Tim Leach - Smile of the Wolf

I laid the earth upon the dead and then I laid down myself upon it. No green fire dancing in the sky, not this early in the year. It was a short night, that late in summer. A few hours of darkness, and I did not sleep.

One more time I looked on what remained of the longhouse, the fields, the hills around it, the grave at my feet. I did not look on that place to fix it firm in my mind. I looked on it and I wanted to forget.

I looked down on the tracks, clear-marked in the wet ground, and not yet washed away or trampled and forgotten. The killing was there, simple enough to read. I saw where the men had circled the longhouse, where they had come forward to throw their torches and retreat just as quickly. I saw the single trail of footprints where Gunnar had gone to fight them alone. How he had reached a place, then turned in every direction, surrounded on all sides. And I saw another set of tracks, leading from the longhouse and back once more. I saw those footprints and I saw the story written there. I knew what had been done.

After a night without sleep, all things seem as dreams do. That morning I walked back through the valley as I might have walked through such a dream, through a world that no longer made sense to me. And so when I saw Sigrid sitting outside in the sun, outside a little longhouse such as I had one day hoped that I might own, it seemed to complete the vision. How many times had I dreamt of such a thing, in those years of exile?

It was only as I drew closer, and saw her stitching together two pieces of a sail for her husband’s ship, that the dream was broken. She looked up, her hands curling into fists as she saw me.

‘If we still lived in a time when women wielded swords,’ I said, ‘you would have been quite the warrior.’

‘Do you think there was such a time? You poets like to sing of it, but I do not think I believe you.’

‘I do not know. Perhaps.’

She looked me over, seeking some sign of where I had spent the night. Some mark of earth or of blood.

‘Where did you go last night? How little courage you had, to stay and speak to me. I would have thought I had earned that much.’

‘I went to bury Gunnar and his kin,’ I said, and I saw her eyes dim for a moment.

‘That was well done,’ she said.

I sat on the ground before her and made no answer.

‘A battle?’ she asked, looking at my maimed left hand.

‘No,’ I said. ‘The cold.’

She paused for a moment. ‘I often hoped that you suffered,’ she said quietly. ‘I do repent that now.’

‘Which of the three winters past did you spend learning to hate me?’

‘The very first,’ she said.

‘So soon? I see that our love was worth little enough to you. A little matter to pass a summer, I suppose. But it meant more than that to me.’

She tossed her head at that. ‘What was it that you said Gunnar called you? Kjaran the Kind.’

I did not answer.

‘I thought that once, too. Then I found a man who was truly kind.’

‘And a coward.’

‘I care not. Neither do you, I think.’

‘I think much of Ragnar.’

‘Do not think it some marriage of pity,’ she said. ‘He is a better man than you.’ She cursed and threw her stitching to the ground. I waited.

She turned to me. ‘You want to ask me why. So why not ask?’

‘Did you think me dead?’

She thought for a moment. ‘I did not know. I had always thought that I would know if you had been killed. When my father was killed I seemed to know it before they spoke it. A touch of his ghost on my shoulder, a whisper in my ear, and then he was gone. But I never heard you speak to me.’ She picked up the two squares of the sail and began to sew once again. ‘And I had decided before they returned, before they spoke of your death.’

‘When?’

‘When they told me that you had not left with Ragnar. That you had chosen to stay.’

‘You did not think that I stayed for you?’

‘Did you?’

‘No.’

Her mouth twisted. ‘You see? I am not such a fool as you think. Tell me why you stayed.’

I could not answer for a long time. When I spoke, I said: ‘I looked on the mountains and the sea and I thought it beautiful. I thought my country too beautiful to leave. So it was not for love of you. But for this island.’ I looked down at my one good hand, turned palm upward to the sky. ‘I suppose that sounds foolish to you.’

She said nothing for a time. Then: ‘I have often wondered at the lies men tell themselves. I see that you tell them, too.’

‘You think that I lie to you?’

‘I do.’

‘Tell me, then, why it was that I stayed. Since it seems you think you know better than I do.’

She closed her eyes and shook her head, and it seemed at first that she would not answer.

‘For pride,’ she said at last. ‘You were too proud to run.’

To that, I found I had no answer.

She finished her stitching and rolled it up.

‘Will you stay with us, this winter?’ she said, and there was a challenge in her tone.

‘Do you want me to?’

‘I do.’

‘Then I shall. For I have no place else to go.’

‘And if you did, then you would.’

‘Yes,’ I said. But when I looked at her I could see the hurt that word gave. ‘But I thank you for your kindness. I will stay with you.’

She leaned forward, letting her hair fall across her face, hiding it from me. ‘What will you do now?’

‘Wait for the boy to die.’

‘And after that?’

‘What do you want me to do?’

‘I think that whatever I ask of you, you shall do the opposite. I will not say such things to you again.’

‘After the boy has died…’ My throat closed for a moment, but I willed it open once again. ‘I will ask Ragnar to take me on his ship. I do not know what work there is for a one-handed sailor. But there must be something I can do.’

‘You will not continue the feud?’

‘No. They have won.’

‘Does Gunnar not whisper to you of vengeance?’

‘No. I do hear him, but that is not what he says to me.’

‘And what do you hear him say?’

‘He wishes for me to love you. And he wishes for me to live and to sing. I cannot do one of those things. But perhaps I may do the other.’

Her hand drifted towards my shoulder for a moment, before she drew it back again.

‘You will do what you must,’ she said. She hesitated, and then said: ‘Will you sing for us? I would like to hear you sing.’

I thought of all the times that I had been asked that. Perhaps that was all that was left of me. A pair of aching lungs, a tongue and lips, a mind filled only with songs. And I answered as I always had.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I can still sing.’

‘I am glad to see that you live.’

‘Is that the truth?’

‘It is the truth,’ she said. And perhaps I was a fool, but I believed her.

I stood and looked upon the valley, and listened to the calling of the sea. I went inside the longhouse and I waited for the boy to die.

I had hoped that Kari would not wake again. That he would slip from this world quietly, at peace. But I had never seen a man die by fire. I did not know what was to come. For he woke soon enough and he did not sleep again.

Each day, Sigrid and I scoured his weeping skin with sand, even as he screamed and begged for us to stop. We dripped milk and honey into his mouth, for his throat was too far closed to take any more than that. He did not sleep and so neither did we. Each night one of us would walk up to the shieling, for there we could sleep. Two of us stood as sentries on the watch, waiting for the night to pass so that we could sleep. Waiting for him to die.