“No, no. Try to do it less,” Ulric said, which only made his confusion worse.
Compared to proper houses, Raumsdalian houses, the huts the Leaping Lynxes had run up were sorry. Their roofs were thatch over a framework of bones held together with sinew. No one had tended to them since the Rulers ran the Bizogots away from Sudertorp Lake. That left the huts draftier than they might have been. During springtime, though, it wasn’t such a great hardship.
Hamnet and Marcovefa took one of the huts for their own. He threw out the bones and other trash that had accumulated in there. Marcovefa gave him a quizzical look. “Why bother?” she said. “It doesn’t stink or anything.”
“You don’t care much about house keeping, do you?” he said.
“I don’t care any about house keeping,” Marcovefa answered. “Why bother? I save caring for things that matter.”
He supposed that made sense. Lots of people he knew had made sense lately: Marcovefa, Ulric Skakki, even Trasamund. To quote Ulric, what was this old world coming to?
But . . . to stay friends with a woman who’d left you? To stay friends with a woman who’d left you for a weed of a man like Audun Gilli? Hamnet could believe Ulric was friends with a swarm of women in the Empire and on the frozen steppe and likely elsewhere as well. Ulric didn’t take anything or anybody seriously. If he ran into a woman he’d slept with once upon a time-well, so what? He wouldn’t fret about it.
When Hamnet met a woman, though, he always thought she was the woman. And he hated admitting even to himself that he might have made a mistake. If things didn’t work out, then, of course he blamed the woman for the failure. How could you stay friends with someone you blamed?
He glanced over at Marcovefa. If things went wrong between them, would he wind up shunning her, too? He suspected he would. He seemed to work that way, whether Ulric Skakki approved or not.
She was looking at him, too. She beckoned. “Now that we have this clean floor thanks to you, we ought to use it. I said I would thank you for that arrow before. Now I will.” She shrugged out of her jacket.
It was still light outside. Bizogots cared much less about privacy than Raumsdalians. Living the way they did, that was no surprise. It also held true for their cousins from atop the Glacier. Hamnet preferred privacy, but he’d spent enough time among the Bizogots to do without it at need.
Had she thanked him any more thoroughly, he thought he would have fallen over dead. He couldn’t imagine a more enjoyable way to go. After his heart stopped thudding quite so hard, he said, “I should save you more often.”
“Why not?” Marcovefa agreed lazily.
She seemed in no hurry to put her clothes back on. When Hamnet was younger, he would have tried for a second round in a little while. Now that he was the age he was, he knew he would have to wait longer. Most of the time, he took that for granted. Sprawling naked beside an inviting woman who was also a powerful shaman, he realized he might not have to.
“Can you do anything magical to get him back into shape again in a hurry?” he asked.
She looked at him sidelong. “What do you want me to do?”
“I don’t know. You’re the wizard,” he said.
“How about this?” She leaned over and did something. It should have raised the dead. Raising the middle-aged proved a bigger challenge. She muttered to herself, then murmured to herself, then began a chant in her own dialect. The tune she chose almost made Hamnet start to laugh. Down to the southwest of the Raumsdalian Empire, the Manche barbarians had wizards who could charm snakes with music. Marcovefa had never seen a snake-well, she’d never seen a two-eyed snake, anyhow-but her tune was a lot like theirs.
And it worked. Like a charmed snake, he rose to the occasion. She nodded to herself. “There it is,” she said. “Now what do you want to do with it?”
He did laugh then, so much that he lost what she’d given him. She didn’t seem too annoyed about repeating the spell. Hamnet found something to do with it after all. Marcovefa seemed contented afterwards, too.
“Again?” she asked then.
Count Hamnet remembered that. He remembered thinking about the answer. He didn’t remember giving it, which was fair enough, because he fell asleep before he could. When he woke up, he found Marcovefa had pulled a blanket cut from a mammoth hide over the two of them. He was still bare under the hide. A moment later, he discovered she was, too.
It was still light outside. No: it was light again. The brief northern night had come and gone, and the sun was shining from a different direction now. Marcovefa stirred only a couple of minutes after Hamnet did. “Happy now?” she asked him. Her voice said she was smugly certain of the answer.
And he nodded. “With you? Yes, I should hope so.” But he went on, “I’d be happier if we could drive the Rulers back beyond the Gap.”
Marcovefa grunted. She got out from under the blanket and, in a marked manner, got into her clothes. She paused only once, to say, “No wonder you lose women.”
“No wonder at all,” Hamnet agreed mournfully, wondering if he’d lost her, too. All he did was answer the question she asked him. He didn’t even forget to say something nice about her. But then he went on to the rest of what was in his mind. Too late-as usual-he realized that was his mistake. When would he ever learn? No. Would he ever learn, late or otherwise?
“You are what you are, that’s all.” Marcovefa seemed to be reminding herself. She shrugged. “Well, who isn’t?”
Since she seemed willing to leave it there, Hamnet Thyssen didn’t push it, either. As he also dressed, he decided not pushing it was a good idea, and progress of a sort. That also would have been too late to do him any good had he decided the other way.
The Bizogots had a fire of dried dung going. They were roasting meat above it. Hamnet’s stomach rumbled. There were appetites, and then there were appetites. Filling your belly wasn’t so much as making love, but you wouldn’t go on making love very long, even with sorcerous assistance, if you were empty.
Hamnet got a musk-ox rib. Instead of gnawing on it, he gave it to Marcovefa. Then he grabbed another one for himself. Maybe she would recognize the peace offering, maybe not.
She certainly ate with good appetite. Bizogots always did, and their close kin from atop the Glacier even more so. And the only way she could have got more off the bone was with a rough tongue like a lion’s. Her tongue wasn’t the least bit rough. Hamnet knew that as well as a man could.
She took another rib, and denuded that one, too. “You people are so lucky to have such big meat-beasts,” she said. “Do you know how lucky you are? Voles, pikas, hares . . . That’s all we knew. Well, that and the beasts that go on two legs.”
“I was up there. I saw how you lived,” Hamnet said. “You did what you could with what you had. People everywhere do the same.” He thought of the Manches again, and of how they scraped a living from their desert. That wasn’t the same as what the Bizogots did, but it wasn’t necessarily easier, either.
“There is so much more to have down here,” Marcovefa said. “The animals . . . The trees . . . The-what do you call them down in the Empire? The crops! That’s it. Plants that aren’t berries, but you can eat them anyhow. And the big berry things that grow on trees-”
“Fruit,” Hamnet said. Apples and pears and plums surprised the Bizogots, too. They had nothing like them.
Marcovefa wasn’t done. “And the head-spinning stuff, the smetyn and the beer and the wine . . . Once in a while, we find mushrooms to send shamans into the spirit world. You go whenever you want. You are so lucky! I am so jealous!”
Count Hamnet wouldn’t have called getting drunk going into the spirit world. When he did it, he mostly did it to forget whatever was troubling his spirit. But it was new and wonderful to the shaman from atop the Glacier. Everything was new and wonderful to Marcovefa. She was like a child in a fairyland. If it sometimes looked like a nightmare to Hamnet, maybe he was the jaded one.
And maybe he’d seen enough of the world
down here on the ground to have a better notion of what was what than she did. He suspected that was so, but didn’t make the claim out loud. He didn’t feel like arguing. Besides, he might have been wrong. He rather hoped he was.
Ulric Skakki also snagged a second rib. He took a bite, then nodded to Hamnet. “Cozy little place we’ve got, isn’t it?”
“Till the Rulers find out we’re here,” Hamnet replied. “How long do you think that will take?”
“Depends on whether any of them got away yesterday,” the adventurer said. “I don’t think so, but I’m not sure. Or maybe one of the wizards got word out magically, and they already know. Won’t be long any which way. When the wizards don’t show up wherever they’re supposed to, the Rulers will come see why not.”
That was less palatable than juicy musk-ox meat. “I wish you didn’t make so much sense,” Hamnet said.
Ulric only shrugged. “If you don’t like the answers, don’t ask the questions.”
Hamnet Thyssen sighed. “I don’t like the answers. Who would? But I needed to hear them.”
“Well, there you are, then,” Ulric said. “Now you’ve heard them. I don’t think the Rulers will get here before we finish breakfast-at least if we hurry.” He bit another chunk of meat off the rib. Ears burning, Hamnet ate some more, too.
“We need to send out patrols,” Trasamund said in his usual tone of brooking no arguments. “If the Rulers are moving to the north and south, we need to know about it.”
“Suppose they’re going around the west end of Sudertorp Lake.” Ulric Skakki liked arguments, brooked or not. “What do we do then?”
Trasamund scowled. “Why would their wizards meet here if their main route runs around the other end of the lake?” he demanded.
“Well, you’ve got something there,” Ulric said. “How much, I don’t know, but something.”
The jarl gave him a sardonic bow. “More than I expected from you, by God. You never admit you’re wrong, do you?”
Hamnet could have told him that was the wrong thing to say to Ulric. He didn’t need to; Ulric proved quite capable of demonstrating it on his own: “When I am wrong, I don’t have any trouble admitting I am-unlike some people I could name. The difference is, I’m not wrong very often, so naturally you wouldn’t have heard me talk about it much.”
“You are a funny man,” Trasamund rumbled. “Funny as my nightmares.”
“Really? Let me take a look.” Ulric Skakki ambled over and peered into the Bizogot’s left ear. He started to laugh. “You’re right. That is a funny one in there.”
Cursing, Trasamund cuffed him-or tried. Ulric caught his arm before the blow landed, caught it and twisted. Trasamund let out a startled grunt of pain. When he tried to get away, Ulric twisted harder. “You’ll break it if you do much more,” Trasamund said. Hamnet admired how calmly he brought out the words.
“That’s the idea,” Ulric answered. “When you go hitting people who didn’t hit you, you can’t look for them to like it. Well, maybe you can, but you’ll be disappointed.”
“Let go of me, and I’ll cut you in half,” Trasamund snarled.
Ulric gave back a merry laugh. “You really know how to get a man to do what you want, don’t you, Your Ferocity?”
“What do you expect me to say?” the Bizogot asked.
“How about, ‘Sorry, Skakki. Now I know better than to talk to people with my fist’? That ought to do it.” Ulric jerked on Trasamund’s arm a little more. Something in there creaked. Count Hamnet heard it plainly.
Despite Trasamund’s courage, his face went gray. He choked out the words Ulric Skakki wanted to hear. The adventurer let him go and jumped back in case he still showed fight. Trasamund didn’t, not right away. He worked his wrist to make sure it wasn’t broken after all. Once satisfied of that, he managed a glare. “I’ll pay you back for that one day, Skakki,” he growled.
“You’re welcome to try,” Ulric said politely. “But would you give any man leave to hit you for a joke?”
“No man has leave to hit me, no matter why,” Trasamund said.
“Then why did you think you had leave to hit me?” Ulric asked.
“Because he was doing the hitting, not taking the blow,” Hamnet Thyssen said when the Bizogot didn’t answer right away.
That won him a glower. “When I want you putting words in my mouth, Thyssen, I’ll stick out my tongue for you,” Trasamund said.
“Better that than sticking your foot in your face,” Hamnet observed.
Trasamund looked blank for a moment. Hamnet realized he’d translated a Raumsdalian phrase into the Bizogot’s language. Then the jarl got it. His hand went over his shoulder so he could draw his great blade. But he winced when his fingers closed on the leather-wrapped hilt. The wrist still pained him. Maybe it even made him thoughtful. He let his hand drop, contenting himself with saying, “Your time will come, too.”
“I don’t doubt it. Everyone’s does,” Hamnet agreed. “But I hope it doesn’t come at your hands. That would mean we’re fighting each other, not the Rulers.”
Trasamund chewed on that. By his expression, he didn’t care for the taste. “Well, you’re right,” he said at last: an astonishing admission from any Bizogot, and doubly astonishing from him. Then he added, “But once they’re whipped, don’t think I’ve forgotten about you.”
Count Hamnet bowed. “Once the Rulers are whipped, Your Ferocity, I will meet you wherever you please. I will meet you here. I will meet you down in Nidaros. I will meet you in the doorway to the Golden Shrine, if that tickles your fancy.”
“The doorway to the Golden Shrine, is it?” Trasamund threw back his head and laughed. “By God, your Grace, you’re on! Once we beat the Rulers, I’ll cut your heart out in the doorway to the Golden Shrine.” He held out his hand. “Bargain?”
“I’ll meet you there, surely.” Hamnet Thyssen clasped with him. “As Ulric says, you’re welcome to try. You may get a surprise, though-and if you do, it may be your last one.”
“I’m not afraid of you. I’m not afraid of Skakki, either,” Trasamund said. “You can go on about surprises as much as you want. Death is always the last surprise.”
Ulric threw his hands in the air. “When a Bizogot jarl gets philosophical on you, it’s time to go do something else.” He mooched off.
“That one.” Trasamund shook his head in mingled exasperation and affection. So Hamnet judged, anyhow-those two emotions always warred in him when he thought of the adventurer. Trasamund went on, “What are we going to do about him?”
“Turn him loose against the Rulers,” Count Hamnet said. “If that’s not the most important thing we’re doing, we’re doing something wrong.”
“We’ve done plenty of things wrong,” the jarl said, which was only too true. “Not that one, though-not lately, anyhow. They taught us their lessons the hard way.”
“So they did.” Hamnet left it there. The hard way was the only way the Bizogots understood-when they understood any way at all.
Hamnet gnawed on a roasted goose leg as he rode across the Bizogot steppe. Ulric Skakki was working on a swan’s drumstick. That would have been an expensive delicacy down in the Empire. At Sudertorp Lake, the swans bred in as much exuberant profusion as the smaller waterfowl.
And Sudertorp Lake was merely the largest of the many lakes and ponds and puddles dotting the flat ground that was still frozen a few feet down. Count Hamnet looked toward the northern horizon, but he couldn’t see the Glacier. See it or not, he knew it was there.
Ulric understood what his glance meant. “Do you really think that whole mountain of ice is going to melt away?”
“Before I went through the Gap, I would have told you no,” Hamnet said. “Now? I suppose it will, one of these days. The world will be a different place then. I won’t be here to see it, though, and neither will you.”
“I suppose not,” Ulric said. “Seeing what-and who-was on the other side’s been interesting enough, and then some.”
“Yes. And then some.” Hamnet Thyssen’s gaze focused more sharply on ground much closer. First glances could-and often did-deceive. The steppe had little dips and rises that had a way of hiding trouble till it was right on top of you . . . or, sometimes, right in back of you.
Every time something moved, Count Hamnet’s hand started to go to his sword or his bow. And things did move, again and again. Small birds nested among the small bushes. Voles and lemmings scurried. Weasels chased them. Hares hopped. Short-eared foxes loped after them and noisy-winged ptarmigan.
A snowy owl swooped down. It rose again with a lemming in its claws. Prey still writhing feebly, it flew past Hamnet and Ulric just out of bowshot. Hamnet felt the bird’s golden eyes on him till at last it turned its head in a different direction.
“God-cursed thing,” he muttered.
“If it’s only an owl, I don’t mind it,” Ulric Skakki said. “But if it’s one of the Rulers’ wizards in owl shape, come to look us over the way they do . . .”
“If it is, it just got an eyeful,” Hamnet said. “Two eyes full, in fact.”
“I doubt it was a wizard this time,” Ulric said.
“Oh? Why’s that?” Count Hamnet asked.
The adventurer spread his hands in wry amusement. “Well, it looked us over. It looked us over good. And it didn’t fall out of the sky laughing. That makes me think it must be an ordinary owl.”
“Heh,” Hamnet Thyssen said. “I wish that were the kind of joke that made me laugh.”
“So do I,” Ulric replied. “I don’t like wasting them. We’re in a mess, you know. The Rulers can whip the Bizogots. They can whip the Empire. The only thing they haven’t shown they can whip is Marcovefa, and there’s only one of her. A little bad luck, and we’re all in a lot of trouble.”
“Yes.” Hamnet left it right there. If anything happened to Marcovefa, the Bizogots and Raumsdalia would suffer, true. But so would he. The last woman in the world who thought he was anything out of the ordinary . . . He shook his head. That wasn’t quite right. She was the last woman in the world who made him think he was anything out of the ordinary. That made her a rarer bird yet.
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