Chapter Twenty #3
wolf.”
Cai swallowed. “Solstice to solstice,
hand to hand, from blood-mother earth to the heart of man…” He
couldn’t go on. Instead he hung on to his end of the strand, and
Fen grasped the other, tighter and tighter until their veins ached
and pounded with the force of pent-up pulse.
Then Fen released them both, gasping.
“Can I love you? Can I have you without hurting you?”
“I don’t care if it bloody
kills me. Find a way.”
Fen undid Cai’s shirt. He knelt over
him, unthreading its leather fastening one loop at a time. With the
same deliberation he pulled out its hem from Cai’s belt, and
lifted, exposing his belly. Cai hadn’t looked at his own flesh in
daylight in months. He didn’t look down now—kept his gaze fixed on
Fen’s, reading there all the changes in himself, the message of the
wound that hadn’t healed. Fen caressed the scar. Cai arched his
back in response, his skin sending wild mixed signals of pleasure
and pain to swirl around in his head, raising waves of goose bumps,
suddenly lifting his cock. “God. I wasn’t sure I could
anymore.”
“That’ll be the last thing
to go, if I know my Caius.” Fen’s grin was too bright, and he
swiped the heel of one hand across his eyes before returning his
attention to his task. “Sit up a little way. I want this shirt off
you.”
Cai shivered in the wind, until Fen
drew the cloak round him tighter and leaned over him, shielding
him, kissing his shoulders. He brushed the flat of his palm over
Cai’s groin, teasing and promising before he tore his belt buckle
open and pushed his hand down inside.
His grip was perfect. He had learned
Cai’s body in the waves of Addy’s island, in the summer hayfields,
in these dunes. He knew the tender dip between his balls where a
light touch was unbearable but an outright grasp, a squeeze of one
finger into the sensitive gap, would wring out cries of pleasure,
call up climax even from exhausted flesh.
Cai writhed and clutched at him. “Yes.
Like that. No.”
Fen gave a muffled grunt of laughter.
“Yes? No?”
“It wasn’t just your hand I
missed on all those nights. It was all of you.”
“I want you comfortable on
a bunk somewhere before you get…all of me.”
“Not like that. I mean I
want you in my arms.”
“I don’t want to put weight
on you.”
“Beside me, then. I’m still
good for that. Oh, God, Fen, please.”
Fen stretched out at his side. Cai
drew him in so that they were sharing the warmth of the beautiful
cloak. He undid the wolf’s-head belt, and Fen’s fingers tangled
with his in the urgent undoing of his leggings. He gasped with
impatience—his Viking was girded for battle, another of those
cunningly worked bronze cock-pieces shielding his manhood, stitched
into his subligaculum. “That can’t help you now.”
“Help me? It’s strangling
me. Help me get it off.”
Between them they unwound him. Cai
sobbed in relief as at last the garment was out of the way and Fen
shoved his hips forwards, his hand on Cai’s backside holding him
still to receive the long, shuddering stroke. Held and braced like
this, Cai could push back. He groaned beneath the next thrust and
the next, an anvil where the white-hot fetters of the wolf were
being forged, and then he hurled himself into the fire, all pain
and injury and shadowing death forgotten.
Fen clutched him close. Their mouths
met roughly, muffling howls of climax. Sand shifted under them,
receiving their struggle, cushioning its aftermath as Cai rolled up
and onto his lover’s body, hammering out the last of his strength.
He fell and Fen caught him, easing him into the endless embrace of
the dunes.
“Cai, when did Addy come
home?”
Cai stopped brushing sand out of his
clothes. There was little point to it anyway—he’d be washing it out
of his crevices for weeks. He thought of the weeks, and the washes,
perhaps down in the sapphire pools, Fen splashing and complaining
of the cold beside him. How many days might be left to him? It
didn’t matter, he decided. His lung was tight and aching now. The
next fit of coughing might tear him apart and finish it, and he’d
never think himself short-changed, not after…
He looked up at Fen, who was standing
on the crest that overlooked the plain, holding the two horses. He
had just retrieved them. They had wandered off placidly together,
united in their good opinion of the turf at the foot of the dunes.
The plain was now deserted. Had Broc and Sigurd too found peace for
the sake of good land?
His passion-fogged brain cleared a
little. “Addy? He didn’t—not that I know.”
“Look.”
Cai stumbled up to join him. Fen’s arm
closed tight round his waist. He pointed off into the dusk. “There.
Down by the islets, the place where you said the first monks from
Hibernia settled. Near the green mounds.”
Cai leaned on him to look. The night
was falling fast, the light shifting before his eyes could adjust.
He’d never really noticed that the ancient beehive cells were
surrounded by mounds, but they were. In the spring they were
covered with every scented and dancing shoreline flower you could
imagine—celandine, harebells and yarrow, sea pinks and thyme, snowy
drifts of scurvy grass. It must always have been such a beautiful
place, its sanctity held, deep and potent, in its very rocks. And
yes—down by the worn wooden cross, a frail but vigorous figure in a
plain brown cassock. “I can see him. I didn’t hear anything about
him coming home—he’s still the bishop of Hexham.”
Fen broke into laughter. “Perhaps they
threw him out. He’s got a girl with him.”
The girl was leading Addy by the hand.
The old man was following her serenely. The sun dipped down between
two bands of cloud and threw one final bright lance across Fara and
the sea. Cai’s distance vision was no match for Fen’s, but suddenly
the whole scene crystallised. She was wearing a green robe. Her
hair blazed around her like an aura, and in this light Cai couldn’t
tell if it was fair or…
Fair or white. “Fen, that’s
Danan.”
“What—your old salamander
from the fire?”
Salamander, witch, hare. Traveller by
unknown tunnels beneath the sea and currents of air in the night.
“She’s wearing all her jewellery. She made me trade for it over the
years, but she never put it on, just hid it like a dragon in a
cave. Do you see her earrings?”
“Yes, but…”
“Those are coral flowers in
Roman gold.”
“It’s her daughter, then.
Her granddaughter.”
She doesn’t have one, as far as
I know. But the lives of our fellow souls are strange to us, most
of them hidden like a dragon’s gold, and perhaps Fen is
right. Cai
leaned his brow on Fen’s shoulder, and shuddered in pleasure as the
grip around him tightened. “What is she doing with
Addy?”
“I don’t know, but he seems
pleased about it. Look, they’ve seen us.”
The girl raised her free hand. It was
gleaming from wrist to elbow with Danan’s horde of bracelets, and
her smile was just as bright. Addy’s too, when he turned and waved
to them. They were standing at the foot of the largest green mound.
Slowly, as if in a dream, Cai lifted his hand and waved
back.
“Cai, look at all the
seals.”
“Seals? Where?”
“All over the rocks there. I
thought they were the rocks. Is it a haul-out time?”
“No. The tide’s wrong.
God—listen to them.”
The seals began to sing. Hundreds of
them—grey, mottled, inky-wet black, from smallest pups to
mountainous grand-dams—were congregated on the rocks of Fara. They
tipped up their sleek heads. The noise that rose up should have
been a raucous clatter, huffing and barking, echoing off the
cliffs. Instead it took flight on the wind and whirled up to fill
the dusk from sea to zenith like a mermaid’s song of worship to the
sky. And when Cai looked back to find Danan and Addy, they were
gone.