Tim Leach - Smile of the Wolf

‘A man who hunted me.’

‘An enemy, then.’

‘No. I would not call him that.’

‘You gave him a warrior’s death?’

‘No. I left him maimed in the storm.’ I turned my head away.

‘You need feel no shame,’ he said. ‘Not here. That is the secret men like us know.’

‘What secret?’

‘That there is nothing we will not do. Eat a man, kill a child. I have seen the outlaws do it all, and worse. To survive.’

Exhaustion came over me and I knew that soon I would have to sleep again. I lifted my hands towards the fire – not for the heat, but to look upon them.

The fingers of my right hand were pure white. On the left, they were grey and black at the tips. Both were utterly unfeeling.

He noted them and said, ‘I will help you, when a week has passed.’

‘If I live.’

‘If you live.’ Then, almost shyly, he asked, ‘When will you be able to sing?’

‘Soon,’ I promised.

For the first time I saw a smile dance across his lips. Just for a moment, like a falling star, and then it was gone.

The fever came, as he said it would. Days of waking madness and nightmares in the dark. Despite his instructions, I fouled myself time and time again in the dark. And I remember him screaming at me, striking me about the face, dragging me out to the mouth of the cave, where I used snow and rags of cloth to scrub myself clean. The fever filled me with a feeling like hate, a mad, screaming hatred. But it could not kill me.

I came through it as thin as cattle at the end of winter: hollow-bodied, bones sharp against the skin. I could see Thoris look doubtfully on me. Yet I could feel, deep within me, that it was not my time to die. I have seen men and women die of sickness, and they have always known, sometime before the end, that it was coming. I knew that I wanted to live. I thought of Sigrid and I knew that I would live.

My right hand had returned to life, though the pain of it had been like nothing I had ever known. Even in the depths of the fever, when all else was lost to me, I could feel the burning of those fingers coming back to life. Yet on my left hand, the hand that had held the knife, there was nothing. They grew soft once more, but no feeling returned to them and they gave no motion. They had turned from grey to black.

I did not know how many days it had been since he had found me in the snow. Perhaps it had been a week, perhaps longer. But on that day, when he came back from his morning’s foraging, he gave me a piece of his flatbread. Just a small piece, but always before he had eaten, then left once more, without offering me anything. He had given me food in the evenings alone, leaving only a bucket of snow that would melt to drinking water in the day.

On that day, when the heat of the fever was falling from my skin, I felt a different kind of warmth. There was no fire in the cave and yet beneath me I could feel that the stone was warm to the touch.

‘Is this magic of yours?’ I said.

‘It may be magic. But it is not of my doing. I do not possess the art.’ He leant down and spread his fingers across the stone. ‘Perhaps something sleeps down there. A dragon or some other beast. And while it sleeps, we may live. And if it wakes, we die.’

‘I will speak softly, then, so as not to wake it.’

‘No. You will sing loudly. Let it wake. What does it matter?’ He paused. ‘How long are you outlawed for?’ he said.

‘Three years.’

He turned his head from me. ‘I am glad for you,’ he said. For I had heard that he had been outlawed for the rest of his life.

‘How long have you been out here?’ I said.

He did not reply. I waited, for I had learned that after spending so long alone, he was accustomed to silence. Many were the times I would ask a question, hear nothing from him, only to receive an answer hours or days later.

‘Seven years now.’

‘You did not think to go abroad? Why did you stay?’

‘A woman. The woman I killed my brother for. She came with me, to this place. This was our home.’

I looked around the cave for some trace of her.

‘She died,’ he said. ‘A fever. Three years ago. She was why I have survived longer than any other. I have seen many outlaws come and go. Stronger men than me, better hunters, better thieves. And they all die. For what else is there for a man to do in a place such as this? What else is there to do but die?’

‘They kill themselves?’

‘No. But they grow forgetful. They do not prepare enough for winter. They wander openly in farmlands and the hunters find them.’ He tore another piece of bread and gave it to me. ‘They die, without knowing that they want to die.’

‘Do you still have men hunting you?’

‘They still come. Every summer. My kin, bearing the duty of revenge. They have seen me from afar. I expect they will find me, one day.’

‘I have never heard of an outlaw living as long as you have.’

‘There is pleasure in it. To live, when an island of men all wish you dead.’ He smiled that faint, twitching smile once more. ‘I feel powerful.’

I laughed then, as much as I could, hearing his words and looking on the pair of us: half-starved, ragged and filthy. Worse than beasts, for even a horse or a sheep had more protection under the law than we did, and yet he spoke of power.

‘You will see,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you know it already, but choose not to believe it yet. Now tell me, why did you not run? Perhaps you did not have the silver.’

‘A ship waited for me. A captain to take me away.’

‘So why not take it?’

I did not answer.

‘You have a woman?’ he said.

‘Yes.’

‘I see. That is why you did not run.’

‘No. She wanted me to leave. I promised her that I would.’

‘Then why?’

I thought for a time. ‘I have a friend,’ I said. ‘He too is in the feud. While they hunt me, they shall not hunt him.’

He spat on the ground. ‘I doubt that. They will think you dead now.’ He looked at me closely and I saw a coldness settling into his eyes. ‘I will have the truth from you or I will not have you stay here.’

I rested my dead hand upon the sword at my side. I felt for the markings of the runes, for the patterned whorls of the iron. I knew it was there, but I could feel none of it.

‘I did not want to leave,’ I said. ‘I could not leave. There must be a world beyond this island, but I cannot seem to believe it. I would be taking a ship to nothing. To be with the dead. And it is not my time to die.’

He nodded to himself. ‘You speak the truth, I think.’ He placed his hands on his thighs and sat upright, like a chieftain on the high seat. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘you will sing.’

I was afraid, then – more afraid than I had been in the storm, or when Gunnar and I had hunted the ghost, or at any time that I had stood with blade and shield in battle. I thought of the stories I had heard, of the skalds who saved themselves with song. Egill Skallagrímsson, the greatest of my people, had ransomed his head from a king with a poem. This cave was no kingly court, but Thoris was ruler of it just the same. He had no headsman to execute me if I failed, but he did not need one. The ice and snow would be his executioners, if he chose to cast me out.

I sat upright in my blanket, took water for a throat raw from coughing, daubed my face with a wet rag to still my restless mind.

It had been so long since last I had sung that I was certain I had lost my gift. That the words would not come. That the poet in me had died out in the storm. Perhaps the White Lady, too, obeys the word of the law. Perhaps it is that an outlaw cannot sing.

But after only a moment, I felt the touch of the White Lady on my shoulder and knew that she was with me still. The words came, as they always had, and I could feel the warmth building in my heart and my throat, could feel the poet’s longing, and knew, at that moment, that I could not have remained silent even if I had tried.