Brothers of the Wild North Sea by Harper Fox Page A

He could wield a sword, more or less, and show others how to do it, but he had no more idea than his father of how to coordinate men. He’d been their doctor, their friend, not their leader. He crashed to a halt face-to-face with a young man whose surpassing beauty was visible even behind the nose guard of his iron helmet. The noble face registered—what—surprise? A strange recognition? Red-bronze hair streamed in the wind. Golden wolf’s eyes flickered wide. The moment passed. A lean arm arced up, sword blade flashing, and he and Cai were nothing but beast meeting beast, both rigid with the will to stay alive. The Viking failed to lift his shield. Cai drove forwards into the gap, the burnished flesh for an instant revealed between a leather jerkin and a belt. His sword tip sank deep. He hauled back, ready for his next man—God, another beauty, so like the first they had to be brothers. This time his arm was knocked aside by a vast, roaring mountain of muscle and hide, the leader, who’d emerged from his tussle with Ben in a bloodstained fury.
    A pitched fight broke out on the cliffs. Men who’d been ordered to stand guard at the infirmary, storehouses and crypt came racing down, yelling like the blue-painted savages Broc’s Roman ancestors had driven from the hills, and joined hand-to-hand in the fray. They were beyond Cai’s control, wild with anguished recall of the last raid—of how it had felt to be sheep in the path of these wolves. Most had never lifted a weapon in anger in their lives. They hacked and jabbed indiscriminately, their training thrown to the winds. Cai yelled out orders unheard. The Vikings would slaughter them wholesale, surely. He was too occupied with his own battle to look, to try to save them.
    His sword descended through air. Thrown off balance, he staggered. His man—a snarling weasel who’d been doing his best to disembowel him with an axe—was gone. All along the clifftop was unfolding a sight he could never have dreamed of. He sat down hard on the turf, hand going slack round the hilt of his sword. The Vikings were running away.
    He leaned back, laughter shaking him. They wouldn’t have expected resistance at all, let alone a suicide-dash by madmen. No strategy Cai could have planned for them would have worked so well. He didn’t understand the cry going up among the last of the raiders rushing back down the cliff path, but he could guess. Retreat! Retreat!
    A warm weight hit his shoulder, and he almost turned and ran Brother Oslaf through on raw-nerved reflex. Oslaf skidded to his knees, throwing his arms around Cai. “We did it! They’re going!”
    “All right. No need to strangle me.”
    “I killed one myself. I lifted my shield, and I lowered it, and…” Oslaf demonstrated, Cai wriggling out of the way. Then Oslaf’s eyes went wide and dark. “I… Oh, God. I slew a man.”
    Cai took the boy’s sword from him. He tucked it back into its sheath. “You helped save your brothers.”
    Oslaf nodded. But Cai knew for some men that answer could never be enough. It wouldn’t have satisfied Leof. Cai dismissed the thought. For himself, he looked at the fallen shapes on the turf with unmixed satisfaction. None of them wore a cassock. Not only had they repelled this raid, but the vikingr would think better of it next time. Oslaf would have to work out his own salvation. He was trying now, his gentle face frowning and lost beneath its bloodstains.
    Cai put a hand on his shoulder. “You did well.”
    But Oslaf wasn’t listening. A big shape was emerging from the smoke, chilling Cai’s marrow until it resolved itself into Benedict’s familiar form. Cai hadn’t seen him since the beginning of the fight. He hadn’t yet had time to fear the worst, but he grinned in relief and waved.
    Oslaf’s joy burst like a leaping salmon. He shot away from Cai and ran full pelt for Ben, who opened his arms wide to catch him. Cai looked away. So much for playing the game…
    And that