Archive of Our Own

Have the poets left in the garment a place for a patch to be patched by me
and did you know the abode of your beloved after reflection?

The vestige of the house, which did not speak, confounded thee,
until it spoke by means of signs, like one deaf and dumb.

And verily you have occupied in my heart the place of the beloved,
so do not think otherwise than this, that you are my beloved.

- from the Poem of Antar.

---

How Ahmed Ibn Fahdlan got to the village at Braco Cove he had no idea. No, he knew physically how he'd arrived. That had happened through the simple expedient of going to the harbor, finding out which ships were departing that day, and then booking passage on which ever one would have him. The storm that broke his ship apart had done the rest, and the sea had completed his journey for him, washing the spar of wood to which he clung to the one safe place on an inhospitable coastline. It was more the why of the whole thing that was puzzling.

He'd returned home, heroic and scarred. Returned to a life that he'd longed for all the time he'd been gone. He'd even found himself practically gifted the girl by the very Caliph who had banished him, another form of praise that was ultimately unwanted, though he knew his changed mind and heart had hurt her deeply. She'd been made a widow while he was gone and had sent for him when he returned, had welcomed him back and into her body with all the enthusiasm he would once have cherished, and with the unspoken approval of the world he had once thought to be an ideal.

But he did not cherish it. It all felt flat and tame and far too...structured. All of life, since his return home, had seemed like a play written out with a part for him to follow, no room for improvisation. And so he had left, not even knowing until the second day of his voyage what his destination was to be.

He had been en route to Constantinople, the haven for those saddened and disused by the ones who refused to call themselves an Empire - and when he was blown off course, like the driftwood that arrived with him, to this small, chilly, and utterly unyielding piece of shoreland, he had simply found it oddly appropriate, amusing, and fitting to his hand.

Everyone else had found it far more fitting, he learned later, to rebuild the boat - ship - and sail away. He had been the only survivor to reach this particular inlet, and the others had been completely unaware of his existence, though they had been a scant thirty leagues away for many weeks.

So all of this, chance and fate and perhaps the prayers Herger had once called out a promise to make for him, had led him to his new life in Braco Cove, a small fishing village. It was a poor place, frequently ravaged by Vikings and vagabonds alike. Although what, Ahmed wondered, could they find that was still worth taking?

Braco Cove boasted a dock, if you could call a dirt abutment that ventured out into the sea that had been fitted with a plank extension a dock. And the dock was the village's most interesting feature. It was a tired and weary looking place, filled with tired and weary looking people. Even the children looked exhausted, as if the mere thought of running and playing were beyond them.

Ahmed, used to the children of the harems, who had often been refused even the license to play, in case it took their mothers' rights of family from them both, taught them the quiet, huddled games of dice and knucklebones, merrills and queek. He taught them all the things that had enlivened his own childhood, and, just as he had learned, he taught them how to conceal it. He used the ubiquitous shells and stones and hard, broken sand to show them how to sketch out boards and tables, and use them for whatever they wanted. Games for those with nothing, for the dispossessed.

It was a simple thing, and easily done, but it made him a part of this place, at least in his own mind. And he wanted any place that he felt a part of to be safe. He wanted the children to be protected, their mothers the same. He wanted their fathers to know how to defend them when the next raid came. Ahmed had never learned that feeling himself to be a part of a place, did not make it true.

So he, wanting a home, and wanting it in every sense of the word, learned the tides and the vile weather, learned that it never seemed to grow warm, learned, slowly and far more painfully than he had learned to speak to the Northmen, the mangled language, and learned that he could be a part of a town while never being considered to live there. It suited him astoundingly well.

And if he never grew close to anyone, neither was he maligned. He was listened to, at least, giving suggestion for fortifications to the village elders. That he was willing to put his own hands and strong back to the building afterwards, only helped his cause. Perhaps in another twenty years, the villagers might not refer to him as 'the stranger'.

He didn't mind. It was a sort of name, less and somehow more familiar than 'Eben', and less likely to make him wish that life were different. If he had to build palisades and hew stone in the name of 'Stranger', then he was content.

Or he was until the new stranger arrived in town, a Northman trying to trade a few carvings and skins for food. At least that was what he told one of the villagers, in his broken speech. It was more temptation than Ahmed could resist. He spoke to the man in his own barbaric tongue, asking where he was from, had he heard the tale of Buliwyf, did he know of Herger's clan?

But the man knew the tale of Buliwyf as that of 'Beowulf', the man with sunlight and honey in his veins, the son of a king who could defeat evil with one breath, one gesture, one thrum of his mighty heart. He defeated dark magic by the purity of his life, and perhaps that part of the story was the closest the would ever come to understanding the kind, strange, man who had changed Ahmed's life and his worked by virtue of his mere existence. But Buliwyf himself, the man who had once loved his warriors and his dog, loved a mead-girl and a queen and the idea of 'writing sounds', and all with equal joy and respect was long since forgotten, and his true deeds with him.

I have only these hands. I will die a pauper. Man might be thought wealthy if someone were to draw the story of his deeds...

But it was the way of the world, Ahmed knew, that the legend had been too fantastical for anything but the defeating of monsters and dragons, the true horror of the fireworm shrouded in the ever-present mists of that place, still. He had not mourned for the man he had come to know and respect and - yes, for it was impossible not to - love. Even so, he missed, as he suspected he always would, the idea of Buliwyf in the world, enriching it by his presence in the skeins of life Herger had spoken of, a rich gold thread in the dull loom of life. Buliwyf , though, he knew, would simply have been thrilled that his tale had grown to such proportion, his fame spread by word of mouth to reach even a man who sold carved deer and bad pottery and three-times turned cloaks in the marketplace of a tired fishing village. He would have credited Ahmed's account with this new glamour, and rewarded him accordingly with unfeigned delight.

But still, Ahmed vowed again, he would set down the true story eventually, if only for his own remembrances.

He had, of course, put it down in straight fact, a record of what had occurred, and knew that had been Buliwyf's intention, even on that long-ago day when he painstakingly scrawled the name of God into the sand. But fact was not a story, that much he had learned in the dark and frightening woodlands of the North, amidst fire and dung and poisoned darts. Stories could teach you, and facts could be ignored, and it was a long time since he had thought otherwise.

Eventually he had sent the Northman off, a few coins richer, and returned to the small building that he had been staying in. It was near the edge of the cluster of the village, but had the deep cut of a bluff and the high sand dunes just behind it, and not far from the dump where shells and bones where disposed of, some of which, as he had found, could be put to use either for sharpening or embellishing weapons. One kind of shell, with small, sharp edges along its surprising length worked as well as a stiletto knife he had seen once. It wasn't much of a defense, he knew, but an improvement over what the rest of the town had when he'd arrived. And, as often as he could, he shared his slow discoveries, charging little and expecting no other repayment.

The days were slow, exhausting for all that, and full of unprofitable longings that left him, sometimes in the lonely and sea-filled silence of his cottage, more restless than he had any right to be. At least to this particular kind of restlessness he could put a name, and it was lust, and unsatisfied and unclassifiable lust at that, since here he was the infidel, and there was no house of easy virtue with which to solve his problem.

It fell, embarrassingly, to him to find the solution, and the sea air seemed at least to have cleared his memory, so that he could think the hand on him belonged to another, remember times when it was. It was effective, but not enough.

He should, he knew, have gone to sleep far more often to thoughts of Olga's arms and sweet breath, or of the subtle perfume which Sayyida had combed into her hair, than he did of Herger's approving grin as he cut his first palisade, but it was not as he would have wished it, and with no-one to speak of this to, he found he could not care as much as he should when all churches, not only this one which he helped to rebuild and yet was considered inferior to, would have disapproved of and condemned him for his recollections.

And the dreams that followed those thoughts and the rare times when he acted upon them, were far more satisfying and satiating than any dreams of harems and softness, the times when he found he was letting himself imagine a rough embrace and a touch to his shoulder were far more assuaging to his need than any imaginings of Olga's almost-translucency in the firelight, or Sayyida's glowing silks that were all promise and revelation. Ahmed added another gain to his self-knowledge, and kept it to himself. A warm guarded secret in this too cold land.

**

A community is made up of many parts, some necessary and some for comfort. Ahmed had argued that the building of fortifications had to be the priority for the village. The elders had agreed with him, but had put equal importance on the rebuilding of their little church. Why they needed a building to worship, Ahmed did not understand, but who was he to argue about the importance of someone's religious practices?

No one.

But what he did argue was that if you were dead, having a church would be of no comfort to body or soul. The elders shook their head sadly over the state of his soul which they, apparently. found lacking. But their sorrows for his 'lost' status, did not keep them from using his knowledge to begin the fortifications.

He sometimes suspected they were hoping he might miraculously be converted by the simple means of hard work, though he was more likely to start worshipping the gods of engineering and leverage, and perhaps the man who had first thought of using weights as more than simple balances. After weeks of moving stone by virtue of bags of sand that was more shell and stone than anything he would have dignified by the name, he had a thorough appreciation of the first man to sit down and construct a pulley system. He was also developing a true love of strong rope and thick cloth, but that had stemmed more from a personal desire to keep his hands intact than any dawning theological convictions.

With the constructions, both necessary and for comfort, well on their way, Ahmed turned his thoughts to other matters. Things like an early warning system. This mainly consisted of bonfires set at the mouth of the cove and the hills behind it, to be lit by lookouts if trouble was suspected, and runner teams to be made up of the town's children and young adults.

He doubted, somehow, that those who came from the sea would be so obliging as to announce their presence from afar, but at least with a watch system in place there was some chance of at least being warned, if not completely prepared. They were a small town, after all, hardly likely to turn into a standing army just because of an hour's advance notice that everything they had rebuilt was about to be destroyed once more.

On the other hand, it might give the greater proportion of them a chance to hide both themselves and their more valuable remaining possessions - not exactly valiant, perhaps, but certainly practical.

Ahmed had never been one to promote exaggerated bravery above survival, even if he was capable of admiring that trait in others.

Still, they were doing what was possible and it was with some small portion of pride that he looked over the men that were working beside him. They were not learned nor even taught at all, in most cases, but they were hardworking and intelligent, understanding what he wanted and offering their own suggestions as to how it was to be accomplished with no thought of any recognition beyond the idea that they were keeping their families safe. He understood them, he thought.

So it was with some surprise when he overheard one of them talking about him to one of the elders.

"I don't trust him. Why is he doing this? He's not one of us."

And that was the trouble with overhearing something rather than being a part of it - he could not respond. He wanted to say 'Because I have no way of leaving. Because I do not want to go back, and I cannot go on. Because if I must be here, then I would rather stand a chance of survival. Because I do not want to see any more needless death.'

But he could say none of that, could not even say 'Because all I know, now, is how to help. I have forgotten how to be the one who takes without considering the results of my action, or the one who lets others do the work for me and simply profits by it.' There was no-one who would understand or believe him, no-one, now, who wanted to hear the real story of the Wendol or the truth behind the horror of the fire-worm.

He heard the elder say something placatory about God and mysterious ways, and knew that it was yet another barrier to separate him from the town, to make him still more different. An instrument to be used, not a man.

He had been granted more humanity when he was laughed at by the Northmen. At least they had done so to his face, as well as when they thought he could not understand, and it had been close to friendship even when it was mixed with a kind of pitying incomprehension on both sides.

"But he speaks their language," the man said. "The language of the North. Gest heard him when that trader came through."

Now he was to be condemned for his knowledge? Did these people worship ignorance the way they did their God? In cold stone rooms with their eyes averted.

Oddly, this seemed to concern the elder not at all, a strange thing given that he was more likely to be found in those rooms on his knees than nearly any other man. "And when your grandfather first heard Latin or the language of the Franks, I don't doubt he felt the same fears," he said. "Until I see him welcome the Northmen at our gates, I think I shall reserve judgment."

That, at least, was encouraging, and Ahmed put it behind him, doing his best to not treat the man who spoke out any differently than he did the rest of the workers. And in spite of his words, that particular man did not treat him any differently after his talk with the elder than he had before. So status quo and they all moved on, hopefully, and tried to gain a better understanding one for the other.

Or at least, he tried, even if he knew that they did not always bother to even make the slightest effort. He put up with endless fish in various stages of half-cooked horror, and the fact that everything smelled of it in some form, either smoked or cured or, nastily, slowly dried and pickled in its own slow decomposition, and he learned how to mend the small fishing boats with their taut skin coverings, and when he questioned the traders, now, he made sure he did so in the townspeople's language or in Latin. He might have nowhere else to go, but he was learning to make what he had endurable.

And then, one evening, more than just the watch fire glowed in the distance, and he knew that he was about to find out whether it had all been for nothing, or whether, as the elder had suggested, there had been some purpose to his coming there.

One of the children, a very quick ten year old girl called Guenbrith, came running up to him, panting heavily as she tried to relate her message, "A ship... Northmen...they came in...close to shore. We didn't...see them until... they were nearly here."

"You did well," Ahmed reassured her, then sent her off to help her mother in clearing their few possessions out of their home.

He hoped that he would do as well, or at least ensure that some of the things he had put into place would serve as a temporary distraction, He knew that to completely avert disaster was beyond his capabilities or indeed anything they had planned, but he thought they might, at least, be able to make things a little less annihilatory than the last time. He wondered if the young men standing with him had faith like the battle prayer he had once joined in with, or if they simply hoped they would live, and decided it did not matter, as long as they were prepared to fight for something.

The wait was not as long as he had hoped for, but probably too long for his nervous companions. It gave them time to think, and to fear - to regret missed opportunities and to pray for second chances. Yet, even with that, none left their place or fled. And in spite of the whimpers he heard as the dragon boat beached and it's crew deployed, they remained steadfast.

It had been a long time since he had been truly afraid, and he was not afraid now, even though he thought, with a kind of weary amusement, that it seemed strange to die here at the cold, fish-smelling world's end with people who did not know or like him and had never shown any signs of wanting to do either. He thought, briefly, of how it might have been if he had reached Constantinople, of how he had made a sword into a scimitar one sunlit day, and, clear as the warning bell behind him, understood that it had, indeed, been a good life, if only because he had finally learned how to live it as best he could.

If that meant that he stood in a place without real sand and fought to preserve a faith that would never be his, then so be it. It was not happiness, but it was a measure of contentment, and that was more than many men found in their lives, even if they lived to the end of their days' span.

There were sudden harsh cries as the Northmen charged toward their location, harsh and fierce. To Ahmed the sound was as familiar and heartbreaking as it was frightening. Men's voices calling on Odin and Thor and the dozens of other gods that the Northmen worshiped. Gods that Herger had promised to pray to for him. It was a bitter sweet memory, coupled with Herger's entreaty for him to not be offended that he did it. As if he could be.

He called direction to the young men around him, encouragement and reassurance to hold back their fears. He could quite understand it. The Northmen charging toward them, weapons at the ready, their hair - blond, red, brown - flowing around them like mad halos of sentient life, it was frightening.

He wondered if he would be able to tell if any of them were laughing from the sheer joy of being alive to fight, or whether it would all blur into the same flame-filled struggle for survival as the last time he had fought. He wondered if he would remember, if he did hear laughter, that it did not mean help or that odd sense of safety he had grown half-accustomed to, but an enemy.

Back to the beginning, he thought, and wondered if he still merited a place in the Valhalla he had once forgotten his own God to pray for.

"Where the brave may live forever," he said clearly in the Northmen's tongue, ignoring the fearful looks from the men he was supposed to be fighting with, and found consolation in what had once been an alien tongue.

"Be ready," He then told them in their own rough dialect, "for they will certainly be. Ready to gut you and take your wife as prize."

The words were harsh, but seemed to put steel back into a few backbones and they all turned, now at the ready to face the oncoming Northmen.

But now, somehow, they weren't coming, and he could hear a cry of, "Létta! Létta!" from somewhere. Stop! Stop!

But why? And who would be giving the command?

"Eben!" It was a rough, exultant, familiar shout, and then he was looking down at Herger's grin, in the midst of bewildered Northmen and the petrified townsmen, as Herger said, "What in the name of Odin's beard are you doing here?" He had to shout to be heard over the cacophony of varying forms of annoyance.

"Defending the town from you, you idiotic infidel," Ahmed laughed back, and sheathed his sword. "And why, I have to ask, are you charging in here like demons? Could you not have used the docks like a civilized man?"

He got the look of 'you're an idiot, but I'll humor you' for that, and almost laughed again as Herger said, "You wanted us to wait off shore and send people to ask, instead?"

Ahmed just shook his head, then moved to climb down off the wall. "I know this man," he said to the questioning eyes of his companions. "It will be alright."

And then, only a few moments later he was in Herger's arms, sharing a hug and having his back thumped in the roughly affectionate way he remembered so well. "Eben. It's so very good to see you."

"You too," he said, his voice rougher than he would have liked with disbelief and relief. "You and your life's skein that must be lived out nearly had me dying in a fish paradise."

Herger drew back and gave him a look of mingled confusion and disgust. "Fish?"

"That's what they have here," Ahmed said, beginning to enjoy himself out of all proportion to the situation. "Fish."

"Fish?" Herger was frowning now. "But we were told-- but that's wrong, I see, for we were also told the town was unguarded. It appears that Loki has taken a hand in our lives, Little Brother. We should be wary."

And that, of course, was the reverse of the coin to any conversation with Herger, the absolute and complete confusion that resulted from any attempt at coherent thought. "Loki?" Ahmed said at last, with all the wariness that could possibly have been wished for.

But Herger just laughed in his face, then turned to the other Northmen, "My friend says that all they have to protect is their lives and their fish."

There was general laughter and then the warmth of Herger's hand on his shoulder once more and his gentle amused voice, far too near his ear, "Only you, Little Brother, would build such fortifications to protect fish."

"And the people," Ahmed said, equally quietly, because that was the first lesson he had learned at the end of the long, horrible journey to fight a demon none of them had really understood the true nature of. "They needed it." No wall. No moat. Not even a presentable fence. It had been like revisiting the camp, and he had thought of Rethel's disgust, and understood it.

"Playing at hero?" Herger teased him, in that same affectionate voice. The tone warmed him and he realized that he had missed that most of all. That sound that said, 'I may not always understand you, but it doesn't matter.' It was unqualified and undemanding. It was friendship and love and so many of the things that made life worthwhile.

"Playing at stonemason," he corrected with feeling, and made a face, wondering whether all his work was still going to be for nothing and the Northmen were going to destroy the town in any case, in their disappointment over the fish.

He had found though, that where the Northmen were concerned he was often better off being straightforward, "Really, Herger, they have been raided so often that they have little left beyond their lives. This was a last hope for them."

Herger scowled for a moment, obviously thinking, then nodded. "We'll make camp," he said, and somehow, in the intervening time between their parting and this strange new encounter in the middle of nowhere, he had learned to make a statement into a command, instantly obeyed. It was new, and yet not so, and Ahmed was not sure that he liked it very much, although that could have been jealousy, given as his own ragged little group were still shuffling around him like awkward children.

"Make camp and then what?" Ahmed had to ask. He'd made a commitment to this town, to these people. A commitment to help defend their lives and their few remaining possessions. But, how could he fight against Herger, if it came down to that?

"You worry too much," Herger said with a grin. "You can't save every town, Arab." His head tilted a little to the side, obviously assessing whether Ahmed was going to query that, too.

He did manage to restrain himself, for the moment. "I know that, Northman." But his thoughts still tangled. "I don't want to save every town, just this one." It was a small distinction, but a distinction none the less.

"And this time you did," Herger said, but it was the false amiability Ahmed had learned the hard way to thoroughly distrust. "From us."

He gave a sharp nod of understanding, although he didn't, not really, "Excuse me then, I must tell my..." He hesitated to call them troops, or men, and could not call them friends, "...the villagers that they are safe...from you."

He didn't wait for an answer but turned and picked his way back over the wall and into the town.

**

It wasn't as though Ahmed was expecting the reception of a conquering hero, but a little...well, gratitude, not to put too fine a point on it, would have been nice. Instead, he walked through an odd hush that was at the same time full of whispers, and the feeling of being watched from behind closed doors and windows covered with oiled skins.

It seemed that he had, somehow, made everything a hundred times worse by stopping the raid.

As a matter of fact, it seemed that that one small fact was being completely forgotten in the mix of suspicion and prejudice that was winding around him.    Because, while he hadn't saved the village by the strength of his arm, he had saved it. It may have help more of luck than skill but that should not be the point.

He gave orders to the few boys left on the wall and headed toward his home. Herger and his crew had settled their tents at the edge of the trees, just above the coarse and lumpy beach - settled as if they planned on remaining there for quite some time.

Considering the extremely bizarre form that any kind of luck in his life had taken recently, they probably were. Not that he would mind, but the constant worry about what they were thinking of doing next might start, along with the town's attitude, to become rather wearing.

It was almost a relief to get into his house and close the door on it all.

The fire, as he had learned to his cost was an important factor of slightly smoke-filled life here, was banked down with packed bracken, retaining heat and faintly glowing embers that would, eventually, rekindle so he could add driftwood. It was a long and irritating process, and did nothing to lighten his mood, as he yet again thought of the luxuries he had taken for granted in another lifetime, such as hot water.

Or large bowls in which he could put the hot water, and actually feel halfway to clean, something that hadn't happened in over a year.

He got the fire rekindled and himself cleanish, and was just considering the idea of food... when there was a strong firm knock on the door. It was not a remarkable occurrence, in and of itself, but this was the first time it had happened since he arrived in Braco Cove. No one ever came to see him, aside from a few of the children, and they usually just lurked around until they saw him come outside.

Still, it was oddly not a surprise when he opened the door and found Herger standing on the other side of it.

He would have quite happily stood there, his mind failing completely to function other than the almost-pleasant knowledge that he wasn't surprised, and then the slowly growing amusement on Herger's face reminded him that there was in fact a response to finding someone outside your door, and it usually was not simply standing there in total silence.

He stood to the side, and gestured an invitation towards the room, wincing at the track of mixed wet sand and mud that immediately followed Herger in his bee-line for the fire.
Ahmed pulled two stools up to the fire and offered one to Herger along with a mug of hot mint tea, liberally laced with honey. Then with opening amenities provided for, he took his own seat.

"How did you find me?" True the village was not large, but Herger could not have watched his progress home from his camp.

Herger was looking at his admittedly rather badly-made cup as though Ahmed had kindly filled it with snake venom. "I asked," he said, turning a slightly less worried look on Ahmed. "One of the men you left on the wall - he has some Latin."

"And he very kindly directed you right here?" Ahmed just shook his head in wry amusement. "You see why they have been raided so many times? They have no sense of self-preservation at all. Possibly no sense at all. "

"You were talking to me, that was reason enough," Herger pointed out, before putting his cup down carefully, as though he were in imminent danger of being bitten by it. "And I didn't get the feeling anyone would care much if I killed you in your home. Or perhaps everyone just has unfriendly faces here?" He mimicked the usual stone-faced expressions that everyone in the area seemed to have when confronted with something - or someone - new. It didn't suit him.

"Both, I'm afraid." Ahmed was sure his voice sounded as bitter as he felt. "I'm here by chance and I've tried to fit, but I don't. But neither do I wish to return home."

"Which is what I - what are you doing here? Saving the ungrateful, yes, I can see that, but here and saving them? I thought you went -" Herger's arm sweep endangered life and limb and somehow conveyed an immense sense of distance - "back." He lowered his hand to pat Ahmed's arm. "Not ungrateful enough there?"

"I did go back." Ahmed told him, taking a sip of his tea. "And was welcomed. Home was the same as ever, though, and I was not."

I was bored. He didn't say that out loud. Even to himself it sounded completely childish.

"So you came here?" The mere fact of the place seemed to have completely bewildered Herger. Ahmed didn't blame him, since he had come to think of it as the end of the world himself.

"No." His voice was harsh. "I left on the first ship for Constantinople... but... there was a storm."

He wondered at times, if the shipwreck had been Allah's punishment on him for not being grateful for all that he had at home.

"You're sure it was a storm?" Herger's voice was light, teasing. He obviously remembered just how much Ahmed hated ships, and the sea, and anything to do with water that moved, including downwards in the form of rain, or slowly in the form of groundswell. He hated it all, and had not been slow to share that fact with everyone. "Not just a little wind and a shower of rain?"

"It overturned the ship and broke it to pieces... I floated on a piece of it for two days before I reached land." The disaster had perhaps, been as much the fault of their captain as it had been that of the storm, but that was what had happened.

"And this was the land you reached," Herger said thoughtfully. "Eben, I cannot decide if you are blessed or cursed, but I don't doubt any more that the gods are watching you." He laughed. "Perhaps you are their idea of a long joke."

Ahmed barked out a laugh, "My friend, I begin to think you're right."

Herger didn't stay long, after that. It was as thought he had wanted an answer to some question that he hadn't quite asked, and got it, though Ahmed was unsure as to how he might have provided anything but what he was aware of saying. He might have imagined the visit, save for the slowly drying mud and sand on his floor, and the clay cup of untouched, cooling mint tea on his hearth. He began, slowly and oddly unwillingly, to clear up.

The sound of laughter drifted up from the beach, and the faint scents of campfires and cooking, over the more familiar ones of gorse and drying seaweed.

The gods are watching you.

He wished they would stop.

**

The beach in this odd little village was far more comfortable than that of his own home. True, it was cold, but not as cold as home. The shale and shell and sand mix was easier for walking than either the rocky stones of home or the fine sand of the fjords. It still got into everything though, that seemed to be a universal quality. It found its way into food, and clothes, and bedding, no matter how careful you were or how you blocked the wind, or which direction you set up your tent.

Eben had told Herger of the deserts of his homeland, of its beauty and warmth, but the only thing Herger could picture was sand-crunchy soup and itchy clothes and blankets. But he'd also told him of the baths. Hot water, he'd imagine, would cure many ills. Not that sweat lodges and icy plunges did not invigorate a man's blood, but the thought of lounging in a tub of hot water, was a luxury he could only dream of.

Herger looked around their small camp, set up in the lea of their beached ship. His men were relaxing in this rare time of leisure, although a few of them had asked why they were staying if they weren't going to raid.

A good question, but one Herger wasn't quite ready to answer, even for himself.

It seemed to be a question just about everyone in the area was asking about them, too, if the number of people who seemed to have made excuses to pass by or talk to the few men remaining at the wall, or, in the case of some children he kept almost-seeing and certainly hearing, playing an elaborate game of hide-and-seek with them.

If, of course, it counted as hide-and seek when no-one was really looking for them.

Herger pulled his cloak just a bit tighter around him and looked toward the wall and the village beyond. There, just to the left of their church building, he could see a small plume of smoke. He couldn't be certain, but the location was correct for the small building that Eben was calling home. It wasn't much, but it was far more permanent a home than Herger had had for a very long time.

He wondered if he envied the other man, or pitied him.

But then, he had wondered which of those emotions he felt almost from the first time they had met, only able to communicate through an old man in doubly mangled languages of an old world, and he had still felt himself opposed by a blank smooth wall of unshakeable confidence that was obviously the result of total inexperience in the world he knew.

Even when he had found out just how thorough that lack of any knowledge that he considered worth having was, he had still not been sure whether it was envy or pity that drove him to laugh at the Arab and goad him into some kind of open response, some kind of action.

He'd like to think that by the time they had parted ways, they had both learned something. And really, what more could a man ask than that?

Well, aside from good company, a good fight and some good mead, that is.

He just had difficulty, most of the time, in working out what exactly had been learned , other than that half the time they didn't understand what the hell the other was doing or why - which went straight back to wondering whether he was annoyed or pitying or what, other than generally confused.

There was another giggle from somewhere behind him, and he turned his head just in time to see yet another small figure disappear hurriedly behind the nearest sand-dune.

He calmly wandered to the far end of it, looking for all the world as if he were merely going off to take a piss. But when he got to the far end he abruptly changed direction and came up behind a small group of five or six children. They were huddled together and whispering as they took turns sneaking peeks at the camp.

He coughed a bit, and stood there calmly, waiting to see what reaction he would get, and not sure whether it was going to be complete panic or not. He was hoping not, but then again, it wasn't as though he had come with assurances of his safety, no matter how curious they might be to watch from a distance.

Almost as one they turned toward him, curious eyes taking him in from much closer. Then almost as suddenly, the smallest one let out a shrieking whoop and they scattered, all of them screaming.

But it wasn't frightened screaming, nor were the children actually going very far. It suddenly dawned on Herger that they were inviting him to play, to become part of whatever game this was.

He turned, a grin on his face and his arms high, fingers spread and curved like claws, "I'm a bear and I eat children for breakfast." He gave a mighty growl and they began an elaborate game of feint and switch, until he finally caught one of them and they all collapsed on the ground laughing and tumbling, Herger on the bottom of the pile.

The sand really did get everywhere, and was definitely a reason for untangling everyone, as he got chattered at from at least five different directions and couldn't make out a single word. Whatever it was, it was obviously hysterically funny, and trying to shake the sand out of his hair only seemed to make it all worse, or funnier. He wasn't really sure which, and he had the definite feeling he'd been got the better of.

"They say they've never seen a bear with yellow hair before," A deep amused sounding voice told him. "Nor one with sand down his pants."

One of the children piped up at that point, interrupting with something else that Herger did not understand.

"Ah, actually, they've never seen a real bear at all so maybe they do have blond hair," Ahmed chuckled, "but the little one says she is quite certain that real bears do not even wear pants."

"They might think their fur's the same thing," Herger pointed out without a shred of regret for his non-existent and thoroughly lost dignity, such as it had ever been.

Ahmed relayed that thought to the children who all nodded solemnly and turned to leave, but not before the youngest one had hugged him tightly around his neck.

"I never knew that this was what you did with your off-duty time," Ahmed ventured. "But it seems to suit you."

Herger grinned at him, deliberately misunderstanding. "The sand?" He managed to dislodge a bit more of it, not entirely coincidentally over Ahmed's clothing.

Ahmed gave a half-hearted scowl and Herger laughed outright. "I like children, when they belong to someone else. Then you have the fun without having to wipe noses or the rest."

Ahmed still looked skeptical, but since Herger had a fairly good idea that there were reasons as to why the children assumed all strangers were there purely for their entertainment, he decided to ignore it.

"How long are you staying?" Ahmed said suddenly, looking toward the camp on the beach.

It was an amazingly abrupt inquiry, even coming from Eben, and he wondered if he had read the other man wrongly. Did he really want them gone or was he just being pressured by those in the town?

"Until we hear of somewhere else to go," Herger said, deliberately teasing, hoping to annoy at least a look of exasperation out of him, and becoming exasperated himself when he failed, meeting only the calm smoothness of the look he had become used to in the days before the Wendol.

"I see." Ahmed said. "They will have a ship come in to port in about two days time. I'll... I'll keep my ears open."

The comment, however it was said, made Herger frown. "We don't need help, Eben."

He was surprised when that did evoke a laugh. "No, of course you don't," Ahmed said, and now he was teasing. "I'll remember that when the townsmen's fear becomes too much and you all end up needing rescuing from more than suspicious looks."

Herger snorted, "I don't think we need to fear your fisher folk. I haven't yet changed my name to Gravlaks."

"But fishermen have nets, and those may be worse," Ahmed said hesitantly. "And they try to be good men, but you know what fear can do even to good men. Besides, their God is as inhospitable as their shoreline, and my word will be worth less than the sand if they decide you are their enemy."

"You worry too much, Little Brother," Herger said, quietly. He put one hand on Ahmed's shoulder and gave it a squeeze. "We would not knowingly raid on a friend, nor take away his home. Your people have nothing to fear from us, so we should have nothing to fear from them."

"Someone has to worry," Ahmed said quietly, too quietly, and was this what months of wasted grey time with a lifeless town and an unanswering God did to a man? "But of course, you have never been wrong." The old glint of malicious amusement was back in his eyes at that, the combination of certainty and apprehension, as always, an invitation to take him by the shoulders and shake him, hard, until he lost both

But really, fighting with Eben was the last thing Herger wanted to do, "Of course I haven't. Ask anyone. Ask Einar or Geir or Oddvar over there. They'll tell you as much."

Herger used the hand on Ahmed's shoulder to turn him toward the camp and move him in that direction. "Of course, they will also tell you that I was the one who chose this particular village... so their judgment might be questionable."

"I thought you said it was your gods that decided," Ahmed said dryly, and that tone of voice, at least, was completely familiar, the sarcasm and scathing disbelief held in check only by some idea of politeness that just stopped on the right side of insulting.

"The gods direct all things, Eben. You know that. Whether we choose to listen or not is what causes problems." Herger kept his smile on his face. "And right now, the voice I hear is telling me that mead is in order."

"Oh no. Oh no, I am not believing that story about bees again," Ahmed protested. "Once was enough and you made my head into an anvil. No."

"Just one drink." Herger coaxed. "After that, we'll find you some...fish juice, or whatever it is they drink here."

"Fish jui -" Ahmed quite visibly gave up, holding up a finger. "One drink," he said with a firmness Herger had every intention of demolishing. "One."

**

There was an entire mountain range digging into his kidneys. The Alps he thought, since their peaks appeared to be so pointy. He tried to shift his position but as soon as he did, several of those very same peaks seemed to jab straight into his eyes. That was the only explanation for the sharp aching pain that he was feeling. Mountain peaks in his back, fire in his brain and a terrifying need to relieve himself - ah, yes, he'd spent an evening in Herger's company, so all was explained.

Somewhere, a seagull was making noises that sounded exactly how he felt, and when he got enough energy, he was going to throw every rock he could find at it to make it stop, since one of them should definitely be put out of their misery.

"Are you awake?" A tiny voice whispered to him. "I don't think I'm 'sposed to talk to you until you're awake."

"Urgh," Ahmed said coherently, and managed to open his eyes just enough to decide if this was morning, he wanted nothing at all to do with it. He was also, he was starting to realize, very cold indeed, which could not be put down entirely to the after effects of mead.

"He told me to keep the fire going, but I'm not 'sposed to play with fire," the little voice confided. "The Herger said you'd probably be cranky."

"Did he." He'd forgotten Herger's gift for understatement. "Well, where is -" Ahmed opened his eyes more fully, and saw nothing but an expanse of empty beach, a dying fire, and a small child. It was not precisely what he had expected.

"Yes," The child answered. "Well, I think so anyway. He said a few things I could understand and..." The girl waved her arms around enthusiastically. "He kind of acted it out."

"He acted out how I would be cranky?" Ahmed knew he normally made more sense than this, but sometimes confusion was just impossible to avoid. He pushed himself up into a sitting position, and his head pounded sympathetically with the movement.

"Yes..." She nodded. "And Oh... you're supposed to drink that." She pointed one small finger at a mug sitting on the edge of the fire pit. "It's probably cold now though. The Herger said it was a... hairy dog, I think. That's an odd name isn't it?"

Ahmed just stared at her, and wondered why Herger had found it necessary to prove himself insane as a parting gesture. Slowly, through the several desperate feelings of wishing he was someone else, or dead, he realized that he was in fact very annoyed. "Did he - they left." It was not exactly a wonderfully brilliant conclusion, but it explained why he was so very annoyed. "They left?"

The child looked around at the empty beach, obviously devoid of ship or tents or anything else but themselves and that one annoying gull. "Yes. A few hours ago. They had a visitor." She said it as though it would be obvious that having a visitor would mean you were leaving.

"They had a visitor," Ahmed repeated slowly. With nothing else for it, he reached for the battered tin mug. It had probably been something warm and comforting once, now it was cold, and edged with the all-pervasive sand, and tasted like mead someone had dumped some stale casked water into. It was horrible. "And they just - they - he didn't say where he was going?"

The little girl sadly shook her head, "Do you think he'll come back? He's fun."

Of an oddly disastrous and chaotic sort, yes, Ahmed supposed he was. "I don't know," he said honestly. He hadn't known, after all, that there was any chance of Herger's being here at all, or that he was leaving, so whether or not he would come back seemed to be something very dangerous to speculate about. "Perhaps," he added, and did not know which one of them he was consoling.

"Oh..." The little girl moved closer to him. "It's cold this morning. Can we go home now?"

No telling exactly how long the child had been here waiting for him to wake up. "Of course." As soon as I manage to convince my legs to work and my head to remain attached to my body,

He struggled to his feet, shivering in the raw air, and held out his hand. "We must tell the town they have gone," he said, although it was entirely possible that he was the last one to know. "And then I think I must talk a great deal to the elders."

The small hand slipped into his with far too much trust.

This, this was what he'd worked to save, was still working to save, fisher folk or not. And Herger, no matter what, needed to understand that.

Or perhaps he had understood, Ahmed thought, in a vain attempt to still the anger that was still seething within him at what he could not help but perceive as abandonment. Perhaps he had, and that was why he had left. Or perhaps, in leaving, he had ensured he would never need to try and understand.

**

Not much changed, in the days and weeks that followed. The rain grew a little colder, and the wind a little sharper, and not even fires banked with packed bracken could keep enough heat in to make the small houses comfortable. The tides did not often allow for venturing out, and all the food was either dried and cold, or soaked for too long and disintegrated into an unpalatable, watery soup that tasted mostly of old salt and a little of fish-redolent oil.

If they talked of the Northmen and their sudden leaving, it was never when Ahmed was able to overhear, and if there were suspicions that matched the sidelong looks he received, he never heard them.

He knew now what the feeling was he strove against, even as he found himself exchanging his garments for thicker wool, accepting the fact that he would never feel dry or free from the rime of salt as long as this weather lasted. He knew it to be loneliness, and not estrangement, and he wished the Northmen had never come, wished he had never been reminded of what companionship felt like, wished he had never been faced with all the reality of what could never be.

He began to learn the carpentry of the place - not the small, elegantly chiseled works that took time and craftsmanship and could be prized as gifts or belongings, but the makeshift hewing of driftwood into supporting beams, his axe strokes now as haphazard as when he had built a palisade with his scimitar, and designed to be as temporary in their results.

He was currently helping the mother of the little girl he'd met on the beach, Birkita, make an addition to their home. Birkita, it appeared, was going to have a new brother or sister, and fairly soon if Ahmed's judging of her mother's state was at all accurate. Where Birkita's father was he wasn't certain, but in return Treva, Birkita's mother, was making him a new shirt and cooking for him. He hadn't really expected any repayment, but the woman insisted it was a necessity, something that would show that it was not charity nor lust that was motivating him.

He had laughed at the idea of being motivated to make his hands a mass of splinters and small raw blisters for the sake of lust, laughed and apologized for it, thinking he would have given offence. Sayyida would have thought - and said, in no uncertain terms - that his amusement was an insult and the small pain a not great enough compliment. Treva had simply rolled her eyes at his apology and shown him how to toughen his skin with salt water.

The structure was about three fourths completed and his new shirt done but for the decoration that Treva had planned for it. He was cutting more wood when he looked up and saw that one of the signal fires had been lit.

"Birkita, go inside and help your mother get ready to go...just in case." He himself, headed for the wall, his scimitar strapped at his waist. That was where he'd hear the first news.

It was, he thought later, rather inevitable that instead of the carefully controlled panic of the last time he had arrived at the wall, he was instead faced with a stone-faced priest, two confused-looking elders, and three young men in various states of hysterical laughter.

"What has happened? How close are they?" Ignoring the men for a moment, aside from his questions, he looked out over the cove trying to discover the threat.

He stared for one moment before putting his hand rather firmly to his mouth and containing his desire to join the giggling young men. A sort of choked hiccup escaped past his fingers. Of all the ways to announce that a ship meant no harm, having three different people waving obviously damp and extremely spluttering torches from precarious positions on the side of the damn vessel while singing what he could tell, from the very few snatches that made it across the waves, was an extremely descriptive drinking song about why goats were important to seafaring survival, was not something he had ever thought to see.

He had, of course, experienced the peculiar means of avoiding shoals by shouting loudly and optimistically at someone who might or might not be on the shore, but this was -

Well. It was, at least, very definitely Herger's ship.

And it was also time for him to thank Allah that the priest did not speak Herger's language, because the present verse of the song detailed in quite lurid terms how a goat could be better than a woman for...companionship...and never had hurt feelings if you turned to another goat.

Really, it was quite imaginative.

It was also a bit disconcerting to realize that the three young men, while evidently not having understood a word that was spoken to them the last time the Northmen had arrived, were absolutely familiar with both the song, its meanings , and probably every variation that following verses could elaborate upon. Or perhaps they just understood that singing and torch waving meant descriptively bawdy songs, and Ahmed found it quite difficult to care which. Judging by the priest's expression, he had certainly understood the word 'goat', if nothing else.

"I'll... I'll go signal them in," Ahmed broke away before he laughed at the piously condemning expression on the priest's face, grabbed a somewhat less sputtering torch of his own and climbed over the wall, waving it in a wide arch.

From behind him - and from the harbor - came a renewed burst of laughter as someone and their torch fell into the sea. Ahmed was starting to get the impression that whatever they had gone to do, it had been horribly successful and probably involved quite a lot of association with both grain and grape.

The fallen man was fished out of the water and dropped back on deck with more laughter and another raucous chorus. Really, Ahmed was beginning to wonder exactly how they had managed to find their way back.

But another part of him thanked God that they had.

They managed a few moments later to beach their ship and then debark, tumbling out over the side like a mass of happy puppies.

"Eben! Eben!" It was Herger, of course, laughing and draping an elegant and very warm cloak over his shoulders. "I've brought you a present."

He hoped it was the cloak, because it was too late to refuse that, and he would end up causing great offence if he had to reject anything else, which the faint remnants of honour told him he would have to. He wondered, very briefly, who was now missing the cloak, before deciding it was too much effort to care, and that it was certainly too warming to even think about scruples and refusing gifts that were stolen without a doubt and probably expensive to the former owner's health, as well.

While his mind whirled through all the possibilities and discarded them as irrelevant, he was aware that he was grinning as broadly as any of the raiders, and probably looked completely ridiculous.

"Thank you?" he managed, inadequately.

"You're welcome." Herger pulled him, cloak and all into a warm welcoming hug, slapping him on the back enthusiastically. "I also have gifts for the children and..."

He paused there, whispering into the bend of Ahmed's neck, "...gifts for the elders, so they will continue to welcome our presence here."

Ahmed told himself sternly that warmth and relief and physical proximity were no excuse to reveal his true reactions to the susurration that seemed to touch on his every nerve-ending, and said with what he thought was commendable detachment -

"It's not a goat, is it?"

Herger snorted out a laugh, then pulled back to look at him. "Why, do you think he'd like one?"

"Not any more," Ahmed said honestly, and managed to restrain himself from waving at the little group still standing by the wall.

"Ah, then I'll give it to you." Herger laughed and planted a very sloppy and somewhat damp kiss on the side of Ahmed's face, stepping away almost immediately afterwards. "Come, Little Brother, we've a ship to unload and riches to share. Call your friends down off the wall. We'll need help."

Ahmed wondered if he was collaborating in the introduction of the world's first emotionally damaged goat to the town, and then just gave up, signaled to the young men at the wall (who scrambled over and arrived with a rather frightening eagerness) and thought about everything but the fact that the kiss he had just received fit into almost every category of opposite to his imaginings.

**

The return of Herger's ship had very subtly changed a few things in the town. The outpouring of generosity from the always-laughing Vikings was not only endearing them to the villagers, but seemed to be faintly contagious. Ahmed noticed more smiles, more greetings when he walked through the streets and...well, it was as if color had suddenly been added to the dull grey landscape he had lived in for months.

At least the thought that most of the changes were happening to the villagers, maybe they were actually happening to him. His outlook had certainly brightened since Herger's return. He was enjoying his friend's company, almost too much, because what would it mean when he left for good?

He refused to think about what this acceptance of their presence must have meant for other towns, the effect it would be having elsewhere a direct mirror of what he had sought to avoid for these people whose lives he was now so entangled with. Easier to think about how one of the gifts had been the confused return of Treva's husband, Gerdulf. Captured by other raiders when they had all thought him merely voyaging, he had been re-taken by Herger's ship, and consequently returned when they worked out where he came from.

But somehow, the look on Birkita's face when she saw her father, drove a lot of his doubts away. This could still be doing good, helping people, people he knew rather than the amorphous 'other people' of distant towns.

He shook his head at that thought. He was sure that even the Wendol had thought that their way of life was right and just, no matter how it affected others. How could he feel this way?

Perhaps because everything had changed for him with the scattering of bones on cloth in a smoke-filled hut, or because everything was so far from the way of life he had fled that he was changing his own thoughts of right and wrong to match. Perhaps because he had watched the world end in rain and mud and grief and still continue. He had learned that life could continue around him and touch him briefly and move on, leaving him behind like sea-wrack, and perhaps there was no other way to feel, any more, save accepting.

Or maybe it was that his world had narrowed down to here and now and to Hell with the rest. Like a wolf that protected his pack and didn't worry about the pack in the next valley.

Either way it all felt right, proper and how things should be. If he could just adjust the rest of his feelings as easily, he'd be truly...content.

That was the only true constant in his life, these days. The inability to talk of, or show, or even admit to himself how deep those feelings ran. His fear of discovery had long since dimmed and faded - even if he wore his heart and his desires on his sleeve, no-one would recognize them for what they were, or know to what extent he consoled himself with small gestures, tiny familiarities that others took for granted. He was not those others, and he knew that if he once allowed himself to let those moments wash around him as he did so much else, they too would blur into pleasantries and be forgotten among the main, not stored away in individual crystalline form to be thought of in his rare moments of solitude.

That might be for the best, he knew, but it was not what he wanted. And yet, how could he risk what he did have for what he might have? It was almost like choosing flame and conflagration over the warmth and coziness of a controlled fire. The first might be more destructive, but it was also more exciting, more consuming, and somehow he knew it would be much, much more satisfying. The second was safer, tamer but possibly more long lasting.

Then again, he had spent far too much time in recent years trying to find safety either for himself or others, so he recognised it might well be for the best. He had, after all, gained a new-found appreciation for the benefits of banked warmth - and he was, he knew, afraid of losing even that small glow of heat if he gave away too much.

In the end, he knew that the choice was not solely up to him. He was happy for the moment to let the subject lay, to simply ignore it until the proper time and place to either make his feelings known...or decide, finally, to keep them to himself indefinitely. He just hoped that moment would come swiftly, before he did something he might regret.

To say that he was confused and conflicted was an understatement.

It was as though there were two different measures to which time passed. There was the one he knew of old, where hours and days and weeks went by, and turned to months, the time when the skies warmed and changed and finally began to show sun, and light came earlier in the mornings and stayed to make the days longer, where the Northmen came and went without warning and he measured absence as well as he did companionship - and then the other, internal time, that took no account of waterclocks or seasons or marked days on a tally stick, or the differing calendars that he had learned to keep consecutively.

That time was his own, moved at once slowly and too fast, a racing sun and the slow swell of the tides together, as he marked the unchanging rhythms of his heart. Time passed and stood still for him, ropes of caught amber in which he could change nothing and yet changed too much to catch his breath, where thought could pause for days at a time and then move forward faster than a shooting star, leaving him strangely bereft of self-knowledge.

And it was in this time that he loved.

It had been so difficult for him to admit it to himself, let alone to anyone else. But it was there and it was true. That this love was not for Sayyida or any of the beautiful women that he had known, or the few here, in this strange cold place that might bid him welcome, was not surprising. That this love was all bound up in a package of blond hair and bright eyes, wound together with a quick laugh and a knowing, yet tolerant expression was.

The camp by the shore became almost permanent, moving to a safe distance above the tideline, and then moved again to beyond the sand dunes, not quite part of the town and yet not quite separate either, Ahmed's small and increasingly patched and weather-beaten house a bridge between the two in more ways than one. The Northmen and the townspeople learned fragments of one another's languages, more and more pieces falling together until no-one even thought about the difficulties of communication, and the children learned to write in the flowing lines of Ahmed's home, as fluid as the sea that washed away their sand-slates each day.

Ahmed, for his part, learned to talk as well as to listen, to share what pieces of himself he could trust to others, and found a great deal of his old solemnity, that had set him apart for so long, lightening as he did so. It was more than those small pieces, though, that he trusted to Herger when they talked, for this most open of men was also the most hidden, and Ahmed learned to treat conversation with him like any trade, giving more than he meant to for the rare, brief glimpses into his friend's thoughts.

He cherished every one of those glimpses like a jewel, cherished, kept close and safe. Some he would have like to have shared with others, flashed them around as concrete evidence that he and he alone was trusted with them. But that would have defeated the purpose, shown him to be as unworthy of their keeping as a swine was unworthy of pearls. A betrayal, somehow, of Herger and of himself.

Concerned more with his own behavior - and sometimes lack of it - than with the observation he had once prided himself on, it was not until the summer had almost mellowed into autumn, until the sand was warmed deeply enough that the shallows were tepid with it, and the few thorny hedges were beginning to glow here and there with early-turning berries, that he realized he was not the only one who had started to discard something very like a shroud over his soul. It was simply that it had never occurred to him to look for it in Herger, and not knowing to look, had not recognized its presence.

It was also inevitable that with this new clarity of vision came yet another departure, and he was left to wonder about his own obtuseness in a solitude that, for once, fretted at him rather than being a time of peace.

I should have told him. I should have spoken. It became a litany in his mind followed closely by, What if something happens to him? What if he doesn't come back?

Because that was the one thing they never seemed to speak of, how long Herger planned to remain. All future plans avoided as topics of conversation, like mentioning them would somehow curse them.

Now there was little else that Ahmed could think of and he forced himself into days of rough labor, wearing himself out so that he fell into bed at night too exhausted to think. It worked...most of the time.

On the rare times it did not, he managed to keep his wilder and more illogical fears at bay by using the sand as a scroll, writing and rewriting the stories of his past into words that fit legend better than the first recounting of fact that he had embarked upon. Insomnia was teaching him poetry in a way that no schooling had ever managed, in a way that no discipline could ever have revealed as thoroughly, and it came to him one evening that what he was learning was not form, but meaning.

He was searching for a perfect expression of his thoughts, and as the days passed, he found more relief in the erasing of them under the creeping waves than he did even in writing them down. Permanency, it seemed, had become something of the mind and heart, and not the tangible.

I am learning, he thought, and listened to the sounds of the sea and wind, taking comfort in them where once he had tried to shut them out, a student once more under his own tuition. I can still learn. And his heart gladdened a little more with this new conviction.

**

When Herger's ship arrived this time, it was almost anti-climactic. They sailed in just at dawn, light singing accompanying them like the bright flash of dolphins in the waves. There was a second ship, this time, and for a moment Ahmed wondered if they had been captured and forced to bring raiders with them back to their home. But then he saw the bright flash of blond hair at the bow and that most familiar voice calling out to him.

"Eben! We're back!"

The sound laughed across the distance, sending a shiver of longing and joy down his spine.

"They brought a ship?" asked Gerdulf from somewhere behind him. "What are they going to do with a ship?"

Ahmed just shrugged, as bewildered as the fisherman. "Sail it?" he suggested, in a vague attempt to focus on his immediate surroundings and not on his thoughts. "Live on it?"

They looked at each other and started laughing. "Perhaps it is a new home for the goats," Ahmed said at last, in defiance of the fact that there had only ever been one goat, and after its consumptive forays into everything that was not made of metal, was only ever likely to be one goat.

"Burn it?" Gerdulf suggested, a bit more seriously. "Save it for a funeral boat and burn it?"

Ahmed just gave a shrug and moved down toward the beach, his swinging step belying his sober expression. He and the ships hit the beach at about the same time.

Herger tumbled out of the ship, splashing through the last few feet of water until he stood just a few paces from Ahmed.

"I'm home, Little Brother" were his only words as he wrapped his arms tightly around Ahmed and hugged him. "I missed you."

Ahmed snorted. "You didn't even notice who was there," he said, but his words lacked bite or emphasis or even conviction, and he knew it. It was rare for him to do anything other than make his welcoming embrace anything other than a formality, but this time he found himself returning it with equal strength. "It has been very, very dull here. I almost envied you."

Herger stepped back a pace, holding him at arms length. "Come with us next time then. We can always use another good man."

But the tone of his voice said he was certain that Ahmed would not. It wasn't an accusation or a reproach, but rather a simple belief.

"Perhaps I will. Perhaps I will take this new ship of yours," Ahmed said, teasing and sincere at once. "Even sea-sickness can't be worse than thorn-hedges." He had no idea whether all the heart-searching he had done over the past few weeks was visible in his face, or could be heard in his voice, but he hoped that at least something of his decision to show what he had learnt of himself was there to be understood.

"Even hedges have their place in the world, Oh Thorny One." Herger teased softly. "But come, this once I will claim privilege and leave my men to unload. I feel as if my skin is nothing but salt and my clothes would stand alone, so soaked with it they are."

"We shall have to put you in the drying-house and add some variety to our diet this winter," Ahmed agreed, touching Herger's undertunic with an expression of disdain. "You are right, it will stand alone. But not, I think, only from salt." He sniffed ostentatiously. "Unwashed heathen."

Herger barked out a laugh, then turned Ahmed toward the village, his arm around his shoulders, "Then you'd best wash me. I might overpower the stink of indignant righteousness. "

"I shall borrow the scrubbing brush and the wringer from Treva," Ahmed agreed serenely. "My friend, what I have is yours to command, of course, but first you must answer me this. Why the ship?" He opened his eyes to an exaggerated degree of wide enquiry.

"Some of the village boys have been begging to come with us. They want to try their hand at sailing...among other things." Herger's lip twitched. "You don't really think I would let them practice on my ship, do you?"

Ahmed carried out a pretence of thought for a count of almost five before starting to laugh. "No, you would drown them first," he admitted. "You know, when I was a child, I had wooden toys as well. I, however, could pick them up in my hand..."

"Yes, but is it not appropriate that as we grow larger, our toys do as well?" Herger chuckled. "Now come, I've been dreaming of that stream behind your home for days. I itch, Arab, truly."

"That would be the lice," Ahmed agreed, and didn't even try to conceal his enjoyment at the sight of Herger trying to find signs of lice in his distinctly foul clothing and still keep walking at the same time.

"Hummmpf, " Herger finally snorted. "You see them, you have the task of picking out any that survive the wash."

"Thank you," Ahmed said with enormous insincerity. "Perhaps I shall just drown you and solve all problems at once. You will, of course, be very clean afterwards."

"Of course, there is always the possibility that I would wish all the lice on to you with my dying breath," Herger ventured, but then continued in a less amused manner. "I can't die yet anyway. I've no one to go with me."

Ahmed never knew, then or in all the long years that followed, how his voice stayed perfectly, contentedly steady, but he replied without faltering, "If you believe that, Northman, then you are blinder than even your one-eyed god."

"There was a time I knew it to be true, but then-- " Herger stopped, laughing at himself. "Like all men, I have doubts. I need to hear it said. Since we no longer battle together, the words are important."

"And now I have said them," Ahmed rejoined, knowing that he could hardly yield like some maiden protesting her love. "They are yours."

"And I will keep them," Herger nodded. "And an offer to help me get this irritating salt off, if you'll make one?"

"I think I already made it," Ahmed pointed out. "It is hardly my fault if you don't notice these things."

"No, what you offered was to drown me," Herger pointed out. "Or to drown my lice, which really I don't believe would have survived all the salt in the first place."

"But I did say you would be clean," Ahmed pointed out virtuously, and caught his breath on a gasp of air that was nowhere near laughter and all of relief. As easy as that, then? he thought, bewildered. As easy as this?

Apparently it was. But then so many things, as confusing as they might be, were easy with Herger. And this whole strange attraction he felt towards him was just another piece.

They entered Ahmed's little home a few moments later, and Herger wasted no time in stripping off his clothes and demanding soap and a towel and company for his bath.

Ahmed offered hot water as well, was rejected in favor of the stream, which was, he knew very well, going to be freezing cold in spite of the warmer weather, and found himself more tempted to throw the soap at Herger's head than anything else by the time it could be of any use.

But, true to form, Herger just laughed and started tugging on Ahmed's shirt, trying to pull it off over his head, "Come. You said you'd help."

"Why do I always have such pleasant ideas and why do they never come to anything?" Ahmed demanded of the sky, and then was pulled into the stream, shirt still half-on, and gave up querying the vagaries of the heavens in favor of cursing Herger and all his ancestry.

The water as predicted was icy, but Ahmed wrestled some amusement out of shoving Herger repeatedly under the shallow surface, then scrubbing him roughly with the soap. This was accompanied with much splashing and hoots of reaction to the cold and Herger grabbing him in an attempt to cause him to suffer the same indignities.

"I'm clean enough! Any more scrubbing and my skin will wash away with the salt!"

"And that," Ahmed agreed, making his look utterly unambiguous, "would be a terrible shame." He touched a finger, almost politely, to a drop of water that was running down a scar over Herger's collarbone.

Amazingly enough, even more gooseflesh dimpled over what was surely already frozen skin, and Herger's voice hissed out roughly, "Let's get inside."

Feeling as though he had won some unspecified victory, Ahmed nonetheless hurried to comply.

As soon as they were inside, rough, calloused hands pulled him nearer the fire. The towel was wrapped around him and Herger chaffed it over damp, near frozen skin, his eyes locked on the task at hand.

"If we dry ourselves on the same linen, we'll quarrel," Ahmed said nonsensically, because when didn't they, even in jest?

"I'm willing to risk it," Herger said, his hands slowing from their frenetic pace, the rough chaffing become warming caresses.

"You never do anything where there isn't a risk," Ahmed pointed out, before leaning in and snatching a rough and hurried kiss. It seemed, after all, the thing to do.

A delighted smile crossed Herger's face, but rather than pursuing anything more, he took the towel and began to dry himself, "Risk keeps the blood pumping, Eben. Where I come from if you don't manage that you freeze and die."

"Where I come from, only those touched by the divine or entirely mad would admit to it being a pleasure," Ahmed pointed out, and hoped that it was clear it was not risk alone he was speaking of.

"I would never call it a pleasure," Herger dropped the towel on the floor and stepped closer to him. "Risk is mere necessity. Now this... this is a pleasure."

He put one hand on either side of Ahmed's head, pulling him closer for a slow, unhurried kiss.

It was entirely different and yet altogether the same, because he had thought so often of how it would be and allowed himself no illusion in the imagining. He had never credited his dreams with it being anything other than a man for whom he lusted, nor wanted anything but that same desire to occupy his mind. It was affirmation, then, this kiss, an acknowledgement that risk or pleasure or necessity, this was what he chose.

"You're thinking," Herger accused in a light, teasing tone. "Should I be insulted?"

"No," Ahmed said. He had promised himself honesty, and he was keeping that vow. "I was thinking of you and that there is no difference between thought and truth. Of course, if that insults you..." He shrugged, elaborately nonchalant, and then yelped as he was tripped backwards onto the pile of packed, wrapped bracken that served him for a bed, spread with raided furs and Treva's good embroidered linen. He hit his head on the thin wall, which shook, and quite unexpectedly burst out laughing.

Herger crawled up the length of him, joining his laughter, "There, that's much better. You've had the laughter knocked right into you."

Ahmed tried to glare at him, no easy feat when he was trying to focus two inches away from his nose, sent himself cross-eyed, and scowled instead, or as much as he could while still smiling in a manner he thought was probably more befitting a lunatic. "Truly," he agreed thoughtfully. He took Herger's wrist in his hand, and moved it to his mouth, biting down rather ungently onto the calloused skin at the heel of his palm.

The answering hiss was quite satisfying, he thought. As was the jerking of Herger's hips in reaction.

"More."   Herger's throaty chuckle breathed over his neck, followed by lips and teeth and, yes!, warm tongue.

And Ahmed had been right, it was no different at all, it was the touch of skin and lips and hands and tongue, and feeling another's pulse match your own. It was no different, and yet so very much more, and he had never known until now that urgency and need and longing could also be the deep ineradicable thrum of belonging and contentment.

It also struck him that laughter could mean joy and tenderness, as well as amusement. That a battle of wills could turn into heat and warmth and a surrender so sweet that it made you ache.

So much to learn, to know, in as short a span of time as one night. Ahmed was almost impressed with himself, and - Allah - very impressed with Herger for entirely different reasons.

"Stop thinking," Herger grumbled, half asleep, and bit his shoulder, partly in warning, and partly, Ahmed suspected, because he could. He turned his head to the side, and Ahmed realized it was the first time since they had met on the bleak shore that he had seen Herger actually smile, not with challenging amusement or inexplicable mockery or some private hidden laughter that he could not reach, but with ordinary unalloyed happiness. "Go to sleep, stop thinking," he repeated, the smile turning into a yawn.

And Ahmed, being so admonished, chuckled and kissed Herger, then obligingly blanked his mind for sleep.

**

It was, Herger thought, not a bad place for a dreary fishholm. The people were warming to them, especially the children, and fewer looked at them with distrust every day. Of course, he thought that a lot of that was to do with Eben. Although, he supposed he should call him Ahmed now that they were sharing a bed away from the camp and the town.

He snorted out a laugh at that, causing Ahmed to look at him with a curious expression. Herger just waggled his eyebrows at him and returned to his musing.

No, Eben he would remain, if only to irritate him and keep him on his toes. Herger hated to be too sentimental, and calling the man by his actual name after so long would smack of that. Sadly, he felt the sentiment, even if he did not want to show it. Amazing how the too solemn, stiff-necked Arab had crept into his softer thoughts, and remained stuck there like a barnacle on a ship's keel.

"It'll be winter soon," Ahmed said quietly, following half his thoughts. There were a few traces of silver in his hair when he turned into the late sun, less the mark of time than of life, the passage of events rather than years softly making itself felt, just as the scars that would never quite leave his face were now white lines that few even noticed. There was more than one kind of writing to a story.

"It will," Herger agreed. They would need to make some changes. Maybe get his men out of tents and into actual buildings. Definitely fix up Eben's little monstrosity, because he was not going to freeze there all winter with the drafts blowing in.

Huh. He almost laughed again. He would winter with Eben? Live in the same small room where they had shared a bed?

Yes, he supposed he would.

Most of them spared the towns in the winter months in any case, stayed with their own people and lived off the borrowed glory they had gathered. It would be no different, really, to stay here rather than gleaning the cold-starved leavings that were all that was to be found before the spring.

"You should stay," Ahmed said, as though in agreement. "Stay here. Just until the ice thaws on the edges of the stream." It sounded oddly like a plea.

Herger nodded slowly, "Yes. Winter storms make sailing too treacherous for all but the most foolhardy."

He fought back the smile he felt tugging at his lips. Wouldn't do to let Eben know that he'd already decided to stay.

"Why didn't you go home?" Ahmed asked suddenly. "Before. When the winter came, why did you keep raiding?"

Oh. Yes, he was well and truly caught with that question.

"We needed to," He tried to shrug like it was of no importance. "Home couldn't support us then. The burden of so many is better spread out."

"Which is why you use the summer months," Ahmed pointed out, and it was strange how the well-known could hurt so much with that carefully phrased voice stating it. He paused, and then said, even more carefully, "Buliwyf asked me to write his story. Well." He laughed a little, quietly. "Not asked. But - asked, all the same. He said he had nothing to leave, and all this time, I have found myself wondering - how could a king's son have nothing to leave?"

Herger hung his head down. He would have to tell Eben everything. He deserved that much, at least. "Because there was nothing left. We left nothing and we have no home to return to. It's gone, like the Wendol would have left it. Gone."

What or who had destroyed it they never knew. They had returned for the winter to find the ruins. No family or friends, no home. Gone, all of it.

He was expecting pity in the dark eyes, and he probably deserved that and worse, for all the times he had mocked Eben's beliefs and behaviour and way of living. But this was the man who had spat out 'I listen!' in exasperated fury at their obtuseness, and even then had shown no signs of judgment, simply annoyance. There was no pity, no attempt at understanding in the familiar face, not even sympathy, only a strange kind of agreement, as though this was something already known.

"So we followed him. Followed Buliwyf. It was all we knew...all we had." Herger shook his head. "But I would have anyway. He was a good leader, Eben. A good man."

"Yes," Ahmed agreed. Someone else might have tried, unforgivably, to offer comfort. He just sat still, letting the world move around him, waiting. "He was easy to love," he added then, "and that was impossible to write in words that expressed him truly."

"Very easy to love," Herger agreed. "And I did. Loved him and shared what little we had. I would have followed him into death if he'd asked."

But he hadn't and a part of Herger didn't know if it was because he was unworthy or because Buliwyf had actually wanted him to live.

"I expect," Ahmed said, as though they were talking about just how much it rained, or how salt water seemed to get into everything, or just why sand dried out in patches, "that was why he did not ask." He moved, then, not quickly or uncertainly, but a little turn that somehow focused his whole body onto Herger. Listening. "I think this is where I apologise."

"Apologize." Herger said the word as if it had no meaning. He was lost for the moment, still thinking about Buliwyf, their many conversations, how he still missed the man and wondering how many he had conquered in Valhalla.

"For taking so long to understand you were mourning," Ahmed said in the same steady voice. "I think it's a very good thing you are not especially sensitive." His mouth twitched, just a little, at one corner.

"No, of course not." Herger gave a small huff. But he had been mourning, although he had barely admitted it even to himself. It made him wonder how Eben had known. Was he so transparent?

He looked at the Arab for a long moment. No, he wasn't transparent, the other man was simply that perceptive. He learned their language by listening. He learned their ways by watching. And now, it seemed, he was learning Herger.

He didn't seem anxious to pursue it, though, simply leaning back on his hands and watching the gulls. He seemed utterly unaware of Herger's observance.

"So," Herger ventured after several minutes. "Not long to prepare for winter."

Ahmed looked at him, and there was a sort of shining joy beneath his calm expression, as though the last of the sun had been caught under his skin. "No," he agreed, and his smile was worth all of it, from the first moment of journeying to this half-confession at the edge of the world. "We had better start."

**