The Humming of Numbers Read online

  The old woman’s feeble blows hurt Aidan less than her loathing, but one of her relatives quickly corralled her. As others watched with pained sympathy, the fellow pulled her aside to say, “He didn’t know. If no noble had been taken for ransom, blood still may have been flowing tonight. We would be planning a riverside ambush, and you’d be calling him hero instead.”

  “Fie!” spat Muirne. “Call a curse upon him, that is what I should do!”

  The onlookers blanched.

  “Not under my roof, you won’t.” The metalsmith stepped up, alarmed, as if his roof and not Aidan had been threatened with evil. “It might miss its mark.”

  “Not to mention he does not deserve it,” Liam growled.

  “He’s one of us, Grandmother, not one of them.” The younger Connach drew the distraught elder back to her remaining family. “And you’re a fierce old woman, but no conjuring crone, so stop pretending. I know you’re aggrieved, we all are, but not by Aidan O’Kirin. Let him be.”

  Liam and the other men discussed the dilemma in weary voices. Aidan only listened, his head low. He could not regret taking a tiny bite at the Norsemen in exchange for the deaths of people he loved, but clearly his action had made matters worse.

  The men decided to send a messenger to alert Donagh that the bargain would be more complicated than it seemed. It was the ruler’s right and responsibility, after all, to make decisions and lead the defense. Aidan offered to run the bad news up the hill to the lord’s ring fort. Liam would have none of it.

  “You’re not a good liar, Aidan,” he said. “If he asks who sank the boats, you’ll either tell him outright or he will know from your face. He may run you through on the spot.”

  “Better my blood than another’s,” Aidan whispered, his mouth dry. He stuffed his hands into the cuffs of his sleeves to cover their trembling, which he did not want Liam to see. “’Tis my fault. I’ll take the blame.”

  “No. I intend to protect you better than that. I have few enough others left.”

  Instead, Aidan’s childhood friend Kyle would go, claiming ignorance of the culprit’s identity. As he prepared to leave, Aidan embraced him. A rush of memories flowed through him, wafted by the tingling three that had always been Kyle’s number.

  “Forgive me your errand,” Aidan said. “I would walk out with you, knock you on the head, and go in your place, but you know Liam. He’ll hang on to my sleeve until you’re long up the hill.”

  “And your brother is right,” Kyle said. “But what makes you think I would fall to a blow delivered by you?”

  They both grinned about old times, and Kyle clapped Aidan’s back.

  “’Tis good to see you,” he added. “I wish it were over a mutton shank instead. Are they letting you out of the abbey walls now, or are you free only because of the raid?”

  Aidan dropped his eyes. “I’m not supposed to be out.” He didn’t know what else to say. He wasn’t sure if brothers Eamon and Nathan would allow him back in. He had no idea whether he wanted them to.

  “Aidan, defying a rule?” Kyle snorted. “Monkhood has indeed changed you, my friend, but not as I might have expected.”

  Aidan studied the wry grin on his friend’s tired and somehow aged face, wondering how he’d slipped from last week’s humble obedience to this tumult of impulse and confusion. It wasn’t so much the Viking attack, he decided, as a certain young woman who would not admit to being a witch.

  “I have found a few things at the abbey that I did not expect, either,” he said.

  Just then, as Aidan had predicted, Liam approached to stay within arm’s length of him.

  “Indeed?” Kyle said. “Well, perhaps you can tell me more later.” He gently slapped Aidan’s cheek, a taunt long swapped between them. Aidan expected a jibe to follow, as when they were younger. After a moment of hesitation, however, Kyle just shook his head and said, “Until I see you again.”

  “Godspeed,” Aidan murmured. He watched his friend, looking oddly too large, disappear into the night. It made him feel both guilty and strangely calm, as if they’d both grown so much older that whatever happened next didn’t matter.

  Behind him, Liam drummed a fist on his shoulder. “Depending on what Donagh chooses to do, we will likely still need men to lift weapons—but there may not be much work for a monk. Should you get back to the monastery?”

  “I’m going to fight with you until this is done.”

  “I cannot imagine your brothers in God will approve.” Liam tipped his head, studying Aidan. “Don’t turn your back on what you want, not over one mistake.”

  Aidan lowered his chin to rub the nape of his neck, partly in uncertainty and partly because he wanted to escape that knowing gaze. He mumbled, “I don’t know what I want anymore, Li.”

  “Then this is not the time to decide. There’s too much blood on the grass for good decisions anytime soon. Go back, Aidan. We can handle what comes without you.”

  Liam’s face, however, showed the doubt Aidan felt.

  Perhaps aware that he had not been convincing, Liam added softly, “And I’d like to know that at least one O’Kirin will survive till next week.”

  Aidan tried to picture himself walking back to the abbey and dropping to his knees there. Now that his initial horror had grown cold, his repugnance and anger overlaid with even more blood and loss, he could better understand and perhaps even forgive the numb acceptance with which the senior monks had faced calamity. Without magnificent books in the library, however, it was harder to envision a place for himself among them.

  There was somewhere else, though, that he longed to return to.

  “Do you think Donagh will do anything before morning?” he asked.

  “If I were him, I’d attack now. They are all in one place, unsuspecting, and probably drunk.”

  “But his heir—” Aidan protested.

  “Yes. He would have to forfeit his son, and I doubt he’s man enough to do that. His idiot son’s life is worth ten or twenty of ours.”

  “Idiot?”

  “He’s older than you, Aidan, with a horse and arms and the training to use them. Would you have allowed yourself to be captured alive, knowing how many would suffer to recoup a ransom?”

  Aidan grimaced. Liam had a point. After pacifying the Vikings with silver and gold, Donagh’s attention would turn to rebuilding his wealth. He’d mount raids of his own on distant enemies, with local men bound to take part. In their absence, the crops left unburned by the Vikings would languish. The late autumn would echo with danger and blood, and the coming winter might be brittle with hunger.

  “I would not have been taken alive for a ransom of stones,” Aidan said. He was not sure it was true, but he hoped the truth would reflect in Liam’s reaction. Outside the abbey for the first time in long months, he needed help in remembering who he was when no monkish expectations confined him.

  “Exactly,” said Liam, with gratifying certainty. He added, “But go be a monk. Pray for the rest of us. That may help more than a scythe blade in your hands.”

  Aidan gnawed his lip. “I can pray here. At least until Kyle returns with some word.” Faltering, he added, “If there’s night left before whatever will come, I might leave for a time. I’ll be back, though.”

  “You don’t mean the abbey, from the looks of you.” When Aidan only flinched and kept his eyes low, Liam pressed, “Aidan, if I didn’t know better I would think you were trysting.”

  Willing the blush back out of his face, Aidan said, “When the attack started, I ended up with a … a prisoner of the abbey. Who’s now hiding in the woods. I just want to check that she’s still all right.”

  “She, is it? I was right, then.” A wry chuckle broke through Liam’s weariness. “Oh, you are in turmoil, aren’t you, little brother? But she’ll be safer in the woods awhile yet.”

  “I want to make sure,” Aidan said, trying to ignore Liam’s teasing.

  Nodding, Liam let it rest there. Aidan found a quiet corner and took the sugge
stion to pray. He split the time evenly between pleading with God to protect his remaining family and friends and searching his heart for an impossible path between monkhood and a girl waiting near an uprooted tree.

  XVI

  Kyle returned in less than an hour on the back of a horse reined by one of Donagh’s stable boys. The refugees gathered around for news.

  They were given only the instruction to hold cover until after dawn. The lord stuck to the planned payment of ransom and had decided he would also offer horses and wagons to speed the Norsemen’s departure. He was betting they would not learn about their boats before then.

  After the stable boy left, the men sat around the forge, grumbling.

  “At least he’s trying to stem the bloodshed,” muttered Liam. “Though from cowardice, I suspect, not compassion.”

  “He’s doing nothing to prepare for the worst, either,” complained Michael, Aidan’s middle brother. “Not protecting his people tonight, in case the Vikings discover their craft gone, nor ransoming any other captives, so far as we know.”

  “Regan might be hauled off in one of those carts!” Aidan realized, the notion pricking new outrage from him. He’d begun to think of his sister as already dead.

  “And my two sons,” agreed the cartwright, “if their hearts are still beating. Borne away in a cart that I built—an evil sight that will be. If I had no wife and old mother to feed, I would make sure yon Norsemen closed my eyes with a blade before I saw that.”

  “Liam,” Aidan said, “I like your idea better.” He hesitated. “Why can’t we hit them ourselves? With the same method they use—set the alehouse afire and kill the vermin one at a time as they flee it.”

  “This is the monk talking?” Kyle asked.

  Aidan ignored him. The tumult in his heart left no room just now for questions of faith, humility, or obedience.

  “But there is a truce on while Donagh’s collecting their ransom,” the smith’s apprentice protested. “’Tis not honorable warfare to break it.”

  “They’re Vikings, not a nobleman’s forces,” somebody snapped.

  Liam added darkly, “Honorable men do not slay four-year-old boys.”

  “Lord Donagh would have our heads, though,” sighed Michael. “We might as well sever and stake them ourselves.”

  His objection drew murmurs of agreement.

  “Too bad Widow Connach cannot truly fling curses,” mused Kyle. “We could use such arts right now.”

  “Bite your tongue,” the smith said. “Weird-women have ears in the trees. One may bend her cunning to our sorrow instead of our gain.”

  The words sparked inspiration in Aidan. While the others stared glumly into the fire, his mind raced. A grim smile pulled at his lips.

  “Donagh won’t care what we do,” he said, “as long as his son isn’t killed. We just have to keep him alive when we do it.”

  “And how would you propose we accomplish that?” Michael demanded, his frustration showing. “As if you had battle experience, Aidan. Try harder to not be a fool.” He and Aidan had always sparked against each other, and the day’s strain added fuel.

  Aidan licked his lips. Most of the men, aware Michael was older, did not look for Aidan to answer. Yet enough hope mixed with the doubt on their faces to encourage him.

  He said, “If someone walked into the alehouse just before the fire was set and could locate Brendan Donagh, possibly that person could protect him until the smoke was thick enough to cover.”

  “Slitting his throat is the first thing they’ll do,” Michael retorted.

  “Maybe not,” Aidan countered calmly. “Not if they think the person walking in is a witch.”

  His comrades erupted with uneasy laughter and protests. The women and children huddling in the corners looked over, concerned.

  “You’ve all gone daft,” the smith grumbled.

  “Kyle suggested a curse,” Aidan continued over the furor. “A conjurer in the flesh would be far more disarming.”

  Peppered with questions, he paid attention only to Liam, who now headed the family and whom Aidan respected most. His eldest brother simply wanted to know where Aidan expected to find a witch willing to help them.

  “Never mind where,” Aidan said. “But I—”

  “Oh, I’m sure the monastery is full of the Devil’s assistants,” Michael said, rolling his eyes.

  “Be silent, Michael.” Liam’s sharp voice cut off Michael’s sneer.

  Ignoring the interruption, Aidan went on, “I can find out how to pass for a witch myself, for a few moments—just enough to surprise them and get close to the lord’s heir. After that it won’t matter.”

  “Have you taken leave of your senses?” Liam wondered. “The glare of a witch would likely freeze their entrails, I admit. Mine too, come to that, if I didn’t know it for a ruse. Yet soon enough they would thaw. Young Donagh’s throat might be cut first, but yours would soon follow.”

  Aidan regarded him coolly, almost forgetting the others around them. “I am not so docile as that, Liam. I won’t be bound. If I have any weapon at all, I can defend myself for a moment. If I can, I’ll loose him to defend himself. They won’t fight for long once the rafters are burning.”

  “I will vouch for Aidan’s skill with makeshift weapons,” Kyle said softly, “if he can fight as well in earnest as he used to face me in jest.”

  “He should,” said a neighbor. “He is obviously mad.”

  “And you’re being sheep!” Aidan clutched at the dark streaks on his robe. “Have you forgotten the blood we’re all wearing? And who it belonged to?”

  Liam put his hand on Aidan to calm him.

  “Enya and Kevin,” Aidan hissed at him, flinging the names of the dead like sharp stones. “Would you bear their slaughter with only a shrug?” He half expected his brother to hit him, and he knew he deserved it, but he also knew it took drastic words to provoke someone who hummed of nine.

  Liam only closed his eyes, the muscles in his jaw twitching. Nobody said anything for several uncomfortable moments. Eyes shifted their gaze from one person to the next. Aidan could see the men consider his suggestion, and he knew they would follow Liam.

  “It would be suicide, likely,” the eldest O’Kirin said finally. He opened his eyes and drilled them into Aidan. “Martyrdom, if you like, although not strictly for God. Is it worth that, Aidan?”

  If Liam’s voice had held even a hint of condescension, Aidan might have fallen on habit and bowed to the judgment of his eldest brother. The respect in Liam’s eyes, though, gave Aidan pause. He knew what Liam’s answer to that question would be, but Liam would yield. Aidan had to answer this one for himself.

  He imagined dying under a quick, heavy stroke from a hulking Viking. Then he thought about the blow that felled Rory and the torn flesh of his own family members. If they could all die as they had, without choice, then he could die to avenge them.

  “If those of you waiting outside do your part well enough,” he said softly, “then, yes.”

  “And this is how you would have me protect you?” Liam wondered, mostly to himself.

  “Think what our family name stands for, Li, and why O’Kirins have fought in the past,” Aidan urged. “I would rather you bury valor than protect cowardice.”

  “Numb-witted valor, in that case,” Michael argued. “If you fail, you’re not the only one who will die. We may kill all the Norsemen tonight, only to follow them ourselves on the morrow as traitors. Donagh’s fury will rage.”

  “Are you so afraid of meeting God and your namesake, Michael?” Aidan asked. “But Lord Donagh will not be there to watch. Work fast and get back here. If I can escape with his accursed son, he won’t care. If I fail, who will give him your names? The brewster? Not likely. I can’t imagine he and his wife are enjoying their guests. All Donagh will see when he arrives at sunup is a yard full of dead Vikings. My body can bear all the blame. He can’t hang our whole clan—not with so few left—and he won’t know where else to start.”
/>   “It is tempting,” Kyle murmured.

  “It is more than tempting,” Liam said. “Except I don’t know why they would believe you’re a witch.”

  “Let me worry about that,” Aidan said. “That’s the simplest part.”

  XVII

  Without hours hidden by sleep, the night stretched impressively long. As he hurried back toward the woods, Aidan felt grateful for all the time he could get. He’d spoken bravely enough, and he meant it, but he wasn’t sure he would live to see dawn.

  Guilt, as well as dread, burdened his belly. The Gospels spoke of forgiveness and peace. Kyle had been justified in wondering that a monk—even a wavering one—would urge violence. Yet Aidan had also been told of armed monks storming rival abbeys over relics and wealth. Surely if one monk could raise a weapon against another without being damned, then Aidan could, with a clear heart, bring righteous war to invaders. He clung to that hope. God’s judgment of his choice would be delivered all too soon.

  Once he was well into the trees, another worry began to simmer in Aidan’s chest. Knowing the Norsemen to be relaxed in truce, he’d left the smithy with a lit tallow lamp so he wouldn’t flounder so much finding his way. The light did not help him enough. He knew roughly where Lana’s shelter must lie, but he had paid too little attention arriving the first time, when he’d simply followed her. Now he wasn’t sure he could find it again.

  After more stumbling and casting about than he would have admitted, he finally gave up on his eyes. Instead he tried reaching with some other sense. It couldn’t have worked with anyone else; so many people buzzed of the same numbers, at any distance their sounds merged to surround him in noise as meaningless as silence. But Aidan heard eleven only from Lana. Any eleven-ish hum he caught now would have to be her. He’d never met a cat in the woods.

  His lashes veiled his eyes. Peeping out just enough to avoid walking headlong into trees, Aidan slowed and trolled the forest for her hum. He might have been imagining it, but he thought he recognized her sound a little farther east than his feet had been aiming. He turned that way.