Tim Leach - Smile of the Wolf

‘Your feud?’

‘Yes.’

His fingers tapped against his sword, dancing and moving, as if it were an instrument on which he played a silent tune.

‘Are they Christians, the men you will fight?’

‘No.’

He paused, considering. ‘Then yes,’ he said. ‘But you must be made a Christian at once. There is no time to spare.’

‘What must I do?’

He smiled at me, that half-toothed smile, a corpse’s smile.

‘Come with me,’ he said.

Frozen water does not lie silent. It moans like a dying man. It barks like a mad dog. And when the wind runs across it, one can hear the sound of scratching fingers, of all the dead men that the water has swallowed, begging to be let out.

It was the start of summer and yet here the river was still frozen. I placed each foot carefully, hunting for where the ice seemed thickest, even as it groaned beneath me. I had seen a man swallowed by that kind of ice when I was a boy. A snap and he was gone beneath the water. By the time I got to him, slipping and sliding across the ice as I ran, the water had frozen over once more. I saw him beat against that ice once, twice, three times, but already I knew it was too late.

Thorvaldur strode out ahead of me, trusting the god to guide his steps, only pausing from time to time to look back and mock me with a smile.

‘You are afraid to die? I thought better of you than that.’

‘There is still much that I have left to do.’

He shrugged. ‘Here, then,’ he said. ‘This will be far enough.’ And he took a small axe from his belt; he handed it to me and told me to break the ice.

I have heard tell of how sometimes, in the worst of the feuds when an avenging warband has a man at their mercy, they will refuse to grant him an honourable death, a death in battle. They hand him a tool rather than a weapon, and they make the doomed man dig his own grave.

You may question why a man would do such a thing. Why he would not simply refuse and call on them to kill him cleanly. On this the stories are silent. Perhaps it is the threat of torture that compels him, or it may be that they promise to hand him a weapon if he does as they ask, to give him a chance to die well. Whatever it may be, it seems that the doomed man will always do as they ask. And whatever bargain is made for an honourable death, the killers refuse it. They put him into that grave and they bury him alive. They let him drown beneath the earth.

As I worked the ice, Thorvaldur sitting cross-legged on the frozen water and watching me in silence, I thought only of those stories. And yet I could not seem to stop.

I cut a circle in the ice – a fisherman’s circle, though there was nothing to catch in this dead water. And Thorvaldur spoke the words in some tongue that I did not understand, his hands clasped together in prayer.

‘A spell?’ I said, when he had finished.

‘There is no witchcraft here. Only words. And water. And God.’ He pointed to the ice. ‘Kneel with me.’

I felt his hand against my neck, the sound of more words, the cracking of the ice beneath my knees. Then the world swung upwards and I felt the water close around me. And from my mouth, the deadened sound of screaming underwater.

I was a sacrifice, a gift to his god from the water. And so I fought against him, my hands scrabbling at the edges of ice, trying to push myself free of the water. But he was stronger than I, his weight bearing down on me, pressing me into the black water. And I felt the mad longing to breathe that water.

The world returned and I traded water for the sky – lying gasping on the ice, my breath frosting before me. I tried to speak, but the cold stilled my voice; and Thorvaldur leaned over me, his hands on my shoulders. He laughed the way that wolves seem to laugh in the hunt, howling with joy, teeth bared and eyes wild.

‘Oh, I am glad to have you with me. Do you feel it now? Do you feel the new god’s hands upon you?’

‘Yes,’ I said. And I did.

Later, by the fire. It had been many hours since the ritual on the ice and I still could not seem to get warm. My heart beating sluggishly or threatening to pound its way from my chest, and I could feel myself growing weaker, moment by moment. I sat still and did not speak, and waited to see if I would live or die.

Thorvaldur was as restless as I was still. He poked the fire and looked at the sky, wishing the night away, praying for the coming of the dawn.

‘How many are there,’ he said, ‘that we must kill?’

‘Two brothers are the ones who matter. Björn and Snorri. Three kinsfolk with them. Bersi, Harald and Svein.’

‘Only five?’

‘There are others. There are always others to carry on the feud, are there not? But those five are the ones that matter.’

‘Very well. And who else do we have at our side?’

‘Only one. Kari Gunnarsson.’

‘Gunnar’s child? A boy?’

‘Near enough a man. And he shall fight as one.’

‘And what of the woman? Vigdis, you called her.’

‘What of her?’

‘Must she die, too?’

‘Does your god permit the killing of women?’

‘Sometimes he does.’ He clasped his hands together and leaned towards me. ‘Tell me something, if I am to fight in this feud of yours.’

‘Ask me.’

‘Why is it that you do this? And do not lie to me. I shall know it if you do.’

‘For revenge, of course.’

He studied me for a moment, then he wagged a finger as though I were a child to be scolded.

‘No,’ he said. ‘That is not the answer. But no matter. You will give me the truth, in time.’

Without another word, he turned from me, rolled up in his blankets, and was asleep within moments.

I slept, too. Better than I had since the feud began. And I did not dream.

We moved by night, for Thorvaldur was an outlaw still, and it would be death to both of us if we were caught together. We moved over the land in darkness, sleeping in fens and riverbeds in the day, and the stories spread in our wake.

I would hear them later: the farmers who heard our footsteps in the night and thought us ghosts. The shepherd boys in their shielings, who caught glimpses of us silhouetted against the sky and mistook us for giants, their eyes playing tricks at the distance. Gods and monsters, making their way to the Salmon River Valley.

When I showed Thorvaldur the valley for the first time, we stood on the southern hills, risking the dawn light. His eyes traced over the rivers and the dales, the mountains and the sea. He nodded and said: ‘A good land. But I would not die for it.’

‘You do not have to die for this place.’

‘I do not have to die at all. That is what you came here for, is it not?’

I made no answer.

He grunted. ‘So,’ he said, ‘that is not your secret either. But I will find it, do not worry.’

‘It is almost day. We must sleep now. They will be in the fields before long and we must not be seen.’

‘Where is it that we go tomorrow?’

‘To the house of a friend,’ I said, though the words were like ashes in my mouth.

When we came to Ragnar’s house I rapped my hands against the door – softly, with a thief’s touch. Yet the door was open in a moment and it was Sigrid who stood behind it. I suppose she knew it would be me.

‘I am glad to see you return,’ she said, and I could see her eyes shining in the darkness. Her hand drifted towards me, hesitant, as though she thought me a spirit rather than a man, and would believe me only through touch. Then her gaze strayed past my shoulder to the man who stood behind me. ‘Who do you bring with you?’

‘An ally.’