Tim Leach - Smile of the Wolf

‘I have seen men burned before,’ he said. ‘We must give him cold water. Only a little. But we must keep his throat cold, and clear.’

He passed me a horn of water and I tilted it towards the boy’s mouth. A few drops at a time, patient and constant, as falling water wears patterns into stone.

‘Later, we must clean the skin,’ Ragnar said. ‘It will hurt him terribly, but it must be done. And that is all I know to do.’

‘Will he live, do you think?’

He hesitated, his mouth working silently. Then shook his head. ‘Burned men almost always die,’ he said. ‘I am sorry, Kjaran.’

I looked down on the boy and watched my tears falling upon his face. I felt no shame. It was as though I watched another man weeping.

‘You must tell me what has happened.’

‘Much has changed since you left us,’ Ragnar said, and he seemed to diminish as he spoke.

‘Tell me of the feud.’

He dipped the horn into a barrel of water and this time he held it out to me. I touched it to my lips, felt the sharpness of the cold water like a blade against my teeth. I drank it down in one draught and held it out to be refilled. Again and again I drank, Ragnar saying nothing. When at last I wanted no more, he spoke.

‘They returned from the mountains. Björn and his kin. They said that they had caught you and killed you. And they bore Ketil with them, his leg maimed, as proof of what they said.’

‘Ketil lives?’

‘If you can call it that.’

‘And you believed them.’

‘Gunnar would not. But yes, the rest of us believed him.’

‘And what then?’

‘Nothing. Gunnar swore vengeance, but had not the followers to claim it. Neither side could move against the other.’

‘Until today.’

‘Until today.’

‘There were no followers with him,’ I said. ‘Do you think they fled the fighting?’

‘No,’ he said quietly. ‘They left before the fighting.’

A silence for a time, as the fire burned and my tears no longer fell.

‘Tell me of this,’ I said.

‘There is little enough to tell. They left him, one by one. Some were bought, I think. With silver and promises of land. Others Gunnar drove away himself. Quarrelling with them, accusing them of betraying him, of betraying you. He was half-mad at the end, I think. And the last of them left when they saw this, for they saw no honour in dying at his side. So it went, until he stood alone in the feud.’ He breathed deeply and let his head hang low. ‘We have known this would come, sooner or later. One cannot stand alone for long.’

‘You would not stand at his side. You were afraid?’

‘He would have no company with me. He cursed me for letting you run to the mountains.’ He lifted his head and I could see the sadness marked on his face. ‘You must believe me.’

‘I believe you.’

His eyes drifted to the boy in my arms. ‘They burned them out?’

‘Yes. The cowards. Ten against one, and they would not face him as a man.’

‘He was a warrior out of the old times,’ he said. ‘They would not dare stand against him.’ Ragnar reached out and took the boy’s hand in his. ‘Where did you find him?’

‘The boy hid. It saved his life. It seems that all around Gunnar there were none but cowards.’

Ragnar flinched again.

‘What of Olaf?’ I said.

‘He sought to keep the peace. His lands lay between those of Vigdis and Gunnar, and he would not stand for warbands roaming across his fields.’ He rubbed his hands against each other. ‘But I do not think that he will be sorry to hear of the end of the feud.’

‘What end of the feud?’ I said.

He dropped his head, spoke bare above a whisper. ‘Even you must know that it cannot go on. You killed Erik and answered for it with outlawry. Gunnar killed Hakon and answered for it with his own life. The debt is settled.’

‘What of his wife and children?’

‘You must know that to be an accident. They would not kill a woman and child deliberately. It would be a shameful thing.’

‘Perhaps. You are right.’

‘You have suffered much. But the feud has to end. You do know that, don’t you?’

I closed my eyes. ‘Yes. I know.’

‘Whatever I can do to help, I shall. But Kjaran, there is something more that you must know.’

‘Tell me, then.’

‘I do not know how to speak this.’

‘What can you say that can hurt me now? I am beyond such things.’

He licked his lips. ‘We thought you dead,’ he said.

We . I would not have known, if it were not for that word. If he had said I , I would have lived in ignorance a little longer. But he said it, and I knew.

I heard the sound of the door as it swung open. And in a moment, she was there.

I could not look at her face, at first. To see the face that I had fought to remember in that maze of ice and snow, the sharp lines of her face, the light dancing in her eyes – I knew I had not the courage to look there. I looked instead upon her hands, remembered the way she had once touched my face with them, the touch light and soft as snow. I remembered the turn of her waist as it had felt under my hands, but now the key of the house was tied about her waist, as was her right. In the way she stood I could see the strength of a housewife who walks many miles in front of her loom each day – a serving maid no longer. No sign of a child on her body, yet somehow I felt that one was there. I knew it in a single look.

I bowed my head and stroked the hair of the dying boy on my lap.

I heard Sigrid sit. Then I heard Ragnar speak.

‘They came back from the mountains. Björn and the others. They came back bearing a crippled man and stories of your death.’

‘And you believed them.’

‘Yes.’

‘You believed the stories, too?’ I said, looking at her for the first time.

Those strange eyes of hers met mine and there was no pain in them. Only a certain cold anger, the eyes of one in a feud.

‘No,’ she said. ‘But what does that matter?’

‘You may stay as long as is needful,’ Ragnar said.

I gave a gesture of the head that could have been a nod, if they chose to take it as such.

‘What will you do?’ Ragnar asked.

‘Will you care for the boy?’ I said to Sigrid. ‘I must go back to Gunnar’s house.’

‘What will you do there?’ she asked.

But I had already stood, was already gone.

Above me, scattered clouds and a hollow moon. Below, the wet earth, scoured with rain. And soon enough, the smell of ash in my nostrils, the taste of it on my tongue.

It was dark by the time I returned to the farm. It was better work done at night, for the dead almost seem alive in the darkness. I was not digging graves, it seemed, but shelters. Beds carved into the earth, for them to rest and rise again.

The greatest men and women are given a boat filled with treasures to take them to another world, piled high with weapons and gold and slaves with their throats freshly cut, for their service does not end with death. What gifts could I find for that great warrior Gunnar, against whose sword none could stand? What gifts for his wife and child? A few carved chess pieces, a little wooden horse that had somehow escaped the fire, the chain of stones looped on to a silver wire. What had not burned had been taken, and these were all the treasures that I could give them for the afterlife.

Before I cast the first handful of earth down on to Gunnar, I looked on the sword at my hip.

‘I cannot return this to you yet,’ I said, ‘for it is still bright and unbloodied. I will stain it for you first.’ And I thought I saw his ruined face smiling up at me from his grave.

I could feel madness so close that I could touch it. Like a hand that is proffered in a dance by a smiling girl – one has only to reach out and take it. And I would, I promised myself, for that would be my reward. But not yet.