Brothers of the Wild North Sea (22 page)

“Yes. But he wasn’t worried about that—at least, not about the one he was writing. He said that was only a copy.”

“Theo’s book? What was it?”

“He called it the
Gospel of Science
.”

Addy almost laughed. He caught the reaction, pushed it firmly down. Cai saw himself and Fen through the old man’s eyes—a dishevelled, faithless monk in fisherman’s clothes, and a barely tamed Viking raider whose face had lit up at the idea of treasure. “A little blasphemous of him,” Addy said, settling back. “Very typical, though. I wish he’d had time to complete it. And I wish I could tell you his message means something to me, but I know of no treasure. No secret. Young men, I must think about this, and pray, and I must do so in solitude. You lost your boat last night?”

“Yes. She was smashed to pieces.”

“How you escaped the same fate is a mystery greater than Theo’s. God cares for children and fools.”

“It was not God.” Fen clambered onto his feet, hoisting Cai easily up with him. Cai remembered how he’d blanched with pain on the training ground just the morning before, and wondered if the shipwreck had been good for him. “It was me. I am an excellent sailor.”

Once more the old man fought laughter. “Well, whichever of you takes credit,” he said solemnly, “I’m glad of the result. Companionship is rare for me, and I will gladly shelter you here for the night. But go away now. There is a stone hut down by the shore with the remains of some boats in it, perhaps belonging to the devils when they were still human enough to know how to sail. You may be able to patch one together for yourselves.” He nodded, gazing into the ashes of the driftwood fire, where spectral blue-green lights were shimmering against the morning sun. “Yes. Yes, go away now.”

Fen leaned over the hull of an upturned boat. He braced, muscles cording up and down his bare arm, and tore a length of planking away. He examined it critically. “Rotten at both ends, but sound enough in the middle.”

Cai put out a hand. Fen tossed it to him, and he fitted it into a gap in the ancient fishing boat they were repairing. He hammered it into place with a rock, crushing the rotten ends tight into the good wood. That would form a kind of seal, and the clay pit a little way up the shore would provide caulking for the rest. He sat up. “That’s the last of the holes. The big ones, anyway—for the rest we can just bail. It’s not a long trip, if we catch an incoming tide.”

“All right. Let’s haul her out and have a look.”

Cai got out of the hull where he’d been working. He picked up the prow, and Fen went to grab the battered stern. They dragged her out of the crude drystone boathouse that had stopped her from eroding to splinters and dust over the years. She was heavy, but Fen didn’t flinch, and he set her down on the runway outside with a dazzling grin. “She looks good.”

“Better than she has any right to.” Cai eased down his end, grateful that none of his repairs had snapped out of place. “Speaking of which…”

“Yes. I am better too. Your stitches came out somewhere last night, and beneath them I am healed. Maybe you were right, physician, about the benefits of salt water, or…of something.”

Cai had begun to wonder if
something
had been consigned to the seabed along with their boat. They had come down here in silence and worked quietly, only exchanging the words they needed for their task. Maybe a
vikingr
pirate could grasp at a brother-in-arms in a moment of danger, rekindle the fires of life with him, but afterwards… “I should come and have a look. May I?”

“You never asked my leave before.”

“My patients have to do as I say. If you’re well again, I don’t wield the same authority.”

Fen examined him from the far side of the boat. The morning was brilliant now, a brisk wind dancing in the light. There wasn’t much chance of concealment, for damaged vessels or for men. It didn’t seem likely to Cai that Fen had shared his doubts, but there was a trace of uncertainty on his brow, in the corners of his mouth. He took a couple of steps back and sat on the remains of the hut’s seaward wall. “Yes, then. You may look.”

Cai knelt in front of him. It felt natural, and it was the best place from which to undo his leather jerkin and the top strand of his leggings. Lifting both garments far enough aside, he saw that the wound had closed, its edges ragged but clean. New flesh, pink and healthy, had formed inside. “It’ll scar,” he said roughly. “I’m sorry.”

“For what? Thor counts our scars in our favour when we die.”

“No. That I did it to you.”

“We were in battle. And we were nothing to one another then.”

Cai looked up. It had been on his lips—
what are we to one another now?
But he didn’t need to ask. Answers to questions he hadn’t even known were forming inside him were there in Fen’s eyes. Fen put a hand on top of his, pressing it to the warm skin inside his jerkin, laying it over the wound. He leaned down, and Cai stretched yearningly up. They kissed with brief ferocity, then Cai sat back on his heels. He tugged the front of the leggings open with his free hand. He’d noticed in some lightning-flash instant the night before that Fen had dispensed with the subligaculum cloth, just as he’d left his own behind him with his cassock on the storeroom floor. Easier to get to… He gasped and swallowed hard as Fen’s shaft rose, then without hesitation—the moment before memories of Leof, of doing this for him, could rush in—he dived down.

Fen grabbed the hair at his nape. Pulling away, not claiming him. Cai sat up. “What’s the matter?”

“This…”

“What about it?”

“Among the Torleik, it’s…something a lesser man does for a greater.”

Cai stared at him. In Leof’s case, that had probably been true. No, certainly true—as time went on, Cai understood more and more what strength had lain in that gentleness. What strength such gentleness took, to survive unsoured in a rough world. “Do you think,” he growled, “a lesser man is about to do it to you now?”

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…”