Tim Leach - Smile of the Wolf

‘To love is to die for what we love. Gunnar loved you, did he not? And he died for you. I learned to love Hrapp. For he taught me the truth of the world.’

‘And what is that?’

She leaned forward, close to the flames, and I could see the light reflected in her dead eyes. ‘Men like you came to this place, thinking to be free,’ she said. ‘But you will never be free. You will always be a slave to men like Hrapp.’

‘And to women such as you?’ I said. ‘That is what you believe.’

‘I do not fear to die,’ she said. ‘Perhaps I am even like you.’

‘How so?’

‘Perhaps I want to die,’ she said. She looked to the wooden cross I wore on my neck. ‘You wear the mark of Christ.’

‘What do you know of him?’

‘I know that he forgives.’

‘Yes, he does, in the next life. But he is a god of revenge, more than anything else.’

‘What will you do?’

I thought on this for a time. Wound-weary and with the heat of the fire there, I could have slept. I wanted to. But I knew that there was more left for me to do.

‘I will not kill you,’ I said. ‘But I will take your child.’

Her mouth worked silently, the entreaties of a mute. And at last there was fear in her eyes.

‘Please,’ she said. She made to stop me then, but I held up the knife.

‘Sit down. Or I shall kill him before you. Would you have that?’

‘Please,’ she said.

She went to her knees and she spoke more words, but I did not listen.

I went over to the blankets in the corner. A child of three, as old as the feud, sleeping by the heat of the fire. A boy with a smile playing across his lips. What was his dream? Was it of his mother? The father he had never known? Games in the fields and upon the ice? Many are the joys of the child, and how quickly the man forgets them. A mercy, to end a life so soon, when it knows only joy – that is what I thought. That is what I thought, as I picked you up in my arms.

‘What is his name?’ I said.

And she whispered, so soft that I could hardly hear it over the sound of the fire: ‘Sumardil.’

You were still sleeping as I picked you from your blankets, but awoke for a moment when I took you. I looked into your eyes and you stared at me without fear or recognition, before you fell back into your dreams.

That was the first time that we looked upon one another, Sumardil. That was you, my child.

I was to take you to some quiet place and open your throat, for I would not have left you to wander lost and frightened on the snow. Your killing was a payment, a settling of a debt, not an act to be relished. And I thought I would die out there with you, that I would lie down on the cold ground beside you and let myself sleep. There seemed to be nothing else left for me to do.

Yet there seemed no need to hurry, if that night was all that I was to have left. And so I wandered in the cold, looking for a fine place to die. I was weeping, though it shames me to admit it, for the life that could have lived. I could feel your hot breath against my neck as I walked around and around those empty fields, up the rolling hills and back down towards the whisper of the sea.

I could not find the place, for that country held too many memories for me. A curve beside the river seemed as though it would do, but as I drew my knife I saw that we were too close to where Sigrid and I had made love. I wandered further, up towards the high ground, so you might see all of that beautiful valley one more time before I cut your throat. But now we were close to the stone and the tarn where Dalla and I had spoken together, and left no secrets untold. I could not do it there.

Again and again I thought I had found a place of killing, only to be halted by a memory. Like those great heroes of the old stories who have grown tired of life – their friends all dead, their women lost to them. And so they wander the battlefield, looking for the warrior brave enough to give them peace. But none will stand against them, for their reputation is so fierce, and so it is that they cannot die. I was no great hero, but perhaps that was my gift, too.

At last, I found myself at Gunnar’s longhouse, or what remained of it. As I sat on the blackened ground, leaning against one of the broken pillars, I thought to hear their bodies beneath the ground calling to me, begging for your blood to be spilt. But there was only silence from the dead.

You had not woken. You pressed your face close against my neck, huddled under my cloak, and you did not stir or cry out. I held you close and I thought to join you in sleep, a sleep we would not wake from. I thought to let the cold take us both to the next world.

Yet the sleep did not come to me. You did not wake. At some time in the night I found myself singing.

Soft, so as not to wake you, for I wished my words to find their way into your dreaming. My throat raw with weeping, dry and unpractised. Yet still I tried to sing, some of the old songs returning to me. Not the high, great songs of heroes and kings and gods, but the little songs I gave to children. Foolish rhymes, tales of tricksters and elves. I knew then that I did not want to die.

The night drew on and the sky began to lighten. I stood at last, my muscles aching from the trembling, stumbling on my numb legs. I no longer felt any pain from the wound in my side.

As we moved, you woke. You looked on me and there was no fear in you. You found yourself waking beneath the stars, in the arms of a stranger, and you were not afraid. You rubbed at your eyes and you said: ‘I am hungry.’

I was hurrying then, running across the dale, laughing and singing to you so that you would not see my fear. I went back then, to the house you were born in.

I would give you back to your mother – that is what I told myself. And I would give myself up for judgement for the killings. They would outlaw me again and there would be none to give me passage this time. I would die upon this land and my death would end the feud at last.

At the longhouse once more, the door swinging open against my hand. And the fire reduced to embers in the hearth, the back door swinging open with every stroke of the wind.

I had returned too late. She was already gone.

Do you remember those days of waiting?

One day passed, then a second, a third, as we waited for Vigdis to return. She would come back in the company of what kin remained to her, seeking revenge. I would give it to her without a battle. All that I wished was for you and her to be reunited, that I might undo what I had done.

You asked me when she was coming back and I told you that I did not know. But you did not weep – I did, but you did not. There was such strength in you, it made me humble to see it.

Was it Vigdis who gave that to you? It must have been. Do you remember those days that you spent with her? You do not? Her holding your hands and pacing you around the longhouse as she taught you how to walk, even as she plotted my murder. Her carving a wooden horse for you, tears springing to her eyes at your smile, before she spoke the words that goaded those men to burn my friends alive.

She destroyed all that I loved – almost all, at least. Yet with you she became what she was meant to be. And I took that from her.

Now I see your eyes asking what your words will not, Sumardil. You want to know what became of her. And that, I cannot tell you.

She was lost in the storm or she cast herself from some cliff into the sea. Perhaps she fled to some other part of the island or a distant land far from these shores. None know, and you must believe what you will.

But there came a time when we both knew that she would not return. I asked you if you had any other kin in the valley and you named the men that I had killed.