The Humming of Numbers

by Joni Sensel

  Liam recoiled and turned wider eyes on her in a lengthy appraisal. His teeth dragged his lip, then he shook his head. Aidan could tell from the look on his face that his elder brother was going to call the whole thing off.

  “She’s too pretty to be very—”

  Lana hissed. Both brothers jumped at the harsh sound, which would have befitted a spitting cat.

  “Don’t,” Lana told Liam, her gritted teeth crushing the word to a growl. “Don’t you dare question me. We have begun. It is too late to stop. If you are a man, I suggest you stand ready to kill them, because once I walk in, they will run out. Shrieking.” With a final flash of her eyes, she turned on her heel and took a few steps toward the alehouse not far away.

  The dumbfounded look on Liam’s face would have drawn a laugh from Aidan if the situation had been any less sober.

  “Let’s get this over with,” Aidan said softly.

  “Mother of God,” Liam breathed, “I am glad she is on our side. When you appeared, I thought she was merely the one who was tempting you to …” He faltered, making the connection. “Aidan, for the love of the saints! Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

  “No,” Aidan said. “But I trust her. Let’s go.” He’d already said a few silent prayers on the way. Waiting would not make it easier. He did not want the quaking inside him to find its way out in visible form.

  Liam stared at Lana’s stiff back another long moment, then glanced over at the mob. Though all kept a nervous watch on Lana, several men nodded or gestured impatiently toward the alehouse. Liam exhaled hard, tipped his head in agreement, and then handed Aidan the curved blade of a scythe removed from its handle.

  “Something that looks less like a weapon would be better,” Aidan told him. “So they don’t realize right away how I’m planning to use it.”

  Taking back the blade with a sour nod, Liam consulted a few of the men about their makeshift arms. Aidan settled on an iron hook for hanging pots over the hearth. He tucked it under his belt. It bounced on his thigh.

  “Beware you are not caught in a spell,” Liam murmured. Then he grabbed the scruff of Aidan’s neck and shook gently. “And come back out alive, little brother, whether you bring Brendan Donagh with you or not. We’ll worry about his father when all else is done.”

  Aidan didn’t argue. Resisting the urge to fling his arms around his brother, he thumped his fist on Liam’s chest instead and then turned to catch up with Lana. He could soon hear the secretive rustle of men coming behind.

  “Are you ready?” he asked her.

  “We’ll stop by the horse trough, in the shadow where nobody on watch could see us just yet,” she said. “One or two things to do there. Then we’ll go in. You still have your lamp?” She turned her head to check the sputtering flame.

  “If the tallow will hold out a few moments more.”

  “We won’t need it once we go through the door.”

  As they approached the brewster’s, Aidan caught the round smell of beer and the grumble of conversation in the Norsemen’s guttural language. The noise of many numbers and an occasional guffaw spilled out with the hearth light around the ill-fitting door. He tried to picture perhaps twenty men slouched around the fire, in every corner, and atop every table or bench. He mostly saw twenty swords and axes ready to go back to work after a long evening of rest.

  Kyle darted up behind him and had Aidan and Lana wait while he and a few others skulked around the alehouse, trying to spot any guard or captives outside. Aidan took the chance to lift one hand and rest his fingertips on Lana’s shoulder blade. He could not meet his fate without one last touch, however small and public and perhaps even unwanted.

  She only turned her gaze on him and then back to the house, concentration plain on her face. But he thought she leaned into his hand.

  He dropped it when Kyle returned with no news of activity outside the building. Brendan must be under close watch with his captors inside, where his noble blood gave them a confidence and security that Aidan hoped to prove false.

  “Wait until you’re inside to start torching the thatch?” Michael asked. Since Aidan’s return, this brother had given no word of encouragement, doubt, or advice. He’d merely come up to stand silently beside him while they had waited on Kyle.

  “No.” Aidan’s words scratched in his tight throat. “I want to go in after the fire catches but before they have noticed. Too much time will be worse than too little.” He turned expectantly to Lana beside him.

  She took a deep breath, then plucked three needles from the yew bough.

  “Put these under your tongue,” she whispered. “Don’t swallow them, Aidan, they’re poison. Just hold them there.”

  He obeyed, feeling as though she had given him some unholy communion. She did the same.

  “The thatch?” she prodded.

  Aidan nodded to the men. “Set the thatch alight. Quietly. Don’t throw any torches atop yet.” His fear thinned to a hazy relief. There was no turning back now.

  While the men spread their flame among the torches and touched them to corners of the roof, Lana asked Aidan to hold out his flame as well. When he offered the lamp, she dipped the very tip of the yew in the flame. The needles began smoldering immediately. She closed her eyes and wafted the smoke into her face, inhaling deeply. When she opened her eyes again, a new, wild light shown there.

  Gripping the holly in one hand and the sputtering yew in the other, she whispered, “And we enter, Aidan. The yew is alit. It will burn us to life or to death.” She blew gently on the yew branch. To his surprise, the green bough burst into flame. For the first time, Aidan understood that his concern for her might be misplaced.

  “Godspeed,” Kyle whispered behind him. “To you both.”

  From nearby, Michael growled, “Don’t make me come in after you, Aidan.”

  In a few paces, Aidan and Lana reached the door. She flung her hawthorn twig against the sill. She had assured him it could unlock as well as be kept sealed, and that it would loosen the door, even if it were bolted inside. He hadn’t really believed her. Nonetheless, he followed the instructions she’d given and stomped the door as hard as he could with the flat of his heel, half expecting to break his foot against the strength of a bolt.

  The door flew open. It bounced back and would have slammed shut again but that Aidan’s force carried his whole body into the doorway. Flailing desperately to regain his balance, he stumbled to fall just inside the door. It struck him and stopped there, half open.

  A chorus of startled grunts greeted him.

  XXI

  Aghast at his clumsy entrance into the alehouse, Aidan started to clamber to his feet. Someone kicked him back down. The foot pinned him there on his elbows and knees before he realized that it belonged to Lana. He could hear her shrieking at the top of her lungs. Her sounds might have been words, but not in any language he knew. He caught sight of a ring of stunned Viking faces. Then he remembered the plan. He’d almost ruined it, but she had responded quickly enough that the effect might have been even better. He whirled to cower and grovel at her feet as though more frightened of her than of the raiders. When he saw her livid face, he did not need to act much. Lana stood in the doorway, arms flung high, filling the space, both boughs aloft in her hands. The yew blazed; if she’d shifted it a few inches she could have set fire to the timbers herself.

  By sheer force of will, Aidan scrunched his eyes almost closed. He needed to spot any threatening motion, but he needed even more to focus on the humming of numbers. Flooded with people and shock, the room roared like the sea. Beer tankards dropped. He felt and heard Norsemen leaping to their feet, scattering dishes and toppling stools. The men instinctively grabbed for their weapons but didn’t seem to know whether to use them.

  Lana tapped Aidan’s head with the holly as if anointing him. It drew his attention from numbers to her voice, and now he understood some of her words. Physically she ignored the Vikings, but clearly her banshee cries were directed at them.
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  “Vengeance for the dead, whom I summon and raise with the incense of this flaming Yew!” she shouted. “As you have dealt death to the living, thus will death be delivered to you! Tree of Life and of Death, see it done!” She snarled and screeched, making hideous sounds that echoed sickly in the tightness around Aidan’s stomach.

  Wrenching his attention back to the raiders, he listened for numbers. One by one, as Lana’s shrieks filled the air, he isolated those of the men nearest him. None were easy to dismiss; all of the invaders were riled and filled with the day’s bloodlust and conquest, and they hummed powerfully. Even numbers Aidan normally associated with temperance whirred and growled.

  In the next instant he caught a firm, crooning eight, almost too calm in the havoc. He warned himself that just because Lord Donagh hummed of eight did not mean the Norse leader did, too. He knew from the sound’s bold assurance, however, that he had found what he sought.

  He converted a wave of relief into bellowing and gnarling. Still at Lana’s feet, he barked like a dog, then slobbered and convulsed as if possessed by a demon. This act, meant to prove the fearsome power of witchcraft, sowed further confusion, to Aidan’s relief. Men who had stepped forward now skittered back. They stood agape at Lana, probably not understanding a word but clear enough on her demonic fury and its apparent effect on the monk. Both scowls and emerging snickers gave way to horror.

  Writhing, Aidan squirmed away from the door and toward that beckoning eight. Lana pursued him as though unaware of their audience, tapping at him with the holly. Men in blood-stained tunics stepped on one another’s feet and crowded the walls, parting before Aidan and Lana. Terrified the same men would close around behind them and attack, Aidan roared and shivered more madly than ever. Finally he could reach out and claw at the high leather boots of the man he thought was their leader.

  The Viking humming of eight did not retreat. He only drew one foot back to kick off the demon-tormented monk. Aidan saw the blow coming well enough to take it in the shoulder instead of the head. Pain boosting his howls, he let the kick roll him back toward Lana. When she stepped over him, he knew she had understood.

  Rolling his eyes madly, he caught sly glimpses of the room. He could see smoke curling down from the thatch, mingling with the haze that hung over the hearth. The brewster’s guests hadn’t noticed the new tendrils yet. They stood transfixed as Lana fearlessly directed her attention now to the man Aidan had tagged. Giving no ground, he glowered at her but did not yet lift a hand. The rest of his men watched to see how he would react. Their leader’s response and the few seconds that followed would determine who lived and who died.

  Aidan cast about desperately for Brendan Donagh. He spotted the brewster and his wife, two older boys bound to a heavy table in the back of the room, and a pile of tattered girls’ garments that might have had a limp girl inside them. He prayed it was not his sister Regan. He did not see the lordling or anyone with sacking over his head.

  Aidan rose half to his feet. For the moment the awestruck Norsemen were still locked in the apprehension that a dead witch might be angrier and even more dangerous than a live one, since she might not be mortal at all. Lana would not have more than a moment longer, however, before their leader or some other brave Viking decided to find out.

  “Fire! Fire!” Aidan shouted in both his own tongue and Latin. Though he doubted the foreigners would understand either, he needed them to react to the burning thatch soon. He could smell it all the way down on the floor, so the flames had to be flashing and biting overhead.

  The brewster took up the cry, dancing and pointing at the invading flames. The nearest Vikings eyed the rafters and pushed toward the door, suspicion twisting their features. They tightened their grips on their weapons. Their progress was hampered, however, by the rest of their fellows, whose attention remained fixed on Lana.

  Weaving and flailing, Aidan dodged about in a crouch, desperately scanning the crowded room for the lord’s son. He had met Brendan and knew the young lord hummed of seven, but there were many sevens here to sort out, amid much noise and confusion. Fear clutched his heart: Everything was taking too long. He would never survive, much less succeed, and Lana would die alongside him. Anguished, he glanced toward where she’d last stood.

  “Haste, Aidan!” she shrieked, adding to the clamor. Before Aidan even recognized that demand was for him, she continued.

  King Holly, do my work!

  Take the will from those I strike!

  Return the harm they’ve brought this place!

  Pierce their hearts and pin their souls

  with everlasting winter fire!

  From the corner of his eye, Aidan saw her fling the burning yew into the air, scattering the men beneath where it fell. Then she slashed the Norse leader across the face, hard, with her holly bough.

  “Thus may Holly blind thine eyes to better see thy path to death!” she roared.

  Aidan cringed, horrified by what she’d just done and certain he would now witness her murder almost before he could move. To his great joy, the large fellow recoiled, blinked twice, and clapped his palms to his eyes. With a holler, he stumbled back into the arms of his men. Lana followed, whipping the holly branch in furious arcs against the surrounding faces. The leader’s roar, whether curse or command or inarticulate wail, set the others in motion. Vikings stampeded like geese before a wolf, yelping. Flames licked near their heads.

  Aidan dropped back to his knees as if in prayer and curled his head into his arms, perhaps the only person in the room not in motion. He had to block some of the confusion so that he might actually hear. The position triggered habit in him, and a silent plea rose from his heart up toward heaven.

  There! The seven he sought purred subtly from the far side of the hearth.

  Forgotten by the Norsemen in their panic over the wild witch and the new threat of burning, Aidan scrambled between slashing legs and around the glowing mound of coals. He found a body hunched nearby, a male body with cloth over his head. Brendan Donagh’s smooth, resigned seven contrasted immensely with the room’s tumult of numbers, all of which were now overlaid by the grating of terrified ones. Aidan had to respect that self-possessed seven.

  “Stay still,” he hissed into the sacking, thumping Brendan to make sure he heard and paid attention. “I’ll set you free. Just a minute.” The covered head nodded, so Aidan knew Donagh was alive and still conscious. His hands fumbled to remove the hood, held in place by snug coils of rope twined around the lordling’s neck.

  While his fingers scrambled, Aidan shot a glance around the room. He saw mostly wide backs. Norsemen surged toward the door, overturning benches on the way. Their tide swamped back at the threshold, where they swirled and shoved in their attempts to all get through at once.

  Aidan’s work also jammed: He couldn’t loosen the knot. Moving instead to Brendan’s bound hands, he wished he’d brought the scythe blade after all. The lashed ropes were too tight to untie. Expecting someone to notice his efforts and begin raining down blows any moment, Aidan reached for the pothook at his belt.

  It was gone. It must have fallen loose, unnoticed, when he’d stumbled at the door or squirmed and groveled thereafter. Aidan’s legs wavered at the realization that he had crawled deep into a hornet’s nest without any defense whatsoever. If he hadn’t already been on the floor, he would have fallen.

  He whirled to grab something, anything, that the brewster might have at his own hearth. The blank floor around the firepit mocked him. Even the hearth’s iron firedogs were gone. The Norsemen had made sure that their hostage, though bound, could not grope for a weapon.

  Abruptly, the jam at the doorway broke. Roaring men stomped out into the dark. A sudden fear gripped Aidan: Lana would either be trampled or swept out with them into a blade that didn’t wait to make sure it was biting a raider. He had to find out exactly where she stood now. He jumped to his feet.

  A bushy-bearded Viking at the back of the crowd, not expecting a young monk to rise i
nto his path, slammed against Aidan. Reflexively, their glances met. The Norse eyes narrowed, seeing immediately that Aidan was not so possessed by demons as he had appeared. The big man raised the ax dangling in his hand.

  Aidan leapt sideways. He only banged up short against an ale cask. In the instant before the man swung, Aidan knew he would die if that ugly blade hit him. He knew equally that the tables and benches and fleeing bodies around him did not grant him a place or a path to get out of its way. He grabbed an upended stool, aware that the weighty ax would smash through the wood and into him with barely a pause no matter how well he parlayed. Thuds and wails and murderous cries from outside the door told him his kin and their neighbors were busy. That must be satisfaction enough. Not wanting to watch the ax hit him, he swung the stool toward his opponent and swiveled his head to let his last sight be Lana.

  She stood alone in a front corner of the house, glowering. The holly bough she held high before her like a fearsome green sword. Burning thatch rained around her. Even in their rush to escape from the fire, the Norsemen gave her wide berth.

  As if she had felt Aidan’s gaze, her face turned to him. She screamed his name.

  The end of her cry was lost in a clatter and crash. The stool bashed from his grip, Aidan fell backward, stumbling over the captive he’d hoped to protect. He scrambled once more to his feet before he realized that he hadn’t been knocked back by an ax in the chest. The two boys tied to the table in the back of the room had upended their anchor. Whether by fate, witchcraft, or chance, one corner had struck the threatening Viking’s legs and knocked him to his knees, sending his ax blow astray along with the stool. Aidan smashed his heel into his enemy’s bristling beard before the weapon could be lifted again. The man toppled and lay still.

  Fire roared overhead, its heat growing intense. Aidan grabbed the ax and slashed its blade against the bonds of the two still struggling in panic with the table. They squirmed loose and lit out immediately.