Tim Leach - Smile of the Wolf

I knew no paths through the maze. At any moment I might come to an impassable blankness of stone, with no time to retreat. I turned each corner in fear, came over every rise in the terrain expecting to see the place where I would die. But the gods were kind, or perhaps they merely wished to toy with me a little longer. I always found a path through. Yet always, I could hear them close behind.

Weaker day by day, chewing snow in place of water, feeling the cold settle within me like a piercing arrow, a deep wound that I could not heal. Once I had run out of meat I scraped moss and lichen from the stone, hoping the pretence of eating might quiet my hunger for a time. I waited for some change, some way that I might escape.

Then, one morning, I felt a touch upon my face as I slept.

A gentle touch, like a lover’s hands that seek to trace across skin without waking the sleeper. And I sat upright, one hand pushing forward and seeking a tunic or hair to wrap my fingers around, the other taking up the blade at my side, for there could be no lover here to wake me. My hands found nothing but air and I thought at first I had merely dreamed that touch.

Then I felt it again. A cold, scattering touch that seemed to be everywhere at once. It was only once I had come fully out of the world of dreams that I understood. It was snowing.

I put down the sword, held my hands upright and felt the coldness against my skin. What had begun as the lightest of touches was already becoming something else: a thick flurry of white that had already covered my legs, that swept over the mountainside all around me, that blocked the rest of the world from view. I looked on it and I began to laugh.

Silent laughter, for I could not take the chance of being heard. My shoulders shaking, biting down on the web of skin between thumb and forefinger, as the snow fell around me like the answer to a prayer. I got to my feet, already shivering yet still laughing, and stumbled forward into the snow, one hand held high to shield my face.

This was the time. There would be no more hunting, no more running. I would lose them in the storm that day or I would die in the attempt.

They were close to me. I could hear them calling in the storm, trying not to lose one another. They were stronger than I was, well fed around a fire each night, moving faster than I could. Wherever I placed my feet I left marks upon the snow. Wherever I went, I broke a path for them to follow.

And yet we could not see one another – the storm was too thick for that. The blind hunting the blind, by touch, by sound, by voice, fighting through the heavy snow one aching step at a time. Of all the ways I had thought to die, I had never foreseen this.

Out there, on the high mountains, I came to a flat, open field of snow – beautiful, in its own dead way. Like a well-tended field, as though the mountain spirits had chosen this place to harvest snow and ice.

The storm swirled into stillness for a moment, and on the other side of the snow field I saw something. A glimpse only, so brief that it might have been a trick, but I had to believe it to be true.

A pass leading down from the mountains. A valley beyond, green fields and rivers. A place of life, not this open-air tomb that I had trapped myself in. The snow closed off that vision once more, but I knew it to be there.

I moved across the field as fast as I could, towards what I had seen. And it was not long before, behind me, I heard them coming. The crunch of snow, the curses of tired men. They sounded so close to me, yet I could not see them.

I moved as in a dream, those trapped, sluggish motions. Pulling my legs free of the snow with numb hands, taking in the sharp air in great gasps that seemed to cut at my lungs, the tip of my belted sword catching with every step that I took. Waiting for the touch of a hand upon my shoulder, the feel of iron inside my skin.

But it did not come. There were rocks beneath my feet, in front of me the vision I had seen before. I could leave this place, go down amongst the living once more. But it would not be for long.

I turned to my right and ran across the rocks, crouched low, my ragged cloak flapping about me like a raven’s wings. When I had gone far enough, I turned again, back towards the field of snow. I stepped on to it and I began to walk back.

I moved slowly now, caring more for silence than speed, waiting for the wind to gather up before I took each step. I could hear them drawing close. If they were spread out across the snow, they would catch me. I would see the shadow of a man in front of me and know it was too late, that my ploy had failed. He would see me and call to his companions. There would be no rush to it, for I could not run in that thick snow. It would be a patient killing.

But there was no man in front of me. They must have been gathered together, like a troupe of blinded slaves navigating as one. I heard them draw level, deep breaths and heavy footsteps to my right. They could have asked a question of me and I could have spoken softly in answer, we were so close. Then they were past, the sounds of them receding. Distant, I thought I heard one of them cry out as they reached the edge of the snowfield, when they saw that path down from the mountains.

A quickening joy in my heart. How long before they realised their mistake? Before they turned back and found that second trail through the snow? Long enough for me to vanish back into the mountains. Most likely to freeze or starve, but in that moment I did not care. I felt only the trickster’s joy, Loki’s joy.

Then I saw a shadow in the storm. The shape of a man, passing close by.

I crouched down, the snow slackened and I saw him. A man, pulling his cloak close around himself. Bowed over, staring at my tracks in the snow, trying to make sense of them. Just for a moment, then he was gone.

Carefully, gently, I dug at the snow at my feet. Clearing a hollow, like a madman digging his own grave. And I crawled into it, pulling the snow back over me. I took my knife in my left hand, and I listened.

For a long time, there was nothing but the howling of the wind. My right hand held close against my chest as if to quieten the beating of my heart, my left hand burning in the cold, fingers locked tight around the handle of the knife. The pain of the cold was akin to nothing I had felt before and I bit the folds of my cloak to keep myself from crying out. Then, abruptly, like the striking of lightning against the ground, I felt nothing at all.

I heard him then: the heavy tread of footsteps drawing closer. And a voice calling out – too hoarse for me to know who it was.

‘Björn! Kari! Can you hear me?’

He was lost. Calling to his companions, mistaking my tracks for theirs.

What strange stroke of chance had brought him here? A twisting in the bowels that had set him behind his companions. A stone working its way into his boots that he had taken a moment to remove, then looked up and found himself alone.

He wandered closer and closer, until he was near enough that I could have reached out and touched him from my hollow in the snow. But he had no eyes for the ground. He was trying to pierce the storm, to catch the sight of his companions.

‘Björn!’ he cried once more, the wind swallowing the sound. Then, ‘Kjaran.’

He did not cry out my name. He said it quietly, to himself, a realisation. Then he looked down and his eyes met mine.

The snow flew from me as I rose, my shoulder into his knee, the knife searching and cutting at his leg. He fell, his body taut with horror, his lips moving but saying nothing. I crawled up him like a man climbing a mountain, and placed my fist into his mouth before he could cry out.

It was Ketil. Here for some duty he owed to Björn, some debt to be repaid in blood. No killer’s longing for him, a mere discharge of a duty. And of all the people I might have faced, the gods had brought him here to die at my hand.