Tim Leach - Smile of the Wolf

And so I woke in the cave on a late summer’s day and I felt the unseen chains fall away from me. I was a free man once more.

I could go home.

The others did not speak as I made ready to depart. Thoris sat on the floor of the cave, his long arms wrapped around his knees, his head towards the ground, his ruined ear facing towards me. Thorvaldur watched me, a faint smile on his face.

I took a little food, a single skin of water, for I needed no more than that. I was a free man once more: I could call upon any farm in the land and the law of guest friendship would compel them to give me shelter for the night. I could sing for my food, cut corn and tend cattle, and receive bread and ale in return. They, still outlaws, had more need of it than I.

I wrapped the fur cloak around my shoulders, struggling to tie the clasp one-handed – three years of practice, yet still I had not mastered this. The knife went into my belt, my killer’s weapon, its edge almost dull. Last of all, I settled the sword at my hip. Gunnar’s sword, a weapon of heroes, that had not left its sheath for all the time I had been exiled. That blade was still sharp.

‘It is time, then?’ Thorvaldur said.

‘It is.’

Thorvaldur nodded.

‘We shall walk with you. For some of the way at least. Come, Thoris. We must see him out of the valley.’

I did not think that he would follow. He had barely spoken a word to me for months, for the sooner we drew to the day of my freedom, the less he wished to speak to me. He counted the days more than any of us, though their passage could bring him no reprieve. And sometimes I awoke in the night to find him watching me, his eyes cold.

But he rose without a word, and the three of us walked out together.

Down into the valley, the place that I knew as I would know a lover. The tall smooth rock that curves and hollows like the body of a woman. The place where the winter ice was thinnest on the river, where we had broken it open a hundred times for gulps of the piercing water. The rock wall that looked like a giant’s face; the hidden hole in the moor that threatened to twist and snap an ankle.

We went to where the valley opened out, where the free lands of Iceland lay stretched before us. Distant, the movement of the herds, the dancing of crops in the wind. A different world, that I could enter and they could not.

‘This is as far as we may go,’ Thoris said.

For a moment I did not dare look back on them. For I wondered if they meant to let me taste freedom for a moment before they cut my throat. We held no bond of kinship, of loyalty. I might earn great renown, bringing back the heads of those two outlaws. Perhaps they could not take the chance of letting a free man go, knowing that valley as I did.

But when I turned back to face them, they greeted me with silver, not with iron.

Thoris stepped forward and handed me a silver arm-ring, the double of the one I had traded away in Borg. In the three years we had spent together I had never seen him wear it. He must have kept it hidden away, one last treasure. A relic from his lost life. Perhaps a gift from a friend, as mine had been.

‘Take it,’ he said. ‘You shall have more need of this than I.’

‘I cannot take this from you.’

‘What use have I for silver? I shall never spend it.’

In that cave he had been a tyrant and I had learned to hate him. I was free of him now, could nurture my hatred freely. And yet I felt no need for it.

‘Why have you given this to me?’ I asked.

‘You sing well,’ he said. He seemed to want to say more, but he could not find the words.

I turned from him and looked out on the frozen valley that I had called home. The prison which he could not leave.

‘This will make a good song,’ I said.

‘Three years in this place and you think it will make a good song?’

‘All men love to hear of outlaws.’

You will sing of me?’

‘I shall.’

‘What kind of a song?’ he said, and I think there was fear in his voice. Perhaps he feared a flyting song, strange as that seemed. This man who would be forever exiled from his people, and yet he still feared to be mocked behind his back. Perhaps that was all he heard when he closed his eyes at night. Men laughing at him, a fool who had killed his brother for love.

‘You have lived out here longer than any other outlaw. What is there to mock in that?’

He turned from me and began to walk away, slow and purposeless, like an old man who has forgotten himself.

‘It was not a shameful thing,’ I said, and he looked back to face me.

‘What did you say?’

‘There is no shame in what she did. The woman that you loved.’

He said: ‘I thank you.’ Then he was away, striding back up the slope of the hill, towards his cave.

Thorvaldur clasped his shoulder as he passed, whispered words that I could not hear. The Christian came forward and took my hand, smiled that terrible, half-toothed smile of his.

‘Good fortune, Kjaran.’ He looked back at Thoris. ‘It was kind, what you said to him.’

‘It was what he wished to hear,’ I said. ‘Just as what you speak to him, with those stories of your God.’

He shrugged, caught.

‘Perhaps we shall meet in better times,’ I said.

‘I do not wish for better times. I am where I should be.’

‘I cannot believe that.’

‘You are jealous, I think. That he cares more for my words than your songs.’

‘You came here to find desperate men. Desperate men who would need your God.’

He did not seem insulted by my words. He cocked his head, considered the thought.

‘It does not seem so wrong to bring God first to those who need Him most. I thought to bring the word of God to the chieftains of this country. But I think that is not the way. The shaming I received, this exile – God is telling me that it is not the way.’

‘And so you bring your God to men who will soon be dead. Men who will father no children. Your word will die with them.’

‘Perhaps. But I say that it is time well spent. Two years spent saving a single soul, and I do not regret it.’

‘You truly think that he will join your God?’

‘He is close to it.’

‘Yes. He wants to be forgiven.’

‘And what of you?’

‘I do not. I have nothing to forgive.’

‘My God will love you.’

‘I have a woman who loves me. What need have I of the love of a god?’

‘That will change, in time. When it does, come back to me.’

‘It will not change.’

‘Then I hope we do not meet again,’ he said.

There was a coldness to his eyes, where before there had been nothing but merriment. I wondered if this was what those men had seen in him, those men who had mocked him at the Althing, all those years ago. Had they seen that look in his eyes, before they died?

‘Do not mistake me,’ he said. ‘I will make you a Christian, or give you a warrior’s death. There can be nothing else between us.’ He raised his hands, gesturing to the valley. ‘There is a truce between us here. You sheltered me and I thank you for it. I like your company well enough and think you a good man. But I am a warrior in a feud. A feud of gods. And beyond this valley, you are my enemy.’ He brought both hands to rest upon his heart. ‘But I hope that you will be my friend, one day.’

‘Be kind to Thoris,’ I said.

‘My God will be kind,’ he replied. And then he was gone.

I watched them walk away, one behind the other. The slow, clumsy steps of Thoris and the careless stride of Thorvaldur. Like an old man close to death and the son who will succeed him.

I came back to the free lands as a traveller from another world. I stood tall and walked in daylight, wandering the high ground with no fear, the warmth of the sun against my skin. Let me be seen by every man and woman and I would not have cared. The law was once again my friend and I felt as though every man on the island walked at my side.