I marked the comings and goings, scratching into the earth to count the men who came and went. But I had to wait for many days to be certain that the man within was alone. I had to be certain that the man I wanted was inside.
It was the fourth day, when I could feel a fever begin to burn underneath my skin, that I saw him. Just for a moment at the doorway, leaning out, his face pale and filthy. It was Keticlass="underline" the man I had cut in the storm and left to die in the snow.
On the fifth day I scratched and unscratched my marks on the ground, until I knew for certain that Ketil was alone in the shieling, that none would come to disturb us. The night fell and the wind began to whisper, carrying voices to me from memory. The voices of Gunnar and his children. I stood from the brush. I walked to the shieling, with no attempt at stealth, and I pushed open the door.
There was a small fire burning: a handspan’s worth of dung chippings and twigs, a fire built for a lonely man to sit beside. Ketil sat beside it, his crippled leg stretched forward, a rough-cut piece of wood beside him to help him walk. He lifted his head slowly as I entered, fixed me with a dull-eyed stare. His eyes widened at the sight of me for a moment, but then he nodded to himself and leaned back against the wall of the shieling.
There was an axe at his side, but he did not lay a hand to it. Not yet.
‘You are not a ghost,’ he said, flatly, after a moment’s silence.
‘You can be certain of that?’
‘You would have died too far from here to roam this far. From what I know of ghosts, at least. You would have haunted those mountains forever.’ He rubbed his thumb across cracked lips. ‘And I lived through that storm. Why wouldn’t you?’
‘I am not a ghost.’
He wrinkled his nose. ‘You smell like a dead man, though. I can smell your stink from here.’
‘I have been hiding in the brush for days. You should cut it down, if you do not wish to be watched.’
‘It did Gunnar little use,’ he said. Slowly, he rubbed his dirty hands against each other. ‘You have been waiting to catch me alone, then. Are you here to kill me, Kjaran? There is little honour in the murder of a cripple.’
I did not answer at first. I felt water dripping on me from the neglected roof, could feel the fingers of the wind finding their way to my skin through the broken walls.
‘Why are you here?’ I said. ‘You have a farm on the lowlands. And I am sure that Björn or one of the others would take you in.’ I glanced at his leg. Even beneath his clothes, I could see how withered it was, the strange angle that it hung at. ‘You have earned that much.’
‘I will not live on the charity of men such as that.’ He spat on the ground beside him. ‘I cannot stand the way that my wife looks upon me. Or my children. It is better that I am here.’ He lifted his left hand, moved his fingers in mockery. ‘I think you may understand that. We are no longer men.’
By instinct I drew my maimed hand behind me, and he laughed.
‘If you had come back unhurt, I would have killed you, cripple that I am.’ He hesitated and the smile faded from his face. ‘You did not answer, before. Have you come to kill me, Kjaran?’
‘No.’
‘Then what is it you want?’
I sat down beside him and I stretched one hand, my good hand, towards the fire.
‘Do you remember the feast that Gunnar had?’
His hand, which had been rubbing and pawing at his wounded leg, ceased moving.
‘I was not there,’ he said.
‘You were not at the table, but you were there. Watching from the shadows, with Björn and his kin.’
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘You butchered the horse and put its head up on a scorn-pole.’
A pause, this time. Then: ‘Yes.’
‘But there was someone who led the horse to you. A man who was at the feast with Gunnar and me. A man who pretended to be a friend and who betrayed us. I want you to give me that name.’
He turned his face from me.
‘Do you know what I despise most of all? About being a cripple, I mean.’
‘Tell me.’
‘It has made me a coward.’
Even after all I had seen and done, I still shivered at that word. To hear a man confess himself the worst of things. To feel that cowardice in the room was akin to being trapped with a leper or a man dying of the rotting fever.
‘I was close to death, out there, after you left. As close as a man can come.’
‘I was there as well. Afterwards, in the storm.’
‘I do not want to go to that place again. Or beyond it. I do not like what I saw there. Yet all men do. And I shall go there soon. The next winter will finish me soon enough. As it should have done three years ago. As it should have killed you.’
He looked back at me and there was a strange hunger in his eyes – a kind of needful madness.
‘Has it done the same to you?’ he said.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I am not afraid.’
The pain broke across his face, and shame as well. But he nodded, accepting.
‘Why did you not kill me? Why not spare me this shame?’
‘I knew it would slow the others. That they would not leave you. That was all. I would have killed you, if it were not for that.’ I hesitated. ‘What will you say to the others?’ I asked.
‘To Björn? And his kin? Perhaps I would speak of you to them, if ever they came here. But they do not. I will not speak of your return. I do not care who else dies in this feud. But you are a fool if you continue the killing.’
‘And a coward if I do not.’
‘And there is the trap. Our people came to this island to be free. Of kings, tyrants, men who would tell us what to do. Yet here we are. With less freedom than a slave.’
He picked up a stick and poked at the little fire.
‘Put this aside, Kjaran,’ he said. ‘I am not a wealthy man. But I will give you silver – twice the blood-price for Gunnar and his family. Enough to settle the feud honourably. You can go to some other part of Iceland and begin your life again. Or I will give you the name. What is it that you want?’
‘I must have the name.’
He waited for a time, his eyes fixed on mine. He gave me as much time as he could to change my mind.
28
I left the shieling and struck out across the dale. I did not go to the west, towards the sea and Ragnar, Kari and Sigrid. I went south, along the familiar path. And I broke the promise that I had made to myself, that I would never set eyes on the valley again.
I walked down through the mountain passage and at the first farm I came to on the other side I traded my last silver arm-ring – the one Thoris had gifted me – for a good horse. I rode until I was in sight of Borg, the mountains and the sea. It was time to turn east then, to travel along the path of exiles and outlaws.
I was afraid that I would not remember the way, but I need not have worried. Every point on that journey was marked in my memory. There was no shape of stone, no cliff face or river or curving line of earth that I did not remember.
The passage was easier this time. It was the beginning of summer and the snow was gone from the lowlands. Yet still, I came to the heights and here the snow remained upon the ground, for it is a place that knows no summer.
The coward’s fear was building, every instinct I had warning me off that place. The horse beneath me felt my fear, in the way that beasts always do, wiser than men and cursed with silence. But as he danced and whickered beneath me, he reminded me to be brave. I touched my heels to his flanks and rode on.