Brothers of the Wild North Sea by Harper Fox Page A

Leof’s destroyed face. If not a demon, he’d at least brought scarlet-handed murder into his brethren’s midst. “I don’t forget anything,” he said. “Get the others back to bed, and…tell Aelfric if you have to. Go.”
    He didn’t look up as the door thudded closed. He couldn’t pull his attention away from the man on the bunk. Was he gone? After taking from his satchel a piece of obsidian glass, Cai held it over the pallid mouth. He couldn’t detect a rise and fall in the Viking’s chest, and he didn’t want to touch him again, to feel beneath his week’s growth of soft beard that fine skin. He waited. After long moments, a faint cloud appeared on the glass.
    Cai got up. There was a bucket of water in the cell already, and a pile of clean rags. He remembered now putting them in here when he’d been treating the others after the fight. He washed his hands, scrubbing them afterwards with the essence of sage and lavender Danan had taught him would help kill invisible sources of infection before surgery. He had perhaps half an hour before the effects of the poppy wore off. He drew up a stool by the cot. “Stay asleep for your own good, demon. I am going to save you. Or kill you, and I don’t care much which.”
    The sword wound was deep. Dark blood rushed from it when Cai pulled back the Viking’s leather jerkin. The bedframe was soaked with it, a black pool spreading on the floor. Another sign of life, Cai noted bitterly, stemming the tide with rags. Pulse after pulse of it, the heart still beating out the dance somewhere within that elegant chest, with its ribs sprung as beautifully as timbers in the keel of a longship.
    Stitching wouldn’t be possible yet—the edges of the wound were ragged and too far apart. Cai couldn’t remember twisting the blade as he’d dragged it back, but perhaps he had. He’d never been confronted with his own battlefield handiwork before. Quickly he soaked the cleanest of his rags in the solution of sage and lavender, wadded them up and began to pack them into the gaping hole. Blood welled up immediately around them. He grabbed a dry cloth and pressed that on top, then another. Both bloomed crimson, like the poppies that opened in one sunny hour around Benedict’s barley fields and faded as fast. Cai needed an extra set of hands. For want of them he began to unfasten the rough hemp girdle round his waist, then stopped. The Viking’s own belt would do better. Three inches wide and secured on his lean belly by a savage-looking wolf’s-head buckle, it would hold the bandages in place, and Cai could tighten it hard enough to hold pressure on the wound.
    He undid the belt. The buckle was cleverly forged, the mechanism of it belying the crude silver wolf. Hands slipping on blood, he tried to tug the leather strap free, but it was caught behind the young man’s back. Cai reached under him and lifted his hip.
    The Viking stirred. It was much too soon for the effects of the poppy to have worn off, but he was built like a young oak tree, his vigour manifesting in every line of his body. Nevertheless he was blind. Cai knew that when the amber eyes opened and searched for a focus, their pupils immense in the lamplight. Quietly, hampered by the rattle in his throat, he asked a question.
    Cai almost understood him. The language was like trying to look round a corner in his mind. Theo had taught that the narrow sea between here and the Dane Lands had once been dry, nomad hunters following the herds freely across it, bearing their words and ways with them.
    Where am I? Who is here with me?
    Cai ignored him. He ripped the sheepskin hook that secured the belt at the back, jerked it up far enough to cover the wound and drew the strap tight through the buckle. The Viking arched and groaned. Blood gleamed on his lips. The words came again, two out of five familiar to Cai’s ears. Who is here with me? Who?
    Cai sat back. He folded his arms and pushed his hands into the sleeves of his