the western shore

by khaleesian

Summary:

979 A.D. Charles and Erik sail away to find Raven....and Sebastian of Sammelsberg learns that there are some people you just shouldn't fuck with.

Sequel to 'Beloved of Ravens' and it would be essential to read that first.

Chapter 1

Charles bit his tongue to keep from yelping. He had been trying so hard to be careful, but everything was so miserably wet and horribly cold. His feet were numb. So it was almost inevitable that he slipped off Einar’s sea chest on his way to the bow, managing to crush his foot, bark his shin and smack his kneecap all at once.

A drumming tattoo of light feet heralded Erik’s arrival. Charles pulled himself off the inner strakes with a grimace. The Vikings pranced over their wretched boat like it was the only fixed point in the firmament, even when swells practically turned the deck into a staircase.

“That sounded like it hurt.” Erik thumped down next to Charles and tugged him into a seat on the sea chest. “Let me see.”

Charles hissed when Erik rolled his leggings back and pulled his shoe off. Not much blood, just a long pink scrape pointed at an already-darkening bruise. Erik sucked his teeth sympathetically and murmured down at Charles’ feet while he pressed each of Charles’ toes with his thumb. Nothing appeared to be broken.

Charles squinted at the top of Erik’s head. “Did you just call me your poor little horse?”

“Uhm,” Erik glanced up at him and thought clearly is there a correct answer? “Perhaps?”

Charles cocked his head. Erik hunched further over Charles’ injured leg. “You know, like you are…valuable and attractive and…sturdy?”

“And you could ride me all night?” Charles volunteered dryly. Erik just grinned and tugged Charles’ shoe back on with a delicacy he barely looked capable of. The pain was starting to soften to an ache. Erik captured both of Charles’ hands in his equally-cold hands and cupped them in front of his mouth. Erik’s steamy breath made Charles shiver.

“Ole’s looking for you.” Charles waited for Erik to pull back and stand up. But Erik seemed oddly reluctant, pressing little kisses to each of Charles’ chapped knuckles. The glamour that hid Charles from the other sailors would cover Erik if he stayed close. Sometimes Erik seemed to like being invisible. It was a small boat.

Ole cast another puzzled look around the stern and Erik sighed and stood up. When Erik stepped away from Charles, Ole blinked and tugged on his beard nervously like Erik had just appeared from thin air. Erik chopped his hand left with an impatient flourish. Ole nodded and leaned gently on his rudder post.

Erik nudged Charles up onto the bow platform and pulled his cloak up around both of them. “He wants you a lot today.” Charles remarked, unabashedly snuggling under Erik’s arm. Finally, warmth. “I thought he was the one who knew the way.”

“It’s overcast.” Erik didn’t complain or even shiver when Charles slid both hands under his tunic. He countered by inching his hands down the sides of Charles’ leggings. Einar was curled up not four feet away, snoring like a boarhound in front of a fireplace.

“I have no idea why that should be significant.” Charles winced and let Erik tug him into the space between Erik’s legs. He rolled his head back on Erik’s shoulder. Covered with Erik’s cloak, and shielded from the worst of the spray, he felt almost human again. “Maybe you could explain.”

Erik sighed into Charles’ hair. “I always know where north is. Even without the sun.”

It took a moment for the significance of that to burst open in Charles’ head. “How?”

Erik shrugged under Charles’ cheek. “I don’t know. I feel it.”

“That’s very interesting.” Charles said gravely.

“You would think so.” Erik snorted. He bit the top of Charles’ ear, very tenderly.

“What does it feel like?” Charles continued. “Is it just…constant awareness? Does it radiate?”

Erik groaned and tightened his arms around Charles, but he did appear to be thinking. “It kind of…pulls at me.”

“Like a rope?” Charles pinched the wool over Erik’s thigh and tugged. “Or more like a thread?”

Erik growled wordlessly into Charles’ ear and worked one hand down to Charles’ crotch. “More like this.” Erik gave Charles his own gentle tug.  

“You’re not even a little curious?” Charles tried to be strong, but Erik’s breath in his ear was making it hard.

Erik cupped the hardest part and murmured, “Stop talking.”

****

Vikings didn’t ever actually sleep at sea; they napped in little piles of wool, fur and long hair, like particularly fierce puppies. Charles woke up from a deliriously seasick dream to discover that the warrior using his thigh as a pillow wasn’t Erik but Gunnar Thorstenson and Gunnar was prone to drooling. Charles gave him a quick nudge and slunk down to the stern to piss and grab a dipperful of clean water. He managed not to slip and fall again. His foot and leg throbbed with each hesitant step.

Erik was leaning on the beitass, cupped in the sail like it was a hammock. He looked precariously close to the rushing water. Charles frowned at him. “I wish you wouldn’t do that. You could fall in.”

“Guess I could.” Erik leaned over the side in a way that made Charles’ stomach heave. “What would you do if I did?”

“Jump in after you.” Charles folded his arms. The only way to deal with Erik when he got like this was to seem utterly unmoved by his fatalism.

“Can you even swim?” Erik grinned and tossed him a piece of salty dried venison.

Charles swallowed hard and then gamely tore off a chunk. “Well enough to drown with you.”

Erik threw back his head to laugh and swung down off the sail. Gunnar sleepily asked him what was so funny and Erik called ‘your face’ in a jovial tone.

Erik gave Charles a squeeze as he sidled past to crouch in the stern with the impassive Ole. Charles half-heartedly smacked at Erik’s wandering hand. He still felt surges of amazement and awe when Erik displayed his power, but Erik found Charles’ own displays of power exciting in a very primal way.

Erik had insisted that the glamour was essential to the endeavor, since the smallest crew to man the smallest boat was a dozen men. And they never brought thralls apparently.

“Why not?” Charles had asked, frowning. Keeping a dozen people in very close proximity constantly unaware of his presence was not the kind of challenge he relished. “Is it unlucky?”

“No it’s…” Erik had paused, considering. “Rude.”

“Rude?” Charles wondered if he was misunderstanding something. “As in discourteous?”

Erik had nodded and gone back to scowling down at some silver pieces.

“Because you don’t want to…make one thrall serve a dozen men?” Charles tried to analyze the source of the social impropriety. Surely Erik didn’t mean rude to the thrall.

Erik had snorted and slapped a coin on the table with a click. “Odin’s eye, think a little. Yes, you wouldn’t want to make one thrall serve a dozen men. Or share a favorite thrall with a dozen men.”

He had broadcast a mental picture at Charles that made Charles turn quite red even though the fire was low. “Ah, so, I guess they won’t see me.”

“Excellent.” Erik grinned at him sharply, left off toying with the silver and pulled Charles into bed. Charles had woken the next morning with a deep red stain sucked into his shoulder, tooth marks on his neck and fingerprint bruises all over his thighs. He had thought about tartly suggesting a brand or a tattoo, but considering how Erik’s eyes might glitter at the prospect, Charles held his tongue.

It had been easier than he’d expected to steal a boat and kidnap twelve Norsemen. Charles barely had to exert any control at all to make them follow Erik’s lead. They were slightly troubled by the lack of other ships, but aside from Ole they were all young enough to be trusting. They were doing what they usually did. And the glamour worked well enough that Erik lost no opportunity to grope him publicly whenever the spirit moved. Not being distracted by that or the seasickness had been a test of his power.

“Land today.” Erik said laconically and Ole nodded along with him. “The outer islands”

Charles felt almost weak at the knees with relief. Or maybe he was still a bit seasick.

He cast his mind Ravenward.

****

 “So far north.” Charles couldn’t help but exclaim in wonder. They had run the prow of the ship right up onto the sand of this secluded bay. Charles pressed two fingers to his temple and felt for the bright core of Raven’s consciousness.

“You’re sure you feel her?” Erik shoved Einar out of his way. The young Viking was wandering around the deserted beach scratching his head, obviously puzzled at the lack of looting prospects.

“You don’t have to push him around like that.” Charles protested. Charles wrapped Einar’s mind in thoughts of re-watering and re-victualing and Einar brightened and reached for his bow and a waterskin.

“Now you’re defending the vikinger?” Erik sighed. “It’s what he understands, Charles. Now quickly, where’s your sister?”

“That way.” Charles pointed. “I think two days walk, maybe three?”

“Hmmmm.” Erik gave him the sharp look that meant that Erik was about to do or say something that Charles wasn’t going to like. “How about instead of us both walking…” He gestured at Charles’ bruised leg. “…how about just me, running?”

Charles was already shaking his head. “She wouldn’t come back with you.”

“She’s been feeling you in her head for days.” Erik argued. “And I know enough of your tongue to charm a woman, at least.”

“Oh I’m sure you must have had lots of practice with that.” Charles returned sarcastically. “I guess if you can’t talk her round, you could always bash her over the head.”

“Charles, this is rough country.” Erik gestured up at the hills which did look forbidding, Charles had to acknowledge. Scrubby trees clung to sere patches of earth. This was the only bay they’d seen with sand; the rest of them had been fanged with jagged rocks. “You’re already hurting; you’ll just get hurt worse.”

“I’m coming with you.” Charles set his feet stubbornly, trying to ignore the flare of pain from his knee. He tried to keep his agitation from bleeding into the other men. He was keeping their minds so carefully blank that most of them were just staring at the surf, dazed.

“Charles.” Unexpectedly, Erik swept up both of Charles’ hands and placed ardent kisses on his palms. “Lille konen min, it would hurt me so much if something were to happen to you.”

Charles bit his lip and narrowed his eyes. Outrage warred with affection in his chest. “Did you just call me your wee wifey, Erik?”   

Erik blinked up from where he still pressed his mouth to Charles’ hands. Erik tried hard, but he never really looked innocent. “Two days, I promise.”

“Fine.” Charles jerked his hands back peevishly. “As long as you never call me that again.”

Erik just grinned his usual rakish grin and said. “Look, I’m leaving you a good karvi boat and twelve sturdy slaves.” He thumped Gunnar’s broad shoulder as if to illustrate just how sturdy. “It’s a decent morning gift, if I do say so myself.”

“Just go.” Charles huffed. “Before you get yourself a headache that lasts all day.”

Erik ducked in for a hard parting kiss and pressed his forehead against Charles’. “Anything happens, you know how to find me.”

Erik wiggled his fingers while hitching up his quiver and donning his helmet. He had left his sword on the ship, content with an axe and a couple of short blades. Charles twisted his hands together, wishing irrationally that his gift was the ability to run all day.

“They’ll keep you safe.” Erik was jogging backwards as he shouted. It looked like a mile-eating pace. “I’ll be back soon with the lady.”

****

Young Vikings weren’t exactly the best conversationalists, but they knew how to make a solid camp. He watched them haul a cask of ale down from the ship and gather wood for a fire. Each of them had thrust a sword in the sand in a semi-circle, like a half-made fence.

Charles amused himself by skipping smooth stones in the calmer water of the bay. The sun was high, but the breeze had an edge like a broad knife. It felt good to be on land again. He kept wanting to call out an observation or question to Erik. Charles sighed to himself as he knelt on the sand.

He closed his eyes and pressed the cold, damp tips of his fingers to his forehead. He was hesitant to vocalize thoughts to Raven, but he could make her think of him. He didn’t want to scare her. With a slight effort he could see what she was seeing: high hills patched with shadows as the clouds moved over them. She was sitting on a sun-warmed rock, feeling grateful for the spring.

He had tried to explain to Erik how the mental connection worked. “It’s like her head is a place. My head is the village where I live; her head is the village closest by. The way between, I know it so well, I could walk it in the dark. But they’ve moved the village, so the path is longer.”

“But you can still find her.” Erik had been doing something very complicated with two different colored disks of metal.

Charles found himself wanting to pluck them out of the air. “It took some doing, but yes.” The price had been more than a few headaches. But it had felt like good pain, like muscles well-used and growing stronger.

Erik looked up at him sharply. “Because you were so close.”

“She was the first person who knew me.” Charles said simply. “I should have known it would take more than the sea to divide us.”

Nodding, Erik looked away and his coins dipped an inch. “I guess since we have to cross that sea, it’s lucky that she’s the one who’s easiest to find.”

Charles stroked a hand over his mouth, hiding his smile. “Well, to be fair, she’d be the second-easiest to find.”

“Then who…” Erik looked up and stopped. He quickly ducked his head, cleared his throat and scowled at his coins.

That was Erik’s way. Punch him in the face, he would probably smile even as blood threaded between his teeth. Say something that amounted to ‘your soul is my home’ and he tilted his chin into something not quite a sneer.

Charles cast his mind out to Erik’s and grinned. Erik’s thoughts weren’t unlike that of a wolf. He was focused solely on keeping aligned with Charles’ directions, his eyes, feet and brain sought the path of least resistance. Erik was thinking only of the next place for each footfall, his breath shallow and even. Charles stayed with him for a long moment, feeling the pleasure of such effortless movement, such singular focus.

Charles knelt on the shore, feeling his knees dig hollows in the sand. He took a deep breath through his nose and widened his attention. He pushed his consciousness outward gently.

Out on the islands, hardscrabble minds were thinking about mutton for supper in a dialect not unlike Erik’s harsh Norse. Closer in, the Painted People thought in a language Charles couldn’t quickly decipher and the gist of their thoughts was supplication. They propitiated their gods more slavishly than any Christian priest, a prayer for every decision, every occurrence, every moment. Charles felt the gentle twitches of animals, and the distant hum of the crowded south. He pushed his mind out further, ignoring his damp knees and chapped fingers.

He blinked his eyes open. That felt strange.

He shut his eyes and pressed his fingers against both his temples. Somewhere out there, a singular mind hadn’t droned along indifferent to his gentle touch. One mind had opened and reached like a grasping hand. Charles’ eyes flew open as he gasped. He reached out again, but the moment of connection was gone. Try as he might, he couldn’t find that clinging, clutching presence again.

 

Charles stared out at the surf, the distant haze of the horizon. He threw another stone, not bothering to skip it. He looked up at the sun which was only now overhead and wished for the hundredth time for Erik, smiling.

****

Charles hadn’t expected that he would be able to sleep after a long, weary day of watching young sailors roughhouse and drink. But here caught between the highlands and the sea, it was exhausting just breathing the air. He’d finally settled himself between Gunnar and the fire, interrupting his doze just enough to keep it fed.

The morning dawned misty and chilly. Charles burrowed his head deep into the hood of his cloak and cupped a hand over his half-frozen nose. A light creaking drew him all the way awake. He sat up and blinked blearily at the smoking gray-orange embers. He leaned over to grab a few splinters of wood and squinted out at the bay, where their ship bobbed on the low tide.

Charles stopped and rubbed his eyes, straining to look into the dense mist. Gunnar rolled sideways and farted in harmony with his snores. The dampening curtain of gray fog seemed like it was seeping into his head.

Someone was walking along the shore toward them.

Charles scrambled to his feet and pulled his cloak straight. He struggled to focus on the solitary figure who seemed to pause at his gaze, swathed in a dark, hooded coat. Charles tried to shrug off any feeling of foreboding and took a few steps down to the beach, stretching to unkink his shoulders.

As he got closer, he kept expecting the shadowy figure to vanish. This felt like a dream, the heavy, quiet air and light shushing from the early tide. The dark figure seemed to beckon him when he hesitated until there were only a handful of steps between them.

A woman, Charles thought. An astonishingly lovely woman who didn’t smile. Incongruously, she seemed to be dressed for a royal audience in a white gown under her dark coat. Charles found himself wanting to bow and then he laughed aloud. For all that she looked real, this must be a dream.

She had cocked her head in response to his laughter. She seemed to be waiting for something.

Charles felt a sudden flicker of apprehension. If she was real, there were a dozen Vikings behind him who would be anxious to ascertain just how real. He really had no business just standing here, rudely staring.

“My lady.” He placed one hand on his chest and bowed. “My name is Charles Xavier, and I am at your service.”

When she didn’t speak, he sent out a tendril of thought to ascertain whether he was speaking to a shade or if they even shared a language. She smiled brilliantly then and said very clearly. “Yes, him.”

Charles froze in astonishment when someone just appeared behind him and his last thought before a heavy blow laid him flat was ERIK!

****

Erik sat up and promptly bashed his head on a low-hanging branch. The vicious pain cut through any remnants of sleep. He blinked out at the tiny burn that was edged with fir trees. Mist coalesced on the tip of a leaf and dripped on the back of his neck. He shivered and gripped a hand over his axe.

He’d run until the light had been an uncertain, dusky glow and then he’d bedded down in the first place that looked like it would stay somewhat dry. He was sore now and full of uneasy dreams.

Charles had called to him. His head still rang with it.

Erik stood up and paced around the small clearing. He thought simply, Charles? Then he pictured Charles in his mind, the beach where they’d parted. He was vaguely uncomfortable. It was like someone had stripped away a pelt that had been keeping him vitally warm. He shivered again.

It was usually quiet inside his head. At the moment, it was silent.

“Charles.” He spoke into the muffled dawn. At the other end of the burn, a bird chirped hesitantly.

He could feel his heart beating in his throat now. The voice in his head called out in a yell: CHARLES!

He noticed he was pacing, boxing north, west, south and east in a few tight turns. Breathing hard. He desperately wanted to run.  But where?

Without Charles’ guidance, he had no sense of where to find Raven.  As the mist lightened and he continued to feel none of the warm, sleepy awareness that was Charles’ usual presence dawning in his head, he became intensely conscious of how alone he was. He’d never been this far inland. This part of the island held nothing for his kind except spooky stories of the strange, dark folk who hadn’t anything worth taking and fought like fierce animals when cornered. They were all rumored to be shape-shifters. It was no wonder that Raven had taken refuge up here.

He’d been so relieved when Charles had agreed to stay on the shore. He’d wanted Charles to stay home so desperately, safe in their fortified bay surrounded by people who knew the full measure of Erik’s reputation. There was nowhere safe in the world, but Erik’s chosen clan held their corner well enough. He could’ve left Charles at home and slept at night.

But of course, Charles wouldn’t hear of it and he wouldn’t even argue the point, he just leveled Erik with a steady blue gaze. And Erik wasn’t a fool. There was no reward without risk and the way Charles lit up at the thought of his blue damsel made Erik want to be the one to bring her home.

Like the way one of his mates would bring a bauble back to make his woman’s face glow, Erik sneered at himself. He was hopeless, helpless before the thought of Charles’ pleasure. Some days it made him want to pull his hair out.

So he’d managed to quell his own need to keep Charles always within an arm’s reach and left Charles on the lonely shore in the care of tractable young men who could turn into savage and bloodthirsty warriors in the blink of an eye. With a fast ship if a quick escape became necessary and enough swords and axes to hold a small army at bay.

But now, silence. Erik pulled his axe-head into an impossibly sharp disk of iron and caressed it uncertainly. He gritted his teeth against the indecision. He’d feel awfully foolish to run back empty-handed if Charles was just too momentarily distracted to reassure him.

But something told him that this wasn’t the case.

It would be worth a day’s run at this point just to see Charles’ puzzled look. To put his hands on Charles’ shoulders and squeeze him.

Erik tightened the lower laces of his fur-lined boots, stretched his toes out and rolled his shoulders a few times, preparing to run.

Of course, it was at that moment that the giant burst from the trees and attacked him.

****

Charles returned to consciousness in a creaking place that smelled strongly of ocean brine and wet sheep. His wrists were bound with leather thongs tight enough to be uncomfortable.

He swallowed a hot metallic mouthful of saliva and grimaced. His head was pounding and he could rub his knuckles along the swollen edge of a lump on the back of his skull.

There should be a name for this feeling, he thought, wrinkling his nose.  The sensation was so wretchedly familiar. Fucking Vikings.

He blinked hard a few times, relaxed his jaw and cast his thoughts out. The consciousness around him felt odd, like glowing torches when he was accustomed to the rushlights of human minds. And there was an odd muted presence as well, life but no thought. It made Charles feel like he was itching under his skin. He was on a ship, a large ship…what Erik would have called a drekar.

He felt the sudden presence of that grasping, open-handed mind clutching his. The woman he’d seen, he realized with alarm. Her mind curled around his for a moment and it felt shocking like he’d been introduced to someone who had grabbed at his crotch instead of shaking his hand. It lasted for a moment and then a sudden blankness like the torch had been snuffed out.

Charles spat out another hot well of saliva and shook his head free of dizziness. He reached out for familiar thoughts, seeking Gunnar, Ole and the others and was dismayed to feel nothing but a sick, sluggish seizure of pain that was Gunnar’s death throes. Charles had to press his fists hard against his mouth to keep from vomiting. Gunnar was blinking slowly, trying to press the silver-pink coil of his own guts back inside his belly.  And Charles couldn’t do a thing but brush a swift mental touch over him, stealing his pain and drifting him toward darkness.

They were all dead. Because of him.

He took a second to gather himself before reaching for Erik. Erik who was miles away and a whirlwind of frantic, white-hot anxiety, but still alive. Charles sagged back against a wooden cask almost more queasy with relief. He needed to find out what was happening, where he was and then he could allay Erik’s biting fear and save himself.

Charles stretched his mind out to the brightest flame of consciousness he could feel nearby. A male presence was standing on the deck above his head and his brain was a dark fever unlike any Charles had ever sensed.

You, thought Charles grimly. Come to me.

****

Erik’s usual experience of the Painted People was that they were…small. Among the fiercest fighters the world had seen, but typically tending to be compact and darker than their fair southern neighbors. This man, to use the term loosely, had festooned himself with the ritual paint of their tribes, but he towered easily two heads above Erik and he was broad as a wall.  

And he’d launched himself at Erik without regard for any combat conventions. Erik barely got his axe up before the giant grabbed him and threw him into a tree.  Erik managed to duck the heavy blow that would have followed, but it was a near thing. He lost his axe as he crouched and darted left just in time to avoid a kick.

The giant snarled in frustration. There were bones twisted in his hair and beard. Either the leg bones of a rabbit or the long bones from the back of a man’s hand. He reeked with corruption; the scent made Erik glad he hadn’t eaten anything yet.

Erik pulled the axe he’d dropped back to his hand and flung it at the giant’s head, readying his blades. The huge man deflected the axe head with a speed that he should not have possessed.  Erik hesitated for a blink and the giant shoved him hard enough to make him stagger. He barely kept his feet but he managed to make the far side of the clearing and bought himself a moment to regroup. The giant growled at him and for a moment the air seemed to shimmer.

The giant wasn’t wearing a pin or any buttons or talismans, Erik noted grimly. And no one that big should be able to move that fast. Erik lengthened his blades, pulling each into two deadly shards.  He was going to whip them out and take the overgrown beggar’s head off at the shoulders. Typically just the sight of the metal yawning and stretching was enough to make men quiver, a second of gelatinous fear before the end.

The giant seemed barely to notice. With an odd, feline grace, the man ducked under the swooping blades to fetch Erik another dizzying blow which knocked his helmet flying.

Erik wobbled but he stayed on his feet, pulling weakly at his iron. He could not die here. Charles…

The giant looming in his vision seemed to shimmer and rustle. Erik looked straight into cat-like eyes, the woman around them a rich, gleaming blue. Unearthly. His body was momentarily too heavy, he stumbled to his knees and still those amber-yellow eyes followed him.

“Raven.” His exhalation was more cough than word, but her eyes widened.

“I’ll kill you, you fucking pirate.” Her words didn’t have any heat, which made them all the more frightening. “I don’t care if you magicked up my name.”

“Why don’t you then?” Erik wheezed, showing his teeth. She wouldn’t kill him now, he felt pretty sure. She was too curious.

 “I’ve seen your face before.” She shook her head slowly. “But I don’t know you.”

“Your brother sent me.” Erik panted helplessly. He tried to get to his feet and swayed.

“You know my brother?” Her hands tightened and the air shimmered again.  “Charles?”

“Yes.” Erik swallowed and tried to stop panting. He surreptitiously pulled his blades closer. She had to feel the truth of his words; it was far too strange a story otherwise.

 “How?” Those golden eyes pierced like daggers.

“He’s my…” Erik coughed and scrubbed a hand over his mouth. My sun on the darkest days. My flame on the coldest nights. My slave. My lord and master. “He sent me to find you.”

“You? Norsk?” She sucked the word through her nose, like the grunt of a pig. The insult almost made him grin. “Why would he send a Viking to find me? How do you speak my tongue?”

“Charles taught me.” Erik felt the weight of all the whys and wherefores and his heart sank. He should have waited for Charles to stumble along beside him; he should have carried Charles. Raven’s questions were going to sink him and he just didn’t have time for charm or violence, not with this gaping silence in his head.

“You’re not scared of me,” she said unexpectedly. She’d cocked her head, birdlike.

“I’m a little scared of your big brother.” Erik pulled the disk of his axe head out of the air. Raven grinned and shuddered back into her giant’s form. “Nice trick.”

“As yours.” A quick ripple left her slim and blue again. She nodded at his blades which were twitching slightly with his breath, hovering at about shoulder height. “I always told Charles we couldn’t be the only ones.”  She said this with distracted satisfaction, a hint of the younger sister proved right.

“He really wants to see you.” Erik had imagined this differently. He had expected a sprite of a girl, not this menacing warrior woman. Maybe to Charles she seemed harmless.

It was hard to read the expression on her face. She looked down at her bare feet wistfully.

“Can you feel him?” She looked up and asked sharply. He got the sense that this was a make or break question even though her eyes gave nothing away.

“Not now.” Erik looked straight into her eyes. He got the sense that Raven had nothing but contempt for deceit, perhaps because of just how easy it was for her.  “I left him back on the shore, and…”

“And you’re scared.” Again, she sounded distracted, like she was just voicing her thoughts.

“I’m not…can you do what he does?” Erik tried to keep from snarling. He couldn’t quite touch his usual hot, bright anger and without Charles’ soothing presence, he felt dangerously adrift. And scared, yes, but she didn’t have to say it.

“I can’t read your mind. But I have eyes.” She shook her head. “I’ve felt him for days now, but nothing since after sunrise.”

He looked at her for a long moment. More amazing than her skin was the look in her eyes, it beat in his heart for a moment: kindred. He took a deep breath and she nodded at him.

Without a word, they began to run.

****

Charles was not expecting the man who came to his peremptory command. Having grown up with Raven, he managed not to flinch at the red skin, the tail. He’d seen something like this creature once before, a crimson drawing on the margin of a manuscript. Some exhausted monk’s demon nightmare.

Both his appearance and the manner of it made the edges of Charles’ wonder crackle with fear. This man was frankly amazing but Charles could sense his indifferent bloodlust. He’d killed Erik’s shipmates, the men who’d been protecting Charles all unknowing.  His blank, blue eyes were like moonstones, pale and empty. 

This man was…not a Viking. His mind was like a deep chasm, old and wanting. 

Charles steeled himself. Where am I? Where are we going?

The thoughts came back to him garbled in a strange language, he could see a ship, the beautiful woman, a hooded figure but it was all limned in darkness. A wide sandy spit that the tide covered, a long flat tongue of green land, no, an island.  There was a ruin, arched windows that still had a little glass in them. Almost a fortress.

This man could be there and back in a heartbeat. He’d like to go, he doesn’t like sailing. But the black bishop requires his help and he has a pretty, fecund one in the keep, holding her safe for…

“Azazel.”

Charles looked up at the woman who lashed out with her mind as she spoke. He felt a mental press that strengthened as he resisted. Like she was tugging at his wrist as he clutched the…Azazel’s mind.

He was tempted to yield…perhaps she would be more forthcoming if he let her man go. But then the tingling pain in his wrists and head made him set his teeth a little. He hardened his control and started pushing back at her.

Her face set as she tried to reinforce her own resolve. He could feel her edges where they wanted to fray and he teased at them gently while she ruthlessly cut at him for control of not just Azazel’s mind but now her own. Charles blinked and frowned at the sensation of yet another presence, the odd one.

With a gasp, the beautiful woman burst suddenly into a living fountain of crystal. Charles recoiled in surprise and found himself pressed against someone who grabbed his shoulders and shoved a hard, hollow covering over his head. For a moment, Charles couldn’t see.  The sweat on his cheek stuck to the inside of whatever they’d muffled him with.

When he shook his head, his vision returned. His sudden blindness wasn’t anything truly sinister. They hadn’t even pulled a hood over his head; he was wearing some kind of helmet. He could feel the metal resting on his cheekbones, pressing hard on the bridge of his nose and he had a singular vision of Erik putting on his leather helm, how Erik always ran his finger down the nose guard to straighten it.

And then his mouth went dry because he could see, yes, but he couldn’t hear. The presence of all the minds around him was stifled and distorted almost to silence. He tried to reach out with mental fingers and the crystal witch just smirked at him as she transformed back into flesh.

“Is that necessary?” She delicately dabbed at her nose which was bleeding. The red man grimaced and flicked his tail like an angry cat.

A voice behind Charles, an ordinary sardonic voice said, “You seemed to be getting overwhelmed.” 

****

Erik hadn’t thought he could run any faster, but the fire of fear and uncertainty kept him going until his sides burned, his feet ached so deeply that could barely feel them at all. Raven had made him stop around the noon hour, insisted that they drink from every third stream they splashed over. She matched him for stamina at every turn, and she was matter-of-fact in a way that brooked no denial. They needed fuel to run. Some delay was inevitable.

He thought he’d managed to prepare himself for the worst. At every step, he steeled himself, even the final few stumbling strides down to the beach. But no scenes of smoking carnage awaited them. Somehow that was almost worse. The beach was smooth and untouched. He couldn’t see their karvi ship, just the remnants of a fire burned out and a ring of swords in the sand.

Sand, water, sky. Except for a few gulls circling and screaming, nothing moved.

He stood in the middle of the curve of the bay and barely kept himself from howling with rage.  Raven threw herself to the ground as the leftover swords spun crazily through the air. Wisely, she didn’t say anything even as they stretched into improbable shapes that cartwheeled around impotently, striking each other hard enough to throw sparks.

He clenched his fists and gazed out to sea. He should have known from the first that this would be a mistake.

**

Gunnar had gawped at him. He remembered very clearly the moment last summer that he had shoved an unconscious thrall up over the gunwale with a shout at Gunnar to mind his fucking head already. Gunnar had slung the limp body over his shoulder, looking askance at Erik. “You’re taking a slave?”

“What tipped you off?” Erik had snarled as he boosted himself over the side. He could have done it smoother with the aid of all his weapons, but he made it a point not to frighten his shipmates unduly.

“You’re just so…fucking picky.” Gunnar wasn’t clever enough to mask his expression and it was clear that he thought that Erik’s slim, pale youth wasn’t worth the sweat it cost to haul him around. “You’re gonna have to feed him all winter and he’s probably sickly.”

“I’ll skin your carcass to feed him if I have to.” Erik snapped as Gunnar dropped Erik’s new-found prize into the hold.

“I’m just saying…” Gunnar was already reaching back over the side to grab a bundle of furs. “My old man has four. They don’t always make life as easy as you’d think.”

Erik had gritted his teeth against the temptation to cuff Gunnar around the head a few times just on principle. Gunnar wasn’t too clever. No one usually burdened Erik with their opinions.

And it had gotten just gotten worse when they returned.

Hrafnkel had raised one eyebrow at the slim slave in front of him and said, “One for the sacrifice, Járnangan?”

Sometimes he couldn’t resist shoving his difference in their faces, all his many differences. Erik stretched his bravado over a smile and said archly, ‘Freya’s got nothing to do with what I want this one for.’

And Hrafnkel had laughed because the chieftain was adept at reading Erik’s face and it was either laugh or have blood flowing ankle-deep in the hall. They all laughed. And he had his first thrall.

And somehow it hadn’t really occurred to him until he was crouched on his own bed, staring down at his new possession, that this latest prize could stare right back. Erik had felt oddly unsettled by that deep blue gaze. He’d contemplated beginning as he meant to go on. He could pull his new…Charles up off the floor by his hair and have him warming the bed this very night. Easy now, while he was still half-starved, bruised and stupid with fear. And those wide eyes wouldn’t trouble Erik overmuch if Charles were face down in the furs.

But there was tomorrow and the day after and the rest of the winter to consider.

He couldn’t quite put his finger on what made this creature so appealing. If he were very hard pressed, he would admit that he liked the way Charles’ teeth were set in his mouth, the arrogant sweep of his nose.  

“Don’t be scared until there’s something to be scared of, lille hingsten min.” Erik had meant to be reassuring, but he thought later that it might have been a warning.

He liked that Charles had proffered his name first. Charles would duck his head against Erik’s stare, but if Erik looked away for even a fraction of a moment, Charles’ gaze drew right back on him. This one was stronger than he looked.

You’re so fucking picky. Gunnar’s words came to him when he rose in the morning, already hard and hungry. Looking down at the pale skin of his trophy, he thought now. Charles would be rested but still groggy. Erik’s fingers itched for his sleep-warm and pliant flesh. Crouched next to the banked fire, Erik had the impulse to seize his sleeping slave, knock his knees apart and...

Charles gasped a little on waking and one of his eyes opened wide while the other stayed half-shut where it was swollen. The bruise on his face spread like a shadow out of his hairline. Erik watched the long tendon in Charles’ neck tighten and tremble as Charles swallowed and raised his chin, waiting.

Erik stood back and poked the fire. He made porridge desultorily without remembering until afterward that he should be showing his new possession how it was done. There was an unexpected pleasure in watching Charles eat, his hunger and gratitude almost palpable. Erik was surprised to find that there were myriad small pleasures in getting Charles clean, warm, dressed in the best fashion for his status.

He supposed that knowing he could do as he pleased made him feel generous.

              

It seemed like a bare handful of days before Charles spoke like a native. Even the taciturn Gudrun had allowed that Charles had a clever head, which was gratifying.  He supposed that it might be beneath a warrior’s dignity to acknowledge the worth of his slave, but Erik didn’t pay much attention to conventions like that. He supposed he was pleased that Charles made such an effort to fit in.

Some thralls never came in line. There had been that sad girl who’d strangled herself with her own long braid, that fiercely proud young man from Alba who’d stabbed Thorsten early one morning, selling his own life cheap. But most humans wanted to belong somewhere and Erik knew firsthand just how far they would go to adapt.

He liked the way Charles’ ear was just at the level of his mouth. He liked the way Charles’ eyebrows arched when he didn’t understand something. He’d heard that the ones led by the black robes had funny ideas about their bodies, but he’d never experienced it firsthand. Charles’ extreme shyness was amusing even as it made Erik’s teeth feel sharper.

Almost all of Erik’s sexual life had been paid for with gold or steel but it wasn’t long before he knew that Charles was going to cost him awfully dear.  He wanted it all.  He wanted Charles’ sweet, untouched smile just as much as his sweet, untouched flesh.  And he knew that it might require skill he didn’t have to enjoy both.

The day Charles had uncurled enough to smile directly at him….he’d felt a bit of the red haze of the berserker then. He only remembered in patches: how the scent of Charles’ skin made Erik want to bite him hard enough to leave welts, the clear whites of Charles’ eyes, his quivering lips, the hard wings of Charles’ shoulder blades spread underneath his palms. But even as he clutched and tasted and buried himself in Charles’ taut, gasping body, some potent imperative pulsed through him, gentle, be gentle.

Erik had woken up the next morning early, his fingers already tightening, his tongue tasting the edge of his teeth. Charles slept curled up with his brow still furrowed, breathing shallowly through his swollen mouth. Erik traced the air over the livid mark he’d left on Charles’ shoulder. All his muscles already ached with the struggle of not simply giving in to his instinct for pillage and rapine.

But he stood up and laced up, waiting until he was out in the dawn mist before pulling on his tunic. He’d gone on a long walk, trying to let the chill settle into his bones. He hadn’t felt this searing, nerve-wracking anticipation for years and then only before a fight. Stifling it was…hard.

It was natural, he guessed. He wouldn’t have any respect for a man who let a blade rust or food rot. A slave was even harder to replace.

He walked until his feet were sore.

Perversely, he almost hoped that he’d sown a seed of hatred in Charles with his violation. He wondered if he’d find Charles’ hatred and loathing as liberating as he did everyone else’s. But Charles persisted in radiating more confusion than fear. And Charles’ confusion infected Erik like plague.

Charles would flinch in the morning, but could be surprised into a smile by dusk. Erik couldn’t quite believe that anyone was as innocent as Charles appeared to be.

Erik took to carrying a smooth chunk of iron, pressing it between his palms in his odd moments of leisure to keep from seeking too much ease on Charles’ easily-bruised flesh. He had a vague sense that it was unseemly to want it so much from a thrall. And it was unnerving how much Charles just…pulled at him. There were moments (when Charles arched unconsciously into a touch, when Charles stroked his mouth to hide a smile, that amazing day when Charles had said, ‘I can see your thoughts’) that Erik felt a fierce flash of something not unlike rage…a sharp, hot feeling but fuller and more buoyant than anger.

It was confusing. Trying to push the feelings aside just made them stronger.

It had come up upon him so slowly, digging in like tree roots. By the time he’d realized the depth of the trap, it was far too late to fight.

It had been the day before he’d left on the last raid. After a couple of practice rounds, sparring with his shipmates and with his blood up, he’d thought of Charles, of how outraged Charles would pretend to be if Erik took him while the sun was high in the sky. But Charles was nowhere to be found.

He’d feigned indifference when quizzing Gudrun but she’d given him an anxious, wide-eyed look all the same. It had been almost the limits of his will to keep walking, not running as he searched the stream, casting about up the hill, trying not to call out. He was already displaying enough concern to make his shipmates laugh at him. Not that he cared.

Erik tracked the few footprints he found with hot, dry eyes. He gritted his teeth and tried to tighten down on his own frantic breathing. Charles lost in the forest didn’t bear thinking about. Charles was sturdy enough but…

He’d been just about to start shouting when Charles tripped out from behind a stand of fir trees. Charles tilted his chin down swiftly after giving Erik one long look that pierced like a javelin.

He’d wanted to grab Charles; he’d wanted to slap him. He’d wanted to twist his hands in Charles’ hair and kiss him hard enough to cut his mouth and taste his warm copper blood. Erik stared until Charles dropped his eyes even lower. Erik felt like his heart was beating in a way that was visible.

Charles kept his eyes cast down and he had a higher color than usual. His eyelashes stood out against the smooth, rosy flush on his cheekbones. Erik twisted both hands over the hilts of his knives to keep from doing something unseemly out in the open.

When he regained a semblance of control, Erik just jerked his chin and Charles fell into step behind him, obedient as always. He let Charles deliver his apples to Gudrun and then ordered him back to the house. 

Predictably, Charles had seemed eaten up with diffidence when Erik stripped his tunic off hard enough to rip the seam. But he’d arched up into Erik’s mouth, gasped sweetly in Erik’s arms at the end. Afterwards, Erik let him nap, pressing his nose into Charles’ soft hair. Lolling in bed before supper, before the sun set, Erik felt lazy and warm and replete.

And abruptly terrified.

Erik remembered starving. He remembered having nothing but filthy rags to wrap around himself, the pelts of animals ineptly cured. He remembered eating flesh-warm entrails cracked out of the bodies of small creatures. He remembered vividly the ache of cold and loneliness as deep and wearying as sucking mud.

He had sworn to have nothing in his life that would lessen him when it was taken away.

But a man may swear and the gods will laugh.

**

They had arrived at their destination in the chill fog of another day. Charles squinted against the bright white of the sky after the dark of the hold. He tried to look as if he was paying close attention to his captors even as he scanned the shoreline for any details as to their whereabouts.  Vexingly, the fog swallowed up the horizons.

He’d been given water and sufficient, if not plentiful, food. Which had been almost impossible to consume with his hands shackled to his waist.  He’d tried ducking and shaking his head furiously to work free of the infernal helm that was like a small, exceptionally vicious prison. Pressing his jaw hard against any edges he could find just left him with bruises and a headache. The ship was built tight enough that no light filtered in and he could only gauge time passing by his own increasing hunger and exhaustion.

When they brought him up on deck he noticed for the first time that he wasn’t alone.  A black-haired boy who looked a bit the worse for seasickness and a pale, red-haired young man whose face was half obscured by his cowl minced behind him down the unsteady gangplank. The boy was almost in rags, the young man wore the gray robe and rope belt of a novice.  

Charles clenched his bound hands together to keep from giving away his agitation. Hearing only his own thoughts gave him a sensation almost like vertigo, like he’d been unmoored from the earth. But these…people didn’t need to know that. Erik had taught him the many virtues of not seeming afraid. Charles raised his chin enough to look down his nose as their captors ushered them up the low beach to a hulking structure of red sandstone.

Charles squinted at the high arched holes that had been windows. That had been a church or a chapel surely. This was the vision that he’d taken from Azazel’s head. He looked north, up at a wide bay that shimmered like silver. The water couldn’t be very deep, at a low tide it would be a broad sandy spit.

They were taken through a ruined courtyard that looked like it was being built up into a secure bailey. Portions of the outer walls had been repaired with darker and lighter stones giving it an odd checked pattern. Inside they were taken through a room big enough to echo and left in an antechamber that was almost comfortable with a couple of low benches and a fire.

The boy stared around at the faded painting between the two high windows.  The young novice sat down on one of the benches gingerly.

“What’s your name?” Charles fought to keep his voice even.  The novice looked up at him with wide, terrified eyes.

“We’re not supposed to talk to you.” The black-haired boy said pertly. In the pale light from the windows, he still looked sickly and Charles felt a moment of sympathetic nausea. The boy pointed with his elbow at the young man on the bench. “He’s not supposed to talk at all.”

Charles squeezed both eyes shut briefly in an effort to stop himself from banging his head against the wall in frustration. “Hardly seems fair. Do you know why?”

The boy shrugged and grinned shyly.

“My name is Charles.” Charles paced over to the fire and surreptitiously twisted his hands against the thick leather restraints. It was nice, almost comforting, to speak his own language for a change. “That’s just me talking to you, which was not expressly forbidden.”

The youth on the bench said softly, almost a whisper. “My name is Sean.”

“Late of Whitby Abbey, Brother Sean?” Charles took a stab in the dark.

“How’d you…?” Sean gaped and then shut his mouth very abruptly. “They said you were a witch, like the other…I heard them whispering about you.”

Charles groaned inwardly. “Sean, I’m just a merchant’s son. And while your face tells me that your people hail from fair Eire, your accent is pure Northumberland. So it’s a fair guess that a young man in monk’s robes speaking like you do…”

“Huh.” Sean sat back on the bench, seeming to forget his nervousness for curiosity. “I guess it seems obvious when you explain.”  He fingered his rope belt, almost looking chagrined.

The young boy peered up at Charles. “You’re not a witch, then?” He sounded slightly disappointed.

At that age, Charles had relished a manageable scare. Charles bent down to face the lad as much as the eyeholes allowed. “Oh, I’m a fearsome witch. You’d better not catch me without this silly thing on my head. There’s no telling what I would do.”

“You can do things too?”  The boy grinned, almost bouncing with delight.

“Wonderful things.” Charles rolled his lip under his teeth, pondering that ‘too’. “Amazing things. But this…” Charles tapped his head on the edge of the mantelpiece.  “…is putting a kink in my rope.”

“Does it itch?” The boy asked in an anxious tone. He scratched his own armpit sympathetically.

“Like the Devil.” Charles said honestly.

The boy frowned and did a funny little jig in place. And before Sean could even squawk in alarm, he curled his small fingers under the edge of the helm and yanked it off.

****

“Hey!” Raven’s shout came to him thinly over the breeze. She had hiked up to the palisade that fringed the north edge of the bay and was waving for him to come up.

“This looks like one of yours.” She had crouched down close to the corpse, trying to turn it over without jarring the organs loose. Erik’s throat tightened. Ole.

“Yes.” Erik brushed his shipmate’s blank eyes closed and pulled a spare sword up from the beach to place in his dead hands. Raven bowed her head and whispered to herself. Erik was surprised that she’d talk to her god on behalf of a strange Norseman. But then she was Charles’ sister.

“This is strange.”

Erik nodded. “It’s like he fell.”

“But from where?” Raven gestured around at the bay. They were at the highest point. He could see another body floating in a swirling eddy of water, bumping back and forth into the cliff side opposite. The long hair spread out like seaweed. Erik swallowed a mouthful of bile.

“Charles isn’t here.” Raven stood up straight. “We’d feel him surely.”

Erik thrust both hands out, spreading his fingers. He’d left Charles with a seax and a circular cloak pin almost the width of his palm. And he couldn’t feel either of them. But he did feel something interesting.

He braced himself and started to pull. Hard. The weight of the wood and water felt like it was crushing him. He huffed two deep breaths and started to pull again. He noticed that Raven was watching him doubtfully before he had to close his eyes. 

“Knull meg i oeret.” He ground out through gritted teeth. The water below was starting to bubble and foam.

“What are you doing?” Raven kept well back. Her voice sounded tight.

The figurehead had almost breached. If he let go now, it would all sink again. His eyes felt like they would pop right out of his skull and pretty soon his teeth would break. But he kept pulling, gently, steadily. Come on.

He didn’t dare to breathe for long moments. And then the hull breached the water and Erik fell to his knees as the water poured out in silver showers.

When it stayed afloat, he fell back, gasping. Raven was looking at him with something that might have been concern.

“Impressive.” She squatted beside him and looked down at the bay. “You’re as red as a currant.”

“Iron rivets in the keel.” Erik gazed down at their boat, his moment of satisfaction waning quickly. “I guess it was faster to swamp the ship, rather than burn it.”

“Or they didn’t want anyone to see the smoke and come running.” She mused. “But is it any good to us anyway?”

She paused and looked at him out of the corner of her eye.

You can bury me in it. Erik grimaced and started. “We’ll just have to…”

And then Charles was in his head so fierce and sudden that if Erik hadn’t started on his knees, he’d have ended there for sure. He choked on his own breath and coughed furiously as Raven clutched her own crimson hair.

EriksofarnorthalivedonotbeafraiditisotherswhotookmepowerfuloneslikeussailedsouthmaybeadayiamontheHolyIslanditsafortressRavenbecarefultheyrelikeusbuticannotsheiscomingdonotbe…

It stopped abruptly and after a moment, Erik managed to pull his hands off his face. He was shaking all over; it felt like Charles had just poured a stream of visions in his head like a cascade into a waterskin.

Raven was retching gently, not bringing anything up.

Erik closed his eyes again and tried to sort through his new memories. A red demon and a crystal witch?

“She is coming?” Raven said with a slight quaver.

“Did you see what I saw?” Erik pushed up to his feet.

“Red…with a tail?” She said much more steadily. She rose gracefully, shaking her head. “Trust Charles to find trouble…here.” She gestured at the forlorn boat rocking in the empty bay.

“Do you know this place he …said?” Erik squinted down at the fringe of the scrubby trees on the far side of the sandy crescent.  As an afterthought, Erik tightened his fist and drew the ship up high on the shore.

Raven shook her head, “I’ve heard of it, but as far as I ever knew, it wasn’t a fortress, but a ruin. An old monastery.”

Off his blank look, she sneered, “You know monks? Black robes? Your favorite prey?”

“It’s not my fault that they have too much gold and silver and not enough iron and steel.” Erik showed her all his teeth. “You don’t expect a wolf to ignore the fattest sheep.”

She raised one blue brow and snorted “I suppose not. I’m not exactly…” She trailed off with a shrug. “It’s south of here, but I don’t know just where…”

“Erik!” A shout came from the foot of the palisade. Erik snapped his gaze down at Einar who was waving up at him frantically. Erik started to scramble down until a consideration brought him up short. He looked back over his shoulder and suppressed a shiver.

“Why Erik, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.” Raven’s voice came wryly from Ole’s mouth.

For a second, Erik’s skin crawled even while his lip twisted. “Lucky that.”

“How so?”

“Ole never said one word when none would do.” He let Raven climb down alongside him. It was amazing. She even smelled like the crabby old sailor.

Einar tripped on a loose rock when he was still a few steps from them and he ended up clutching Erik’s knees. He was practically gibbering when Erik pulled him upright.

“I was hunting!” Einar’s hair looked like he’d let doves nest in it and he was hoarse like he’d been yelling for days. “I came back and everything was gone! Gunnar’s dead, Erik! I didn’t know what…where are we? I don’t remember…Why are we here? Where are the others?”

Erik winced. This was going to be impossible without Charles. He had a brief flicker of an impulse to knock his shipmate over the head and leave him to lie here.

Einar grabbed Raven-as-Ole and squeezed her broad shoulders. She didn’t flinch when he embraced her. “At least we haven’t lost our kjentmann.” Raven patted his back awkwardly.

“Did you see what happened?” Erik asked. Einar could still be useful.

Einar shook his head, his mouth solemn. “It was…I thought I was dreaming. I kept shouting for everyone and the ship was gone. It was…” He patted the side of the ship and looked out at the bay, saying quietly, “How are we going to get home?”

Erik remembered suddenly that for all his size and bushy ginger-blond beard, Einar had only seen 19 winters.  

“Don’t trouble yourself, brother. I have a plan.” Erik clapped Einar’s shoulder and shook him a little. Einar was a hammer, not a blade. Luckily, there was plenty to keep him busy and useful and hopefully not asking questions. “Gather up the gear. Ole and I are going to rig another sail. You catch anything?”

Einar blinked at him. “A couple of rabbits and…”

“Good, go roast them. I’m starving.” Erik waved him away and Einar trotted off looking almost calm.

“Have you gone mad?” Raven looked up at the hull doubtfully. “Can three of us begin to hope to sail this thing?”

“If the weather is…absolutely perfect, then…maybe.” Erik rasped. It was going to be some incredibly weary work to pull a sodden sail from the hold and reeve it over the mast and beitass. “You said it was south, and it’s on the water…this is the fastest way.”

“Until we all drown.” She knocked her chapped, broken knuckles on the strakes.

“We won’t drown.” Erik snapped.

“Right. Iron rivets in the keel.” Ole’s face had never been made to smirk.

Erik pulled out his axe and used it to float over the gunwale. “We’re wasting time. Do you want to see your brother in this world or wait for the next?” 

Raven’s face hardened and she grabbed a sword off the beach and gestured with it. Erik tightened his hand and pulled her up over the side. He lengthened and elongated his axe head and wrapped it around the rudder and the edges of the boom.

“Do you know where to find this…Holy Island?”

“No.” She said honestly and his heart sank. “But I have a friend down south who will know and he’ll help us.”

“If these others…” The thought made him a little dizzy. “…are as powerful as Charles thinks, I don’t think one man can help us much.”

Raven squinted up at the sun which had just managed to burn through the low-hanging clouds. “I said ‘a friend’. I didn’t say he was a man.”

****

His moments of freedom cost him a day of solitary confinement in a cell at the end of a long dark passage. Charles surmised that this had originally been the domestic quarters of the choir monks. No comfort or ornaments, but the cell was large enough and almost warm. He was fed twice a day. But he was still shackled and with the helmet…well, he felt it would have almost been kinder to be suddenly deaf, mute and blind.

It was hard to believe that he’d spent a great portion of his life trying to ignore the full range of his senses. Now he felt like someone had cut his hands off.

He slammed his fist into the door, petulantly. No matter how much he bashed and ground and pulled, the clever little lock on the shackles did not break. Erik would make such quick work of this Charles thought ruefully. He couldn’t raise his hands past the chain on his waist, though he pulled until he was breathless.

He spent an hour trying to work his chin into the sill of the small hole in the door. With enough of an edge, he could maybe lever this infernal thing off his skull. But the flare of the helmet was too wide, the sill was too narrow and he ended by scraping his head on the wall in frustration.

He hoped that he hadn’t bled too much of his agitation over Erik and Raven. He pressed his hands together, saying a small prayer of thanks at finding them together. He felt like he was trying to warm his hands over a candle flame, poking at his memory of those two beloved minds.

He shuddered hard enough to knock his chin into the stone as he remembered the rest of it.

Having the helmet off, even for a moment, had been like sticking his face into hot embers. Pain and confusion had buffeted him ruthlessly as he’d reached out for the familiar. Vibrant flames of feeling raged at him, shame, anxiety, uncertainty, fierce joy. There were at least two people nearby who were in such a welter of panic and grief that Charles felt their minds like burning flesh.

He spent some time curled up on the platform that must have been a cot for some tired monk. This constant silence left a lot of room for echoes. The knowledge that there were others like him, maybe just steps away, but being unable to reach out to them hacked at his nerves with a dull blade.

Charles sat up and pressed his palm into the bruise on his knee. The pain throbbed up again, real and meaty. Salt sea air, crashing waves, Erik.

When Azazel came to get him, Charles made himself stand, move easily as he could with his bruised foot. Azazel seemed reluctant to touch him, not even a guiding hand on his elbow. After a long, stone-bounded walk, they came to a large room studded with chairs and a table. Not a refectory, but perhaps some abbot’s former private dining room.

Charles paused just inside the door and swept his eyes around the room. He couldn’t shake the sense that being blocked by the helmet meant that presences were hiding in the corners of his eyes.

The witch in white was there, idly fingering a chalice of something. Opposite her, a man stood under a ragged turquoise tapestry and smiled widely when Charles appeared. He spread his hands out as if Charles was a welcome guest.

“My name is Sebastian of Sammelsberg.” The man in the black robe managed to look as if he were consecrating a cathedral instead of pacing the flagstoned floor of a chamber that was still half-ruined. Charles couldn’t help looking at the marks that fire had left high on the walls, the whole place still smelled vaguely of old ashes.

“What is your purpose in kidnapping and imprisoning me?” Charles made his voice as imperious as he could, hoping he hadn’t forgotten how in a year of being a slave. “What is the meaning of this?”

But Sebastian of Sammelsberg didn’t seem to be paying close attention. “How are you called, my friend?”

 Charles rolled his lip under his teeth and breathed out slowly through his nose. This man was polite like the hood on a hangman. “My name is Charles Xavier.”

“That sounds rather grand.” The black-robed man turned to his lovely consort as if to elicit her agreement. She quirked her lips up briefly, even while her forehead stayed furrowed. “A name fit for a king.”

Charles set his jaw and knocked his bound wrists on the top of a heavy wooden chair. He noticed that the candelabra and sconces seemed to be exclusively wrought iron.

“We found you just in time.” The man spoke Charles’ language almost perfectly, but with a slight accent consistent with his Frankish moniker.

“I would beg your meaning, sir.” Charles took refuge in politeness even while his blood boiled.

The man smiled again and for some reason, Charles found his teeth on edge. “They told me that the most common prayer in these parts was a furore Normannorum libera nos, Domine. Which is to say, of course…”

“Save us, Lord, from the fury of the Norsemen.” Charles returned flatly.

“An educated man.” Sebastian of Sammelsberg turned to face him. “I dread to think what those savages might have had in store for you. They have no art but new refinements of cruelty. You have heard, of course, what they did to that Northumbrian lord…”

As Sebastian elaborated on the unspeakable death of King Ella a century ago, Charles had a flash of intense memory.

**

“I think this is just willow bark and something.” Charles frowned down into the cup. He winced when he tried to drink it and coughed again. It was so bitter that it almost hurt to swallow. He shut his eyes against the pain flowering behind his forehead. Late winter colds were the worst.

“What does it matter, if it works?” Erik was stoking up the fire after he’d paid the laeknir with two silver torques and ushered her out. It was sauna-warm in here. Charles threw off two of the furs covering his legs and Erik promptly replaced them, scowling anxiously.

“Expensive, yes?” Charles sniffled. “Two silver torques for some bark and…” He tilted the mug. “Dried mint.”

Erik looked at him like he’d started speaking High Church Latin. “What? I could have all the silver in this village, if I wanted.” Erik examined the bubbling stew for a long moment before turning back to Charles and snapping. “I don’t even like silver.”

“This is just a cold,” Charles said softly. “Don’t start sacrificing to Eir just yet.”

Erik stepped over, cupped Charles’ hot forehead and tilted his face up to beg. “Have a few more mouthfuls, yes?”

**

 “…one could almost admire their spirit, if it wasn’t eaten up by their mendacity.” Sebastian of Sammelsberg paused as if he was waiting for Charles to thank him for the daring rescue.

Charles looked very pointedly down at his shackled wrists. “I am unsure that my situation is much improved, sir.”

Charles cut his eyes over to the lady in white. She had to have been perfectly aware that he hadn’t been enslaved by his Viking companions, much the opposite. The woman seemed adept at keeping her own counsel.

Sebastian of Sammelsberg made a gesture and a very handsome man with the look of an Iberian unlocked Charles’ wrists and indicated that he should sit. The man even poured him some wine with an ironic smile.

Charles spread one hand across the table and considered his chances. It took all his willpower not to scrabble the helmet off his head. A glance at the crystal witch kept him still; she was looking at him with the assessing gaze that an owl gives a mouse.

Sebastian was pulling a scroll from an ornate box set on one corner of the table. He showed it to Charles with a slight hesitation like he wasn’t sure which would mean more, the spiky Latin script or the heavy wax seal dangling from the parchment. Charles caught the first few lines before Sebastian of Sammelsberg tucked it away. “This is a directive from Otto II, our most gracious imperator Romanorum.”

“Are we here now subject to the authority of some Frankish king?” Charles asked in what he thought was a very reasonable tone.

“Are you a lawyer, sir?” Sebastian smirked at him. “This little island seems fond of its lawyers. As to our most holy Roman emperor…one could say I am I am Belisarius to his Justinian.”

Charles took a gulp of wine to keep from saying something extremely sarcastic.

Sebastian plucked a smaller scroll from the box and brandished it shortly. “This is safe-conduct from your King Ethelred. Thus speaks the temporal authority. And here in the north as elsewhere, we know that we act in accordance with God’s laws as we gather the…others.”

****

Einar, predictably, did not want to sail down the coast as the sky darkened to night. He tried arguing about it with Erik and even attempted to enlist Raven-as-Ole’s support. He finally sat down and wrapped himself in his cloak while clutching his sword, obviously trying to hide his terror. Eventually he succumbed to human exhaustion.

Erik pulled at the rudder. They weren’t going to move particularly fast. He could feel north and he’d reinforced their hull as best he could, so a clear night and an almost-full moon weren’t for wasting. He had pulled them out far enough to be free of the shoals and promised sacrifices to all the gods he knew.

“Thought he was going to mutiny.” Raven had shifted back into her natural form. Erik might have objected if he hadn’t been quite confident that Raven could handle whatever Einar might do if he saw her. “He must be about ready to piss himself. What are you going to do, if he keeps wanting to argue?”

Erik shrugged. He pulled out a slim stitched leather cylinder packed full of sand and tossed it at her.

She examined the cosh and her teeth gleamed white in the moonlight. “So this is Viking persuasion, is it?”

“Useful, if you don’t want to argue.” He conceded shortly.

“I see.” She brandished the primitive truncheon. “Were you going to use this on me, if I hadn’t agreed to come with you?”

“Possibly.” He ground a hand into his eye socket. His head was pounding.

Something nudged him gently. Raven was pressing the hilt of her borrowed sword on him. He gratefully made the hilt a broad disk and pressed it into the side of his aching temple. “Why did you agree to come anyway?”

She stroked her cheek idly. He could hear the rasp of her ridged skin. “You didn’t flinch once. When you saw me. No one’s ever…well, no one since Charles and he was just a child.”

He nodded in the dark before he realized she probably couldn’t see him.

“He showed me…you.” Erik said clumsily.

He could hear her taking a deep breath over the slap and roar of the waves. “He has grown powerful, I imagine.”

“Yes.” Erik felt a thrill of something not quite fear flow up his back to his neck.

“You serve him.” She asked without inflection.

“Yes.” Erik leaned back and nodded slowly. That was true. Insofar as anything was true.

****

“Others?” Charles repeated carefully.

Azazel smirked at him and suddenly vanished in a mist of smoke.

“No need to play the fool.” The lady toasted him ironically with whatever remained in her chalice.

“We would have you as one of us, Charles Xavier.”  Sebastian of Sammelsberg had an easy smile, but his pale eyes put Charles in mind of an animal. Despite the robes, the seals, the polite and careful words, Charles knew for certain that this was no man of God. This man had no thought of God other than supplanting Him.

“Are you offering me a choice?” Charles didn’t let his voice shake. “Untie me, take this off and I will choose.”

Sebastian just smiled.

****

“We’re almost there.” It felt like she’d been saying that for days. Time was starting to weigh on him. Erik felt every moment like it was a stone in his shoe. A branch hung in his face and he tore it down savagely.

He wanted to snarl at her but he was too exhausted to give it much edge. “I don’t see how you’re planning to find your friend…here.”

“He’ll find us.” She returned confidently.

They were trudging deep into the forest having left Einar with the ship in a narrow bay south of the towering arches of Whitby Abbey. They’d given the monastery and village a wide berth but now Erik couldn’t help but feel that they were just wandering around in a wood that seemed to stretch to the other side of the island. The trees put the landscape in a constant twilight so it was difficult to mark the time passing.

“Stop a moment. Rest.” Without pausing, Raven dug her feet into the bark of an oak tree and hefted herself quickly up the branches and out of sight. Erik threw himself to the ground irritably, squinting up at her rapidly retreating feet.

“You see anything?” He called. He was so tired now that his vision was getting spotty. The trees were thick; he doubted that even a higher vantage point would be much of an improvement. This forest was so…empty, no signs of snares or remains of field-dressing and all the paths they’d seen so far were game trails. It was like nothing human ever ventured here.

Looking up at the tree again, he noticed a number of deep scratches laying the wood white and bare underneath the thick bark. Just the marking of some animal, but something about them seemed strange. He stood up and pressed his palm against the lowest of the gouges which were on level with his face.

Even through his exhaustion, a tiny surge of alarm managed to make his skin prickle. “Raven?” He called softly. He unsheathed two of the six blades he was carrying. He put his back to the tree and surveyed the forest, hunter-like, looking for movement.

Something was close. Erik listened intently, noting how the smaller forest sounds seemed quieter. He could feel or maybe smell something odd. His eyes strained to catch a shadow out of place.

“Erik.” Raven slid down the trunk without pausing, letting bits of bark and dust mar her cerulean skin. “Don’t be hasty.”

“Hasty to wha-ha…!” Erik shied back and barely kept himself from loosing both his daggers into the snarling snout of a blue creature that had just appeared from thin air. The thing towered above Erik, standing on its hind legs and growling unintelligibly.

Or actually, perfectly intelligibly as his brain started to work again. The creature was barking at him in a perfectly understandable Saxon dialect, “Are you lost, you bloody brigand? There’s nothing here to steal and even less to rape.” It had him by the throat, claws tickling his jaw, ignoring the animated blades. Erik wrapped one knife around the broad blue wrist and the creature did nothing but tighten its hold. It bled red still, Erik noted dimly.

“Beast.” Raven crouched on the lowest branch with her feet dug in, birdlike. “He’s a friend.”

“He doesn’t look like a friend.” Up close it was jarring, the creature…the Beast’s eyes were vital and clever but his nose was almost a muzzle and his teeth were savage. He sneered at Erik and then turned his face up to Raven. Erik blinked as the brutish face changed, smoothing out to give Raven what might almost be a tentative smile. “It’s good to see you.”

Erik wheezed as the thing released him. The strength of it was incredible and Erik got the sense it…he hadn’t even really been trying.

“And you.” She jumped down from her perch lightly. “I would say you’re looking well, but you are not, dear Beast.”

Upon a closer examination, the Beast’s fur was matted and dusty. He sighed and swiped a huge paw at a nearby tree which knocked off a branch sizeable enough to make Erik flinch. “You were lucky to find me, I was just…Have you eaten? I am forgetting my manners.”

Erik snorted incredulously, and the creature growled at him again.

“Whatever brings you back down here must be important.” The Beast turned to make its way up yet another game trail, watching Erik sidelong as he followed. “I thought you would never come back south.”

“Never say never.” Raven ran along lightly. After another dense patch of brush, a clearing opened out with one side edged in deep shadow, a break in two rocks guarding the dark opening of a cave. “What has you so troubled, my friend?”

“They’ve taken Sean.” For a second, the Beast truly looked like an animal, hunted.

****

His cell had a small window cut in the door. It looked just large enough to stick a hand through. Charles spent some time wondering what it was for. He sometimes got the sense of someone looking at him while he slept, an eye pressed up against the hole. He spent what must have been hours pressing his own eye to the aperture, watching the shadows move around the dark passageway. Looking across at the other, now empty cells.

“You’re not so scary.” A voice came from behind him.

Charles wheezed with surprise, nearly choking on the breath he’d only half-taken. A little girl was standing on his sleeping platform, pulling on the end of one black braid.

He stopped himself from asking the obvious question. “Ah, what’s your name then?”

She grinned at him appreciatively and stuck one skinny hand through the solid stone wall which answered his first question quite neatly.

“Katherine.” She said, making a flouncy, exaggerated curtsey.

“Very pleased to meet you, Katherine…is that really your name?” He couldn’t help but smile at her, her little nose wrinkled into such a funny face. “It’s just a big name for such a little girl.”

“I’m not so little.” She cocked her head and frowned at him. “What’s your name? You look nice, not so dreadful like they make out.”

“My name is Charles and I am at your service. And Katherine, I feel obliged to tell you that some things that look nice really are quite dreadful.”  Charles made an abbreviated bow over his bound hands and then shrugged. “But I try to be nice, usually.”

“Lady Emma says you’re…in something. I forget the word. You scare her. I listen sometimes.” Katherine tapped her cheek with her finger in an obvious parody of some grown-up’s thinking face. “Why are you wearing that?” She pointed at her own head.

“I can read minds and control peoples’ thoughts.” Charles said. Equivocating at this point seemed foolish, when little Katherine could walk through walls. “But not when I’m wearing this.”

“Oh.” Katherine was hopping up and down on one foot, coming precariously close to the edge of the platform. She seemed unimpressed with his revelation. “So could you make Robert stop freezing my soup? He does it all…”

“Probably.” Charles knew that all the questions he had would quickly overwhelm his young friend, so he tried to be delicate. “How many are there up…where you sleep, Katherine?”

“I think…maybe twelve?” She counted out on her hands.

“All about as old as you?” Charles asked and she nodded. She jumped off the platform and went ankle-deep into the floor. She grimaced and pulled herself up. Charles tried not to gawk.

“I don’t know how many people stay down here. They say it’s just for scary people. Me, I think Azazel is plenty scary, but he can go everywhere, you know.” Katherine shook her head and clicked her tongue, trying another hop.

“Like you?” Charles asked.

“There are…things.” Katherine stopped hopping and scuffed her foot against the wall. “They can do things so that I can’t move, if I misbehave.”

“Would this count as misbehaving?” Charles felt a touch of alarm.

“Probably.” Katherine grinned at him cheekily. “But I like to visit Ann-Marie when she’s not crying all the time. And you’re just above her.”

“Why does she cry all the time?” Charles thought of the agonized mind he’d felt, tearing itself apart from grief, hot as glowing coals.

“Her village…I…” Katherine looked uncertain. “She won’t tell me what happened.” Her little face was momentarily swallowed by her eyes. “Could you make her stop being so sad?” She climbed back up on the sleeping platform and reached for Charles’ head. “I could just pull that off.”

It took a tooth-gritting amount of willpower but Charles said, “I wouldn’t want you to get into trouble, little one.” He’d had a sneaking suspicion that all hadn’t gone well for the boy who’d helped him last time and he remember how big her eyes had gotten when she’d talked about not being able to move. “Maybe I’ll meet…Ann Marie myself sometime soon.”

She looked regretful for a moment, so he said hastily, “Do you ever wake up at night and can’t sleep again?”

She nodded hesitantly and then more firmly.

Charles said, “You could come and see me then.”

She smiled and made an odd little half-curtsey. “I should go. It’s almost time for supper.”

“Katherine, one last question…how’d you come to be here?” Charles asked. “Not here in this room, but…here.” He gestured out at the hallway, encompassing the wider world.

“My mother sold me.” Little Katherine wrinkled her nose up into a frown and skipped through the wall.

****

“Your friend…”Raven started, indicating that Erik should sit again, rest and keep his mouth shut. He wanted to protest but he it felt like his head was full of rocks and his mouth was full of sand.

“He was postulant at the Abbey.” The Beast had quickly skinned the limp carcass of a large buck and was now threading it onto a spit to roast. Erik reached forward to help only to be met with a snarl.

“He’s the one who was keeping you in manuscripts?” Raven had ducked halfway into the cave and lifted what looked like a long scroll on vellum. “The one with the voice?”

The Beast nodded, intent on his task. Erik craned his neck to take in the fact that what looked like a badger’s den was lined with paper that this creature was apparently reading. He couldn’t shake the lightheaded sensation that he was wandering further and further into a dream.

Raven traced her fingers over the script and put it back. “What happened?”

“I don’t know exactly. We used to meet on Mondays each week, dusk or dark, between vespers and compline.” The Beast fed the fire until the roast started to darken and sizzle. “He’d bring me whatever he managed to…borrow and I’d bring him whatever I’d finished.”

 The Beast paused for a moment, lost in thought.

“Did you pass the Abbey, when you came?” He asked abruptly. Raven shook her head.

“Well, it’s….Sean broke all the windows Sunday week. It was getting harder for him to control and they were singing and….” The Beast ducked his head. “And when I came to…see him, they were taking him away and it wasn’t by choice.”

“In a wagon?” Raven cycled quickly through a couple of bodies but the Beast didn’t seem to be bothered by it.

“No, down to a ship. A big ship. I thought that it was…”

“Who’s this ‘they’ who took him?” Erik interrupted.

“You speak our language.” Beast quirked his head at Erik as if he were surprised.

“Yes.” Erik didn’t comment on the unexpectedness of this creature having a tongue to speak.

Beast gazed at him for a long moment, and then nodded. “You speak well.”

**

“Once more.” Charles leaned forward, elbows on his bent knees. Erik shifted under him impatiently, reaching out to shuffle Charles closer to him. “You almost had it that time.”

Erik groaned and pressed his forehead against Charles’. “Kiss me.” He’d meant it to be a command but it came out more like a plea.

“Say it right and I’ll kiss you.” But Charles was already cradling Erik’s jaw in his hands. “Remember, put your tongue just behind your top teeth, then press the air out. Press out hard. Thh-.”

Charles demonstrated until Erik could feel Charles’ hot breath on his lips. Erik sighed but did as he was told, hissing slightly. “Th-thank you. I think so”

“Perfect!” Charles tightened his legs which were draped over Erik’s and kissed him thoroughly, true to his word. “Now, almost the same with less air: this, that, there, those…”

**

“It has to be the same…surely there aren’t many ships like that.” Raven argued.

The Beast was chewing on a rib, looking unsure. “But I didn’t see any like the ones you described…and I think I would have noticed. They all looked like monks to me; the leader had sandy hair.”

Raven scoffed, “Of course they’re not going to be taking that red one up to meet the abbot. It would be like if you decided to take in a mass yourself.”

The Beast bared all his teeth at her, seemingly amused.  “It’s at least sixteen leagues to the Holy Island here, heading northeast. I assume it’s faster to sail, if you can.”

He cocked his head at Erik who shrugged. “Currents aren’t good. And I think the bay has a vicious tide.” He’d gotten the briefest of glimpses through Charles’ eyes.

“Overland…” the Beast eyed up Erik. “I have no idea how fast you can move.”

“Fast enough.” Erik snarled back, rejecting the hint that he could be any chain’s weak link.

“Save your strength for running then.” Raven cut in sensibly.  “And for whatever else we’ll have to…” She trailed off.

“What?” Erik touched each of the blades on his person, willing them to give him strength. The air was starting to be too heavy. He scrubbed both hands through his hair, stifling the urge to go bash his head against a tree. Raven looked thoughtful; her eyes were deep amber.

“I am still…How long did you think you were alone?” She asked and Erik could no longer hear the fire, the wind rustling in the trees, the Beast’s heavy, snuffling breath.

 “We should be going now.” Erik was on his feet even though scrambling up made his whole body ache. “You don’t…we have to go now.”

“You haven’t slept for almost four days.” Raven said gently. “And I don’t think you’re made to go without, either.”

“Charles is…” He flung his hand out, there were no words. “We have to go now.”

“It’s getting dark.” The Beast observed. “I’m going, but I’m not planning to carry you.”

“Eat something.” Raven coaxed. “You’re like a half-fletched arrow.”

Six blades he had. They trembled when he raised them to circle the fire and the Beast made a sound that seemed to be equal parts alarm and admiration. Those teeth snarled into an animal grin gave Erik a fleeting moment of calm. Now that he knew what he was looking at, he felt a moment of kinship with the Beast. The creature had been tearing himself in strips trying to figure out what to do.

“Are there villages near here?” Erik barked abruptly. “I need more iron.”

The Beast stared at him, then glanced at Raven and started to make a gruff, rumbling sound that Erik realized was laughter. Raven joined in, covering her bright white teeth with her hand.

“What?” He snapped. He let one of his smaller daggers hover in front of the Beast’s eye.

“I think we can oblige you, Erik Járnangan.” Raven said, uncommonly formal and then burst into giggles.

“Around here, they’re pretty respectful of the Sidhe.” Beast cocked his head and plucked the knife out of the air to cut Erik a strip of meat. “They have plenty of iron.”

 ****

“I hate it here,” Lady Emma said to the mullioned panes of the window in her sitting room. “This may be the most miserable corner of the known world.”

Charles bit his tongue, trying not to jitter with impatience. After another night watching the stone walls of his cell, it felt like he was full to overflowing of the constant silence, an empty vessel that someone was trying to pour more emptiness inside.

But this evening had been different. He’d been brought to the abbot’s quarters, passing by the eating hall in the process. He’d managed a quick glance inside at the whispering shadows, flickering in the torchlight. Katherine shot a grin at him over her shoulder and it had provided a measure of calm. As she’d estimated, there were twelve children on benches around a table.

Being taken away, even under guard, to come and wait on the frosty pleasure of Sebastian’s consort was almost a welcome change. Even though the only one of his questions that she’d actually answered was to give him her name. She floated around listlessly from the window to the fire and back again.

She had spent a good long while just staring at Charles. He wondered if she were pitting herself against the strange metal that surrounded him, if she were trying even now to touch his mind. She looked him up and down and twisted her lip with a look he couldn’t place before inviting him to sit.

“Why do you stay, if you hate it so?” Charles asked. She looked at him sharply, as if the question was ludicrous.

“Have you never felt that small men were measuring you for a pyre, Charles Xavier?” She spoke coldly. “You are a lucky man indeed.”

He’d seen that expression on her face before, that exacting frown. Like his mother’s housekeeper out on market day, examining goods in a stall that didn’t quite measure up. “Have you never wanted to be as you are without being afraid?”

“Why should I be afraid? Your assurances that you are on the side of the angels would mean more to me without this.” Charles tipped his chin and opened his bound hands. “And your…Azazel. You could have just taken me and left…why did he kill all the Norsemen?”

“Why does the fate of a few human thieves concern you? Why would…” She stopped short with whatever else she’d been about to say. She started again more slowly, like she was crafting her words. “When you look like a god or a demon, you become accustomed to acting like one. And they would have killed him if they could.”

And that was true, Charles supposed. He thought of Raven, and then tried not to think of her. Even with the helmet, he didn’t feel safe around Emma’s questing mind.

Of course, that was the moment that she came to stand behind him and curled her fingers delicately around the blunted metal edges. He only dimly felt the light touch of her hand on his neck when she lifted it from his head. The relief was immediate, presence and consciousness pouring in and filling him. His mouth felt very wet and he swallowed reflexively.

He was suddenly very aware of the woman standing behind him. It was like she’d traded her gemstone form for a cloud or miasma. She’d been preparing for him to turn on her when she freed him and she’d spread her consciousness thin, giving him nothing to grab onto. She’d armored herself in mist.

It was a clever strategy. He decided to play along, letting her drift around him. He made no sudden mental moves, just waited for her to begin whatever she had planned. But nothing happened.

He became very conscious that she was a woman. A very lovely woman.

Flesh so smooth to the touch, taste like no other. No salt, no bitterness. A flutter, like light fingers over his belly. He burrowed into the feeling, deeper, more visceral, less thought. He let her coil around him, serpent-like. Her mind caressed his lightly, then more firmly as his skin awoke.

Dimly, he could feel his own labored breathing, his thighs pressed hard into the oak chair. He opened further tentatively, tilting his chin up for her breath on his face. Her otherness swirled around him in a fog with no motive force, just an insidious occupation. He did not think; he made himself as passive as a dumb animal, a horse standing in a stable being stroked.

He caught the slightest thread of frustration, darkening the mist of her. He did not touch it, but he…coalesced with it gently. He eradicated all consciousness, even the feeling of her hands on his shoulders and merged with her vague annoyance, following it back to where she’d effaced her conscious thought. He’d never done this before and he almost let a feeling of admiration color the haze. Hers was such an elegant prison.

Unnoticed, he curled around, dissolving himself deeply in her cloud. And when it felt complete, when there was nothing to tell him from her anymore, he gripped his hands tightly and drew them both back into sharp relief.

Fear. Rage. Disgust. Doesn’t even want…this was doomed to fail, was too much to ask, was this a test, was the need so great, so dire, that she must enslave herself further to the begetting of a new generation, breeding the power up, but no, it wasn’t just the power, it was the control that he wanted, even if it meant her body closed to him, her mind betrayed, resentful and this one not even…

Charles pulled back into his own mind, clenching down on the instinct to heave huge breaths of air. Her hands were rigid, twisted into the neck of his tunic and she was hard and chilly where she straddled him. He couldn’t really tell, but he thought she was grimacing. He could see his reflection in the planes of her face.

“This seems a bit…undignified.” He carefully curled his hands under her elbows and she obliged him by sliding off his lap. “I would have thought your lord would have more imagination.”

“He has a very practical turn of mind.” She said icily. “All the simplest avenues must be explored.”

Charles wondered for a moment which had come first, her adamant nature or form. “He requires too much of you.”

“I owe him much.” She shimmered into her human flesh again. “I find it very difficult to refuse him.”

She made to press the helmet back on his head and he pushed the chair back to look up at her.

Charles held up his hands, pressed together as if he would pray. She stilled for a moment and then shrugged one graceful shoulder in acquiescence.

He reached out to Erik and Raven, conscious of Emma’s scrutiny, her awareness clinging to his lightest thought. They were closer, it didn’t take as much seeking but their consciousness felt…thin. So weary, so footsore and Erik’s mind circled and tore at itself like a rabid dog. He tried to project as much calm as he could, inducement to sleep the night through. Hopefully, they weren’t too exhausted to feel him.

Considering the style of Emma’s stealthy assault, Charles veiled any startling revelations about the two who sought him with more prosaic revelations. He hoped that she wouldn’t delve much deeper if she thought she was uncovering some secret shame.

It worked.

“Not very dignified.” She smirked slyly. “These feelings you have for the one who...”

“I don’t really think you should be casting the first stone on that account, my dear.” Charles returned, mildly. She went silent at once and tilted her face down, looking almost girlish for a bare second. Like he had managed to embarrass her. She placed the helmet back on him delicately and he didn’t quail at the sensation. It put him in mind of another question that she would probably refuse to answer.

He pointed at his head. “Did someone make this for you? Did you wear it when you were young?”

He caught the slight twitch in her chin that hid the fact that her whole body had tried to shudder.  She sat back and traced a finger over the inlaid table.

“There is an eastern tribe…Sebastian would say they are just part civilized. Refined skin, but savage underneath. But they are very clever, the Kievan Rus. They make wonderful things. Their knyaz, their chief, Vladimir, his mother is…like us.”

She opened the lid of a carved wooden box and pulled out a large necklace made of silvery links. The metal had an odd sheen, set with opalescent moonstones. “They made the helmet for Sebastian in exchange for the secrets of Greek fire. They made this for me. It never grows dull.”

“So he wears this? Not you?” Charles leaned back into his chair. “So he trusts you…just as much as you trust me?”

He couldn’t tell if it was genuine irritation that made her frown, or doubt. “He doesn’t wear it often.”

“I see.” Charles tented his fingers together.

She let the silence stretch. This woman was so cold, so hard.  And guileful. He was going to need a little guile of his own.

“It’s very beautiful.” Charles leaned over to admire the shining links of her necklace. She held the chain up against her throat.  “You should wear it all the time.”

****

“So why can’t you do that all the time?” Raven asked, panting lightly. They had skirted the village at a jog-trot, the better to be quickly away from the shouts and shrill screams of surprise.

Erik tried not to look as blank as he felt. She made a pulling gesture and indicated his new collection of bizarre weapons.  He had unconsciously shaped his stolen iron into fantastical hybrids of blade and spear. One of the pieces he’d called to him was still glowing from the forge. It felt good, more alive that way. He shaped it into a sphere while they plodded onward.

“She means when you and the rest of your pirates row up to shore, why don’t you just…”the Beast made a similar pulling gesture. “…and save yourselves all the blood and sweat?”

Erik snorted. “Yes, well…why don’t you walk up to the gate there and ask for some ale and a room for the night?”

Raven looked at him reproachfully and shimmered briefly into a large-breasted woman with flushed cheeks and a stained apron. The Beast snorted a rueful laugh.

“What you can do, it’s…useful.” Raven started, uncertainly. “Surely…”

Erik sent the cooling sphere weaving through the trees ahead. “Nothing is so useful that it can stop them being afraid. And that’s poison. Like you said, I’ve got to sleep sometime and stones will still crush my skull.”

Raven rustled back into her usual form, looking vaguely chagrined.

After half a mile’s glum plod, Erik spoke again, surprising himself. “They wouldn’t let me anyway. There’s no honor in it. Doesn’t make for a good song.”

“There’s so much more honor and romance in burning a house of God and killing everything that moves…” The Beast started.

”Not my god.” Erik snarled. The Beast snuffled a sigh and Erik felt abruptly ashamed.

“If it is hard work to take something or…defend something, at least you know it’s worth having.” Erik continued lamely. “Where we come from, it’s not like…here. The land is good enough, I guess, but there’s not a lot of it and winter is long. One late spring, too much rain over the summer and we all go hungry.”

“You could trade.” Raven said.

“Sometimes we do. But then…” Erik couldn’t remember speaking this much to anyone except Charles. It was an odd sensation, being called to account, conversing with equals.

“Less than a pound of silver is enough for a bride price. If you can afford a wife, that’s…” Erik trailed off, unsure of how to explain. That’s a start. A place to come home to, a family. Some happiness that’s not in the bottom of a tankard or the riveting story of other men’s deaths. Nothing he’d ever particularly cared for himself.

Raven was still looking at him sharply, her steps unerringly sure-footed. The Beast was looking somberly down at his own feet. It occurred to Erik that human ideas of ‘bride price’ and the cooperative existence of a village wouldn’t mean much to them.

“It doesn’t matter anyway.” Erik changed tack quickly. “Look.”

He had some silver, a pouch for the unlikely event he’d need coin. He held it out on his palm and showed them how sluggishly it responded. “The more precious it is to a human, the less it means to me.”

He jerked his iron sphere back through the trees. It was cool and dark now. He let it hover over his head, enjoying its purity. “I find iron more…responsive.”

“That’s very interesting.” The Beast said and Erik thought of Charles and winced.

****

“That one is the most valuable defender. It can move any way that I have showed you so far.” 

“The queen.” Charles cut his eyes over to the window.  Lady Emma barely acknowledged his glance.

 “You learn so quickly,” Sebastian chuckled. “It’s delightful. Shall we try?”

Charles spared a quarter of his attention for the game. It seemed relatively straightforward and the carved pieces were quite cunning. They had loosened his bonds as if for mealtime; he could rest his hands on the edge of the table. He had found that having something in his hand, even if it were only a small chunk of stone or piece of wood, helped him to focus and keep his mind from constantly seeking the comfort of other.

“I do apologize that I have been much in absence these last days…” Sebastian said idly.

“I haven’t missed you.” Charles returned and then was vaguely ashamed of being so rude. But the man opposite just smiled his usual sardonic smile.

“I hope you have been comfortable enough.” However peculiar and ultimately insincere it was, Sebastian seemed to take his duties as host seriously.

It was dark outside. Charles realized that Emma couldn’t see out, but was instead watching them in the black mirror of the mullioned pane. When he looked back at Sebastian, the man looked purposefully innocent, like he was trying to make his face the opposite of a smirk.

“The lady is not very happy here.” Charles said, placing a piece with care.

“Neither are you.” Sebastian grinned and leaned back on his stool. “I am hoping that you will both be happier when we return south.”

“Why should that make me happy, particularly?” Charles moved one of the smaller pieces experimentally. “Going to a place not my home, completely against my will?” It made him feel odd, saying it out loud. He wondered at himself for a moment.

“I wonder what I can say that would persuade you.” Sebastian reached forward to take a piece and brandished it at Charles.

“You need to persuade me?” Charles hooked a thumb under the thick leather cuff around his wrist.

“Imagine it, Charles.” Sebastian spoke over him. “I myself do not care much for riches, but there is such wealth across the Narrow Sea. Not gold or silver or stones, much better. There is a wealth of us. The others.”

“What makes you one of…us?” Charles asked, surprised. He wondered at himself for being surprised. Everyone else seemed so very forthright with their talents.

Sebastian continued as if he hadn’t heard. “Imagine a woman with wings, as delicate as a dragonfly’s and strong enough to bear her aloft. Imagine a young man who can shape fire the way a potter shapes clay. Like Janos shapes the wind.” He nodded at his squire who kept a station by the door.

“Have you collected them as well, like coins? As you have me?” Charles asked slowly. “Which am I, gold or silver?”

Sebastian smiled broadly. “A price above rubies, I’m sure. You may feel pent up right now, but I’m sure as soon as you come south with us and see the depth and breadth of God’s plan for you, all will become clear and you’ll forget this resentment. It’s far better than being some brutish Viking’s thrall, surely?”

Depends on the Viking. Charles stayed silent, blinking down at the board. As an afterthought, he moved a piece.

“Do you doubt that God has a plan for you?” Sebastian moved a piece, still smiling.

“No.” Charles said softly. “I only doubt that you are the arbiter of it.”

“Do you know what I see when I look at you?” Sebastian leaned back and cupped his knee with linked hands.

A man going slowly mad because he doesn’t hear voices in his head? Charles thought with an edge of hysteria. He didn’t bother to respond.

“I see a man holding himself in abeyance.” Sebastian sat forward and said earnestly. “I can show you so much, Charles. We could do so much together.”

“I have one question for you.” Charles said slowly. Sebastian held his chalice up expectantly.

“Why are you only taking children?” Charles leaned forward and dug his fingers into the edge of the table. Who are the people who hurt so much?

Sebastian’s cheerful smile never wavered. “They’re much more than children, Charles. I am like Noah…gathering the animals, two by two, because there is a new world being forged and the Lord has bade me populate it.”

There was a shine in his eye that Charles did not like at all.

Sebastian gestured to the four walls. “But in this poor world everyone gets put into a harness and told to pull.”

Charles absentmindedly moved a figure in a way that won the game, even though he didn’t realize it.

Sebastian continued, running his fingers lightly over the ebony figurines. “Is it too much to ask that we might all pull together? I am saving them from harsh fates, I assure you.”

This was the Devil’s weapon, surely. Honeyed words. Sweet, unctuous and sticky.

“I think you should let me go.” Charles said clearly. He spread his palms as best he could in their loosened bindings. “It’s a mistake to keep me here.”

“As you wish.” Sebastian said unexpectedly. “There is someone I want you to meet first.”