At lasthe was alone.Nothing and no one could touch him out here.Cai letthe oars rest in their rowels, muscle spasms chasing one anotherdown his back, arms throbbing.The monastery had one smallsailboat, but Cai had taken his usual coracle.It was little morethan cattle hides stretched over a wooden frame.One man couldhandle it, though, and he hadn’t wanted the intricacies of sail.Just to run the craft down the causeway with a tremendous scrapeand rattle, leap into her at the last second, and row and row.Helowered his head.Sweat trickled down between his shoulderblades.
The sunlit waters held him.He felt their movement under thekeel, one tiny part of an unimaginable whole of movement, a rockingand surge that could bear him—if he had strength and fairweather—right to the frigid wastes of the north, or south to theMid-Earth Sea, where Theo had told him, eyes distant with longing,that dolphins leapt and the sun shone all year round.Far to theeast was Fen’s home, the land of the Danes.Perhaps he ought tohead there, surprise thevikingrby going to them.They couldn’t be worse, them andtheir dark gods, than the nightmare unfolding itself at Fara in thename of Christ.
No.Hewanted to stay here and feel that mighty rocking, greater than anyman or god.He also wanted to stop crying, because that was what hehad been doing since he cast off, raw sobs racking him.His chestwas sore.Strength was leaching out of him.With an effort, hecaught his breath.Nothing in his heart or mind would accept thatBen was dead.
“Ben,” he called out, as if his friend’s spirit might still benearby and could come back to set things right, wipe out theatrocity.“Benedict!”
Only thewind answered him.He curled up, laced his fingers round the backof his head and closed his eyes.
A thudon the prow of the boat brought him round.He didn’t know how longhe’d been sitting there.He was sleepy, and a kind of numb peacehad come over him.He didn’t think it was the holy serenity Leofhad said was the goal of their religious lives, but he would takeit.It would do.Leof, Benedict, Theo.Gone.A bird was sitting onthe prow.It was one of the fat little creatures that haunted thegroup of rocky islets two miles or so out from Fara.Their beakswere striped in vivid rainbow colours, their movements comical.Thepuffin watched him curiously, shifting its weight from oneoutrageous bright pink foot to the other.Then it took off, shortwings beating frantically, towards the nearest island.
Theseals were hauling out there too.It wasn’t basking time.Cai knewthe rhythms for this far better than he knew his canonical hours,the tidal intervals when the rocks below Fara would almostdisappear beneath the furry, mottled bodies.As he watched, a smallflotilla of beautiful black-and-white ducks bobbed past thecoracle’s prow, calm on the surface but heading purposefullyinland.
Get out of the water.Cai receivedthe message loud and clear from these three harbingers, and he setit aside in his mind.The day was still lovely, if he didn’t lookbehind him to the place where surly clouds had been gathering sincedawn.The ducks became a glimmering patch in the distance.Eider,they were called, their feathers highly coveted stuffing forpillows.Addy ducks, the locals sometimes called them.
You have to find Addy.Addy will give you the treasure—thesecret of Fara.
Cai satstill.Theo had been silent in his head for a long time now, as ifleaving him to deal with his own problems.In a way that had beengood, because his voice—so close, so vivid—had made Cai fear forhis sanity, but he had also missed him.This was just a memory,though, an echo.He reached for it, and like a dream it dissolvedfrom under his grasp, leaving him desolate.
He had come out here to fish.That was what he’d told Fen, andhe would do it.He got up stiffly and shook out the net from itsheap on the deck.He was a good fisherman, adept at spreading hisnets against the current of the sea.Getout of the water,the creatures of theislands said.Well, he would when he was done.And if in themeantime the tempest chose to break on him, he would take that asGod’s word.The Viking had sparked something in him he had thoughtwas dead, some instinctive yearning to friendship and life, but hewas tired now, and Fen was far away.Yes.He was done with thefight.
The sunturned copper green and vanished.Out of the darkness came avoice—one note, low and huge, filling the horizon.Cai’s fishingboat sat still in the midst of it on water turned suddenly, deadlycalm, and he listened.This was the voice of the wind, not upon himyet but racing blackly towards him over the waves.
Avisceral terror awoke in him, nothing to do with his life on theshore but a blood-simple message from his bones, lungs and heartthat they did not want to be out here, exposed like a cork, withthat demon gale bearing down on them.That they, no matter howtired Cai’s spirit was, did not want to cease.He grabbed the oars.He didn’t stand a cat’s chance in hell now, but he began torow.
Thestorm broke like the end of the world.The voice became a shriek,and the millpond water boiled.Just for a moment Cai had theadvantage of it all—the wind was howling landward, pushing him.Then the first wave heaped itself out of the mouth of thedemon.
Itsmashed over the coracle.Cai ducked and clung to the littlecraft’s hull while its force thundered down on him and spentitself.For seconds the whole boat was under water, then shesomehow righted and heaved back to surface.Scrabbling for purchaseon her soaked deck, Cai managed to look up.
Straightinto the demon’s maw.A wave the size of Fara’s church was rearingover him.Half-blinded with salt, Cai stared at it.He had time tohear its snarl, its hungry, sucking roar as it gathered up, tuggingthe coracle into its undertow.Cai waited.He would meet his end asTheo and Leof had met theirs—upright, unafraid.He wouldn’t lookaway.
Chapter Eight
He wasswimming.It might have been for minutes or for years.His sense oftime had gone down with the coracle, shattered toshards.
No.Noteven swimming, not anymore.His arms were numb.He was clutching aspar from the wreckage.Each wave drove him under for longer, lefthim less time to suck lungfuls of air in between.He was startingto like the submersions.It was quiet down there, out of the shriekof the wind, the brutal chaos above.Down there was a memory, onethat branched off from reality and blossomed on its own.Down therehe hit the sands again with Fen, and this time no guilt about Leofrose to stop him, because Leof knew all, understood all, forgaveall, and was no more likely to condemn him than the sun or themarram grasses waving over his head.Down there Fen’s arms closedround him, and even better than the sweet rush of hunger andrelease was the reality of that body on his, as if all his life hisflesh had yearned for this brother, this counterpart, a missingpiece of himself at last returned to him.
Thememory-dream was waiting.The spar became an obstacle to it, agrudging barrier, and he started to push it away.
A wallsliced down into the water barely a foot from his skull.Bylightning flash and tarnished light, Cai saw it—a timber wall,curved and glistening.A voice close to his ear said, “No, youdon’t,” and a hand locked into the back of his shirt.
A hugestrength hauled him upwards.No more tender than the waves hadbeen, it dragged him over the top of the wall, bruising his ribsand hips.A boat, Cai realised, when he was more in than out of it,and the strength let him go, dumping him onto its deck.He landedfacedown and lay still.
A bootpromptly shoved at him.“Physician!”
He kepthis eyes shut.He was done for, his lungs flooded.The deck beneathhim heaved, and he rolled with it, nothing more than flotsam on thetide.
“You!Caius!Dead or alive?”
He gothis head up, coughing and choking, and shoved onto his arms.“Dead.”
“Get your arse up off that deck and help me anyway.”
The nextflash revealed a Viking in the prow.He was soaked and resplendent,his jerkin and leggings clinging to him, cassock discarded God knewwhere.With one hand he was clutching the mast of Fara’s onlysailboat.He was holding the other out to Cai.“Come on!Help meraise sail.”
“Sail…” Cai grabbed him and hauled himself up.“You can’t.Notin this.”
“How do you think I got out here?”
