The Humming of Numbers by Joni Sensel Page B

terrain below to reorient himself. Twice more, however, he found himself confronting a creek in the wrong place or a hill where he’d expected a hollow. Only after he gave up on his eyes to follow the stench of burning and the slope under his feet did he finally aim true.
    Eventually he broke into open fields and got his bearings. Then Aidan coursed the drystone walls, moving in long Z shapes toward the monastery. It blotted the horizon like black ink splashed on a purple drape. The evening was dreadfully silent, free from the grunting of pigs and the braying of donkeys. A few orange streaks in the distance marked roofs and crops still smoldering yet. Aidan stayed hunched in the shelter of the low walls, not stopping to prod any of the lumpy shadows in the fields. They were clearly not cattle or sheep. He did not want to recognize more than that.
    When he drew near the abbey’s rear gate, he hunkered under a tree for a long while, listening to nothing and seeing even less. He smelled char but could not find a billow
of smoke. If anyone at all breathed inside the monastery’s ramparts, it was not apparent.
    Aidan crept to the gate, which he found ajar. Peering through the gap revealed more darkness. Drawing a tense breath, he slipped inside.
    He dropped immediately to a crouch, nearly invisible alongside the thick gatepost. Robed bodies, impossible to deny, were strewn in the yard.
    Aidan swallowed hard against the gorge that rose in his throat. Cowls and hems fluttered, lifted by the light nighttime breeze. Their owners no longer hummed of numbers at all. Aidan could hear only faint echoes, mostly the desperation of one, bouncing in the yard’s vast, hollow silence.
    He scanned the nearest building, the kitchen. No light glowed from inside. When he was sure that this much of the compound, at least, was deserted, he crept toward the Great Hall and the monks’ cells beyond. The minutes dragged with his feet. He bit his tongue to keep from calling out for one of his brethren, anyone, to answer. The only thought that kept him from fleeing was the recognition that the corpses on display were not enough to account for all of the monks. The rest could be holed up or hostages yet.
    The rows of monks’ cells and the novices’ dormitory also were still. In the yard between there and the front
gate, Aidan froze. He feared he recognized a slight form sprawled in the dust. After long seconds, motionless except for the thudding of his heart, Aidan goaded himself to check closer. Once he had already decided whose body it must be, he could finally move his feet.
    Rory had fallen facedown. Wincing, Aidan put a hand on his shoulder to gently roll him. He whimpered at the result. His friend had been struck across the back of the neck with a heavy blade. His broken neck had been nearly severed as well, so Rory’s body flopped over while his head only lolled. Aidan’s stomach lurched. Empty, it had nothing to discharge but bitter phlegm.
    Not hearing his own sobbing breath, he gently pushed Rory’s body back into place. He hoped the younger boy had not seen the blow coming, but his sprawl suggested he had been running. Aidan doubted that the foreknowledge of a short life had much eased Rory’s fear at its end. His eyes burned at that thought. He didn’t bother, in the dark, to blink away the gathering tears.
    When Aidan lifted his hand from Rory’s shoulder, his palm squelched, sticky. Revolted, he leapt back to his feet. Furiously scrubbing his bloody hand across the wool of his robe, he dashed blindly toward the abbey’s main gate. He’d seen enough.
    A bell rang.
    Startled beyond reason, Aidan plastered himself against
the nearest refuge, the High Cross that loomed near the gate. It offered no comfort but the cover of shadow. His mind flailed to connect the ringing with the fact that the monastery seemed to be peopled with nothing but corpses. The bell had tolled four times before he