
A terrible silence, Fen’s eyes blazing
down into his. “Caius. Stop.”
“The next time we meet
could be on a battlefield. Why the hell don’t we start
now?”
He smacked Fen hard across the face.
Other demons could be called up too, and this one lived close to
Fen’s surface. He wasn’t a tolerant man. The trick worked
instantly—Fen cuffed him back. He had laughed until he wept when
Cai had told him the doctrine of turning the other cheek. But he
wasn’t the same creature who had been marooned here in the spring.
His eyes filled with tears. “Stop this.”
Cai dragged him down into a kiss that
tasted of blood. There was the surge of his erection. Even
unwilling, Cai could command his body. Perhaps the soul would
follow. “You are going home. Why? They betrayed you.”
“My brother. Not my whole
clan. They are starving, diseased. I can’t abandon
them.”
“I can’t let you
go.”
“Then come with me. Leave
your brethren behind and sail with me. Can you?”
Cai stopped struggling. He lay still,
his breath coming in great gulps. The prospect unrolled itself
before him. At first it felt like an answer. He could taste the
salt now, hear the rush of the wind as it had sung to him on their
way back from Addy’s island. It wouldn’t be easy. He would be a
Christian among hostile strangers, lucky to escape with his hide.
But to be on shipboard with Fen, perhaps with one of those great
dragon heads dipping and rising with the motion of the
prow…
Leaving his brethren behind. Oslaf and
Eyulf and the rest of them, the little community that had been
smashed to pieces again and again, this time almost to oblivion.
The men who looked to him to lead them, flawed though he
was.
For many years now, Cai had thought of
himself as a grown man. He had left his father’s kingdom and come
here, stiff with pride and independence. He had trained an army,
fought and killed with them. He had taken a lover, in the teeth of
hellfire doctrine and the religion he had vowed to
serve.
But he had been a child.
Adulthood didn’t lie in action, or the assertion of his will. It
was here in this moment. Fen couldn’t have imposed it upon him more
deeply. Forget them so you can be with me… Impossible. But Cai had asked that
very thing of him.
Cai grew up fiercely, gasping at the
pain of it. Fen was still holding him fast at the focus of that
merciless gaze, making him see. No nobility, no fire. Just the
slow, cold dawning of realisation. He had taken the men of Fara
into his hands, and now he couldn’t let them fall. “Go and look in
the box in that far corner.”
“What?”
“Just go and open it. I had
Oslaf bring it up from the cellar, after you had talked to me by
the graves and I knew what you were going to do.”
Fen detached himself stiffly from
their embrace. After a moment he returned, his expression
wondering. In his left hand he clasped the magnificent helmet Cai
had found on the beach and hidden away from them both. “You told me
this had been lost.”
“I picked it up from the
beach that night. I put it away in a box in my
infirmary.”
“Well, I could have used it
before now, you idiot.”
“I know. I couldn’t bear
the sight of it.” Despite his words, Cai took the beautifully
worked thing from Fen, and when his lover knelt beside him,
carefully drew it down over the shining red hair. “There. Now you
look as you did when I first saw you. How you’ll look when you
become a stranger to me again.”
“Cai, don’t.” Fen’s voice
cracked, giving the lie to the blank ferocity of the helmet’s mask.
“Take it off me, for God’s sake.”
“All right.” Cai obeyed
him. “But when you go, you will have that, and your shield and your
sword.” He buried his fists in Fen’s hair. He drew his head down,
barriers of resistance dropping inside him.
Fen kissed him with a tenderness that
was new, even after all their exchanges. “Forgive me, Cai. I swear
I will come back to you.”
“Don’t make any promises.
You don’t know what you’ll find there.”
“Nothing like you. Not
ever.”
“And…” Shifting, Cai took
his weight more thoroughly, welcoming the blossom of pain in his
side. “Understand me, love. You have to go now.”
“What? No. I will wait till
you’re well. Till the rebuilding is done and you have some defences
against—”
“Listen. I can behave
myself like a good soldier—a good monk, a good leader, whatever
kind of man I’m meant to be. I can do that, maybe for a day, maybe
two. More, if I have to. But if you drag out your leaving any
longer than that…”
“Don’t.” Another of those
kisses, lingering, deep. “Oh, don’t.”
“If you drag it out, I’ll
fall. I’ll weep at your feet in front of the very men I have to
lead.”
“You know,” Fen said hoarsely,
“making my decision wasn’t hard—not once I’d seen I had to. No, it
was easy, because I pushed it away and made it little. I told
myself I wouldn’t leave for weeks—and it wouldn’t really matter
even then, because I would come back. I’d promised you that.
Already in my mind I was back.”
“And I won’t let you
promise.”
“No.”
“Won’t let you push it
away.”
Fen’s expression didn’t alter. But two
hot splashes hit Cai’s face—just two, as if all the grief in the
world had been distilled into them. The tears of a Viking
warrior.
Cai wrapped his arms around him. That
wasn’t enough, and he lifted his thighs, groaning, and embraced him
that way too. Fen’s hard shaft pushed into the crease of his body,
ploughing in tight behind his balls, the dear familiar trackway.
Cai nodded, pressing consent to Fen’s face and neck in mute kisses.
Yes. Fen smelled of apples—he must have been helping to store the
crop they had left up in the drying lofts. His skin was warm as if
printed with the memory of sunlight, and Cai’s ailing flesh yearned
and opened to the sheer health and strength of it, starving for his
heat. “Yes. Push in.”
“Not like this. I’ll get
something.”
“No. No wheat oil, no
butter filched from Hengist’s kitchen, no flax.” They’d tried all
of those and managed on less—on seawater, sweat, spit. “Not now.
There isn’t time.”
Fen froze for an instant, confusion
palpable. “No time? You want me to leave so soon as—”
“No, you idiot. I mean I
can’t wait for you.”
“Oh…”
“What do you do to me?
Don’t let me come on my own, empty and alone like this.”
“I’ll hurt you.”
“I want that, this once.
Carve your shape into me. So I won’t ever forget.”