Then there were the Bizogots, whom Hamnet couldn't even claim to command. No one commanded Trasamund, who was as much a sovereign as Sigvat II. Hamnet thought that if he told Liv to do something, she might. . . if she decided it was a good idea.
Wonderful. That may make one. Hamnet sighed. "Do you really suppose I could persuade the others to turn back?" he asked.
"How do you know if you don't try?" Ulric Skakki replied. Count Hamnet sighed again. That sounded sensible, reasonable. Both men knew it wasn't, which only made it more irritating.
"I'll try," Hamnet said. "That'll teach you."
* * * *
The smell of roasting meat brought another striped hunting cat—or maybe the first one the travelers saw—back to investigate. They yelled and threw things at the animal and frightened it away. But it didn't go far. It skulked around out of bowshot, as if to say it claimed the scraps.
After Hamnet bit into a rib, he was willing to let the beast have them. The meat was tough and not very tasty. What flavor it had, he didn't much care for. The deer had been feeding on something that left it unappetizing. Hamnet had found the like in gamebirds, but never before in deer.
He used the poor meat to help make his point. "Now that we've found out what this country is like, shouldn't we head back to our own side of the Glacier and let the people there know?" he said, waving the rib bone for emphasis.
"Makes sense to me." Ulric Skakki did what he could to support the argument he'd proposed himself.
Everyone else metaphorically tore it limb from limb. "We have not found the Golden Shrine yet," Eyvind Torfinn declared, as if it were right around the corner—as if this vast, flat plain had corners.
"You have not seen a white bear yet, either," Trasamund added. "They're fine hunting, better even than the short-faced bears back on our own side of the Glacier." Considering how dangerous short-faced bears were, Hamnet Thyssen was anything but convinced that he wanted to meet anything worse. If he did, it was liable to end up hunting him, not the other way around.
No sooner had that thought crossed his mind than Gudrid said, "Besides, we haven't met the people who live beyond the Glacier."
"All the more reason to leave now, wouldn't you say?" Count Hamnet replied. Ulric Skakki nodded.
No one else could see it. Liv couldn't understand it, because the discussion was in Raumsdalian. Hamnet wondered what excuse his countrymen and Trasamund had. Were they merely foolish, or were they willfully blind? He glanced over at Gudrid. People would have asked the same thing of him when she first started being unfaithful. No doubt they had asked it— behind his back.
In those days, no one could have persuaded him she was anything but true. Here in the long-shadowed summer evening of the land beyond the Glacier, he himself could not persuade the others danger might lie ahead.
X
Defeated and depressed, Hamnet Thyssen strode away from the campfire. The sun had set at last, but he was in no danger of getting lost. The northern horizon remained white and bright; the light was still good enough to read by. But he didn't feel like reading, even if he'd had a book. He wished he could keep walking, and leave behind the fools who didn't want to listen to him.
"Hamnet Thyssen!" As Liv often did, she spoke his given and family names as if they were part of the same long word. "Please wait!" she added.
After a moment, he did. She hadn't ignored him; she hadn't understood a word he was saying. Well, save for Ulric Skakki, neither had the rest, even though they and he used the same language. "Not your fault," he admitted.
"What was the argument about?" she asked, adding, "No one would slowdown and translate for me. I really have to learn Raumsdalian, don't I?"
"It might help," Hamnet said. "If I can learn your language, I don't think there's any reason you can't learn mine. As for the argument, I thought we should turn around and go home while the going is good. Ulric Skakki thought I was right. Everyone else thought I had a mammoth turd where my brains ought to be."
The Bizogot shaman laughed. "You have an accent when you speak our tongue, Hamnet Thyssen, but that is something a man of my clan might say."
"What? That we should go home?" He misunderstood her on purpose.
"No, about the mammoth turd and—" Liv broke off. Her eyes flashed. "You are teasing me. Do you know what happens when you tease a shaman?"
"Nothing good, or you wouldn't want to tell me about it," Hamnet answered. "Tell me something else instead—do you think we ought to head back?"
"Probably," Liv answered. "What else can we do here, unless we happen to stumble over the Golden Shrine?"
He stared at her. He thought she was the most wonderful woman in the world. Of course he did—she agreed with him. "By God," he exclaimed, "I could kiss you!"
Liv waited. When nothing happened, she said, "Well? Go ahead."
He stared at her again, in a different way. She wasn't a bad-looking woman, not at all, but he hadn't thought she would take him literally. No—he hadn't thought she would want to take him literally. Since his troubles with Gudrid, he'd had trouble believing any woman would be interested in him.
Carefully, so as not to offend, he kissed her on the cheek. She raised an eyebrow. She was grimy and none too fresh, but he hardly noticed. All the travelers, himself included, were grimy and none too fresh. "Well?" he said, when she stood there looking at him with that eyebrow halfway up her forehead.
"Not very well, as a matter of fact," Liv told him. "You can do better."
You'd better do better, lurked behind the words. He managed a crooked smile of his own. "Who knows what you'd do to me if I told you no? You were just talking about how it's dangerous to anger a shaman."
In saying he didn't want to anger her, he managed to do just that. Her frown put him in mind of a building storm. "I do not force you to this, Hamnet Thyssen," she said. "If you care to, you will. If you don't. . ." She didn't go on, but he had no trouble filling in something like, Be damned to you.
Angry at himself and her both, he did kiss her, not much caring if he was gentle or not. "Well?" he said again, tasting a little blood in his mouth.
"That is better." Liv paused. "Different, anyway."
Count Hamnet bowed. "Thank you so much."
"My pleasure—a little of it, anyhow." The Bizogot woman could be formidably sarcastic.
The one person except Ulric who thought the same way he did—and here he was quarreling with her. How much sense did that make? Not much, and. he knew it too well. He fought his temper under something close to control. "Will you tell Trasamund you think we ought to go south?" he asked.
"Is this what you ask after you kiss a woman?" Liv snapped. "Would you ask Gudrid the same question after you kiss her?"
"I would never kiss Gudrid." Hamnet s fury kindled for real. "And if, God forbid, I did, I would ask her who shed just kissed before me and who she planned on kissing next." He spat at Liv's feet.
He thought that would infuriate her in turn. Instead, it sobered her like a bucket of cold water in the face. "Oh," she said in a small voice. "I did not mean to tease you, either. I am sorry."
"Let it go," Hamnet said roughly. "Just—let it go. But do talk to the jarl, because that really is important."
Liv bit her lip and nodded. "It shall be as you say." Then, without a backward glance, she went off toward the camp. Slowly, Hamnet Thyssen followed.
* * * *
The bear the travelers saw scooping salmon from a stream was not white. It was brown. It was also the biggest bear Hamnet Thyssen had ever seen. Oh, some short-faced bears might have been as tall at the shoulder as this monster, but they were long-legged and quick. This beast was built like an ordinary woods bruin, but on an enormous scale.
It showed formidable teeth when the riders drew near. With a little coughing roar, it stood between them and the fish it had caught. "It doesn't trust us," Ulric Skakki said.
"Maybe it's met men before," Audun Gilli said.
"Maybe it just knows what we'
re likely to be like," Count Hamnet said.
Trasamund eyed him sourly. "And now you'll go, 'It's a great big bear! We should all turn around and run home!'"
Hamnet Thyssen looked back, his eyes as cold as the Glacier. "Demons take you, your Ferocity," he replied in a voice chillier yet.
"No one talks to me that way!" Trasamund had no more control over his temper than a six-year-old. "I'll kill the man who talks to me so."
After sliding down from his horse, Count Hamnet bowed with ironic precision. "You are welcome to try, of course. And after you have tried, the demons will take you in truth." He was not afraid of the Bizogot. Trasamund was big and strong and brave but not, from everything Hamnet had seen, particularly skillful. And even if he were . . . Hamnet Thyssen would not have been afraid, because whether he lived or died was a matter of complete indifference to him.
Trasamund also dismounted. He drew his sword, a two-handed blade that could have severed the great bear's head from its shoulders. A blade like that could cut a man in half—if it bit. Hamnet s own sword was smaller and lighter, but he was much quicker with it.
Ulric Skakki rode between them. "Gentlemen, this is absurd," he said. "You are quarreling over the shadow of an ass."
"By no means," Hamnet Thyssen said. He intended to add that he saw the ass before him. The more furious Trasamund got, the more careless he would act. He was proud of being a Bizogot like any other. That a Raumsdalian might goad him into foolishness because he was so typical never once crossed his mind.
It crossed Ulric Skakki's, though. "That will be enough from you," he snapped before Hamnet could speak. Then he rounded on Trasamund. "And as for you, your Ferocity, you owe his Grace an apology."
"I will apologize with steel." The jarl swung his sword in a whirring, whirling, glittering circle of death.
"You are a bloody fool," Ulric said.
"Shall I kill you, too?" Trasamund asked. "I do not mind. Take your place behind that other wretch, and I will dispose of you one at a time."
"If I have to, I will," Ulric Skakki said. "Personally, I don't think you'll get past Count Hamnet. If by some accident you should, I know you won't get past me. Count Hamnet, I believe, fights fair. I promise you, your Ferocity, I don't waste time on such foolishness."
"Do you want to die?" Trasamund sounded genuinely curious. "If you do, I promise I can arrange it."
"Get out of the way, Ulric," Hamnet Thyssen said. "Believe me, I can take care of myself." He had no intention of backing down—or of dying. Surprises happened, accidents happened, but he didn't think any would this time.
Trasamund seemed to realize for the first time that he was not only serious but murderous, that he wasn't just fighting to save his honor or to keep from seeming a coward but because he expected to win. "You are making a mistake, Raumsdalian," the Bizogot jarl warned.
"I don't think so," Hamnet answered. "And there's been too much talk already." He trotted toward Trasamund, ready to dodge around Ulric Skakki's horse.
"Hold!" That cry didn't come from Ulric—it came from Liv. The shaman pointed one forefinger at Hamnet, the other at Trasamund. They might have been drawn bows. "You are both behaving like men who have lost their wits. Either you are mad, or some sorcery in this country has struck you daft. Whichever it is, you shall not fight."
"No one tells me what to do. No one, by God!" Trasamund growled. He set himself to meet Hamnet Thyssen's onslaught, or perhaps to charge himself.
"I will curse the man who strikes the first blow. I will doubly curse the man who draws the first blood. And I will triply curse the man who slays." Liv sounded as determined as the jarl. Bizogots didn't commonly do things by halves.
Eyvind Torfinn was murmuring a translation for Audun Gilli. The Raumsdalian wizard said, "My curse also on anyone who fights here. We need to stick together."
"I fear no curses," Trasamund said, but the wobble in his voice belied his words.
Hamnet Thyssen really did fear no curses. He was already living under a curse, and shed chosen to travel with him to the land beyond the Glacier. But Ulric Skakki guided his mount between Hamnet and the Bizogot again. "I think Liv is right. I think this land must be ensorceled," he said. "Otherwise his Ferocity would see he needlessly insulted a man who was only trying to do what he thought right—would see that and make amends for it."
He looked toward Trasamund. So did Hamnet Thyssen, who didn't care whether the Bizogot apologized or not. One way or another, Hamnet would go forward. All paths felt the same to him, and all had only darkness at the end.
The Bizogots had a word for that, where Raumsdalian didn't. The mammoth-herders called it fey. Maybe that word was in Trasamund s mind when he said, "This Hamnet dares to offer himself to my sword, to let it drink his blood. That being so, he cannot be such a spineless wretch after all. If I said something hasty, my tongue was running faster than it should have, and I am sorry for that."
"Your Grace?" Ulric said.
Part of Count Hamnet wanted to fight in spite of everything. But hearing Trasamund back down was startling, almost shocking. It shocked him enough to make him ground his sword. "That will do," he said with poor grace, and turned away.
"Good!" Eyvind Torfinn beamed. "Very good!"
Was it? Hamnet wasn't convinced. He wondered whether he'd stopped a fight with Trasamund or just put it off for another day. Trasamund muttered to himself as he slid his sword back into its sheath. Was he wondering the same thing?
* * * *
They went on, but not so far, not so fast. It was as if the quarrel about whether to go on or turn back had wounded the urge to advance without quite killing it. The plodding pace left Hamnet Thyssen less happy than either a forthright advance or a retreat would have.
"We'll never find the Golden Shrine at this rate," he said to Eyvind Torfinn.
"I don't know if it will matter whether we go fast or slow, if we go north or south or east or west," Earl Eyvind said.
"What's that supposed to mean, your Splendor?" Hamnet asked. "It sounds . . . mystical." He didn't feel like trying to penetrate another man's mysticism. To him, mysticism was even more opaque than magic, which after all had practical uses.
Eyvind Torfinn didn't help when he went on, "The Golden Shrine will be found when it is ready to be found. Till then, we can search as hard as we please, but we will pass it by. When we are ready, when it is ready, we will know, and it will be found."
"Wait," Count Hamnet said, scratching his head. "Wait. The Glacier has blocked the way north for how many thousand years?"
"I don't know. For a good many," Eyvind said calmly. "What of it?"
"Well, how could the Golden Shrine know anything about us?" Hamnet Thyssen asked. "We hardly know anything about it. Till I heard the Gap had melted through, I wasn't sure I even believed in the Golden Shrine. I'm still not sure I do."
"Don't worry about whether you believe in the Golden Shrine," Eyvind Torfinn said. "The Golden Shrine believes in you, which is all that really matters."
Instead of answering him, Hamnet Thyssen jerked his horse's head to one side and rode away. If Earl Eyvind wanted to talk nonsense, he was welcome to, as far as Hamnet was concerned. If he wanted anyone else to take him seriously when he did .. . that was another story altogether. Or was it?
Count Hamnet found himself looking in every direction at once. If the Golden Shrine was somehow sneaking around out there keeping an eye on him, he wanted to catch it in the act. Rationally, that made no sense at all.
He needed a little while to realize as much, but eventually he did. Yet out here beyond the Glacier, things weren't necessarily rational. . . were they?
He saw nothing that looked like the Golden Shrine—not that he knew what the Golden Shrine looked like. The country was the same as it had been since the travelers came through the Gap—a steppe for the moment green and spattered with flowers, but with all the signs of winter to come. Here and there, snow lingered on slopes that didn't see much of the sun. Here and there
, frost heaves made miniature hillocks—the only real relief in the landscape.
"You call those pingoes, don't you?" Hamnet Thyssen asked Liv, pointing to one that reared a good hundred yards above the surface of the plain. A thin coating of dirt and clinging plants protected the ice core from melting in the sun.
"That is a pingo, yes," she answered. "Pingo is the name for such things in our language. That pingo is taller than most of the ones in Bizogot country."
"I wonder what makes them," Hamnet said.
"They are," the shaman responded. "How can they be made, except by God?"
"Sudertorp Lake is a lake because of meltwater from the Glacier," Hamnet said.
"Yes, of course." Liv nodded. "God made it so."
"Many, many years ago, Nidaros, the capital of the Empire, sat by the edge of Hevring Lake," Hamnet said. "Hevring Lake was a meltwater lake, too. Then it broke through the dam of earth and ice that held it, and it drained, and it made a great flood. You can still see the badlands it scoured out. One of these days, Sudertorp Lake will do the same thing."
"It maybe so, but what of it?" the Bizogot shaman said.
Stubbornly, Hamnet Thyssen answered, "The land does what it does for reasons men can see. I can understand why Hevring Lake emptied out. I can see that Sudertorp Lake will do the same thing when the Glacier moves farther north. I don't have to talk about God to do it. So what shaped a pingo?"
Liv looked at him. "Speak to me of the Glacier without speaking of God. Speak of why it moves forward and back without speaking of God. Speak of how the Gap opened without speaking of God. Speak of the Golden Shrine without speaking of God."
Count Hamnet opened his mouth, but he did not know what to say.
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