by Tim Leach
‘And after that?’
‘What do you want me to do?’
‘I think that whatever I ask of you, you shall do the opposite. I will not say such things to you again.’
‘After the boy has died…’ My throat closed for a moment, but I willed it open once again. ‘I will ask Ragnar to take me on his ship. I do not know what work there is for a one-handed sailor. But there must be something I can do.’
‘You will not continue the feud?’
‘No. They have won.’
‘Does Gunnar not whisper to you of vengeance?’
‘No. I do hear him, but that is not what he says to me.’
‘And what do you hear him say?’
‘He wishes for me to love you. And he wishes for me to live and to sing. I cannot do one of those things. But perhaps I may do the other.’
Her hand drifted towards my shoulder for a moment, before she drew it back again.
‘You will do what you must,’ she said. She hesitated, and then said: ‘Will you sing for us? I would like to hear you sing.’
I thought of all the times that I had been asked that. Perhaps that was all that was left of me. A pair of aching lungs, a tongue and lips, a mind filled only with songs. And I answered as I always had.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I can still sing.’
‘I am glad to see that you live.’
‘Is that the truth?’
‘It is the truth,’ she said. And perhaps I was a fool, but I believed her.
I stood and looked upon the valley, and listened to the calling of the sea. I went inside the longhouse and I waited for the boy to die.
*
I had hoped that Kari would not wake again. That he would slip from this world quietly, at peace. But I had never seen a man die by fire. I did not know what was to come. For he woke soon enough and he did not sleep again.
Each day, Sigrid and I scoured his weeping skin with sand, even as he screamed and begged for us to stop. We dripped milk and honey into his mouth, for his throat was too far closed to take any more than that. He did not sleep and so neither did we. Each night one of us would walk up to the shieling, for there we could sleep. Two of us stood as sentries on the watch, waiting for the night to pass so that we could sleep. Waiting for him to die.
I began to long for it, and it seemed as though I had never wanted anything so much before. At night when I could not sleep, when I listened to him cry out in pain, I prayed to the gods to let him die. I felt my hand drift to the knife at my side, and it would have been a kindness to do it, the greatest gift that I could have offered to any man. But Kari was all that was left in the world of Gunnar. I knew I could not destroy him. I would have taken that knife to my own throat before I took it to his. And so we waited for the slow death to take him, and we fought it as hard as we could.
*
It was on a morning, as the summer began to turn towards winter, when I came back from the shieling, that the change came. I walked towards the longhouse, and there was a strange silence within. I listened at the door for a time, waiting for the choking cries to begin again. But there was nothing, and an ache of joy crept through me.
I thought to find Sigrid there, beside the body of the boy. But it was Ragnar who sat beside Kari, a fresh catch of salmon still dripping in his net. He spent much of his time working the rivers, sleeping at the shieling or in his ship. He took little part in nursing the boy – not out of cowardice, I think, but out of a particular courtesy. He knew that I did not want him there.
He started as I came in, like a man caught speaking conspiracy.
‘Sigrid asked me to watch him for a moment,’ he said, ‘She will be back soon.’ His eyes darted back to where the boy lay.
‘Is he dead?’ I said.
‘No. He sleeps.’
‘Then what concerns you?’
‘It is no matter.’
‘Tell me.’
He hesitated, then beckoned me forward. ‘Listen to how he breathes.’
I came forward and I saw that the boy did sleep. A change there, for the pain always kept him awake. I put my ear to Kari’s chest, and listened to the wheeze and rattle of his breath. I heard nothing different.
‘Does he seem to breathe easier to you?’ Ragnar said.
‘I think that you imagine it.’
‘Perhaps.’ He sat beside him, reached out an uncertain hand. The slightest touch could hurt the boy, and so Ragnar merely extended one finger, and gave a gentle stroke to Kari’s hair. The boy did not stir. ‘I do not want him to die,’ Ragnar said.
‘I do. I want his pain to end.’
‘Sigrid said that after winter you will go abroad. That you think to take a place on my ship.’
‘If you will have me.’
‘Of course.’
‘I should have gone with you three years ago. It is too late now, but there is nothing else for me to do.’
‘It is not too late.’
A sudden anger stole my sight for a moment, and when it returned I saw him with his hand to his mouth, his eyes open wide. I suppose I must have looked murderous.
‘I am sorry,’ I said. ‘But it is a simple thing for a man like you to say that.’
‘Yes.’ He stood abruptly and made for the door, leaving his catch by the cooking pot. He paused at the doorway and said: ‘I do not imagine it.’
‘What?’
‘I am sure of it.’ His eyes drifted to Kari and then met my gaze with a rare confidence. ‘The boy is healing.’
‘I wish that were true,’ I said.
*
I could not trust the word of a coward: it is all that we are taught, that brave men speak truth and cowards lie. But Ragnar never lied to me. In that, at least, he was brave.
The boy began to crawl back towards life, one breath at a time. He bore the dressing of his skin with hisses of breath, not with screams. He slept entire days at a time without making a sound.
I could not allow myself to believe it for a long time. But I remember a night when we sat together, Ragnar, Sigrid and I. We sat together for hours without speaking, and we watched Kari sleep, and breathe, and it was as though we watched a miracle before us.
Ragnar looked at me and he smiled. ‘The work of the gods,’ he said.
‘Perhaps,’ I answered. And that was all that was said that night.
Our gods do not raise the dead. They welcome them, feast them, fight with them, but they do not bring them back. For if a man died well in battle and found his way to Valhalla, what cruel God would send him back to earth to suffer once more? And if that man died without honour, what favour would he have with the gods to give him life again? There is no charity from Thor or Odin. Only duty. I remembered then a story that Thorvaldur had told me – of a man they called Lazarus, touched by the White Christ and brought to life once more. But I put it from my mind just as swiftly.
He would be a monster to look upon, looking more like a wooden carving of a man than one of flesh and blood. But the boy would live.
*
He was wordless for so long, for in his pain he had retreated to some place beyond language. And even once the wounds on his skin had closed, it was a long time before he would speak to me. Sometimes I thought that I heard him whispering to Sigrid, but she would not repeat his words.
Once he was strong enough we walked him around the narrow longhouse, again and again, as a birthing woman is made to walk so that her child will come. Returning strength to legs that had forgotten how to walk, that had thought themselves unneeded and prepared themselves for death. And still he did not speak.
There was an evening in early winter, when I sat alone by the fire. Sigrid and Ragnar were gone, I cannot recall where. But as I sat, I watched the dancing of the fire. I thought of the coming summer and I tried to imagine the sound of the rolling waves, the sight of distant countries. I tried to imagine that future, and yet it would not come to me. I could see only the fire.
‘Kjaran.’
The
sound as soft as a whisper of the wind, but I heard it. I had waited many months to hear him speak.
I turned and saw his eyes glowing in the light of the fire.
‘Yes. I am here.’
‘Water,’ he said, and I gave it to him. I went to pour it in his mouth, but he took the skin from me and, with trembling hands, poured it into his mouth.
‘More?’ I said.
‘No.’
I hesitated for a moment and saw his eyes wander to my maimed hand, saw his warped lip curl in disgust at the sight. A strange thing, to see a cripple’s horror at the sight of another cripple. But he did not know what he looked like.
‘Did they do this to you?’ he said.
‘No. It was the winter.’
He put his hands to his face, felt the altered skin under his fingers. He turned from me and nuzzled his face against the furs and blankets beneath him.
After a moment I heard him speak once more.
‘What shall we do?’
I did not answer at first. I listened to the rattle and wheeze as he drew breath into his scarred lungs. How many years would he have, before some winter fever would take him? For ours is a land where the weak do not live long. How much time would he have before he began to die slow, drowning on dry land? Before he died in his bed, with no blade in his hand?
‘We stay here,’ I said. ‘We speak to no one else. It is better that we are thought dead. You most of all. The feud continues in you. They must kill you to finish it.’
He lifted his head and nodded.
‘Kari,’ I said, ‘I need you to tell me something.’
‘Yes?’
‘I want you to tell me of the night of the raid. I want you to tell me how Gunnar died.’
‘No,’ he said.
‘I must know.’
‘Please.’
‘I must know.’
‘Later. I shall tell you later.’
‘No. You must speak now.’
It took a long time. Again and again he looked at me in silence, a pleading in his eyes, waiting for me to un-ask my question, to free him from my demand. But I would not. I simply stared at him, my hand on the sword his father had given me, and I waited.
At last, he began to speak.
Sumardil?
You are so quiet in the darkness, I thought for a moment that you slept. So still, I might mistake you for the dead.
Sumardil. We have no strong drink left, yet still I have your name to speak, and it is sweet as mead upon my lips.
I am ready to speak that story now. I heard it first from his son, but now it is my story to tell. I am ready to tell you how Gunnar died.
We think of death in a feud as happening in a moment. The movement of a blade to open a throat, too fast to be seen. And what is the time it takes for the blood to pour from that cut? Count a dozen heartbeats and he will be dead before your lips say ‘twelve’.
But it is a slow thing, to die in the feud. A death by inches, as one’s favour slips away, as loyalties are tested and broken. Each day, there is one fewer man to count upon. Another sleepless night spent watching for enemies at the door. Crops that go unharvested, cattle that go missing. How many in a feud have died from hunger and sickness, and not from the blade? Too many to count. And it is after countless months spent sick, sleepless, alone, that finally the warband comes. By night, carrying fire, determined to end the feud before the rising of the sun.
Think of Gunnar, that night they came for him. For the first time in so long, he sleeps. With no companions left to him, he has not dared to rest, always watchful for the coming of the killers. But this night, the rain falls heavy and there is no moon in the sky. It is no night for a murder.
But the rain ceases while he sleeps. The clouds break open and the moon shines down. Men dress in black, the colour of killing, and steal from their houses, answering some sign or signal they have all agreed upon. They move across the dale – first one, then two, and soon a dozen or more, bearing weapons and torches. They know it is time, but Gunnar does not. He sleeps on.
What wakes him first? Is it the sound of footsteps across the roof? The clatter of arrows in a quiver as one is drawn? Or is it the crackle of fire as the first torch is laid to the longhouse? I cannot say. But in a moment of waking, he knows it is hopeless. He knows it is his time.
His axe is in his hand, the door is open a bare crack. He hopes that they will be foolish enough to rush the entrance, where he can fight them one at a time, but it is a vain hope. The fires are already lit, the house is burning. The men outside only have to wait. They know that Gunnar will come to them, as sure as a sailor knows the passage of the tides. It is as inevitable as that. Once the fires are lit, the men inside a burning house will come out to fight, and to die. For there is nothing else to be done.
Does he think of me, in that moment? I hope that he does. But what if in that moment he remembers that it was my words that began this? That I sent him out hunting a dead man? Perhaps he does think of me, and before he dies, he curses me.
He speaks to them; calmly, without rush or anger, as he might greet a traveller on the road, or as a farmer tending crops in the field. He asks them a question and he receives no answer.
He steps out from his home, his axe low at his side, his shield held close against his body. He feels the metal edge of the steel, cold against his bare chest. He feels the softness of the mud against his bootless feet, and by instinct he bends his knees and goes on to the balls of his toes, though his careful footwork will be of no use to him. In the light of the fire he sees them all quite clearly. Men who have always been his enemies, men he had once known as friends. He smiles at them all, so that they will remember that he was brave, that he met his death well.
This is no song, where one man may stand against one hundred. It is no tale where the warrior kills his sworn enemy as he dies. He does not even see Björn when he takes the first cut. For they are around him on every side and the blades dance against his skin.
He swings out blindly, is cut again. Men are all around him, so close that he smells the stink of their sweat, the foulness of their breath. But whenever he strikes out, fast as he is, his axe finds no flesh. It cuts through nothing but air, until it catches in the slats of a shield; the head breaks from the shaft when he tries to wrench it free.
He falls to the ground; the broken axe is wrenched from his hand. There has been no pain until that moment and suddenly there is nothing but pain. He waits for the killing blow: the blade into the side of the throat that rips forward, or that slides between the ribs or down through the shoulder and into the heart. But it does not come. The hands grip tighter, he sees Björn come forward, and he knows the slow death they mean to give to him. And at the last, he is truly afraid.
The knives begin their slow work upon him, and he tries not to scream for as long as he can.
That is how my friend died.
27
I let Kari speak and I asked no questions. He spoke haltingly, as though he were relearning the words as he spoke them. Several times, when his hesitancy stretched on, he seemed almost to drift to sleep, and when this happened I reached out my hand and gripped his wrist. I kept my fingers from the burned flesh, but it was no mother’s touch I gave him. I let him know that he would have no rest until he had finished his story.
When he had done so, I watched his eyes close, his breathing go soft and steady. I thought of the story that he had not told me. The story that I knew well enough. The story of how his mother and sister must have died.
‘Should I have died with him?’
I started at the voice.
‘I thought you asleep,’ I said. ‘You should rest. You have earned it.’
‘Tell me, Kjaran. Please.’
Should I have given him the truth? Perhaps. But I found that I could not do it.
‘No,’ I said. ‘It is better that you live.’
‘There is no shame in it?’
‘Is there shame for me, that I was not ther
e?’
‘You were not his son.’
I had no answer to that. I sat beside him and we watched the fire. After a time I felt a hesitant touch against my hand. His fingers reaching out, as Gunnar used to do. I clasped his hand in mine and I thought of the friend I had lost.
‘What will I do?’ he said.
‘We could leave Iceland. Find another country to live in.’
‘We cannot run.’
‘It is what Gunnar would have wanted.’
‘That does not matter.’ He shook his head, slowly, like a dozing drunkard or a man underwater. ‘There is shame in letting him lie unavenged.’
‘There is. But it is what Gunnar would have wanted.’
‘What of my mother? My sister?’
‘Björn would not kill them. He had more honour than that.’
‘But I heard—’
‘You do not know what you heard.’
He fell silent and I thought I had won. But I felt it, then. The way a wounded man does not know it at first, feels no pain. And a moment later, puts his hand to his chest and finds himself slain.
I thought of Dalla and I knew what she would have wanted. We could go from this place and find a new home. The shame of Gunnar’s death, perhaps I could bear that. But to leave a father unavenged – what a thing it would be for him, to live his life with that weight upon him.
‘I think you are right,’ I said slowly.
He looked up at me and his eyes were alive once more.
‘We shall kill them all?’ he asked, hope in his voice.
‘Yes.’
He smiled and for a moment he was a child once more, filled with the joy of the child at a dream. ‘How shall we do that?’
‘Be patient. The slave takes revenge at once—’
‘But the coward never does,’ he said, finishing the proverb for me.
*
On the first day of spring I rose before the dawn. I moved quietly in the darkness, but confidently too, like a blind man in a place he knows well. Through touch, I found the things I had placed the night before. A sack of salted fish. Several skins of water. A thick blanket, marked up with earth and grass. I left Gunnar’s sword sheathed and lying by the fire. A parting gift for Kari. And when I was ready, I laid my hand to Ragnar’s shoulder and woke him gently.
