“No!”Aelfric strodethrough his bewildered flock, knocking the slower ones out of hisway.Crazed or not, he looked down through the foot of height hehad on Cai with grim power, and he carried his own nimbus ofauthority with him.“We must all go to our cells and pray insolitude, in thanks for this deliverance.”
“Aelfric—they don’thavecellsanymore.”
“Then let us go and pray intheir ruins.”
Cai gave it up.“You must do as youthink fit.I have wounded men to tend.”
He turned away.A clawlike hand landedhard on his shoulder.Still raw with battle nerves, Cai tore outfrom under it.“Leave me be, scarecrow.”
He hadn’t meant to say it.Despiteeverything, he’d learned—come to believe—that an abbot’s place atFara was sacred.That his person was due all respect.Now Cai hadinsulted him, in front of the Canterbury crows and his faithful.Worse, if that hand descended again, Cai would lash out.He wastrembling still, the scent of blood and Viking torches in hisnostrils.Aelfric was silent.With eyes like that he didn’t have tospeak.Cai read there all his intentions of cold-heartedvengeance.
“Forgive me, my lordabbot,” he rasped.“I must go.”
Cold-hearted vengeance.Theo hadtaught that idea as one of his few examples of sin.Men wereanimals, he had explained—another heresy—and, when injured, turnedupon their attackers with words or blows before their better selvescould prevent it.That was bad.But to go away and brood upon acrime, and then exact a punishment—no, not even the beasts wouldstoop to that.Perhaps sometimes the animalisthe better self, he had mused at theend of his lesson, and walked off abstractedly, leaving thebrethren looking at one another in outrage and wonder.
But Caius had taken his point.He’dtried to work on reining in his own quick temper, secure in theknowledge that he’d never be cold, clever or mean enough to have toworry about the greater sin.He’d dared to entertain a little rarepride in his Christian qualities, glad for once that his blood waswarm, his reactions quick and instinctive.
He had been wrong.He was as bad asAelfric.A wolf was howling on the beach, and Cai’s blood wasice-cold.
He washed his hands in the bucket forthe tenth time, watching red spirals float in the moon-silveredwater.He had just dismissed Benedict and Oslaf to their rest.Bothwere becoming good medics under his instruction, and his patientswere at peace.The warrior monks of Fara had sustained a fewinjuries—some, as Cai had feared, from their own blades—but nonewould be fatal, and the infirmary had been almost a merry placethat night, as they laughed at one another and swapped tales.Allwere sleeping now, clean and calm and dreaming poppydreams.
Not a wolf.A man.The cry came again,long and desolate.The Vikings had left behind one of theirown.
Cai looked out of the window.He hadheard the first cry hours ago.He’d known for all that time that aman was dying on the beach alone.His patients had heard it too,and agreed among themselves, low-voiced and shuddering, that aslow, lonely death was no more than these devil-men deserved.OnlyOslaf had looked troubled over the verdict, but Cai had sent himabout his errands with a sharp word.
One day,Theo had said, tugging at hishair in frustration,I will set us all an exercise of treating oneanother no better than we deserve, and we will see at the end ofthe day how many of us are left standing.
But Theo was dead.Leof was dead,killed by a Viking, and with him had been buried the best of Cai’sChristian intent.Ben had forgotten all about Aelfric’s orders, itseemed, and all night Cai had watched how he and Oslaf workedtogether, how in every unoccupied moment gaze had found devotedgaze.Cai wondered if they’d found some quiet place in the moonlitruins to celebrate their impurity, their soul-condemninglove.
Leof, killed by a Viking.Cai driedhis hands.There on the sand, at the sea’s very margin, the woundedman lay.This one was Cai’s.
The sand was cool beneath hisfeet.He could have been alone in the world, one heart beatingunder the springtime stars.He took time to look at them, as Theohad taught—the little constellation of the lyre, the leapingdolphin and the swan Deneb’s great sail, these three in a trianglewhose rising promised summer.Mars glowed dully near the horizon,as if pleased with his night’s work.Hundreds of millions of othersglimmered behind the full moon’s cobweb light.Yes, millions,Theo quietlyreminded him.More than the grains of sand on this beach, and no matterwhat you’ve heard, I don’t believe they’re holes pricked by theangels in the firmament of night.
Cai, who had never thought so, but hada hard time believing each star was a sun like the one that lit uphis own days, shook his head in wonder.The beach stretched outbefore him, a long, broad sweep southwards, every grain a tiny starin the silver light.The only flaw in its stillness, its perfectserenity, was the black shape of the man down by the water’s edge.He was motionless.His cries had stopped.Cai, who was close enoughnow to make out his matted hair, drew his sword and began torun.
“No,” he whispered, barelyaudible to himself above the thud of his heart.“Don’t die.You’remine.”
Red-bronze hair, streaming over a facewhite as bone in the moonlight.The incoming tide was beginning tolift it, make it drift like seaweed.If Cai left well alone, thewaves would do his work for him.But drowning wasn’t enough.Drowning wouldn’t wipe out the sword stroke that had ripped Leofout of the world.Only another would do that.He skidded to a haltbeside the fallen man.He stood still, planted his feet squarely inthe sand and raised the sword high in both hands, blade downward.One plunge would do it.One blow.
Cai, stop.You alreadydelivered it.
Cai froze, hands convulsing round thesword.Theo’s voice was as real as the wash of the sea, but hecouldn’t turn to look.The man at his feet was the raider he’dencountered in the gully, the first to engage with him.Torchlight,tawny wolf’s eyes.A brief rip and grind of metal through skin,against bone and then out again.On to the next.Cai hadn’t thoughtthe blow a fatal one—hadn’t thought at all after that.But hisblade had put this man here.
Perhaps not.Cai tossed the swordaside, suddenly frantic to know.The fight had been brief butsavage—perhaps the raider had sustained some other wound.Crouchingbeside him, Cai pulled at the thong of his jerkin.Already the saltwater had begun to shrink the leather, tightening the garmentacross the young man’s broad chest.Cai pulled out a knife from hisbelt and quickly cut through the thong.The skin beneath the jerkinwas still warm, with the fading heat of an apple brought in fromthe orchard on a hot day.Smooth as an apple’s too, rippling overthe framework of muscles and bones underneath—and unmarred, exceptfor the one gaping hole Cai had put there himself.
He sat back on his heels, gasping.Hefelt sick.When he searched for his cold, vengeful anger, it wasout of his reach—not far, but enough, like the sword he’d castaside.Just beyond his fingertips.He moved to retrieve the weapon,and his medical kit tugged at his shoulders, the strap pullingtight.Cai couldn’t remember picking it up when he’d left theinfirmary.He must have grabbed it out of habit.
“I’ve come to kill you, notheal you,” he told the pale face hoarsely.“You took my friends,you and your kind.You took Leof.”But the beautiful man laid outon the sand had passed far beyond care for such things.He had losthis helmet, the disguising metal stripped from him.His sins,whatever they had been, were smoothing away in the moonlight.Theseawater rippled and gathered, and shot out one eclipsing wave tohurry on the dissolution.On an impulse he couldn’t understand, Cailifted the Viking’s head clear of the water.
A fist grabbed the front of hiscassock.Cai lurched back, and the Viking shoved onto his elbow,soaked hair whipping back off his face.Cai lost balance.He landedhard on his back, the young man seizing the advantage and pouncingup to straddle him.His thighs clamped tight on Cai’s hips.Thehand Cai had last seen drifting limply in the foam was now clenchedtight around a rock.Amber eyes blazed into his, blind withuncomprehending hate.
Cai still had hold of his knife.Hewas a doctor, and cold vengeance had turned out not to be his gift,but he was his father’s son—the dagger’s tip was pressed to theViking’s throat.“Go on,” he growled.“Brain me with your rock, andI’ll slit your gullet with this.Then we’ll be quits.”
Chapter Four
The wolf’s eyes fell shut.A crescentof white glimmered through his salt-rimed lower lashes.The rocksplashed harmlessly down into the sand, and the huge, viriletension holding his body taut over Cai’s drained away.His armsbuckled and he collapsed.
Cai snatched the knife away,just in time to spare his enemy the passive drop onto the blade.Hedidn’t know why—he’d done worse things tonight than cut a man’sthroat.And this washisViking, the one whose life he’d come down here to take inplace of Leof’s.He rolled out from under the soaked deadweight,sprang to his feet and stood watching while a wave broke over theyoung man’s face.If he was playing dead again, the game would soonbe up.Cai waited.The seventh wave and the ninth one, powerfulheralds of the incoming tide, washed right over the raider’sbody—tumbled him over onto his front.He lay still.
