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.