Tim Leach - Smile of the Wolf

‘We do not know what they will do,’ Gunnar said. ‘And you must stay here and guard our home.’

She looked at her daughter, lying in fitful sleep by the fire, and her mouth twisted with anger; a killer’s look stole across her face. She took up an axe and knelt down beside Freydis. One hand stroking the golden hair of her daughter, the other gripping the handle of her weapon, as if she were some kind of loving executioner.

We left her like that, back into the blue air of the summer night, following the sound of running water down to the riverbed.

‘I will go upstream,’ I said. ‘You go down. We return to the farm at first light.’

Gunnar glanced upstream and shook his head.

‘Björn’s farm lies that way.’

‘And Vigdis lives downstream. They could be waiting for us either way. Or both.’

‘The danger is equal. Very well.’ He paused for a moment. ‘Be lucky, Kjaran.’

‘This will be a good time to start.’

He nodded. ‘Call out if you see them. I will come to you.’

‘What signal should I expect from you, if you need my help?’

He rapped his sword against the boss of his shield. ‘You will hear that, and the sound of the killing.’ With that, he slipped away, swift-footed in the dark and dancing from rock to rock down the shallow river. I watched him go and turned to follow my own path.

Alone now, I moved up beside the river, feeling the wet ground against my feet where the boots had worn away. I should have been more afraid, but I was not. My life was in my hands, and my life alone. I did not carry the lives of Gunnar or of his family. And so I was a weightless, grinning creature as I ran through the dark, scouring the hills for the shape of a boy. I could not risk calling his name, but I listened for his voice. For I could not think his courage would last long, alone as he was.

But I heard nothing. The wind, the trees, the river, and nothing more than that. I drew close to the boundaries of Gunnar’s land and had found no further sign or sound of the boy. I told myself that he must have gone downstream in search of the horse – perhaps Gunnar had already found him.

I turned back – hurrying, and more afraid now that the danger seemed to be passing, for no man wishes to be killed when the end of a battle is in sight. A little longer, a few hundred footsteps, and I would be back to warmth and safety.

But something was wrong. I knew it, and yet I did not know it. It was as if my mind were screaming a warning at me, but in a language that I could not understand. Nothing had changed: the night was still, no sight or sound of anything amiss. I stopped and listened, trying to understand, but heard nothing but the wind and the creaking of the trees.

Then I knew what it was. The ghost of a sound, a memory of the spring. For we had cut down that little wood on Gunnar’s land. There were no trees left. I did not know what the creaking was, but it was not the wind against the trees. A slow, dull, wooden creaking, that came and went with the passage of the air.

I went to my hands and knees. I closed my eyes. I listened again.

To the west. In a dip in the valley, hidden from view. That was where the sound came from.

I made my way there. Slowly, as slow as ice spreading over water. Each foot placed where it would make the least noise. Not a single thing left to chance, for there is no patience like that of a man hunted by other men.

Moment by moment, the sound seemed to change. It sounded like the cawing of a crow, then the groan of a tree, then the turning of an old cartwheel. Even when I was almost on top of it, lying on the grass of the hill with the sound just beyond, I still could not tell what it was.

I waited there a time. I had always thought that, in such a place, I would feel the touch of a god on my shoulder and know that it was time to fight or die. But I felt no sign. And so I counted ten breaths, then leapt to my feet, shield in front and axe held high behind.

A monster. That was what stood before me. A shape taller than a man, a distended head that leered, tongue lolling and open mouthed, teeth shining in the darkness.

That is what I saw for one heartbeat, for two, for three. Then my mind made sense of what my eyes could see. I saw the wooden pole thrust into the ground, black with blood. I saw the horse’s head thrust on top of it, shifting and creaking with the wind. And I saw the runes marked on flesh and wood. A curse. A warning. A promise of the killing to come.

I turned around, expecting to find the men who had done this behind me. But there was no one. They would be long gone, back to their homes, their curse behind them. They had left their message, written on the body, mounted on the pole. That there would be no forgiveness, no ending of the feud. That what they had done to that horse, they would do to men.

The wind stilled and I heard another sound. The sound of weeping. And I saw another shape in the dark, knelt at the base of the pole, a worshipper prostrate before a hateful god. It was the boy.

‘I thought it was him,’ he said. ‘I saw him. I thought I heard him call to me.’

‘I know.’ I sat beside him and put my arm over his shoulder. ‘It is nothing. Nothing but a scorn-pole. The tool of a coward.’

‘Will it curse us?’

‘No. They think to insult us, and scare us. But we are too brave and clever for that, aren’t we?’

‘You will not tell my father I wept?’

‘That is not what I saw. You were watching bravely to see if they came back, weren’t you?’

He nodded dumbly.

‘Come on. Let us go home.’

He got to his feet and walked in front of me, tottering like a child half his age. I followed him, but as I did so I looked back once more at the scorn-pole, looked on that face of the horse. It was as though it was laughing at me.

I could almost hear it, and I wondered if they were out there too, watching and laughing. I felt the killer’s longing rising in me as I never had before. I had stood beside Gunnar at the holmgang , had looked into the eyes of men who wished me dead and had felt no violence stirring. Yet the thought of that mockery, of being toyed with for sport – that was what brought the murderer’s rage to me. I wanted nothing more than to hunt those hills, to kill every one of them.

But I did not have enough time. Tomorrow I would be gone.

‘It was one of them, was it not?’

‘What?

‘One of our guests, at the feast. Who took the horse.’

I did not reply. There was no need to.

Gunnar and I were sat on the high ground above the farm, looking down upon it. On the sheep wandering in the fields, the high wheat almost ready for the harvest. The place that I would not see again for many years. For that was the day I would leave.

The guests had gone home at first light. Gunnar had smiled well enough and played the happy host. No one asked why his children sat dead-eyed in the corner of the house, refusing to speak. Or why our flesh was grey from our sleepless night. They had gone and we remained. To speak together and say our goodbyes.

We had gone out once more in the night, to take down the scorn-pole and burn it. The body we could not find. Perhaps they had butchered it for meat and split it amongst themselves, bloody reward for the hard night’s work. Or left it for scavengers to take.

At last, Gunnar spoke again. ‘At least now I know that I cannot trust them. Better to know that now.’

‘You will find out who it was, soon enough. There are no secrets in this place.’

‘As we have both learned.’ He looked back over the dale, towards where the scorn-pole had stood. ‘Do you think it is true what they say? That it is the worst of curses?’