Tim Leach - Smile of the Wolf

‘Step away,’ Gunnar said. ‘One foot from the hide will be enough. I will not strike a helpless man.’

‘No,’ Hakon said slowly, gulping for his breath like a drowning man, ‘I will not yield. Take what you think is your due in blood. A drop, or all that I have.’

Gunnar did not strike. He understood what to do in the holmgang if a man ran or if he fought. He did not know what to do if he stood and spoke.

‘Or if you will not,’ Hakon said, ‘perhaps there is another way.’

Björn whispered to his brother and I only heard one word of what he said: ‘…shameful…’ And at this, Hakon lifted his chin proudly, shook his head, spoke again to Gunnar. ‘There is no shame in this. Let us put our weapons down together. We will clasp our hands and swear a brotherhood. You have taken a brother from us. Let yourself replace him. And what need is there then, to make an outlaw of your friend?’ He waited for a moment, the only sound the wind echoing across the plain. He shifted his axe to his left hand, offered an open right hand to Gunnar. Then he said: ‘Would that not be beautiful?’

And there it was, something that few men live to see. The end of a feud, there so close and powerful that it feels like a living thing, rare as catching sight of some beast of legend. For so long will a feud seem as unalterable as fate, as inevitable as the rise and fall of the sun. And yet after months or years of blood and hate, the knots of the feud drawing ever tighter like the winding loop of a snare, a gift is offered; gold, a cup of mead, a promise. If the gift is taken, it is the end of the killing.

‘I want no blood from you,’ Gunnar said. He levelled the blade towards Vigdis. ‘I would have fought her, if I could. But I cannot.’ Slowly, his sword dipped towards the ground.

Vigdis looked on those brothers, Björn and Hakon, shield and sword. And she said a single word.

‘Cowards.’

It was Björn who moved first. The broken shield cast to the ground, the knife in his hand. And Gunnar did not raise his sword – a warrior of so many battles, and for once he was caught defenceless, and I did not raise my shield in time. But I saw Hakon move, his axe falling to the ground, hands reaching up to delay his brother. And then, as if suddenly awoken, Gunnar struck.

There was an instant of movement, so fast that I saw nothing but the light of the sun on a blade. A red rain falling upon the ground.

I have never seen a faster move with a blade.

I have heard some bards describe the dead as if they are sleeping. Still, at peace, gone to the gods. Perhaps in older times that might have been true, for I have never seen it. Old men deformed by the plague, women killed in childbirth lying in a sea of blood, desiccated infants that weigh less than a loaf of bread, men torn open by axe and dagger – the dead I have seen have always seemed more like monsters than men.

Hakon was no different. His eyes rolled back in his head until only a sliver of black remained to discolour the white, mouth impossibly wide open and teeth bared in an endless scream. And a second mouth in his throat, the sharp white of bone within giving him a second set of teeth, his spine smiling through his neck.

I could taste his blood in my mouth, feel it dripping from my face. My feet were wet with it, my clothes hot with it.

Björn was on his knees before us, one hand against his brother’s forehead, as though he were feeling for the heat of fever. As if this were a sickness that could be cured.

For a time he seemed to forget we were there. He simply knelt there, feeling his brother’s skin turning cold beneath his hand, his lips moving soundlessly, his face like that of a man trying to answer a riddle.

‘You meant to strike me, didn’t you? he said at last. ‘Not him.’

‘Yes,’ Gunnar replied. ‘I swung at you.’

Björn let his head fall, his eyes returning to his brother. ‘Will you kill me? I cannot live with this shame.’

Gunnar turned from him. ‘Would the law let me kill him?’ Gunnar said – matter-of-factly, as he might have asked about the pattern of the tides or the borders of a grazing ground. At first I thought he was speaking to me, but he looked beyond me, to where Olaf stood at the edge of the hide, his mouth slightly agape.

Olaf hesitated before he answered. ‘Have you been wounded?’ he said.

‘No.’

‘Then no,’ Olaf said. ‘Perhaps when he had a weapon in his hand, but now…’

‘That is settled,’ Gunnar said, not waiting for the chieftain to finish. ‘I will not break the law for you, Björn.’ He wiped the blood carefully from the sword. Then: ‘We all learn to live in shame.’

‘It is over,’ Olaf said. ‘Let all witness it. It is no crime to kill a man in the holmgang .’

‘And what of him?’ I said, speaking of Björn. ‘He broke the code of the duel.’

‘He has lost another brother. Do you not think that payment enough?’

‘And her?’ Gunnar said. ‘What of Vigdis?’

‘A woman’s words mean nothing to the law. It is no crime to speak as she did.’

‘The law has fed well today,’ Gunnar said, his lips curled with disgust. He at last stepped from the hide, the blood still wet upon him, and I saw all those there take a half-step back, as if he were some monster from the old times. I wondered if that was how the stories would speak of him in the centuries to come. If they would speak of him at all.

The others stepped back and parted before him, and he made his way to the edge of the island, sword still in his hand. Before he walked down to the river he turned back, levelled that blade at the swollen belly of Vigdis.

‘I cannot kill you,’ he said. ‘But I pray that you have a son. Perhaps then I will settle my debt.’

‘You are a murderer,’ she said.

‘No,’ he said, by way of correction. ‘I am a killer.’

And that is how he earned his name. That is how they shall always know him. Gunnar the Killer.

The others went south. Back to the plain at the heart of the Althing, bearing the body and the news as well. Only Gunnar and I lingered behind, in view of that island which had seen so much killing.

We washed the blood from ourselves as best we could, watching it redden the waters for a moment before it eddied downstream, but our efforts were of little use. For months afterward I would find some black fragment beneath my fingernails and wonder if it might be some dried drop of blood from that day; some dark smear upon my tunic, and wonder whether it came from the earth or from a man.

Gunnar and I did not speak for a long time. Stripped naked and scouring the blood from our bodies with sand, rubbing stones against our sodden clothing to work out the gore, dressing and lying on the stones in the sun and waiting for the heat to dry us out – all was done in silence. Only the sound of the wandering water, the occasional snort and whicker from the black horse that was the cause of that duel. Our bloody prize.

At last, Gunnar said: ‘Once more I have killed the wrong man.’

He began to tremble and I thought at first he was shaking from the cold, for his clothes were still wet. When the shaking grew stronger, I thought it might be some sudden palsy, a curse from the gods for the blood he had spilt. It took me longer than it should to realise that he had begun to weep.

I held him then, as I might have held a child. It was a shameful thing he did, but I suppose that he had earned that sadness. I tried to forgive him his tears.

‘You could have killed the right one,’ I said. ‘He asked you to.’

‘Björn knew that I would not do it. But he wanted to be seen to ask.’ He pushed me away and got to his feet. ‘I wish I had not killed his brother. It was needless.’