Tim Leach - Smile of the Wolf

Sometimes we saw other men out on such night work – alone, for the most part, but sometimes in pairs like us. We kept far away from each other. A fear of discovery in large numbers, of a rivalry turning violent, and an unnameable fear of other outlawed men. For though they were like us, we feared them. We carried our bad luck with us like a stench: growing used to our own, but disgusted by others with whom we were unfamiliar.

We went many times, and I grew to long for those black nights. To walk in tended fields amongst cattle, in lands that were bare of snow and ice, was a little like being a free man once more. But I knew it would not be for long. I knew that it could not last.

We were walking back one morning, each with a ewe trussed up across our backs, when I noticed the change. Some absence that made me uneasy, a sensation that I had experienced many times before, but never as an outlaw. It was not until we were at the foothills of the mountains that I understood what it was.

‘No birdsong,’ I said.

Thoris nodded. ‘Yes, they have gone. It will be winter soon.’

I looked down on my ruined hand: five fingers taken by the cold, and it had been late summer. I could not imagine what winter would be like in those mountains. I could not think of how we might survive it.

I have heard that in other countries winter is not so cruel. There are many who die in those winters, but through the slow deaths: the rattling cough that becomes wet and choking over many weeks, the endless rain that pierces a house and brings a killing fever, rot spreading unseen through a storehouse and ruining a winter’s provisions. But you will know that your death is coming, long before it reaches you.

In my country winter is a killer of men. It does not kill in weeks or months, but in moments. You step outside in winter and feel the wind as if it were fingers tightening around your throat, a cold blade laid against your wrists. You can feel it cutting, killing, and you retreat to the fire, wounded and beaten.

I knew a man who stepped outside to walk fifty paces to the outhouse. He left the fireside drunk and smiling, joking that the wind might sober him up. We waited for him to return, and he did not. We searched for him, called for him, until the cutting wind drove us back. Fifty paces to the outhouse and he was lost in the storm. And we found him months later when the snow had melted. Carrion-picked. Eyeless and lipless, smiling blindly at the sky.

The sun barely passes the horizon, is gone as soon as it comes. The sea fills with drift ice; even if you chose to take to the water, following the birds to the south, your ship would be torn to pieces. The entire island is sealed away from the world; none can come and none can go. And so we seal ourselves away, too. We sing and drink, and try not to think of the dwindling food and fuel in our stores, the cold death that knocks at the door with every gust of wind, asking to come inside.

We made no more raids on the fields. We butchered our cattle and salted the meat, harvested what grain we had. We dug a pit and buried much of what we had, and took the rest to the cave.

Before we placed the food in the cave, one could not stand fully upright in it. And once all of the food was in, I saw that we would have to crawl in. Live on our bellies like snakes and eat our way to the bottom of the cave again.

‘How will we know when it is time?’ I asked the outlaw.

‘You shall know,’ he said.

A day like any other. We were burying the last of our provisions. A stronger wind, a sharper wind than usual, but I thought nothing of it. I saw that Thoris seemed tense, uncertain, but I did not know why. He felt something that I did not, knew something that I could not.

The snow began to fall. What did that matter? It had fallen many times in the days before. But I saw that Thoris had stopped moving and was staring at the sky. I felt the wind again, that familiar, killing wind against my skin.

The snow fell, faster and faster, and I saw that it would not relent. That the gods would drown us on dry land if they could. We ran, then – we ran for our lives.

My half-hand pulled my cloak tight against my skin, armour against the blade of the wind. The other hand forward by instinct, for the snow was so thick that I felt the urge to part it, as if it were some heavy piece of cloth partitioning a longhouse.

Three times on the way back to the caves we found ourselves lost in the maze of snow. Lost on ground that we had trodden upon dozens of times, and there is no more fearful sensation than that of being lost on familiar ground. Yet each time we chose well, until we could see that black slit in the side of the mountain. We crawled into the cave and watched the snow fall.

All too soon, it was piled up to half the height of the cave. I made to go forward, to clear it away, but Thoris waved me back.

‘Let it be,’ he said. ‘There is no use in fighting it.’

I watched it build, the cave growing darker with each passing moment. The mad desire to rush forward, to flee out in the snow consumed me, for what man can be willingly buried alive? It was as though we lay looking up at the sky in our own graves, buried one handful of earth at a time, watching the sky disappear.

At last the entrance was sealed, and there was only darkness.

We lay in silence for a time, listening to the cry of the wind, feeling the cold begin to seep and settle upon our skin.

Then a voice from the black.

‘You had better sing,’ Thoris said. ‘But make your songs last. We have a long time to listen to them all.’

Let me tell you of a day in winter.

I woke in darkness, yet I knew that outside it was light. I felt it, as those animals do who live deep beneath the earth and can still feel the sun stirring. Beneath me, sacks of grain and salted meat; skins of water. Somewhere below was the stone floor of the cave. I feared to reach down and find it, for I knew that if I felt the cold stone it would mean that we had no food left. That touch would be like the hand of a god on my shoulder, telling me that it was time to die.

I crawled forward to the front of the cave, listening for the sound of snow and storm. There was none, and so I took up the wooden pick and began to hack at that white wall. Chipping away in the darkness, until a point of light broke through, like a dagger in my eyes. No heat from the light, and cold air came with it that left me shivering. Yet I basked in it as if it were a summer sun that shone upon me. That light and clean air were our treasures, taunting gifts from the gods, before the snow came and buried us again.

There were some days where we were given only a few moments of light before the storms returned, the white fire falling from the sky. There were times where the snowfall did not relent, when we lived in darkness and foulness for days at a time.

But this was not such a day. It was a still day, blue skies above. And I listened out for any sound at all from the mountains around us. Sometimes there was music in the mountains: the singing of the wind, the calving of ice, the chatter of rockfall. That day there was not a breath of wind, no sound at all to be heard. An utter, endless silence.

Behind me, I heard Thoris stirring. Then his voice.

‘How does it look?’ he asked.

‘Beautiful,’ I said. And it was.

I threw out fouled blankets, empty sacks, old bones. The hillside was covered in our filth, yet I knew that the next snowfall would bury it all as though it had never been there.

It was as beautiful a day as I could remember, but we would not leave the cave. I longed to walk upon that snow, to climb to the high places and look for some sight of distant lands, of home. But I knew that I could not. I had seen days such as this, clear and beautiful, be taken over by a blizzard in a matter of moments. Winter sought to lure us out for the killing: it was as wily as any murderer in a feud.