And then all the travelers swore at once. The dead bear writhed in the snow. Its shape changed. After a couple of minutes, it was a dead bear no more, but rather a dead man. 'That fellow comes from the Rulers,' Audun Gilli said. No one tried to contradict him; that strong-featured, heavily bearded face plainly belonged to one of the men from beyond the Glacier.
'What in blazes is he doing here?' Ulric said, fitting a new string to the bow that had let him down.
Hamnet Thyssen was doing the same thing. 'The way it looks,' he said, 'I think he was trying to kill me.'
'You don't think well of yourself, do you?' Ulric Skakki mocked as automatically as he breathed.
'I think Thyssen is right,' Trasamund said. 'When it was a bear, it let you shoot it. It let me strike it. It wanted only the count. No one else, nothing else, mattered to it.'
'Why would that be?' Ulric asked.
'I see only one answer—they think he is dangerous to them.' That wasn't Trasamund, who'd raised the point. It wasn't Liv, who might have been expected to take Hamnet's side. It was Audun Gilli. His objectivity helped make him convincing.
'Aren't we all dangerous to them? By God, we'd better be,' Ulric Skakki said. 'Should I write them an angry letter complaining that they don't think enough of me to try murdering me? I'm tempted, if only I could find somebody to deliver it.' He sounded affronted that the Rulers might not find him worth killing.
'Believe me, I could do without the honor,' Hamnet Thyssen said as he dismounted to look at the wounds the bear had scored in his horses flank. They were long but not deep—plenty to pain and frighten the animal, but not crippling. He thought they would heal well. The horse trembled when he put his hands anywhere near the gashes. He bent down, scooped up some snow, and pressed it against the animal's wounds. The horse snorted and started to shy. Then it seemed to decide the cold felt good, and let out what sounded like a sigh of relief.
'Bear grease might help,' Ulric said.
'How about shaman grease?' Trasamund said. 'You can slit that bastard's belly and use what he's got.' He wasn't joking, not in the least. Bizogots wasted nothing. They couldn't afford to.
'This would be the same sort of spell that wizard used when he turned into an owl, wouldn't it?' Hamnet asked Liv.
'I would say so, yes,' she answered, her voice troubled. 'It is a more thorough spell than we use. It is a more thorough spell than we know, though some of ours do the same thing.'
'How did he get down here?' Trasamund said. 'A long way from the far side of the Gap to this forest.'
'Maybe he was an owl till not long ago. Maybe he flew,' Audun Gilli said.
'I doubt it,' Liv said. 'With us, at least, a shaman has a spirit animal. If the animal is a dire wolf, say, the shaman may howl when the moon is full. But he will not hop like a snowshoe hare, and he will not take wing like a ptarmigan.'
'Is it the same for the Rulers? Would it have to be?' Audun asked.
'if it is not the same, they are even stranger and darker than I thought.' Liv sounded more troubled than ever.
'This one was a bear, and now he's dead,' Trasamund said. 'We still live, no matter how strange and dark he was, the son of a scut. And we'd better get up to the north and put a stop to the trouble the Rulers are causing.'
Hamnet Thyssen wondered what Sigvat II would have done if he knew the Rulers were already inside the Empire. He laughed bitterly as he remounted. Seeing that the wizard or shaman or whatever he was had tried to kill him, Sigvat might have congratulated the fellow, or even ennobled him.
'Will the horse be all right?' Ulric asked. 'We still might be able to buy you another one.'
'I think he will,' Hamnet said. 'I think Trasamund s right, too. We need to get up to the Gap as fast as we can.'
'Why?' Ulric Skakki said. 'The Rulers are already here.' On that cheery note, the travelers rode north again.
XXI
In the middle of winter, Hamnet Thyssen saw only a little difference ! between the Bizogot country and the Glacier farther north. Snow blanketed everything. On days when the sun shone, the reflections from all that white could dazzle and overwhelm the eye. Trasamund and Liv had no goggles, but rubbed streaks of ash from a campfire under their eyes to cut the glare. Before long, the Raumsdalians with them started doing the same thing. It was ugly, but it helped.
'I'm wearing musk-ox dung.' Ulric Skakki sounded more cheerful than he had any business being.
'Well, we've been eating it whenever we cook up here,' Hamnet said. 'Why not wear it, too?'
'I wish you hadn't reminded me,' Audun Gilli said.
'I wish for all kinds of things that won't come true—good sense from the Emperor, for instance,' Ulric said. 'What's one more wasted wish?'
Hamnet Thyssen looked around, as if to see who might have overheard Ulric. Down in Raumsdalia, someone could have betrayed him to the Emperor's servants, in which case he would not have a happy time of it. Up here, he was among friends, and had the sense to realize it before Hamnet did.
Trasamund saw the Raumsdalian's glance, and knew what it meant. 'No spies up here, your Grace,' he said. 'No informers. You're in Bizogot country again. You're in the free lands. Breathe deep. Breathe free.'
'What if someone back in the Three Tusk clan has been talking about you behind your back, your Ferocity?' Ulric Skakki asked in his most innocent tones.
Beneath the dirt and ashes on his face, Trasamund turned red. 'If I hear about it, I'll knock the son of a mammoth turd's teeth out!' he growled.
'Welcome to the free lands. Welcome to Bizogot country,' Ulric said.
'And what's that supposed to mean?' the jarl demanded.
'What do you think it means?' Ulric asked.
'I think it means you're making fun of me on the sly, you Raumsdalian hound,' Trasamund said, and he wasn't wrong. 'Didn't I ask you when you chose to come north if you would obey me?'
'How am I disobeying you? Did you ever tell me not to make fun of you? Did you ever tell me not to make fun of silly ideas?' Ulric sounded mild, which didn't mean he wasn't serious.
'If you obey, you have to respect. You are not respecting,' Trasamund said.
Ulric Skakki went to his knees before the jarl. Then he went to his belly, knocking his forehead in the snow. 'Your Ferocity! Your Wonderfulness!' he cried. 'Your Highness! Your Majesty! Your exalted Magnificence! May I please be allowed to kiss some of the musk-ox dung from the sole of your boot?'
Liv giggled helplessly. That meant Trasamund's venomous glaze divided itself between Ulric and her, and lost some of its effect. He stirred Ulric with the toe of his—with luck—clean boot. 'Get up, you fool. Give me the respect I deserve, not this stupid show of more.'
'I was trying to do that.' The adventurer brushed snow off his front. 'You didn't seem to like it very well, either.'
'No one likes to be made fun of,' Trasamund said accurately.
'Well, your Ferocity, if you say something silly, can't I let you know I think it's silly?' Ulric Skakki asked. 'If I can't, what's your famous Bizogot freedom worth? I might as well have stayed in the Empire after all.'
Trasamund started to answer, then stopped. This time, Ulric got the full force of his glare. He seemed to have no trouble enduring it. 'You twist things up,' Trasamund complained. 'I am the jarl. I know what I can do, and I know what I am not supposed to do. And I know what my clansfolk can do, too. You go past that.'
'He is a foreigner, your Ferocity,' Liv said. 'He did not suck in our ways with his mother's milk.'
'Do you follow all our Raumsdalian customs when you come down into the Empire?' Hamnet Thyssen added. 'I don't think so.'
'Maybe not,' Trasamund said. 'But I don't dance on them for the sport of it, either. Ulric was trying to pull my prong for the sport of it. I won't put up with that.' A Raumsdalian would have talked about getting his leg pulled. As usual, the Bizogot idiom was gamier.
And the jarl was probably right. Ulric Skakki
