Tim Leach - Smile of the Wolf

‘The snow blesses us,’ he whispered. ‘A white blessing from the White Christ. Perhaps we may win this battle after all.’ He extended a finger towards the warband. ‘And look. There are only six.’

‘We are outnumbered. He is a boy. I am maimed.’

‘I am worth two of those men. Kari is worth two of those men. But are you?’

‘We must get away from here.’

‘It is too late for that.’

I knew that he was right. ‘We could have waited.’

‘What need is there to wait? You promised me killing, and your faith. You would give me only half a bargain?’

‘I spit on your White Christ. I curse him. A coward’s god.’

‘And yet I am the brave man and you the coward if you will not fight today. You can curse my God, if you want to. But if you do, I shall not fight with you.’ The mad smile went from his face as suddenly as it had sprung upon him. ‘Pray to Him, Kjaran. Do it now, for we do not have much time. He will tell you what to do.’

I put my hands against each other. I closed my eyes and I prayed.

I could feel the closeness of death – like hands closing about my throat, a sharp coldness sliding between my ribs, touching against my heart. Death has a taste, I had learned: a dry taste, like iron upon your tongue. It has no smell at all: the sweat and stink of the world falls away, leaving nothing behind.

I prayed to the White Christ and his father to give me strength in battle, the courage to destroy my enemies, to grant me vengeance for friends long dead. And it was but a moment before I felt the cold hand of God upon my shoulder.

My eyes opened. The world shone a little brighter. The taste of death grew dull, and I could smell the earth and the air once again. He would fight with me; I knew then it was as the priest had said. That this was a God of revenge.

I wanted to sing to Him then, and I thought to give a soft chant that the wind would swallow. I thought to give Him a new song, but I could not find the words. I tried to think of the old songs, ones that I had repeated a hundred times before, and though the words came close to my lips they would not leave them, like a river almost in flood that cannot break its banks.

My songs belonged to the Old Gods, and I had abandoned them. My new God was one worshipped in silence. I would never sing again.

Below, the warband turned the corner, and their talk and their laughter ceased. Björn and the others swung down from their saddles, came forward and faced the boy in silence. I do not think that they recognised Kari at first: they thought him dead, and his burned face gave them little to find familiar.

I saw Kari speak, but I could not hear the words. And I saw those men shudder almost as one, a ripple of shame passing through them. No doubt they had tried to forget what they had done.

Kari spoke again and Björn shook his head. The man pointed south, stabbing his finger towards the beach, towards safety.

Kari spoke one last time, louder this time, a single word. A word, at last, that I could hear. ‘Coward,’ he said.

Björn nodded, then. He pulled the shield from the saddle of his horse, drew the axe from his belt. Another man half-drew his weapon at the sight of this. But Björn snapped a curse at him, spoke loud enough for me to hear. ‘Do not shame me!’

Gunnar’s sword was out now – too big for Kari, but he held it well. Oh, but he was his father’s son. The stance he held, the look in his eyes – even in that ruined face of his, there was still some ghost of the friend that I had lost.

Björn hesitated once more, looking on the boy who stood before him. Viewed from a distance, through the turning curtain of the snow, it was almost as though I was watching some battle from the old stories. Not a boy standing before a man, but a man standing before a giant.

The giant shrugged and spat upon the ground. And the iron began to sing.

I half-rose, my grip tightening around my spear, but Thorvaldur’s hand was on my shoulder.

‘Wait,’ he said.

‘For what?’

He did not answer. But I trusted him then. There is no trust akin to that of men who fight together. Whatever game he had been playing before, no matter how much he liked to make me dance for his pleasure – all that was gone now.

Björn was afraid of that sword, for he had seen what it could do. I could see him dodge back further than he needed to, to place his shield precisely in its way. His strikes were hesitant, in spite of all his advantages. Yet it was already clear how the fight would end. It was a beautiful sword, but it could not undo a foot of reach and fifty pounds of weight. Kari fought well, but he could not break the larger man’s guard. And it was not long before Björn found his courage.

Wood was flying from Kari’s splintering shield and I could see him gasping for breath as he backed away. He barely struck back, the occasional half-checked swipe with the sword, as he fought to hold the shield high as Björn beat against it. He had no art and little skill, but he did not need them: he only needed his weight, and time.

Soon, Kari could retreat no further and his shield groaned and cracked with every blow. Below, I saw the other men lose themselves, the hands half-rise, imploring. Longing for the death to come, to give them their release. Lost in the dance before them, they had no eyes for anything else.

‘Now,’ Thorvaldur said. But I knew it before he spoke and I was already gone.

Down the slope, leaping with great strides from tussock to tussock. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Kari had gone to ground, both hands holding up his shield, blood upon the fresh snow. But I could not look at him. I looked only upon the men that I had to kill.

I could feel some great sound bubbling up within me, scratching at my teeth, closing around my throat, desperate to be born, but I would not let it loose. Not until my spear was in flight, not until it had struck home in meat and bone, not until a man was screaming on the ground. Hearing that, I let the sound come from within me. It was not a curse or a war cry, not a song or a scream, but laughter. For a joy spoke through me, then: the berserker’s joy, which knows only laughter.

The battle was not motion, it was stillness. Moments where the world ceased to move, where everything can be seen. In between those moments, a mist took my sight. I could not speak. I could not sing. But I could laugh. And I could kill.

In those still moments I saw everything so clearly. The white teeth of the man I had speared, the whorls of dirt on the hand he held up, the arcing shape of the blood as I brought my axe down across his mouth and left him a smiling corpse on the ground.

The next man seemed frozen in mid-swing, his axe moving towards my head as slowly as the motion of the sun. It was such a simple thing to place my shield in its way. He had no time to take up a shield of his own and held up his hand by instinct to bar my way. That shield of flesh was gone in two strokes of my axe. I touched his stomach with the blade – the barest touch it seemed to me, yet he knelt upon the ground at once and spilt his secrets into the snow.

His lips moved, but I could not hear what he said. I could hear nothing but the laughter.

I saw Thorvaldur, too. No shield in his hand, just that terrible sword of his clutched in both hands. He moved like a dancer and he left only death behind him.

And at the heights of my fury, I saw Björn. His leg laid open, yellow fat parted neatly before the bone. His shield cast down, one empty hand pressed to the ground, lifting him up. His other hand, the full hand, bringing his axe down again and again on the boy at his feet.

We grow close now, don’t we? Close to the dawn, for the sun will crawl into the sky soon enough. And close to the end of my story. Our story, it would be more right to say.