Hamnet forgot about him as soon as he stopped being a threat. He grabbed Liv by the arm. “We have to get away!” he yelled.
“We can’t!” she said.
“The demon we can’t. Trasamund’s already gone,” Hamnet answered.
Her eyes widened. Her head swung, as if on a swivel. When she didn’t see the jarl, her features sagged in weariness and dismay. “Truly everything is lost,” she said, her voice quiet and amazed and all but hopeless.
“Not while we’re still breathing. Come on, before the Rulers close the sack around us,” Hamnet said. A heartbeat slower than he might have, he added, “You, too, Audun.”
“Yes,” the wizard said. “Maybe we’ll win another chance later. We can hope, anyhow.” He didn’t hesitate in talking to Hamnet Thyssen. Perhaps that meant he was a good dissembler. In another man, Hamnet would have thought it did. But he’d spent too much time at close quarters with the wizard to find it easy to believe. If Audun thought something, he usually said it. Ulric Skakki could smile and charm and say one thing and mean another. Not Audun.
Thinking of Ulric reminded Hamnet what the adventurer had said. “Let’s ride for the avalanche,” Hamnet said. “We can use the ice boulders for cover.”
“For a while,” Liv said. “We’ll get hungry there. If the Rulers want to sit around and starve us out, they can. And where do we have to go?”
“Up to the top of the Glacier, by God,” Count Hamnet answered. “They won’t look for that, and we may get away. And it’s something maybe no one’s ever done in all the history of the world.” The idea had intrigued him ever since it first crossed his mind.
It didn’t seem to intrigue Liv. “No one’s ever come back from doing it – that’s sure enough.” But she didn’t say no, not straight out. And she did guide her horse towards the northwest. So did Audun. So did Hamnet Thyssen.
Some Bizogots were riding in that direction. Others tried to break out to the southwest. Hamnet supposed they wanted to join up with the White Foxes. If they could, they might stay safe … for a while. He feared climbing the Glacier gave a better long-term hope – and climbing the Glacier was pure desperation.
A few warriors on riding deer had already got between the Bizogots and the Glacier. Liv shot one of them out of the saddle. She had more arrows left than Hamnet. He relied on the sword, and slew a warrior himself. When one of the Rulers started to attack Audun Gilli, his deer seemed to go mad, bounding off across the steppe at random despite his curses and, soon, his fist.
“Nicely done,” Count Hamnet said, his tone as neutral as he could make it. “Would it work for more than one riding deer at a time?”
“I don’t think so.” Audun watched the animal’s antics with solemn fascination. “I was surprised it worked once.”
“So was he,” Hamnet said. Then they were past the Rulers. Hamnet spied Trasamund a couple of bowshots ahead and to the left. He waved and shouted. After a moment, the jarl waved back and steered his horse over towards them.
“What now? Up the Glacier?” Plainly, Trasamund didn’t mean it.
He blinked when Hamnet Thyssen nodded. “Have you got a better idea?” Hamnet asked.
Trasamund spat. “I have no ideas left, and nothing else, either. If you say you want to take it out and piss your way through the Glacier, I’ll try to follow. Everything I’ve tried, everything I’ve done, has turned to dung in my hands.”
Count Hamnet shivered. It wasn’t altogether in response to Trasamund’s despair; here close by the Glacier, it was colder than it had been even a couple of miles farther south. This was where winter lived. The growing warmth might have weakened it, but it was a long way from dead.
They’d ridden past a house-sized chunk when Hamnet heard a shout from Ulric Skakki: “Over here!” Beside him, Arnora pressed a chunk of moss to a cut that split her cheek. She wouldn’t be pretty any more, but that was a worry for later, if there was a later. Now, Ulric said, “Well, here we are, in this jolly place. Where do we go next?”
Hamnet told him.
VII
“This is madness,”Trasamund said, scrambling up over a tilted block of ice. “Madness, I tell you.”
“Of course, Your Ferocity,” Ulric Skakki said politely. He pointed down towards the edge of the frozen steppe, which now lay some distance below them. “Would you like to explain to the Rulers how mad it is?”
Hamnet Thyssen paused for a moment at the top of another jagged chunk of ice. He looked down towards the ground, too. The Rulers weren’t coming after the dozen or so Bizogots and Raumsdalians who were trying to use the avalanche to climb to the top of the Glacier. In their boots, Count Hamnet wouldn’t have, either. They were doing about what he would have done were their positions reversed: they were standing there pointing at the fugitives and laughing themselves silly.
“We got a chance to kill a couple of horses and hack off some of the meat,” Liv said. “With the musk ox, that will keep us going … for a while, anyhow.”
“Horseflesh tastes like glue,” Ulric Skakki complained.
“How much glue have you eaten?” Hamnet asked.
“Well, I’ve eaten more crow, I must say,” Ulric answered. “And it’s plain enough I haven’t eaten enough glue to know when to keep my mouth shut.” He still sounded like a man on a lark, not someone fleeing for his life without much hope that even fleeing would stretch it very far.
“One thing,” Audun Gilli said. “We can keep our meat fresh as long as we need to. We won’t have any trouble putting it on ice.” The wizard’s laugh sounded slightly hysterical, or perhaps just slightly cracked.
That didn’t mean he was wrong. Most of the ice in the world was either under their feet or ahead of them. Hamnet Thyssen was glad he had his winter mittens. Without them, his hands not only would have frozen but also would have been cut to ribbons: much of the ice over which he struggled was almost swordblade-sharp.
A couple of Bizogot men were without mittens. They’d wrapped cloth around their palms, which was better than nothing but probably not good enough. One of them, a big, blocky fellow named Vulfolaic, said, “Some of that horsemeat still has the hide on, yes? I can cut strips from that when we stop.”
“It will spoil,” Audun said, proving he really was learning the Bizogots’ speech.
“Not if I piss on it a few times,” Vulfolaic answered. “Not proper tanning, but it will have to do.”
“Er – yes.” The wizard’s expression said he would rather do without gauntlets than wear that kind. Vulfolaic wasn’t so fussy. Squeamish Bizogots wouldn’t last long.
“Come on,” he said. “We ought to get as high as we can while the daylight lasts.”
“What if we touch off another avalanche?” With the wound to her cheek, Arnora’s voice was mushy and indistinct.
Hamnet Thyssen only shrugged. “If we do, we won’t need to worry anymore.”
That made Vulfolaic laugh. “Spoken like a Bizogot, by God! I wouldn’t have thought you southerners had the manhood to say such things – and to mean them.”
“If I had a copper for every time a Bizogot wondered how long my prong was, I’d be too rich to want to leave Nidaros,” Ulric Skakki said.
“He wasn’t questioning yours – he was questioning mine,” Hamnet answered. “And as long as Arnora doesn’t worry about yours, I don’t see that it’s anybody else’s business.”
“You’re no fun,” Ulric told him. “Life would be so much duller if people didn’t get all hot and bothered over stupid little things.”
“You mean like being invaded? Like being beaten?” Count Hamnet said. “I’m bothered. I can’t very well say I’m not. But I defy anyone to stay hot climbing the Glacier.”
“Well, you’ve got something there.” Ulric reached up to him. “Give me a hand, will you? You made it to the top of that block, but I don’t think I can, not by myself. You’re taller than I am.”
