The Reluctant Berserker (11 page)

When the instrument came to him, sat nestled onto his knee and into the crook of his arm like a lover, when he struck the chords and felt the music vibrate in the wood as though the lyre itself were alive and singing, that night came back to him in a physical rush. The young harper’s slight arms and thin lips made into something swordlike, something that pierced him and made him bleed out his strength, by a spirit strong as any angel’s. He leaned his face against the lyre, felt its hum against his cheek and wished with a vain, hollow desperation that tonight he could have been sharing his cloak with that man.

When the song ended he could not follow it with another—he had learned one only, to avoid being humiliated when the harp was passed around, but that he had thought was enough. He let the instrument go to the next player and told himself that he had not known that man above an hour before he had been humiliated at his hands. He told himself that if they ever met again, he would take a handful of that curly hair—was it soft or rough, it seemed important to know—and force the man to kneel to him, and do whatever it took to put in his eyes the wary respect that was due to a man of Wulfstan’s status.

The picture kept slithering out of his mind. He thought he’d got it—the kneeling youth a tangle of long limbs, the face, upraised, long nose and high cheeks, thin jaw and downcast eyes. But when his imaginary harper looked up, his twisted smile was full of mockery, his wide, clear eyes as scorching as fire. At the picture, rather than feel fury, Wulfstan’s mouth dried and a deep, delicious throb went through his spine from the nape of his neck to his balls.

“You’re having pleasant thoughts.” Where no one could see, concealed in the hall’s brown-gold light by tablecloth and tunic skirts, a hand wormed its way past Wulfstan’s hose and began to untuck his thin linen braies from the top of them. Rough fingertips burrowed underneath and alighted on the smooth, sensitive skin of his upper thigh, stroking, seeking. He managed not to gasp, but he closed his eyes and shifted closer, lost in his dreams, and for a moment when he opened his eyes again, he was confused and disappointed to see Cenred beside him. That broad, smug smile was not what he had been thinking of at all.

This disappointment was strange and ungrateful in him, he thought, tasting it at the back of his throat like the blood from a nosebleed. When this was his good friend beside whom he had grown and learned all his life, and the harper might easily have been no man at all but some uncanny thing, an elf of the sea or a demon or a spirit sent against him by an enemy to bring him to ruin. No mortal man should have had such power over him, when his closest shoulder-companion did not.

That sense of unease persisted through the evening, through jests and songs and riddles, and into the hours when all began to soften and the servants took the tables away to stack them against the walls. Wulfstan’s servant, Ulf, who had been sent with him from home by Wulfstan’s mother—a strange grizzled man to have charge of the washing and clothing and management of this younger son—stopped by Wulfstan’s side and leaning down whispered, “Your pallet is laid out close to the fire. Will you be wanting anything more until the morning, my lord?”

Last year, Ulf had married a marsh fisher’s daughter, and now, although Wulfstan’s needs were tended to, and his clothing more effectually washed and mended, the man was forever sloping off to his small cottage outside the burh to tend his new family. Normally this gave Wulfstan a slight feeling of loss, but this evening it was welcome.

“No,” he said, handing over his bowl and beaker to be taken away and washed. “I will not keep you from the balm of your bed.” Wulfstan’s heart should not have felt so heavy at these words. His body was keen enough, the fine tremble of it audible in his voice, but beneath the need, doubt ran through the marrow of his bones. He ignored it—he had made a decision. Now he would act on it and not be forever changing his mind like a child with two toys.

Around him the lamps were being put out one by one, winched down to waist height so that the sooty slave could clap a snuffer over them. The hall filled with darkness and the scent of hot ox-fat and burned flax. Men became shadows that felt for their blankets and sat down. The last of the servants raked the embers of the fire together in the centre of the firepit and scattered soil over the top of it, bedding it down to keep it live but slumbering over the long, quiet hours when no one would be awake to tend to it. With the fire in its bed, this final servant left, shutting the door behind him, and the darkness was absolute.

It filled with the metallic slither of chain mail being kicked off beds, the grunts and thuds and soft woolen rustles of men putting down sword-belts and shoes, wriggling beneath blankets. Wulfstan felt a body settle beside him, and together they sandwiched their armour between themselves and Aelfsi, whose back would otherwise have been touching them. Now no one was close enough to feel what occurred between them.

As he lay down, it was in a pile of knees and elbows. Cenred was everywhere, and Wulfstan could not seem to get his breath or his balance. One moment he would think he had it—time had paused enough for him to catch up—and there would be a hand on his arm, or in his hair and he was struggling again. He’d scarcely got to hands and knees before the weight of Cenred’s chest was on his back, and both arms wound tight around his chest, and he couldn’t tell whether his skin shrilled with pleasure or alarm to feel the scrape and tickle of Cenred’s sparse blond moustache against the nape of his neck, or the touch of teeth.

Don’t bite me!
He thudded down onto the pallet, straw creaking at the impact, did not dare to say it out loud, but turned over instead, jabbing with elbow and fist to get his friend to move. He’d just about decided to call the whole thing off when Cenred took the hint and wriggled away, lying down close enough, on his side, that his knees and feet touched Wulfstan’s. At the failure of his first attack he gave a little noise, somewhere between frustration and amusement, and instead snaked a single, careful arm around Wulfstan’s waist and pulled himself flush, hip and belly to Wulfstan. Leaning in, after some fumbling, he found Wulfstan’s mouth with his own.

That silenced Wulfstan’s protests, for the doubt in his bones could not compete with the dragging friction and wet heat of that experienced mouth on his own. He didn’t want a fight, but he did want that. He opened up and let himself be invaded by Cenred’s hot tongue, remembering, sometimes, with a jolt of panic, to chase it back and make sure Cenred got as good as he gave.

By themselves, his hands had gone to his braies and undone the bow keeping them tight around his waist. He pushed them down, freeing prick and balls into the private warmth their blankets made around them. When Cenred responded by taking it in his hand, stroking hard from root to tip, it was all he could do not to make a noise. Teeth buried in his lip, he arched towards his friend and his hands fell idle to his side, giving up. It felt good to do so—to let Cenred free his own prick and hold both together, stroking as he saw fit. It felt good to anticipate the other man’s actions, not to know. To be, literally, in safe hands and given pleasure like a gift, without having to strive for it.

The shape of Cenred’s mouth had changed—he could feel it against his skin and knew it must be a smile. Cenred shifted even closer, trapping their cocks between them, the pressure almost bruising—tight and so good. His other hand felt up between Wulfstan’s legs, a painful bliss over the clenched fists of his balls, and a deep, dark red need as the knuckle of his thumb pressed hard against the flesh between balls and arse, and Wulfstan thought he would break apart, trying not to whimper.

The questing hand prodded none to gently at his arsehole, and he barely had the presence of mind to shove Cenred hard in the chest while his bones flew apart and he was coming and coming over Cenred’s belly and chest. The heat and liquid smoothness of his friend following drew all out until he was utterly spent. He had just resilience enough to wipe off the mess with the skirts of his undertunic before dark and satiation took him and he slept.

He was asleep when it happened again—asleep and dreaming of lying beneath one made out of glass and fire, delicate but indestructible. It was his harper, yes, but his harper revealed as an angelic force—a god of sorts, of music and poetry, greater than human. So much greater than Wulfstan that there could be no shame at all in yielding to him. Nothing more than nature taking its rightful course…

So Wulfstan rolled over onto his belly and spread his legs, and dreamed of fingers rubbing grease on him, that melted and slid inside and made him shiver with the strangeness of it. When he woke to the full, aching slide of possession and the rhythm of all but silent breaths against his nape, it took him so long to rouse his mind out of dreams that there seemed no need to protest, all his urgency saved for the coil of building pleasure in his belly and the way the intrusion made him feel like a slow-worm stunned by sunlight on a rock. Too late to protest now, without letting every man in the hall know what was going on.

He opened his eyes and saw a blue dimness in the hall and a brighter blue triangle at the apex of the roof where night was giving way to dawn outside, and something in his mind screamed protest even while his eyelids were closing of themselves, weighted by bliss. His body demanded that he should relish the surrender, glory in the perverse triumph of it. He was showing them all, now, shouting a challenge to every voice that said this should not be done, and he felt the looseness of his muscles and the rock of his pelvis against the ground like defiance, heady and splendid as war.

Cenred shuddered behind him, pressing a delighted laugh into his skin, and stopped as Wulfstan squirmed with need. In his frustration, Wulfstan’s sodden maze of pleasure-drunken thoughts turned into a sack full of snakes.
What? No! Don’t stop!
What kind of a friend would leave it there, would take his own victory and leave his lover unsatisfied? Cenred would not. Yes, he was selfish, always had been, but surely…

There was nothing he could say, but as Cenred pulled away he turned and grabbed the thankless man around the waist and threw him down. Got him pinned. Cenred twisted his ankles together and Wulfstan took the hint—he had no time or mind for anything complicated—just thrust in the hollow between Cenred’s thighs, coming with embarrassing ease mere seconds later.

They lay breathing hard, together, in a nest of rough blankets and the scent of sex and straw. Wulfstan might have fallen asleep again, for when he opened his eyes a second time it was to see Cenred’s face drawn close to his, the narrowed indigo eyes glittering with hard-edged laughter. It was not the soft, indulgent expression Wulfstan would have preferred, and the ice in his marrow bloomed and spread at the sight.

“Well,” said Cenred, soft as the sounds of other men beginning to stir around them, “long have I suspected it, but no man can say I knew until now.”

There were too many teeth in his smile, and Wulfstan’s hands were drawing up and lacing his sticky braies before his thoughts had time to make it into words.

“What do you—”

Over by the wall, Eadwacer was sitting up and stretching, his face and hands white blurs in the woad-coloured dim. The enchantment of safety woven by the darkness began to shrink and fray under Wulfstan’s hands. He had more light now in which to see the cruelty that gave such a glint to Cenred’s smile.

“Shall I say it more plainly?” The whisper shuddered with laughter. “Shall I tell everyone that their berserker is no wolf at all, but a vixen in heat? Shall I tell them that I defeated Ecgbert’s favourite and nailed him into the ground and
he loved it
?”

The ice in Wulfstan’s bones froze him solid—he wondered why dew did not fall on him and the boards of the floor slick with ice. He could not… He could not
think
. What was this? What was Cenred saying? It made no sense.

And he went on saying it. “I think I shall. Do you know how you have tyrannized over us all, all these years? How we have had to walk around you as though around a rabid dog, carefully staying out of the range of the teeth? How you brought about Manna’s disgrace, when he did nothing but speak the truth? How you have dared, all these years, to give me your friendship out of
pity
? You, pity me? When you are a soft, suckling weakling
cunt
who needs a real man to fill his hole and fuck him.”

The hissing voice passed over Wulfstan poisonous as dragon’s breath. Slowly, slowly, the thought that he was about to be betrayed began to break through his shell of ice.

Cenred pulled his clothes together and pushed himself up on one knee. The light had broadened and his voice grown stronger. There could no longer be any doubt that others were watching, others were listening. “I will,” he said, reckless and laughing and cruel. “I’m going to tell them all how you let me—”

By some strange alchemy, the ice in Wulfstan’s bones turned in an instant into fire, as panic made him surge up and drive his head into the hollow beneath Cenred’s breastbone. The breath went out of him in a great whoop as the force of the blow drove him backwards. As he stumbled on the blankets underfoot, Wulfstan—shouting “You fucking liar! You fucking, fucking liar!”—balled both fists and slammed them as one hammer into Cenred’s throat beneath the jaw. He wasn’t thinking, he just wanted the mocking voice to go away and it seemed his fists knew what to do far better than he did.

As the blow drove Cenred away, the edge of the firepit caught him in the back of the knees. Wulfstan saw him go down. Following the great blow with a punch to Cenred’s nose, shattering it, he hit and hit again until finally Aelfsi and Eadwacer got his arms and dragged him away from Cenred’s unresisting form.