Beyong the Gap

III

Riding out of Nidaros came as nothing but a relief for Hamnet Thyssen. He could deal with Ulric Skakki and Audun Gilli. He could deal with Trasamund the jarl. He could even deal with Eyvind Torfinn, though he would rather not have to. As long as he didn't have to deal with Gudrid, he felt he could do anything.

The Great North Road ran from the Raumsdalian capital toward the imperial border-and toward the Bizogot country beyond it. Armies had moved up that road more often than Hamnet could easily count, ready to repel invaders from the north. And the barbarians had spilled into the Empire more often than he could easily count, too. Its riches and the better weather it enjoyed drew them like a lodestone.

One of these days, Hamnet supposed, the Bizogots would win, and either put one of their own on the Raumsdalian throne or topple the Empire altogether. Nothing lasted forever. It seemed not even the Glacier lasted forever, although a couple of lifetimes earlier everyone would have thought the Glacier the one surely eternal thing God made.

Was God himself eternal? Hamnet Thyssen uneasily looked up into the steel-blue sky. If God himself might pass away, who rose to power after he was gone? Men intent on their affairs? Women intent on their affairs? (Gudrid was certainly intent on hers.) Or older, darker Powers God had long held in check?

What was the Golden Shrine, anyway?

Ulric Skakki chose that moment to remark, "A copper for your thoughts, your Grace." Hamnet was a man who made a habit of saying what was in his mind, even-perhaps especially-when no one had asked him. He told Ulric Skakki exactly what he was thinking about. The younger man blinked; whatever he was expecting, that wasn't it. He reached into his belt pouch and pulled out a copper coin. Offering it to Count Hamnet, he said, "Well, your Grace, I got my money's worth."

Hamnet solemnly stowed the coin. "We endeavor to give satisfaction. It doesn't always work, mind you, but we do endeavor." He thought of Gudrid again. But it wasn't that he hadn't satisfied her. He had, as far as he could tell. She'd wanted something else, something more, from him. Whatever it was, it seemed defined not least by his inability to give it to her.

Did her first lover, the one who laughed? Did Eyvind Torn Torfinn? Did Trasamund? Did having them give her what she craved? Was having them what she craved?

If Ulric Skakki had chosen that moment to ask him for his thoughts, he would have lied without the least hesitation. He didn't mind talking about the death of the Empire, or about the death of the Glacier, or even about the death of God. The death of the one real love of his life? That was different.

Farmers weeded their young, hopeful crops of rye and oats off to either side or the road. Barley rarely succeeded north of Nidaros, even now. Wheat? Maize? Those were crops for softer, more luxurious climes. The farmers always seemed to have one eye on the north. If the Breath of God blew against them for long, their crops would wither and freeze and fail, even here. Then they would live on what they'd stored in better years, and on what they could hunt.

Or they would die. It happened, in hard years. Oh, yes-it happened.

No one hurried. Neither Trasamund nor Audun Gilli was any sort of a horseman, while Eyvind Torfinn might have been once upon a time but wasn't any more. Some of the Raumsdalians in the party might not have been anxious to leave the Empire behind-not in their hearts, anyway, no matter what their heads might tell them.

Hamnet Thyssen knew perfectly well what lay beyond the border. Nomad huts on the tundra-land crushed flat by the Glacier that had lain on it for so many centuries. Herds of half-tame musk oxen and mammoths guided-when they could be guided-by half-tame men. Meltwater lakes. Cold beyond what even Nidaros ever knew. Wind almost always from the north, almost always with frigid daggers in it. Snow and ice at any season of the year.

And then-the Glacier itself.

Yes, it was wounded. Yes, if Trasamund spoke truly, the Gap had at last pierced it to the root. Not the Glacier any more, but Glaciers, divided east and west. Count Hamnet shook his head in slow wonder at that. But still, any man who ever saw the Glacier, even diminished as it was, knew in his belly what awe meant. It went forward and back-more back than forward of late-like alive thing, but it swallowed the whole north of the world.

Well, most of the north of the world, anyhow. If the Gap ran all the way through it… That was why they were here.

The Golden Shrine. Hamnet glanced over at Earl Torfinn. No, he hadn't believed in the Golden Shrine. Even if he had believed in it, what difference would that have made? With the Glacier between Raumsdalia and the Golden Shrine, whether it was real might trouble scholars, but not ordinary men. Count Hamnet was not exactly an ordinary man, but he was no scholar, either, and just as glad not to be one.

Ulric Skakki puffed on a long-stemmed pipe. Tobacco came up from the warmer climes of the south. "Why do you smoke that stinking thing?" Hamnet asked. "You'll just run out of your precious weed after we've been on the road awhile."

"When I run out, I'll do without," Ulric answered cheerfully. "If you don't like the smell, I'm sorry. You can ride upwind of me easily enough."

"You didn't tell me why you smoke it," Hamnet said.

"Well, maybe I didn't." Ulric Skakki smiled and shrugged. "I've got to where I like the taste, though I didn't when I started." Count Hamnet made a face. Ulric laughed. "Tell me you liked beer the first time you drank it," he said. Hamnet couldn't, and he knew it. Ulric went on, "And the smoke relaxes me, and fiddling with the pipe gives me something to do with my hands. Does that suit you?"

"Reasonable today, aren't you?" Hamnet Thyssen said with a crooked smile.

Laughing, Ulric bowed in the saddle. "I'll try not to let it happen again, your Grace." He pointed north. "Is that a serai up ahead?"

Hamnet eyed the large, low building by the side of the road. The lower half of the wall was of stone, the upper of timber. Smoke rose from three brick chimneys. "It's not likely to be anything else," Count Hamnet said.

"Well, no." Ulric Skakki's smile was so charming, it made Hamnet distrust him on sight-as if he didn't already. Smiling still, Ulric went on, "Do you think we're likely to come to another one before nightfall?"

"Mm-I daresay not," Hamnet answered. "They aren't usually set close together-if they were, they'd hurt each other's trade."

"Then shall we stop?" Ulric said.

"Why ask me?" Hamnet Thyssen returned. He knew why the others were on the expedition. Trasamund had actually gone beyond the Glacier. Eyvind Torfinn knew whatever there was to know about the Golden Shrine. If Audun Gilli could remember his own name, he was a wizard. Ulric Skakki could get his hands on anything that wasn't nailed down-and steal the nails if that looked like a good idea.

Which leaves me, Count Hamnet thought. He could ride and he could fight and he was glad for a chance to escape the Raumsdalian Empire. All of that was well enough. But did it make him the leader? Ulric Skakki seemed to think it did. Ulric wouldn't want to lead himself-it was too much like work. But Eyvind Torfinn was a belted earl, while Trasamund was a jarl and as arrogant as anyone Hamnet had ever met. He didn't much want to lead such a motley crew.

But then Trasamund guided his horse close by Hamnet s. "Shall we stop at that serai for the night?" the Bizogot asked.

Hamnet stared. Did Trasamund think he was in charge, too? He hadn't looked for that. But he said, "Yes, I think we'd better. We won't come to another one before the sun goes down." Trasamund nodded and rode away.

Eyvind Torfinn didn't even question Hamnet's right to decide. Neither did Audun Gilli, though Count Hamnet would have been astonished if he had. It's on my shoulders, Hamnet thought. And when things go wrong-and they will-the blame will land on my shoulders, too.

Despite the chimneys, the common room in the serai was smoky enough to make Hamnet Thyssen's eyes sting. Some of that smoke came from the hearthfires, some from the cookfires back in the kitchen, and some from the pipes and cigars on which more than a few of the travelers puffed.

Gnawing on a turkey leg, Trasamund said, "This is not a bad place." A tall jack of beer sitting beside his trencher of hard barley bread probably went a good way toward improving his opinion. So did the smiles he'd won from the barmaid who'd brought him the jack. He had at least some reason to hope he'd win more than smiles from her.

The food and drink suited Hamnet Thyssen well enough. The barmaid didn't interest him. He did idly wonder what Gudrid would think of Trasamund's pursuing another woman so soon after leaving her arms. He shrugged. Chasing a barmaid wouldn't worry him unless the Bizogot got killed in a brawl over her (which seemed unlikely) or came down with an unpleasant disease because of her (the odds of which Hamnet had no way of guessing).

Eyvind Torfinn seemed content with supper, even if it was rougher than what he was used to. Audun Gilli ate more than he drank. To Count Ham-net, that made the meal a success as far as the wizard was concerned.

Hamnet shared a room with Audun. The evening was not a success. The sorcerer, though a small man, proved to own a large snore. Hamnet wondered if there was some sorcerous cure for that. Then he wondered if he ought to throw a boot at Audun, the way he might have at a yowling cat.

Ulric Skakki and Eyvind Torfinn had the room to one side of Hamnet s. The walls were no thicker than they had to be-Hamnet could hear the other two men talking for a long time. He wondered what they were talking about. Gudrid? As far as Hamnet Thyssen knew, she hadn't slept with Ulric. But he didn't know how far he knew.

On the other side, Trasamund had a room to himself. Except he didn't have it to himself for long. The bedframe creaked. He grunted. His companion giggled and then moaned. Hamnet found himself glad of Audun Gilli s snores. They helped drown out the amatory racket. Not long after the creaking next door reached a crescendo, it began anew. The Bizogot had stamina. By the noises his partner made, he also had technique.

How much of that technique had he had before he came south off the frozen steppe? How much had he learned inside the Empire-or, to come straight to the point, inside Gudrid? Count Hamnet ground his teeth. What he had right now was insomnia. He also had the firm conviction that God would have had trouble falling asleep in that room just then.

Eventually, in spite of everything, Hamnet did go to sleep. What that said about God's chances of doing the same … he was too unconscious to worry about.

A sunbeam sneaking through the slats of the shutter on the south-facing window poked him in the eye. He yawned and sat up. Audun Gilli went on snoring away. Either Eyvind Torfinn or Ulric Skakki also owned a pretty formidable snore. As for Trasamund, he really did have stamina. That barmaid would probably walk bowlegged for days.

Yawning again, Hamnet got out of bed. He'd slept in his clothes, as one did on the road. Instead of throwing his boots at Audun Gilli, he put them on. He did take the small pleasure of shaking the wizard awake. "You snore," he said when he saw reason in Audun's eyes.

"I do?" the wizard said around a yawn of his own. Hamnet Thyssen nodded emphatically. Audun Gilli started pulling on his own boots. "Well, your Grace, if I do, I'm not the only one here who does."

"What? Me?" Count Hamnet didn't believe it-or didn't want to believe it, anyhow. He stood on what dignity he could. "I've never once heard myself snore."

Audun Gilli started to answer that, then seemed to think better of it. He contented himself with, "Shall we get the others up?"

"Trasamund’s been up most of the night," Hamnet answered, which made Audun begin and then visibly reconsider another answer. Hamnet added, "But we may as well knock. That barmaid will have to go to work soon anyhow, though I daresay Trasamund’s worked her harder than the fellow who runs this serai ever did. Here's hoping she had fun."

"They don't stay till morning if they haven't." The wizard spoke more practically than Hamnet Thyssen would have expected.

Hamnet knocked on the door to the room that Eyvind Torfinn and Ulric Skakki shared. He knocked loud and long, hoping Trasamund and his lady friend would also hear. That actually worked; the barmaid scurried out of the Bizogot's chamber and down the hall toward the common room. But when Ulric opened the door, he looked more than a little put upon. "What?" he said irritably. "Is this place on fire?" Earl Eyvind appeared behind him, seeming similarly aggrieved.

"No fire-except, I hope, in the hearth," Hamnet said. "Which of you snores?"

"He does." Ulric and Eyvind both said the same thing. They pointed at each other. Eyvind Torfinn added, "As long as we're talking about snoring, was that you or Audun sawing stone last night?"

"Yes." Hamnet let him make whatever he pleased of that. "I'm going to get Trasamund moving," he went on. "Then we ought to eat and we ought to ride."

Earl Eyvind rubbed his hindquarters. Ulric Skakki sighed a martyred sigh. But neither man said no. Hamnet Thyssen knocked on Trasamund's door. "You hit ours a lot harder than that," Ulric said. Yes, and I had my reasons, too, Hamnet thought. Ulric went on scowling.

Trasamund was also scowling as he opened up. But when Count Ham-net said, "We should be moving," the Bizogot's glower faded. Moving was something the mammoth-herders of the north understood.

They all went off to the common room. Hamnet Thyssen was ready for oatmeal mush swimming with butter or rye crackers or barley rolls or boiled goose eggs or whatever else the seraikeeper served for breakfast.

The barmaid was already busy, hurrying from the kitchen to other travelers waiting for their food. Count Hamnet noticed her only out of the corner of his eye. He stopped in his tracks at the entrance to the common room. None of his companions tried to push past him into the big hall, either.

From her perch on a bench near a fireplace, Gudrid waved gaily to them.

She hadn't come alone. Half a dozen stalwart imperial guardsmen sat across from her and to either side. Hamnet wondered how she’d talked Sigvat II out of them. Then he decided he didn't want to know, because talking might not have had anything to do with it. A heartbeat later, he shied away from hadn't come alone, too.

"My sweet! What are you doing here?" Eyvind Torfinn asked-a reasonable question, and much more mildly phrased than it would have been coming from Hamnet. Still sounding reasonable, and reasonably concerned, Earl Eyvind went on, "Is anything wrong down in Nidaros?"

"No, no, no." Gudrid laughed one of her silvery laughs. And then Count Hamnet discovered that he'd thanked God too soon, for she said, "I decided I'd come along with you, that's all."

Hamnet stiffened, as if taking a sword thrust. Eyvind's jaw dropped. Even the unflappable Ulric Skakki blinked. Audun Gilli's eyes widened. And Trasamund roared laughter himself.

"That's . .. impossible," Eyvind Torfinn said. Again, Hamnet would have told Gudrid the same thing. Again, he would have used stronger language. Earl Eyvind continued, "You couldn't possibly make it to the land beyond the Glacier."

"Why not?" When Gudrid sounded innocent and sweet, you were well advised to set a hand on your belt pouch.

"Because you're a woman, that's why not," Eyvind answered.

"And so?" Gudrid said. "If I can't ride better than Audun there, I'm a musk ox. And I can shoot-dear Hamnet taught me how years ago. I don't pull a very heavy bow, but I hit what I aim at."

She did, too. Hamnet Thyssen knew it. Trasamund looked from him to Gudrid and back again in surprise. No, the Bizogot jarl hadn't known of any connection between them. Hamnet hadn't thought he did.

"And besides," Gudrid went on, still sounding sweet and innocent and, if you knew her, deadly dangerous, "I'll have all you big strong masterful men to protect me, won't I? And these guardsmen his Majesty was kind enough to give me, too."

Some of the guardsmen looked mildly embarrassed. Others smirked. How had Gudrid persuaded the Emperor? And why were those men smirking?

"This is most unwise. It will not do," Eyvind Torfinn said.

"I agree. This journey will be complicated enough without, uh, complications." Ulric Skakki didn't put that well, and knew it, but also didn't leave much doubt about what he meant.

"Madness," Hamnet said.

Gudrid fluttered her fingers, literally dismissing that out of hand. "As if you'd say anything else," she murmured. Then she fluttered those slim fingers again, this time toward Trasamund. "And what does our valiant Bizogot chieftain say?"

The valiant Bizogot chieftain hadn't said much of anything. He'd listened to the backbiting with what seemed like immense enjoyment. Now he laughed once more. "Let the wench come," he said. "Why not? It will make the journey more entertaining."

"But-" Eyvind Torfinn said.

Trasamund cut him off with a slash of the hand. "I have said she will come, and she will come." He spoke with a jarl's hauteur-he didn't think Hamnet was the leader any more, then. "Raumsdalia does not have to go beyond the Glacier. Raumsdalia does not have to look for the Golden Shrine. We Bizogots can do it alone. The way north for you goes through our land."

Earl Eyvind made a horrible face, not because Trasamund was wrong but because he was right. When the Empire's needs clashed with his … He scowled at the Bizogot and scowled at his wife, but in the end he nodded.

Hamnet Thyssen, by contrast, started out of the common room. "Where are you going?" Eyvind Torfinn called after him. His tone suggested a drowning man watching a spar drift away.

"Home," Hamnet answered. "The Golden Shrine can rot, for all of me, and the Gap, too."

Gudrid's laugh somehow struck him as ominous. "I knew you'd get stuffy about this, Hamnet. I knew it. Read this." She held out a rolled parchment.

He made sure he didn't touch her when he took the parchment. She noticed him making sure, and laughed again, this time at him. He ignored her. She thought that was funny, too. The parchment was sealed in wax of imperial gold, and had stamped on it a sabertooth's head-Sigvat's seal. Hamnet Thyssen ground his teeth as he broke it.

Most of the message was in a secretary's supremely legible script.

To Count Hamnet Thyssen from his Imperial Majesty, Sigvat ll, by God's grace Emperor of Raumsdalia. Your Grace-You are hereby requested and required to continue on your journey north to the lands beyond the Glacier and, if possible, to the Golden Shrine, notwithstanding the presence on the said journey of Gudrid, wife to Earl Eyvind Torfinn, whose intimate knowledge of conditions pertaining to the said Golden Shrine conduces to the success of the expedition of which you form a component.

A scrawled signature, unquestionably Sigvat's, lay under the body of the letter.

"You see?" Gudrid said, languid triumph in her voice.

"I see." Hamnet folded the parchment and put it in his belt pouch-he offered no offense to the imperial letter, though his first impulse was to fling it in the fire. "And I tell you this, Gudrid: no matter what this letter says, I am not a cursed component. I am a man-my own man, by God. I'm for my own keep, too, and the journey can go hang. And so, my former dear, can you."

He trudged out of the serai and off toward the stable, not a man in a hurry but not a man about to change his mind, either. He'd almost got to the stable door when someone behind him called, "Hamnet-wait."

If that had been Gudrid, he wouldn't have waited-though he might have drawn sword on her if she tried to insist. But it wasn't. It was Ulric Skakki. "Well?" Hamnet growled. "Are you fool enough to think you can make me change my mind? If Sigvat can't do it, you aren't likely to."

"I wouldn't dream of trying, your Grace," Ulric said. Hamnet laughed harshly-he knew a lie when he heard one. Unperturbed, Ulric Skakki went on, "I just wanted to tell you one thing before you go."

"Well?" Hamnet said. "What is it? Say your say, then, and be quick about it."

"I will," Ulric said. Whom he served-beyond himself-was a mystery to Hamnet. He hadn't been in the habit of talking about himself when he and Hamnet served together a few years earlier. Evidently he still wasn't.

With a small shrug, he went on, "If you leave, if you walk away, that woman wins."

Had Ulric called Gudrid by her name, Hamnet Thyssen would have turned his back and gone into the stable, and afterwards much would have been different. As things were, he looked Ulric up and down, a glower that would have annihilated a lesser man, or a less self-assured one. Ulric Skakki withstood it with no external signs of injury.

"As if I care what that woman does," Hamnet said, and then, not at all at random, "Have you swived her, too, the way everyone else has?"

"Good God, no," Ulric Skakki answered. "No scorpion ever hatched anywhere has a sting in its tail to match hers."

That held the unmistakable ring of sincerity. But then, Ulric might well be able to sound sincere when he wasn't. It was a common gift. Even Gudrid had it. For the moment, Hamnet Thyssen chose to assume Ulric meant what he said, and growled, "Well, then, you see what my trouble is. I don't want to be within miles of that woman, let alone riding beside her. And I used to love her, which makes it worse."

"But we need you on the journey. You're the best Raumsdalian we have," Ulric Skakki said. "Eyvind Torfinn is nice enough, but he's an old fool. Audun Gilli is … what he is. They won't do, Thyssen."

"There's you," Count Hamnet said. "Why are you acting so modest? It doesn't seem your natural state."

"It's not," Ulric agreed. "But I'm only a commoner, and I have a strange background-to say nothing of my foreground." Was his chuckle self-conscious? Hamnet had trouble believing it. Ulric went on, "Earl Eyvind won't take me seriously. Neither will Trasamund. You've got the blood they respect."

"Gudrid might want to see it spilled. Otherwise it doesn't much impress her," Hamnet said. "And there are her bodyguards. One of them would likely serve your purpose."

Ulric Skakki shook his head. "Louts. Fools. Chowderheads. The Emperor won't send away men he can't afford to lose. He'll send the ones he doesn't care about-so that's what he's done. I know about these fellows. And I know something else."

"What?" Hamnet asked uneasily; what Ulric said made altogether too much sense.

"I know Trasamund hasn't told everything he knows about what lies beyond the Glacier."

"And how do you know that?" Hamnet inquired in sardonic tones. "I suppose you've gone beyond the Glacier yourself ?"

Ulric grimaced. "Yes, as a matter of fact, I have, though it's worth my life if you say so where a Bizogot might hear. It's likely worth your life, too, so you ought to bear that in mind."

Hamnet Thyssen stared at the younger man. He did not think Ulric was lying; he wished he did. "By God, how did you manage that?" he asked.

"Carefully," Ulric Skakki answered, which had to be the understatement of the year. "Trasamund says he doesn't know if there are men on the far side of the Glacier. Either he's lying or he's not as much of a far-ranger as he'd have us believe. There are." Again, he spoke with great conviction.

"And?" Hamnet asked, as he was plainly meant to do.

"And they're dangerous. To the Bizogots, to us, maybe even to themselves. I am not making this up, Thyssen. I have seen them. We need you there."

"Then send Gudrid back to Nidaros."

Ulric Skakki shrugged sadly. "I'm sorry. I can't do that. I wish I could, but I can't."

"Mmrr." Hamnet made a noise deep down in his chest. "If you lure me on with this, Skakki, if you dangle a wiggling worm in front of me to make me swim after it, I'll kill you. Gudrid's first lover didn't believe me when I said something like that. I'd tell you to ask him if I lied, but he's too dead to give you a straight answer."

"Well, you can try," Ulric Skakki murmured. Count Hamnet sent him a sharp stare. Ulric looked back imperturbably. If Hamnet's words worried him, he showed it not at all. He didn't seem to believe Hamnet could harm him. Maybe that made him a fool. Maybe it meant he knew some things Hamnet didn't, things Hamnet might discover if he tried to make good on his threat. As if it were never made, Ulric went on, "Does that mean you're coming, then?"

The last word Hamnet Thyssen thought he would use came out of his mouth. Hating himself, hating Gudrid, and saving a little hate for Ulric Skakki, too, he said, "Yes."

Weather along the Great North Road seemed to get worse with each passing mile. That had to be Hamnet's imagination. Spring was advancing, the sun staying in the sky longer with each passing day. Things should have got warmer and finer, not darker and gloomier. Odds were that the cloud over the expedition was fixed above his head and no one else's.

Had he wanted other opinions, he would have asked for them. He rode apart from the other travelers, with them but not of them. Audun Gilli rode apart, too, but Audun Gilli was about as sociable as an old root. Sometimes the noble and the wizard rode side by side, but even then they were apart.

As usual, Gudrid contrived to make the world revolve around herself. The royal bodyguards, Eyvind Torfinn, and Trasamund all danced attendance on her. Ulric Skakki seemed more loosely attached to that group, but attached he was-or so it seemed to Count Hamnet's jaundiced eye, at any rate.

For most of the way north toward the frontier, things went smoothly enough. The travelers stopped at a serai each night. If they didn't have all the comforts Gudrid was used to down in Nidaros, they had most of them. Gudrid played the part of the cheerful voyager as if she'd rehearsed for years. Whatever went on in the nighttime went on without Hamnet Thyssen. He and Ulric Skakki usually shared a chamber. As far as he could tell, Ulric didn't go out of nights, so maybe the other man had given his true opinion of Gudrid.

And if he hadn't, it was his lookout.

The country got flatter and flatter as they went north, till it looked as if it were pressed. And so it was. The Glacier had crushed it till very recently. Countless shallow ponds and lakes marked the slightly-the ever slightly-lower ground. The winds mostly blew warm out of the south, but snow lingered long in the shade of the spruce and fir woods.

This far north, farmers planted their rye and oats and hoped for the best. They didn't count on them, though, not the way they did in lands longer free of the Glacier and in those that had never known its touch. They raised hogs and sheep and horses and musk oxen for meat, and they hunted. Imperial garrisons couldn't hope to live on the countryside, not in this inhospitable clime. Supplies came up by riverboat when the streams were open, and by sledge when the rivers froze.

One day, the travelers found there was no serai when they needed to stop for the evening. The one that should have been there had burned down, and nobody had got around to rebuilding it.

They'd passed a village a few miles back-a small, sullen place where a lot of the people looked to have Bizogot blood. Hamnet Thyssen didn't like the idea of turning back to the south on general principles. He especially didn't like the idea of turning around to pass the night in a miserable hole like that.

Up ahead lay… well, who could say what? He didn't see any village close enough to reach before the sun went down. No cloud of smoke on the horizon foretold chimneys clustered close together.

"We'll just have to spend the night in the open, under the sky," he said. "This seems about as good a place as any."

"So it does," Trasamund agreed. "Enough trees to the north for firewood, and enough to shield us if the Breath of God blows hard tonight, too. We may shiver a bit, but we won't freeze." The Bizogot jarl laughed. "Next to what we'll see farther north, we might as well still be in a serai."

Gudrid seemed excited about spending the night in a tent. She put up with chewy smoked sausage over an open fire. She drank beer without making a face, though she preferred mead and wine.

Hamnet quietly fumed. He'd hoped the first taste of rough living would send her scuttling back to the capital. That was one of the reasons he'd chosen to camp out here beside the ruins of the serai. She foiled him again.

He volunteered for the first watch. Owls hooted. Off in the distance, dire wolves howled. The wind did come from the north, from the Glacier. Ragged patches of cloud scudded across the sky, now hiding stars, now revealing them.

Someone came up behind him. He whirled. The sword that had been on his belt was suddenly in his hand. Audun Gilli froze. "You don't want to try sneaking up on me," Count Hamnet remarked. "It isn't healthy."

"So I see," the wizard said. "I am not your enemy, your Grace. I hope I am not. I do not wish to be."

"No, you are not my enemy-not unless you make yourself so," Hamnet Thyssen said. "But what are you doing here, anyway?"

"Something besides lying in a gutter clutching a jar of whatever happens to be cheap and strong," Audun answered. "Whatever happens in the north, it has to be better, wouldn't you say?"

"For you, maybe," Hamnet said. "For all of us? Who knows?"

Audun Gilli studied him for a while before saying anything. In the starlight and the dim red glow of the embers from the campfire, the wizard was only a shape in the darkness to the noble. Hamnet couldn't have been much more to Audun Gilli… at least, if the wizard was seeing only by the light of the world.

"You are not as hard a man as you make yourself out to be," Audun ventured at last.

"No, eh? If you’d got a little closer before I heard you, I would have cut you in half," Hamnet said. "That would have given you something to grumble about-for a little while, anyway."

"Maybe," Audun Gilli said. "But maybe not, too. I am not everything a wizard ought to be-God knows that's true, and so do I. But I am not nothing as a sorcerer, either."

Ulric Skakki had also said Audun wasn't a negligible wizard. Count Hamnet was more inclined to believe it from Ulric than from the wizard himself, whether he was negligible or not. Yes, Hamnet remembered those two chattering, bickering mugs. But that was a bagatelle. How Audun Gilli would do if-no, when-they had to rely on his magic .. . was anybody's guess.

Hamnet Thyssen didn't like going into the unknown with a wizard whose true quality was also unknown. Some sort of proper test seemed reasonable-to him, anyway. He said, "Can you divine for me why Gudrid wanted to come north? Is it just to jab spikes into my liver, or does she have some other reason, too?"

Audun didn't answer right away. When he did, he said, "Down in Nidaros, she asked me for a divination about you, your Grace."

"Did she?" Hamnet rumbled. "What did she want to know? What did you tell her?"

"I told her that, since the two of you were long separated, whatever she wanted to know was none of her business," Audun Gilli said. 'As for what it was, your Grace, you don't need to know that. And I would not feel right about divining her reasons for you unless you think she purposes danger to the Empire."

A wizard with scruples? Hamnet Thyssen would have imagined the breed long extinct. He had a hard time imagining the breed ever existed, in fact. But here he had a specimen before his eyes.

Or did he? Was Audun Gilli a wizard with scruples or only a wizard without strength? "We'll find something else for you to do, then," Hamnet said. Audun nodded. If he'd divined what Hamnet was thinking, would he have?