Tim Leach - Smile of the Wolf

Oh, I see you stir at that, Sumardil.

You will have it all, I promise. The end to all mysteries. All the truth that you could want – too much, perhaps. We shall see. I must linger but a moment longer, before we get to the end. I must speak a little more of Kari, Gunnar’s son.

When I was a young man I never thought to have a child. With no land to call my own, it was too much to hope for. In truth, it did not matter to me so much. I wanted nothing more than to wander and be free. I thought that my words would be my children. A good song lives longer than a good son, after all.

When I found Sigrid and I thought we would be married, I felt for the first time that strange ache for a child. I understood it as I had not before. That longing to have more of the one that I loved brought into the world, to find a way to make your love cheat death. And I suppose in the end I did get my wish, though not as I imagined it.

Kari was our child, mine and Sigrid’s, raised together. Not raised from his birth, but from his death. There was no child like him in the world.

I have loved a woman. I have loved a friend. Sometimes, I wonder if I have loved anyone so much as I loved that child.

Not even you, Sumardil.

The battle fury left me, and I could hear once more.

I could hear the calling of the wind and the rolling sea beyond the hills. Somewhere near me, a man lay sobbing. I could hear my own gasping breath, the beating of my heart like a fist pounding against a door.

But there was one sound that I longed for, but could not hear. The sound of a word or a breath or a scream – none of these came from the boy on the ground. And even at a distance, I could see the blood that stained the snow.

A wheezing, gasping chuckle, close to me. For Thorvaldur yet lived, hunched over and leaning upon his sword as an old man leans on a staff. I was bent over, too, for it seemed the battle had made old men of us both. And of Björn, it had made a child. I could see him dragging himself away, trailing blood behind him.

He was the only one left. His brothers, his friends – those five men lay dead at my feet, and I could not remember which of them I had killed myself.

The soft, wet sound of mud and snow beneath my feet, as I came forward to where Kari lay. He was on his back, arms thrown wide as though he meant to embrace the sky. One eye was gone, the other dark, like a bead of blackened glass.

The rip of grass, the drag of a body through wet mud. Björn, trying to crawl away from us. I should have felt an urgency: my revenge was so close at hand. I should have worried that other men might come, for the coast road was well travelled. But there seemed to be no hurry. There was no rush to do anything anymore. For as long as the feud had gone on I had felt time slipping away from me. And now there was too much time. Too long left to live.

Thorvaldur’s hand was upon my shoulder and I saw his weary, half-toothed smile.

‘Come on,’ he said.

Björn had not gotten far. I could see the evil wound upon his leg, a great cut of the sword that had split thigh and knee open to grin at the sky. Kari must have done it, as he lay upon the ground. Exhausted, shield broken, body cut open. He could have laid down still, played the corpse and the coward and saved his life. But he had found the strength for one more swing of his father’s sword.

Björn rolled on to his back as he heard us come near. Axe held close to his chest, as though he were afraid I would snatch it away from him, the way a child holds a toy it fears will be taken from it. He looked up at me, and knew me then.

‘Are you a ghost?’ he said.

‘No.’

‘My brother?’

‘He is dead.’

His eyes dimmed and the hand on his axe slackened. He cursed me then, and I waited for him to grow tired.

When his oaths were finished, he said: ‘You have done this for Gunnar. Because of what we—’

‘No. It is not what you did to Gunnar.’

‘Then…’ He gasped with the pain and turned his head. ‘Then why?’

I knelt down beside him, out of the reach of his axe.

‘The footprints,’ I said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘When I came upon Gunnar’s farm, I saw the footprints. Two sets. One large, one small. They came out from the longhouse. Then they turned around and went back towards the fire.’ I saw the shame there in his eyes. ‘It was his wife and daughter, was it not? Dalla and Freydis.’

‘Yes.’

‘Tell me what you did.’

He looked up and down the trail – grey-faced, the sweat running thick on his face like a blown horse after the gallop. But he could see that there was no rescue coming. Only the falling of the snow and the two men who stood over him.

‘We…’ he began, then trailed off, gasping. ‘They came out when we fired the house. I was going to let them go. I swear that. But…’ He paused and he looked at me. I do not know what he hoped to find in my eyes, but he did not see it there.

‘It was Vigdis. She told me… she said I would be a coward if I let them go. That my brothers would be ashamed of me.’ He closed his eyes at the memory and he said no more.

I imagined it, then. A circle of men, a wall of shields. A burning house, the fire roaring high. A woman and her child beating against those shields, begging to live. And those men marching forward, one pace at a time, driving the woman back into the fire. Had they turned their heads from her, as they pressed her back towards the flame? Had they wept with shame behind their shields?

Had Gunnar died seeing that?

‘It was a shameful thing we did.’ He was whispering now. Shivering, his face gone pale as ocean-washed bone. His hands slack around the axe. ‘I know Gunnar’s last words. I know what he said. Promise that you will kill me well and I will tell them to you.’

I looked up to Thorvaldur. ‘Your choice,’ he said.

Nearby, I could hear the babbling of a stream. I knew then what to do.

‘Put down the axe,’ I said. He nodded, without thinking, and let me take the axe from him.

‘Give me your arm.’

‘What will you do?’ he said, his teeth chattering with the cold.

I said nothing and I lifted him up so that he leant upon my shoulder. Thorvaldur came to his other side and together we helped him to the river – two brothers, helping an old father towards his bed.

We laid him down there and he reached out one hand to cup the water, to bring it to his lips. Yet when he had the water in hand, he seemed to forget what it was that he wanted. The fingers opened and the water spilt back to the river.

‘Do you know how a man is made a Christian?’ I said.

‘No.’

‘We are reborn in water. I will make you a Christian and you will tell me Gunnar’s words.’

‘You will let me live?’

‘Tell me what Gunnar said.’

He looked down at the water. When he spoke, it was as though he were another man speaking.

‘He called out your name. As if… as if you were some woman that he loved. That was all he said as he died. Your name, over and over again.’

I tried to hear Gunnar, then. He had spoken my name as he died – perhaps his spirit spoke it still, was whispering it to me.

I heard nothing. I thought of what I knew, of the words that a dying man must speak. I knew my friend then, for the first and last time.

‘Put your head in the water,’ I said.

He crawled to the river’s edge. He looked at me once; doubting, afraid. Then he carefully placed his head into the running water.

One of my hands went to the back of his head. The other, my fingerless piece of flesh, hooked under his arm, and all my weight was upon his back. He knew what I intended then, and he fought me as best he could. But he had no strength left: he had bled it all into the snow.