by Tim Leach
‘Let me speak to you, Olaf,’ I said.
‘No man is stopping you,’ Gunnar said.
‘No. I must speak to Olaf alone.’
I thought I would have to fight hard for what I wanted, but Gunnar stood at once and looked on us both with scorn.
‘More tricks,’ he said. ‘More words. They will do no good. But as you wish. I see you think me too foolish to understand. But I understand it. I know.’ And he strode from the hut to face the howling crowd.
‘There is nothing more I can do for you,’ Olaf said. ‘You will have to convince him to do as I say. Or both of you will die.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘There is another way. This is what we will do.’
*
After we had spoken, I waited there alone. Olaf was gone amongst the people, working upon what we had agreed. Where Gunnar was, I could not say. Riding for home with a warband at his heels, sitting alone upon the grass, calling for vengeance with sword in hand – neither would have surprised me.
A shadow passed across the entrance. I thought it would be Olaf, come to tell if we had succeeded or failed. Or Gunnar, come back to demand an answer that I could not give him, or one of the brothers, seeking a settlement in blood. Yet when I looked up, it was the shape of a woman. I could not see her face, but I did not need to. I would have known her in any kind of darkness.
‘Is it true?’ Sigrid said, as she sat beside me. ‘Is it true what the people say?’
‘Enough of it is true.’
‘Gunnar killed that man?’
‘We both killed him.’
She leaned forward and her unbound hair spilled forward to cover her face. ‘What will happen now?’ she said.
‘Olaf will offer a settlement to the brothers.’
‘If they refuse it?’
‘There shall be a trial. We shall both be made outlaws.’
She did not answer at first. Outlaws. The word hung in the air.
Since men were made to walk upon the earth, we have wondered what to do with the thief, the murderer, the blasphemer. I know there are many lands where the criminal is tortured, murdered in judgement. But what a cowardly thing it is to bind an unarmed man and lay a blade across his throat or hang him from a rope or burn him upon the pyre. It dishonours the executioner far more than the one who is killed, no matter what the crime may be.
My people do no such thing – there is no crime that I can think of that could earn such a shaming. The worst of men are simply put outside of the law. They are not men, they are meat. The outlaw can be killed by anyone, and no blood-price will be paid to his family, no revenge sought in the long feud. His life is worth nothing.
‘You will die, then.’ It was not a question.
‘We do not have the silver to go abroad. Or the kin to protect us against the sentence.’ For a rich man may flee his sentence. A powerful man may make a fortress of his home, gather his people to protect him. But we were neither.
‘I have heard stories of outlaws who did survive,’ I said. ‘Those too poor or proud to flee, those who were most reckless and cunning, who tried to make a life in the mountains to the east, where nothing can live.’
‘Do you believe those stories?’
‘No. The outlaws always run, and they are always hunted and they always die. Yet they die on their feet, with a weapon in their hands.’ I tried to smile. ‘Never let it be said that we are a people lacking in mercy.’
I looked down at my hands, ran my thumbs across the palms to feel the marks, the scars. They were not marked with weapons, but with a farmer’s tools. Who would have thought them a murderer’s hands? Who would have thought that my poet’s lips belonged to a killer?
She looked away then, stood and went to the door, one hand upon either side. How many different paths waited for her, out on that plain? How many better than the one that was left to her in the darkness, there with me?
And she returned out to the light, to the living.
I closed my eyes in the darkness and tried to sleep, like a warrior before a battle. I would need all of my strength soon enough.
9
‘Murderer.’
It was Björn who spoke the word and I could not help but flinch at it. There was no such movement from Gunnar – a tremor, perhaps, like that of a man shrugging away a wound. But no more than that.
We were packed in close, there in Olaf’s booth. Gunnar, the brothers, Olaf and myself. I could smell the sweat from the brothers, hear their breathing, our knees almost touching. It would take but the slightest of movements to put my hands around another man’s throat, to reach for a stone on the ground and break open a skull. Only our respect for Olaf kept us from bloodshed.
The eldest brother Hakon looked to Olaf. ‘Very well, Peacock. We are here, as you asked. Speak and we will listen.’
Olaf did not answer at first. He lifted up the strip of cloth that covered the entrance and for a moment the light flooded in. Outside, under the sun and open sky, the court waited for us. A circle of stones where all assembled to hear the crime, and the judges make their ruling. I imagined the crowd that would be out there, the fathers who would point at us and speak to their sons. ‘Look at that man,’ they would say, ‘and remember his face. This is what a coward looks like.’
Olaf clapped his hands for silence and it was given to him. ‘A man has been killed,’ he said. ‘A secret murder, not an honourable killing. The worst of crimes, and these men stand accused of it. And I have come to speak, to offer—’
‘Why should we take your judgment in this case?’ It was Björn who interrupted the chieftain. He pointed to us. ‘They are your men. How can we trust you?’
‘I do not impose a binding judgment,’ Olaf said, as he held a hand up like a parrying blade. ‘It is a settlement that I offer. You may take it or refuse it, as you wish, find some other chieftain to press your claim. But I think that you will be satisfied. I have spoken with these men. They have given me the truth.’
‘Go on, then,’ Hakon said, before his brother could offer any further dissent. ‘Let us hear what it is you have to say.’
‘They met with Erik in winter. They quarrelled and fought. And they did not report what it was they had done.’ And Olaf turned and extended his hand towards me, and he said. ‘Yet it was this man who gave the killing blow.’
There was near silence at this. The murmuring crowd outside, the moan of the wind against the walls, and nothing more than that to mark the unravelling of my life. Yet I felt the strange lightness of heart, so strong that I had to fight to keep a smile from my face. When the worst has come to pass, when your life has fallen to ruin and yet you still stand unharmed – what is there to do then but to smile or to laugh?
‘This is true, is it not?’ Olaf said.
‘Yes, it is true,’ I said.
Olaf paused, waiting for Gunnar to speak. But he gave no sign of dissent. His face was unmoved – that same empty mask he wore when he fought. His eyes were a different matter and I did not trust what I saw there. But his silence would hold, for a time at least.
‘What was Gunnar’s part in this?’ Olaf said.
‘I made him swear as my friend not to speak of it.’
‘Why would you do this?’
‘I am a poor man. What compensation can I offer to pay the blood-price? I knew that I would answer with my life.’
‘And what was the cause of this quarrel?
‘An insult I will not speak of here.’
‘Why not?’
‘It would dishonor the man I have killed.’ I met Hakon’s gaze and held it. ‘Yet I will tell the brothers, if they ask it. And they will understand why I acted as I did.’
Hakon asked the only question that mattered. ‘Did he die well?’
‘It was a fair fight. He fought well. He died without fear.’
‘Is this true?’ Olaf said, speaking now to Gunnar.
My friend hesitated and looked at me, weighing his choices. But we had planned for this. I had told Ol
af that Gunnar would not lie, or if he did, that he would not do it well enough. He was only to be given questions that he could answer with the truth. And he did.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It was a fair fight. One against one.’
‘I have heard the reason why they fought,’ Olaf said. ‘And I swear, on my honour, that they speak truly. There was good cause to the fight and I only wish they had spoken of it at once. Yet a secret killing may hardly go unpunished. And this is the settlement I offer. Gunnar will pay a quarter of his herd and silver over to the Haroldsson brothers for his part in the crime. And Kjaran…’ He waited then, and I did not know why. ‘Kjaran,’ he said, ‘will be made an outlaw for three years. He will be given one month before the sentence. After that, the law will grant him no protection.’ He looked back to the three brothers and spread his hands wide. ‘Will you accept this? Or will we go before the Court?’
Blood and silver, and a good weight of each. The way that all debts are settled in Iceland.
‘We accept,’ Hakon said. ‘It is a fair offer.’
I believed him as he spoke. That he was honest and true. And I knew it did not matter.
For Björn looked at me with a killer’s eyes. He would never stop hunting me. Three years or not, within the law or outside of it. But that was a matter for another time.
First, he would have to catch me.
*
The brothers went, and it was Olaf, Gunnar and I who remained behind. Gunnar and I sat upon the ground, and Olaf stood over us like a father before foolish children, waiting for one of us to speak.
At last, Gunnar raised his head. ‘Leave us, Olaf,’ he said. ‘We have nothing to say to you.’
‘You order me out of my own property?’
‘A request. I do not know what you want from me. Gratitude or shame, or some other thing. But you shall not have it.’
Olaf spat on the ground and spoke to me. ‘My debt is paid. Do not ask me for another favour. Never speak to me of this again.’
He left and I felt a weariness descend such that I have never known, not even after battle or lovemaking. I expected that Gunnar would speak more – there were so many things that he could have asked, answers that I wished to give. But he said nothing and it fell to me to break the silence.
‘Do you want to ask why?’ I said.
‘I think that I do not want to know. I think that it would shame me to know.’
‘As you wish.’
‘Where will you go?’
‘Olaf knows a trading captain. Ragnar the Keel-farer. He sails in a month. Perhaps I will go to Ireland. I speak a little of their tongue. My father taught me.’
He nodded absently. ‘I do not think that I could ever leave Iceland. I think I would die before I let that happen.’
‘Three years is not so long a time.’
‘You will come back, then?’
I thought of Björn, waiting for me with murder in his eyes. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I will come back.’
Slowly, like a cut tree that falls of its own weight, Gunnar folded forward and put his head into his hands. I looked away and I tried not to listen or to see. I let my gaze drift to memory, my mind turn to song, and gave him the absence that he needed.
At last, he spoke again. ‘Will you stay with me? Before you go?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I will.’
And with that, we both fell to silence. There was nothing more to say.
*
I did not think that I would see Sigrid again. As I walked about the Althing there were men who I had known for ten years, women who had played with me when I was a boy and laughed with me as a man, who stared past me as if I were a stranger to them. I was not an outlaw, not yet, but already they looked on me as they would look upon a dead man. Why should Sigrid be any different?
Yet I had not been long in my wandering on the plain – a purposeless, hopeless walk of farewell – before I saw her coming towards me. I turned aside, found a rock a little apart from the crowds to sit upon, its polished surface a testament to the hundreds of people who had sat upon it. Old men looking on their last Althing, young men brooding on feuds. And lovers, too.
She sat down and her eyes cut into me – unblinking, empty of tears. A fighting man’s eyes. ‘Why would you lie for him?’ she said.
‘You have heard the judgement, then?’
‘Everyone has heard it.’ She hesitated, her hands clasping and unclasping each other, as if she sought to break some invisible set of bonds. ‘Why would you lie for him?’
‘It was only half a lie. I put my blade to that man’s throat.’
‘But why do it?’
I looked to the ground. ‘Gunnar has a wife. Children. Land.’
‘You think his life is worth more than yours.’
‘I know it is. In every way.’
‘And what of me? Did you think of me?’
To that, I had no answer.
Her mouth twisted in grief, and she spoke again. ‘You are a fool. Weighing your life in land and family and the herd. It is always men like you who die first. And you bards never sing those stories.’
‘I do not understand.’
‘Oh, you’ll sing of those wealthy farmers, those mighty chieftains. The way they died bravely. But it always begins like this. Some poor slave or servant offered up as a sacrifice, sent to die on the command of their master. They are always the first to die. But they never sing songs of those men.’
‘That was your father’s fate, wasn’t it? He died in his master’s feud.’
At this, she flinched and could no longer meet my gaze. I had guessed well, it seemed.
‘You are meat for these men,’ she said, her voice cracking. ‘To be cut and traded and destroyed. You owe them nothing. And now you will die for one of them.’
‘They have to catch me first.’ I waited for a moment, let her think on that. Then I took her hands in mine. ‘I will go for three years and this feud will die. And I will come back.’ I lifted my arm so that she might see the arm-ring I bore. ‘This is all the silver I have in the world. It could be a beginning for us. Some land, a little herd. Nothing more than that. But perhaps it will be enough.’
She tilted her head, her eyes still as hard as beads of glass. ‘You truly mean this, don’t you?’
‘Yes, I do. Will you wait for me?’
She did not speak for a long time.
‘I will wait,’ she said at last, in weariness and defeat. For it is a madness in the blood, that love with a morbid heart. It is no blessing. But it is unalterable.
The madness filled me too, and I do not know what we would have done, had we been given a moment longer, together there on the plains. But there was no time left. Footsteps were coming towards us, a figure running across the plain.
Ragnar the Keel-farer, a man I half-knew, the sea captain who would take me on my exile a month hence. I thought at first that he had come to discuss our journey, to name his price. But one look at his face and I knew it was some other matter that drew him to me.
He was too breathless to say more than a word, but that was all he needed.
‘Gunnar,’ he said, and pointed back the way he had come, back to the heart of the Althing.
*
Blood spilled at the Althing – that was my first thought of what must have come to pass. That Gunnar or Björn had broken the truce, taken weapons on to the field and that one had killed the other, a crime that might make the People forget their injunctions against execution, and murder the transgressor where he stood. I did not know which I would rather see, Gunnar dead on the ground, murdered by a blasphemer, or with a bloody blade in his hand, soon to die a shameful death.
Gunnar and Björn – I could see that they stood close, heads bowed forward like bulls before the charge. Soon there would be the screaming that goes beyond words, after which blood flows as inevitably as the autumn floods. But not yet – we were still at words. There was still hope that the quarrel could be put aside.
I we
nt between them, caught Gunnar’s head in my hands, placed my forehead against his.
‘Speak to me,’ I said. ‘Tell me what has happened. The feud is settled, is it not?’
He smiled at me, his eyes alive with honour and madness. He levelled his finger over my shoulder and said: ‘The horse.’
I looked upon it – a handsome black gelding that tossed its head and stared back at me, proud as a prince. The horse that Gunnar had come to buy, but I did not laugh. I had seen men killed for much less.
‘It must be a black horse,’ Gunnar said, ‘for Kari. I promised him. And it was promised to me.’
I looked to the trader – a man I did not know, thin and hunched, shifting from foot to foot.
‘A better offer was made,’ he said. ‘You cannot hold that against me. I sell at the best price, that is all.’
‘Oh, I do not blame you,’ Gunnar said. ‘I blame him.’
Björn spoke slowly, seeming to weigh each word before he said it. ‘I did not know you wanted this horse. It is not my fault you do not have the silver to match my offer.’
‘I have the iron to match your iron. Will that be enough?’
‘Gunnar, be silent,’ I said, but he would not.
‘Your family are all thieves,’ he said, and at those words something between a sigh and a groan broke through the crowd. They knew what must follow.
I watched Björn’s skin pale. He said: ‘I will have an answer for that insult.’
‘Wait,’ I said. ‘Gunnar, let him have the horse.’
‘Let him die for it, if he wants it so much. I will have it for my son.’
I could see it in him, that hunger he had tried to forget when he came to Iceland, now returned to him as strong as ever it had been. The taste for blood that all the true warriors have. The longing that cannot be ended.
I stepped close again, whispered so that only he might hear me.
‘Is this what you want, Gunnar? Truly?’