The Smile of the Wolf

by Tim Leach

  Distant, I thought that I heard a cry, carried to me on the wind. I looked back and saw the figures moving faster in the distance. Stirring their horses, realising at last what it was I intended. I did not look again until I reached the top, gasping and retching, looking down to see the warband milling at the bottom of the mountain, shouting and arguing with each other.

  I did not have to hear them to know what they said to one another. They had not thought that I would be so desperate as to go into the mountains. Would they follow me there? Or would they trust to the ice and stone to settle the feud for them? For no man could hope to pass three years in such a place.

  ‘Go home,’ I whispered to myself, willing it to be so, a heartfelt prayer.

  And yet it seems they heard me. For they leapt from their horses, took their weapons and supplies from their saddlebags, and began up the slope.

  I turned away and looked to the east, to the heart of our country. And it was there that I saw a more dangerous sight than a conquering army, a fleet of warships, a mountain spewing fire.

  I saw – nothing. I saw a land in which nothing lived, in which nothing could live. And I walked into it, the dead snow breaking beneath my feet, and moved as fast as I could over ground that no man had walked on in a hundred years.

  They would not be far behind.

  18

  There are those who come to Iceland – newcomers, merchants from distant lands – who have never seen our country before. If the sea mist hangs thick in the air when they arrive, they may only see the rich farmlands along the coast, the rivers teeming with salmon, the grazing pastures on the low rolling hills. They may wonder how this country took such a hard name at its birth. How any man could look on this place and call it a land of ice.

  Then the wind blows from the sea, the mist clears and they see the great mountains at the heart of the country. The endless fields of snow and ice, the black stone, the dead soil. And it is then that they understand. We live at the edges of this land, holding fast to what green country we may find. The rest we leave to the ice and snow, to the beasts, the monsters and the outlaws.

  We look watchfully towards the centre, as if fearing that one day the mountains and the ice will march towards us like a conquering army, consuming the pastureland and freezing the rivers, driving us out into the sea.

  Nothing may live in that place. Nothing grows. A world of ice and snow, that only the desperate, the hunted, will call home.

  *

  They followed me into that maze of stone and ice. Their numbers diminished: eight of the twelve now remained, for the others must have taken the horses back. They would not have cut down their horses as I had. These were still men with something left to lose.

  Before, our chase had been almost sightless. Specks on the horizon following another speck on the horizon, walking our horses across the empty land. But we were on foot now and on ground where a few miles might take a day to cross.

  When they shouted I could hear them clearly, and sometimes they did not need to shout. The twisted rock faces brought their voices to me – idle conversations about cattle and crops, muttered complaints about the cold. At night I sometimes felt as if I were at the campfire with them, and had to catch myself before I spoke in answer to them.

  Not a day passed without us seeing each other. When I was on a high path and looked back to see them on the rocks beneath me. When I had passed through a thick snowfield, the cold whiteness up to my thighs, only to hear the soft crunch of breaking snow behind me, see the warband struggling half a mile from me.

  I had no time for a fire and could not chance it, and so I ate my horsemeat raw – wolfish, blood running in my beard, soft meat slipping down my throat. Perhaps, I thought, it would be sickness that would kill me rather than the men who hunted me, for already my throat was raw from coughing. But if it seemed that it might come to that, I would turn back to seek out my pursuers. I would rather die fighting than be consumed by disease. I would rather taste iron than starve to death.

  I knew no paths through the maze. At any moment I might come to an impassable blankness of stone, with no time to retreat. I turned each corner in fear, came over every rise in the terrain expecting to see the place where I would die. But the gods were kind, or perhaps they merely wished to toy with me a little longer. I always found a path through. Yet always, I could hear them close behind.

  Weaker day by day, chewing snow in place of water, feeling the cold settle within me like a piercing arrow, a deep wound that I could not heal. Once I had run out of meat I scraped moss and lichen from the stone, hoping the pretence of eating might quiet my hunger for a time. I waited for some change, some way that I might escape.

  Then, one morning, I felt a touch upon my face as I slept.

  A gentle touch, like a lover’s hands that seek to trace across skin without waking the sleeper. And I sat upright, one hand pushing forward and seeking a tunic or hair to wrap my fingers around, the other taking up the blade at my side, for there could be no lover here to wake me. My hands found nothing but air and I thought at first I had merely dreamed that touch.

  Then I felt it again. A cold, scattering touch that seemed to be everywhere at once. It was only once I had come fully out of the world of dreams that I understood. It was snowing.

  I put down the sword, held my hands upright and felt the coldness against my skin. What had begun as the lightest of touches was already becoming something else: a thick flurry of white that had already covered my legs, that swept over the mountainside all around me, that blocked the rest of the world from view. I looked on it and I began to laugh.

  Silent laughter, for I could not take the chance of being heard. My shoulders shaking, biting down on the web of skin between thumb and forefinger, as the snow fell around me like the answer to a prayer. I got to my feet, already shivering yet still laughing, and stumbled forward into the snow, one hand held high to shield my face.

  This was the time. There would be no more hunting, no more running. I would lose them in the storm that day or I would die in the attempt.

  *

  They were close to me. I could hear them calling in the storm, trying not to lose one another. They were stronger than I was, well fed around a fire each night, moving faster than I could. Wherever I placed my feet I left marks upon the snow. Wherever I went, I broke a path for them to follow.

  And yet we could not see one another – the storm was too thick for that. The blind hunting the blind, by touch, by sound, by voice, fighting through the heavy snow one aching step at a time. Of all the ways I had thought to die, I had never foreseen this.

  Out there, on the high mountains, I came to a flat, open field of snow – beautiful, in its own dead way. Like a well-tended field, as though the mountain spirits had chosen this place to harvest snow and ice.

  The storm swirled into stillness for a moment, and on the other side of the snow field I saw something. A glimpse only, so brief that it might have been a trick, but I had to believe it to be true.

  A pass leading down from the mountains. A valley beyond, green fields and rivers. A place of life, not this open-air tomb that I had trapped myself in. The snow closed off that vision once more, but I knew it to be there.

  I moved across the field as fast as I could, towards what I had seen. And it was not long before, behind me, I heard them coming. The crunch of snow, the curses of tired men. They sounded so close to me, yet I could not see them.

  I moved as in a dream, those trapped, sluggish motions. Pulling my legs free of the snow with numb hands, taking in the sharp air in great gasps that seemed to cut at my lungs, the tip of my belted sword catching with every step that I took. Waiting for the touch of a hand upon my shoulder, the feel of iron inside my skin.

  But it did not come. There were rocks beneath my feet, in front of me the vision I had seen before. I could leave this place, go down amongst the living once more. But it would not be for long.

  I turned to my right and ran across the rocks, cr
ouched low, my ragged cloak flapping about me like a raven’s wings. When I had gone far enough, I turned again, back towards the field of snow. I stepped on to it and I began to walk back.

  I moved slowly now, caring more for silence than speed, waiting for the wind to gather up before I took each step. I could hear them drawing close. If they were spread out across the snow, they would catch me. I would see the shadow of a man in front of me and know it was too late, that my ploy had failed. He would see me and call to his companions. There would be no rush to it, for I could not run in that thick snow. It would be a patient killing.

  But there was no man in front of me. They must have been gathered together, like a troupe of blinded slaves navigating as one. I heard them draw level, deep breaths and heavy footsteps to my right. They could have asked a question of me and I could have spoken softly in answer, we were so close. Then they were past, the sounds of them receding. Distant, I thought I heard one of them cry out as they reached the edge of the snowfield, when they saw that path down from the mountains.

  A quickening joy in my heart. How long before they realised their mistake? Before they turned back and found that second trail through the snow? Long enough for me to vanish back into the mountains. Most likely to freeze or starve, but in that moment I did not care. I felt only the trickster’s joy, Loki’s joy.

  Then I saw a shadow in the storm. The shape of a man, passing close by.

  I crouched down, the snow slackened and I saw him. A man, pulling his cloak close around himself. Bowed over, staring at my tracks in the snow, trying to make sense of them. Just for a moment, then he was gone.

  Carefully, gently, I dug at the snow at my feet. Clearing a hollow, like a madman digging his own grave. And I crawled into it, pulling the snow back over me. I took my knife in my left hand, and I listened.

  For a long time, there was nothing but the howling of the wind. My right hand held close against my chest as if to quieten the beating of my heart, my left hand burning in the cold, fingers locked tight around the handle of the knife. The pain of the cold was akin to nothing I had felt before and I bit the folds of my cloak to keep myself from crying out. Then, abruptly, like the striking of lightning against the ground, I felt nothing at all.

  I heard him then: the heavy tread of footsteps drawing closer. And a voice calling out – too hoarse for me to know who it was.

  ‘Björn! Kari! Can you hear me?’

  He was lost. Calling to his companions, mistaking my tracks for theirs.

  What strange stroke of chance had brought him here? A twisting in the bowels that had set him behind his companions. A stone working its way into his boots that he had taken a moment to remove, then looked up and found himself alone.

  He wandered closer and closer, until he was near enough that I could have reached out and touched him from my hollow in the snow. But he had no eyes for the ground. He was trying to pierce the storm, to catch the sight of his companions.

  ‘Björn!’ he cried once more, the wind swallowing the sound. Then, ‘Kjaran.’

  He did not cry out my name. He said it quietly, to himself, a realisation. Then he looked down and his eyes met mine.

  The snow flew from me as I rose, my shoulder into his knee, the knife searching and cutting at his leg. He fell, his body taut with horror, his lips moving but saying nothing. I crawled up him like a man climbing a mountain, and placed my fist into his mouth before he could cry out.

  It was Ketil. Here for some duty he owed to Björn, some debt to be repaid in blood. No killer’s longing for him, a mere discharge of a duty. And of all the people I might have faced, the gods had brought him here to die at my hand.

  I rolled back from him, scrabbling along the snow on all fours. He stared at me, disbelieving, and he tried to stand, his hand reaching for the axe at his side. He tried to stand and his ruined leg gave way beneath him. I had felt the skin part deeply under the cut I had given him, but he did not know his wound until that moment. I could see the white of bone, the cords of his leg exposed like cut worms.

  He embraced himself, arranging and rearranging his arms again and again over the wounds I had given him, for there were too many to cover. He was lost for a moment in his pain – eyes closed and teeth bared. Then it seemed that he remembered me.

  ‘Do not shame me,’ he said.

  I looked beyond him, into the storm. Thinking that I had heard distant sounds, drawing closer. That they were coming back.

  ‘Do not shame me!’ he cried again.

  But I turned from him and ran back across the snow. Back to the rocky paths at the heart of the mountains, leaving a dying man behind. And, before all sound was stolen by the wind, I heard him plead with me one last time.

  I heard him plead with me to kill him.

  *

  I wandered, lost in the storm, looking for a place to die.

  Every step I could feel the life pouring out of me, like blood from some deep and terrible wound. All I wished for was sleep, to lie on the snow and sleep.

  There is a longing of a man who faces hopeless odds in battle. It is the longing to kill one man at least, to not die without spilling the blood of one who has come for you. You have killed one, the mind seems to say, and that is enough. Lie down and die if you wish, for you have done enough.

  The snow fell thicker and thicker, the memory of the blood the only warmth that I had. And as I took another step I knocked loose a rock, heard it dance and scatter down towards my left. I followed that sound, and beneath the snow and stone I saw something. Not a path, but a gully that seemed to lead down from the mountain.

  I stumbled down: careless, clumsy steps that were buried in snow, slipped across icy stone. I fell, time and time again. Slumping against the white blanket on the ground, closing my eyes for a moment of exquisite rest, then coming to my feet again.

  ‘One more step,’ I whispered to myself. One more step.

  And then the ground levelling before me, the storm growing weaker and weaker until the way was clear and I could see where it was that the gods had taken me.

  It was another world of black stone. A bare and empty valley, no shelter to be seen, no grass. No man had walked in this place for a hundred years at least.

  I fell and could not get back up. Again and again I tried to stand, but I could feel some great, unseen weight upon my chest. I knew that I had gone as far as I could. At least I would not die in the mountains. At least I would not die at the hands of those who hunted me.

  I looked out at the hand that had held the knife, that had maimed a man I had once called a friend, and I could feel nothing from it. I lay down in the snow and I waited to die.

  *

  I wandered from sleep to waking, time and time again. I had hoped to dream of Sigrid, but I dreamed of nothing at all. Only a silent dimness, like being under deep still water.

  I woke one more time, and before me there was a figure in the darkness. He was no trick of the mind, for I could feel his heavy tread against the ground. I thought, for a moment, that he was one of my pursuers, that against all odds they had followed me to this place. But it was a man I did not know.

  A ghost, perhaps, of another outlaw who had died in this place, come to guard his territory from the living. His clothing a patchwork of rags, his eyes rolling wild, a chipped axe held in his hand. Yet there was a dripping carcass slung to his back – a fox, skinned and bloody, and I knew that he was no ghost. For the dead do not need to feed.

  He knelt beside me, unstoppered a leather skin that he slung around his neck. I could smell the sweetness of mead. Life was in that smell, and poetry and love. The strength to stand and fight again. I ached for it and reached out, but he drew it back from my hand.

  He gave a bark and a cough – a man remembering how to speak. Then he spoke.

  ‘Why should I save you?’

  I could not understand and did not answer. He grabbed my chin and shook me.

  ‘Listen! Tell me why I should save you.’

  My li
ps moved, but no words came. He sat back, preparing to stand, preparing to leave me in the snow. And, his voice marked with regret, he spoke to me one more time.

  ‘What can you do?’

  I knew then what I had to say. What it was that I had to offer this man, the only thing of value that I had in that waste of ice and snow.

  ‘I can sing,’ I said.

  I remember nothing more after that.

  19

  When I woke there was no sky above, no mountains surrounding me. Only shadows dancing on the walls of a cave. And, close by, the sound and the feel of a fire.

  I shrank from it as the first man to strike fire must have done, fearing his own creation, believing that he was going to burn the world away with his strange, flickering gift.

  It endured only for a moment. Then I had a hunger for the fire, crawling as close to it as I could stand. I held my hands out to it and could smell the hair burning, yet I could feel no heat in my fingers.

  As I moved, something stirred on the other side of the fire. A great shadow moved on its hands and knees to my side, for he was tall and the top of the cave was close to me.

  I saw him better now than I had out in the snow. His hair was the colour of wet iron, tied back tight against his head, yet his eyes were alive with youth, or madness. When he turned his head to face me, by the light of the fire I saw that one ear was gone, a ragged lump of flesh and scar all that remained on the right side of his head.

  He gave me a sip of water. I gestured for more, but he withdrew it after I had barely wetted my lips. He rested his head against one palm and stared at me for a time. Then he said:

  ‘I think you will die. A fever, most likely.’ He turned away, stirred the fire, then looked back to me once more. ‘I will give you a little food and water. I do not have much and I will not waste it. If you live a week, I will give you more. Do you understand?’