Most of the time—but not always.
"Well, well," Eyvind Torfinn said, as he had a habit of doing. "Well, well." He said it—and Hamnet Thyssen heard him. One of the horses snorted and shook its head, sending snow flying. Count Hamnet heard that.
He looked around. He felt as dazed and drained as if he'd fought in a battle. The aftermath of a battle, though, was horror, with the cries of the wounded and the stenches of blood and ordure filling the air, with maimed and slaughtered men and beasts sprawled on the ground, with ravens and vultures and teratorns spiraling down out of the sky to glut themselves on flesh before it grew cold. The aftermath of the storm . . . was one of the most beautiful things Hamnet Thyssen had ever seen.
Everything was white.
As far as the eye could see—and it could see farther with each passing moment—everything was covered in snow. Even the travelers were mostly shrouded. Hamnet almost dreaded having the sun come out. Shining off so much whiteness, it would be bound to blind. The Bizogots sometimes wore bone goggles that let in only narrow slits of light to fight against snow-blindness. Hamnet wished for a pair of his own.
To either side, the Glacier loomed up. It was white, too, whiter than he’d ever seen it. The blizzard covered the dirt that clung to the sides of the ice, covered the plants that sometimes grew in crevices when the weather warmed. The way Hamnet's breath smoked reminded him it was anything but warm now.
Trasamund shook himself like a bear emerging from hibernation. The snow he dislodged made the comparison seem more apt. "Well, now I know where south is, by God," he said in a voice not far from a bear's growl. "Let's get to the Gap as soon as we can, and leave the worst of this behind us."
On they rode. Gudrid's back was uncommonly stiff. She wasn't used to getting mocked over and over again for making a mistake; that was something she was more in the habit of doing to other people. Trasamund didn't care. He'd taken what she gave him, and he gave back nothing. No, Gudrid wasn't used to that at all.
What would she do about it? What could she do about it? Nothing that Hamnet could think of, not now, not unless she never wanted to see Nidaros again. But if they got down into safer country.. . Hamnet wondered whether to tell Trasamund to watch his back.
In the end, he decided not to. The Bizogot jarl was a grown man, able to take care of himself. That he'd turned the tables on Gudrid proved as much. If he couldn't see that she might want revenge, he was a fool. To Count Hamnet's way of thinking, Trasamund was a fool, but not that kind of fool.
The sun came out and shone down brightly. Hamnet blinked and narrowed his eyes against the glare. But for the snow everywhere, the blizzard might never have happened. The air grew .. . warmer, anyhow. The travelers slogged on toward the Gap.
XIV
Ham net Thyssen spread his arms wide. Liv laughed at him. "You can't span the Gap with your hands, my love," she said. "It's narrow, but not that narrow."
"I suppose not," Hamnet said. But the urge remained. With those cliffs, those mountains, of ice going up and up and up, the gap between them still seemed tiny—and, on the grand scale of things, it was. But a tiny gap was oh, so different from no gap at all. And then Hamnet stopped and gaped, really hearing in his mind everything Liv had said. "What did you call me?"
"I called you my love," she answered. "You are, aren't you?"
"By God!" The idea still startled him. But he had to nod. "I am, yes. And that would make you mine."
"Well, I should hope so." The shaman sent him a sidelong look. "Not much doubt about what we've been doing, is there?"
"Er—no," Hamnet Thyssen said, and she laughed at him. He didn't think it was so funny. He'd lavished all sorts of words of love on Gudrid.
Much good it did him.
Since his love for Gudrid foundered—no, since her love for him did, if she ever knew any—he hadn't wasted such words on any other woman. He would have sickened himself if he had. Now, with Liv, he could affirm he was her love and she his without wanting to bend down over the snow.
After the travelers got beyond the narrowest part of the Gap, after they returned to the regions Bizogots and Raumsdalians had known since time out of mind, they left the worst of the winter weather behind them, or almost behind them. It was as if they were in the front room of a house where the door wouldn't close all the way. The icy wind gusted and roared at their backs, but ahead of them the sun shone.
"Down in Nidaros, it's hardly even autumn yet," Eyvind Torfinn said wistfully.
"It will be cold enough on the plains, by God." Trasamund's breath smoked as he answered. "Coid enough, yes, but not so cold as this."
"As the Gap widens out, your Ferocity, could we perhaps steer away from the very center of it?" Eyvind asked. "That way, the worst of the blast from the north will pass alongside of us instead of blowing through us." Maybe his shiver was exaggerated for effect; on the other hand, maybe it wasn't. Hamnet Thyssen was cold, too.
But Trasamund shook his head. "By your leave, your Splendor, I'll take a cold breeze on my kidneys. I don't care for that, but I can live with it. If chunks of ice decide to come down, they'll squash me like a louse. The two halves of the Glacier are still too cursed close together—a really big avalanche'll squash us no matter where we are. Still and all, I'd sooner keep the risk as small as I can."
"Makes sense," Ulric Skakki said.
Reluctantly, Eyvind Torfinn nodded. "Yes, I suppose it does. I was hoping for the chance to be warm. Like his Ferocity, though, I should much prefer not to be flat."
Ulric looked back toward the narrowest part of the Gap. It was almost like looking back toward a dragon's mouth, except that what it belched was not fire but scudding clouds and snow. In thoughtful tones, Ulric asked, "Could a big avalanche in the right spot still block the Gap, do you think?"
"Wouldn't be surprised," Trasamund answered. "But I don't think God will give us one. God expects people to solve their own problems. He doesn't go around doing it for them."
Hamnet Thyssen found it hard to quarrel with that. But Audun Gilli inquired, "What good is such a God?"
"Well, I don't know that anyone would say he didn't make the world and all the things in it," Trasamund answered. "It'd be a little hard to get along without this old world, even if your kidneys do get cold."
"Do you suppose God made the Rulers?" Hamnet Thyssen asked, not altogether seriously but more so than he would have wanted.
"If he did, he was having a bad day," Ulric Skakki said. "If he didn't, some demon or other was having a good day. Which choice do you like better?"
"I don't like either one of them," Count Hamnet said.
Ulric Skakki chuckled. "All right, then—which choice do you like less?"
"Both," Hamnet answered, and Ulric laughed out loud.
The Gap slowly widened. Little by little, Hamnet Thyssen lost the urge to push the halves into which the Glacier had split farther apart by brute force. When he looked ahead, he saw the gap between the ice mountains stretched farther and farther apart. It still wasn't hospitable country, being flat and often marshy, but he'd known worse.
However flat and dull the countryside was, it brought a broad smile to Trasamund's face. "This is my homeland!" he boomed when the travelers camped one evening. "This is the land of my clan! We have roamed here forever!" He thumped his fist against his chest to emphasize the words.
"Forever, to him, means longer ago than his grandfather could remember," Hamnet Thyssen whispered to Ulric Skakki behind his hand.
"No doubt," Ulric whispered back. "I'm surprised he doesn't drop his trousers and dump out a pile of dung to mark his territory, the way mammoths will sometimes." They both smiled. But they were careful not to laugh. Trasamund was not a man you wanted to insult to his face unless you were ready to put your life on the line. Parsh had found that out.
Gudrid had different thoughts about dung. "I want to get back to the Empire," she said. "If you knew how sick I was of eating food cooked over turds . . ."
"It
may not be pleasant, but when the other choice is not eating at all, you do what you need to do," Eyvind Torfinn said.
Had no one else added anything, it might have rested there. But Trasamund said, "Me, I like meat roasted over a dung fire better than what you get down in the south, where you cook with wood. The flavor's better."
"All what you're used to," Earl Eyvind said with a smile.
But Gudrid screwed up her face into a horrible grimace. "What you mean is, meat roasted over a dung fire tastes like dung. We've been eating dung ever since we left the Empire!"
She wasn't wrong. The same thought had crossed Hamnet Thyssen's mind once or twice. He wished she wouldn't have said it, though. Now he really had to think about it. By the looks that crossed some of the other Raumsdalians' faces, they felt the same way.
"What does she say?" Liv asked. Count Hamnet didn't much want to translate; that made him think about it, too. But Liv only shrugged and said, "Otherwise, we would starve—and fire is clean."
When Hamnet heard that, he nodded. "You have a good way of looking at things," he said. Fire was clean, even if it was fire from ... He shook his head. He didn't want to go down that road. Fire is clean, he told himself, and left it there.
* * * *
Ulric Skakki shook him awake in the middle of the night. "Sorry to do this to you, your Grace," he said, "but I need my time in the bedroll, too."
"Who says?" Hamnet demanded through a yawn. Ulric laughed. Count Hamnet yawned again. Ulric stayed there by him till he got to his feet. Who hadn't seen a man fall back to sleep instead of going out to stand sentry?
Muttering—and still yawning—Hamnet Thyssen trudged away from the embers of the fire (the dung fire, he thought, and wished he hadn't). Off in the distance, he could see the Glacier on either side of the Gap. It seemed almost magical under moonlight, and made him wonder if it shone from within with a glow of its own. The sensible part of him knew better, but around midnight that part wasn't at its best.
Like all the sentries, he stationed himself north of his sleeping comrades. If trouble came, from where but the direction of the Rulers would it come?
He breathed out fog—the visible warmth flowing from his body every time he exhaled. The landscape was eerily quiet. He could hear the other travelers snoring more than a bowshot away. But for those small noises, there was nothing, so much nothing that before long he could hear the blood rushing in his ears and the beating of his heart.
After a while, someone stirred and sat up, there by the smoldering fire. Was that Liv? Hamnet Thyssen's heart beat faster. Warmth flowed through him instead of flowing out. She got to her feet and walked toward him. A broad smile spread over his face. It still felt peculiar; his muscles just weren't used to shaping that expression.
She kissed him when she got out to where he was standing. But then she said, "Something's wrong," which spoiled his hope for anything more.
"What is it?" he asked. Instead of slipping under her tunic, his hand fell to the hilt of his sword.
"I don't know yet." Moonshadow made her look as troubled as she sounded. "But something."
"Should we wake the others?" Hamnet asked. "Should we wake Audun?" Something that roused foreboding in a shaman was bound to be sorcerous . . . wasn't it?
But Liv shook her head. "If he feels it, too, let him come," she said. "If not.. . not. I would say something different if we could talk together." She switched from her language to Raumsdalian. "Not know enough yet. And Audun Gilli not know Bizogot speech."
"You're doing very well," Hamnet said in Raumsdalian.
Liv returned to her own tongue to answer, "I should have started sooner. Then I would know more. And Audun Gilli should have started learning my language."
Not all Raumsdalians cared to learn the Bizogot tongue. Several of the guardsmen who'd come north with Gudrid also remained ignorant of it. Hamnet Thyssen had heard them muttering about braying barbarians— but never when Trasamund or Liv was in earshot. They might be arrogant, but they weren't foolhardy.
Hamnet put his arm around her—partly from affection and partly for warmth. "However you like. The company is good this way."
She nodded and smiled. "It is. If I was wrong . . . Well, we can see what happens then. But let's wait a while first."
"All right." Hamnet didn't want to wait. He waited anyhow. Pushing an unwilling woman wasn't a good idea any time. It made her think a man wanted her for only one thing—which was too often true. But pushing her when she said trouble was on the way had a special stupidity all its own.
If he were twenty years younger, he might not have cared. What man who was hardly more than a youth didn't think with his prong? Now, though, Hamnet could wait. Liv would still be here after the trouble, whatever it was, went away.
Motion in the sky made both of them swing their heads the same way at the same time. Silent and pale as a ghost, an owl soared past on broad wings. Or was it only an owl? To Hamnet's senses it was, but he would never make a wizard if he lived to be a thousand. "That?" he whispered.
"That," Liv said.
"What can we—what can you—do?"
"I don't know. I don't know if I can do anything," she answered, which wasn't what he wanted to hear. But then she went on, "I'd better try, though, yes?"
"I'd say so," Hamnet Thyssen said. "If you don't, the Rulers will think we're too weak to do anything about them."
"And they may be right to think that," Liv said bleakly, which was not at all what he wanted to hear. "But I don't care to be spied on night after night, and so . . ."
She reached into her pouch and drew from it something feathered, something clawed, and something that in the moonlight might have been a dark stone. "What have you got there?" Hamnet asked.
"The dried right wing of a screech owl, and his right foot, also dried, and his heart, likewise," the Bizogot shaman said.
"You didn't kill an owl on our travels," Hamnet said, and Liv shook her head to show she hadn't. He went on, "Then you've had them with you since we set out," and she nodded. He asked, "Why, by God?"
"Because these three things, taken together, will summon birds to them, which can be useful," Liv answered. "Also, the heart and the foot together, without the wing, will compel a man to truth if set above his heart while he sleeps."
"You did not use this magic against Samoth when he first spied on us," Hamnet said.
"No—he was in man's shape then," Liv said. "He took bird shape and flew away faster than I could have shaped the spell—faster than I thought anyone could do it. If he flies away now, the spell will fail. But if he gives me time to use it... If he does, I may give him a surprise."
"May it be so," Hamnet Thyssen said. "What can I do to help?"
"For now, just stand quiet," she answered. "The time may come, though, when you will want to put out an arm. If it does, I promise you will know it." He scratched his head, wondering what she meant. Meanwhile, she held up the wing and the foot in the right hand and the screech-owl heart in her left. "This spell must have come from the south," she remarked, "for the version we learn first says that these parts are to be hung in a tree." Even under the moon, her smile was impish. "Then we have to reshape it so that it works in our country. But the original still survives."
Hamnet Thyssen wondered why. Maybe the shamans needed the link with the original to ensure that their altered version still worked. He didn't know enough of magic to be sure of anything like that. He didn't have long to wonder, either, for Liv began to chant in a soft voice. He had everything he could do to stay quiet as she'd asked. He wanted to burst out laughing, for the tune she used was the same as a Raumsdalian lullaby. Sure enough, that charm had reached the Bizogots from the south.
Instead of laughing, Count Hamnet watched the owl. At first, he thought its soaring circles were unchanged, and feared the Rulers had some counterspell to deflect or nullify the charm Liv was using. But then he saw that the circles were getting narrower, and that they were centered on Liv and himself, n
ot on the fire as they had been.
The owl called, a strange, questioning note in its voice. Liv answered— Hamnet could find no better way to put it. She gave back fluting hoots, still to the tune of that song that made babies in the Empire close their eyes in the cradle.
Down spiraled the owl. It flew right in front of Liv's face. She never flinched. Hamnet Thyssen didn't think he could have been so calm with that hooked beak and those tearing claws bare inches from his eyes. Then he remembered what she’d said. Before he quite knew he'd done it, he held out his right arm. The owl perched on it.
It stared from him to Liv and back again. Moonlight flashed from its great golden eyes. Despite that flash, though, it seemed confused. It looked back and forth again, as if wondering how it had got there. Hamnet didn't blame it—he was wondering the same thing.
"Do you understand me?" Liv asked in the Bizogot tongue.
The owl hesitated. Then it answered, "Yes, I understand." An owl's beak and throat were not made to speak any human language. The bird managed even so. Samoth, Hamnet recalled, was fluent in the Bizogot speech.
"You are from the Rulers." Liv didn't make it a question, or need to.
"I am from the Rulers," the owl agreed, and it nodded its round head, one of the eeriest things Count Hamnet had ever seen.
"Are you Samoth? Does his spirit dwell inside you?" The Bizogot shaman was thinking along the same lines as Hamnet himself.
"I am Samoth. It is not a matter of the spirit. I am Samoth," the owl said. To hear its words hoot and hiss their way forth made the hair at the back of Hamnet s neck want to stand up of its own accord, as if he were a frightened animal puffing up in the face of danger. By God, what else am I? he thought.
"And you flew here to spy on us?" Liv asked.
"To spy on you, yes, and to spy out the way south," said the bird that was also a wizard or a shaman or whatever the right word among the Rulers was.
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