That jerked a laugh out of Count Hamnet. Trasamund visibly started to say something. Then, just as visibly, he changed his mind. Hamnet strung his bow, too. Short-faced bears were hard to kill with arrows. Sometimes, though, they would run away if they got hurt. And sometimes getting hurt would only infuriate them and make them attack all the more ferociously. You never could tell.
"Audun, Liv—if you know any charms for fighting off animals, this would be a good time to dust them off," Hamnet said.
"These don't always work," Liv said. "Animals are more deeply connected to nature than shamanry can ever hope to be."
"Well, see if you can make this beast unbearable all the same," Ulric said. Audun Gilli and Hamnet Thyssen winced. Liv was too new to Raumsdalian to get the pun or realize how bad it was.
The horses snorted and sidestepped. They smelled the bear, too, and didn't like it. "The wind is blowing from it to us," Hamnet said. "Maybe it won't realize we're here."
"I hate to tell you this, your Grace, but bears have eyes as well as noses. They have ears, too," Ulric said.
"Really? Tell me more about these things, and I'll taste what you have to say." Unlike Trasamund, Hamnet Thyssen didn't miss sarcasm aimed his way. He didn't put up with it, either.
"There!" The Bizogot jarl pointed. "I saw something move behind that tree."
Hamnet peered in that direction. He wasn't sure which tree Trasamund meant, but he didn't see anything moving. Was a short-faced bear clever enough to hide behind a tree trunk and peek out at its intended prey? He wouldn't have thought so, but maybe he was wrong.
Then the bear came out. It wasn't very big, not as far as short-faced bears went, but they went a long way in that direction. When it rose on its hind legs to growl at the travelers, Hamnet saw it wasn't a sow, as Ulric Skakki had guessed—and as Hamnet had thought himself—but a boar.
Ulric let fly. His bowstring thrummed. The bear dropped down in that same instant, so the arrow hissed over its head and thumped into a tree trunk, where it stood thrilling. Ulric swore. He reached over his shoulder to grab another shaft from his quiver.
At the same time as the short-faced bear ducked under the arrow, Liv gasped and Audun Gilli let out a wordless exclamation. Then he said, "Magic!" and her hands twisted in a sign Bizogots used against evil.
All that Hamnet noted only out of the corner of his ear, so to speak. His attention centered on the bear. If he gave it an arrow in the face, that might hurt it enough to make it run away. He drew his bow—and the bowstring snapped. His curses made Ulric Skakki's seem a beginner's beside them.
The bear let out a deep growl and sprang forward, straight toward him. Ulric shot again in that same moment, but only grazed the bear's right hind leg. Count Hamnet just had time to draw his sword before the bear was on him. It reared again, perhaps to smash him off his horse.
He swung first. His blade bit into its right paw, severing three claws.
Blood spurted and splashed the snow with red. The bear roared, opening its fang-filled mouth enormously wide. As it did, Ulric shot an arrow straight into that inviting target. This time, the short-faced bear's roar was more like a scream. It came down on all fours, raking Hamnet's horse with the claws on its left paw as its forelegs lowered.
The horse screamed, too, more shrilly than the bear had. It sprang away. Hamnet Thyssen tried with all his strength to keep it under some kind of control, and also tried to stay on its back. The bear lumbered after him. The wound on its front paw must have slowed it; short-faced bears could usually outsprint horses.
Ulric Skakki had a perfect shot this time—right at the bear's heart. But his bowstring also broke. This time, he outcursed Count Hamnet.
Trasamund rode up and slammed his sword down just behind the bear's ears. The animal had hardly seemed to notice his approach—all its attention was on Hamnet Thyssen. It let out a startled grunt and slumped to the snow, dead. No wonder—Hamnet heard its skull break.
And then all the travelers swore at once. The dead bear writhed in the snow. Its shape changed. After a couple of minutes, it was a dead bear no more, but rather a dead man. "That fellow comes from the Rulers," Audun Gilli said. No one tried to contradict him; that strong-featured, heavily bearded face plainly belonged to one of the men from beyond the Glacier.
"What in blazes is he doing here?" Ulric said, fitting a new string to the bow that had let him down.
Hamnet Thyssen was doing the same thing. "The way it looks," he said, "I think he was trying to kill me."
"You don't think well of yourself, do you?" Ulric Skakki mocked as automatically as he breathed.
"I think Thyssen is right," Trasamund said. "When it was a bear, it let you shoot it. It let me strike it. It wanted only the count. No one else, nothing else, mattered to it."
"Why would that be?" Ulric asked.
"I see only one answer—they think he is dangerous to them." That wasn't Trasamund, who'd raised the point. It wasn't Liv, who might have been expected to take Hamnet's side. It was Audun Gilli. His objectivity helped make him convincing.
"Aren't we all dangerous to them? By God, we'd better be," Ulric Skakki said. "Should I write them an angry letter complaining that they don't think enough of me to try murdering me? I'm tempted, if only I could find somebody to deliver it." He sounded affronted that the Rulers might not find him worth killing.
"Believe me, I could do without the honor," Hamnet Thyssen said as he dismounted to look at the wounds the bear had scored in his horses flank. They were long but not deep—plenty to pain and frighten the animal, but not crippling. He thought they would heal well. The horse trembled when he put his hands anywhere near the gashes. He bent down, scooped up some snow, and pressed it against the animal's wounds. The horse snorted and started to shy. Then it seemed to decide the cold felt good, and let out what sounded like a sigh of relief.
"Bear grease might help," Ulric said.
"How about shaman grease?" Trasamund said. "You can slit that bastard's belly and use what he's got." He wasn't joking, not in the least. Bizogots wasted nothing. They couldn't afford to.
"This would be the same sort of spell that wizard used when he turned into an owl, wouldn't it?" Hamnet asked Liv.
"I would say so, yes," she answered, her voice troubled. "It is a more thorough spell than we use. It is a more thorough spell than we know, though some of ours do the same thing."
"How did he get down here?" Trasamund said. "A long way from the far side of the Gap to this forest."
"Maybe he was an owl till not long ago. Maybe he flew," Audun Gilli said.
"I doubt it," Liv said. "With us, at least, a shaman has a spirit animal. If the animal is a dire wolf, say, the shaman may howl when the moon is full. But he will not hop like a snowshoe hare, and he will not take wing like a ptarmigan."
"Is it the same for the Rulers? Would it have to be?" Audun asked.
"if it is not the same, they are even stranger and darker than I thought." Liv sounded more troubled than ever.
"This one was a bear, and now he's dead," Trasamund said. "We still live, no matter how strange and dark he was, the son of a scut. And we'd better get up to the north and put a stop to the trouble the Rulers are causing."
Hamnet Thyssen wondered what Sigvat II would have done if he knew the Rulers were already inside the Empire. He laughed bitterly as he remounted. Seeing that the wizard or shaman or whatever he was had tried to kill him, Sigvat might have congratulated the fellow, or even ennobled him.
"Will the horse be all right?" Ulric asked. "We still might be able to buy you another one."
"I think he will," Hamnet said. "I think Trasamund s right, too. We need to get up to the Gap as fast as we can."
"Why?" Ulric Skakki said. "The Rulers are already here." On that cheery note, the travelers rode north again.
XXI
In the middle of winter, Hamnet Thyssen saw only a little difference ! between the Bizogot country and the Glacier farther north. Snow blanketed everything
. On days when the sun shone, the reflections from all that white could dazzle and overwhelm the eye. Trasamund and Liv had no goggles, but rubbed streaks of ash from a campfire under their eyes to cut the glare. Before long, the Raumsdalians with them started doing the same thing. It was ugly, but it helped.
"I'm wearing musk-ox dung." Ulric Skakki sounded more cheerful than he had any business being.
"Well, we've been eating it whenever we cook up here," Hamnet said. "Why not wear it, too?"
"I wish you hadn't reminded me," Audun Gilli said.
"I wish for all kinds of things that won't come true—good sense from the Emperor, for instance," Ulric said. "What's one more wasted wish?"
Hamnet Thyssen looked around, as if to see who might have overheard Ulric. Down in Raumsdalia, someone could have betrayed him to the Emperor's servants, in which case he would not have a happy time of it. Up here, he was among friends, and had the sense to realize it before Hamnet did.
Trasamund saw the Raumsdalian's glance, and knew what it meant. "No spies up here, your Grace," he said. "No informers. You're in Bizogot country again. You're in the free lands. Breathe deep. Breathe free."
"What if someone back in the Three Tusk clan has been talking about you behind your back, your Ferocity?" Ulric Skakki asked in his most innocent tones.
Beneath the dirt and ashes on his face, Trasamund turned red. "If I hear about it, I'll knock the son of a mammoth turd's teeth out!" he growled.
"Welcome to the free lands. Welcome to Bizogot country," Ulric said.
"And what's that supposed to mean?" the jarl demanded.
"What do you think it means?" Ulric asked.
"I think it means you're making fun of me on the sly, you Raumsdalian hound," Trasamund said, and he wasn't wrong. "Didn't I ask you when you chose to come north if you would obey me?"
"How am I disobeying you? Did you ever tell me not to make fun of you? Did you ever tell me not to make fun of silly ideas?" Ulric sounded mild, which didn't mean he wasn't serious.
"If you obey, you have to respect. You are not respecting," Trasamund said.
Ulric Skakki went to his knees before the jarl. Then he went to his belly, knocking his forehead in the snow. "Your Ferocity! Your Wonderfulness!" he cried. "Your Highness! Your Majesty! Your exalted Magnificence! May I please be allowed to kiss some of the musk-ox dung from the sole of your boot?"
Liv giggled helplessly. That meant Trasamund's venomous glaze divided itself between Ulric and her, and lost some of its effect. He stirred Ulric with the toe of his—with luck—clean boot. "Get up, you fool. Give me the respect I deserve, not this stupid show of more."
"I was trying to do that." The adventurer brushed snow off his front. "You didn't seem to like it very well, either."
"No one likes to be made fun of," Trasamund said accurately.
"Well, your Ferocity, if you say something silly, can't I let you know I think it's silly?" Ulric Skakki asked. "If I can't, what's your famous Bizogot freedom worth? I might as well have stayed in the Empire after all."
Trasamund started to answer, then stopped. This time, Ulric got the full force of his glare. He seemed to have no trouble enduring it. "You twist things up," Trasamund complained. "I am the jarl. I know what I can do, and I know what I am not supposed to do. And I know what my clansfolk can do, too. You go past that."
"He is a foreigner, your Ferocity," Liv said. "He did not suck in our ways with his mother's milk."
"Do you follow all our Raumsdalian customs when you come down into the Empire?" Hamnet Thyssen added. "I don't think so."
"Maybe not," Trasamund said. "But I don't dance on them for the sport of it, either. Ulric was trying to pull my prong for the sport of it. I won't put up with that." A Raumsdalian would have talked about getting his leg pulled. As usual, the Bizogot idiom was gamier.
And the jarl was probably right. Ulric Skakki did make trouble for no better reason than that he liked making trouble. He'd certainly annoyed Count Hamnet more than once. Now he said, "I'll be mild as milk. You can rely on it."
"You'll be as mild as smetyn, and like smetyn you'll make everyone around you wild," Trasamund predicted. "The only reason I tell you to come along is the hope you will madden the Rulers more than the Three Tusk clan."
"That's good enough," Ulric Skakki said cheerfully, and on they went.
* * * *
The Breath of God reached down to Raumsdalia in the winter. Ham-net Thyssen thought he knew what blizzards could do. After the first couple he went through on the plains, he owned himself an amateur.
He was as warmly dressed as any man could be, in furs with mittens on his hands and baggy felt boots with more loose felt in them on his feet. Only his eyes showed. His hood came down low on his forehead. A thick musk-ox wool scarf covered his nose and mouth. When snow came roaring down from the north riding a wind almost strong enough to knock a man off his feet, it hardly seemed to matter.
Trasamund and Liv took being out and about in such weather for granted. "We're still a long way from the Glacier," Liv screamed in Hamnet's ear, that being the only way to make herself heard through the wind's howls. "This is nothing."
"It seems like something to me," he shouted back. Her eyes showed amusement, or he thought they did. When they were the only part of her he could see, he had trouble being sure.
It was blowing too hard for them to hope to set up their tents when they stopped for the evening. Trasamund and Liv started making snow huts, lumping snow into blocks and building inward to form a dome. They left a tiny opening in the roof to let smoke out. The entrance faced south and had a dogleg to break the force of the wind.
"What about the horses?" Audun Gilli asked.
But the Bizogots were already piling up more snow blocks into a windbreak. Liv used a little magic to melt some snow on the ground and let it re-freeze as ice around the poles she used to tether the horses. "They won't be able to go anywhere," she said confidently.
"Suppose bears come? Or wolves? What do we do then?" Audun asked.
"We walk," Trasamund answered with withering scorn. The idea didn't seem to worry him. It worried Hamnet Thyssen, but he didn't say anything about it. What could he say? The wizard also kept quiet.
No one said anything about how the travelers would occupy the snow huts, either. But Hamnet and Liv ended up in one, with the other two Raumsdalians and Trasamund in the other. Just getting out of the ravening wind made Hamnet feel warmer. He fumbled for flint and steel in the darkness inside. He had a little leather pouch with tinder in it on his belt. The sooner he got a fire going, the happier he would be.
Liv did it before him. A few murmured words were enough to set a lamp alight. He gave her a seated bow. "Handy traveling with a shaman," he said.
"Up here, any Bizogot will know that spell," she said. "We need it too often, and not knowing it can kill."
"Can Bizogots who aren't shamans work it?" Hamnet asked. "Is the power in the spell or in the spellcaster?"
"This spell works most of the time for most people," Liv answered. "Whether that means most people have some power or the spell itself is strong ... I don't know. I never thought about it."
Most of the time, Hamnet wouldn't have thought about it, either. It was the kind of question more likely to interest Eyvind Torfinn. But here, in the snow hut, fire was naturally on his mind. He and Liv didn't need much of a blaze. The heat from their bodies warmed the cramped space surprisingly well. The lamp gave more light than heat.
Liv even had a chunk of musk-ox meat with her. As she sliced off frozen strips, she sent Hamnet a sly look. "Can you eat raw meat?"
"If I'm hungry enough, I can—" He broke off. He almost said he could eat anything if he got hungry enough. But, since the Bizogots ate stomachs and guts with their contents still in them when they got hungry enough, that might prove more bragging than he cared to back up.
To his relief, Liv took what he did say for a complete sentence. She started passing him strips of meat. He had no
trouble eating them. They might even have been a delicacy down in Nidaros. And the company here was better than any he would have known in the imperial capital.
"What's it like making love when the wind is screaming outside?" he asked.
Liv smiled. "You want to find out, I suppose. Well, why not? It's warm enough, and the work will make us warmer."
As long as they lay on their clothes and blankets, it was fine. When Ham-net stuck his foot in the snow for a couple of heartbeats, it put him off his stroke, but he quickly recovered. Afterwards, he dressed in a hurry, and so did Liv. They wrapped themselves in their blankets and fell asleep.
It was dark inside the hut when Count Hamnet woke—the lamp had gone out. The wind still howled and screeched outside. Within the hut, though, it was snug and more than warm enough. The Bizogots knew what they were doing, all right. He yawned, twisted, and went back to sleep.
The next time he woke up, a little light was coming in through the smoke hole. He needed a moment to realize the storm had died. It was almost eerily quiet. Beside him, Liv said, "It's blown itself out. I hoped it would."
"I wondered if it would bury the hut before it did," Hamnet said.
"No—too windy for that. The snow wouldn't stick enough," she said. "We may have to dig out of the entrance, though."
They did. As they shoveled snow with mittened hands, Hamnet Thyssen said, "I hope the horses came through all right."
"So do I. They're your southern beasts, not the ones we breed ourselves." Liv went on digging as she spoke. She broke out into fresh air. "We'll know soon."
Standing up came as a relief to Hamnet. He'd felt as crowded in the snow as he felt small and insignificant traveling across the frozen plains. Everything was frozen now, the ground as far as the eye could see robed in white. Even his furs and Liv's had snow all over them.
He trudged through snow that crunched under his boots to the windbreak Trasamund and Liv had built. The horses were still there, still alive, and eager for food. He had a little sugar made from maple sap down in the Empire. The animals snuffled up the treat and snorted for more.
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