"That was-bravely done," Hamnet whispered, not wanting to disturb its flight in anyway. "Bravely done!"
"My thanks," Liv whispered back. She let out a long, weary, fog-filled breath. "He is very strong. He almost slipped free of my magic four or five times, even as an owl. As a man … I don't know if I could stand against him as a man. This should have been easy, and it was anything but."
"You did it. What else matters?" Hamnet Thyssen was determined to look on the bright side. That felt strange for him, but it was true.
"Nothing else matters-now," Liv answered. "But if we see the Rulers again . . . When we see the Rulers again . . . How strong they are matters a lot."
He couldn't tell her she was wrong, for she plainly wasn't. "The way you sent Samoth off makes it less likely we'll see them anytime soon," he said. "It may mean we won't see them at all."
"I doubt that," the Bizogot shaman said. "What I wonder is whether he'll stay fooled, whether he'll believe the weather was bad or hell realize he had a spell put on him. If he does realize I used magic against him, will he know how close his owl-self came to breaking free?" She sighed again, even more deeply than before. "Nothing is ever simple, however much we wish it would be."
Count Hamnet nodded; he couldn't argue there, either. But he said, "You did everything you could. It all worked, every bit of it. Be proud of that." He put his arm around her.
She leaned against him for a little while, drawing strength or at least consolation from his touch. Then she straightened and took her weight on her own feet again. "I am," she said. "But it should have worked better. It should have worked easier."
Hamnet Thyssen almost did argue with her then. At the very end, he held his tongue. He recognized that drive to have everything come out perfect, and the gnawing sense of dissatisfaction when any tiny little detail didn't. He had it himself. If anyone had told him not to worry so much, what would he have done? Ignored the advice and probably lost his temper. Why wouldn't Liv do the same? No reason at all, not that he could see. And so he kept quiet.
When the travelers rode south the next morning, Audun Gilli had the oddest expression on his face. He rode up alongside of Count Hamnet and asked, "Did anything strange happen in the nighttime?"
"Strange? What do you mean?" Hamnet couldn't have sounded more innocent if he'd worked at it for a year.
"I had the oddest dream," Audun said. "I was flying. I was a bird of some kind, not a flying man, the way you can be in dreams. I know I was a bird, because I looked down and saw myself. I don't know how I could, though, because it was night in the dream. But I did. And then-then I didn't. Then everything was all confused, as if I couldn't see at all. And I was flying away as fast as I could. But do you know what the oddest thing was?"
"No," Hamnet Thyssen said gravely. "You're about to tell me, though, aren't you?"
"The oddest thing was"-Audun Gilli ignored, or more likely didn't notice, his irony-"that in the middle of all this, your Grace, I somehow shook hands with you. Isn't that peculiar?"
"Yes, that is peculiar," Hamnet said. The wizard's occult senses, whatever they were, must have picked up some of what Liv was doing. But Audun never fully woke, and so had only a dreamer's confused notions of what had happened.
Audun sent him a quizzical look-or maybe a look a little more than quizzical. "You don't seem surprised by what I tell you."
"Nothing you tell me ever surprises me," Count Hamnet said-let Audun make of that what he would.
The wizard scratched his head. "When we get back to Nidaros, I will buy myself scented soap and a tub of hot water," he said. "And then . .." He didn't go on, not with words, but his smile was blissful.
"Sounds good to me," Hamnet said, nodding. "Buy one more thing while you're at it."
"What's that?" Audun Gilli asked.
"A brush with at least medium-strong bristles," Hamnet answered. "We've been up here a long time, and the soap will need some help."
"You're right." Now Audun nodded, as if making sure he would remember. "I'll do that." Hardly noticing, he went on scratching.
Watching him made Hamnet scratch, too, the way someone else yawning might make him do the same. And once he started scratching, he also went right on. "You wizards don't have a sorcerous cure for bugs, eh?" he said.
"Not one that does much good," Audun Gilli said mournfully. "If we did, we'd be richer than we are, I'll tell you that."
Hamnet Thyssen scratched some more-thoughtfully at first, and then just because scratching felt good. "Speaking of rich . . . Meaning no offense, but Ulric Skakki found you in the gutter. How do you aim to buy your soap and your soak and your brush?"
Now Audun Gilli looked appalled. "Won't the Emperor pay us, reward us, for going beyond the Glacier in his name?"
"Well, I don't know." Hamnet made his hand stop scratching, lest he rub himself raw. It wasn't easy. He went on, "He may think we can live on fame." He could himself. Eyvind Torfinn could, easily. Jesper Fletti and the other guardsmen would go back to the duty they'd had before setting out. Ulric Skakki? Count Hamnet didn't know how much Ulric had stashed away, but Ulric was enough like a cat to be able to land on his feet no matter what happened.
Audun Gilli. . . wasn't. "I hope you're wrong," he said in what had to be one of the most desperately tense understatements of all time. "Times were . . . hard for me before I started this journey."
"I know," Hamnet said. "No matter what, you have a story people will want to hear, likely a story people will pay to hear. That will help you carry on your trade, too. You'll be a known man, even a famous man."
"Do you think that will stop me from ending up in the gutter again?" Audun asked. It was a serious question; he sounded as if he really wanted to know.
"Well, I can't answer that. Only you can," Hamnet Thyssen said. "If you can't keep yourself out of the gutter, who else will?"
"I suppose you're right." Audun Gilli sighed, almost as wearily as Liv had the night before. "I don't know whether it's good news or bad, though. Well, I expect I'll find out." As the Bizogot shaman's had, his breath filled the air with fog.
The travelers hadn't left winter behind. The wind didn't howl so hard on this side of the Glacier, but the cold still reached into Hamnet Thyssen's bones in spite of the furs that muffled him.
"Before long, we should run into bands of my folk and their herds," Trasamund said. "It will good to see my clansmen's faces again. It will be good to see the faces of the women, too," he added in a different tone of voice. Gudrid's back stiffened.
They started to run low on meat. Things might have got serious if they hadn't come upon a herd of musk oxen. Ulric Skakki slew one bull with an arrow through the eye, a perfect shot that dropped the big beast in its tracks.
"You couldn't do that again in a hundred years," Jesper Fletti said as they started the gory job of butchery.
Ulric studied him with a mild and speculative gaze. "Would you like me to try?" he asked in a voice so mild that no one could possibly take offense at it. Despite that mildness, Jesper was quick to shake his head. Maybe he didn't think Ulric was talking about shooting musk oxen. Hamnet Thyssen certainly didn't.
They gorged themselves on the meat once they cut it off the bones. People needed much more food in this climate just to fight the cold. Hamnet Thyssen was amazed at how much half-scorched, half-raw flesh he put away. It was as if he were doing hard physical labor even while only riding. When he actually did have to work hard … he needed even more.
The horses were in worse shape than their riders. They had trouble finding enough fodder under the snow. When one of them went down and would not rise, Trasamund knocked it over the head. The travelers butchered it as they'd butchered the musk ox. Hamnet had eaten horse before after similar misfortunes. It was chewy, almost gluey, but ever so much better than nothing.
Chewing-and chewing, and chewing-Eyvind Torfinn smiled wryly. "I don't believe my cook down in Nidaros has any recipes for this particular meat."
"I hope h
e doesn't," Gudrid said.
"It may not be wonderful food," Ulric Skakki said, "but any food is better than going hungry."
"All Bizogots know this, for we know how hard life can be when winter clamps down," Trasamund said. "I was not sure a man from the south, where you have bread and grain as a cushion against bad times, would understand it."
"I've been hungry a time or two, your Ferocity," Ulric answered. "Believe me, having food is better."
"To food!" Trasamund said. "A toast I will make in earnest when I can."
After they ate, they rode. Hamnet Thyssen had never spent so much time in the saddle before this journey. He wondered if he was growing bowlegged, the better to fit his shape to the horse's. He also wondered how long he would be able to go on riding. If the horses kept getting weaker, he and the other travelers might have to dismount and lead them. They might have to slaughter them one by one. The thought of more meals like the one he'd just eaten did not appeal. He patted the side of his mount's neck.
"Sizing up how tender the beast will be when the time comes to roast it?" Ulric Skakki asked.
"God, don't listen to this man!" Hamnet Thyssen exclaimed.
Ulric laughed. "Can't say as I blame you. Not the finest supper I've ever got down. But swallowing anything is better than not."
"Some people will certainly swallow anything," Count Hamnet said.
That drew another laugh from Ulric Skakki. "You're in a cheerful mood, aren't you, your Grace?" These days, he used Hamnet s title only for sardonic effect. They'd all traveled too far with one another for the formalities to matter any more.
"No." Hamnet wasn't laughing. "We've come an awfully long way. I'd hate to see us fall just short of getting back to … to Trasamund's clan." He almost said, Back to civilization. No matter how far he'd come, no matter what he'd seen, he wasn't about to confuse the way the Bizogots lived with civilization.
By Ulric Skakki's mischievous grin, he had a pretty good notion of what Count Hamnet didn't say. With his pointed nose and narrow, foxy eyes, he was good at sniffing his way past all kinds of deceptions and evasions. "Better to have the Bizogots with us than against us," he said, and Count Hamnet could hardly quarrel with that. Then, looking even more sly than usual, Ulric added, "You've got one Bizogot on your side, all right."
Hamnet refused to rise to the bait. "You already teased me about that. If you do it over and over again, people will say you're boring."
"People? What do people know?" Ulric said. "Or did you mean the Rulers? They know everything-and if you don't believe me, you can bloody well ask them."
"I don't want to ask them anything. I hope I never see them again." Ham-net Thyssen feared that was a forlorn hope.
"Now that you mention it, so do I." But Ulric sounded no more hopeful than Hamnet. He looked to the east and to the west. The Glacier still loomed tall on both horizons, but a broad expanse of land lay between the two walls of ice-the Gap was widening out. Then Ulric Skakki stared south. "I never want to see the Rulers again, no, but I wouldn't mind meeting a Bizogot besides our ferocious jarl and the admittedly charming Liv."
"Neither would I," Hamnet allowed. "We're far enough south that we could any day now."
"There is some small difference between could and will," Ulric said. "You may perhaps have noticed."
"Why, no." Hamnet tried to play the game of irony himself. "Explain it to me, if you'd be so kind."
One of Ulric's gingery eyebrows rose. "I could say you're being difficult. I will say you're doing it on purpose."
"Very neat," Hamnet said with a mounted bow. "You should be a scholar."
"Thank you, but no," Ulric Skakki said. "No silver in it."
"Oh, I don't know. Look at Earl Eyvind." Hamnet Thyssen did look at him. Eyvind Torfinn was talking earnestly with Gudrid. For the moment, playing a subdued, demure wife seemed to suit her.
Ulric Skakki shook his head. "Earl Eyvind had silver before he decided he wanted to be a scholar. He's a scholar in spite of his money, not because of it."
"Well, not altogether," Hamnet said. "The silver he's got lets him do what he pleases. He wouldn't be able to buy his books and learn his lore without it."
"I suppose so," Ulric said. "But he isn't the kind of scholar I had in mind, anyway. I meant the hole-and-corner kind, the ones who have to stuff a rag into the toe of their felt boots in wintertime because they can't afford to patch them. That sort is good enough to teach boys how to read and write and count, but not for much more."
"Plenty of them around," Count Hamnet agreed. "They call themselves scholars, but I'm not sure how many other people do."
Ulric Skakki surely said something in reply. Whatever it was, Count Hamnet didn't hear it. His eyes went to an owl flying past the travelers from out of the north, white and swift and strong. Samoth? Hamnet's heart pounded. No wizard himself, he couldn't tell. His gaze went to Liv. She noticed him no more than he'd heard Ulric. All her attention pursued the bird till it streaked out of sight to the south.
Only then did she turn in the saddle and look for him. Even before she spoke, he saw the relief lighting her fine features. "Sometimes a white owl is only a white owl," she called.
"A good thing, too," Hamnet answered. They smiled at each other.
"Sometimes I think I don't know everything that's going on," Ulric Skakki said in tones full of mock self-pity.
Count Hamnet reached out and set a consoling hand on his arm. "Don't worry about it. Sometimes I don't think you know what's going on, either."
"Thank you. Thank you so much," Ulric said. Hamnet waved modestly.
On they went, farther and farther south. Another horse died, and another. They cut up the animals and ate them. The meat was strong-flavored and there wasn't a great deal of it; the horses had got very scrawny before finally failing.
"Do you think we'll make it?" Jesper Fletti asked Hamnet. The guards officer had never been up in the north before this journey. All things considered, he'd acquitted himself well enough. Hamnet Thyssen could … almost forget that he'd come along to protect Gudrid.
"I think so," Hamnet answered. "We can't be far from outriders from the Three Tusk clan. I would have guessed we'd run into them already, truth to tell." That they hadn't worried him, though he didn't say so. Had some disaster befallen Trasamund's clan while the jarl journeyed beyond the Glacier? That was the worst kind of bad news he could imagine.
The words were hardly out of his mouth, the thought hardly through his head, before Trasamund let out a bellow that might have come from the throat of a bull musk ox. That dot on the southern horizon was a mounted man, and he was riding toward them.
XV
Seeing a new face, hearing a new voice, felt strange to Count Hamnet. The Rulers hardly counted. Most of them hadn't spoken the Bizogot language, and the ones who did showed themselves to be outright enemies. Hilderic wasn't. He and Trasamund kissed each other on both cheeks in the usual greeting of Bizogots who hadn't seen each other for a longtime.
"By God, your Ferocity!" Hilderic said. "By God! It's good to see you! You've been gone a long time. Some people were starting to wonder if you'd ever come back."
"Oh, they were, were they?" the jarl said. "I'm not so easy to get rid of as all that, and they'd best believe I'm not. Who are these fools who have no faith in Trasamund?"
Hilderic suffered a sudden coughing fit. "Uh, that is … Well. . . You see . . ."
Trasamund laughed. "All right. Never mind. You don't need to tell me. I can understand that you don't want a name as a snitch. But I'll find out sooner or later-have no fear of that. And when I do, I'll make those doubters pay." He thumped his chest with a mittened fist. "Yes, / will take care of them. You don't need to worry about it."
"May it be as you say, your Ferocity," Hilderic replied. Hamnet Thyssen and Ulric Skakki exchanged covert smiles. Trasamund always saw himself as larger than life. Because he did, he could make other people see him the same way most of the time. Hilderic, though plainly a seasoned
man, certainly did.
Liv worried less about how important other people thought she was and more about things that really mattered. "Where is the camp you rode out of, Hilderic?" she asked. "We've traveled long and hard. We aren't at the end of our tether, but we aren't far from it, either."
"It's not far, lady," Hilderic said. Then he stopped and blinked. The face of every traveler who understood the Bizogot language must have lit up. Hamnet Thyssen knew how happy he was. Hilderic went on, "The guesting will be good, too. The herds have done well through the summer and into fall."
"Lead on!" Trasamund boomed.
Hamnet soon found that something he already knew remained true- what a Bizogot meant by not far was different from what a Raumsdalian would have meant. But they did reach the encampment just before darkness fell. Hamnet wondered whether he'd ever seen anything more beautiful than those black mammoth-hide tents.
Bizogots swarmed out of the tents to greet the travelers. "Welcome back!" they shouted. "Welcome home!" It was home only to Trasamund and Liv, but none of the Raumsdalians complained or contradicted. These tents might not be home, but they came much closer than the endless expanse of wilderness the travelers had crossed.
The Bizogots slaughtered and butchered a plump young musk ox. Spit flooded into Hamnet Thyssen's mouth. Trasamund scooped out a handful of the raw brains and ate it, blood running down into his beard. Hamnet did the same. He'd learned to tolerate the Bizogot delicacy on his first trip up beyond the tree line, years earlier. On this trip, he'd learned to enjoy it. And he was hungry enough now to find it delicious beyond compare.
Ulric Skakki took some of the brains, too. "Always glad when my stomach is smarter than my head," he said.
"Mine is most of the time, I think," Hamnet said, licking his lips.
None of the other Raumsdalians wanted anything to do with raw brains, though Liv came up to eat some. Trasamund clapped Hamnet and Ulric on the back in turn-gingerly, for his hands were still sore. "By God, the two of you make pretty fair Bizogots," he said.
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