The Golden Shrine

by Harry Turtledove

  One thing at a time, he thought. First, beat the Rulers. Then worry about what comes after that.

  He knew when the invaders spotted his oncoming warriors. Some of them started shooting into the crowd of captives. Others swung swords. Still others rode out to face his men. One of them, plainly, was a wizard. He held up his hand, palm out, as if ordering the attackers to stop.

  Marcovefa laughed. Her left hand twisted in deft passes. Surprise seemed to radiate from the enemy wizard when he discovered his magic didn’t work the way he wanted it to. Marcovefa laughed again, louder.

  She reached out toward the Rulers’ wizard—and then she stopped laughing, because whatever spell she aimed at him didn’t work the way she wanted it to, either. He stayed on his riding deer and aimed more magic at the Raumsdalians and Bizogots.

  That also failed. He and Marcovefa seemed able to stymie each other, but no more. Hamnet wondered what Marcovefa thought of that. He knew what he would have thought of it: nothing good. How anxious was she about being able to work magic? As anxious as a man who had trouble rising for his woman? That was the only comparison that occurred to the thoroughly unsorcerous Raumsdalian noble. When it did, he wished it hadn’t. Worrying about rising to the occasion only made you less likely to rise the next time.

  Then Marcovefa gestured again—this time, Count Hamnet judged, angrily. And the Rulers’ wizard threw up both hands, as if he were shot. He clutched at his chest. A moment later, he fell over. And, a moment after that, all the Rulers’ bows and arrows caught fire. Their swords suddenly seemed as limp as if they would never do their women any good again.

  If his weapons failed in his hand, Hamnet knew what he would do: he’d run away. What else could you do, with no hope of fighting back? The Rulers seemed to come to the same conclusion. They rode off toward the south. A few of their captives had the wit and spirit to throw rocks after them, but Hamnet didn’t see that they hit anyone.

  As soon as the Rulers were out of rock range, the rescued Raumsdalians turned and welcomed the army that had saved them. The sad irony was that it hadn’t saved all of them, but it had saved most. Here and there, someone wept because a spouse had died or got badly wounded at the last instant before freedom returned. Hamnet didn’t know what he could do about that.

  And then his head came up, suddenly and sharply. Someone in the crowd of captives was calling his name. Two someones, in fact: a man and a woman. “No,” he said softly, for the voices were familiar. They called again. They waved, even more insistently than a lot of the other Raumsdalians. They were filthy and haggard and scrawny, but he recognized them anyhow. “No,” he said again, and covered his eyes with the heels of his hands.

  Eyvind Torfinn went on shouting and waving. So did Gudrid.

  “I’LL KISS YOU, if you want me to,” Gudrid said. “By God, I’ll kiss you and I’ll mean it, too.”

  “If it please you, Your Grace, I’ll kiss you,” Earl Eyvind added.

  “Don’t do me any favors,” Hamnet said—to which of them, he wasn’t quite sure. He was sure he wished he had something stronger than water in the tin canteen he wore on his left hip.

  “Aren’t you lucky?” Ulric Skakki murmured.

  “No, curse it,” Hamnet answered. “As far as I’m concerned, the Rulers were bloody well welcome to Gudrid. As for Eyvind Torfinn . . .” He shrugged. He couldn’t make himself dislike the scholarly earl, even if Eyvind was married to his former wife.

  “There? You see?” Ulric sounded amused. That only made Hamnet Thyssen want to hit him.

  “Have you got any food?” Eyvind asked. “Anything at all? We’ve been empty a long time.”

  “Horse meat. Venison from riding deer. Maybe a little mutton. Some mammoth meat. It’s not too fresh, but it’s what we have,” Hamnet answered. He tried not to look at Gudrid. It wasn’t easy.

  Earl Eyvind bowed low. “Whatever you can spare. God knows we aren’t fussy, not now.” A rich noble in Nidaros, he would have had every chance and every excuse to be fussy before. His shudder now said he might have eaten worse things than stale mammoth meat. Eating nothing, for instance, was much worse than that.

  Seeing the sorry state the rescued captives were in, Raumsdalians and Bizogots started feeding them. Seeing the sorry state Hamnet Thyssen was in, Ulric handed him a skin and said, “Here. Drink this.”

  Expecting sour ale or maybe even smetyn, Count Hamnet did. Smooth, strong wine slid down his throat. He eyed Ulric with respect. “Where did you find this?”

  “Oh, somewhere along the way,” the adventurer said airily.

  “Do you mind if I—?” Hamnet nodded toward Eyvind Torfinn.

  “Go ahead. You do know he’ll give it to Gudrid next, don’t you?” Ulric said.

  “Yes, I know that.” Hamnet’s voice was rough as a rasp. He shrugged, as if to say, What can you do? Then he leaned down and handed Earl Eyvind the wineskin. The other noble caught the rich bouquet. A broad, astonished smile spread across his haggard face. It got broader yet after he swigged. Then, sure enough, he passed it to Gudrid.

  She eyed Hamnet. “I don’t suppose you’d slip hemlock in there and poison Eyvind just for the sake of getting me,” she said, her tone declaring that she didn’t really suppose any such thing.

  “Don’t blame me for the games you’d play yourself,” Count Hamnet replied, even more harshly than before. “If you want to drink, drink. If you don’t, give the skin to someone else who can use it.” Plenty of sorry-looking people were eyeing it with jealous, zealous attention.

  Gudrid drank. He’d been sure she would. She tried to provoke him as automatically as she breathed. After blotting the ruby wine from her lips, she handed the skin back to Eyvind Torfinn, as if to claim it for their own. Eyvind had better sense. He gave it to the haggard Raumsdalian hanging over his left shoulder.

  “God bless you, friend,” the haggard man said, and drank deep. Then he passed the wineskin to a woman beside him.

  Ulric Skakki, meanwhile, gave Earl Eyvind a chunk of meat and Gudrid another. They both tore into it raw. They’d traveled up in the Bizogot country and even beyond the Gap. They could live rough if they had to. They were used to better things, though.

  “Where did the Rulers catch you?” Hamnet asked.

  Before answering, Earl Eyvind had to gulp down an enormous mouthful of meat. Hamnet was amazed not to see his throat swell like a snake’s when he did it. “South of here,” Eyvind said once the way internal was clear. He took another big bite and choked it down before adding, “We never expected to see you here—not that we’re sorry we did.”

  “We’re doing what we can,” Hamnet Thyssen said. “I don’t know if it will be enough, but we’re trying.”

  Gudrid was eating as greedily as Eyvind. Wine and meat seemed to distract her from Hamnet, at least for the moment. Just as well ran through his mind.

  Per Anders asked Eyvind, “Is the Emperor still safe?”

  “Who cares?” Ulric Skakki murmured, but the imperial courier plainly did.

  “He was the last time we saw him,” Earl Eyvind replied. “That was . . . some little while ago, though. As far as I know, he isn’t in this sad herd of people.”

  Count Hamnet tried to imagine Sigvat II, Emperor of Raumsdalia, shambling along in the midst of so many other captives. He tried to imagine the Emperor sleeping on the ground and grubbing up roots and insects like any other unfortunate. The picture made him want to smile. Maybe he was small-spirited, to relish the idea of someone else’s misfortune. If he was, he would just have to live with it.

  “What are you going to do with us?” Gudrid asked after some fairly monumental swallowing of her own.

  What she really meant, of course, was, What are you going to do with me? She thought of herself first, last, and always. But Hamnet answered the question the way she asked it: “Anyone who wants to fight the Rulers is welcome to join us. We have a few extra horses and some spare weapons.”

  Neither white-bearded Eyvind Torfinn nor deco
rative Gudrid made a likely warrior. “And the rest?” she persisted.

  “I don’t know,” Hamnet said. “I’ll have to talk with Trasamund and Ulric and Runolf and Audun and Liv and Marcovefa.”

  “Liv. Marcovefa.” Gudrid didn’t try to disguise either her disdain or her amusement.

  “That’s right.” Hamnet did his best to ignore them both. “We have to send you toward a place where you’re likely to get food. Figuring out where to find a place like that may not be easy.”

  “You can’t send us away!” Gudrid’s voice went shrill. To Hamnet’s amazement, she came up with a reason he shouldn’t: “Eyvind knows more about the Rulers than anybody else from this side of the Glacier.”

  “Well, so he does,” Count Hamnet admitted, deciding he couldn’t very well deny it. “But what’s that got to do with you? We may need him, but how are you going to help us drive the Rulers back through the Gap? The farther away from trouble you go, the better for everybody. You’ll even be safer somewhere away from the fighting. You won’t need to worry so much about starving, either.”

  “Eyvind won’t help you unless I’m with him.” Gudrid turned to her current husband. “Will you?” she asked ominously.

  “If ground sloths and glyptodonts rose up against the Rulers, I would gladly help them right now,” Eyvind Torfinn replied.

  Gudrid’s jaw dropped—she wasn’t expecting mutiny from that quarter. Earl Eyvind was even more pliable than Hamnet had been back in the days when he was wed to her. Hearing him tell her no almost made her former husband laugh out loud.

  “I’m not going anywhere without you,” Gudrid declared when she’d recovered somewhat. “You need someone to take care of you, and you know it.” To Hamnet Thyssen’s disappointment, that held a measure of truth.

  “I expect I can manage,” Earl Eyvind said. “Whether you believe it or not, I’m not entirely helpless.”

  “That’s what you think.” Gudrid hardly bothered to hide her scorn.

  Marcovefa ambled over. Gudrid eyed her the way a bird might eye a snake. Marcovefa paid next to no attention to Gudrid, not at first. She pointed toward Eyvind Torfinn. “We need him.”

  “You have me,” Eyvind said.

  Hamnet waited for Marcovefa to dismiss Gudrid. He waited, as he knew, with more than a little anticipation. Gudrid had a knack for ignoring him and getting under his skin like a tick. She did not have the knack for outfacing Marcovefa. As far as Hamnet knew, nobody did.

  Marcovefa pointed at Gudrid. Gudrid flinched, then made a good, game try at pretending she hadn’t. “We need you, too,” declared the shaman from atop the Glacier.

  “What?” Gudrid sounded as if she couldn’t believe her ears.

  “What?” Hamnet Thyssen knew only too well that he couldn’t believe his.

  “We need her, too,” Marcovefa said. Then she spoke directly to Gudrid again: “We do need you, too.” She shook her head. “Doesn’t anybody listen to anything any more?”

  “Why in God’s name do we need her?” Count Hamnet demanded. “She isn’t worth . . . anything.”

  “That’s not what you used to think,” Gudrid said with a smile all the more provoking because it was so sweet.

  “Well, I know better now,” Hamnet replied. “You taught me—the hard way.”

  Marcovefa ignored their sniping. “I don’t know why we need her. I only know we do.” She eyed Count Hamnet. “Do you want to tell me you know these things better than I do?”

  Hamnet wanted nothing more. Unfortunately, he couldn’t. “No, but—”

  “But me no buts.” Marcovefa sounded as imperious—and as imperial—as Sigvat II. “If you do not believe me, ask Audun Gilli. Ask Liv. They will tell you the same.”

  Asking them was the last thing Count Hamnet wanted to do. No—it was the next to last thing he wanted to do. Keeping Gudrid with them was the last thing, the very last thing. “By God, I will!” he growled, and stormed off.

  He found Liv before Audun. That made things worse, but not worst. “What is it?” she asked as he approached with determined stride.

  He told her exactly what it was. “Does Marcovefa know what she’s talking about?” he asked. “Can she know? Can’t we get rid of Gudrid?” The last question was the one that really mattered to him.

  “Marcovefa . . . knows all kinds of things,” Liv said slowly. “Sometimes she knows without even knowing how she knows. I could do a divination to see if she is right here.”

  “Would you?” Hamnet hated how eager he sounded, but couldn’t help it.

  “Yes.” Liv gave him a crooked smile. “I suppose I should be grateful you’re not asking whether we can do without me.”

  “You hurt me,” Hamnet answered, as steadily as he could. “But you didn’t hurt me because you enjoyed hurting me. There’s a difference. How complicated is your divination?”

  “Not very. Questions with yes or no answers usually aren’t.” She took from her pouch a small disk of shining white stone, pierced near the edge. “Moonstone,” she said, threading a thong through the small hole.

  “What is the magic?” Hamnet asked.

  “I ask whether Gudrid should stay with us, then let the stone fall down over my heart,” Liv answered. “If she should, it will stay close to my skin. If she should not, it will leap away.”

  “Seems simple enough,” he said.

  She nodded and began chanting in the Bizogot language. She wasn’t exactly asking the question, or not in so many words. Hamnet judged that she was priming the moonstone, so to speak, so it would do the asking for her. Then she put the thong over her head and let the stone fall down between her breasts. Though she showed next to none of herself in the doing, Hamnet had to look away. He still remembered how his head had lain there. . . .

  “Well?” he asked roughly.

  Liv’s half-smile said she knew he wanted to reach inside her tunic to find out whether the moonstone disk was clinging to her. Gudrid would have worn a half-smile, too, but hers would have been full of sardonic triumph as well. Liv’s was, if anything, sympathetic.

  And so was her voice when she said, “I am sorry, Hamnet, but the magic tells me Marcovefa was right.”

  “Damnation!” Hamnet Thyssen burst out. “She can’t be! God knows Gudrid is nothing but trouble.”

  “Gudrid is trouble,” Liv agreed gravely. “But I would have to say she is not nothing but trouble. If she were, the spell would tell me Marcovefa had made a mistake. I don’t think she has.”

  “Damnation!” Hamnet repeated. He turned on his heel and shambled off, feeling almost as betrayed as he had when Liv left him for Audun Gilli. The idea of keeping Gudrid around tempted him to sit down on the ground somewhere and slit his wrists. The certainty that his former wife would laugh if he did was one of the things that kept him from drawing dagger or sword.

  Marcovefa had no trouble reading his face when he walked up to her. “You see? We do need the stupid vole after all.”

  That made Gudrid splutter, which gave Hamnet a certain somber satisfaction. Ulric Skakki turned away before smiling. Trasamund laughed out loud, which won him a venomous stare from Gudrid. He’d enjoyed her charms in days gone by. She didn’t like it when someone else was as faithless and heartless to her as she was to her former lovers.

  Hamnet was too stubborn to give up easily. “Give me one good reason why we need Gudrid,” he said.

  “Because I tell you so,” Marcovefa answered. “Somewhere later”—her gesture encompassed all the time from the next instant to the moment when the Glacier melted away for good—“it will be better if we have her than if she is off doing mischief somewhere else.”

  “What do you mean, doing mischief?” Yes, Gudrid was irate, too. “I don’t do mischief. I do what I have to do.” Count Hamnet laughed at that. So did Ulric. So did Trasamund, raucously. Gudrid looked daggers at each of them in turn.

  “I mean what I say,” Marcovefa told her. “I don’t waste my time and everybody else’s with a pack of lies the
way you do.”

  Gudrid took a deep breath, no doubt intending to deny it. Something in Marcovefa’s face made her keep her mouth shut. If she lied about lying, Marcovefa could give her the lie. That convoluted logic brought a smile to Hamnet’s face. His smile made Gudrid steam. He’d had things happen that he liked less.

  “Well. It is decided then,” Eyvind Torfinn said. Maybe a lot of what had just gone and had flown over his head. Or maybe he was willing to pretend it had for the sake of peace and quiet. And maybe that wasn’t the worst idea in the world. Maybe they all needed to do more of it.

  “Yes,” Hamnet said, and he couldn’t help sighing. “It is decided.”

  ULRIC SKAKKI LOOKED at the trees. He looked at the sky. He looked down at the scarred backs of his hands. Then he looked over at Hamnet Thyssen, who was riding next to him. “Ever have the feeling something’s about to go wrong, but you don’t know what?”

  “Now and then,” Hamnet answered. “Not soon enough, usually.”

  “Well, we can all say that,” Ulric told him. “I’ve got it now—curse me if I don’t. Feels like something crawling on the back of my neck . . . and no, it’s not a stinking louse. It’s more like what I felt up by Sudertorp Lake.”

  “I didn’t say it was a louse. But why are you telling me? Tell Marcovefa. Maybe she can do something about it.”

  “There you go!” The adventurer laughed cheerily. “You see? You’re not always as foolish as you seem.”

  Hamnet bowed in the saddle. “Be careful, or you’ll turn my head, or maybe my stomach, with flattery like that.”

  “Maybe both at once, so you can be sick down your own back. I do believe I’d pay money to watch that.” Ulric Skakki raised his voice: “Marcovefa?”

  “What do you want, you noisy man?” she asked.

  “That’s me,” Ulric agreed, not without pride. “I thought you ought to know I have the bad feeling we’re running into trouble.”

  “Oh, you do, do you? Again?” Even though Ulric had been right before, Marcovefa didn’t sound particularly impressed. She wasn’t mocking, but she wasn’t convinced, either. “Why do you say that?”