Ulric Skakki walked into the dining room. He needed only a heartbeat to notice things there weren’t much warmer than they would have been up on the Glacier. “Hello!” he said. “Have you called a truce, or shall I go back and get my sword and shield?”
“We have a truce,” Eyvind Torfinn said, with perhaps more optimism than conviction. “Come on, my friend. Eat. Refresh yourself.”
“I thank you kindly, Your Splendor,” Ulric said. “Better grub here than I’ll get up on the road, that’s for sure. I may as well fill up while I’ve got the chance. Knowing Hamnet, he’ll want to get moving as quick as he can.”
“Your reputation precedes you,” Gudrid murmured to her former husband.
“If you’re very lucky, people won’t say the same thing about you,” Hamnet Thyssen replied. Gudrid bared her teeth at him. Eyvind Torfinn looked as if he wished he were drinking something stronger than his herbal infusion.
Ulric Skakki came back from the cook’s station with enough food for three ordinary men. He was no Bizogot, but he could eat like one. He sat down and methodically started putting it away. Then Liv and Audun Gilli walked in. That might have made things even chillier, but Hamnet didn’t think such a thing was possible.
Liv got a plate of food that rivaled Ulric’s. Audun’s eating habits were more sedate, or more typically Raumsdalian. Do
He looked over at Liv. She wouldn’t come north if he told Audun to stay behind. Why should she, when the Rulers had already conquered the Bizogots? Next to that, why did she, why should she, care a copper for what happened to the Empire? But Hamnet knew he needed her wizardry, and Audun’s, too. They hadn’t beaten the Rulers, but had challenged them. And if they worked with Marcovefa . . .
In strutted Trasamund. The Bizogot jarl had his arrogance back, however much it had suffered up on the frozen steppe. He waved to Count Hamnet, then went over to the cook and came back to the table with two large plates groaningly full of food. As he set them down, he growled, “Let’s go north and kill all those miserable mammoth turds!”
“We will if we can,” Hamnet said. “This ought to be our best chance.”
“Nothing else matters. Nothing,” the Bizogot said, and fell to eating as if there were no tomorrow.
“Nothing?” Gudrid murmured. Did she mean the way he was stuffing himself, or was she thinking of herself first as she so often did? She’d taken him into her bed almost under Eyvind Torfinn’s nose. Was she reminding him of it, again right past her husband? She hadn’t been that shameless even with Hamnet – or, if she had, he hadn’t noticed at the time.
Whatever she was looking for from Trasamund, she didn’t get it. “Nothing!” he said emphatically, his mouth full of sausage.
Marcovefa laughed softly. Did she know what was going on there? Had she heard, or perhaps somehow divined it? Hamnet Thyssen didn’t know. Gudrid couldn’t have known, either, but her baleful stare said she didn’t like any of what she was thinking. Still, all she did was stare. She must not have felt like taking on another wizard just yet.
All the same, Hamnet was anything but sorry to be leaving Eyvind Torfinn’s house.
By the way things looked, Earl Eyvind’s stablehands were anything but sorry to see Hamnet and his companions go. The stables were enormous; Eyvind could afford not only the best but the most. Even so, feeding and grooming and caring for all those extra animals must have been a burden. The good-byes from the grooms and their assistants seemed most heartfelt.
Out through the streets of Nidaros again, this time zigzagging towards the north gate. The Breath of God was blowing. Maybe cities far, far to the south had streets that ran north and south. Nidaros didn’t, and likely never would.
Fog puffed from Count Hamnet’s mouth and nostrils every time he breathed out, but the wind took it and blew it away. He didn’t like getting the Breath of God full in his face. Even here, a long way from the Glacier, it blew bitterly cold. So he thought, anyway. Trasamund and some of the other Bizogots smiled at the familiar blast. Someone – Hamnet thought it was Mar-comer of the Leaping Lynxes – said, “This place is wonderful, but it was too stinking hot before.”
“Some people don’t know when they’re well off,” Ulric Skakki said.
“Like us, riding north?” Hamnet suggested. Ulric sketched a salute, yielding the point.
A caravan from the north was coming into Nidaros when Hamnet and his companions got to the gate. “What’s the news?” Ulric asked. Hamnet supposed he would have thought of the question, too, but certainly not so fast.
The caravanmaster was a burly man with a gray-streaked black beard tumbling halfway down his chest. His face wore a scowl well, and wore one now. “The news?” he echoed. “By God, stranger, it’s not good. There’s some kind of Bizogot invasion or something up in the woods by the tree line, and I hear tell one of our armies took a demon of a licking.”
He didn’t have everything straight, but what he had was plenty to irritate the sergeant who was admitting him to the city. “Don’t you go talking about our armies that way,” the underofficer growled.
“What? Should I lie to this poor bugger instead?” The merchant pointed at Ulric. “If he gets it in the neck, do I want it on my conscience?”
“He won’t get it in the neck, and you haven’t got a conscience,” the sergeant said. The caravanmaster let out an angry bellow. Ignoring it and reveling in his own petty authority, the sergeant went on, “What you have got is a demon of a lot of horses and mules that need inspecting. Who knows what you might be smuggling if you think our soldiers are no good?”
This time, the caravanmaster’s howls threatened to shake down the icicles hanging like the teeth of a new portcullis from the gate’s gray stonework. With the majesty of the imperial government on his side, the sergeant could afford to ignore those howls, too. And, since he was going to spend some time making the merchant miserable, he considerately waved Hamnet Thyssen’s party of out Nidaros without asking for, much less examining, the order Hamnet had got from Sigvat II.
“Poor bastard.” Ulric Skakki looked back towards the extravagantly unhappy caravanmaster. “Sometimes the worst thing you can do is tell the truth, you know?”
“Really?” Count Hamnet answered, deadpan. “I never heard that before.”
The adventurer laughed out loud. “No, you wouldn’t have, would you? Nobody in the dungeons would say anything like that to you, right? Neither would the Emperor, would he?”
“His Majesty has told me a lot of things,” Hamnet said . . . truthfully. “I don’t believe he ever mentioned that, though.”
“No, eh? Somehow I’m not surprised.” Even a free spirit like Ulric Skakki glanced back over his shoulder to make sure no one not from their party could overhear before going on, “His Majesty doesn’t know enough about telling the truth to know it can be dangerous.”
Hamnet Thyssen laughed then. He wondered why – it wasn’t as if Ulric were lying. Of course, if he didn’t laugh, he would have to weep or swear or ride back to Nidaros and try to assassinate Sigvat. Laughing was probably better.
But he confused Marcovefa. “What is funny?” she asked. . “Nothing much,” Hamnet answered. “We’re taking turns insulting the Emperor, that’s all.”
“Oh.” But she frowned. “He deserves insulting, yes?” She didn’t wait for an answer, but nodded to herself. “Yes, of course. So why is this funny?”
“You never met him,” Count Hamnet said.
“Some people have all the luck,” Ulric Skakki added.
Marcovefa’s eyes twinkled. “Do you say I am lucky, or do you say he is lucky?”
“You’re lucky you never met him – take it from one who has,” Hamnet answered. Then, after a moment’s thought, he went on, “Come to think of it, he’s lucky he never met you, too, or he probably wouldn’t be here anymore.” If Marcovefa could make herself disappear and go elsewhere, could she also do the same to someone else? Hamnet couldn’t see any reason why not.
