XXI
NOT EVERYONE WHO’D gone into the Golden Shrine wanted to leave so soon. Liv and Audun Gilli seemed to be learning things. So did Marcovefa. Trasamund and Runolf Skallagrim looked as if they were enjoying a safety they hadn’t known for too long. Ulric Skakki might have been a sponge; he was soaking up as much as he could. He might not be able to take away more than he’d brought, but he seemed ready to try.
Eyvind Torfinn, though, kept twisting like a man in pain. And Hamnet noted that the priests and priestesses seemed steadily less welcoming. The men and women in gold steered the strangers toward the doorway by which they’d come in. Gudrid came along with everyone else. She could walk, but not much more. Her eyes stayed blank. A thin, shiny line of spittle ran from the corner of her mouth down to her chin.
“May God keep you safe,” said the priestess who’d ensorcelled her.
“What
The priestess smiled at him as she opened the door. “Why, exactly what you think he is.”
That might have been true, but it wasn’t helpful. “Thank you so much,” Ulric said with a bow. His grin was wry.
“Happy to help,” the priestess answered sweetly. The adventurer laughed and spread his hands, owning himself beaten.
As soon as Gudrid walked outside, her face cleared. She looked around behind her. “Oh! The Golden Shrine!” she said. Then she went on toward her horse. Her interest in the place seemed to end right there. Hamnet Thyssen decided that the priestess had been merciful after all.
“Where do we go now?” Trasamund asked.
“Wherever we please. The Rulers are beaten,” Marcovefa said.
That was true . . . now. Would it stay true? How many more invaders would come through the Gap? What would happen when they did? Hamnet decided to worry about that when it happened . . . if it did.
For now, he had other things to worry about. “The priestess gave me a message to take to Sigvat. I don’t understand it, but she said he would. And so I need to go south. Anyone who wants to come with me is welcome—I’d be glad of the company. But I’ll go alone if I have to.”
“I’ll come,” Ulric said. “I want to see him get this message from the Golden Shrine. I don’t know how these people can be so sure he’ll understand it. He doesn’t understand much.”
“I will come with you, too,” Marcovefa said. “I have my reasons.” She didn’t explain what they were.
Hamnet didn’t press her about them. Instead, he asked, “Did you understand what the priestess told me?”
“No.” She shook her head. “From not just before the last time the Glaciers moved, but from the time before that?” Her eyes went wide with awe. “I had never dreamt of so deep a time.”
“Who would have? Who could have?” Hamnet said. “Only the folk here. I wonder if these are the same ones who saw that distant day.”
“Nothing about this place would surprise me any more. Nothing,” Marcovefa said. Count Hamnet nodded. He felt the same way.
His horse seemed happy enough to ride away from the Golden Shrine. It had no trouble staying on the narrow road that led from the Shrine to the former shore. The mud to either side of the road seemed as thick and wet and uninviting as it had when Hamnet rode out onto the lakebed toward the building from days gone by.
Trasamund looked over his shoulder. Hamnet understood the gesture—he not only understood it, in fact, but imitated it. In a low voice, Trasamund asked, “Do you think we’ll ever come back here?”
“Come back?” Hamnet started to laugh. “I never thought—I never dreamt—we’d come here once. I’ll worry about doing it again some other time.”
“Well, when you put it that way . . .” Trasamund also chuckled sheepishly. “I was looking at that wall of war mammoths. I was looking at the Rulers’ shamans out ahead of them. Meaning no disrespect to Marcovefa, but I thought I was a dead man. I thought we were all dead. I was angry, because I hadn’t got as much of my revenge as I wanted.”
“How far has that wall of water gone now?” Hamnet murmured. “How much has it carved up?”
“Probably just kept going till it smashed up against the mountains.” Trasamund pointed far off to the west. “Maybe there’s a new lake over there now. The clans that roam that part of the plain must be mighty surprised. Where’d all this water come from?” He mimed a surprised Bizogot very well.
“Are you riding south with me, or will you head back up toward the Gap?” Hamnet asked him.
“I’m with you for now,” Trasamund answered unhappily. “My clan is broken. One of these days, I may go back. With luck, we can keep more Rulers from coming down into our land. But that’s for another day, not this one. The Bizogots aren’t ready to try anything so grand.” He sighed. “My folk’s not really ready for anything.”
“And the Empire is?” Count Hamnet suspected there would be endless uprisings and revolts and attempted breakaways. All he wanted to do was stay clear of them. Whether he’d get what he wanted . . . he would just have to see.
A few of the Bizogots who’d stuck with the band rode off across the steppe on their own. With the Rulers crushed, they’d try to find a clan to which they could adhere. Or they might try to live on their own. Hamnet wouldn’t have wanted to try that, but the Bizogots knew this country more intimately than he ever could.
Off in the distance, a man on a riding deer saw strangers on horse back approaching and rode away from them as fast as his mount would take him. Not all the Rulers were dead, then. Well, that would have been too much to hope for. Most if not all of their wizards were. That mattered more than anything. The surviving warriors might make brigands, but brigands were a nuisance. They wouldn’t overrun the Bizogot steppe or overthrow Raumsdalia.
“I do wonder what those words mean,” Marcovefa said.
Hamnet wasn’t sorry to think about something besides the fall of empires. “So do I,” he answered.
HAD HAMNET BEEN coming north, the scraggly fields of oats and rye ahead wouldn’t have been worth noticing, much less talking about. Since he was riding south, out of the great dark forests that marked the Raumsdalian Empire’s northern border, those sad little fields took on more meaning.
“We’re back in the country where crops can grow,” he said, pointing toward the weedy green.
Ulric Skakki nodded. So did Runolf Skallagrim and Eyvind Torfinn and Audun Gilli. Raumsdalians themselves, they understood what that meant. North of these fields, people either brought grain up from where it would grow or did without, living by hunting and gathering like Bizogots.
“Back in civilization,” Earl Eyvind said, perhaps incautiously.
“Huh!” Trasamund said: a scornful sniff. “I didn’t see the Golden Shrine showing up in Raumsdalia.” Eyvind Torfinn opened his mouth, then closed it again. That might have been the wisest thing he could have done.
If it was civilization, it was no more than the ragged edge. The local farmers didn’t want to hang around and talk things over with men on horse back who carried weapons. They ran their livestock off into the woods. Pines and firs and spruces didn’t stop growing south of the forest line. It was only that other plants could claw out a foothold there along with them.
“They ought to know we aren’t Rulers. We don’t ride deer—or war mammoths, either,” Runolf said.
“Even if they know, it’s not obvious they’d care,” Ulric pointed out.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Baron Runolf had served the Empire his whole life, and took its inherent goodness for granted.
Ulric Skakki had also served it for many years. As far as Hamnet could see, Ulric took nothing for granted. “I’ll tell you what,” he said now. “It means they think Raumsdalians would be just as happy to plunder them as the Rulers would. And you know what else, Your Excellency? I’d bet they’re right.”
Runolf Skallagrim spluttered. “We are His Majesty’s soldiers, by God!”
“All the more reason to run, wouldn’t you say?” Ulric replied. Runolf spluttered some more. He looked to Hamnet for support. Hamnet had none to give him: he sided with Ulric here. Seeing as much, Baron Runolf eyed him as if he were in the habit of accosting young girls.
Hamnet sighed. Runolf was a decent sort. Men like him had been Raumsdalia’s backbone for generations. They had their limits, but within them were solid as iron. He’d been a man like that himself, till too much to do with Sigvat turned him into another kind of man altogether. Well, that was nobody’s fault but the Emperor’s. If Sigvat didn’t care for the kind of man Hamnet was now, he had only himself to blame.
Riding up alongside him, Ulric spoke in a low voice: “What do you suppose dear Sigvat will do after you give him the message from the Golden Shrine?”
“Depends on what it means,” Hamnet answered. “I feel like a seed that hasn’t sprouted, but I don’t know if I’m a lily or a stinkweed.”
“Well, Your Grace, I’ve got news for you,” Ulric said. “If those folks in the fancy gold robes have anything good to say about Sigvat—or to him—they’re dumber than I think they are.”
“Or maybe we’re dumber than they think we are, because we can’t see how wonderful Sigvat really is.” Hamnet Thyssen considered that. Then he shook his head. “No. I’m sorry, but no. I’ve been stupid all kinds of ways, but if I were
“I feel the same way,” Ulric said. “Of course, we could be wrong.”
“Yes. We could. I used to think the Glacier stretched north forever, so the Gap couldn’t melt all the way through.” Count Hamnet sighed. “Shows what I knew, didn’t it? But if Sigvat’s a good Emperor, if he’s done even a lead slug’s worth of good against the Rulers, I think I’ll go ride off and find a land somewhere that isn’t so wonderfully ruled.”
“Come up to the plains,” Trasamund boomed. “Even if you’re dark, you’d make a pretty fair Bizogot. I’m not trying to butter you up, either—I’ve said the same thing before.”
“So you have,” Hamnet agreed. “And maybe I will. Or maybe I’ll go way down into the south so I don’t have to think about the Glacier at all any more. Ulric here has seen more of that part of the world than I have.”
“Too hot’s as bad as too cold,” Ulric said. “Worse, maybe. When it’s too cold, you can put on more clothes or make a fire. When it’s too hot, what can you do? Sweat—that’s about it. And too hot will kill you just as easy as the Breath of God will.”
“Not too hot right now. Not too cold, either,” Hamnet said. “Let’s ride down toward Nidaros while the weather stays good.”
ON THEIR WAY to the capital, they skirted the badlands Hevring Lake had gouged out after its earthen dam broke. They rode across the rich cropland that had been lakebottom when the edge of the Glacier lay not far north.
“One of these days,” Eyvind Torfinn said, “wheat and barley may grow on the bed of Sudertorp Lake, around the Golden Temple.”
“That’s Bizogot country, by God,” Trasamund declared.
“It is now, yes,” Earl Eyvind said. “When the weather was colder, nomads roamed near Nidaros, too. Two thousand years ago, Nidaros was a hunting camp beside a meltwater lake. No one can say what the weather will be like two thousand years from now.”
