Tim Leach - Smile of the Wolf

I hesitated. ‘Then why hunt me?’

‘You played your part. There is no mercy for such as you. But I will kill Gunnar.’

‘You may kill me. If it comes to that, so be it. But you cannot stand against Gunnar. And I may not die so easily.’

I half-drew my sword, Gunnar’s sword, enough so that he could see the colour of the metal, the familiar marks on the blade. He tossed back his head, as if struck by the sight of it, and I wondered if he feared it. It had killed two of his brothers. Perhaps he still believed in fate, and curses.

‘You shall die upon this sword as well, I think,’ I said.

‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘You still think you will die like a warrior, like a poet. That you will die well. When we catch you, you will be torn to pieces like a hunted animal.’

‘Perhaps. But Gunnar will avenge my death.’

‘No. He will not.’

He turned from me – disappointed, I thought. I do not know what he wanted from me, but I had not given it to him. As he walked away, I searched for something more that I might say. Some words that might put aside his hate or inspire fear. But I could not find them.

I took to my own horse, rode north, and every so often I looked over my shoulder to watch them ride south towards the ford, to watch them disappear from view.

By the morning, they were in sight once more.

It was time, then, to take my chance. To break free of my pursuers or die in the attempt.

For weeks they had pursued me and we had barely stirred our horses beyond a walk. At the end of a battle, when men are too tired to run, I have heard there are many such chases. Walking men stumbling after other walking men, dragging one foot in front of the other. For the pursuit of men on horseback is not settled through galloping speed, but mere persistence. A horse that stumbles and breaks a leg or throws its rider into the rocks – these are the things that may end a chase across the land.

But that morning I broke with that tradition. I put my heels to the horse and we tore across the land.

When I looked back, I saw the figures on the horizon recede a little. They too stirred their horses, but they were content to lose a little ground, knowing that I was riding a tired horse too hard. No doubt they thought that I had panicked, that they had merely to wait for my horse to be exhausted. I had no second horse and no man would trade a mount to an outlaw. They would wait and have me soon enough. But they did not understand my purpose.

I rode like that until I was at the base of the mountains, until I was stood beneath some great, nameless piece of stone – who would waste time giving names to such things?

I swung down from the saddle and my horse seemed to gasp in relief. His head bowed, spitting gobbets of rank phlegm to the ground, the sweat rolling off his hide like waves in the swell. In the last few miles he had favoured one leg, and now I saw that he could barely stand on it. Yet still he stood: brave as he was, he would not go to ground unless I gave him leave.

I put my head to his, embraced his neck with my arms. I felt him lean forward, lean against me, like a weary old man leaning on his son, as though he hoped that I might be able to take some of his weight.

‘Thank you,’ I said. I took my knife and opened his throat and let him go to the ground. I held him as he died.

I had no time to butcher him properly. I took only the quick cuts across the top of the back, wrapped the bloody meat in cloth. Then I was away, running up the scree as fast as I could, the loose stones biting my feet. Three times I fell, striking skin from my palms, digging in my knees and elbows to stop myself from sliding further. A wrench of the knee, a breaking of bone – either of these would ruin me, leave me helpless for my followers. But I had to take the chance. I could not be caught on that slope.

Distant, I thought that I heard a cry, carried to me on the wind. I looked back and saw the figures moving faster in the distance. Stirring their horses, realising at last what it was I intended. I did not look again until I reached the top, gasping and retching, looking down to see the warband milling at the bottom of the mountain, shouting and arguing with each other.

I did not have to hear them to know what they said to one another. They had not thought that I would be so desperate as to go into the mountains. Would they follow me there? Or would they trust to the ice and stone to settle the feud for them? For no man could hope to pass three years in such a place.

‘Go home,’ I whispered to myself, willing it to be so, a heartfelt prayer.

And yet it seems they heard me. For they leapt from their horses, took their weapons and supplies from their saddlebags, and began up the slope.

I turned away and looked to the east, to the heart of our country. And it was there that I saw a more dangerous sight than a conquering army, a fleet of warships, a mountain spewing fire.

I saw – nothing. I saw a land in which nothing lived, in which nothing could live. And I walked into it, the dead snow breaking beneath my feet, and moved as fast as I could over ground that no man had walked on in a hundred years.

They would not be far behind.

There are those who come to Iceland – newcomers, merchants from distant lands – who have never seen our country before. If the sea mist hangs thick in the air when they arrive, they may only see the rich farmlands along the coast, the rivers teeming with salmon, the grazing pastures on the low rolling hills. They may wonder how this country took such a hard name at its birth. How any man could look on this place and call it a land of ice.

Then the wind blows from the sea, the mist clears and they see the great mountains at the heart of the country. The endless fields of snow and ice, the black stone, the dead soil. And it is then that they understand. We live at the edges of this land, holding fast to what green country we may find. The rest we leave to the ice and snow, to the beasts, the monsters and the outlaws.

We look watchfully towards the centre, as if fearing that one day the mountains and the ice will march towards us like a conquering army, consuming the pastureland and freezing the rivers, driving us out into the sea.

Nothing may live in that place. Nothing grows. A world of ice and snow, that only the desperate, the hunted, will call home.

They followed me into that maze of stone and ice. Their numbers diminished: eight of the twelve now remained, for the others must have taken the horses back. They would not have cut down their horses as I had. These were still men with something left to lose.

Before, our chase had been almost sightless. Specks on the horizon following another speck on the horizon, walking our horses across the empty land. But we were on foot now and on ground where a few miles might take a day to cross.

When they shouted I could hear them clearly, and sometimes they did not need to shout. The twisted rock faces brought their voices to me – idle conversations about cattle and crops, muttered complaints about the cold. At night I sometimes felt as if I were at the campfire with them, and had to catch myself before I spoke in answer to them.

Not a day passed without us seeing each other. When I was on a high path and looked back to see them on the rocks beneath me. When I had passed through a thick snowfield, the cold whiteness up to my thighs, only to hear the soft crunch of breaking snow behind me, see the warband struggling half a mile from me.

I had no time for a fire and could not chance it, and so I ate my horsemeat raw – wolfish, blood running in my beard, soft meat slipping down my throat. Perhaps, I thought, it would be sickness that would kill me rather than the men who hunted me, for already my throat was raw from coughing. But if it seemed that it might come to that, I would turn back to seek out my pursuers. I would rather die fighting than be consumed by disease. I would rather taste iron than starve to death.