That was less palatable than juicy musk-ox meat. “I wish you didn’t make so much sense,” Hamnet said.
Ulric only shrugged. “If you don’t like the answers, don’t ask the questions.”
Hamnet Thyssen sighed. “I don’t like the answers. Who would? But I needed to hear them.”
“Well, there you are, then,” Ulric said. “Now you’ve heard them. I don’t think the Rulers will get here before we finish breakfast—at least if we hurry.” He bit another chunk of meat off the rib. Ears burning, Hamnet ate some more, too.
“We need to send out patrols,” Trasamund said in his usual tone of brooking no arguments. “If the Rulers are moving to the north and south, we need to know about it.”
“Suppose they’re going around the west end of Sudertorp Lake.” Ulric Skakki liked arguments, brooked or not. “What do we do then?”
Trasamund scowled. “Why would their wizards meet here if their main route runs around the other end of the lake?” he demanded.
“Well, you’ve got something there,” Ulric said. “How much, I don’t know, but something.”
The jarl gave him a sardonic bow. “More than I expected from you, by God. You never admit you’re wrong, do you?”
Hamnet could have told him that was the wrong thing to say to Ulric. He didn’t need to; Ulric proved quite capable of demonstrating it on his own: “When I am wrong, I don’t have any trouble admitting I am—unlike some people I could name. The difference is, I’m not wrong very often, so naturally you wouldn’t have heard me talk about it much.”
“You are a funny man,” Trasamund rumbled. “Funny as my nightmares.”
“Really? Let me take a look.” Ulric Skakki ambled over and peered into the Bizogot’s left ear. He started to laugh. “You’re right. That is a funny one in there.”
Cursing, Trasamund cuffed him—or tried. Ulric caught his arm before the blow landed, caught it and twisted. Trasamund let out a startled grunt of pain. When he tried to get away, Ulric twisted harder. “You’ll break it if you do much more,” Trasamund said. Hamnet admired how calmly he brought out the words.
“That’s the idea,” Ulric answered. “When you go hitting people who didn’t hit you, you can’t look for them to like it. Well, maybe you can, but you’ll be disappointed.”
“Let go of me, and I’ll cut you in half,” Trasamund snarled.
Ulric gave back a merry laugh. “You really know how to get a man to do what you want, don’t you, Your Ferocity?”
“What do you expect me to say?” the Bizogot asked.
“How about, ‘Sorry, Skakki. Now I know better than to talk to people with my fist’? That ought to do it.” Ulric jerked on Trasamund’s arm a little more. Something in there creaked. Count Hamnet heard it plainly.
Despite Trasamund’s courage, his face went gray. He choked out the words Ulric Skakki wanted to hear. The adventurer let him go and jumped back in case he still showed fight. Trasamund didn’t, not right away. He worked his wrist to make sure it wasn’t broken after all. Once satisfied of that, he managed a glare. “I’ll pay you back for that one day, Skakki,” he growled.
“You’re welcome to try,” Ulric said politely. “But would you give any man leave to hit you for a joke?”
“No man has leave to hit me, no matter why,” Trasamund said.
“Then why did you think you had leave to hit me?” Ulric asked.
“Because he was doing the hitting, not taking the blow,” Hamnet Thyssen said when the Bizogot didn’t answer right away.
That won
“Better that than sticking your foot in your face,” Hamnet observed.
Trasamund looked blank for a moment. Hamnet realized he’d translated a Raumsdalian phrase into the Bizogot’s language. Then the jarl got it. His hand went over his shoulder so he could draw his great blade. But he winced when his fingers closed on the leather-wrapped hilt. The wrist still pained him. Maybe it even made him thoughtful. He let his hand drop, contenting himself with saying, “Your time will come, too.”
“I don’t doubt it. Everyone’s does,” Hamnet agreed. “But I hope it doesn’t come at your hands. That would mean we’re fighting each other, not the Rulers.”
Trasamund chewed on that. By his expression, he didn’t care for the taste. “Well, you’re right,” he said at last: an astonishing admission from any Bizogot, and doubly astonishing from him. Then he added, “But once they’re whipped, don’t think I’ve forgotten about you.”
Count Hamnet bowed. “Once the Rulers are whipped, Your Ferocity, I will meet you wherever you please. I will meet you here. I will meet you down in Nidaros. I will meet you in the doorway to the Golden Shrine, if that tickles your fancy.”
“The doorway to the Golden Shrine, is it?” Trasamund threw back his head and laughed. “By God, your Grace, you’re on! Once we beat the Rulers, I’ll cut your heart out in the doorway to the Golden Shrine.” He held out his hand. “Bargain?”
“I’ll meet you there, surely.” Hamnet Thyssen clasped with him. “As Ulric says, you’re welcome to try. You may get a surprise, though—and if you do, it may be your last one.”
“I’m not afraid of you. I’m not afraid of Skakki, either,” Trasamund said. “You can go on about surprises as much as you want. Death is always the last surprise.”
Ulric threw his hands in the air. “When a Bizogot jarl gets philosophical on you, it’s time to go do something else.” He mooched off.
“That one.” Trasamund shook his head in mingled exasperation and affection. So Hamnet judged, anyhow—those two emotions always warred in him when he thought of the adventurer. Trasamund went on, “What are we going to do about him?”
“Turn him loose against the Rulers,” Count Hamnet said. “If that’s not the most important thing we’re doing, we’re doing something wrong.”
“We’ve done plenty of things wrong,” the jarl said, which was only too true. “Not that one, though—not lately, anyhow. They taught us their lessons the hard way.”
“So they did.” Hamnet left it there. The hard way was the only way the Bizogots understood—when they understood any way at all.
HAMNET GNAWED ON a roasted goose leg as he rode across the Bizogot steppe. Ulric Skakki was working on a swan’s drumstick. That would have been an expensive delicacy down in the Empire. At Sudertorp Lake, the swans bred in as much exuberant profusion as the smaller waterfowl.
And Sudertorp Lake was merely the largest of the many lakes and ponds and puddles dotting the flat ground that was still frozen a few feet down. Count Hamnet looked toward the northern horizon, but he couldn’t see the Glacier. See it or not, he knew it was there.
Ulric understood what his glance meant. “Do you really think that whole mountain of ice is going to melt away?”
“Before I went through the Gap, I would have told you no,” Hamnet said. “Now? I suppose it will, one of these days. The world will be a different place then. I won’t be here to see it, though, and neither will you.”
“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
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
