Tim Leach - Smile of the Wolf

But I dared to go as far as I had been in months: to the edge of the cave, my back resting against the stone. From there I looked out on the valley.

It did not matter that the day was clear, that the sun was bright. I did not need light to know that landscape, for I had been staring at it for many months and knew every fold and turn by now. Like a prisoner in the old stories, whose only glimpse of the world is from a single barred window.

I tried to remember other places, the places that mattered to me. The mountains around Borg, the rolling landscape of the Salmon River Valley, the hillside of Hildarendi where my father lived. It should have been the simplest thing, to recall them. But I could not do it. They were fading from my mind – dust, and dreams. There was no place but this.

Thoris came out to sit beside me. He passed me a scrap of salted meat: the first thing I had eaten that day, for I had learned not to touch the food unless he permitted it. The custom was with us as it is with wolves, where none may eat except if the leader allows it.

We sat together and we did not speak. We watched the movement of the sun; it had been in the sky for so little time, and yet already it was fading.

He broke the silence. ‘We shall have a fire,’ he said.

‘Are you certain?’

‘Yes. Why not?’

I felt tears sting my eyes and turned my head so Thoris would not see them.

We gathered what little we had to burn, with all the patience at ritual of priests at a sacrifice. Every scrap of cloth, every fragment of wood, every piece of dung – all were so carefully placed. Nothing could be left to chance.

We waited for the sun to sink down and when it touched the horizon I struck sparks from the flint. A dozen points of light, each one visible for only a moment, yet I seemed to see all of them perfectly. I had such a terrible longing for that fire.

I watched the sparks that died and those that caught. I watched each place where the flames began – how they flickered and danced, grew and combined together – until the fire was burning strongly, the hiss and crackle of the flames like music to us. I held out that ruined hand of mine towards the fire and in the heat it felt whole once more.

The snow around us grew soft with the heat, melting and weeping like a woman at a funeral pyre. We grew busy, placing food over the fire, pots of snow to melt down for warm water. And I felt the longing that men and women always feel around a winter fire. A longing for memories and for stories.

I spoke. ‘Let me tell you of the woman I love.’

‘No,’ Thoris said. ‘I do not wish to hear that story.’

‘Then I will tell you of my friend Gunnar. A great warrior.’

‘No. I do not wish it.’

‘Then tell me—’

‘No,’ he said, stirring the pot with his knife. ‘I do not wish to speak.’

‘Why?’

He said nothing for a long time. Then he said: ‘There is no world but this place. There are no people other than we two. Do you understand?’

I wish that the fire had been stronger, so that I might have seen his face better, to know what it was that he meant. But perhaps I did understand.

‘Sing for me,’ he said. He had spoken those words many times before, but never as he spoke them on that day.

I had won my life with song, earned my keep with song. A cripple, unskilled in the arts of the outlaw, it was all I had to offer. He had always commanded and I had always obeyed. But that day his voice was different. He did not demand that I sing. He asked me to.

I gave him the song I knew he wanted, that he loved above all others, the first that I had given him. I sang of the death of Cúchulainn, and in those words perhaps he saw a death that he desired. Not frozen and starving, alone in the mountains. But dying in battle against hopeless odds.

I did not think of my death as I sang. That might have been the only hope left to him, but not to me. For he had given up on dreaming of those beyond the valley, of lives unlived and paths untaken. But I had not.

If I were to think of those that I might envy, there would be a danger there. Of Olaf in his great hall, filled with warmth and good company. Of Björn and Vigdis spending the winter in comfort, in victory. Perhaps this was why Thoris did not want to think beyond the valley. Perhaps there was a madness waiting there, in jealousy. But not that day.

I did not think of my enemies, or of fortunate men that I might envy. I thought of Gunnar, and of Sigrid.

I gave Gunnar a hundred different lives in my mind, imagining every path that he might take. I saw him on the water, captain of a ship once more. I saw him working his fields and tending his crops. I saw him clasping hands with his enemies and swearing to a peace. I saw him at the holmgang , dispatching his enemies one by one in honourable duels. I saw him die bravely in open battle, the blood of his enemies upon his sword.

I dreamed a hundred different lives for him and tried to think of which one might be true.

There was only one destiny that I dreamed for Sigrid. That she waited for me. I dreamed of a small stretch of farmland in the Salmon River Valley, where we might spend the rest of our lives. Of love in the darkness. Other dreams tried to find me, but I would not let them.

I thought of the callouses of Gunnar’s hand when he clasped mine. The fineness of Sigrid’s hair running between my fingers. The way her eyes seemed to catch fire a moment before she smiled. How strong and proud Gunnar looked when he shifted one foot a little in front of the other and took up the warrior’s stance. I was losing those memories – hoarding them like a miser, and every day there seemed to be fewer to count. But that night by the fire, the memories seemed to grow stronger, not weaker. For a time, sharing our songs and dreaming our dreams, we were the living once more.

The flames began to die. We huddled close around it in silence, our hands outstretched and almost touching the embers. Until it was as though our roles had been reversed, that fire and I: as if I were trying to give my heat to the fire, trying to keep it alive. And just as the final embers winked out and went cold, the snow began to fall once more. Those steady, heavy pieces of snow, handfuls cast down by a god. We crawled back into our tomb and waited to be buried. The living became the dead once more.

As we did every night, we wrapped our arms around each other, sharing the warmth that was our most precious gift. And I tried to find sleep and dreams, before the cold gripped too tightly.

I could have told you of many other days. Of the days when winter sought to kill us: the day it grew so cold that my lips froze to each other and ice coated the inside of our cave, where we fought to light a fire with shaking hands. Or the day we were buried so deep beneath the snow that the air suddenly turned foul, and we fought against the snow like duellists in the holmgang , hacking and gasping and retching, until the clean air broke through and we could breathe once more.

And there were worse days than those that I could speak of. The days of emptiness that outnumbered all of the rest. Lying still in the dark, wordless, shivering, feeling the winter madness scratching at my mind, trying not to scream.

But I wanted to tell you of that day.

A good day.

Every winter of my life I had known what it was to be trapped in a valley. The plains around Hildarendi when I was a boy, the Beautiful Valley, the Salmon River Valley. Yet even in the worst of winters I could find a sign of another life. A trail of smoke from a cooking fire. A distant shadow moving on a hillside. A voice raised in song, carried on the wind. But not in that valley of the outlaws.

There were no others within the valley, and none would come. Even if our enemies had been mad enough to pursue us in winter, every pass was sealed with ice and snow. They could not come in to the mountains and we could not get out. We were alone.