Tim Leach - Smile of the Wolf

I began to long for it, and it seemed as though I had never wanted anything so much before. At night when I could not sleep, when I listened to him cry out in pain, I prayed to the gods to let him die. I felt my hand drift to the knife at my side, and it would have been a kindness to do it, the greatest gift that I could have offered to any man. But Kari was all that was left in the world of Gunnar. I knew I could not destroy him. I would have taken that knife to my own throat before I took it to his. And so we waited for the slow death to take him, and we fought it as hard as we could.

It was on a morning, as the summer began to turn towards winter, when I came back from the shieling, that the change came. I walked towards the longhouse, and there was a strange silence within. I listened at the door for a time, waiting for the choking cries to begin again. But there was nothing, and an ache of joy crept through me.

I thought to find Sigrid there, beside the body of the boy. But it was Ragnar who sat beside Kari, a fresh catch of salmon still dripping in his net. He spent much of his time working the rivers, sleeping at the shieling or in his ship. He took little part in nursing the boy – not out of cowardice, I think, but out of a particular courtesy. He knew that I did not want him there.

He started as I came in, like a man caught speaking conspiracy.

‘Sigrid asked me to watch him for a moment,’ he said, ‘She will be back soon.’ His eyes darted back to where the boy lay.

‘Is he dead?’ I said.

‘No. He sleeps.’

‘Then what concerns you?’

‘It is no matter.’

‘Tell me.’

He hesitated, then beckoned me forward. ‘Listen to how he breathes.’

I came forward and I saw that the boy did sleep. A change there, for the pain always kept him awake. I put my ear to Kari’s chest, and listened to the wheeze and rattle of his breath. I heard nothing different.

‘Does he seem to breathe easier to you?’ Ragnar said.

‘I think that you imagine it.’

‘Perhaps.’ He sat beside him, reached out an uncertain hand. The slightest touch could hurt the boy, and so Ragnar merely extended one finger, and gave a gentle stroke to Kari’s hair. The boy did not stir. ‘I do not want him to die,’ Ragnar said.

‘I do. I want his pain to end.’

‘Sigrid said that after winter you will go abroad. That you think to take a place on my ship.’

‘If you will have me.’

‘Of course.’

‘I should have gone with you three years ago. It is too late now, but there is nothing else for me to do.’

‘It is not too late.’

A sudden anger stole my sight for a moment, and when it returned I saw him with his hand to his mouth, his eyes open wide. I suppose I must have looked murderous.

‘I am sorry,’ I said. ‘But it is a simple thing for a man like you to say that.’

‘Yes.’ He stood abruptly and made for the door, leaving his catch by the cooking pot. He paused at the doorway and said: ‘I do not imagine it.’

‘What?’

‘I am sure of it.’ His eyes drifted to Kari and then met my gaze with a rare confidence. ‘The boy is healing.’

‘I wish that were true,’ I said.

I could not trust the word of a coward: it is all that we are taught, that brave men speak truth and cowards lie. But Ragnar never lied to me. In that, at least, he was brave.

The boy began to crawl back towards life, one breath at a time. He bore the dressing of his skin with hisses of breath, not with screams. He slept entire days at a time without making a sound.

I could not allow myself to believe it for a long time. But I remember a night when we sat together, Ragnar, Sigrid and I. We sat together for hours without speaking, and we watched Kari sleep, and breathe, and it was as though we watched a miracle before us.

Ragnar looked at me and he smiled. ‘The work of the gods,’ he said.

‘Perhaps,’ I answered. And that was all that was said that night.

Our gods do not raise the dead. They welcome them, feast them, fight with them, but they do not bring them back. For if a man died well in battle and found his way to Valhalla, what cruel God would send him back to earth to suffer once more? And if that man died without honour, what favour would he have with the gods to give him life again? There is no charity from Thor or Odin. Only duty. I remembered then a story that Thorvaldur had told me – of a man they called Lazarus, touched by the White Christ and brought to life once more. But I put it from my mind just as swiftly.

He would be a monster to look upon, looking more like a wooden carving of a man than one of flesh and blood. But the boy would live.

He was wordless for so long, for in his pain he had retreated to some place beyond language. And even once the wounds on his skin had closed, it was a long time before he would speak to me. Sometimes I thought that I heard him whispering to Sigrid, but she would not repeat his words.

Once he was strong enough we walked him around the narrow longhouse, again and again, as a birthing woman is made to walk so that her child will come. Returning strength to legs that had forgotten how to walk, that had thought themselves unneeded and prepared themselves for death. And still he did not speak.

There was an evening in early winter, when I sat alone by the fire. Sigrid and Ragnar were gone, I cannot recall where. But as I sat, I watched the dancing of the fire. I thought of the coming summer and I tried to imagine the sound of the rolling waves, the sight of distant countries. I tried to imagine that future, and yet it would not come to me. I could see only the fire.

‘Kjaran.’

The sound as soft as a whisper of the wind, but I heard it. I had waited many months to hear him speak.

I turned and saw his eyes glowing in the light of the fire.

‘Yes. I am here.’

‘Water,’ he said, and I gave it to him. I went to pour it in his mouth, but he took the skin from me and, with trembling hands, poured it into his mouth.

‘More?’ I said.

‘No.’

I hesitated for a moment and saw his eyes wander to my maimed hand, saw his warped lip curl in disgust at the sight. A strange thing, to see a cripple’s horror at the sight of another cripple. But he did not know what he looked like.

‘Did they do this to you?’ he said.

‘No. It was the winter.’

He put his hands to his face, felt the altered skin under his fingers. He turned from me and nuzzled his face against the furs and blankets beneath him.

After a moment I heard him speak once more.

‘What shall we do?’

I did not answer at first. I listened to the rattle and wheeze as he drew breath into his scarred lungs. How many years would he have, before some winter fever would take him? For ours is a land where the weak do not live long. How much time would he have before he began to die slow, drowning on dry land? Before he died in his bed, with no blade in his hand?

‘We stay here,’ I said. ‘We speak to no one else. It is better that we are thought dead. You most of all. The feud continues in you. They must kill you to finish it.’

He lifted his head and nodded.

‘Kari,’ I said, ‘I need you to tell me something.’

‘Yes?’

‘I want you to tell me of the night of the raid. I want you to tell me how Gunnar died.’

‘No,’ he said.

‘I must know.’

‘Please.’

‘I must know.’

‘Later. I shall tell you later.’

‘No. You must speak now.’

It took a long time. Again and again he looked at me in silence, a pleading in his eyes, waiting for me to un-ask my question, to free him from my demand. But I would not. I simply stared at him, my hand on the sword his father had given me, and I waited.