Beyong the Gap

XVII

By the standards of Nidaros, the hostel in the northern town of Naestved would have been third-rate at best. But even a third-rate hostel boasted a bathhouse. A big, hot fire blazed in a hearth near the two copper tubs that sat side by side. The travelers rolled dice for the order in which they would bathe. Hamnet Thyssen and Ulric Skakki had to wait far into the night. Hamnet didn't care.

Neither did Ulric. "Did you hear the landlord squawk about how much water he'd have to heat?" he said, and then ducked himself and scrubbed at his hair. He came up blowing like one of the whales seacoast people talked about. "The poor dear."

"You'd think we weren't paying for the wood," Hamnet Thyssen said, doing some scrubbing of his own. The steaming bathwater had been clean when he stepped into his tub. It wasn't clean any more. It was grayish brown and scummed with soapsuds. His own skin, by contrast, was getting toward the color he remembered its being once upon a time.

"Oh, but we're making his servants work for their living. They don't like it any better than anybody else would." As usual, Ulric Skakki had enough cynicism for two or three ordinary people.

"I want to wallow here for the next week," Hamnet said. "This is almost as wonderful as I thought it would be." Only two things separated him from perfect bliss. For one thing, the soap the landlord gave them was harsh and strong-smelling. For another. . .

Ulric leered at him. "You wish Liv were in this tub instead of me. Or more likely you wish she were in that tub along with you."

Hamnet s ears heated. That was exactly what he wished. He wondered if Liv had ever had a real bath before. He doubted it. Among the Bizogots, hot water, except for cooking, was hard to come by. They washed their hands and faces. Sometimes they steamed themselves, pouring water onto fire-heated stones. But he was sure they'd never heard of bathtubs.

She would have to bathe with Gudrid. That filled Hamnet with misgivings. Gudrid might try to lead Liv astray for the fun of it. But if Liv watched what Gudrid did herself, she wouldn't go far wrong.

"These tubs are narrow to fit two," Ulric went on. "Of course, if you fit one on top of the other. . ."

"Oh, shut up," Hamnet told him.

This time, Ulric didn't leer. He just grinned-he'd wanted to get under Hamnet's skin, and he'd done it. "Down in Nidaros," he said, "they make tubs a little wider, because they know people will want to sport in them."

"Do they?" Hamnet said. "And is this something you've heard, or have you tried it for yourself?"

"Oh, I've tried it," Ulric Skakki said cheerfully. "Doing things is a lot more fun than talking about them. Some people will tell you the opposite, but they're liars-or if they're not, I'm sorry for them."

"Doing some things is more fun than talking about them," Hamnet said. "I'd sooner talk about lice and fleas and bedbugs than deal with them in person." He looked at the specks floating in his bathwater. How many of them were drowned bugs? Too many-he was sure of that. Had he killed them all? He was just as sorrowfully sure he hadn't.

"Have to take the bad with the good." Ulric s shrug made water slosh out of his tub. "Not everyone sees that." He paused. "Sometimes I think hardly anyone sees that."

"Everyone sees why the other fellow needs to take the bad with the good," Hamnet Thyssen said. "Why he needs to do it himself. .. That's a different story."

Somebody banged on the bathhouse door. "Haven't you two turned into prunes yet?" Jesper Fletti called through the spruce planks. Almost all the wood up here was fir and spruce, drawn from the enormous northern forests. "Some of the rest of us want to see what color we really are, too," Jesper added.

"All right. All right. We'll get out," Ulric said regretfully. Under his breath, he went on, "Talk about taking the bad with the good."

"Or after the good, anyhow." Hamnet sighed as he got out of the tub. The water was starting to get cold, but it hadn't got there yet. In spite of the fire roaring in the hearth, the air in the bathhouse was chilly. He went and stood in front of the flames to dry off and warm up. Ulric Skakki stood beside him. Hamnet was the bigger man, but saying which of them was harder wouldn't have been easy. Hamnet eyed Ulric's scars. "You've been in a scrape or three, haven't you?"

"Oh, you might say so." Ulric Skakki surveyed Hamnet s hairy arms and torso. "Now that you mention it, so have you."

"The other fellows will fight back now and again," Hamnet said. "Treacherous dogs, but what can you do?"

"Kill ‘em fast, before they have the chance to do anything to you," Ulric answered.

"Good advice. Anyone would know you were a fighting man." Hamnet ran a comb through his hair and beard. Then he stared at the bone tool. "I hope it's not covered with nits. If it is . . ."

"If it is, you'll know about it before long." Ulric, who was also combing himself, paused to mime scratching. "At least we can bathe now. That will help. And if we soak our hair in oil, that will help more."

"I suppose so." Count Hamnet put on a robe the landlord swore was pest-free. Ulric Skakki donned another one. The Bizogot-style clothes they'd worn on their travels were being fumigated with burning sulfur. The stinking smoke would kill most of the pests the garments carried. As for the ones that survived . .. Well, now that the travelers were back in civilization, they could always fumigate the furs again. They could even get new clothes.

The Bizogots would have thought nothing of skinning and tanning hides up on the frozen steppe. Hamnet might have tried it himself in a pinch, but he was glad he hadn't had to. The mammoth-herders were bound to be better at it than he was.

When he and Ulric opened the door, Jesper Fletti and Eyvind Torfinn glowered at them. "Took you long enough," Jesper said.

"Wait till the next pair start yelling at you," Hamnet said. "And they will. They will."

"I suspect he may be right," Eyvind Torfinn said.

"I don't care if he is," Jesper Fletti said. He turned and shouted in the direction of the kitchens. "Where's that clean hot water, by God? Do you expect me to soak in somebody else's swill?"

"So charming," Ulric Skakki murmured. Hamnet Thyssen carefully didn't smile. Jesper Fletti gave Ulric a sharp look. But the bathhouse attendants came up just then, and Jesper went back to yelling at them instead. Count Hamnet thought that wise. Jesper Fletti was a large, strong, tough man. If he got into a fight with someone ordinary, he would win, and win easily. If he got into a fight with Ulric, his size and strength and toughness might keep him alive an extra half minute or so. Or, on the other hand, they might not.

Eyvind Torfinn didn't quarrel with the attendants. He eyed them as if they were the most wonderful people he’d ever met. "To be clean," he said. "I shall be clean." Hamnet Thyssen walked down the hall before Eyvind could finish the conjugation. Not that he didn't sympathize, but he already knew how the verb worked.

Next morning, he found fresh bites. In a way, that infuriated him. In another way, it showed he'd made progress. For weeks, for months, he'd been bitten so often that he hardly noticed new marks-one itch blended into another. Now he had few enough that they stood out. Maybe one day before too long, if he kept bathing and went on fumigating his clothes, he wouldn't have any. Wouldn't that be something?

Fat snowflakes frisked on the breeze as the travelers rode out of Naestved. Liv looked back over her shoulder, watching the palisade disappear behind them. When she sighed, the wind blew her breath, too. "Everyone talks about how rich the Empire is," she said, and sighed again. "Trasamund has come down here before, and I've listened to him go on about it. But I never imagined it could be as rich as … this." Her wave encompassed both the town they were leaving and the dour forest around it.

"Naestved isn't anything much," Hamnet Thyssen said truthfully.

Liv stared at him, sure he was joking. When she saw he wasn't, she sighed one more time. "I think you have so many. . . things .. . that you take them all for granted." Plainly, she chose her words with care.

"Maybe we do," Hamnet said. "Plenty of priests would be happy to tell you how right you are-you can bet on that."

What she said about priests would have horrified any of them who heard her. It made Eyvind Torfinn and Ulric Skakki whip their heads around in astonishment. "I did not mean anything that has to do with my comrades here," she went on in more moderate tones. "But you Raumsdalians do have so many things that I wonder how you can stand to do without them when you come up to the Bizogot country."

That thought had also crossed Hamnet Thyssen's mind. "A lot of us wouldn't want to," he admitted uncomfortably. "A lot of us wouldn't be able to. But things are only things. Either you own them-or they own you. If you can't do without them, they own you. I don't want to be owned, thank you very much."

"You even talk like a Bizogot," she said. "How? You say Naestved is nothing much. That means you must have seen better, though I don't know what could be finer than that. Hot water to bathe in … Things to put the hot water in . . ."

"Tubs," Count Hamnet said helpfully.

"Tubs," Liv repeated. "Soft things to sleep on . . ."

"Beds."

"Beds," she said. "And the food made from ground grain .. . Bread." She found the word before he gave it to her. "And the tents with wooden walls . . . Houses. So much wood everywhere. Even wood around the town to keep out enemies." She shook her head in wonder.

To keep out the Bizogots, Hamnet Thyssen thought. Here in the north, there were no other enemies. He shook his head. There hadn't been any other enemies, not till the Gap melted through. Now the Rulers would come through, come down onto the Bizogots' frozen plains-which would seem familiar enough to them-and then, if they got this far, into the Empire.

"So many things," Liv went on. "This is because you don't have to wander, to follow the herds, isn't it?"

"Partly. Maybe even mostly," Hamnet answered. "It would be hard to carry bathtubs around in a mammoth-hide tent. But also partly because the country is different. It would be hard to herd mammoths and musk oxen through the forest."

"I think so!" Liv exclaimed. "I look at these .. . trees . . . and I think they all lean toward me. I think they all want to fall on me. We go through them, and I feel they are all squeezing in on me." She gestured with her hands.

"Some Raumsdalians, when they come up into the Bizogot country, they feel the land is too big. They feel like flies walking across a plate." Hamnet Thyssen gestured, too. "They feel the land is so wide and they are so small that God has forgot them."

She laughed. "Really?" After Hamnet nodded, she asked, "Did you ever feel this way?"

He thought she expected him to say no, but he nodded again. Sure enough, she looked surprised. "On the Bizogot plains, I feel small," Count Hamnet said. "If a mammoth could think, it would feel small out on the Bizogot plains. But some of my countrymen have it worse than I do. Some of them feel as if they're about to disappear."

"How funny. How strange," Liv said. "But the forest doesn't bother them?"

"I've heard Raumsdalians say they feel crowded here," Hamnet replied. "Farther south, we have forests and fields, all mixed together. We have towns that make Naestved look like nothing beside them. We have rivers that stay unfrozen all year long-well, except in hard winters, anyhow- and we have boats that travel on them."

"We have boats," Liv said proudly. "We make them from hides, and use mammoth bones to give them their shape. We use them for fishing, and to cross streams too deep for fording."

So there, Hamnet Thyssen thought. I'm no savage-my people can do these things, too, Liv was saying. "Ours are bigger," he said gently. "They're mostly made of wood, because it floats on water." He felt odd saying that-how could anyone not know it? On the other hand, how could she know it, living so far north of the tree line? Up where the Three Tusk clan roamed, willows and birches were little shrubs, hardly taller than the middle of a man's calf The forever frozen ground wouldn't let anything larger grow.

Her eyes went wide, so wide that he saw white all around the blue of her irises. "It floats, you say? Then you can make boats as big as you please, and they stay on top of the water?"

He'd already seen she was clever. She understood right away what things meant, even when they weren't things she'd had any reason to think about before. "We do make big boats," he said. "They carry people and goods up and down the rivers. Most of the grain trade in the Empire goes by boat, because it's so much cheaper to ship by water than by land."

"Up and down the rivers? How do you go against the current?"

"Our boats have sails." Hamnet Thyssen answered. They were mostly using the Bizogot tongue, but the new word had to come out in Raumsdalian. As best he could, he explained what sails were and how they worked.

Liv's eyes widened again. "How marvelous!" she breathed. "This is one of the most wonderful sorceries I ever heard of-more marvelous than anything I ever imagined myself, believe me."

"If you think this is magic, then I didn't make myself plain," Count Hamnet said. "It's a craft, a skill, like tanning leather or carving bone."

"Is it? Are you sure?" Liv asked. "Suppose the wind doesn't blow the way you wish it would, the way you need it to. Won't a shaman call up a wind to take the boat where it needs to go?"

"More likely the crew will use oars, or will have horses to tow the boat upstream." Hamnet plucked at his beard. He was no wizard. He didn't know everything a spell might do. If any of the travelers did, Audun Gilli was the man. "Hi! Audun!" Hamnet called, and waved to draw the sorcerer's notice.

"What is it, your Grace?" Audun didn't seem as enthusiastic about going back to Nidaros as the rest of the Raumsdalians. Up in the Bizogot country, he'd been able to set aside the cruel memories that haunted him. Now he was returning to them again. He couldn't be looking forward to that.

"If the breeze is against him, can a wizard raise enough of his own wind to send a boat upstream?" Hamnet asked.

"Well, it depends on the boat and the wizard," Audun Gilli answered. "If it's a little sailboat and it doesn't have to go too far upstream, a lot of wizards can manage. I could do that myself, I think. If you're talking about a great wallowing barge with a couple of hundred head of cattle aboard, that's another story. Maybe a team of strong sorcerers could bring it off, but chances are there's some easier way to do it. Try that and fail, and the wizards might not be worth much afterwards."

"How much did you understand?" Hamnet asked Liv.

"Most, I think," she said in her own language, then switched to Raumsdalian to ask Audun, "Why not make better spells for such a useful thing?"

"Because most of the time, like I said, you can go upstream without using much magic," he replied. "Don't you know spells you could use, only most of the time you don't because they're more trouble than they're worth?"

That got too complicated for her to follow easily. Count Hamnet translated it into her language. She thought it over, then nodded. "Yes, there are some," she said, again in Raumsdalian. "But for something this wonderful-"

"Ah, there we have it," Hamnet Thyssen broke in. "You think boats and sails are marvelous and wonderful because they're new to you. Down in the Empire and the lands farther south yet, we've been using boats for as long as anyone can remember, and probably for longer than that. We take them as much for granted as you take mammoth-hide tents."

"How sad," Liv said in Raumsdalian.

"Sad?" Hamnet and Audun both asked at the same time.

She nodded. "Sad. Very sad. Wonders should be wonders. To take them for granted is to waste them. Do you take making love for granted?"

Audun Gilli shook his head. "By God, I hope not!" Hamnet said.

Liv didn't claim he did, which was a relief. She just said, "Well, then," as if she’d proved her point.

"To people who are used to them, boats aren't as important-or as wonderful-as making love," Hamnet said stubbornly. Audun Gilli coughed. Hamnet sent him an annoyed look, not least because he had a point of sorts. Men who skippered boats and men who made their living from them probably did think what happened aboard them was as important as what went on in bed. "You know what I mean," Hamnet said. Audun didn't deny it. If he had, Hamnet would have looked around for something to clout him with.

"Well, it's not worth the argument," Liv said.

Hamnet Thyssen stared at her, as surprised as if a short-faced bear had spoken to him. He'd never heard those words from Gudrid. And what about you? he asked himself. He'd never been known to back away from any argument. He'd kept this one going. He wondered why. Who was right and who wrong counted for nothing, not when you thought for a little while. But he hadn't. He wanted to be right, whether he was right or not.

When you got down to it, that was .. . pretty stupid. And he'd only taken forty-odd years to realize it. The really scary thing was, he was doing better than most. A lot of people went to their graves without ever figuring that out.

"No, it's not," he said, and neither Liv nor Audun Gilli had the slightest idea how much effort getting those three words past his lips took.

By Raumsdalian standards, the northern forests changed very slowly. But Liv noticed differences at once. "What are those trees with the white . . . ?" she asked, and gestured because she couldn't remember the Raumsdalian word she needed.

"Trunks," Count Hamnet supplied, and she nodded. "Those are birches," he said.

"They look like skeletons." Liv took off her mittens and raised her hands with fingers widespread. "How do they live? Where are their leaves?" The last word came out in the Bizogot language.

"They'll grow them in spring and keep them into fall," Hamnet answered. "They do that every year. The leaves fall off. They turn brown and die. Most of them are buried under the snow now."

"Why do they do that?" she asked. "It seems like a waste. The . . . the firs and the spruces keep their leaves in this time. Why not the birches, too?"

"I don't know. Maybe you'd have to ask the trees," Hamnet Thyssen said. She made a face at him. He called out to Eyvind Torfinn. "Why do birches and oaks and willows lose their leaves in the fall?"

Eyvind stared on him. "What on earth makes you think I'd know something like that?"

"Well, I don't, your Splendor," Count Hamnet said. "Of all the people here, I thought you had the best chance to tell me. You know all sorts of strange things."

"Not that one, I fear."

"Too bad." Hamnet Thyssen turned back to Liv. "If Earl Eyvind doesn't know, you really do need to talk to the trees."

"I wonder if I could magic out the answer." The Bizogot shaman sounded completely serious. "Use the law of similarity to compare leaf to leaf, branch to branch . . ."

Eyvind Torfinn was no wizard, but he knew a good deal about sorcery-he knew a good deal about anything that happened to catch his interest. "I don't see why you couldn't," he said, surprise and what sounded like wonder in his voice. "I don't believe anyone has ever used wizardry like that. I don't believe anyone ever thought to use wizardry like that."

"What are you going on about in that horrible language?" Gudrid asked. Most of the time, she paid as little attention to her husband as she could. Seeing him talking with Liv, though, drew her notice-and her ire.

"Deciduous and evergreen trees," Eyvind replied in Raumsdalian.

"What about them?" Gudrid still sounded suspicious.

"Why there are such things, why they're different, and how one might go about finding out through sorcery."

His wife stared at him. "You're joking."

"No. Why would I be?" Eyvind Torfinn sounded confused.

"Because if a man talks to a woman, only a sap talks about trees." Gudrid rode down the path ahead of Eyvind and Liv and Hamnet Thyssen.

"What was that all about?" Liv asked. "She talked too fast for me to follow much."

"You're lucky," Hamnet said.

"My wife has a short temper sometimes," Eyvind Torfinn said. "Once in a while, she lets it get away from her."

Hamnet Thyssen coughed a couple of times, in lieu of snorting or breaking into wild-into mad-laughter. What Earl Eyvind said was true. And the Glacier was chilly, and the sun warm, and this forest rather wide. Sometimes understatement was the most effective way to lie-even to yourself.

Did Eyvind know-did he even suspect-she was no more faithful to him than she had been to Hamnet? I can't very well ask, Hamnet thought. This wasn't the first time he'd wondered, though-far from it.

Usually, the man was the one who wandered, and also the one who bristled if the woman so much as looked at anybody else. Count Hamnet did laugh then, even if not in the gales he'd almost loosed a moment before. Trust Gudrid to do things backwards.

And then she screamed, and he forgot about his musings.

He didn't need to hear the short-faced bear's growling roar to guess what was wrong. The great bears haunted these northern woods, and often didn't sleep through the winter. A horse-and a woman-would be just what a hungry bear was looking for.

Gudrid screamed again. No, this time it was more of a shriek. She'd bragged about what an archer she was, but that seemed forgot now-or maybe she never had a chance to string and draw her bow.

Hamnet Thyssen yelled, too, as he rode toward her. He drew his sword- no time for him to string his bow, either. Maybe he could distract the bear, keep it from attacking. … He shouted once more, and laughed while he did. The world turned upside down again. More often than not, he would have been happy to see Gudrid dead. And here he was, riding to her rescue. If that wasn't insane, what was?

The short-faced bear had Gudrid's horse down. If the horse had tried to run, it didn't have much luck. Short-faced bears had longer legs than grizzlies and ordinary black bruins. A horse with a running start might escape them. But if the bear was already charging and the horse just ambling along, the bear could-and this bear had-outrun its intended prey before the horse got up to speed.

When the horse went over, Gudrid had jumped or been thrown clear. But she wasn't running. Was she paralyzed with fear, or had she hurt herself? Hamnet couldn't begin to guess. It hardly mattered. She was easier to kill than a kicking, thrashing horse. Before long, the bear would figure that out.

Hamnet Thyssen shouted at the top of his lungs. The short-faced bear ignored him. It started eating the horse before the other animal was even dead. If dinner kicked and squirmed and screamed, so what? The bear's muzzle was crimson almost to the eyes. How close to starving was it?

And if it did pay attention to Hamnet and his onrushing horse, what would it do? Run off? He hoped so. Suppose it didn't. Suppose it went for his horse-and him-instead. What would he do then? Think of something fast, he told himself. He'd be on the bear in another few heartbeats.

An arrow hissed past his head-someone had managed to string his bow, or perhaps was traveling with it strung. The shaft thudded into the short-faced bear's hindquarters. That got the beast's attention, where Ham-net's shout hadn't. The bear jumped and reared and roared again, this time in pain and surprise rather than in fury.

As it reared, he swung his sword. The stroke wasn't perfect. He'd intended to strike its muzzle and badly wound it, and all he managed to do was shear off the tip of one ear. Then his horse thundered past. He tugged hard on the reins and guided the horse around with pressure from his knees and thighs. If he had to make another pass at the bear, he would.

He didn't. Two wounds at opposite ends were more than enough for the animal. With a final snarl, it limped off into the forest again. It left a trail of blood behind. Had Hamnet wanted to hunt it down, he would have had an easy time tracking it. He was content to let it go.

"Bravely done!" Ulric Skakki called. He had an arrow nocked and ready to shoot, so Hamnet supposed he'd let fly with the first one. He didn't shoot again as the bear withdrew; like Hamnet, he thought driving it off counted for more than killing it. With a wry grin, he added, "Foolhardy, maybe, but bravely done."

Looking back on things, Hamnet thought he was foolhardy, too. But he'd got away with it. "Are you all right?" he called to Gudrid.

"That horrible monster didn't eat me, so I'm a lot better than I might be. I hurt my ankle when I went off the horse, though." She looked up at him from the snow. "You're the last person I expected to come riding up and save me."

The same thing had gone through his mind while he was booting his horse forward. Shrugging, he said, "I would have done it for anyone. I would have done it for the horse, come to that."

"Nice to know where I stand-er, sprawl," Gudrid said. "What's worse is, I believe you."

"Do you think the ankle's broken or sprained or just twisted?" Hamnet asked.

"I don't know. I think it would hurt more if it were broken, but I never broke one before, so how can I be sure?" Gudrid eyed him again. "Do you want to feel it and find out? God knows you've wanted to get your hands on me again for long enough now."

"Around your neck, maybe," Hamnet Thyssen said grimly. "Around your ankle? No, thanks. Somebody else can check." The poor horse still writhed feebly. He dismounted, bent beside it, and cut its throat-the last favor he could give it. The horse let out a sigh that sounded amazingly human and died.

Trasamund rode up. He glanced at the horse. "Well, the bear didn't get a whole lot," he said. "It can feed us now." Bizogots didn't waste much- didn't waste anything if they could help it. The jarl pointed to Gudrid. "How bad is she hurt?"

"I don't know," Hamnet answered. "Enough so she couldn't run, anyhow. Do you want to see if that ankle's broken?"

"Well, why not?" Trasamund leered. The way he prodded and tugged at Gudrid's ankle was all business, though. She gasped a couple of times, but she didn't scream or burst into tears or even swear. Trasamund looked up from his work. "I think it's sound, but she should lie on her back for a while when she-Mmpf!" Gudrid threw a snowball in his face.

"Serves you right, you nasty man," she said. Trasamund scrabbled at himself. Even after he got rid of some of the snow, he still looked like a frozen ghost.

Hamnet Thyssen turned away so neither Gudrid nor Trasamund would see him laugh. He still had little use for his former wife. He didn't think he ever would. But she had a point-that snowball did serve Trasamund right.

When they came out of the northern forests, the sun was shining brightly. The weather wasn't warm, not by Hamnet s standards, but it was above freezing. Some of the snow on the ground had turned to slush. Some had even melted, exposing patches of bare black earth. They weren't on the Great North Road, but somewhere to the west of it.

Liv laughed out loud. She threw back her hood to let the sun shine on her head. "A thaw in wintertime!" she said. "Who would believe that up in Three Tusk country? Why, the Breath of God hardly blows at all here."

"When it blows, it can blow hard," Hamnet said. Liv laughed again, right in his face. He held up a hand. "Oh, it can. Believe me-it can. Not the way it will in your country at the worst, but bad enough. The difference is, it doesn't blow all the time here. This is about as far north as south winds can reach during the winter."

"South winds in the winter?" A smile bright as the sun, and much warmer, still lit Liv's face. It might have been the funniest thing she'd ever heard. "In the winter, in Three Tusk country, there is no wind. Or, more often, there is the Breath of God." She gave a melodramatic shiver. "Now you have met the Breath of God in truth."

"A lazy wind," Hamnet Thyssen agreed gravely.

"Lazy?" Liv started to scorch him, but then very visibly checked herself. "Wait. You mean something by that. Tell me what."

"What we call a lazy wind is one that blows straight through you because going around is too much bother."

"Ah." She thought it over. After a few heartbeats, her smile came back- she must have decided she liked it. "Truth. That is a truth. Has Trasamund heard it?"

"I don't know," Hamnet answered. "If he has, he hasn't heard it from me."

Liv called to the jarl. "What is it?" Trasamund rumbled.

"Do you know what a lazy wind is?" Liv asked.

"Is that what happens when Jesper Fletti talks?" Trasamund said with a sly grin. Jesper wasn't close enough to hear himself slandered. If he had been, if he'd chosen to take offense .. . Count Hamnet would have bet on Trasamund in a fight.

Liv made a face at her clan chief. "No," she said when they got done scowling at each other. She told him what a lazy wind was.

He weighed it. Then he nodded. "Not bad. No, not bad at all. The Raumsdalians don't lack for wit-no one would ever say they did. Some other things, maybe, but never wit. I wouldn't have come down to Nidaros for help with the Golden Shrine if I thought different." Even on that relatively warm day, steam surged from his lungs when he sighed. "Turned out we didn't need help with the Golden Shrine after all."

"Not this trip," Hamnet Thyssen said. "But chances are we'll go beyond the Glacier again. It may be there. If it is, Eyvind Torfinn knows more about it than any other man alive."

"Eyvind Torfinn knows all sorts of things," Trasamund allowed. Then he spoiled it by asking, "So why doesn't he know his wife disgraces him whenever she pleases?"

"Maybe he doesn't choose to look," Hamnet said. "That can happen, especially when a man who isn't so young has a wife who isn't so old. Or maybe he doesn't care."

"Doesn't care? Do you say he has no ballocks at all, then?" Trasamund demanded.

Count Hamnet shook his head. "No. I wondered about that myself before I got to know him on this journey, but no. He isn't a warrior-he doesn't pretend to be a warrior-but he's no craven, either."

"Well, then, what do you say?" Trasamund's frown was half anger, half incomprehension.

"That men and women and how they get along-or don't get along-are more complicated than you'd guess," Hamnet answered. "I won't judge Eyvind Torfinn, and I hope he won't judge me. Sometimes not judging someone is the biggest kindness you can do him-or her."

"It sounds very pretty," the Bizogot said. "Tell me this, then-do you not judge Gudrid?"

He was a boor, a brute, a barbarian. He was a shrewd boor, a clever brute, a sly barbarian. Hamnet Thyssen’s lips tightened. His hands also tightened on the reins, as if the leather straps were Trasamund's neck … or possibly Gudrid's. He didn't want to answer the question, and didn't see how he could help it. "I judge her," he said after a pause he hoped wasn't too long. "Yes, I do. But just because I do, that doesn't mean someone else has to. If Eyvind Torfinn wants to, he may. If he chooses not to, who am I to tell him he should? Who are you?"

Trasamund opened his mouth. Someone who spread his wife's legs. That was what he was about to say, that or something like it. But at the last moment, instead of saying anything, he jerked his horse's head to one side and rode off.

"He shouldn't have put you through that," Liv said quietly.

"The only way I could make him stop was to kill him," Hamnet said with a shrug. "It isn't worth that. I've killed one man over Gudrid, but I was married to her then. Now? Now it's Earl Eyvind's worry, if he feels like worrying about it."

"How did it happen that you killed him?"

"About the way you'd expect. I found out he was bedding her. No room for doubt. No room to look away-I'd already done too much of that. We fought a duel. Swords. He would have killed me, too. You've seen that scar on my left arm, up near the shoulder, and the one that streaks my beard with white?"

She nodded. "Oh, yes."

"Ingjald gave me those. Ingjald Oddleif, his name was. But I killed him anyway. I was proud of myself. What a man I was! Gudrid acted like I had a cock the size of a bull mammoth's. For about a week, she acted that way. Then she went out and found somebody else to sleep with. She must have decided I wouldn't kill her."

"You loved her," Liv said.

"So I did." Hamnet Thyssen shook his head like a musk ox the Bizogots were slaughtering. They'd herded it and tended it and warded it all its life- why were they doing this to it now? The beast couldn't understand. Even after all this time, part of Hamnet couldn't, either. "So I did," he repeated heavily. "And much good it did me, eh?"

"Maybe for a while," she said.

He shook his head again. "I used to think so, but I don't any more. What good is love when the person you love is laughing behind your back? You're only fooling yourself. I was a fool. I'm not the first. I won't be the last, God knows." He rode on.