The Smile of the Wolf

by Tim Leach

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘Do not foul this cave. Call me when the need takes you and I will carry you out.’ He paused. ‘It is a long time since I have shared a place with anyone. I will try to remember. But do not test me.’

  Blackness came again – as swiftly as river ice breaking, cold dark water swallowing me. When I woke again, he had not seemed to move.

  ‘You are an outlaw?’ I said.

  ‘You think that a free man would choose to live in this place? You are as well, I suppose.’

  ‘Yes.’

  He leaned forward, close enough for me to smell the stink of his breath. ‘Do you know who I am?’ he said.

  ‘I do not know you. Are you from the north?’

  He leaned back, seemingly satisfied. ‘Yes. And you have come from the west?’

  ‘I lived in the south, once. Then in the west.’

  ‘And now, here.’ He leaned back against the wall of the cave and his eyes followed the dancing flames. ‘My name is Thoris. They call me Kin-slayer.’ He paused. ‘You know me now, I think.’

  I had heard the story. ‘You killed your brother,’ I said.

  ‘Yes. I killed my brother. I wanted to marry his wife.’

  He lapsed into silence. There was nothing else to be said. For a man may kill for many reasons. To answer an insult, to take revenge, to avoid shame. For silver or land or power. But our people hold no honour in killing for love.

  ‘When I found you. Whose blood was on you?’ he asked.

  ‘A man who hunted me.’

  ‘An enemy, then.’

  ‘No. I would not call him that.’

  ‘You gave him a warrior’s death?’

  ‘No. I left him maimed in the storm.’ I turned my head away.

  ‘You need feel no shame,’ he said. ‘Not here. That is the secret men like us know.’

  ‘What secret?’

  ‘That there is nothing we will not do. Eat a man, kill a child. I have seen the outlaws do it all, and worse. To survive.’

  Exhaustion came over me and I knew that soon I would have to sleep again. I lifted my hands towards the fire – not for the heat, but to look upon them.

  The fingers of my right hand were pure white. On the left, they were grey and black at the tips. Both were utterly unfeeling.

  He noted them and said, ‘I will help you, when a week has passed.’

  ‘If I live.’

  ‘If you live.’ Then, almost shyly, he asked, ‘When will you be able to sing?’

  ‘Soon,’ I promised.

  For the first time I saw a smile dance across his lips. Just for a moment, like a falling star, and then it was gone.

  *

  The fever came, as he said it would. Days of waking madness and nightmares in the dark. Despite his instructions, I fouled myself time and time again in the dark. And I remember him screaming at me, striking me about the face, dragging me out to the mouth of the cave, where I used snow and rags of cloth to scrub myself clean. The fever filled me with a feeling like hate, a mad, screaming hatred. But it could not kill me.

  I came through it as thin as cattle at the end of winter: hollow-bodied, bones sharp against the skin. I could see Thoris look doubtfully on me. Yet I could feel, deep within me, that it was not my time to die. I have seen men and women die of sickness, and they have always known, sometime before the end, that it was coming. I knew that I wanted to live. I thought of Sigrid and I knew that I would live.

  My right hand had returned to life, though the pain of it had been like nothing I had ever known. Even in the depths of the fever, when all else was lost to me, I could feel the burning of those fingers coming back to life. Yet on my left hand, the hand that had held the knife, there was nothing. They grew soft once more, but no feeling returned to them and they gave no motion. They had turned from grey to black.

  I did not know how many days it had been since he had found me in the snow. Perhaps it had been a week, perhaps longer. But on that day, when he came back from his morning’s foraging, he gave me a piece of his flatbread. Just a small piece, but always before he had eaten, then left once more, without offering me anything. He had given me food in the evenings alone, leaving only a bucket of snow that would melt to drinking water in the day.

  On that day, when the heat of the fever was falling from my skin, I felt a different kind of warmth. There was no fire in the cave and yet beneath me I could feel that the stone was warm to the touch.

  ‘Is this magic of yours?’ I said.

  ‘It may be magic. But it is not of my doing. I do not possess the art.’ He leant down and spread his fingers across the stone. ‘Perhaps something sleeps down there. A dragon or some other beast. And while it sleeps, we may live. And if it wakes, we die.’

  ‘I will speak softly, then, so as not to wake it.’

  ‘No. You will sing loudly. Let it wake. What does it matter?’ He paused. ‘How long are you outlawed for?’ he said.

  ‘Three years.’

  He turned his head from me. ‘I am glad for you,’ he said. For I had heard that he had been outlawed for the rest of his life.

  ‘How long have you been out here?’ I said.

  He did not reply. I waited, for I had learned that after spending so long alone, he was accustomed to silence. Many were the times I would ask a question, hear nothing from him, only to receive an answer hours or days later.

  ‘Seven years now.’

  ‘You did not think to go abroad? Why did you stay?’

  ‘A woman. The woman I killed my brother for. She came with me, to this place. This was our home.’

  I looked around the cave for some trace of her.

  ‘She died,’ he said. ‘A fever. Three years ago. She was why I have survived longer than any other. I have seen many outlaws come and go. Stronger men than me, better hunters, better thieves. And they all die. For what else is there for a man to do in a place such as this? What else is there to do but die?’

  ‘They kill themselves?’

  ‘No. But they grow forgetful. They do not prepare enough for winter. They wander openly in farmlands and the hunters find them.’ He tore another piece of bread and gave it to me. ‘They die, without knowing that they want to die.’

  ‘Do you still have men hunting you?’

  ‘They still come. Every summer. My kin, bearing the duty of revenge. They have seen me from afar. I expect they will find me, one day.’

  ‘I have never heard of an outlaw living as long as you have.’

  ‘There is pleasure in it. To live, when an island of men all wish you dead.’ He smiled that faint, twitching smile once more. ‘I feel powerful.’

  I laughed then, as much as I could, hearing his words and looking on the pair of us: half-starved, ragged and filthy. Worse than beasts, for even a horse or a sheep had more protection under the law than we did, and yet he spoke of power.

  ‘You will see,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you know it already, but choose not to believe it yet. Now tell me, why did you not run? Perhaps you did not have the silver.’

  ‘A ship waited for me. A captain to take me away.’

  ‘So why not take it?’

  I did not answer.

  ‘You have a woman?’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I see. That is why you did not run.’

  ‘No. She wanted me to leave. I promised her that I would.’

  ‘Then why?’

  I thought for a time. ‘I have a friend,’ I said. ‘He too is in the feud. While they hunt me, they shall not hunt him.’

  He spat on the ground. ‘I doubt that. They will think you dead now.’ He looked at me closely and I saw a coldness settling into his eyes. ‘I will have the truth from you or I will not have you stay here.’

  I rested my dead hand upon the sword at my side. I felt for the markings of the runes, for the patterned whorls of the iron. I knew it was there, but I could feel none of it.

  ‘I did not want to leave,’ I said. ‘I could not leave. T
here must be a world beyond this island, but I cannot seem to believe it. I would be taking a ship to nothing. To be with the dead. And it is not my time to die.’

  He nodded to himself. ‘You speak the truth, I think.’ He placed his hands on his thighs and sat upright, like a chieftain on the high seat. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘you will sing.’

  I was afraid, then – more afraid than I had been in the storm, or when Gunnar and I had hunted the ghost, or at any time that I had stood with blade and shield in battle. I thought of the stories I had heard, of the skalds who saved themselves with song. Egill Skallagrímsson, the greatest of my people, had ransomed his head from a king with a poem. This cave was no kingly court, but Thoris was ruler of it just the same. He had no headsman to execute me if I failed, but he did not need one. The ice and snow would be his executioners, if he chose to cast me out.

  I sat upright in my blanket, took water for a throat raw from coughing, daubed my face with a wet rag to still my restless mind.

  It had been so long since last I had sung that I was certain I had lost my gift. That the words would not come. That the poet in me had died out in the storm. Perhaps the White Lady, too, obeys the word of the law. Perhaps it is that an outlaw cannot sing.

  But after only a moment, I felt the touch of the White Lady on my shoulder and knew that she was with me still. The words came, as they always had, and I could feel the warmth building in my heart and my throat, could feel the poet’s longing, and knew, at that moment, that I could not have remained silent even if I had tried.

  And so I lifted my head and closed my eyes. And I sang.

  *

  He had let his head tip forward and that iron-grey hair had fallen about his face. He had been still, silent for the length of the song, and it was not a silence that had spoken to me.

  My voice had cracked many times, my rhythm had been uneven, my breathing weak. Yet even so, somehow I did not think that I had ever sung so well.

  At last he reached out a hand, placed the tips of his fingers to my shoulder. He let it rest there for a time.

  ‘Well performed,’ he said, his voice soft. ‘I thank you.’ He swallowed. ‘You can stay.’

  ‘It has been some time since you heard a poet sing, I think.’

  ‘Gudrun. My wife. She used to sing. But not like that. Who was he, this Cúchulainn that you spoke of?’

  ‘The great Irish hero. You have not heard of him before?’

  ‘No. I have never heard an Irishman sing.’

  ‘I know many songs of him. How he lived and fought. How he died.’

  ‘You will sing of him more?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But first, you must do something for me.’ I lifted my left hand and showed him my fingers.

  He hesitated. ‘We should wait,’ he said. ‘You are still weak.’

  I shook my head. ‘There is no time,’ I said. ‘Let it be now.’

  His mouth worked, but he did not speak. I think he was afraid – afraid that he would kill me, even as he sought to save me. That he would have nothing but the memory of song to keep him company.

  He took a knife from his belt. My knife, the sharpest blade that we had, for his axe and seax were long since dull and rusted. He tested the edge with his thumb, nodded.

  ‘Give me your hand,’ he said.

  I lay flat on my stomach and laid my left hand down on the stone, black fingers on grey stone. The other hand I kept curled up close beneath my body, as if to protect it from him.

  He touched the knife to my thumb, to the bottom of the black skin. He might have been holding the blade to another man’s hand, for all that I knew of it.

  ‘There,’ I said. ‘I feel nothing.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘We must be certain.’ And he moved the blade down further, until it rested upon the white flesh and not the black. I felt the cold metal against my skin. Every nick and mark in the blade, I felt it perfectly.

  ‘There,’ I said.

  ‘Do not move,’ he said, and he placed both hands on the hilt of the knife, ready to press down.

  ‘Wait,’ I said.

  I looked on that hand one more time. It had carried a shield, it had born crops from the harvest, it had cupped the face of the woman I loved as I kissed her. And with it, I had killed a man.

  ‘Now?’ he asked.

  I took a filthy rag, balled it up ready to be bitten. I turned my head away.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Now.’

  And he began to cut.

  *

  I tried to think of myself as a prisoner, bound with irons. And that Thoris was a friend who had come to free me, each strike of the knife breaking the link on a chain.

  I tried to believe that a spell had been laid upon me – that Thoris was a priest come to cleanse my body of the curse.

  I tried to believe many things as I listened to the sound of the cutting, as I shook and trembled against the ground. And none of them could still the pain.

  It was only after, as I cradled my mutilated hand close against my chest as though it were a child of mine, rocking backwards and forwards, the taste of bile on my lips, willing the pain to end – it was then that there was a great and terrible joy. The joy that I would live. And there is no agony that cannot be overcome with that joy.

  I forced myself to look on it – five wet stumps daubed in blood. And I made myself smile, as I knew Thoris would want from me.

  ‘Another nickname earned,’ I whispered. ‘Kjaran the Half-hand.’

  ‘There are worse names to have.’

  I lay down and thought of all the gods who had been maimed. I thought of my God Odin: he had given up one of his eyes for the gift of wisdom. What gift would be granted to me, in return for what I had sacrificed?

  I felt Thoris’s hand on my shoulder. Almost tender.

  ‘Rest,’ he said. ‘You bore it well.’

  ‘Tomorrow I will help you,’ I said. ‘I will not lie in this cave like an old man any more.’

  ‘As you wish. But tomorrow.’

  I lay down and let sleep take me.

  I dreamed of miraculous healing, of my fingers sewn back and living once again. I dreamed of being tied down and being cut upon by all who I knew, of bleeding and screaming, but being unable to die.

  Then I did not dream of Sigrid or of Gunnar.

  I dreamed of revenge.

  *

  It was three days before I was strong enough to rise. I woke alone in the cave and it took me a long time to fight my way to my feet. But once I had stood, I felt no longing to lie back down. I leaned against the wall of the cave and breathed, and felt the strength flow through me.

  When Thoris returned, he said nothing at first. Merely watched me with a warrior’s eyes, looking for weakness. When he was satisfied, he said: ‘We must go to work. We do not have much time before the winter comes.’

  I looked beyond him, out of the cave and into that land of stone and snow. It seemed impossible that this could still be called summer. I could not imagine what a winter here would be like. Of how a man could hope to live in this place.

  Yet soon I learned that we were to be what Icelanders had always been: farmers and herdsmen. For he had a small herd in one of the outer valleys. Year-old ewes, diseased and weak, worms dripping from their nostrils as they breathed. But he treated them as tenderly as if they were the finest of hillside cattle. The endlessly patient and exhausted love of a shepherd for his flock.

  We had a little field of crops, too, in some rare patch of green land. They were blighted, half of them dead with frost, but gave a scattering of grain for us. We tended those crops and that herd in a desolate land, and I thought of those first settlers who had come to Iceland in the centuries before us. Perhaps this was how they had lived then, alone in the cold, fighting with the land to survive, with no kin to count upon if the harvest failed.

  It was not enough – even I could see that. The meat and grain we would have might last us a few scanty months. But it was not enough to survive the winter. />
  When I told Thoris this, he nodded.

  ‘I lost much time caring for you. We need more food than I thought.’

  ‘What must we do, then?’ I asked.

  He did not answer, for the answer was too shameful to speak out loud. He merely looked to the west, towards the lands of other men.

  *

  We waited for the clear nights to pass, for the clouds to come, for the moon to grow thin. We hiked by day across the barren mountains, slept a few restless hours in dusk, and when the night was truly upon us we went out into the fields of men we did not know.

  We were the ghosts that leave a man’s sheep butchered in his fields, the trickster elves who steal wheat and corn from isolated shielings, the shadowy figures who send boys running across the heath back to their longhouses, screaming of monsters in the darkness.

  I had never been on a Viking raid, but still I felt it in my blood. My mother’s people had been hunters and raiders, my father one of those taken as a slave in those same raids. And so I told myself that we were not thieves, but hunters. They had cast us out of the law, would kill us if they caught us. We owed them no shame. And so, night after night, we raided the farmers for grain and meat.

  Always careful not to raid in the same place twice. Always taking little enough that the farmers might tell themselves that they had miscounted their herd, had forgotten where they had placed that sack of grain. They did not want to believe in thieves.

  Sometimes we saw other men out on such night work – alone, for the most part, but sometimes in pairs like us. We kept far away from each other. A fear of discovery in large numbers, of a rivalry turning violent, and an unnameable fear of other outlawed men. For though they were like us, we feared them. We carried our bad luck with us like a stench: growing used to our own, but disgusted by others with whom we were unfamiliar.

  We went many times, and I grew to long for those black nights. To walk in tended fields amongst cattle, in lands that were bare of snow and ice, was a little like being a free man once more. But I knew it would not be for long. I knew that it could not last.

  We were walking back one morning, each with a ewe trussed up across our backs, when I noticed the change. Some absence that made me uneasy, a sensation that I had experienced many times before, but never as an outlaw. It was not until we were at the foothills of the mountains that I understood what it was.