I felt the touch of cold fingers against my skin – some warning from the gods, I once would have thought. But I ignored them. My new god did not speak in riddles or omens, did not lay hands upon His worshippers. I prayed and I heard Him speak. So I let Thorvaldur leave, and I let the boy go with him.
After a time, Ragnar sighed and dipped a horn bowl into the pot of stew above the fire. He handed it to me. ‘Eat,’ he said. ‘You must be hungry.’
‘I have brought trouble to you and I am sorry for it.’
Ragner shook his head. ‘I owe you a great debt.’ He licked his lips and said, ‘I thought that you would kill me, when I saw you return.’
‘I thought of it.’
‘Why didn’t you?’
I looked at Sigrid and she met my gaze without fear.
‘It would have won me nothing,’ I said. ‘You believe that you owe me a debt for that?’
‘I thought I was to die and I was not afraid. I thought that I… that I would not give those years with my wife for anything. Not even to die. I have never had courage. But I knew it then. And I thank you for that.’
There was nothing for me to say to that. I placed my bowl upon the ground, half-finished, for I no longer had the stomach to eat.
‘What will you do tomorrow?’ asked Sigrid.
‘I will go to see an old friend. It is better that you know no more than that.’
I was tired then, the long weeks of night-walking bearing down upon me. With no further word I curled into my blankets and let myself drift half into sleep. Not fully – I waited to hear the door swing, to hear Kari return. But he did not. And when I awoke late in the night from restless dreams, the taste of blood in my mouth, the screaming of ghosts in my ears, I saw that he had not returned.
I thought little of it.
The next day was beautiful, yet I saw it would not last. Brilliant sun beating down upon us, but over the inland mountains the thick clouds were gathering, the promise of rain in the sky. But I could enjoy the sun for a time as I sat outside Ragnar’s longhouse with my back against the wall. I was glad of that.
I heard Kari’s voice, calling my name. And when I turned I saw him coming from the barn, dark whorls beneath his eyes.
‘You slept little?’ I said.
‘I slept enough. You are going again?’
I nodded.
‘Can I come with you this time?’
‘No. Not yet.’
He kicked at a tussock on the ground. ‘I will not be left behind a second time.’
‘You shall. But there will not be a third. I promise you that.’
He looked back towards the barn and I did not know what that look could mean.
‘He told me that you became a Christian,’ he said. ‘Is that true?’
‘It is.’
‘He says that I should become one, too.’
‘Do not listen to everything that Thorvaldur has to say.’
He nodded absently. ‘When does it begin?’
‘The killing?’
‘Yes.’
‘Soon. We must be patient. We must wait for our chance.’
‘I am afraid to wait.’
‘Why?’
His fingers darted up to the burns on his face – a habit now. When he was in thought or he did not know what to say his hands would drift up to the strange, ageless, ruined skin. I had seen the children of chieftains play with carved dolls from across the sea. His face was akin to those: flat, still, not quite human.
‘There is something else I must tell you,’ he said. ‘About the night that—’
‘Tell me.’
‘When father went out… to fight them… I heard him calling to me. To fight beside him. And I did not. I ran to the tunnel, to escape. But I could not get through.’
‘And what then?’
‘My mother and my sister. I could hear them crying out behind me, feel them pulling at my legs.’ He looked up to me. ‘Björn would have let them go, wouldn’t he? Why did they not run?’
‘I do not know,’ I said. A lie, but a needful one.
He did not speak. He looked at me, awaiting a judgement.
‘You ran from the battle?’
‘Yes,’ he whispered.
‘So you think that you must die?’
He shook his head violently. ‘No, no.’ He wiped at his eyes. ‘I do not want to die. But I cannot bear this shame. I have to…’ He looked back at the barn once more. ‘Perhaps then I will be forgiven.’
‘We shall all be forgiven.’
‘That is not what Thorvaldur says.’ He turned back to me. ‘Where is it that you go?’
‘You remember the horse, don’t you?’
Even in the dark, I saw his face go pale.
‘I know who did it,’ I said.
He was in my arms then, his head working into my chest, as though he thought to bury himself there. I held him as I might have held a child of my own, in another life, another world.
‘Kill them for me,’ he said, his voice thick.
Then he was gone from me, just as abruptly, striding back to the barn and wiping at his eyes.
Let them talk, I thought. Let him be a Christian if he wishes. I thought to keep Thorvaldur content, to feed him converts like a man sacrificing to his gods.
I was still thinking in the old ways, of the old gods. The White Christ took a different kind of offering. But I did not know that then.
30
I moved slowly across the land, an idle traveller. For years I had waited for this, yet the day had come and it seemed there was no rush. I stopped at rivers and dangled my ruined left hand in the cool water, as though hoping to find an elvish place that might knit my hand whole once more. Looking in the tussocks and the bogs for the bones of sheep or stones worn smooth, as a child searches the land for charms of good fortune.
As the sun peaked in the sky I made my way inland, near the good trapping ground on the upper banks of the river. I walked through a little patch of woodland, cutting at the brush with my knife to pass the time, collecting the twigs and wet leaves, feeling the damp matter between the palms of my hands before I drew them once more within my cloak. I did not know what I was waiting for, but there came a moment when I knew that it was time, and I knew that I was ready.
I made my way to the house of Kormac Bersisson. To the home of a traitor.
There was sound within. As I came close to the door of the longhouse, walking soft upon the wet ground, I could hear men talking. Not many: two or three, unless they had one of those silent men with them, the kind that does not speak a word until there is blood to be spilled.
I backed away from the house, each foot placed carefully, though there was little need for such caution. Men in a feud listen for hoofbeats, for the whicker of horses. They do not expect soft footfalls of a lonely man on foot. And these men had no need to listen for a murderer’s footsteps. The feud was over. They had won.
I waited for smoke to rise from the longhouse, for the fire within to burn high. Then I went to the door and pushed at it without knocking. It swung open – unbarred, an open house for friends and neighbours. I heard a curse within, for no doubt they thought me some sudden gust of wind. Then footsteps coming.
‘Kormac,’ I said, and the footsteps stopped.
‘Who is there?’ said the voice from within.
‘An old friend,’ I said, but I was sure to turn the corner before I spoke my name. I wanted to see them first, before I gave them such a warning as that.
There were two men there, sitting by the fire, looking on me as they might have looked upon a ghost. Kormac was there, older and fatter than when last I had seen him, and with him but one other man, whom I did not recognise at first. Bjarni – that was his name. Kormac’s son. I had seen him at Gunnar’s feast three years before. A boy then, but a man now.