Tim Leach - Smile of the Wolf

‘No,’ Thorvaldur said. ‘We speak of the Althing. Of old friends.’

Thoris spat upon the ground. ‘I do not want to hear of this. The gossip of the farmers, the schemes of the chieftains. What does it matter to me? If you will speak of such things, you shall not do it in this cave.’ He sat down beside us, took a spoon carved from bone and dipped it into the cooking pot. ‘Tell me more of your God.’

Thorvaldur stood and offered his hand to me.

‘We have not finished speaking,’ he said, ‘so we shall leave your cave. Warm yourself by the fire. We shall be back before too long.’

Thoris’s mouth worked, but no words came, and he looked on us like a man scorned by his lover.

‘Go, then. And freeze, for all that I care.’

How long had it been since I had walked for pleasure alone? At first I could not recall, I had been so long an outlaw or caught in a feud where every motion held a purpose.

It had been the night we had hunted the ghost, Gunnar and I. A winter sojourn taken for the pleasure of the hunt, the joy of good company, and nothing more than that. Perhaps that was why I had lost my taste for an idle wandering.

As Thorvaldur and I walked from the cave we went not as outlaws, but as though we were chieftains surveying our lands or lovers seeking the peace of a secluded dale. And though I shivered with the cold and my weak legs seemed to drag at every step, I was glad of it. To be away from Thoris, for a time at least.

‘Was that wise, do you think?’ I said.

‘I shall not be silenced by that man.’ He regarded me for a moment. ‘But perhaps it was not wise. I have caused a break between the two of you, I think.’

‘No. Whatever is broken, was broken before you came to us.’

‘Is that so? Tell me of it.’

‘What interest is such a thing to you?’

‘I am merely curious. Speak or do not. Be it as you wish.’

We walked in silence for a time, our breaths coiling and frosting in the air before us, as I considered what to say.

‘We have nothing,’ I said. ‘Yet we fight for all things. I wonder if it will be that way on the day when the gods die, when the wolf swallows the sun. When there are only two men left in the world, when they have nothing but each other. Will they huddle close together in companionship or will one man’s hands tighten around the other’s throat? Will they feel love or will it be hate? I think it will be hate. I do not know why he has not cast me out.’

‘He needs you, of course,’ Thorvaldur said.

‘And I would not survive without him.’

‘A feud, then?’

‘A feud of two lonely men. Fought with words.’

‘No blood.’

‘Not yet. I think we would have killed one another if you had not come to us.’

He cocked his head. ‘Oh really? Then you owe your life to me?’

‘No. He owes his life to you.’

‘You would win the fight?’ he said, his eyes upon my ruined hand.

‘I have something left to live for. He does not.’

‘That might have been true, once. But not any more.’ He grinned that terrible smile of his. ‘My gift to him.’

‘And what of your gift to me? What more news do you bring from the Althing?’

He shrugged. ‘Little enough, in truth. I was there for a day, before the killings began and they made an outlaw of me.’ He stumbled for a moment, his foot swallowed by a deeper patch of snow. I caught him by the elbow and he smiled his half-toothed smile at me in gratitude.

‘What will you do?’ he asked. ‘What will you do when your sentence is finished and you are an outlaw no longer? Go back to your friend? Marry your woman?’

‘Aye. And I will settle the feud.’

‘With silver or with blood?’

‘I cannot say. And what will you do, Thorvaldur?’

‘Oh, I will try to preach again. I will speak to the chieftains once more and see if they will listen.’

‘And kill them if they will not?’

‘No. Not unless they force me to. But I am waiting for something else.’

‘And what is that?’

‘You remember from my stories? The land where the White Christ was born?’

‘You call it Jerusalem.’

‘So,’ he said, ‘you have been listening. At least a little.’

‘I remember such things. What of this place?’

‘There are infidels who rule there now. They serve a newer god than my Christ.’

‘You must find that a shameful thing.’

‘I do. But it shall not last. God will not allow it.’ He looked out across the valley, but I knew that he saw it no longer. It was a vision of a distant land. A place of red earth, a sun beating down like a hammer upon an anvil. Hordes of spears waving like trees in a tempest. The glitter of blades, held high against the light. And blood upon the sand, a new sea pouring out over a bone-dry land.

‘There will be a great war,’ he said. ‘The Christians will gather. We will forget our petty quarrels and take back that city. I only hope I live long enough to see it.’

‘A feud, then?’

‘Yes.’ He grinned at me. ‘You see? My God does have a place among your people. A feud over a piece of land. What is truer to the Icelanders than that?’

‘True. Very true.’

‘But still you are not persuaded.’

‘No. But I like to hear you try.’

He rolled his shoulders, like a wrestler before a bout. ‘Come,’ he said. ‘We must return.’

The fire had been left to go cold, only embers remaining. I thought at first that Thoris had gone, for there was no sign of him. But then there was a stirring deep within the cave, and as my eyes became accustomed to the darkness I saw Thoris sat hunched up on the blankets, a king upon a squalid throne.

‘I want more stories of your God,’ he said.

‘And you shall have them,’ Thorvaldur replied. He sat, dipped a finger in the cooling soup and licked it clean. ‘But first, you must give something to me.’

‘I give you shelter, food. I allow you to live. You ungrateful—’

‘No, I am grateful.’ He held his hand out to me, the palm toward the sky. ‘But Kjaran sings.’ He brought the hand to rest against his chest. ‘I speak of God.’ He held that same hand out towards Thoris. ‘What can you do?’

‘Be careful,’ Thoris said. The words as soft as snowfall, sharp as a blade lifted from the whetstone. But Thorvaldur did not seem to care.

‘You must tell me your story,’ the Christian said. ‘Tell me of how you became an outlaw.’

A hesitance from the darkness. ‘You know that story already.’

‘I know what other men say. That you killed your brother and stole his wife. But I want to hear you say it.’

He did not answer. Many were the times, during those endless-seeming winter nights, that I had thought of asking that. Once or twice I had spoken the first word of that question. But Thoris had looked on me and had seemed to know what it was that I was about to ask, the way a great swordsman will seem to know each movement of your blade and every piece of pretty footwork a moment before you act. You have not struck a single blow, yet already you are defeated. And I had felt that to speak the question would be to utter my last words.

‘No,’ Thoris said.

‘Then you will have no more words of my God. And you shall not know how the story ends.’

Thoris bowed forward, as though curling up around some belly wound, the kind that kills a man inevitably, slowly. His fingers clenched and unclenched around the cloth of his cloak and I waited to see them wander towards a weapon, for the killing to begin. But they went still. And he began to speak.

‘His name was Kjartan,’ he said. ‘My brother. They called him Kjartan the Strong, and he was. There was no man who could stand against him in battle.’ He looked at me. ‘Even your Gunnar, who you must always sing of. He could not have stood against my brother. And he married the daughter of a chieftain. Her name was Gudrun.