Thyssen had said about the downfall of his marriage since Gudrid left him. He scowled at Ulric Skakki, wondering how the other man tricked the words out of him. Ulric stared back blandly, as if to say he had nothing to do with it.
And, listening to himself, Hamnet Thyssen realized he'd been a fool to believe that then, and was a bigger fool if he still believed it now. Things couldn't have been all right between him and Gudrid, even if he failed to notice anything wrong. A happy spouse didn't start running around for no reason at all—which could only mean Gudrid hadn't been happy long before he realized she wasn't. How many lovers did she have that he never suspected?
Maybe things would have been different if she'd had a child or two in the first few years they were married. Well, things certainly would have been different if she had. Maybe they would have been better. He'd never know now.
Off in the distance, a bull mammoth wandered by itself. The bad bulls were probably the most dangerous animals on the frozen steppe. They were fierce and clever and swift and strong and very hard to kill.
Ulric Skakki kept looking from the woolly mammoth to Hamnet and back again. That almost made Hamnet laugh. He was strong and swift, and could be fierce. He dared hope he was hard to kill. Clever? Hadn't he just proved himself a fool in his own eyes? Didn't a teratorn, a bird that needed no more in the way of brains than what was required to sneak up on a corpse, have wits sharper than his? So it seemed to him, anyhow.
'May I ask you something else, your Grace?' Ulric said.
Harshly, Hamnet Thyssen nodded. 'Go ahead.'
'Do you know why your, ah, formerly beloved took it into her head to come up here?'
'By God, I don't,' Hamnet exploded. 'Because she does what she pleases when she pleases, and worries about it later if she ever worries about it at all. Any other questions?'
'Why didn't you kill her? You must have had your chances.'
The answer to that seemed much too clear. 'Because I'm a fool.'
'Soon, now,' Trasamund said. 'Soon we enter the grazing grounds of the Three Tusk Bizogots, the grandest land God ever made.' He sat up straight on his horse and puffed out his chest. He felt grand himself, and he wanted the world to know he felt grand.
Hamnet Thyssen, on the other hand, had to work to hold his face straight. He didn't know exactly where the grandest land God ever made lay, but he thought it had to be somewhere south of the Raumsdalian Empire. The Empire was far enough south for farming to be possible through most of it, though its northern reaches lay beyond the limits of agriculture. Its strength lay less in its soil than in its people. They were tested by adversity—and by raids from the Bizogots, from farther north still.
Were the rest of the Raumsdalians here thinking the same thing? Count Hamnet didn't see how they could think anything else. Yet not a one of them, not even Jesper Fletti, not even Gudrid, said a word. For one thing, whether this was God's country or not, it wasn't theirs. They needed help from the Bizogots if they were to keep on pushing north, up through the Gap. For another. . .
For another, whether this was God's country or not, spring did eventually reach it. Warm—well, warmer— breezes blew up from the south, driving back the clouds and mist and spatters of snow and sleet that had dogged the travelers for so long. The sun shone from a blue sky. If the blue was watery, if the sun didn't climb as high above the southern horizon as it did even down in Nidaros, those were details. When the clouds receded, when the mist retreated, when the sun shone, the travelers got their first clear look at something they never would have seen if they stayed down in the Empire.
The Glacier.
That wall of ice to the north might have been a mountain range. It stood as tall as many mountains. Did it reach a mile up into the sky? Two miles? Three? Hamnet Thyssen couldn't say. Here and there, storms blew dust and dirt over it, so that from a distance it looked as if it might be made of rock and soil.
But then the sun glanced off a bare patch, and that coruscating flash proved the Glacier could only be ... the Glacier. A chill and awful majesty clung to it. 'What must it be like,' Ulric Skakki murmured, 'to always look over your shoulder and see—that? How do you get used to it? Don't you think it's going to fall on you?'
'I would.' Count Flamnet's shiver had nothing to do with the weather, which was, well, better than it had been. One enormous difference between the Glacier and ordinary mountains was that the latter ascended gradually through uplands and foothills to the peaks at the heart of the range. The Glacier, by contrast, rose sheer, which made those frozen cliffs seem even taller than they were.
A herd of woolly mammoths, no doubt belonging to the Three Tusk clan, ambled along over the snowy ground in the middle distance. By any ordinary standard, mammoths were enormous, gigantic, titanic—mammoth. Against the Glacier, ordinary standards failed. Against the Glacier, those mammoths seemed like nothing more than what Ulric Skakki had called them farther south—fleas on the hide of a white-coated world.
Hamnet Thyssen eyed Trasamund with sudden new respect. The Bizogot jarl hadn't said the land over which his clan wandered was the best or the most fertile God ever made. He said it was the grandest. Looking north from the abruptly dwarfed mammoths to the Glacier, Hamnet Thyssen decided he might be right after all.
VII
Trasamund did not know where in the large territory they roamed the rest of the Three Tusk clan would be. 'It depends on the beasts,' he said. 'It depends on the hunting. It depends on the weather. Later in the year, they may go some way up the Gap—but not, I think, so soon.'
Hamnet Thyssen looked ahead, toward the Glacier. He imagined it not just in front of him, but to either side. The thought was not comfortable-was anything but comfortable, in fact. Wouldn't he feel like a bug between two hands waiting for them to slap shut and smash it between them? The rational part of his mind insisted that couldn't happen. In spite of the rational part, he sent apprehensive glances northward.
Then he had a new thought. What would it be like with the Glacier not just to either side of him but
While he was looking at the Glacier, Eyvind Torfinn was peering east. Eyvind pointed. 'Isn't that a horseman?' he asked.
Everyone's head swung that way. Count Hamnet was angry at himself for letting the scholar spot something before he did himself. Earl Eyvind would be worth his weight in gold when and if they found the Golden Shrine. Till then, the learned noble was so much excess baggage. So Hamnet had thought, anyway.
By the chagrin on Trasamund's face, he was having similar thoughts. Or would they be so similar? Hamnet hadn't slept with Gudrid since she married Eyvind Torfinn. Trasamund had, and hardly bothered hiding it. If Eyvind noticed, he didn't let on. But maybe it was more a case of not letting on than of not noticing. If it was, did he contemplate vengeance on Trasamund?
What kind of vengeance could an overeducated Raumsdalian earl take against a Bizogot jarl here on the frozen plain? Hamnet Thyssen couldn't think of any. That didn't have to mean Eyvind Torfinn couldn't, though. Whatever Earl Eyvind might be, he was no fool.
Before the rider—for a rider he certainly was—came much closer, Trasamund said, 'I know him. That's Gelimer. He is of my clan.'
'How can you tell?' Audun Gilli asked. 'By some sorcery?'
'No, no. By his size. By the way he sits his horse,' Trasamund answered, shaking his head. 'Do you not know your brother at some distance? Gelimer is my brother. Every man of the Three Tusk clan is my brother.'
Did that make every woman in the clan his sister? Hamnet shook his head. Not in that sense—Bizogots could marry within their own clan, even if they often didn't. And, as he'd seen, they weren't shy about sporting with women from their own clan, either.
'Who comes to the land of the Three Tusk clan?' Gelimer shouted when he came within hailing distance. He was alone, and facing many strangers, but seemed fearless. After a moment, Count Hamnet shook his head. Gelimer wasn't so much fearless as righteous; he seemed certain he had every moral right to demand answers from anyone he found on the land his clan roamed.
