Then I was ready to look upon the rest. The longhouse, black from fire and open to the sky. The wind shifting the great pile of ashes, so that it looked as if some great and monstrous creature were stirring unseen beneath them. And the blood upon the ground. So much it was as though a giant had been slain there.
But it had not. No giant had died there, no great beast slain. Only a man and his family.
I held my maimed hand out towards the gutted longhouse and felt a little heat rising from it. It had been burned the night before. I had returned a day too late.
Revenge
-
No. Stop. Wait a moment and let me think.
Yes, you are right, I am tired. And yes, the ale has touched my mind a little. And yes, perhaps I do not wish to speak of this. This is a memory that I have interred as deep as though it were the body of a great king, whose tombs are like cities. But this is a memory like a ghost. Again and again I cut the ground for its grave and cover it with heavy earth. Still it rises, still it walks.
I will tell it to you. I am afraid if I do not speak it tonight, I will never have the courage to do so again. I would not live a coward.
But first, let me tell you a different story. Another story of Gunnar.
Many of them I have told you already. Of how we met in the home of Olaf the Peacock, how I charmed him with a song. Soon I will tell you the story of how it was that he died.
But now, let me remember this.
It was the Day of Movement in early summer, when wanderers like me must go on to their new homes. There was a rare sun that day, a heat falling from the sky that seemed to caress the skin. We sat side by side in front of the door, the earthen wall of the longhouse against our backs, and we basked in that sun, passing a cup of water between us.
‘A good winter,’ he said.
‘Is there such a thing?’
‘I had not thought it, but there is.’ He paused. ‘You sing well.’
‘Well enough.’
‘Better than that.’
‘You have been kind to me.’
‘Kind enough,’ he said, echoing my tone, a little smile on his lips. ‘Where will you go now?’
‘To find some other place. Perhaps Olaf the Peacock will show me favour. He has a weakness for the songs of an Irishman.’
‘You are only half an Irishman,’ he said.
‘Oh, I do not think there is an Irish singer in the whole of Laxdæla. He may settle for a half-breed like me.’
He ran his thumb around the rim of the horn cup, the nail catching on the nicks and whorls. ‘What if you cannot find a place to take you in?’ he said.
‘There is always a place for a poet.’
‘But what if you could not?’ he persisted.
‘I would die, I suppose. If I could not find a home for winter.’
He stared out across the fields, towards the distant sea. ‘I would not want to rely on the kindness of others.’
‘It is good to keep moving,’ I said. But I felt that ache in the heart, where one must leave the place that one is meant to be, or leave the woman one is meant to love. When fate and desire do not meet, as they rarely do, and we must leave behind what matters most to us.
I stood and yawned under the heat of the sun. I turned to Gunnar, offered my hand and said, ‘Good fortune, Gunnar. I shall see you at the Althing.’
He did not answer me. He simply stared into that cup as though he had been ensorcelled by it, and I thought at first that I had offended him. He blinked and looked up at me, and he said: ‘Will you stay for the winter?’
‘I did not think that you would ask.’
‘Did you want me to ask?’
‘Yes.’ I thought for a time. ‘For one year. I cannot do more than that.’
He reached out and took my hand in his for a moment, and there was a gentleness there that I did not understand. Then he remembered to clap his other hand to it, sharp and martial, and led me back to his home.
There, that is all. A little story, but it matters greatly to me.
Now, I shall tell you the rest. I will tell it quickly, for the sun will not sleep much longer. And when it rises, there is much for us to do.
25
Had the killers known? Had they waited for the day that I would return? To welcome me home with blood and still-warm ashes?
They could not have done. It was some god who had whispered to them, calling out to them on that night.
In those years of exile I might have spoken a word against Odin or Thor. I could have made a silent wish that Loki had twisted against me, as is his nature. Or had it been long before, when I was a boy – some curse or challenge thrown at one of them? How long had that god been waiting, to take revenge upon me? For the gods cannot forget. And our gods, the old gods, they do not know how to forgive.
I moved slowly, for there seemed to be no hurry. The stillness was complete, save for the dance of the smoke on the wind. I moved over the wet ground – for it had rained the night before – marked with many footprints. The circling, dragging steps of men in battle. The longhouse burned open, four black walls beneath an open sky.
I could see them there, lying on the ground, but it took me a long time to come forward to where he lay. I went first to the entrance of the longhouse, where the head of a dragon had once marked a doorway.
Two black shapes, curled on the ground, buried in one another. They did not seem like people, not at first. Fire plays strange tricks upon skin. Yet after a moment, I could see the curve of a foot, the white of teeth, and above all, there was no mistaking the way in which one held the other. Dalla and Freydis, curled up together in the ashes of their home. I could not see Kari, but I was certain that he was in there, too. I could not think why they had not run.
Then I came back, walking slowly, so slowly, to where Gunnar lay on the ground.
I sat beside him for a time and waited for him to rise. For cut skin to knit back, the blood to seep up from the ground and return to his body, for the terrible wounds to close. I waited for a miracle and it would not come.
I lifted his head from the ground and saw what they had done to his face. How they had marked him and left him unburied.
He was barefoot and shirtless. There was a broken axe at his side, and I touched the sword at my hip, useless in its sheath. What could he have done with that hero’s weapon at his side? Not enough to save his life. But a better death would have been his. One that he could have been proud of.
I sat beside him and took his cold hand in mine. I rubbed the palm of my maimed hand against it, trying to instil some warmth in it. We sat together and I watched the fall of the sun from the sky.
I do not know how long I waited there. But in time a sound came to me. A sound so soft that I thought it a trick of the wind at first. It came again, from behind me: a sucking of the air. A little gasp of pain. Turning my head slowly, I laid Gunnar’s hand back down and took up the sword.
Something moved within the ashes of the house. At first I thought it to be a spirit, a ghost, for it seemed that no man or woman could have lived through such a fire.