The Golden Shrine

by Harry Turtledove

  “I suppose not,” Ulric said. “Seeing what—and who—was on the other side’s been interesting enough, and then some.”

  “Yes. And then some.” Hamnet Thyssen’s gaze focused more sharply on ground much closer. First glances could—and often did—deceive. The steppe had little dips and rises that had a way of hiding trouble till it was right on top of you . . . or, sometimes, right in back of you.

  Every time something moved, Count Hamnet’s hand started to go to his sword or his bow. And things did move, again and again. Small birds nested among the small bushes. Voles and lemmings scurried. Weasels chased them. Hares hopped. Short-eared foxes loped after them and noisy-winged ptarmigan.

  A snowy owl swooped down. It rose again with a lemming in its claws. Prey still writhing feebly, it flew past Hamnet and Ulric just out of bowshot. Hamnet felt the bird’s golden eyes on him till at last it turned its head in a different direction.

  “God-cursed thing,” he muttered.

  “If it’s only an owl, I don’t mind it,” Ulric Skakki said. “But if it’s one of the Rulers’ wizards in owl shape, come to look us over the way they do . . .”

  “If it is, it just got an eyeful,” Hamnet said. “Two eyes full, in fact.”

  “I doubt it was a wizard this time,” Ulric said.

  “Oh? Why’s that?” Count Hamnet asked.

  The adventurer spread his hands in wry amusement. “Well, it looked us over. It looked us over good. And it didn’t fall out of the sky laughing. That makes me think it must be an ordinary owl.”

  “Heh,” Hamnet Thyssen said. “I wish that were the kind of joke that made me laugh.”

  “So do I,” Ulric replied. “I don’t like wasting them. We’re in a mess, you know. The Rulers can whip the Bizogots. They can whip the Empire. The only thing they haven’t shown they can whip is Marcovefa, and there’s only one of her. A little bad luck, and we’re all in a lot of trouble.”

  “Yes.” Hamnet left it right there. If anything happened to Marcovefa, the Bizogots and Raumsdalia would suffer, true. But so would he. The last woman in the world who thought he was anything out of the ordinary . . . He shook his head. That wasn’t quite right. She was the last woman in the world who made him think he was anything out of the ordinary. That made her a rarer bird yet.

  Rare as a wizard from the Rulers magicked into owl’s shape? Hamnet didn’t know. He couldn’t tell. Marcovefa could have if she’d been along. She was busy back at the Leaping Lynxes’ huts: busy with something sorcerous, though Hamnet couldn’t have said what it was.

  She didn’t mind working with Liv and Audun Gilli. Sometimes Hamnet could accept that. Sometimes it bothered him. It didn’t bother Marcovefa, though, and she paid no attention to Hamnet’s occasional grumbles.

  He supposed he could see the logic behind that. Working against the Rulers counted for more than personal squabbles. It made perfectly good sense. He’d even pointed out as much to Trasamund. Understanding it and liking it were two very different things.

  “What’s going on inside your head?” Ulric Skakki asked. “You look like you want to murder somebody.”

  “The owl.” Count Hamnet lied without hesitation. Ulric was too good at divining what went on inside him. Hamnet didn’t want the adventurer to know he was worrying about his latest woman. Ulric would only laugh at him and tell him things he didn’t want to hear. Even if they were true—or maybe especially if they were true—he didn’t want to hear them.

  Ulric Skakki eyed him now. Hamnet wondered if the adventurer would start telling him things even after he’d lied. That would be humiliating. And if Hamnet lost his temper and turned away, Ulric would laugh at him, and laugh and laugh. That would be more humiliating yet.

  But Ulric didn’t twit Hamnet. Instead, he pointed to the northwest. “Something over there,” he said. “Don’t know what, but something.”

  “I didn’t see it,” Hamnet Thyssen confessed.

  “Well, it’s there,” Ulric told him. “We’d better find out what the demon it is, too, because it’s liable to be dangerous.” He rode off to see what he’d spotted.

  “A dire wolf, maybe, or a lion.” Count Hamnet followed. He made sure his sword was loose in the scabbard. He strung his bow and reached over his shoulder to check on the position of his quiver. He adjusted it a little, then nodded to himself.

  Ulric laughed harshly, watching him. “You don’t believe that yourself.”

  “It may not be likely, but it’s possible,” Hamnet said.

  “All kinds of things are possible. It’s possible the Rulers really are nice people who want the best for us,” Ulric said. “It’s possible, sure, but it’s not bloody likely.”

  Count Hamnet shut up.

  His eyes narrowed as he scanned the ground ahead. Lots of little dips where a man on foot might hide—and the flowers and grasses and little bushes here grew as thick as they ever did on the Bizogot steppe. Hamnet thought of snakes. No real vipers up here—the mammoth-herders thought Raumsdalians were lying when they talked about them. But a man from the Rulers could prove more dangerous than any rattlesnake ever hatched.

  “There!” Ulric Skakki pointed. Hamnet was a good hunter, but Ulric was better. He could follow a trail that baffled the noble, and he spotted motion Count Hamnet missed. Hamnet missed it till it was pointed out to him, anyhow. Then he too saw the shifting shrubs up ahead.

  “Not a wizard, anyway,” he said as he rode toward them with Ulric.

  “No, eh? How come you’re so sure?” the adventurer asked.

  “Don’t be stupid.” Hamnet was pleased to get a little of his own back. “If the bastard were a wizard, he wouldn’t be running from the likes of us, would he?”

  Ulric grunted. “Not unless he was a cursed stupid wizard, I suppose.”

  “The Rulers don’t seem to have many of those,” Hamnet Thyssen answered. “I wish to God they did.”

  “Would make life easier, wouldn’t it?” Ulric agreed. “Now, if you were a Ruler stuck on foot, where would you hide from a couple of savage fellows from the wrong side of the Glacier who’re trying to do you in?”

  “Right about there—that birch thicket.” Now Hamnet Thyssen pointed. He and Ulric both laughed, even if it wasn’t really funny. None of the birches grew much higher than his knees. They were shrubs, bushes, not the trees they would have been south of the line where the ground stayed frozen all the time. But at this season of the year their leaves gave good cover.

  Good, yes, but not quite good enough. The birch bushes stirred; someone was trying to crawl deeper into the thicket. Two bowstrings twanged. Hamnet wasn’t sure whether he or Ulric let fly first. A grunt of dismay, bitten off short, said at least one arrow struck home.

  “Give up!” Count Hamnet shouted—one of the fragments of the Rulers’ language he’d acquired. He added another one: “We no kill captives!” To the Rulers, any kind of yielding looked like shameful weakness. Many of them preferred death to surrender. Many—but not all. The fights across the frozen plain and inside the Empire had taught Hamnet as much. He might despise and distrust the invaders, but he’d found that some of them were ordinary enough to go on breathing if they saw the chance.

  All Hamnet got this time was more wiggling among the leaves. He and Ulric Skakki looked at each other. They didn’t bother nodding, but both shot at about the same time again. Another involuntary grunt of pain told of a wound—or of someone desperate who was cunningly bluffing.

  But Hamnet didn’t think so. He slid down from his horse and drew his sword. “Let’s find out what the”—he added an obscenity—“knows.”

  Ulric also dismounted. “Let’s make sure one of those things isn’t that you’re a real idiot.”

  Count Hamnet gave the adventurer a mocking bow. “I never need to worry about the different nasty things that might happen to me, not when you’re around. You come up with more of them than I ever could.”

  “Always at your service, Your Grace.” Ulric sounded more like a tr
usted retainer than a comrade-in-arms.

  They plunged into the low thicket together. They both made plenty of noise, hoping to panic their quarry into moving and showing them where to go. And it worked. The leaves not far from where they’d shot the Ruler started thrashing. The Raumsdalians hurried that way.

  “Embarrassing if four or five of the buggers are hiding under there,” Ulric remarked.

  “Embarrassing is hardly the word,” Hamnet Thyssen said. Ulric laughed, for all the world as if they were trading quips at an elegant salon—say, Earl Eyvind Torfinn’s—down in Nidaros, goblets of wine in their hands instead of sword hilts.

  But only one Ruler hid in the birch bushes. When Hamnet and and Ulric split up to attack from two directions at once, the invader from beyond the Gap called out, “Don’t kill me! I yield!” in the Bizogot language.

  “Good God!” Count Hamnet burst out. Ulric Skakki didn’t say anything, but he looked as astonished as Hamnet felt. That harsh, guttural accent was familiar, but not in a woman’s contralto.

  “I bleed,” she said. “You said you would spare me. Will you help me, and not—?” She broke off. Not rape me and then cut my throat or knock me over the head was what she had to mean.

  Bleed she did. She had an arrow through her right hand and another in her left calf. Raping a wounded woman wasn’t Hamnet Thyssen’s idea of sport. He wondered whether it was Ulric’s. If it was, the adventurer gave no sign of it. “I will draw the arrow in your leg,” he said, and drew out a spoonlike device. He’d left one of those with a Bizogot shaman, but must have got another down in the Empire. As he got to work, he added, “By the way, what’s your name?”

  “Tahpenes,” she said through clenched teeth.

  IV

  WELL, WELL. ISN’T this intriguing?” Ulric Skakki said as he extracted the arrow from Tahpenes’ leg. She kept her teeth clenched and didn’t let out a peep all through the unpleasant process. Hamnet had seen that the Rulers’ warriors were made of stern stuff. The same appeared to hold for their women.

  “Intriguing? Not the word I’d use,” he said, using Raumsdalian like Ulric. They wanted Tahpenes worried, or he supposed they did; not being able to understand them would push her down that road.

  He eyed her with more than a little curiosity of his own. She was the first woman of the Rulers he’d seen close up. Liv had spoken slightingly of their looks. They weren’t tall and blond. They weren’t even tall or blond. Tahpenes had hair so black it was almost blue, dark brown eyes, and a formidable blade of a nose. She also had broad shoulders and formidable arms. If she weren’t multiply wounded, she might have been dangerous.

  She might be dangerous anyhow.

  Ulric bandaged her with matter-of-fact competence. “What will you do to me? Uh, with me?” she asked in the Bizogots’ tongue.

  “Whatever we want,” Ulric said before Count Hamnet could answer. Had the adventurer done some raping and knocking over the head in his time? Hamnet Thyssen wouldn’t have been surprised. He didn’t want to ask, even in Raumsdalian.

  “Right now,” he said, “we’ll take you back for questioning.”

  Tahpenes winced. Count Hamnet had no trouble figuring out why. When the Rulers questioned people, they put them to the question. By all accounts, they were good at that kind of thing, and they seemed to enjoy it, too.

  “We don’t intend to torture you right now,” Hamnet said, trying to reassure the new captive.

  “Not unless you show us we need to, anyhow,” Ulric Skakki added, trying to do anything but. Hamnet sent him an aggrieved look. If that bothered Ulric, he concealed it very well. In Raumsdalian, he said, “We may have to do some nasty things to her. You never can tell. And even if we don’t, she’d better think we’re ready to. Otherwise, she’ll just decide we’re soft.”

  “Mmh,” Hamnet Thyssen said unhappily. He didn’t like the idea of torturing women. He didn’t like the idea of torturing men, either, which didn’t mean he’d never done it. And Ulric had a point. The Rulers were much too likely to judge the Bizogots and Raumsdalians as soft. Keeping Tahpenes healthily on edge wasn’t the worst idea in the world.

  “Can you stand?” Ulric asked her, returning to the Bizogots’ tongue.

  “I think so,” she said, and showed she could.

  “Wait,” Hamnet said as Ulric started to lead her back toward the horses. The adventurer raised a gingery eyebrow. “Search her,” Count Hamnet told him. “Otherwise, you’re liable to sprout steel in some uncomfortable spot.”

  “My, my. And here I took you for a dewy-souled innocent,” Ulric Skakki said. Hamnet answered that with the rude noise it deserved. Ulric laughed, then shook his head. “The worst of it is, you’re right. I may not find everything even with a good frisking, but I sure won’t if I don’t check her at all.” Ulric gave Tahpenes a bow of sorts. “This isn’t personal, you understand. Just something I’d better do to keep you from sticking me while I’m not looking.”

  She didn’t say anything. If Ulric hadn’t told her the search wasn’t personal, it wouldn’t have been hard for her to think it was. He patted her through her clothes and then reached under them. Chances were she would have slapped his face if she didn’t figure that was a fast way to get herself killed.

  He came up with several small, slim holdout blades, too. “Think I missed anything, Thyssen?” he asked when he thought he was done.

  “Her hair,” Hamnet said at once. After a moment, he added, “And women have a hiding place men don’t.”

  “So they do,” Ulric said, and then, “You have anything shoved up your twat, Tahpenes?”

  “No,” she said.

  “If you do, I’ll kill you,” Ulric told her. “But the Bizogot women can find out about that when we get back to our camp. As for your hair . . .” He didn’t ask her about that. He patted and prodded at it, and was rewarded with a couple of long, stout pins. “Wouldn’t want one of these poking out of me.”

  “Neither would I.” Hamnet nodded to Tahpenes. “Have any more? Give them up now and no blame to you. If you say no and we find them . . . well, you won’t like that, I promise.”

  “One more, is all.” The woman pulled it out and gave it to Ulric Skakki. He accepted it with a sour smile; he liked missing things he should have found no more than anyone else would have.

  “All the same, you can bloody well ride in front of me,” Ulric said. “That way, Hamnet and I will both have a shot at you if you decide to get smart.”

  “That way, you can put your hands all over me,” Tahpenes replied, distaste in her voice.

  “If I feel like it,” Ulric said. “What makes you think you’ve got anything I’d want to grope? And as long as you’re alive and we don’t peel you out of your trousers here and now, what makes you think you’ve got any business complaining?”

  Tahpenes answered the first question with a dirty look, the second with what was probably intended for a dignified silence. Ulric helped her climb up onto his horse. That did interest her. “These are strange animals, your riding deer with no antlers,” she said as he got up behind her.

  “We like ’em,” Ulric answered. He nodded to Hamnet. “Keep an eye on her. Just because she doesn’t know what a horse is, that doesn’t mean she wouldn’t do her damnedest to steal one.”

  “Really? I never would have guessed.” Like the adventurer, Hamnet Thyssen used the Bizogots’ tongue. They wanted Tahpenes to know they were alert.

  She didn’t try anything as they rode back to the stone huts the Leaping Lynxes had built. When she realized where they were going, one of her strong, dark eyebrows rose. “What are you doing here?” she said. “This is where our wizards were meeting.”

  “Were is right,” Hamnet told her. “I don’t think any of them got away.”

  “Sure hope not, anyhow,” Ulric Skakki put in.

  Tahpenes turned around to stare at him. She looked away in a hurry when he blew her a kiss from close range. “This is not possible. You are not of the Rulers. You are of th
e herd, to be ruled as we think best. How could you beat our wizards?”

  “Wasn’t too hard,” Count Hamnet answered. “And here’s a lesson for you: if something happens, it isn’t impossible. You should remember that.”

  “How dare you mock me?” Tahpenes demanded.

  “We enjoy mocking silly ideas. It makes us laugh,” Ulric answered.

  “You are not afraid.” By the way Tahpenes said it, she might have accused them of cheating at dice. She was at least as arrogant as the men of her people. Why am I not surprised? Hamnet thought wryly. Tahpenes went on, “Folk of the herd should be afraid. Something is wrong, something is perverse, if you are not.”

  “Get used to it, sweetheart,” Ulric Skakki said cheerfully. “You’ve beaten us more than we’ve beaten you, sure, but we’ve won often enough so we know we can. Ask your wizards if you don’t believe me—if you can find any of them alive to ask, I mean.”

  “But you cannot beat our wizards.” Tahpenes might have been stating a law of nature. She doubtless thought she was. Well, too bad for her.

  She suddenly let out an indignant squeak. Hamnet Thyssen didn’t see exactly what Ulric had done to her, but it was something that damaged her dignity. The adventurer said, “That’s to remind you not to talk nonsense. You see we did, so why do you say we can’t?”

  Tahpenes didn’t answer. She was one sadly confused Ruler. Count Hamnet almost didn’t blame her. If not for Marcovefa, the wizardry from her folk would have dominated anything the shamans and sorcerers from south of the Gap could do against it.

  A Bizogot spotted the two horses coming back to the stone huts. He rode toward them. “Who’ve you got there?” he called.

  “A captive.” Hamnet stated the obvious.

  “It’s a woman!” The Bizogot was full of clever observations. “Did you bring her in for the sport of it?”

  “No, for questioning,” Ulric answered. “If she lies to us, then we can have fun with her. But if she tells the truth, she’s worth more for that.”