Then a voice from the black.
‘You had better sing,’ Thoris said. ‘But make your songs last. We have a long time to listen to them all.’
Let me tell you of a day in winter.
I woke in darkness, yet I knew that outside it was light. I felt it, as those animals do who live deep beneath the earth and can still feel the sun stirring. Beneath me, sacks of grain and salted meat; skins of water. Somewhere below was the stone floor of the cave. I feared to reach down and find it, for I knew that if I felt the cold stone it would mean that we had no food left. That touch would be like the hand of a god on my shoulder, telling me that it was time to die.
I crawled forward to the front of the cave, listening for the sound of snow and storm. There was none, and so I took up the wooden pick and began to hack at that white wall. Chipping away in the darkness, until a point of light broke through, like a dagger in my eyes. No heat from the light, and cold air came with it that left me shivering. Yet I basked in it as if it were a summer sun that shone upon me. That light and clean air were our treasures, taunting gifts from the gods, before the snow came and buried us again.
There were some days where we were given only a few moments of light before the storms returned, the white fire falling from the sky. There were times where the snowfall did not relent, when we lived in darkness and foulness for days at a time.
But this was not such a day. It was a still day, blue skies above. And I listened out for any sound at all from the mountains around us. Sometimes there was music in the mountains: the singing of the wind, the calving of ice, the chatter of rockfall. That day there was not a breath of wind, no sound at all to be heard. An utter, endless silence.
Behind me, I heard Thoris stirring. Then his voice.
‘How does it look?’ he asked.
‘Beautiful,’ I said. And it was.
I threw out fouled blankets, empty sacks, old bones. The hillside was covered in our filth, yet I knew that the next snowfall would bury it all as though it had never been there.
It was as beautiful a day as I could remember, but we would not leave the cave. I longed to walk upon that snow, to climb to the high places and look for some sight of distant lands, of home. But I knew that I could not. I had seen days such as this, clear and beautiful, be taken over by a blizzard in a matter of moments. Winter sought to lure us out for the killing: it was as wily as any murderer in a feud.
But I dared to go as far as I had been in months: to the edge of the cave, my back resting against the stone. From there I looked out on the valley.
It did not matter that the day was clear, that the sun was bright. I did not need light to know that landscape, for I had been staring at it for many months and knew every fold and turn by now. Like a prisoner in the old stories, whose only glimpse of the world is from a single barred window.
I tried to remember other places, the places that mattered to me. The mountains around Borg, the rolling landscape of the Salmon River Valley, the hillside of Hildarendi where my father lived. It should have been the simplest thing, to recall them. But I could not do it. They were fading from my mind – dust, and dreams. There was no place but this.
Thoris came out to sit beside me. He passed me a scrap of salted meat: the first thing I had eaten that day, for I had learned not to touch the food unless he permitted it. The custom was with us as it is with wolves, where none may eat except if the leader allows it.
We sat together and we did not speak. We watched the movement of the sun; it had been in the sky for so little time, and yet already it was fading.
He broke the silence. ‘We shall have a fire,’ he said.
‘Are you certain?’
‘Yes. Why not?’
I felt tears sting my eyes and turned my head so Thoris would not see them.
We gathered what little we had to burn, with all the patience at ritual of priests at a sacrifice. Every scrap of cloth, every fragment of wood, every piece of dung – all were so carefully placed. Nothing could be left to chance.
We waited for the sun to sink down and when it touched the horizon I struck sparks from the flint. A dozen points of light, each one visible for only a moment, yet I seemed to see all of them perfectly. I had such a terrible longing for that fire.
I watched the sparks that died and those that caught. I watched each place where the flames began – how they flickered and danced, grew and combined together – until the fire was burning strongly, the hiss and crackle of the flames like music to us. I held out that ruined hand of mine towards the fire and in the heat it felt whole once more.
The snow around us grew soft with the heat, melting and weeping like a woman at a funeral pyre. We grew busy, placing food over the fire, pots of snow to melt down for warm water. And I felt the longing that men and women always feel around a winter fire. A longing for memories and for stories.
I spoke. ‘Let me tell you of the woman I love.’
‘No,’ Thoris said. ‘I do not wish to hear that story.’
‘Then I will tell you of my friend Gunnar. A great warrior.’
‘No. I do not wish it.’
‘Then tell me—’
‘No,’ he said, stirring the pot with his knife. ‘I do not wish to speak.’
‘Why?’
He said nothing for a long time. Then he said: ‘There is no world but this place. There are no people other than we two. Do you understand?’
I wish that the fire had been stronger, so that I might have seen his face better, to know what it was that he meant. But perhaps I did understand.
‘Sing for me,’ he said. He had spoken those words many times before, but never as he spoke them on that day.
I had won my life with song, earned my keep with song. A cripple, unskilled in the arts of the outlaw, it was all I had to offer. He had always commanded and I had always obeyed. But that day his voice was different. He did not demand that I sing. He asked me to.
I gave him the song I knew he wanted, that he loved above all others, the first that I had given him. I sang of the death of Cúchulainn, and in those words perhaps he saw a death that he desired. Not frozen and starving, alone in the mountains. But dying in battle against hopeless odds.
I did not think of my death as I sang. That might have been the only hope left to him, but not to me. For he had given up on dreaming of those beyond the valley, of lives unlived and paths untaken. But I had not.
If I were to think of those that I might envy, there would be a danger there. Of Olaf in his great hall, filled with warmth and good company. Of Björn and Vigdis spending the winter in comfort, in victory. Perhaps this was why Thoris did not want to think beyond the valley. Perhaps there was a madness waiting there, in jealousy. But not that day.
I did not think of my enemies, or of fortunate men that I might envy. I thought of Gunnar, and of Sigrid.
I gave Gunnar a hundred different lives in my mind, imagining every path that he might take. I saw him on the water, captain of a ship once more. I saw him working his fields and tending his crops. I saw him clasping hands with his enemies and swearing to a peace. I saw him at the holmgang, dispatching his enemies one by one in honourable duels. I saw him die bravely in open battle, the blood of his enemies upon his sword.
I dreamed a hundred different lives for him and tried to think of which one might be true.
There was only one destiny that I dreamed for Sigrid. That she waited for me. I dreamed of a small stretch of farmland in the Salmon River Valley, where we might spend the rest of our lives. Of love in the darkness. Other dreams tried to find me, but I would not let them.