“Drink yourselves foolish if you please, but I’m going upstairs.” Liv set down her mug and did just that.
After Hamnet Thyssen had more ale in front of him, he found he didn’t feel like getting getting blind drunk just to make a point. He knew what he could hold, and so did Ulric and Trasamund, the people he would have been most interested in impressing. He drained the mug in a hurry – no point in letting it go to waste, after all – then pushed back his stool and stood up. “I’m going upstairs, too,” he said.
His friends jeered at him. He’d known they would, so he had no trouble ignoring them. The room spun a little as he walked to the stairs. Yes, he’d already had plenty.
He climbed the steps with exaggerated care and quiet. At the top of the stairs, he stopped dead. There stood Liv and Audun Gilli, kissing in the hallway.
XIV
Sometimes when you were wounded, you didn’t feel the pain for the first few heartbeats. Sometimes it pierced you right away. When Hamnet Thyssen heard a noise like a dire wolf’s growl, he needed that handful of heartbeats to realize it came from his own throat.
The other two also needed a moment to hear it through their more enjoyable distraction. It reached Audun before Liv. He sprang away from her with a gasp of horror. “I can explain,” he gabbled. “You have to understand -”
“Understand what?” Hamnet said, still growling. “Understand how many pieces I’m going to cut you into?” His hand already lay on the hilt of his sword, though he didn’t remember telling it to go there.
“Don’t be foolish, Hamnet,” Liv said. “It’s over. You know it is. It’s been over for a while now. You know that, too.”
He did know it, even if he hadn’t wanted to look at it. That made things worse, not better. “It can’t be!” he said. He’d lost Gudrid. How could he stand losing another woman? “I loved you! You loved me!” He wished that hadn’t come out in the past tense. Maybe his mouth was wiser than his brain.
Liv nodded. “I did, for a while. But when you started herding me the way dogs herd musk oxen, when you started wondering whether I was faithful every time I breathed . . . You caused what you wanted to cure. Killing Audun won’t get me back, even if you can. It’s too late for that.”
“I ought to kill you, too,” he ground out. He should have done that with Gudrid. Then she wouldn’t have been able to torment him all these years after they broke apart. Would Liv do the same? Would she revel in it the way Gudrid had?
“You can try,” she said. “But what good would it do? It won’t bring me back to you. Nothing can do that now. What we had was good while it lasted. Why not remember it that way?”
Hamnet started to say that killing her and Audun would make him feel better. But he wasn’t even sure that was true. It might make him feel better for a little while, but he knew he would be sorry afterwards if he did it. He couldn’t tell them he hoped they would be happy together; he didn’t. He didn’t see much point in telling them he hoped they would be unhappy together – they could figure that out for themselves.
And so he pushed past them without a word. Audun Gilli shrank from him. Liv didn’t. She had as much courage as any Bizogot. She looked as if she wanted to say something, but she didn’t do that, either. After their first spell of intoxication with each other, neither of them had been able to find enough to say to each other. That was part of the trouble, though Hamnet didn’t realize it.
When he walked into the mean little room he’d thought he would share with Liv, he found she’d already taken her meager belongings out. He said something that should have made the roof cave in and the walls collapse. Everything stayed up, though, and the bed didn’t collapse when he threw himself down on it, even if the frame did groan.
After losing Gudrid, he’d wept for days – weeks, in fact. He wept now, too, but even he knew the tears were more drunken self-pity than anything else. Gudrid had had a hold on him that Liv couldn’t match. Knowing he would probably be all right before too long made him all the more mournful.
One good thing: Audun Gilli’s chamber lay halfway down the hall. If he’d had to listen to the mattress in the next room creaking rhythmically, he really might have drawn his sword and done his best to slaughter the wizard and the shaman.
Instead, he fell asleep with his boots still on, sprawled out across the bed. After that, he didn’t hear a thing.
When he came downstairs the next morning, some of the Bizogots were already eating breakfast. So was Ulric Skakki. He sat next to Trasamund. Both of them cautiously spooned up porridge of rye and oats and sipped from mugs of beer. By their sallow skins and red-tracked eyes, they hoped the beer would soothe aching heads. By the way the corners of their mouths turned down, it hadn’t done the job yet.
Trasamund stared at Count Hamnet. “By God, man, what ails you?” the jarl burst out. “You went to bed long before we did, but you look worse than either one of us.”
Ulric, by contrast, had a way of cutting to the chase. He did it now with two words: “He knows.”
Hamnet scowled at him. How long had they known? How long had everybody known? How long had people been laughing at him behind his back? Hadn’t he had enough of that with Gudrid? Evidently not.
“What’ll it be, friend?” The tapman sounded cheerful. Why not? He hadn’t just lost his woman.
“Beer,” Hamnet said. “Porridge.” Even if part of him wished he were dead, his belly craved ballast.
“Sorry, Thyssen,” Ulric said when Hamnet sat down across from him. “It happens, that’s all. It’ll probably happen with me and Arnora before long.”
“Yes, but – ” Hamnet began, and then stopped.
“But what?” Ulric asked, his voice deceptively mild.
“But you and Arnora aren’t in love.”
“No. We just screw each other silly, which isn’t bad, either. But you and Liv aren’t in love any more, either, if you ever were,” Ulric said.
“I still love her!” Hamnet cried.
“Which has nothing to do with what I said.” Ulric was most dangerous when he was most accurate. “You may love Liv, but it’s pretty plain she doesn’t love you right now. And if she doesn’t, you two aren’t in love, no matter how much you may wish you were. Or will you tell me I’m wrong?”
Count Hamnet wanted to. He knew too well he couldn’t. “No,” he mumbled. A serving girl who might have been the tapman’s daughter brought him his breakfast.
“Dig in,” Ulric said cheerfully. “You may as well.”
And Hamnet did. The porridge had onions and bits of smoked sausage in it. No matter how the rest of him felt, his belly was happy. Arnora came down a few minutes later. Instead of sitting by Ulric, she made a point of plopping herself down at a far table and scowling at him. He grinned back, which only seemed to annoy her more.
Then Liv and Audun Gilli came down together. They were holding hands. Liv looked pleased with herself. The wizard looked happy and frightened at the same time. Hamnet’s glower said he wished they would both catch fire. Liv shook her head and Audun flinched, but they stayed unscorched.
They did have the courtesy to sit where Hamnet couldn’t see them without twisting to do it. That helped a little, but only a little. Every time he heard Liv’s voice, he felt vitriol dripping down his back.
Ulric Skakki waved to the serving girl and pointed at Hamnet. “Bring this man another mug of beer.”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Trasamund asked.
“I’m not
The girl set the mug in front of Count Hamnet. He drained it. Ulric was a nice judge of such things, no doubt from experience. The beer built a wall – a low wall, but a wall – between him and what he was feeling. A few more, though, and he wouldn’t have cared what he did.
Marcovefa was one of the last travelers to come down to the taproom. When she did, she noticed right away how people were sitting. The clans atop the Glacier must have had their quarrels and squabbles and scandals, too. People were people, no matter where and how they lived. They would fall in love with one another.
They would fall out of love with one another, too.
Marcovefa sat down by Hamnet. “I am sorry,” she said in the ordinary Bizogot tongue. “It happens.”
He looked at her – through her, really. “Go away,” he said.
