Brothers of the Wild North Sea

by Harper Fox

  “Still think you can do better, then?”

  “I don’t want to try. I’ll just watch you.”

  Cai sent Eldra flying out along the strand. Here, if he’d wished, he could have galloped for hours—the sea margin ran flat and golden-white all the way to Berewic in the north, a great, long, welcoming smile of a place, now at this pitch of late spring nothing but wide, empty beauty, singing to him from the sky. He wasn’t sure what impulse made him turn the horse’s head a little inland, so that her hooves struck softer sand, the drag on the wheels slowing the chariot up. The dunes were tall here. Their crescents echoed the crescent of the great bay, music in shapes and forms. When Eldra tore along their edges, following their curve, she and Cai and Fen were part of the music too. This conviction seeped into Cai’s blood, and he eased back on the reins to listen. Oh, it was like the sea bells, only deeper, overwhelming…

  “Had enough, monk?”

  No. Cai was quite sure that he hadn’t had enough—not of anything. He was young. He’d barely had a chance to set his lips to life’s cup, and he was hungry and thirsty in a hundred ways at once. Ignoring Fen’s laughter and tightening grip round his waist, he drew Eldra to a trot, and then a sweaty, snorting standstill. He hitched the reins to the rail. You never left your horse loose, no matter what tides were rising inside you. Beyond that, Cai’s thought systems failed him. His mind was a dazzled blank when he turned, eyes closed, mouth opening like a rose, into Fen’s arms.

  Fen grunted, as if despite everything, this had surprised him. It was only for a heartbeat. He seized Cai hard. He closed his hand on Cai’s throat and jaw, tight enough to send a splash of fear into Cai’s arousal, and stilled him with a grip to the back of his skull. Their mouths met in hot, salt-rimed impact. Cai groaned, pushing back at him, shoving off the chariot rail to meet him. He wanted to kill him, devour him, pounce with him into the sand, wolf to wolf. Violent images flashed through his mind, cravings and needs he’d never come close to feeling when he’d gone and lain down in the dunes with…

  With Leof. Oh, God. Cai tore back, so hard that Fen’s restraining grip on him almost cracked his ribs. “Stop. Let me go.”

  “What? You’re stiff as a spear.”

  “I know. But I can’t—”

  Fen released him. Cai was briefly relieved—disappointed—but only long enough for Fen to leap down off the board and hold up one imperious hand to him. “You can. Come here, monk. Do as you’re bidden.”

  Cai sprang down. “Do as you’re bidden?” he echoed incredulously. He knocked aside Fen’s grasp and seized the front of the raider’s cassock. “Who the devil do you think you are?”

  “A prince of the Torleik Danes,” Fen informed him. “I honour you with my touch.” Cai tried to punch him to show how honoured he felt, but Fen didn’t blink, catching his fist in midair. “I am not like some of my kind, who rape the Saxon peasants in their huts. I will lie only with my equal.”

  “Whether he likes it or not?”

  “A prince in his own land, and…” For the first time Fen’s voice faltered. “And a fine man who has healed me. Besides, he will like it.”

  Cai crashed down with him into the sand of the dunes. Only one sea-grass ridge shielded them, but no one came out here. They were alone in the sight of God, a god Cai knew from the marrow of his bones did not send men to hell for love. Had he dragged Fen the last few yards off the beach, or had he succumbed to the Viking’s grip? He couldn’t remember, and it didn’t matter now. Fen rolled on top of him, and that was a first—that full weight, a man of his own size and strength pinning him down. He moaned in fear and pleasure, turning his face to find the rough kiss he’d broken off before.

  Fen met him hungrily, tongue thrusting deep. “Caius!”

  Not like a sheep giving birth now. Now the sound of his full name made Cai’s shaft lift still harder, as if summoned by royal command. “Say it again,” he growled, biting at the side of Fen’s neck.

  “Caius. Caius. You fine man… Lie on your belly for me.”

  “Oh, God. No.”

  “Are you afraid? Did Leof never fuck you?”

  Leof. Cai froze, clutching at Fen’s shoulders. That ancient word fuck, the same in both their languages, rang in his ears. They weren’t far from the place where Cai had last loved him. Just over the dunes from here, the boy’s fine hair fanning out on the turf as he lay down in surrender. “You know how you won’t let me say your brother’s name?”

  “What of it?”

  “Don’t say his.”

  “Why not?” Fen tugged at the girdle of Cai’s cassock, then gave up on that and ran a hand under its hem, his palm warm as life on Cai’s chilly thigh. “I can do anything for you he did. More.”

  “I don’t doubt it. He was gentle. There was no fucking.”

  “Pitiful. Wasn’t he able?”

  “Shut up.” Cai pushed Fen off him. “He was… You’ve no idea what he was.” And the thing Cai couldn’t forgive was not Fen’s ignorance but his own forgetting. “He’s only been dead for six weeks. And your lot killed him.”

  “I told you, not the Torleik.”

  “I don’t care! You’re all the bloody same to me!” Cai scrambled upright. When Fen reached to grab him, he slapped him aside, the blow connecting this time, a sharp crack. “I loved him. And now you’ve turned me into a beast like yourself.”

  Fen stared at him. Cai struggled to read the changing lights in his eyes. Fires of lust were blazing there—a heat to match his own—but what was the darkness behind? He couldn’t have caused this creature serious pain. Not that kind—not a raw hurt of rejection.

  “I loved him,” he repeated. “I shouldn’t have come here. Take… Take my horse. Take the damn chariot if you want. You’re not my prisoner anymore.”

  Fen stood up. He had consented to being shaved once a week along with the Fara monks, and the mark of Cai’s blow stood out clearly on his white skin, a crimson handprint. Cai forced himself not to step back in fear of him. Whatever barbaric world had spawned him, he was the prince of it—a real one, unlike Cai, with his few muddy acres and his brawling sot of a father.

  He looked down on Cai from a pitch of enraged royalty. “Your horse? You think I’d consent to take that mongrel nag—or your father’s hay cart?”

  “All right. To hell with you. Don’t.”

  “Do you imagine I offer myself—my flesh, my manhood—without meaning? For a brainless fuck on the sand?”

  Cai swallowed hard. “How do I know what you do? You’re my enemy. I should never have forgotten it.”

  “I would have made your blood sing.”

  Cai turned away blindly. He grabbed the chariot’s rail and hauled himself aboard. He was shaking in every limb, barely able to untangle Eldra’s harness. She didn’t respond to his shout, as if holding opinions of her own about his decision to leave, and for the first time he struck her—the lightest sting to the rump with the loop of the reins, but enough to make her start forwards, dancing in outrage. “Go on,” he called again, voice breaking like a boy’s. “Get on with you. Go!”

  Fara was in sight before Eldra slackened her pace. The stark outlines of the monastery—more than half in ruins now—broke Cai from a trance.

  He hadn’t meant to come so far. For the last couple of miles, rage dying out of him, he’d known what he was doing and let the horse thunder on anyway, hiding his thoughts in the beat of her hooves. But he’d abandoned a wounded man. Friend, enemy, lover—it didn’t really matter. He was a doctor, and Fen had been under his care.

  He turned Eldra and drove her back the way she’d come, cold fear tightening his throat. If Fen had gone into the dunes, Cai’s chances of tracking him in the soft, windblown sand were slim. There would only be a gap in the world, as Leof and Theo were now empty spaces to him. Cai didn’t feel as if he could bear another hole. He was a cobweb already. The next gale would blow him away. As he approached the place where he and Fen had parted, he gripped the reins hard, legs weakening. He
didn’t know how it had happened, but if Fen was gone, Cai had lost far more than a patient or a prisoner. The beach was empty. He felt sick.

  He could hear something. He pulled Eldra to a halt and dismounted, this time forgetting to tie up her reins. It was a kind of chanting, not melodious like Laban’s plainsong but broken and rough. The sea fret was thickening now, riding the incoming tide. Spectral figures danced in it, and Cai shielded his eyes against the glare from the cloud-wrapped sun. Far out in the water, just before the place where the beach shelved down to unknown depths, a solitary human figure was standing. He was breast-deep, his hands raised and pressed to the back of his head in an attitude of prayer—or desperation, Cai realised, beginning to run. The dark shape at the water’s edge was a discarded cassock. Barely breaking pace, Cai hitched up and tore off his own. The heavy wool would drag him under instantly once it got soaked through.

  He ran until the resistance of the sea against his thighs became too strong, then arced forwards into a dive. Waves slapped him hard in the face, and his lungs and gut clenched at the chill, the implacable north-shores bite that never eased, even in the heart of summer. Brine flooded his sinuses, and he coughed and forced a rhythm on himself, four powerful strokes, then a breath. Four and a breath, looking for his target each time he surfaced. Expecting each time for Fen to be gone.

  When he was close enough, he stopped and trod water. Fen must be on a spar of sand—Cai was out of his depth here, the riptide current tugging at him. He made one last effort against it. “Fen! Fenrir!”

  Fen didn’t move. Cai could distinguish individual words now. Words for gods, and darkness, and revenge. He covered the last space between them and seized Fen’s shoulder, anchoring himself as best he could on the sand underfoot. “What are you doing?”

  Fen’s hair was slicked down, his eyes wide and vacant. It took him a moment to focus, and when he did, an expression of mild surprise crossed his features, as if he’d encountered Cai unexpectedly in a corridor of Fara. “I am placing a curse upon my comrades. They should have returned for me by now.”

  “All right.” A swell of the tide tore at them, and Cai fought to hold him still. “But can’t you do it from the beach?”

  “No. The sea must bear my vengeance away to those who deserve it. To Sigurd, to the Torleik warriors who swore their loyalty to me. To… To Gunnar.”

  “Don’t. You love your brother.”

  “You may say his name now. He is nothing to me.”

  “You don’t mean that.” Fen was warm beneath Cai’s hands, his skin burning under the water’s chill. “You’re feverish again. Come ashore with me.”

  “I haven’t finished cursing.”

  “Well, you can do the rest some other time.” Cai took his shoulders and turned him around. “Come on.”

  Cai got him back to shore with a mix of persuasion and brute force. He was shaking with exhaustion by the time he pushed him up the final rise of the beach. Eldra was waiting patiently where he had left her. He paused for long enough to dry Fen down a bit with one cassock and bundle him into the other, then quickly got dressed himself. He climbed onto the chariot’s board and hoisted Fen up after him. There was barely room for a man to sit, but Fen didn’t fight when Cai eased him down so he was huddled at his feet.

  “You’ve undone all my good work,” Cai told him, pulling the hood up over Fen’s head.

  “I don’t care.” Fen blocked Cai’s next move, thrusting his hand away. “Don’t touch me.”

  “Very well.” Cai shook Eldra’s reins. She set off at a smooth-running canter, as if aware of her precarious load. Cai guided her onto the firm strip of sand between the high-tide seaweed mark and the incoming waves. Soon this flat strand would be under the water, but perhaps he would have time to get Fen home. He didn’t really care about anything else. He didn’t want to think any further than the next few yards of sand ahead of him, any deeper than the warmth of Fen’s shoulder pressed against his thigh. Cai had found him. He wasn’t drowned or lost. He was here, awkward and fever-racked, simmering with almost-palpable rage. For the first time in a month, Cai was happy.

  “I retract my curse on Gunnar.”

  “That’s good. I don’t know much about cursing, but Danan says they can come back and strike you.”

  “Danan?”

  “A friend of mine. You’ll meet her.”

  “Ah. A girl.”

  Cai bit back a smile. There, on the crest of the furthest dune he could see, a female figure was standing, long grey hair blowing in the wind. Had she been there all along, watching over the beach and everything that had played out there today, or had Cai’s naming just conjured her up? “No. Very much not a girl.”

  “I understand now. About Gunnar.”

  Cai didn’t prompt him. He let Eldra run on in silence, and the next time he looked Danan was gone.

  “I have been here long enough to know…you have no treasure in Fara, secret or otherwise.”

  “I did try to tell you. My abbot Theo thought there was something too. Believe me, I’d have handed over anything we had to stop the raids.”

  “So Sigurd will have taken the Torleik men to raid elsewhere in search of it. But my brother would have come back anyway. You understand nothing about him. No puny Christian could. He had a warrior’s heart. He could lift a sword as soon as he could walk. He never ceased in slaying and striking from that moment on.”

  He sounds lovely. Cai kept that thought to himself. Fen was shivering now, a tense vibration where he was pressed against Cai.

  “So he would have come for me. There is no doubt. I am still here, trapped among you paltry excuses for men, and therefore… Therefore Gunnar is dead.”

  Cai took the reins in one hand. Blindly he put the other one down, seeking Fen’s head. It was lowered, pressed to his knees. This time Fen didn’t push him away.

  “Listen,” Cai said. “I can’t be your lover. But I won’t be your captor, either.” He ran a rough caress over the bowed skull in its hood. “Once you’re well, I’ll help you leave here. You’re not my prisoner anymore. I’ll help set you free.”

  Chapter Seven

  Step, parry, thrust. One, two, three. Cai glanced over the top of his shield at Brother Gareth, broke the rhythm of the drill and drove a slicing stroke downwards. Gareth didn’t so much as blink. He spun and knocked Cai’s blade aside.

  “Good,” Cai gasped, gripped his sword hilt fast and carried on.

  That was the trouble. They were good now, his little band of warriors. Cai had taught them everything he knew, and he couldn’t take them further. Cai’s fighting skills were those of a quarrelsome hillfort chieftain. They had served well enough in the last raid, but what about the next? One, two, three… It was hard, even with surprise attacks like the one he’d just launched on Gareth and one-on-one test fights that came perilously close to the real thing, to sustain his men’s concentration. Benedict no longer joined them. No sign of Oslaf this morning either. Would they lose momentum, one by one, fall under Aelfric’s influence and wait for God to save them?

  Gareth, grinning, his hypochondria long since blown away in the pleasures of action, jumped to one side, broke drill and made a sly jab at Cai’s ribs.

  “Good!” Cai said again, only just evading him. “Insolent, but…very good.”

  “No. No, no, no.”

  Cai jerked round, signalling Gareth to stop. From the shadows by the wall, a lean shape was emerging, one hand impatiently extended. The rest of the monks stopped their drill and turned to watch.

  For the last few days, Fenrir had accompanied Cai to the training ground. He’d asked to do so politely enough, and Cai had been content to let him. Fen had been very different since their return from the sea. His belief in imminent rescue had been destroyed. He hadn’t spoken to Cai again about Sigurd or Gunnar—had barely spoken at all—but his silences had been thoughtful, and instead of holding himself proudly back from the daily life of the brethren, he had started to appear amongst them, in
the kitchen garden and at the refectory table. He had gone out once with Benedict and the plough. A few of the men recoiled from him, but those who knew and trusted Cai took their cue from him, and carried on about their tasks while their Viking enemy—now clad in a cassock, hard to distinguish from one of their own number unless you looked into the amber-fire eyes—began unprompted to work at their side.

  In the ruins where Cai trained his warriors, he’d remained on the sidelines. Cai wasn’t sure why he’d wanted to come, but it meant at least that he was within sight and out of trouble. And although for the last week he’d barely opened his mouth, and not once laid hand on him, still his presence was pleasing to Cai—a warmth like the glow in the air after sunset, the promise of morning to come. Now he was striding towards the gathered men, his passivity thrown aside.

  “No,” he repeated, taking Cai’s sword from him. “You hold it badly. I’ve been watching you—trying to work out why. Now I see.”

  Cai folded his arms. He was peripherally aware of murmurs from the group behind him. A Viking in the vegetable patch was one thing. Here in their midst with a sword in his hand, he was a bad memory, a vision from nights of smoke, blood and fire. “Well?” Cai challenged, making sure he kept himself between Fen and the others. “Are you going to tell me?”

  “Since it irks me beyond endurance to watch you, yes. Come here.”

  He stood behind Cai. It was the best position for correcting grip, and Cai braced himself not to notice the heat at his spine. He remembered a sea-fret breeze, and a promise—I would have made your blood sing…

  “You think of it as a weapon. An object.”