Free Brothers of the Wild North Sea by Harper Fox

song among the gorse. Cai went up to the desk. Aelfric tensed for confrontation, but there was no need.
    “Have you set a watch?”
    “A watch?”
    “At night. The raid here came early this year. But now they’ve come once, they’ll do it again. They think we have something they want.”
    “The demons will not come when men’s hearts here are pure. And pure they shall be.”
    Cai gave it up. He could watch the sea himself. He no longer seemed to need sleep. “By your own wisdom, then. But remember this.” He took up the stub of a candle from Theo’s desk and put it upright. “Here is the sun. Imagine its light if you can.” He placed in front of it the round stone Theo used as a paperweight, and produced from a pocket in his cassock a small pink apple. It was one of Broc’s, from the orchard where sweet Roman strains still grew. He set it down in front of the stone, so that all three objects were in a line. “We are on the rock, my lord abbot. The apple is the moon. Just now our rock, this stone, sits between the sun and moon, and so the moon is dark. In fourteen days, this apple moon has moved to our rock’s other side, and so we see her face in full. So we must be between the sun and the moon—not at the centre of them.” Cai paused and drew in a deep breath. “Preach what you will. Darken men’s minds if you must—tell them the sun and all creation dances round you. As long as there’s a candle, a stone or an apple anywhere in this monastery—I can prove otherwise.”

Chapter Three
    Cai stood on a fallen lintel stone, his arms folded over his chest. His perch gave him a good vantage point over the ruins where the dormitory chambers had been, and he was watching carefully. One, two, three. Step, parry, thrust. So far he wasn’t displeased, except that Brother Wilfrid… “No, no, no.” He leapt down and ran across the open, sunlit space. “Wilf, your Viking just ran you straight through the heart. Don’t drop your shield.”
    “Why, you just told me not to raise it, lest he strike me through the balls!”
    Cai stepped back, lifting his hands in despair. He let the dozen men gathered around him have their laugh—joined briefly with it himself. In the week since the raid, not much laughter had been heard at Fara. He took up position behind Wilf and covered his shield hand with his own. He nodded to Oslaf, Wilf’s fighting partner for this bout. Oslaf came forwards, feinting with his sackcloth-covered sword. “Raise your shield. Now lower. React. You can see what he’s going to do from the set of his shoulders.” Especially when he’s poking at you like an old woman chasing flies with a broomstick, but that can’t be helped. “Predict him. Better. Good.”
    Signalling to the others that they should continue the drill, Cai returned to his post. This was his third session, and the best turnout yet. When he’d let it be known two days before that he would be here with Broc’s donated arsenal, only Oslaf and four others had appeared, glancing nervously over their shoulders. Cai couldn’t blame them for their fears. The ruin was a good place to practise—the one remaining wall shielded their endeavours from the main hall, and rebuilding here was a low priority, the displaced monks sleeping on makeshift cots in a barn, where they rested the more easily for safety in numbers—but Aelfric wouldn’t remain deceived for long. A handful of monks missing from their duties during quiet hours was one thing. A dozen, though, almost half the surviving complement…
    Cai sensed movement behind him and whipped round. “Benedict,” he said in relief, then recalled his friend’s behaviour over the past few days and frowned. “Have you come to join us? Or has our lord abbot sent you to smoke us out?”
    Benedict looked at the ground. He was very pale. “I should be insulted that you ask. But I understand.”
    “To join us, then?” Cai jumped down. “Did something change your mind?”
    “I am not