The Smile of the Wolf

by Tim Leach

  ‘Name them. Perhaps I do know them.’

  ‘Gunnar Karlsson.’

  He thought for a time – recalling a memory or stitching together a lie. But I would know it if he lied. I wonder if I would have cut his throat for the lie. But at last he nodded slowly. And when he spoke, I believed him.

  ‘I saw him at the Althing,’ he said. ‘I did not speak to him myself. But there were others who spoke of him.’

  I felt an aching in my chest. ‘He was well?’

  ‘Well enough. Though he seemed to quarrel with many men.’

  ‘That is his way.’

  He considered me for a moment. ‘I saw him go to the poets,’ he said. ‘To hear them sing. Thinking of you, I suppose?’

  ‘He always liked to hear the poets sing,’ I said. ‘I am but one of many.’

  A smile played across his lips. ‘There was a woman there that he spoke to.’

  I closed my eyes. ‘Describe her to me,’ I said.

  ‘Tall, pale-skinned. Too thin. But I think you know of whom I speak.’

  One more year, I thought. Wait for just one more year. Please.

  ‘So,’ he said. ‘This is a woman that you love.’

  ‘Yes, it is. Tell me more of the Althing.’

  ‘What is it that you wish to know?’

  ‘Everything.’

  He laughed and would have spoken again. But we heard the heavy tread of Thoris returning to the cave.

  He stood in the entrance of the cave, his hands resting on the stone above his head. He leaned forward, peering in, and looking from one of us to the other.

  ‘What is it that you speak of?’ he said.

  ‘Nothing of consequence.’

  ‘That is a lie. You speak about me, don’t you?’

  ‘No,’ Thorvaldur said. ‘We speak of the Althing. Of old friends.’

  Thoris spat upon the ground. ‘I do not want to hear of this. The gossip of the farmers, the schemes of the chieftains. What does it matter to me? If you will speak of such things, you shall not do it in this cave.’ He sat down beside us, took a spoon carved from bone and dipped it into the cooking pot. ‘Tell me more of your God.’

  Thorvaldur stood and offered his hand to me.

  ‘We have not finished speaking,’ he said, ‘so we shall leave your cave. Warm yourself by the fire. We shall be back before too long.’

  Thoris’s mouth worked, but no words came, and he looked on us like a man scorned by his lover.

  ‘Go, then. And freeze, for all that I care.’

  *

  How long had it been since I had walked for pleasure alone? At first I could not recall, I had been so long an outlaw or caught in a feud where every motion held a purpose.

  It had been the night we had hunted the ghost, Gunnar and I. A winter sojourn taken for the pleasure of the hunt, the joy of good company, and nothing more than that. Perhaps that was why I had lost my taste for an idle wandering.

  As Thorvaldur and I walked from the cave we went not as outlaws, but as though we were chieftains surveying our lands or lovers seeking the peace of a secluded dale. And though I shivered with the cold and my weak legs seemed to drag at every step, I was glad of it. To be away from Thoris, for a time at least.

  ‘Was that wise, do you think?’ I said.

  ‘I shall not be silenced by that man.’ He regarded me for a moment. ‘But perhaps it was not wise. I have caused a break between the two of you, I think.’

  ‘No. Whatever is broken, was broken before you came to us.’

  ‘Is that so? Tell me of it.’

  ‘What interest is such a thing to you?’

  ‘I am merely curious. Speak or do not. Be it as you wish.’

  We walked in silence for a time, our breaths coiling and frosting in the air before us, as I considered what to say.

  ‘We have nothing,’ I said. ‘Yet we fight for all things. I wonder if it will be that way on the day when the gods die, when the wolf swallows the sun. When there are only two men left in the world, when they have nothing but each other. Will they huddle close together in companionship or will one man’s hands tighten around the other’s throat? Will they feel love or will it be hate? I think it will be hate. I do not know why he has not cast me out.’

  ‘He needs you, of course,’ Thorvaldur said.

  ‘And I would not survive without him.’

  ‘A feud, then?’

  ‘A feud of two lonely men. Fought with words.’

  ‘No blood.’

  ‘Not yet. I think we would have killed one another if you had not come to us.’

  He cocked his head. ‘Oh really? Then you owe your life to me?’

  ‘No. He owes his life to you.’

  ‘You would win the fight?’ he said, his eyes upon my ruined hand.

  ‘I have something left to live for. He does not.’

  ‘That might have been true, once. But not any more.’ He grinned that terrible smile of his. ‘My gift to him.’

  ‘And what of your gift to me? What more news do you bring from the Althing?’

  He shrugged. ‘Little enough, in truth. I was there for a day, before the killings began and they made an outlaw of me.’ He stumbled for a moment, his foot swallowed by a deeper patch of snow. I caught him by the elbow and he smiled his half-toothed smile at me in gratitude.

  ‘What will you do?’ he asked. ‘What will you do when your sentence is finished and you are an outlaw no longer? Go back to your friend? Marry your woman?’

  ‘Aye. And I will settle the feud.’

  ‘With silver or with blood?’

  ‘I cannot say. And what will you do, Thorvaldur?’

  ‘Oh, I will try to preach again. I will speak to the chieftains once more and see if they will listen.’

  ‘And kill them if they will not?’

  ‘No. Not unless they force me to. But I am waiting for something else.’

  ‘And what is that?’

  ‘You remember from my stories? The land where the White Christ was born?’

  ‘You call it Jerusalem.’

  ‘So,’ he said, ‘you have been listening. At least a little.’

  ‘I remember such things. What of this place?’

  ‘There are infidels who rule there now. They serve a newer god than my Christ.’

  ‘You must find that a shameful thing.’

  ‘I do. But it shall not last. God will not allow it.’ He looked out across the valley, but I knew that he saw it no longer. It was a vision of a distant land. A place of red earth, a sun beating down like a hammer upon an anvil. Hordes of spears waving like trees in a tempest. The glitter of blades, held high against the light. And blood upon the sand, a new sea pouring out over a bone-dry land.

  ‘There will be a great war,’ he said. ‘The Christians will gather. We will forget our petty quarrels and take back that city. I only hope I live long enough to see it.’

  ‘A feud, then?’

  ‘Yes.’ He grinned at me. ‘You see? My God does have a place among your people. A feud over a piece of land. What is truer to the Icelanders than that?’

  ‘True. Very true.’

  ‘But still you are not persuaded.’

  ‘No. But I like to hear you try.’

  He rolled his shoulders, like a wrestler before a bout. ‘Come,’ he said. ‘We must return.’

  *

  The fire had been left to go cold, only embers remaining. I thought at first that Thoris had gone, for there was no sign of him. But then there was a stirring deep within the cave, and as my eyes became accustomed to the darkness I saw Thoris sat hunched up on the blankets, a king upon a squalid throne.

  ‘I want more stories of your God,’ he said.

  ‘And you shall have them,’ Thorvaldur replied. He sat, dipped a finger in the cooling soup and licked it clean. ‘But first, you must give something to me.’

  ‘I give you shelter, food. I allow you to live. You ungrateful—’

  ‘No, I am grateful.’ He held his
hand out to me, the palm toward the sky. ‘But Kjaran sings.’ He brought the hand to rest against his chest. ‘I speak of God.’ He held that same hand out towards Thoris. ‘What can you do?’

  ‘Be careful,’ Thoris said. The words as soft as snowfall, sharp as a blade lifted from the whetstone. But Thorvaldur did not seem to care.

  ‘You must tell me your story,’ the Christian said. ‘Tell me of how you became an outlaw.’

  A hesitance from the darkness. ‘You know that story already.’

  ‘I know what other men say. That you killed your brother and stole his wife. But I want to hear you say it.’

  He did not answer. Many were the times, during those endless-seeming winter nights, that I had thought of asking that. Once or twice I had spoken the first word of that question. But Thoris had looked on me and had seemed to know what it was that I was about to ask, the way a great swordsman will seem to know each movement of your blade and every piece of pretty footwork a moment before you act. You have not struck a single blow, yet already you are defeated. And I had felt that to speak the question would be to utter my last words.

  ‘No,’ Thoris said.

  ‘Then you will have no more words of my God. And you shall not know how the story ends.’

  Thoris bowed forward, as though curling up around some belly wound, the kind that kills a man inevitably, slowly. His fingers clenched and unclenched around the cloth of his cloak and I waited to see them wander towards a weapon, for the killing to begin. But they went still. And he began to speak.

  ‘His name was Kjartan,’ he said. ‘My brother. They called him Kjartan the Strong, and he was. There was no man who could stand against him in battle.’ He looked at me. ‘Even your Gunnar, who you must always sing of. He could not have stood against my brother. And he married the daughter of a chieftain. Her name was Gudrun.

  ‘I heard rumours of what went on in that place. Whispers, gossip, and I thought nothing of it. He was my brother. I loved him.’

  He dipped his horn cup in a pail of melted snow and drank deeply.

  ‘I was in his longhouse,’ he said, ‘in summer. I had come to visit him, but he was out hunting seals with his men, so I sat down to wait. His wife gave me bread and ale, and we sat together by the fire for a time. We spoke. I do not remember what we spoke of. Then she turned to me and she asked if I would help her to die.’

  He drank the water again and I thought of those men who are cursed with an endless thirst, first for water, then for blood.

  ‘I told her to go to her father, to seek a divorce. It was her right. But my brother was a powerful man. He had earned the father’s favour, and her father would not help her. So she went back to my brother. And none of her kin would help her.’ He lifted his eyes to us. ‘I do not wish to speak any more of this.’

  ‘Speak on,’ Thorvaldur said, his voice soft. ‘You have come this far.’

  Thoris nodded, like a man half asleep. He said: ‘There were those amongst her kin who spoke of killing him. But they were hollow words. I knew that they would not do it. They did not have the courage. And my brother had many men who were loyal to him. Brutes like him always do. It is the good men who stand alone.’ He placed his horn cup upon the ground and I saw his hand tremble a little. His right hand, his killing hand. ‘But he would let me in to his longhouse at night. He trusted me. And why not?’

  I risked a question. ‘You could have challenged him to the holmgang,’ I said.

  I thought that he would shout at me – perhaps even that he would come for me, blade in hand. But he nodded and said: ‘That would have been the honourable thing. But what if I had lost? He was a berserker. A better warrior than I. Then she would be alone, with no one to help her.’

  I was afraid that he would weep. For I was sure that he would kill us if we saw him weep, to leave no witness to his shame. But he breathed deep and spoke again.

  ‘I waited until all were asleep and I went towards his chamber. He was a wealthy man, with a room to himself. Too proud to share the hall with other men.’ He laid a hand to the weapon on his belt. ‘This knife in my hand.

  ‘But when I opened the door, I found that someone had been there first.’ He shuddered. ‘I could feel the blood soaking through a hole in my boot, still warm against the skin. I could smell it in the air, like fresh-forged iron. And on the bed, my brother and his wife.

  ‘I could see his throat open. Torn out, as if some wolf had been let loose in that room. Three wounds in his chest, though none that could have killed him. They were no practised killer’s wounds. Whoever had done them had learned to murder in that moment.

  ‘She was there beside him. The blood so heavy upon her that it was as though she had been flayed. I thought that I had come too late, that some dark magic had been brought into that room and torn them both to pieces.

  ‘But she moved. Her eyes were so white against the blood. And I knew then what she had done. Her left hand had been bitten. Down to the bone. For she had to keep him silent or we would have heard her.

  ‘We did not speak. I could not risk the words. I sat down beside her, felt the blood soak into my tunic. I took her hand in mine.’ And he clasped both of his own hands together – imagining, perhaps, that once more she was with him. ‘What would they have done to her?’ he said, speaking only to himself. ‘I do not know. Our laws make no account for a woman who kills. She would have been beyond the law, as we are now. And anything can be done to such a person.

  ‘So I took her away from that place, and I let men talk. I let the story grow and become what it is now. And you know what remains of it.’

  ‘What happened to her?’ Thorvaldur said.

  ‘She came with me. To this place.’ He reached out to touch the walls of the cave, to touch some memory of her that might still live there. ‘I asked her not to, to go to her kin or travel to some other place. To live as a servant, a slave, rather than be an outlaw’s wife. Anything seemed better than that. But she would not go. She lasted three winters. She grew weaker and sicker with each one. But she would not leave.’

  He looked beyond us, out towards the entrance to the cave, to the falling snow beyond.

  ‘She is buried in this valley,’ he said.

  That was the end of the story. If had sung it in a song or told in a saga that would be the place that my voice would fall silent.

  ‘There is something more,’ Thorvaldur said. ‘Something that you are not telling us.’

  ‘I have told you everything.’

  ‘No. There is more. And I think that you wish to speak it.’

  Thoris’s head rolled back, twisted away from us, the way a man in fever will contort himself, seeking somehow to escape his own body, the body that tortures him.

  ‘I do not know what kind of a woman she was,’ he said, the words drawn out like poison that is sucked from a wound and spat upon the ground. ‘That she could do such a thing. What kind of a man I am, who would love his brother’s killer.’

  Thorvaldur nodded, satisfied. This, it seemed, was his ending. The Christian ending that he sought. ‘I thank you for this,’ he said.

  There was no absolution from Thoris. No relief at telling the truth. Only the sullen air of a man who feels that he has been deceived.

  ‘There,’ he said. ‘You have had your story. Now, give me yours.’

  Thorvaldur began to speak once again. Of God, of forgiveness, of redemption. I did not listen. I looked out on the valley and listened to the call of the wind, and wondered where it was that she was buried.

  24

  I had always wondered how an outlaw might know the day of their return. Those who flee abroad or have the wealth to make fortresses of their homes will know the date well enough. But what of men who flee to the ice and make their homes in the dead valleys?

  For most, it does not matter. They die long before their day of freedom – starving or frozen, or dead on the spears of the men who hunt them. But what of those who do survive their three years? In all the stories t
hat I have heard, it is never spoken that an outlaw comes back a day late.

  Perhaps there were outlaws who had counted or marked every day, keeping their time with the greatest precision. Or did they have another art? I have heard of men in distant lands who may read the date from the movement of the stars.

  No man would want to linger in outlawry any longer than he had to, yet it would be death to return before the time. Had a man ever come back a day too early and died upon the sword of the first man he greeted, hearing his mistake as the darkness closed over him?

  No, before I was an outlaw I did not know how those men could know when they should return. And yet when my time came, I knew it without a doubt.

  I felt the shifting of the seasons and knew that it was the late summer of my third year. I had thought that I would have to wait until snowfall to be certain of the time, to waste a month in the agony of waiting so that I could be certain. But I knew the day itself when it came.

  It was no guesswork or a counting of the days. Nor was it blind luck, and I do not think it was the work of a god. It was memory alone that told me that I could go home.

  There was so much that I forgot of those three years as an outlaw. There was so little to remember. Yet I remembered everything of the day I had been outlawed. The precise curve that the sun had taken through the sky. The pattern of the sunlight on the sea. The exact ripeness of the crops in the field, so that I could have picked out a stem of wheat from that day from a hundred of its fellows harvested a day later. For when a man or a woman longs for a day so completely, it will be known when it comes once more.

  And so I woke in the cave on a late summer’s day and I felt the unseen chains fall away from me. I was a free man once more.

  I could go home.

  *

  The others did not speak as I made ready to depart. Thoris sat on the floor of the cave, his long arms wrapped around his knees, his head towards the ground, his ruined ear facing towards me. Thorvaldur watched me, a faint smile on his face.

  I took a little food, a single skin of water, for I needed no more than that. I was a free man once more: I could call upon any farm in the land and the law of guest friendship would compel them to give me shelter for the night. I could sing for my food, cut corn and tend cattle, and receive bread and ale in return. They, still outlaws, had more need of it than I.