Brothers of the Wild North Sea

by Harper Fox

  Again, that silent answer. Cai would never have believed that face could soften in surrender. The clasp at his nape became a caress. “No. Please.”

  He was big, and Cai took him carefully. The small noises he made sent red pulses of arousal into Cai’s groin, but he kept his hands off himself, stroking and grasping Fen’s thighs until he’d accommodated what he could of the long shaft. Fen kept very still, electrical as pent-up lightning under Cai’s touch. What was it costing him not to grab, paralyse, thrust? The great hands released him and fastened convulsively on the stonework, a clutch that would have cracked Cai’s skull. And now he did move—small shifts of his hips, the movements of Cai’s peaceful ocean yesterday before the storm, infinite power stored up and waiting. He braced his feet on the sandy floor and let go one desperate moan.

  The sound of it washed all of Cai’s caution away. He closed his mouth hard around Fen’s straining cock and let him slide deep into his throat. He couldn’t breathe, but that mattered less than getting him inside, sucking him, making those half-anguished cries rip from him. Tears burned him blind. He hung on, twisting his fists into the deerskin, the swollen shaft-head ramming further and further into him—unbearable, perfect.

  Fen went rigid, muscles of his thighs locking tight. The pressure in Cai’s throat became a rush, a melting heat, and he swallowed and swallowed to keep from drowning. Red haze threatened him, but he hung on still, pushing through it, wanting every wild pulse of Fen’s coming, meeting every one of them halfway.

  Fen caught him. He dropped to his knees with him onto the sand. Cai leaned against him, brow pressed to his shoulder, coughing and snatching great lungfuls of the sun-bright air. Fen was shuddering, his own breath ragged. He felt at Cai’s groin. “You’re still hard.”

  “Yes. I was…” Cai waited till the words would come out whole. “I was…occupied.”

  “Aye, almost suffocating yourself on me. Gods! I thought you would eat me alive.”

  “Maybe next time.”

  “Or I will eat you.”

  Cai raised his head and looked into the eyes of the wolf. A deep, delicious fear unfolded itself, stretching his erection harder. “Will you?”

  “Maybe I will start right now. You smell good enough. Lie down.”

  “Here? It’s damp.”

  “You did it in the sea last night.”

  Cai grinned and subsided onto the stones. The moment’s resistance had been feigned—he’d have lain down in fire if Fen had asked. He spread his thighs, moaning, while Fen unfastened him and leaned in close.

  The hot mouth engulfed him—paradise, with a sharp scrape of teeth. He grabbed Fen’s shoulders. “Careful, you savage.”

  Fen sat up briefly, his face avid, a wicked smile curling one corner of that handsome, dangerous mouth. “Forgive me. I’ve never…”

  “Never been the lesser man before?”

  “If you must put it so, yes.”

  “Well, take some instruction. Run your tongue up me first. Open a bit wider and… Oh, God,” Cai breathed. Fen had obeyed him on the instant, putting the lesson into practice. “Let your lips cover your teeth. Yes.”

  Yes. Cai fell back, raising his arms over his head in surrender, hiding his face in the crook of one elbow. He forgot Leof and Ben, and Theo, and the secrets and treasures of Fara. He forgot about death, in the rising flood of red-hot life Fen was calling up from his bones. He angled his hips, and Fen seized his backside, lifting him to be devoured. His vision blurred, and the flood rose high, and just for a while he forgot.

  It took all afternoon to caulk the boat. The walk to the clay pit was a rough one, and the business of scraping damp clay into a makeshift pail arduous, straining backs and shoulders. Cai and Fen spoke very little, and looked at one another less. The work needed doing. Back at the boathouse, they took up position on either side of the repaired vessel’s hull and began the laborious task of spreading the clay. Cai’s hand brushed Fen’s, and the spark leapt, the flash of a flint striking stone above dry kindling. Their hands clasped tight.

  “No,” Cai whispered, still not daring to look. “Not unless you want to spend the rest of your life on this island.”

  “You’re right. The clay will take some time to dry.”

  “The rest of the day at least. So…”

  “So?”

  “So you have to let me go.”

  They went back to work, and this time didn’t pause until every crack and hole in the woodwork was packed tight. Then Cai straightened up, rubbing a handful of dry sand between his palms to clean them. The sun had passed zenith and was blazing over the monastery to the southwest. Only a narrow stretch of sea divided Addy’s retreat from the mainland, but in this light the Fara buildings, all the pain and joy that had reverberated within their walls, were nothing but a handful of glitter. Even the great rock on which they stood could have been cut from papyrus in this light. If you want to spend the rest of your life on this island… That was old Addy’s desire. Cai too could see the charm.

  Fen came to stand beside him, and the charm became clearer still. “We have hours of daylight yet.”

  “Yes. The boat should dry.”

  “Our work is done, then. I don’t imagine your crazed hermit will want to be disturbed in his prayers, so…”

  “I’m not sure he’s all that crazed. So?”

  “So…we have time. Sunlight. Sand dunes and soft beds of thyme. I would do with you…” He faded out, voice roughening, a little rasp that raised the hairs all up and down Cai’s spine. “What you could not do with Leof.”

  He’d used the word fuck without hesitation before. What had changed? Everything, the wind-voice breathed in Cai’s ear. Everything has changed. “What—with an old man running around, and bands of inbred cannibals prowling?”

  “We will find a place. I will keep watch.”

  “Even while you’re…” Cai shook his head. He couldn’t say it either. He wondered if Aelfric had ever experienced desires of the flesh so intense that they passed into the spirit, and then beyond words. “Even while you’re doing that?”

  “Yes. And so will you. You were a warrior before you became a monk, and long before you lay down with me. That’s what you’ll be when everything else is gone.”

  Cai frowned. It was a solid Viking compliment, but he wasn’t sure he liked it. “That doesn’t enthrall me.”

  “What else would you have?”

  “Your idea of a beautiful death might be a battlefield one. For myself, I’ll take a long life and a warm bed at the end of it.”

  “Would you? When you left Fara yesterday, I didn’t think you wanted to last until sunset.”

  “Well, I almost got my wish.” Fen passed an arm round his waist, and he shivered in surprise and then returned the gesture. “But everything’s changed. Come on.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “The dunes. The soft beds of thyme.”

  Fen was right—they both were inveterate warriors. Cai caught himself assessing their chosen dune for defensibility even before they’d reached it, and he knew he’d have done so without the Viking’s suggestion. High, isolated a little way from the rest. Good lines of sight all around, and plenty of crisp marram grass to give away intruders.

  Tucked away behind its crest, a perfect crescent of white sand. Cai stepped carefully around its edges. Its surface was unmarred, shining like the inside of an oyster shell in the sun. He didn’t want to disturb it till they both did. Then they would rip it to hell. He didn’t know how it would be, but he knew there’d be a fight, a combat he longed for and hungered to lose. “Fen…”

  Fen was immobile on the ridge of the dune. His back was turned, his attention fixed on the mainland. Afraid their peace was already about to be shattered, Cai scrambled up to join him. “What is it?”

  “I have understood something.”

  He was quivering finely, like an arrow drawn against a string. Cai wouldn’t have known it, but the tense vibration transferred itself when he la
id a hand to his arm. “What? Is something wrong?”

  “This island—they call it Fara, yes?”

  “Yes. Well—all this scatter of islands are called the Faras, but this is the largest, so yes.”

  “Fara, the island. And the place where the monastery stands…”

  “Fara too, but not an island. Peninsula, not insula.” The words felt more than usually awkward in Cai’s mouth. He didn’t want to be up here talking Latin to this man. He was sure that, a little time more in each other’s company, they would smooth out the differences in their north-lands tongues and be able to speak as their natures intended. “What about it?”

  “The Fara treasure. Our legends say it lies on the island of Fara. Insula, not peninsula.”

  Cai chuckled. It wasn’t funny, but he could see a bitter irony. “Great. So you lot have been knocking seven bells out of my poor monastery for nothing? Didn’t you know the difference?”

  “It looks like an island from the sea.”

  “Well, next time you see them you can tell them to leave off, can’t you? They can come and raid…” Cai fell briefly silent, his mouth drying. “Oh, for God’s sake, Fen. You can’t think there’s anything here.”

  Fen took hold of his sleeve. He pulled him down into the bright crescent, rucking up its surface. “Sit,” he said, a trace of command in his voice Cai was more than half-inclined to argue. “There are things I haven’t told you about the Fara treasure—just as you didn’t see fit to tell me all the things you said about it to the old man.”

  “That wasn’t on purpose. There hasn’t been time, and—”

  “And you hardly knew me. Very well. The same constraints have been on me, but now you have to listen. I need your help.”

  Cai couldn’t understand the change in him. He’d perked up at Addy’s fireside, but this was different—a feverish distress beneath his eagerness. “You’ll have it, if it doesn’t mean outright murder,” he said, trying to smile, immediately regretting his choice of words. What did he expect of the wolf? “Tell me now.”

  “According to a prophet of my people, the Dane Land tribes once held a treasure, an amulet of infinite power. It could even bind our gods. And many years ago, one of the followers of Christ stole this amulet and buried it on a holy island off the east coast of Britannia.”

  “But there are dozens of those. Why are we feeling the business end of Thor’s hammer?”

  “Our prophet had a new revelation over the winter this year. He named Fara. You do not understand about this treasure, Cai, and nor did your abbot. No man not born a Dane could ever understand. In our enemy’s hands, it has the power to bind our warriors’ might. To suck the wind from our sails, cause our swords to snap and our proud manhood to wither.”

  Cai looked innocently out to sea. He still had hopes of this refuge amongst the dunes. He said, thoughtfully, “God forbid.”

  Briefly he thought it had worked. The fever-lights in Fen’s eyes warmed to gold. He was laughing softly when he took Cai into his arms, and his kiss was so thorough and carnal, the push of his tongue so deep, that everything else faded away. Then he pulled back. He kept a warm grip round Cai’s shoulders, but he was pale in the tapestried patterns of the marram-grass shadow, his profile set and fierce. “Well, it hasn’t happened yet. But my people—the Torleik men, Sigurd and Gunnar and all my clan—believe in it. That’s why the monastery raids have been so unrelenting. But this is the island of Fara, right here.” He got up, letting Cai go. He took up position on the dune’s western ridge, the light wiping out his details from behind, leaving only a black silhouette, the ageless shape of a warrior. “I will find the amulet. Then Sigurd and Gunnar will come to me, and they will find it in my hands. And the world will change.”

  “I thought… I thought you’d decided your brother was dead.”

  “What if he is not?” Fen didn’t move. He might have been cast in bronze there and left as a warning, a memory of fear. “What if he lives, and…he ditched me here, like a dog or a broken shield? Like a thing?”

  “He wouldn’t have.” Cai sprang up. The faceless statue spoke like a man, a living soul stricken to the core by something far worse than Cai’s sword. Cai climbed up to join him, took his hand—more like a child than a lover this time, folding his fingers tight into his own. “He loved you. You told me so yourself.”

  “He loved power.”

  “Fen, come on. Never mind ancient treasures and fantasies. Lay me down here and show me what I’ve been missing.”

  Fen tore his fingers free. He gave Cai one look—half-anguished, half-amused, as if Cai had come up with the one proposal that might have slowed him down, diverted him from his purpose. Then he turned away. He set off down the slope of the dune, his long stride devouring the ground. The lowering sun struck blood-scarlet lights from his hair.

  “Help me,” he yelled back to Cai, not glancing round. “I’ll lay you down later, and you’ll never forget it. But for now—we’re going to find this damn treasure!”

  Cai couldn’t sleep. He was dirty and bruised, and darkness had fallen too suddenly for him to go and bathe in the sea as he’d wanted to do. Addy, sharing with them a fireside supper of scurvy grass and salmon, had warned them against venturing too far from the cave in the night. The devils were restless then and prone to hunt, their weakened eyes more effective in torchlight than under the sun. The old man had seemed different when Fen and Cai had returned. His air of distracted hospitality had vanished, and he had eaten in silence, watching them gravely from his own side of the fire.

  The cave was barely wide enough to accommodate the three of them, and Fen had offered to take a watch, although Addy had assured him that wasn’t necessary. He was crouched outside in the cloudy moonlight now, his tense, powerful shape just visible. Cai was relieved not to be forced into close quarters with him. He felt as if some kind of padding had been stripped off his nerves, leaving them naked and vibrating to Fen’s slightest touch. In the boathouse that morning it had been wildly pleasant, and now…

  Now he was afraid. He’d gone with Fen, and he’d done his honest best to help him find the secret of Fara. All afternoon and into dusk they had quartered the bare little island. He had turned over rocks, followed streambeds to their source. He had met Fen coming up to meet him a dozen times, his face a baulked blank, frustration coming off him in waves. A dozen times he’d told him to give it up, and a dozen times been ignored.

  To say that he wasn’t the man Cai knew would be absurd. What did Cai know of him? Shifting uncomfortably on the cave’s rocky floor—how luxuriant even his own thin mattress at Fara, by contrast—Cai remembered a beautiful hound his father had traded for and brought into the hillfort camp. The seller had been evasive about the beast’s ancestry, although her upswept yellow eyes ought to have given her away. She’d been good for a while, herding Broc’s cattle and sleeping at the foot of his bed, and then one full-moon night she had plucked up a baby by its nappy rags and trotted away with it into the unknown. A wolf in the fold, Broc had fulminated for weeks afterwards, damning the trader to a hundred gory deaths, never seeming to realise that he’d opened the gates to the sheep-fold himself and let the creature in.

  Cai dropped into exhausted sleep at last, and dreamed restlessly of a man with golden eyes who followed him into the dunes, brought him down with one breathtaking pounce and began to tear him apart. The dismemberment was painless, the rip of sharp incisors a shuddering delight, and when he protested—painlessly bleeding, dying—the wolf looked up at him and said, But you let me in, you fine man. You lay down with me. You let me in.

  He woke up, throat convulsing in a choked-off howl. The cave was full of cobweb light, delicate as pearls. Every detail of the scene before him was perfect, so lucid he would take it with him to his grave. Addy was lying flat out on his back. His mouth was open, his long, thin frame nothing but a loose collection of bones beneath his cassock. And, rising up from a crouch of dreadful, virile beauty beside him—Fen, a fisherman’s knif
e clutched savagely tight in his fist. Before Cai could move or make a sound, he was gone, silent and swift, dissolving into the sea mist that had come in with the tide.

  Chapter Nine

  Cai knelt by the old man on the cave floor. He couldn’t breathe, not even to let go of the horrified sob wedged tight in his chest. He didn’t know where to touch him. His throat looked intact, but there were a dozen places in his cassock’s folds where the wound might be concealed. You’re a doctor, he told himself fiercely, but it was no good. All hope was gone, all life long fled from a face like that—ravaged and hollow, grey as the dawn.

  The sob tore free. Addy snorted himself awake at the sound, opened his eyes and stared up at him. A beatific smile spread across his face, as if he had expected this morning all his life, anticipated everything and awoken full of joy to find it fulfilled. “There’s a good boy,” he said, lifting a bony hand and patting Cai’s face. “There, you see? Don’t worry.”

  Cai leapt to his feet. He cracked his head off the cavern’s roof, but the pain was meaningless. The thing that got released in men’s bodies in extremity, the heat in the blood that made them fight or run away like deer—he could feel it, raging through every vein. His heart would rip out through his ribs if he didn’t move. He gave Addy one last look and half-fell out of the cave.

  The beach was empty, swathed in mist. No Fara devils seemed to be around, but God help them if he found any now. One line of footprints faded off into the distance. The blood-heat in him pitched, and he took off, heedless of the stones on his bare feet.

  Fen had got far enough to let Cai run off some of his terror-born rage, but he was still throbbing all over in the grip of it when the lean figure emerged from the mist. Fen was motionless, his head down. He didn’t flinch or glance up when Cai tore across the last stretch of beach between them.