The Smile of the Wolf

by Tim Leach

  SMILE OF THE WOLF

  Tim Leach

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  About this Book

  About the Author

  Table of Contents

  www.headofzeus.com

  About Smile of the Wolf

  Tenth-century Iceland. One night in the darkness of winter, two friends set out on an adventure but end up killing a man.

  Kjaran, a travelling poet who trades songs for food and shelter, and Gunnar, a feared warrior, must make a choice: conceal the deed or confess to the crime and pay the blood price to the family. For the right reasons, they make the wrong choice.

  Their fateful decision leads to a brutal feud: one man is outlawed, free to be killed by anyone without consequence; the other remorselessly hunted by the dead man's kin.

  Set in a world of ice and snow, it is an epic story of exile and revenge, of duels and betrayals, and two friends struggling to survive in a desolate landscape, where honour is the only code that men abide by.

  Contents

  Welcome Page

  About Smile of the Wolf

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Settlement

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Feud

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Outlaw

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Revenge

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Acknowledgements

  About Tim Leach

  An Invitation from the Publisher

  Copyright

  For Caroline

  1

  The feud began in winter, when a dead man rose from the earth.

  In the distant lands where men worship the White Christ, I have heard that a ghost is not such a dangerous thing. They are creatures of no substance, who may wail and howl but cannot hurt a man. But in my country, the people are warriors even in death. Our ghosts are not shadow and air, but walking flesh. They wield their weapons with as much strength as they did in life, and more bravely, for they have nothing left to fear. And so, when we heard that Hrapp Osmundsson had crawled from his grave and begun to wander his lands at night, no man in the Salmon River Valley would leave his house after dark without a good blade at his side and a shield on his arm.

  In life, Hrapp had been the terror of his neighbours, ever covetous for their lands, their women, their blood. When the winter fever came on him and he knew he was soon to die, he commanded his wife to bury him upright beneath the doorway of his house, so that he could watch over his lands even in death.

  Soon enough, the stories spread throughout the dale. Thord the Sly had gone to check on his sheep at night and been set upon by a dead man carrying an axe. Erik Haroldsson, a braver man, had grappled with the creature when it came for him, but was sent running for his life with the heavy tread of the ghost behind him.

  No man sought to buy the farm from Hrapp’s widow. Indeed, there was talk amongst the neighbours of selling their own lands and moving on elsewhere, though there were few farmlands so prized in all of Iceland as those in the Salmon River Valley.

  For all that was spoken of the ghost, I thought it mere winter talk at first, one of those foolish tales spun to pass the long cold months of near-permanent night, when men do little but huddle round their fires and drink mead, sing songs, tell stories and wait for the sun to return. I am a collector of such tales, yet I tell only the ones I know to be true – or half-true at least. This ghost story held little interest for me.

  But then one night I heard Olaf the Peacock speak of it when I visited his farm to trade milk for ale; he was an honourable man, a respected chieftain of the people, and he would never tell a lie. He said that he had seen the bruises on Erik’s arms, and gone in search of the ghost himself. He had found it wandering Hrapp’s fields, bearing Hrapp’s old axe. Olaf cast a spear at it and the ghost had fled from him.

  I wish he had not told me that. For it was then that I believed, and I began to tell the story myself.

  *

  I am Kjaran. Kjaran the Landless is what many call me, though some of the sharper-tongued call me Kjaran the Luckless, for they think it the worst of fates to be a man without land.

  It is true, I am no man of property or wealth. My father was a slave – gifted his freedom but nothing else, and so he had little to leave his children. But my voice is sweet and my memory is good, and I have always traded stories for food and songs for shelter. I am not one of the truly great skalds of this country, such as Kormákr Ögmundarson or Hallfred the Troublesome Poet. But I was not afraid to stand beside a friend in a feud when the odds were against him, and I never overstayed my welcome or chased after another man’s wife (rare qualities in a poet, I know), and so I earned myself a good name amongst the people of this island. Twenty-four winters had I passed, the year the feud began.

  I had spent that winter with the man they later called Gunnar the Killer, though he was merely Gunnar Karlsson when I met him, a farmer with a little land and a good-sized herd. I had spent the summer there, hunting for seals along the coast and helping to tend his sheep, for a humble skald earns favour with the sweat of his hands as much as the strength of his voice. But in winter it was the stories that I traded for shelter and food. And when I told Gunnar the story of the ghost, one late winter night, he said this:

  ‘So. The ghost fears a spear?’

  He did not speak in mockery or in doubt. He merely thought out loud, picking out the detail that, to him, seemed most important. That the ghost feared iron, and a man brave enough to face it.

  He said nothing more for a time. We sat beside the embers of the cooking fire, his wife asleep at his feet, one of his children sleeping at mine. I had been his winter guest for many months and we had passed countless nights in this way. The taste of those nights is icy water and salted fish, the sound is the burning of the fire and the whistling of the wind, the smell is smoke and sweat and ash and earth. Now it was almost spring. The time of storytelling was almost over – soon it would be the time to act.

  Perhaps this thought was on Gunnar’s mind, too. For it was then, after the long silence, that he said: ‘I will hunt this ghost.’

  I should not have been surprised. He had been a Viking in his youth, one of those restless men who took their due from the lands of the Saxons, the Scots, the Irish. But he had tired of the bloodshed, so he sailed his ship to these lands, broke it to pieces for timber, and built a house with that wood. He was a farmer, his ship forever stilled in the timbers of the roof above us, beached and capsized and never to sail again, his warring days long behind him. Yet killing is like any other art: when it is learned, it cannot be unlearned. Once learned, it will always long to be practised.

  ‘You believe the story that Erik has told you?’ he said. ‘I have never thought him a trusty man.’

  ‘No. But Olaf the Peacock would not lie to me.’

  He nodded. ‘Will you come with me?’

  ‘Why not? At the very least, it will make a good story for next winter. May
be even a song.’

  He grinned at me. ‘That it will.’

  Many men had gone hunting for ghosts in the past and had never caught them, for the dead only prey upon the unwary and flee the brave. But there was little enough to do on the farm. It would be a good excuse to go walking together in the night, for ale never tastes so good nor a fire feels so warm as after a winter’s walk. We would prove ourselves brave men who did not fear the dead, and I would make a song of it. There would be nothing more to it than that.

  In the end, I did get my song. It was a good one, too, but not worth the price I paid for it. But I did get my song.

  *

  The loneliness of an Icelandic night – how would I speak of it to one who was not of our people?

  There is no place that is so lifeless, so isolated, as our island in the depths of a winter’s night. The scattered turf-walled houses all but disappear into the ground, looking more like hills or grave barrows than homes for the living. There is no movement in the fields. The herds are dead, butchered and salted for the winter, the few survivors huddled in the darkness of the barns. Out in the night, one can almost feel the land longing to return to desolation. The dead have more business here than the living.

  We had set out in that half-light of late winter, a two-hour dawn that becomes a two-hour sunset with the sun barely above the horizon. For it is as the old song says: ‘He must rise early, who would take another’s life.’ We had been merry as we trudged through the snow, heavy cloaks on our backs and weapons in our hands, singing together to keep the cold away. Yet the short day was almost spent by the time we reached Hrapp’s lands, the wind snapping and biting at us like an unseen spirit, and we circled his fields in silence. We no longer felt in the mood for song.

  Soon Hrapp’s longhouse lurked before us in the half-light. The turf walls ragged after a winter spent untended, but still there was smoke rising from the chimney. Hrapp’s wife Vigdis lived alone now on the farmstead. Alone, save perhaps for a slave, a servant, or the company of the ghost.

  ‘Perhaps she still cooks him supper at night,’ Gunnar said, looking at the smoke.

  ‘You think the ghost can be hungry?’

  ‘Let us find out.’

  I began to laugh, but the sound caught and died in my throat. For it was then that I saw it. A quarter mile distant, a dead man walking through the snow.

  His back was to us as he moved with a heavy, steady tread, seemingly ignorant of the cold. There was no mistaking him for anything else. He was no farmer chasing after a wandering flock, no lover sneaking back from a midnight tryst in the next valley. He wore a helm on his head, a shield on his arm, and an axe – Hrapp’s old axe – in his hand. He was wandering his old lands, seeking men to kill.

  ‘Do you see him?’ Gunnar said.

  I did not reply at first. I did not want to believe.

  He spoke again, barely louder than a whisper. ‘Am I mad? Do you see him?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I see him. What should we do?’

  Gunnar did not reply with words. He beat his blade against his shield – a hollow, echoing sound, like a knocking on a tomb. The ghost turned towards us then, though we could not see his face in the darkness, and Gunnar gave the battle cry.

  We did not run, the way you may have heard the old stories say. A warrior does not waste his strength, does not commit to questionable footing in the dark. We stalked forward, always keeping our left foot ahead, our shields presented, moving together as a shield-wall of two.

  A howl split the night, the scream of the dead man answering our battle cry. A sound like nothing else I had ever heard, but we did not falter. Then the ghost took a few steps back – no doubt seeking a better footing, though it looked for all the world as though he were preparing to run.

  We were close now, close enough to see the pale eyes glittering through the eyelets of his helm, to see the breath frosting upon the air, for it seemed that ghosts still breathed as we do. The dead man offered a warrior’s salute, and Gunnar, grunting in surprise, returned it in kind. Seeing such a sign between them – a challenge offered and accepted – I let Gunnar go forward alone. Even a ghost deserved to be fought honourably.

  They gave no further sound as they closed the distance, for men fight like dogs do: all screaming and howling at play, silence when they fight for their lives. There was only the sound of deep, steady breathing, of boots crunching against snow. Then the sound of iron into wood.

  The ghost fought with reckless fury, and Gunnar was forced back at first, kicking up little puffs of snow from the ground as he retreated. A quickening of fear stole through me to see him so hard-pressed.

  But I was a fool to worry. They will still be telling stories of Gunnar a hundred years from now, for my friend was a patient warrior who knew his trade all too well. He did not fight the man, he fought the shield, catching the blows that came to him on the metal boss, answering them with strikes to the wood. Always to the same side, the left side, a woodsman chopping at his mark. I could hear the shield cracking and groaning, and then, under a great back-handed strike from Gunnar’s sword, the shield fell in half.

  Now it was Gunnar’s time. He circled to his right with every step, towards the broken shield, driving the dead man’s guard wider. The ghost fought as best he could, but it is exhausting fighting with half a shield, every movement doubled. I could hear the sobs he gave with each blow struck back, could see his movements slowing.

  Then it came, the killing moment – Gunnar feinted another step to the right and the ghost’s shield went with him. But my friend danced to the left instead, levelled the sword and thrust forward, into the break in the guard.

  ‘Wait!’ the ghost said and my heart went still at the sound of his voice, a voice that I knew. But it was too late. The sword was already through him before he had finished speaking the word, the snow darkening at his feet.

  And it was then, in the distance, that we heard a woman begin to scream.

  Settlement

  2

  The voice seemed to come from all around us in the dark, as though every woman who had seen her kin slain were screaming down upon us. It took me a moment to see her – another figure in the dark, running at us from Hrapp’s longhouse.

  The light of the moon caught her face as she drew close; it was Vigdis, the wife of Hrapp, who was screaming. I saw another thing under that light, that it was no ghost on the ground before us. It was a living man who lay there, gasping wetly for air, drowning in blood on dry land.

  He wore Hrapp’s tunic and his face was daubed white with curdled milk, but there was no mistaking who he was now that battle fever had left us. A neighbour of ours: Erik Haraldsson, one of the first to tell the stories of the dead man walking.

  ‘Erik,’ I said.

  The dying man lifted his head at the name. He tried to speak and bubbles of blood burst upon his lips, black under the light of the moon.

  I did not even see her move, she was so quick. In a moment Vigdis had leapt at Gunnar and held his right hand with both of hers, trying to wrestle the blade from him. And when he tried to pry her away with his free hand, she sank her teeth into the flesh of his hand, right between the thumb and forefinger.

  He bellowed in pain and struck her. She twisted away, nose pouring blood and legs shaking, but still as full of fight as any young warrior. Her eyes strayed to the axe on the ground, and perhaps she would have taken it up and fought like a shield maiden from the old stories if she had faced one of us rather than two. As it was she watched us silently, teeth bared and eyes black.

  I knelt beside Erik. I showed him the knife; he wept and clawed at the red snow with his hands. Then he nodded. He watched the knife come, but at the last moment he closed his eyes and turned his head away. He could not bear to watch.

  The blood steamed against the snow; the sound was like river water when you break the ice in spring. And though I thought she would fight and struggle and kick and howl, Vigdis gave up all fighting the moment the knife
bit deep. She stood still and soundless and watched the man die.

  I rubbed my hands clean with snow, stood and faced her.

  ‘What is your part in all this?’ I said.

  ‘It is cold out here,’ she said. ‘Come with me. I will tell you all.’

  ‘We must bury him and mark the grave. We must tell his family what has happened.’

  She looked up at the stars, judging the colour of the sky: the time we had left until the sun rose upon the killing.

  ‘It is cold,’ she said again. ‘That can wait.’

  She turned from us then and picked her way carefully through the snow, back towards the squat house in the distance. And, like the fools we were, we followed her.

  *

  They are as dark as tombs, the houses of the Icelanders. In other lands some light may bleed through a thatched roof; the occasional gap in the walls is permitted to let in a little light. But our homes are without windows, walled over with earth. They seal out the winter cold, and sun and moon and stars are sealed out as well. There is only the light of the cooking fire to see by, and that is little more than embers at the end of winter.

  Vigdis gave us bread and that watered-down, end-of-winter ale that I had grown to hate. She moved around the narrow building and I could see that she was a handsome woman, slender and flaxen-haired. More beautiful than in daylight, as I was to learn later, for in daylight one could see her eyes – thief’s eyes, my people call them. But in that half-light of the fire, I began to understand why she was a woman that men might fight and kill for.

  We sat together in that homely barrow and did not speak for a time. Had some lost wanderer come in, we might have looked like any other household. Family and friends, host and guests. Not the killers that we were.

  At last, Gunnar spoke. He had been hard at thought in the near darkness, yet still he said: ‘I do not understand.’

  ‘Your friend does,’ she said, looking at me. ‘Don’t you?’