Tried and failed.He couldn’t doit anymore.What was the point of it all, if one day Fen came homeandhewas lying under the damn hawthorns?Cai had seen the lookin his father’s eyes, unsentimental and accurate, sizing him up.His lung was sticking to the inside of his ribs, or so it felt, andeach day it hurt him more to breathe.He’d known it to happen withdeep wounds like this one—scar tissue forming too fast, tooabundantly, binding and strangling where it should heal.
He scrambled back up the dunes.If he was going to follow the track of the dawn sun, it had betterbe soon.Now,his racing heart told him.Go now.Go now.He could take one of the ponies Brochad brought.No.If he was going to leave Fara, desert hisbrethren, he’d take nothing with him but the clothes on his back.Ahuge, sick exultation rose up in him.He would go.Each step hetook—down the long track to the Tyne, and then further south still,down maybe as far as Eboracum where trading ships set out acrossthe North Sea—would carry him closer to Fen.God, it wasstrange—now that he’d made his decision, he could almost catch hislover’s scent in the air.A sense of his own failure clawed at him,but he was past caring.
“Fen,” he gasped, stumblingout onto the slope where the beehive cells lay curled and dreamingin the day’s first light.“Fen, I’m on my way.”
Chapter Nineteen
Leaving was easy after all.Cai did itin a handful of sun-shadowed minutes, in still waters at the turnof the monastery’s tide.He shooed Oslaf gently out of his bed,before it could be said that the abbot of Fara had a new friend anda short memory, and he washed and dressed himself as if for anyday.
He breakfasted with his men, notingwith detached approval that Oslaf had colour in his face and thathe went back for a second slice of Hengist’s fresh bread.He metthe boy’s grateful gaze steadily.Afterwards he sat with Hengistamong the grain sacks Broccus had brought, which were piled up inthe covered part of the church for want of other space, and the twoof them went through the tough, basic arithmetic of supply anddemand.There would be enough to last the winter—just.If therewere no more raids.
When Cai left the church, a blazingautumn day was unfurling its wings.The sunlight held a crystalchill of summer’s end.The shadows were blue-black, deep.The menof Fara had gone to the fields, or to help in the villagers’ dairyand barns.The place was as still as a starling’s nest with all itsnoisy fledglings flown.Cai changed into his travelling clothes andunhitched his sword from the wall of his hut.After a short tusslewith his conscience, he took one of Broc’s horses after all.Theothers had survived the raid, and maybe this one could be spared.Leading it to a drystone wall so he could clamber on—a leap he hadused to make without thinking—Cai reflected that he had no choice.Even this much exertion had left him coughing and fighting for air.He was going to the Dane Lands, and if he tried it on foot he wouldget as far as Godric’s southern pastures and probably die thereamongst his cows.Everything was silent.He turned the horse’s headtowards the track that led out across the mud flats.
He rode until the sun was high.Whenit began to beat upon his skull in silent hammer strokes, itfinally occurred to him to wonder why he’d brought no water.Well,there were streams everywhere.He would stop and find one, if hecould overcome the need in him, insistent as his pulse, to travelsouth, and south, and south.Water was easy.
Not so food.Cai touched the placewhere his satchel would normally hang on journeys like this.Hehadn’t brought it.He’d set out with nothing at all.He hadn’tthought as far ahead as paying for his passage on board ship.Hecould work it, he supposed, as a physician on one of the bigmerchant vessels, or simply as a deckhand.
“First you have to getthere.”
Cai reined in, gasping.There on thetrack ahead of him a woman was standing.There were no trees orcover for miles around.This was the first lonely moorland stretchof Cai’s journey, and to be there she must have dropped from thesky.She was familiar.Cai rubbed his eyes.“Danan?”
“Who else?Stop that horsebefore you trample me.”
Cai dismounted, hanging on to thebeast’s mane until he was sure his legs would bear him.The oldwoman was planted squarely in his path, and the trouble Cai washaving—another sign of failing health, perhaps, distortions of hisvision—was that she no longer seemed old.She was boldly upright.Her hair, though still white as banners of falling snow, drifted insunny abundance.Her expression was ageless, stern as the angel’sat Eden’s gate.
“I had thought better ofyou,” she said.“And old Addy certainly did.”
“What are you doing out here?What has Addy got to do with...”Cai remembered his manners.Nomatter how she appeared to him, she was frail and alone, and nobetter equipped for a journey than he was.“I’m sorry.Where wereyou going?Can I take you?”
“And interrupt yourflight?”
“Danan, I don’tunderstand.”
“You’re leaving, aren’tyou?Your men, and the holy lands of Fara, and thebook.”
Cai left one arm hooked round thehorse’s neck.That way it would look as though he were standinghere easily, not about to drop to his knees on the track.“How doyou know about the book?”
“I know everything thathappens in this land.Don’t you realise that by now?I am alwayseverywhere, just like the wind and the sea.”
“That’s…” Cai shook hishead.“That’s what Addy told the ducks.”
“And what did theythink?”
“I don’t know.They justwaddled after him, but…”
“They seemed to understandit better than you.Caius, you can’t leave Fara.You know thatyourself, or why have you come out here in your shirtsleeves,without enough food to get you to the next town?”
“I just wasn’t thinking.Ihave to go on.”
“You won’t makeit.”
Yes.Cai knew.No need for a dying manto pack his bread and cheese.He couldn’t even raise a flicker ofdenial.“Please let me use up what’s left of myself as Iwish.”
“In search of your Viking.”Danan came and took Cai’s arm.She led him off the track, and Caiwent with her helplessly, wondering at the wiry strength buoyinghim up.“Sit down here with me.”He subsided onto the flank of abeautiful green mound he hadn’t noticed before, and she settledbeside him, producing from somewhere in her robes a leather flask.“Drink.And listen.It was good of you to come and rescue me fromAelfric’s pyre, even if I didn’t need your aid.”
“Well, it was Fen whoreally… What do you mean, you didn’t need me?You were about to beroasted alive.”
“It was Addy who said Ishould wait and let you try your powers—or at any rate, see whatwould happen if you didn’t.He’s an old fool.I damn nearsuffocated, and I singed my robes.Still, you came at last, didn’tyou?”
