Tim Leach - Smile of the Wolf

‘Is it true?’ Sigrid said, as she sat beside me. ‘Is it true what the people say?’

‘Enough of it is true.’

‘Gunnar killed that man?’

‘We both killed him.’

She leaned forward and her unbound hair spilled forward to cover her face. ‘What will happen now?’ she said.

‘Olaf will offer a settlement to the brothers.’

‘If they refuse it?’

‘There shall be a trial. We shall both be made outlaws.’

She did not answer at first. Outlaws. The word hung in the air.

Since men were made to walk upon the earth, we have wondered what to do with the thief, the murderer, the blasphemer. I know there are many lands where the criminal is tortured, murdered in judgement. But what a cowardly thing it is to bind an unarmed man and lay a blade across his throat or hang him from a rope or burn him upon the pyre. It dishonours the executioner far more than the one who is killed, no matter what the crime may be.

My people do no such thing – there is no crime that I can think of that could earn such a shaming. The worst of men are simply put outside of the law. They are not men, they are meat. The outlaw can be killed by anyone, and no blood-price will be paid to his family, no revenge sought in the long feud. His life is worth nothing.

‘You will die, then.’ It was not a question.

‘We do not have the silver to go abroad. Or the kin to protect us against the sentence.’ For a rich man may flee his sentence. A powerful man may make a fortress of his home, gather his people to protect him. But we were neither.

‘I have heard stories of outlaws who did survive,’ I said. ‘Those too poor or proud to flee, those who were most reckless and cunning, who tried to make a life in the mountains to the east, where nothing can live.’

‘Do you believe those stories?’

‘No. The outlaws always run, and they are always hunted and they always die. Yet they die on their feet, with a weapon in their hands.’ I tried to smile. ‘Never let it be said that we are a people lacking in mercy.’

I looked down at my hands, ran my thumbs across the palms to feel the marks, the scars. They were not marked with weapons, but with a farmer’s tools. Who would have thought them a murderer’s hands? Who would have thought that my poet’s lips belonged to a killer?

She looked away then, stood and went to the door, one hand upon either side. How many different paths waited for her, out on that plain? How many better than the one that was left to her in the darkness, there with me?

And she returned out to the light, to the living.

I closed my eyes in the darkness and tried to sleep, like a warrior before a battle. I would need all of my strength soon enough.

‘Murderer.’

It was Björn who spoke the word and I could not help but flinch at it. There was no such movement from Gunnar – a tremor, perhaps, like that of a man shrugging away a wound. But no more than that.

We were packed in close, there in Olaf’s booth. Gunnar, the brothers, Olaf and myself. I could smell the sweat from the brothers, hear their breathing, our knees almost touching. It would take but the slightest of movements to put my hands around another man’s throat, to reach for a stone on the ground and break open a skull. Only our respect for Olaf kept us from bloodshed.

The eldest brother Hakon looked to Olaf. ‘Very well, Peacock. We are here, as you asked. Speak and we will listen.’

Olaf did not answer at first. He lifted up the strip of cloth that covered the entrance and for a moment the light flooded in. Outside, under the sun and open sky, the court waited for us. A circle of stones where all assembled to hear the crime, and the judges make their ruling. I imagined the crowd that would be out there, the fathers who would point at us and speak to their sons. ‘Look at that man,’ they would say, ‘and remember his face. This is what a coward looks like.’

Olaf clapped his hands for silence and it was given to him. ‘A man has been killed,’ he said. ‘A secret murder, not an honourable killing. The worst of crimes, and these men stand accused of it. And I have come to speak, to offer—’

‘Why should we take your judgment in this case?’ It was Björn who interrupted the chieftain. He pointed to us. ‘They are your men. How can we trust you?’

‘I do not impose a binding judgment,’ Olaf said, as he held a hand up like a parrying blade. ‘It is a settlement that I offer. You may take it or refuse it, as you wish, find some other chieftain to press your claim. But I think that you will be satisfied. I have spoken with these men. They have given me the truth.’

‘Go on, then,’ Hakon said, before his brother could offer any further dissent. ‘Let us hear what it is you have to say.’

‘They met with Erik in winter. They quarrelled and fought. And they did not report what it was they had done.’ And Olaf turned and extended his hand towards me, and he said. ‘Yet it was this man who gave the killing blow.’

There was near silence at this. The murmuring crowd outside, the moan of the wind against the walls, and nothing more than that to mark the unravelling of my life. Yet I felt the strange lightness of heart, so strong that I had to fight to keep a smile from my face. When the worst has come to pass, when your life has fallen to ruin and yet you still stand unharmed – what is there to do then but to smile or to laugh?

‘This is true, is it not?’ Olaf said.

‘Yes, it is true,’ I said.

Olaf paused, waiting for Gunnar to speak. But he gave no sign of dissent. His face was unmoved – that same empty mask he wore when he fought. His eyes were a different matter and I did not trust what I saw there. But his silence would hold, for a time at least.

‘What was Gunnar’s part in this?’ Olaf said.

‘I made him swear as my friend not to speak of it.’

‘Why would you do this?’

‘I am a poor man. What compensation can I offer to pay the blood-price? I knew that I would answer with my life.’

‘And what was the cause of this quarrel?

‘An insult I will not speak of here.’

‘Why not?’

‘It would dishonor the man I have killed.’ I met Hakon’s gaze and held it. ‘Yet I will tell the brothers, if they ask it. And they will understand why I acted as I did.’

Hakon asked the only question that mattered. ‘Did he die well?’

‘It was a fair fight. He fought well. He died without fear.’

‘Is this true?’ Olaf said, speaking now to Gunnar.

My friend hesitated and looked at me, weighing his choices. But we had planned for this. I had told Olaf that Gunnar would not lie, or if he did, that he would not do it well enough. He was only to be given questions that he could answer with the truth. And he did.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It was a fair fight. One against one.’

‘I have heard the reason why they fought,’ Olaf said. ‘And I swear, on my honour, that they speak truly. There was good cause to the fight and I only wish they had spoken of it at once. Yet a secret killing may hardly go unpunished. And this is the settlement I offer. Gunnar will pay a quarter of his herd and silver over to the Haroldsson brothers for his part in the crime. And Kjaran…’ He waited then, and I did not know why. ‘Kjaran,’ he said, ‘will be made an outlaw for three years. He will be given one month before the sentence. After that, the law will grant him no protection.’ He looked back to the three brothers and spread his hands wide. ‘Will you accept this? Or will we go before the Court?’

Blood and silver, and a good weight of each. The way that all debts are settled in Iceland.

‘We accept,’ Hakon said. ‘It is a fair offer.’