Or so I believed, at first.
There came a day in late summer when Thorvaldur and I sat by a small fire, preparing a rare hot meal. Thoris was away – tending the herd or collecting water, I cannot remember which. But I was alone with the Christian, for a time at least.
‘Will you speak of your God again tonight?’ I said. ‘Or shall I sing?’
‘It will be as our chieftain wishes it.’
‘Then I think that we will have your stories. I would lay a wager, had I anything of my own to gamble with.’
‘You do not care for my tales of Christ?’
‘I do not mind them. Some of them make for good stories.’
‘But they do not move you.’
‘I have enough gods at my side already. I have no need for another.’
‘Perhaps I may tell you other things. What is it that you wish to hear?’
I hesitated. ‘There is a man that I would hear news of,’ I said. ‘A woman, too, though I doubt you will have heard of her.’
‘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.’