Tim Leach - Smile of the Wolf

‘Oh, I do not blame you,’ Gunnar said. ‘I blame him.’

Björn spoke slowly, seeming to weigh each word before he said it. ‘I did not know you wanted this horse. It is not my fault you do not have the silver to match my offer.’

‘I have the iron to match your iron. Will that be enough?’

‘Gunnar, be silent,’ I said, but he would not.

‘Your family are all thieves,’ he said, and at those words something between a sigh and a groan broke through the crowd. They knew what must follow.

I watched Björn’s skin pale. He said: ‘I will have an answer for that insult.’

‘Wait,’ I said. ‘Gunnar, let him have the horse.’

‘Let him die for it, if he wants it so much. I will have it for my son.’

I could see it in him, that hunger he had tried to forget when he came to Iceland, now returned to him as strong as ever it had been. The taste for blood that all the true warriors have. The longing that cannot be ended.

I stepped close again, whispered so that only he might hear me.

‘Is this what you want, Gunnar? Truly?’

‘They would murder you with the law, would they not? Why should I not do the same?’

‘The feud can end with me. Gunnar—’

But he spoke past me, shouting towards the brothers. ‘I say again, your family are cowards. And who will answer that?’

‘You will be answered! Whoreson! Murderer!’

And then there were no more words. I fought to hold back Gunnar, and men I did not know restrained Björn.

I was a fool to believe that it might have gone other than this. For our people, who would rather see their stomachs opened and their guts steaming upon the snow than to see their honour shamed, a word and a blade are one and the same. If a man took a knife to you, you would not rest until you had seen him slain. Why should an insult be any different?

And so Gunnar looked from one brother to the next, that mad smile on his face, and he said. ‘Which of you will fight me? Will it be you, Björn? I think it must be.’

‘No,’ Hakon said. ‘You have insulted a family, not a man. I am the elder.’ He looked at Gunnar for a moment, perhaps hoping for the impossible, that Gunnar might take back his challenge. Then he said: ‘I am the one you will fight in the holmgang .’

In the height of summer the sun barely sets. It touches the horizon twice each day, like a man bowing before a king. Just as our winter is a time of near endless night, summer is permanent day.

So when I say that we left at dawn the next day, you must not think of it as some dark awakening, shadowy figures shaking one another awake and setting forth in dim light. We did not sleep, merely sat and stared at the sun until it gave a shy kiss to the edge of the world, the sky never anything less than impossibly bright. Then we gathered our weapons, a little food and water, and we walked to the river.

They waited for us there. Hakon, Björn, Snorri, Vigdis, and other kinsfolk whose names and fathers I did not know. Ragnar was there, Sigrid and Olaf and some of his men, and standing a little aside from the rest was that unlucky horse-trader, the black horse at his side. The prize for the winner, a mocking reminder of how petty this was.

We walked with the sun and the river at our right hands, the low valley wall at our left. Travelling as a single company, a strange courtesy persisted between us. I saw Gunnar unthinkingly offer a hand to Hakon to steady him when he tripped upon a jutting stone, and when the heat of the sun began to beat down upon us I found myself offering a waterskin to my neighbour, only to find that it was Vigdis who took it from me. Soon, two of us would be fighting for their lives – perhaps it was that knowledge that kept the peace. When one knows blood will be spilt soon, there is no need to seek out the fight, no need to hurry towards it. There is a feeling that is almost happiness. One who saw our company, ignorant of our quarrel, might have thought us a family travelling to a great feast, or a pious band making for one of the sacred places of the island, where the world of the gods and the hidden folk crosses over into our own. And in a way, we were doing both of these things. For men like us, where the dance of iron is the most treasured art, the holmgang is a festival. The island we were headed towards, that was holy too in its own way. There has been enough blood sacrificed upon it.

It could not truly be called an island. A little patch of sodden earth in the centre of the river, separated from the bank by a few yards of shallow water. That was enough of a break from the land, for the holmgang must be fought in a different world to our own.

There are many such places, where one may step out from Iceland and into the duellists’ secret country. The lopsided outcrop in the sea beside Borg, stinking from the seals who lurk there. The turf island in the middle of Hitarvartan, where duellists have fought up to their knees in black mud. And I have heard tell that in the mountains to the east, there is an island in the middle of a lake that is so still and clear that it is as if four men are fighting, two above and two below the water. But this island, being so close to the Althing, has seen more battle than any other. When one stands upon it, one can see the worn ground, the splinters of iron and wood, from the duels that have been fought before. Decades of feuds, begun and settled in that place.

We gathered at the edge of the water and I spoke to Sigrid. ‘No matter what happens,’ I said, ‘do and say nothing.’

‘You are not the duellist.’

‘Shield-men have been killed before. I do not know what they will do on that island.’

She nodded, and when she was quite certain that no man was watching, she put her fingers to her lips and those fingers to my hand. I let them linger for only a moment before I stepped away. I hope that she understood why.

The water was cold against my thighs as I waded in, and I held the weight of three shields up high above my head. The others were at my back, Hakon and Björn among them, and it would have been the work of a moment to cut my throat and cast me down into the water, to let me drown in blood and water alike. I would never have shown my back to them at any other time, but in that moment I knew that I was quite safe – even a man like Björn would respect the law of the duel.

On the island, each man to his task. Hakon and Gunnar each went to opposite corners, weapons in hand – Gunnar with that beautiful sword of his, Hakon with a plain, well-crafted axe, and each with a second weapon beside him if the first one failed. Hakon sat upon the ground, cross-legged and picking at the grass, even as Gunnar paced restlessly, making little cuts at the air as he moved.

It fell to the rest of us to prepare the ground. Snorri and Rolf, who had carried the oxhide with them, laid it upon the ground as though it were an inlaid cloak or spun from gold. They smoothed it down, leaving no fold that might taint the duel, and we staked it down and marked the borders. This was where they would fight, for it is not enough to duel on the scarce ground of the island, with no hope of retreat. Such a place must be reduced again, and it is only if a man is willing to step into a space that it is quartered, then quartered once more, that he has earned the right to fight in the holmgang .

Once, the duel could only be settled in death, but it is not so any more. If a man’s foot strays even a finger-length from that hide, or if a single drop of blood falls upon it, the holmgang is ended. I have seen such duels concluded by the smallest of cuts: a splinter that flies from a breaking shield and cuts a man’s face, a chip of iron from a sword giving a tiny wound between finger and thumb. I have heard tell of a holmgang that ended the moment it began, when a berserker’s frenzy gave him a bleeding nose, and a spattering of drops stained the hide at his feet. I have seen the holmgang settled with a drop of a man’s blood, and with all of it. Until the last shield is broken, one does not know what kind of a duel one will see.