Beyong the Gap

II

Torches blazed bravely. They drove night back to the corners of the dining hall, even if they did fill the room with a strong odor of hot mammoth fat. Perfumed beeswax candles spilled out more golden light and fought the tallow reek to something close to a draw.

A goblet of mead in his hand, Count Hamnet Thyssen surveyed the throng gathered at least partly in his honor. He tried to imagine some of these gilded popinjays up on the tundra, or in the endless forests to the east. That was enough to squeeze a grunt of laughter from even his somber spirit.

So far, he hadn't spotted either his former wife or her new lord and master. He snorted again, more sourly than before. He didn't think even a wild Bizogot could master Gudrid, and he didn't think many wild Bizogots would be fool enough to try.

His gaze flicked to Trasamund. Tall and fair and handsome, the jarl had already acquired a circle of female admirers. The smile on his ruddy face said he enjoyed the attention. The ruddiness on his smiling face said he'd already had as much mead-or beer, or ale, or even sweet wine from the far southwest-as was good for him. Up on the tundra, Bizogots drank fermented mammoth's milk. Count Hamnet had made its acquaintance. It was as bad as it sounded. No matter how nasty it was, the Bizogots drank heroically. Anything worth doing is worth overdoing summed up the nomads' view of the world.

And Bizogots wenched as heroically as they drank. That might-was all too like to-cause trouble. Hamnet drifted toward a steward. A word to the wise .. . probably wouldn't help. He held his tongue. This wasn't the first time Bizogots had been feted in the royal palace. The steward-and the Emperor-would know what they were like.

A serving woman came by with a plate of treats-toasted deer marrow on crackers of barley and maize. Count Hamnet took one. The fatty richness of the marrow went well with his mead. Beer might have been even better, but he preferred the fermented honey.

Someone-someone with long fingernails-rumpled the hair at the nape of his neck. He whirled around. If the goblet hadn't been nearer empty than full, mead would have sloshed out of it onto the rug.

"Hello, Hamnet," Gudrid said. "I wondered if you weren't noticing me on purpose."

He knew how old she was-not far from his own just-past-forty. She didn't look it, or within ten years of it. Her hair was still black, her skin still smooth, her chin still single. Her eyes were almost the color of a lion's, a strange and penetrating light brown. They sparked now in smug amusement.

She was going to jab at him. She did whenever they met. She always wounded him, too. He did his best not to show it; that way, she missed some of the sport. So he shook his head now. "No, I really didn't see you," he said truthfully. "I'm-"

He broke off. He was damned if he'd say he was sorry. He could still feel her fingers on the skin at the back of his neck. His hand tightened on the goblet till he feared the stem would snap. Somehow, the stolen caress infuriated him worse than all her infidelities. She'd lost the right to touch him that way. No, she hadn't lost it. She'd given it up, thrown it away. She took it back for a moment only because she wanted to provoke him.

She knew how to get what she wanted. She commonly did.

Her smile said she knew she'd scored, even if she might not know just why. Her teeth were white and strong, too. That also made Hamnet want to scowl; poppy juice and henbane or not, he'd had a horrid time with a tooth-drawer the year before.

"So you're going traveling with the splendid Trasamund, are you?" she said, eyeing the tall Bizogot with admiration unfeigned and unconcealed. If she decided she wanted him, she would go after him. Yes, she knew how to get what she wanted, all right.

And what would Eyvind Torfinn think of that? Hamnet almost threw the question in her face. Then he saw she was waiting for it, looking forward to it. Whatever the answer was, it would have claws in it. He didn't feel like giving her the satisfaction. "So I am," he said stolidly, and let it go at that.

Eyvind Torfinn came up then, a winecup in his hand. He was a comfortably plump man getting close to sixty if he hadn't already got there. Maybe he wouldn't mind so much if Gudrid satisfied herself somewhere else every now and again. Hamnet drained what was left of his mead. Gudrid hadn't played him false because he failed to satisfy her. Adultery was a game to her, and she excelled at it as she did at most things.

"Thyssen," her new husband said politely.

"Torfinn," Count Hamnet returned. He had . . . not too much against the older man, who'd always seemed faintly embarrassed at acquiring his wife.

"Dear Hamnet is going exploring with the wild Bizogot." Gudrid made it sound faintly disreputable. She eyed Hamnet, ready to finish him off. "What is it you're going off to look for?" Whatever it was, by the way she asked the question it couldn't have been more important than a small coin that had fallen out of a hole in a belt pouch.

"The Golden Shrine," Hamnet answered, his voice still flat. Let her make what she wanted of that.

Her lioness eyes widened, for a heartbeat looking only human, and amazed. "But that's a fable!" she exclaimed. "Nobody really believes it's up there, or wherever it's supposed to be."

"Oh, no. That is not so. Many people do believe it." Gudrid looked amazed all over again, and even less happy than she had a moment earlier. Count Hamnet didn't contradict her; Eyvind Torfinn did. "I happen to be one of them myself," Eyvind went on. He turned to his wife's former husband. "Why would anyone think the chances of finding it now are any better than they would have been last year or a hundred years ago?"

"Because the Gap has finally melted through. Trasamund's traveled beyond the Glacier." Hamnet Thyssen usually had as little to say to Gudrid's new husband as he could. Maybe the mead was what loosened his tongue enough to make him say, "So you believe in the Golden Shrine, do you, Earl Eyvind? Why is that?"

As Gudrid had a moment earlier, he got more than he bargained for. Eyvind Torfinn didn't just believe in the Golden Shrine. He knew more in the way of lore than Hamnet thought there was to know. His talk went spinning back through the centuries, back to the days before Nidaros was even a hunting camp, back to empires far older than the Raumsdalian, back to other retreats of the Glacier-though he didn't know of any others where the Gap actually opened.

By the way Gudrid listened to him, he might have been talking about a mistress he'd kept secret from her. Maybe she thought he was, and maybe she was right; knowledge was like that for some men. Hamnet Thyssen hadn't known Eyvind was one of them. Plainly, his former wife hadn't, either. After a couple of exaggerated yawns didn't make Eyvind Torfinn dry up, she flounced off, hips working in the clinging maroon wool knit dress she wore.

Her husband never noticed. He was comparing and contrasting modern ideas about the Golden Shrine with those from bygone days. He knew more about ideas from bygone days than Hamnet Thyssen had thought any living man could. "And so you see," Eyvind Torfinn said with an enthusiast's zeal, "there is more than a little consistency about these notions through time. Not perfect consistency, mind you, but more than a little. Enough to persuade me something real lies behind all the guesswork and the legends."

What Hamnet saw was Gudrid doing everything but painting herself against Trasamund. She all but purred when the Bizogot stroked her. If her gap wouldn't open for him, Hamnet would have been very much surprised.

But that was not his worry now, for which-some of him-thanked God. He set a scarred and callused hand on Eyvind Torfinn's shoulder. "Your Splendor," he said, "his Majesty was talking about recruiting a scholar to accompany us on the journey north. I think you are the man we need."

"I?" Eyvind Torfinn said in mild astonishment.

"Certainly. You know so much about the Golden Shrine. Wouldn't you like to put what you know to use? Wouldn't you like to see the Temple with your own eyes?" If it's there to see, Hamnet Thyssen added, but only to himself.

Eyvind stared at him. "I would like that very much," he said. "Whether I can make such a journey may be another question. Beyond the Glacier! I was not sure there was such a thing as beyond the Glacier. For all I knew, for all anyone knew, it went on forever."

"I had the same thought when I learned the Gap has melted through," Count Hamnet said. "But Trasamund speaks of white bears and strange buffalo and other marvels he's seen with his own eyes."

"Does he?" Eyvind Torfinn looked toward the tall Bizogot. By then Gudrid, with a sure instinct for self-preservation, no longer clung to him, even if she did hover close by. Seeing her set her present husband down a different thought-road. He swung back toward Hamnet. "Can you stand to make a journey with me, your Grace? I would not be grateful-I fear I would not even be long ungrateful-if you set on me the moment we passed the Empire's borders, or perhaps even before we passed them."

"By God, your Splendor, by God and by my honor, I will do nothing of the sort," Hamnet Thyssen said. "You have my oath, the strongest oath I can give. If it is not enough to satisfy you … If it is not enough to satisfy you, sir, then be damned to you. I don't know what else to say."

"If we meet danger, I am more likely to prove a liability than an asset," Earl Eyvind said. "I am not young. I am not strong. I am not swift or graceful. I have not even practiced with a sword for many years, let alone unsheathed one in anger."

"You know things," Hamnet said. "You know things I did not think anyone could know. Speak to Trasamund." Though not of your wife-she's not mine now. "Speak to the Emperor. Knowledge is always an asset."

"Is it?" Eyvind Torfinn raised a bushy gray eyebrow. "Are you glad knowing . . . what you know about the lady who was once your wife?"

"Am I glad? No," Count Hamnet answered steadily. "Would I rather know the truth than live in a fool's paradise? Yes, and she played me for a fool." And she'll play you the same way, if she hasn't done it already, and you may prove yourself a fool if you don't know that.

"The Golden Shrine," Eyvind murmured. "Well, maybe, if you don't think I would slow you up too much."

"Persuade Trasamund. I have no trouble with riding a little slower than I might have ridden otherwise, but I'm no hot-blooded, impatient Bizogot." And you have put horns on me, and Trasamund-I doubt not-will put horns on you, and if I should meet Trasamund's wife, if he has a wife… What a jolly gathering we would be then.

"Well! The Golden Shrine!" Eyvind Torfinn said, and he waddled off toward the Bizogot jarl.

Sigvat II was delighted that Earl Eyvind wanted to fare north, and delighted and amazed to discover him a scholar of the Golden Shrine. Trasamund was willing to bring him along, although amazed and less than delighted to discover him the husband of Gudrid. Hamnet Thyssen was . . . resigned. He would have had some strong opinions if he thought Gudrid was coming along, but she seemed furious that Eyvind Torfinn could find the Golden Shrine more interesting, more attractive, than she.

"She will spend my money while I am gone," Eyvind said to Count Ham-net when they met two days after the reception to plan what they could. On a journey into the unknown, they couldn't plan nearly as much as Hamnet would have liked.

"No doubt you are right, your Splendor," Hamnet replied. She will spend your reputation while you're gone, too, he thought with mournful certainty.

"I hope I have some left by the time I get home," Eyvind Torfinn said.

"Maybe your chief of affairs should oversee your funds," Hamnet said. And who would oversee Gudrid's affairs? Hamnet Thyssen almost laughed at himself. No doubt Gudrid would take care of those on her own.

Hamnet glanced over toward Trasamund. Did the Bizogot jarl speak fluent enough Raumsdalian to make that joke, or one like it, for himself? By the smirk on his ruddy, weathered face, he did.

Earl Eyvind was either blind to what Gudrid was or resigned to it. Hamnet hadn't made up his mind which. He wouldn't have wanted to be either one, though he'd stayed blind for too long when she was his wife. Maybe he hadn't wanted to see. Considering all the strife that sprang up when he finally couldn't help it… He shook his head. He didn't want to consider that.

"We still need a sorcerer," Eyvind Torfinn said. He was looking ahead again to the lands beyond the ice, not to what Gudrid would do while he wasn't here to watch her. "His Majesty was wise to suggest one."

"I suggested one," Trasamund said in a voice like distant thunder.

"Did you indeed, your Ferocity?" For the first time, Earl Eyvind eyed the Bizogot as something more than a dangerous and dubiously tame animal. Eyvind didn't seem to have imagined a brain might lurk under that handsome, well-muscled exterior. He blinked once or twice, revising his opinion.

"I did." Trasamund proudly drew himself up straight. All Bizogots were full of ungodly gobs of pride-so it seemed to Raumsdalians, anyhow. A Bizogot jarl was apt to be proud even by the standards of his people. Having known quite a few clan chiefs among the mammoth-herders, Hamnet Thyssen had seen that for himself. And Trasamund was proud even for a Bizogot jarl.

"Well, good for you, then." Eyvind Torfinn kept his voice mild. Even if Trasamund wanted to act irascible, that mildness left him not the smallest excuse. Eyvind's gaze swung back to Count Hamnet. "And where will we come by the wizard?"

"Ulric Skakki is searching Nidaros for the best man," Hamnet answered.

"You know this Skakki, don't you?" Eyvind Torfinn said. "I confess I had not met him before. He seems . . . versatile."

"A sneak, a thief, a cutpurse, a knife in the dark, a pretty song to woo the ladies." Trasamund delivered his judgment before Hamnet Thyssen could. "A good man at your side, maybe not so good at your back." He mimed taking a knife in the kidney.

"And what do you think, your Grace?" Eyvind Torfinn asked Count Hamnet-he valued a Raumsdalian's opinion more than the jarl's.

But Hamnet said, "I think his Ferocity is a keen judge of men." He bowed to Trasamund. "I rode with Ulric Skakki once. We had some business to attend to for his Majesty-this was toward the end of the first Sig-vat's days." He made a sour face. "It was one of those nasty little things you wish you didn't have to do, the kind you don't like talking about afterwards. And we took care of it, and Ulric was .. . everything you said he was, Trasamund."

"Did you let him get behind you?" the Bizogot inquired.

"No. I'd already decided that wasn't a good idea," Count Hamnet answered. "As long as I could keep an eye on him, everything was fine."

Trasamund nodded. That satisfied him. And hearing his cleverness and judgment praised pleased him no less than it would have pleased a Raumsdalian. He likes himself pretty well, Hamnet thought. No, Bizogots were no more immune to vanity than the folk of the Empire. Many people would have said they were less immune to it.

"How far did you travel after you passed through the Gap?" Eyvind asked him.

"I stayed beyond the Glacier for about three weeks all told," Trasamund said. "I wasn't heading out in a straight line to see how far I could go, you understand. I was wandering here and there, wandering wherever I pleased."

"Drunkard's walk," Eyvind Torfinn murmured.

"By God, I wasn't drunk!" Trasamund's cheeks flamed with anger. "I drank water all through that journey-well, almost all through it."

Eyvind held up a plump, placating hand. "No, no-I meant no offense. The drunkard's walk tries to answer the question of how far from where you start you will end up if you travel at random for such and such a time."

Trasamund's face remained thunderously suspicious. "How can anyone know that? And why would anyone care?"

"It takes a good deal of calculating," Earl Eyvind allowed. "And why? Well, people like to find out whatever they can. Haven't you seen that?"

"Didn't you come down to Nidaros, your Ferocity, because you knew Raumsdalians know more different kinds of strange things than you Bizogots do?" Hamnet Thyssen added.

Trasamund made a discontented noise down deep in his broad chest. He had said something like that, so he couldn't very well deny it. "I meant you people know useful things, though," he said. If he couldn't deny, he could deflect.

Count Hamnet looked over to Earl Eyvind. He thought the notion of a drunkards walk sounded silly, too, so he didn't know how to defend it. "Knowledge is strange," Eyvind Torfinn said. "You never can be sure ahead of time what you may need. Someone who is going to a strange place will carry different tools on his belt. Should he not carry different tools in his head as well?"

Instead of answering him straight out, the jarl of the Three Tusk clan strode over to a sideboard and poured himself a goblet of mead. He drank it down in one heroic draught. Hamnet Thyssen suspected that was an answer of sorts.

When Ulric Skakki brought a wizard back to the palace, Count Hamnet's first thought was of the drunkard's walk Eyvind Torfinn had mentioned. The sorcerer's name was Audun Gilli. He didn't look or act drunk. He looked like a man drying out after a long binge instead-and not like a man happy to be drying out, either.

Count Hamnet recognized that look. He knew it better than he would have liked. He'd gone on a bender or two of his own as his troubles with Gudrid got worse. He'd been sober when he killed. That was something- not much, but something.

Of course, if he were drunk when he faced Gudrid's first lover (or the first one he caught, anyhow), the other man probably would have killed him. At the time, he would hardly have minded. Now he saw living on without her as revenge of sorts.

He also saw that Audun Gilli was in a bad way. He shouted for a palace servant. "Bring this man a mug of sassafras tea," he said, pointing to the wizard. "No, bring him about three. By the time he gets to the bottom of the last one, he may be a bit better off."

"Bring me the hair of the hound-sassafras tea be damned." Audun Gilli's voice was a sorrowful whine.

The servant looked toward Hamnet Thyssen. "Tea!" Hamnet snapped. The man bowed and hurried off. Audun Gilli's sigh said it was just one more defeat in a lifetime full of them. Count Hamnet paid no more attention to him-but then, how many people ever did? Hamnet rounded on Ulric Skakki. "By God, Ulric! Which gutter did you drag him out of, and why?"

"Why? Because he'll do what we need, that's why," Ulric Skakki answered. "More to him than meets the eye." He sounded very sure of himself. From what Hamnet remembered, Ulric always sounded sure of himself. That didn't mean he was always right, though he had trouble recognizing the difference.

"There could hardly be less to him than meets the eye," Count Hamnet said with something between a sneer and a cry of despair. "Look at him!"

He glared at Audun Gilli himself. The wizard flinched under that fierce stare. Audun was a small, weedy man, the sort who didn't stand out in a crowd. He had a long, weathered-looking face, a scraggly beard-brown go shy;ing gray-and a nose that was his largest but not best feature. The whites of his gray-blue eyes were yellowish and tracked with red. His hands trembled.

They were a wizard's hands but for the tremor; Hamnet Thyssen could not deny that. They had narrow palms and long, delicate fingers-perfect hands for the complex passes some spells required. A wizard with the shakes, though, was like a blind archer; he was more likely to be dangerous to his friends than to his foes.

The servant came in with three steaming mugs on a tray. He'd taken Hamnet literally, then. Good, Hamnet thought. He thrust a mug at Audun Gilli. "Here. Drink!"

With a martyred sigh, the wizard obeyed. He did need more than one mug before Hamnet saw any improvement. He was on the third one before he seemed to see any improvement himself. "I never thought I'd be warm inside again," he murmured.

"Well, that proves he wasn't drinking mulled wine," Hamnet said to Ul shy;ric Skakki. "What was he drinking? Anything he could get his hands on, that's plain. And why was he drinking it by the bloody wagonload? And, since he was drinking wagonloads of anything he could get his hands on, what in God's name makes you think he's worth even a counterfeit copper as a wizard?"

"I don't do this all the time," Audun Gilli protested feebly.

"Of course you don't. If you did, you would have been dead in the gutter where Ulric Skakki tripped over you, not just lying in it." Count Hamnet rounded on Ulric. "Now answer me-or else I'll throw him out on his worthless ear and take the cost of three cups of sassafras tea out of his worthless hide."

"How can you take cost out of something worthless?" Audun asked, the first sign Hamnet Thyssen had that whatever he'd drunk hadn't curdled his wits for good.

"He's had a hard time," Ulric Skakki said. "If you'd had that hard a time, you would drink, too."

Since Hamnet had drunk when times got hard for him, and since Ulric Skakki probably knew as much, denying that didn't seem a good idea. In shy;stead, Hamnet turned back to Audun Gilli. "Well?" He made that more a challenge than a question.

"My wife burned down, and my house died in the fire," the wizard said, a pretty good sign not all his wits were working the way they should have.

It was also a pretty good sign he did deserve some sympathy. "When did this happen?" Count Hamnet asked, less roughly than before.

"Three years ago," Audun Gilli answered.

Count Hamnet could feel his neck swelling. "Easy, there," Ulric Skakki said. "When he dries out, he'll be fine. He's a student of sorceries from an shy;cient days, so he should be exactly the kind of wizard we want along if we find the Golden Shrine."

"I'll bet he's a student of ancient sorceries," Hamnet said. "He's been pickled from then till now."

"His Majesty sent me out to find a proper wizard. Me," Ulric Skakki replied with a touch-or more than a touch-of hauteur. "I say I've found him."

"I say you couldn't find your arse with both hands if you think so," Count Hamnet growled. They glared at each other.

Forgotten by both of them like a bone abandoned when two dogs go at each other, Audun Gilli stared at the mugs in which his sassafras tea had come. He chanted softly to himself. The language he used hadn't been spo shy;ken since long before the Raumsdalian Empire rose, but Hamnet Thyssen didn't notice that. In his quarrel with Ulric Skakki, Hamnet Thyssen didn't notice the wizard at all.

Then two of the mugs started shouting at each other in high, squeaky voices that sounded like parodies of Ulric's and Hamnet s. It wasn't ventriloquism; the mugs suddenly sported faces too much like theirs. The less than flattered models both gaped. So did the third mug, which looked like a sorrowful ceramic version of Audun Gilli.

The wizard chanted again, and the mugs . . . were only mugs again. "You see?" Ulric Skakki said triumphantly.

"I saw . . . something." However little Count Hamnet wanted to, he had to admit it.

"He's a wizard. He's a good wizard. And," Ulric went on pragmatically, "he'll be better the longer he stays sober."

"Who says he'll stay sober? We'll be drinking ale or beer or mead or fermented mammoth's milk as much as we can," Hamnet said. "Even runoff straight from the Glacier can give you a bloody flux. Have you ever been up in the Bizogot country, Ulric? Don't you know about that?"

"I've been there, all right. I know," Ulric said. Count Hamnet wasn't sure he believed him till the other man added, "We'll have to pick our way past the lands where a couple of clans range. They may remember me a little too well."

That held the ring of truth. "Why am I not surprised?" Hamnet Thyssen said. Ulric Skakki gave back a bow, as if at a compliment. Audun Gilli managed a wan smile when he saw it. Count Hamnet threw his hands in the air. When you knew you were going to lose a fight, sometimes the best thing you could do was give it up before it cost you more than you could afford to spend.

If only he'd figured that out with Gudrid. . . .

Earl Eyvind Torfinn was a friendly man. As Raumsdalian nobles were supposed to be, he was openhanded in his hospitality. He lived in a large, rambling two-story house on top of a hill in the western part of Nidaros. From windows on the upper floor, he could look out on what had been Hevring Lake when the great city was but a hunting camp.

Hamnet Thyssen knew that because Earl Eyvind insisted on inviting him to feast with the other members of the upcoming expedition. Refusing would have been churlish-Eyvind Torfinn seemed to think that his acquiring Hamnet s wife was just one of those things, certainly not important enough to get excited about. Visiting that house, though, dripped vitriol on Hamnet s soul.

Gudrid did her best to make sure that it should. She wore outfits that clung and revealed. She smiled. She sparkled. Much of that was aimed at captivating Trasamund. The Bizogot didn't prove hard to captivate. If she could wound Hamnet at the same time-well, so much the better.

He set his jaw and tried not to show he was wounded, as he would have if he'd taken an arrow in the leg. Gudrid knew better. She knew him altogether too well. When they were happy together, the way she knew him pleased him and made him proud. These days, it meant he was vulnerable.

Eyvind Torfinn seemed oblivious to the byplay. Count Hamnet wasn't sure he was, but he seemed that way. Ulric Skakki watched it with wry fascination. He didn't seem to interest Gudrid. Maybe that was because he was only a commoner, maybe because she recognized that he might be as devious and dangerous as she was herself, if less alluring. As for Audun Gilli, he took in everything with a childlike, wide-eyed fascination. But a child who drank the way he did would have been in no shape to take in anything.

Trasamund, for his part, took Gudrid's attentions as no less than his due. "That is quite a woman," he told Hamnet, plainly not knowing they'd once been man and wife. "Not as young as she used to be, maybe, but still quite a woman. Still plenty tight." The jarl leered and rocked his hips forward and back, in case Hamnet could have any doubt about what he meant.

"Is she?" Count Hamnet's voice held no expression whatever. That might have been just as well. If he had let it hold expression, what would have come out? Rage? Bitterness? Jealousy? Longing? Since he revealed even less to Trasamund than he did to Gudrid, the question didn't arise. So he told himself, anyhow.

He drank Eyvind Torfinn's wine and beer. He ate horseflesh and fat-rich camel's meat, and musk ox and strong-tasting mammoth flesh brought down from the north on ice. There was ice in the north, all right, ice and to spare. He nibbled on honey cakes and frozen, sweetened milk. And his stomach gnawed at him, and he wished he were anywhere else in all the world. Sinking into soft asphalt with dire wolves and sabertooths prowling all around? Next to this lavish hospitality, that looked pretty good.

"You hate me, don't you?" Gudrid asked one evening after everyone had drunk a little too much. By the way her eyes sparkled, she wanted him to tell her yes.

"I loved you," Hamnet Thyssen said, which was not an answer-unless it was.

The gleam grew brighter. "And now?"

Count Hamnet shrugged. "We all make mistakes. Some of us make bigger mistakes than others."

"Yes, that's true," Gudrid agreed. "I never should have wed you in the first place."

"You didn't think so then," Hamnet said, and let it go at that. If he told her she'd loved him, she would have laughed in his face. He thought she had. He was convinced she had, in fact. But he was just as convinced that Sigvat Us torturers couldn't tear the confession out of her now.

"We all make mistakes. You said it; I didn't." Gudrid was like a cat, playing and swiping and tormenting before the kill.

"And what mistake did you make with Eyvind Torfinn?" Hamnet inquired.

She breathed sweet wine fumes into his face when she laughed. "Dear Eyvind? I made no mistakes with him. He lets me do whatever I please."

"And you despise him for it," Count Hamnet said. Gudrid did not deny it; she only laughed again. Stubbornly, Hamnet went on, "Wouldn't you call wedding a man you despise a mistake?"

"Of course not. I call it an amusement." She reached out and stroked his cheek with a soft hand. "But don't worry, my sweet. If it makes you feel any better, I despise you, too."

"And Trasamund?" Hamnet asked, trying to ignore the way her touch seared his flesh.

"Ah, Trasamund." She laughed throatily and batted her eyelashes at him. "No one could despise Trasamund. He's much too . . . virile."

"He thinks you're quite something, too," Hamnet said. Gudrid laughed again, this time in complacent amusement. Hamnet added, "For someone who's not as young as she used to be." Even a man with no other tool toward revenge had time on his side.

Now her eyes stopped sparkling. They flashed instead. "You'll pay for that," she said.

Hamnet Thyssen shrugged. "I've been paying for knowing you for years. What's a little more?"

"If I tell Eyvind to stay home-"

He laughed in her face. "You hurt the Empire if that happens-not that you care, I'm sure. But it doesn't worry me at all. Your husband probably knows more about the Golden Shrine than any man alive. I know he knows more than I thought anybody could. He'd be useful to have along, yes. But he's still your husband, Gudrid. If you think I want his company, youd better think twice."

She made what sounded like a lion's growl, down deep in her throat. She didn't like being thwarted, didn't like it and wouldn't put up with it. She'd taken up with Eyvind Torfinn not long after Hamnet killed her earlier lover. He judged it was at least as much to show him he couldn't get the better of her as for any attraction Earl Eyvind held.

"I suppose you know I've had your wizard as well as the Bizogot," she said. Her red-painted lip curled. "He wasn't what you'd call magical."

She told him to hurt him. She couldn't have any other reason. "You're not my worry any more," he said. It wasn't true; she would go on worrying him till his dying day. He added, "You've given us all something to talk about on the way north, anyhow."

Gudrid smiled-she liked that. "Something warm, instead of the Glacier."

Count Hamnet shook his head. "Something so cold, it makes the Glacier seem warm beside it."

Fast as a striking serpent, her hand lashed out. However fast she was, she wasn't fast enough. Count Hamnet caught her wrist before she could slap him or claw him. "Let go of me," she said in a low, furious voice.

I've been trying to, ever since I found out what you are, Hamnet thought. He opened his hand. The memory of her flesh remained printed on his palm. She didn't feel cold. Oh, no. You had to know her to understand what he meant.

Then again, he wondered if he'd ever known her at all.

"You're harder than you were," she remarked.

"If I am, whose fault is that?" he asked harshly.

"May the Bizogots eat you," Gudrid said. The mammoth-herders didn't eat men, even if a lot of Raumsdalians thought they did. A lewd question rose in Hamnet s mind. He stifled it. She went on, "May you fall off the edge of the world when you go beyond the Glacier. May one of the white bears Trasamund goes on about gnaw your bones."

His bow was stiff as a wooden puppet's. "I love you, too, my sweet," he said, and tried to match her venom so she wouldn't realize he was telling the truth-the painful and useless truth.

He must have done what he set out to do, for her laughter this time was jagged as shattered ice, sharp as sabertooth fangs. She stalked away, if stalking was the right word to use for something with so much hip action. Even without words, she reminded him what he was missing. He looked down at the rug. As if l didn't know, he thought, and kicked at the embroidered wool.