“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Hamnet said. “I’ll have to do my best not to make a fool of myself, then, won’t I?”
Gudrid’s laugh was loud and rich. “But darling, we all know your best is nowhere near good enough, don’t we?”
He shrugged. “All I can do is all I can do.”
“This is true of all of us,” Eyvind Torfinn said. “For myself, I think doing our best against the Rulers is more important than anything that has faced the Empire for many, many years. I am so convinced of this that, if I see anyone operating on a contrary principle, I shall feel compelled to change my will.”
The Bizogots, even the Bizogots who spoke Raumsdalian, might have followed his words, but they didn’t grasp the thought behind those words. Hamnet Thyssen did. And so did Gudrid. If she kept trying to turn Sigvat against Hamnet, Eyvind would cut her off after he died. Maybe she could get around that, but it wouldn’t be easy. She looked daggers at him. He smiled in return, which did nothing to reassure her.
She put the best face on things she could: “If dear Hamnet wants to go north and kill himself, he’s welcome to for all of me.”
“Thank you,” he said.
Marcovefa set a hand on his arm. “You do what you do. It will be all right. I will help,” she said.
“Good. Thank you, too,” he said.
Gudrid laughed again. “Your lovers get more barbarous every time, sweetheart. The next one will be a jungle ape.”
“No, you taught me all I need to know about those,” Hamnet replied. “Besides, she’s not a lover – only a friend. Not that you would know much about friends, or what they mean.” Gudrid bared her teeth at him. He thought his shot actually went home. That wouldn’t be a first, but it didn’t happen very often, either.
XVIII
Sigvat II dithered two more days before sending Hamnet Thyssen the orders he wanted. Hamnet wondered whether Gudrid was trying to talk the Emperor out of it in spite of Eyvind Torfinn’s warnings, or whether Sigvat simply disliked and distrusted him that much. The nobleman swallowed a sigh: either one seemed possible.
At last, though, a palace servitor fetched the required parchment to Eyvind Torfinn’s home. Count Hamnet unrolled it to make sure it was what it was supposed to be. He didn’t need Ulric Skakki to warn him against going north with a document he hadn’t examined, a document that was liable to order any officer who read it to arrest him and kill him on sight.
The servitor only waited impassively while Hamnet read through the parchment. It was, in fact, everything he’d hoped for and more besides. A calligrapher had inscribed it in red and purple ink. It was bedizened with not one but three imperial seals, each stamped into wax of a different color. Sigvat II’s scribbled signature at the bottom seemed almost an afterthought.
And it said everything it should have. It gave Hamnet powers just short of imperial to fight the invading barbarians “said to be known as the Rulers.” All commanders in the north were ordered in no uncertain terms to subordinate themselves and their soldiers and wizards to him. Whether they would obey, and how well, might prove interesting questions. But Sigvat s orders seemed clear enough.
Ulric Skakki read over Hamnet s shoulder without the slightest trace of embarrassment. “What more do you want?” he said when he finished. “Egg in your beer?”
“I want to get moving,” Count Hamnet answered. “Do you think the Rulers are standing still?”
“Tomorrow is soon enough, unless you think they’re going to land on Nidaros with both feet tonight,” Ulric said. “Do you?”
Part of Hamnet did – a large part, too. But he recognized that the Rulers wouldn’t descend on the imperial capital before he could go out and face them. The Raumsdalian Empire was bigger than that. Odds were that the invaders remained in the northern forests. That would be strange country for them, and they probably wouldn’t be able to push their mammoths through very fast.
“Tomorrow is soon enough,” Hamnet agreed – grudgingly, but it was agreement all the same.
“There you go.” Ulric set a hand on his shoulder. “Besides, who knows? Somebody else may go up against them before you get there. Probably will, in fact. If he loses, what will Sigvat think? That he needs you more than ever, that’s what. And if he wins – well, so what? You’re still out of the dungeon, and that’s what really counts.”
A lot of Raumsdalians would have held a decidedly different view of things. For them, a victory in which they had no part would have seemed worse than a thrashing. It would have marked the death knell of their ambitions. Hamnet Thyssen didn’t feel that way, not least because he had few ambitions.
“Well, you’re right,” he said. Ulric Skakki knew him better than most, but looked surprised all the same. The adventurer had his own fair share of hope for himself, and naturally expected other people to have theirs, too.
A little later that day, Audun Gilli came up to Hamnet. “I will go north if you’ll have me,” the wizard said. “I want to do whatever I can against the Rulers.”
There were ambitions, and then there were ambitions. Count Hamnet had hoped to live out his days happily with Liv. That wouldn’t happen now. But did Audun deserve the blame because it wouldn’t? Wouldn’t Liv have taken up with someone else if Audun hadn’t been one of the travelers in the north? Hamnet feared she would have.
“You can come,” he said gruffly. “I don’t love you, by God. Nothing could make me love you. But I won’t sneak up to your bedroll and stick a dagger in you while you’re sleeping, either.”
Audun looked relieved. “Thank you, Your Grace!”
“For what?” Hamnet growled. “Now you’ve got a better chance of getting killed than you would have if I told you to go to the demons. So does Liv, for that matter.”
“Do you really want to see her dead?”
“No, curse it.” Count Hamnet s voice grew harsher yet; he hadn’t imagined it could. Audun, for the most part, wouldn’t have known a hint if it walked up and bit him in the leg. He took this one, though. Bobbing his head in an awkward gesture of thanks, he retreated in a hurry.
Part of Hamnet wanted to get blind drunk after that. He didn’t, though, which went a long way towards proving how serious he was about setting out the next morning. He went to bed, if not sober, then close enough so that he wouldn’t have more than a mild headache come the new day.
His bedchamber was as luxurious as any he’d ever known. A fireplace and two braziers held the cold at bay. His mattress was soft and thick, the furs that lay atop it even thicker. He had no excuse for not sleeping well.
But sleep didn’t want to come. Count Hamnet lay in the darkness, staring up at the ceiling he could barely see. He muttered to himself. When muttering didn’t do anything, he swore out loud. That didn’t help, either. He groped under the bed till he found the chamber pot. After using it, he lay down again. Sleep still stayed away.
When it finally came, it took him by surprise. He drifted into a dream without realizing he was dreaming. He didn’t remember much about it: only that it was one of those busy, complicated dreams that make waking life seem simple by comparison.
As he didn’t realize when the dream began, he also didn’t realize when it ended. He thought the weight pressing down on the bed next to him was something happening in his mind, not anything real.
Even when his hand touched warm, bare flesh, he turned that into part of the dream – a part that mingled sweet and bitter almost unbearably. But the soft, throaty laugh he heard then couldn’t possibly have sprung from inside his own mind.
His eyes flew open. “Who the – ?” he burst out. Liv, come to apologize the best way she knew how? Gudrid, come to torment him the best way she knew how? A serving girl, come to make sure he slept sound after all? No matter how kindly Eyvind Torfinn might mean that, Hamnet didn’t want a stranger. To say he didn’t want Gudrid proved what a weak reed words were. Liv… would hurt him more than she helped, though she might not understand that.
“Never mind wh
o.” The answer came in the Bizogot tongue, so it wasn’t Gudrid or a servant. But it didn’t sound like Liv, either. Who, then?
Knowledge smote. “Marcovefa?” Hamnet said. “Why – ?”
“Because I want to. Do I need more reason?” A man would have said it like that. But Hamnet’s fingers told him she was no man. She slipped under the furs beside him. Her fingers began to roam, too.
“How did you get in?” Muzzy with sleep, he knew he was a couple of steps slower than he should have been. All the same, he was sure he’d barred the door when he came in. He hadn’t wanted company. He had it, though.
Marcovefa laughed again. “I am a shaman, remember? If I want to be someplace, I go there. If I want something to be mine, I take it.”
“But -” Hamnet spluttered.
“Hush.” Her mouth came down on his. That shut him up in the most effective way imaginable. He raised his arms to push her away, but they went around her instead. She twisted a little so that his hands found her breasts. She made a noise somewhere between a purr and a growl when he squeezed them.
The bed was wide. He rolled her over so that his weight pinned her to the mattress. His mouth trailed down from hers to her nipples. She sighed and pressed his head down on her. His hand found the joining of her legs. Her breath caught. As he stroked her, she opened them wider. She was wet and wanton, waiting for him.
“Here,” she whispered. “I do for you.” She twisted in the red gloom. Her mouth came down on him.
“Easy,” he said as her tongue fluttered and teased. “Oh, easy. Or I’ll -”
“So what?” She dove deep on him, so deep that she choked a little. That made her pull back a little, but she was laughing when she did.
More than a little of that and he would explode. He knew it, and Marcovefa had to know it, too. He didn’t think she’d come here just for that, so he touched her cheek. She paused and made a questioning, wordless noise. “Let’s do this,” he said, pressing his weight onto her again. He slid in with just the slightest of guidance. They began to move together, as if they’d been lovers for years.
Again, he thought he would finish too soon to satisfy her. When his mouth slid down to her breast again, though, she murmured something in her own dialect. There he was, nearly at the peak of pleasure, and there he stayed, and stayed, and stayed, till delight turned almost painful. Marcovefa gasped and quivered beneath him, again and again.
“Now?” she asked at last.
“Now!” Hamnet said. They were both sticky and slippery with sweat, sliding together. He reached the pinnacle, and seemed to fall from it forever. Marcovefa shivered one more time.
“Good?” she inquired brightly.
“My God,” he answered, and then, “Wait till I can see anything but fire in front of my eyes.” She must have liked that, for she laughed again. The motion made him slide out of her.
“Maybe you sleep now,” she said. Count Hamnet was inclined to think he’d sleep for the next month. This wasn’t love – he’d known love twice now, and known it to turn on him and bite – but he’d never dreamt of so much animal pleasure. And then, mischief in her voice, she went on, “Or maybe …” That wasn’t a complete sentence by itself, but what she did a moment later made it one.
After his sweaty exertions of a moment before, he hadn’t thought he could rise again so soon. He hadn’t thought he could rise again at all, not for days. But he surprised himself. Maybe – more likely – Marcovefa made him surprise himself. This time she rode him, less ferociously than he’d taken her. He didn’t think she used any magic past that which any man and woman who please each other have. If he was wrong, he didn’t much want to find out.
“There,” she said when they’d both spent themselves again. “Is that better?”
“Better than what?” Hamnet asked, which set her laughing all over again. It was better than almost anything he could think of.
Almost.If Gudrid truly loved me, and if she were truly faithful… The thought flickered through his mind like heat lightning on a summer night far to the south of Nidaros. Then sleep did smite him, and the darkness in the bedchamber was as nothing next to the black welling up from deep inside.
When he woke the next morning, he thought at first he’d dreamt it all. That couldn’t really have happened . . could it? But he needed only a heartbeat’s more consciousness to realize he wasn’t alone in the bed. The thin, gray light leaking in through tight-drawn shutters showed Marcovefa asleep beside him, a small smile on her face. Her features relaxed in slumber, she looked improbably young.
His eyes went towards the door. Yes, it was barred. She might have done that right after she came in. She might have got out of bed after he fell asleep. She might have, yes. But he wondered whether it had ever been unbarred at all.
Marcovefa woke up a few minutes later. She looked confused for a couple of heartbeats, as if wondering where she was, and with whom. Then she grinned at Count Hamnet. “Good morning,” she said.
“The night was better.” He leaned over to kiss her. He half – more than half – hoped they would pick up where they’d left off, though he was anything but sure he could rise to the occasion.
But Marcovefa said, “We take care of one thing at a time. Now you are all right for a while, yes? So now we go and see what we can do to these Rulers.” The invaders still didn’t seem to trouble her, even if they had everyone else below the Glacier from Trasamund to Sigvat in something close to a panic.
Hamnet wondered if he ought to resent being lumped with a water wheel that had got out of kilter. Pride and the memory of pleasure warred within him, but not for long. He couldn’t stay offended, not when he remembered how she’d put him back in good working order.
Marcovefa slid out of bed, found the chamber pot, and squatted over it. Like the Bizogots, her folk needed less in the way of privacy than Raumsdalians did. She straightened up, still naked. Hamnet watched her in unfeigned admiration.
He looked around the room. He didn’t see her clothes anywhere. Had she walked through the corridors of Eyvind Torfinn’s house like that? Or – ?
She fluttered her fingertips in a wicked parody of a gesture someone like Gudrid might have used. “See you at breakfast, sweetheart,” she said – and vanished. Hamnet didn’t think she’d made herself invisible. She’d really disappeared; a soft pop.’ of inrushing air said as much.
Could Liv or Audun Gilli apport themselves like that? Count Hamnet shrugged. He didn’t know. He only knew he’d never seen them do it.
He used the pot himself, then dressed in the clothes Sigvat’s servants had given him. They would do for winter wear, though they weren’t ideal. He would have stewed in his own juices wearing them in a summer heat wave here. A slow smile – not an expression he was used to wearing – stole across his face. His juices had done considerable stirring in the night.
He found his way to the dining room. Eyvind Torfinn was there, eating sausages and duck eggs and drinking a hot infusion of herbs. Gudrid was there, too. So was Marcovefa. The two of them ostentatiously ignored each other. Hamnet Thyssen nodded to Eyvind Torfinn, then walked up to the cook. “I’ll have what the earl’s having,” he said. “That looks good.”
“Help yourself to the sausages, Your Grace,” the man replied. “I’ll give you your eggs in just a bit. Would you like two or three?”
“Three, please,” Hamnet answered. The sausages were venison, their flavor enlivened with garlic and fennel. When he had his eggs – almost as fast as the cook promised – he sat down by Marcovefa. Catlike, she leaned against him.
Gudrid never missed a signal like that. One of her elegantly plucked eyebrows leaped. “This time, of course, it will be pure happiness,” she said in a voice filled with vitriol.
“I doubt it,” Hamnet answered. “It will be what it is, that’s all.”
Gudrid started to say something, then stopped with her mouth open. She must have expected him to come back with something like, Of course it will. His smile held a ce
rtain grim triumph. Sometimes getting the best of her even in tiny things felt more important than driving the Rulers beyond the Glacier.
Marcovefa pointed across at Gudrid. “She catches bugs, yes?” she said in the regular Bizogot tongue. Gudrid understood that well enough to close her mouth with a snap, and to redden in anger.
“Maybe we should all leave aside our quarrels, whatever they may be, until the happy day when the Rulers are defeated,” Eyvind Torfinn said, also in the Bizogot language.
His wife understood that, too, which was not to say she agreed with it. As Count Hamnet s own thoughts showed, he wasn’t sure he agreed with it, either. Beating the Rulers was his duty. Getting one up on Gudrid was a pleasure, and one he didn’t enjoy nearly often enough.
At the moment, though, Gudrid’s anger seemed more likely to be aimed at Marcovefa than at him. Gudrid had squabbled with Liv, too, and hadn’t liked what happened when she did. Would she remember that angering shamans and wizards wasn’t a good idea?
“With the Emperors order in my hand, I want to go north as soon as I finish here, Your Splendor,” Hamnet said. “And with me and the Bizogots out of your house, you should have peace again, God willing.”
“May it be so.” Eyvind Torfinn didn’t sound convinced, and Hamnet had a hard time blaming him for that. Gudrid wasn’t happy that he’d prevailed on Sigvat to open the dungeon. As far as she was concerned, Hamnet and Kormak Bersi could have stayed there till they rotted. She wasn’t shy about making her opinions known, either. No, Earl Eyvind probably wouldn’t have a happy time of it once his guests left.
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.”
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