The Humming of Numbers by Joni Sensel

Author:Joni Sensel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR)
Published: 2011-06-14T16:00:00+00:00

XIV

When he lifted Rory’s limp body, Aidan took great care to make sure that the poor head did not remain on the ground. The younger boy felt offensively light, inconsequential. Aidan gulped back the angry tears that sprang into his throat. While he carried his friend into the novices’ hut, he murmured Psalm Forty-six. He thought Rory would want it, and he needed to drown out the chanting and noise that escaped from the chapel. He laid the corpse on his own pallet, finished the psalm, and left without crossing himself. He wouldn’t lay others to rest—there were simply too many—but he could at least tend to that one.

Aidan was outside the front gate before another coherent thought formed in his mind. He stood motionless under the distant, ice-flecked sky. He had focused all afternoon on getting back to the abbey. Now he had no idea what to do next.

He considered a return to the woods. The thought of Lana, perhaps frightened but safely removed from this horror, made him aware of his own heart still warm in his chest. A measure of strength flowed from there back into his limbs. He longed for the light of her smile, but before he would deserve it he needed to learn if anywhere else could offer more shelter than where she was now—or if others he cared for had found any.

With a swift decision, he ran toward the riverbank. The monks had not mentioned whither the Norsemen had departed, if even they knew. Aidan didn’t much care. He could skulk along the banks of the river nearly to his father’s land and cottage. Not even the frogs would likely notice him. With luck, he might find some of his family alive—or at least take hope from a home and yard that were empty instead of littered with corpses.

Aidan ran as best he could through the mud and undergrowth fringing the river. When he tripped and sprawled over an obstacle in the reeds, he leapt back up with a cry, afraid he’d stumbled over the dead. It took a moment for his strained senses and throbbing shin to inform him differently. He’d tripped on something hard, something humming numbers he associated with wood, not any silent corpse. Careful probing revealed an oar. It led to a boat. No fisherman’s coracle, this; with a chill Aidan realized he’d stumbled over one of the raiders’ craft. That meant they still reveled somewhere nearby, probably waiting for daylight before they would leave.

His heart in his throat and his ears primed for the noise of approach, he eased among the reeds, identifying two small longboats there. Trampled reeds and a track in the mud suggested a third had already departed. Not the dreaded dragon boats of which he’d heard tales, these were each big enough for only ten or twelve men. A great ship probably awaited downriver while small raiding parties like this one pillaged up and down the banks on both sides.

As Aidan fidgeted near the two craft, debating how to use the discovery, he found something else.

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