Breath of God

XIV

Sometimes when you were wounded, you didn’t feel the pain for the first few heartbeats. Sometimes it pierced you right away. When Hamnet Thyssen heard a noise like a dire wolf’s growl, he needed that handful of heartbeats to realize it came from his own throat.

The other two also needed a moment to hear it through their more enjoyable distraction. It reached Audun before Liv. He sprang away from her with a gasp of horror. “I can explain,” he gabbled. “You have to understand -”

“Understand what?” Hamnet said, still growling. “Understand how many pieces I’m going to cut you into?” His hand already lay on the hilt of his sword, though he didn’t remember telling it to go there.

“Don’t be foolish, Hamnet,” Liv said. “It’s over. You know it is. It’s been over for a while now. You know that, too.”

He did know it, even if he hadn’t wanted to look at it. That made things worse, not better. “It can’t be!” he said. He’d lost Gudrid. How could he stand losing another woman? “I loved you! You loved me!” He wished that hadn’t come out in the past tense. Maybe his mouth was wiser than his brain.

Liv nodded. “I did, for a while. But when you started herding me the way dogs herd musk oxen, when you started wondering whether I was faithful every time I breathed . . . You caused what you wanted to cure. Killing Audun won’t get me back, even if you can. It’s too late for that.”

“I ought to kill you, too,” he ground out. He should have done that with Gudrid. Then she wouldn’t have been able to torment him all these years after they broke apart. Would Liv do the same? Would she revel in it the way Gudrid had?

“You can try,” she said. “But what good would it do? It won’t bring me back to you. Nothing can do that now. What we had was good while it lasted. Why not remember it that way?”

Hamnet started to say that killing her and Audun would make him feel better. But he wasn’t even sure that was true. It might make him feel better for a little while, but he knew he would be sorry afterwards if he did it. He couldn’t tell them he hoped they would be happy together; he didn’t. He didn’t see much point in telling them he hoped they would be unhappy together – they could figure that out for themselves.

And so he pushed past them without a word. Audun Gilli shrank from him. Liv didn’t. She had as much courage as any Bizogot. She looked as if she wanted to say something, but she didn’t do that, either. After their first spell of intoxication with each other, neither of them had been able to find enough to say to each other. That was part of the trouble, though Hamnet didn’t realize it.

When he walked into the mean little room he’d thought he would share with Liv, he found she’d already taken her meager belongings out. He said something that should have made the roof cave in and the walls collapse. Everything stayed up, though, and the bed didn’t collapse when he threw himself down on it, even if the frame did groan.

After losing Gudrid, he’d wept for days – weeks, in fact. He wept now, too, but even he knew the tears were more drunken self-pity than anything else. Gudrid had had a hold on him that Liv couldn’t match. Knowing he would probably be all right before too long made him all the more mournful.

One good thing: Audun Gilli’s chamber lay halfway down the hall. If he’d had to listen to the mattress in the next room creaking rhythmically, he really might have drawn his sword and done his best to slaughter the wizard and the shaman.

Instead, he fell asleep with his boots still on, sprawled out across the bed. After that, he didn’t hear a thing.

When he came downstairs the next morning, some of the Bizogots were already eating breakfast. So was Ulric Skakki. He sat next to Trasamund. Both of them cautiously spooned up porridge of rye and oats and sipped from mugs of beer. By their sallow skins and red-tracked eyes, they hoped the beer would soothe aching heads. By the way the corners of their mouths turned down, it hadn’t done the job yet.

Trasamund stared at Count Hamnet. “By God, man, what ails you?” the jarl burst out. “You went to bed long before we did, but you look worse than either one of us.”

Ulric, by contrast, had a way of cutting to the chase. He did it now with two words: “He knows.”

Hamnet scowled at him. How long had they known? How long had everybody known? How long had people been laughing at him behind his back? Hadn’t he had enough of that with Gudrid? Evidently not.

“What’ll it be, friend?” The tapman sounded cheerful. Why not? He hadn’t just lost his woman.

“Beer,” Hamnet said. “Porridge.” Even if part of him wished he were dead, his belly craved ballast.

“Sorry, Thyssen,” Ulric said when Hamnet sat down across from him. “It happens, that’s all. It’ll probably happen with me and Arnora before long.”

“Yes, but – ” Hamnet began, and then stopped.

“But what?” Ulric asked, his voice deceptively mild.

“But you and Arnora aren’t in love.”

“No. We just screw each other silly, which isn’t bad, either. But you and Liv aren’t in love any more, either, if you ever were,” Ulric said.

“I still love her!” Hamnet cried.

“Which has nothing to do with what I said.” Ulric was most dangerous when he was most accurate. “You may love Liv, but it’s pretty plain she doesn’t love you right now. And if she doesn’t, you two aren’t in love, no matter how much you may wish you were. Or will you tell me I’m wrong?”

Count Hamnet wanted to. He knew too well he couldn’t. “No,” he mumbled. A serving girl who might have been the tapman’s daughter brought him his breakfast.

“Dig in,” Ulric said cheerfully. “You may as well.”

And Hamnet did. The porridge had onions and bits of smoked sausage in it. No matter how the rest of him felt, his belly was happy. Arnora came down a few minutes later. Instead of sitting by Ulric, she made a point of plopping herself down at a far table and scowling at him. He grinned back, which only seemed to annoy her more.

Then Liv and Audun Gilli came down together. They were holding hands. Liv looked pleased with herself. The wizard looked happy and frightened at the same time. Hamnet’s glower said he wished they would both catch fire. Liv shook her head and Audun flinched, but they stayed unscorched.

They did have the courtesy to sit where Hamnet couldn’t see them without twisting to do it. That helped a little, but only a little. Every time he heard Liv’s voice, he felt vitriol dripping down his back.

Ulric Skakki waved to the serving girl and pointed at Hamnet. “Bring this man another mug of beer.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Trasamund asked.

“I’m not sure of anything,” Ulric answered, “but I think one more will numb him. Three or four more . . . Well, three or four more wouldn’t be a good idea right now.”

The girl set the mug in front of Count Hamnet. He drained it. Ulric was a nice judge of such things, no doubt from experience. The beer built a wall – a low wall, but a wall – between him and what he was feeling. A few more, though, and he wouldn’t have cared what he did.

Marcovefa was one of the last travelers to come down to the taproom. When she did, she noticed right away how people were sitting. The clans atop the Glacier must have had their quarrels and squabbles and scandals, too. People were people, no matter where and how they lived. They would fall in love with one another.

They would fall out of love with one another, too.

Marcovefa sat down by Hamnet. “I am sorry,” she said in the ordinary Bizogot tongue. “It happens.”

He looked at her – through her, really. “Go away,” he said.

She looked back. “No.”

“Then keep quiet and leave me alone.”

She said something to Ulric Skakki in her own dialect. Hamnet could follow just enough of it to know it wasn’t complimentary to him. He ignored it. He made a point of ignoring it. He made such a point of ignoring it, in fact, that Marcovefa thought it was funny. The only response he could find was to keep on ignoring her. She thought that was even funnier.

When they rode out of Malmo, Count Hamnet got fresh salt rubbed in his wounds. After Gudrid finally left him, she went off to Nidaros, and he hardly saw her till she came with Eyvind Torfinn on the journey up beyond the Glacier. He brooded that she was gone – brooded and brooded and brooded – but at least he didn’t have to watch her with whatever lovers she’d had before latching on to the scholarly earl.

But he couldn’t get away from Liv. There she was, not far away, talking animatedly with Audun Gilli, her face glowing the way it had not long before when she talked with him. Even when he rode too far away to make out what she was saying, he could hear the lilt in her voice. She talked to Audun the way a woman talked to a lover who pleased her. Hamnet knew the tone too well to mistake it. Now that she used it with someone else. .

He ground his teeth till his jaw hurt. He wished a short-faced bear or a lion would spring out of the woods and devour Audun Gilli. Slowly, he thought, so l can savor his screams. Once the wizard was gone, he reasoned, Liv would come back to him. That she might have other choices didn’t occur to him, which showed his reasoning wasn’t all it might have been.

They rode on through the Empire’s northern forests. The deeper they got, the more Marcovefa and the Bizogots who’d never before come down off the steppe marveled. That marveling wasn’t always of a happy sort; they seemed to feel the trees pressing in on them more than ever. To Hamnet, it was only a forest: not the same kind as grew by his castle farther south, but close enough. The jays here had dark heads and blue bellies, not blue heads and white bellies. But their screeches weren’t much different from those of any other jays.

Sedranc, the next town farther south, was larger and more prosperous than Malmo. As Marcovefa had before, she ate barley bread and oatcakes. In Sedranc, though, she really seemed to notice what she was eating and how unlike anything she’d known atop the Glacier it was. “What is this?” she asked. “How do they make it?” She sounded almost as wary as a Raumsdalian at one of her folk’s cannibal feasts.

Some of the Bizogots also seemed curious. No crops grew on their plains, either. They gathered berries and roots and leaves, but they knew nothing of grain. Explaining how Raumsdalian farmers raised their crops and harvested them, how the seeds were ground into flour and the flour baked, took quite awhile.

“A lot of work.” Marcovefa delivered her verdict. “Too much work, maybe.”

“Lots of food,” Count Hamnet said. “More than we could get from hunting and picking berries. That food lets us have towns.” Lets us be civilized, he thought. The two amounted to the same thing.

“What good is a town?” asked the shaman from atop the Glacier. “Why have this place? Why not wander?”

She wasn’t being sardonic, or Hamnet didn’t think so. “To let us have beds. To let us have bathtubs. To let us build houses the Breath of God has trouble blowing away,” he replied.

“To let us buy and sell and trade,” Ulric Skakki added.

“Money.” Marcovefa used the Raumsdalian word as if it were a curse.

“Money.” It sounded different in Ulric’s mouth.

“To stay safe behind the wall,” Audun Gilli said. He was right, too. Ham-net Thyssen glared at him anyway.

“Wall is not so much, either,” Marcovefa said.

“What would you do different? How would you do better?” If Hamnet argued with her – if he argued with anyone but Audun – he wouldn’t have to dwell on his own misery.

For the first time, a question seemed to give her pause. “I don’t know,” she said at last. “Something not like this, though.”

“These are just country towns, and back-country towns at that,” Ulric Skakki said in the ordinary Bizogot tongue. Then he had to go back and forth with Marcovefa, no doubt explaining what a back-country town was and why it wasn’t so much of a much. When he dropped back into speech Hamnet could understand, he added, “Plenty of places farther south much finer than this.”

“It’s true,” Liv said. “When I first came down to Raumsdalia, I thought each place was the finest one I’d ever seen. Then the next one down the road would be grander still.”

Hamnet remembered that, remembered it with heartbreaking clarity. She’d shared her amazement and delight with him only the autumn before. Now, if she still had them, she’d share them with Audun Gilli. Hearing her voice stabbed Hamnet in the memory, and what wounds hurt worse than that?

He’d felt the same way about Gudrid last year. She’d gone out of her way to bait him, too, which Liv didn’t seem to be doing – a small mercy, but a mercy even so. And yet, when a short-faced bear burst out of the forest, killed Gudrid’s horse, and menaced her, he’d ridden to her rescue without a thought in his head except driving the bear away or killing it. Even at the time, he’d wondered why. Did he hope she’d be grateful? If he did, she disappointed him yet again.

What would he do if a short-faced bear came after Liv now? He was lucky – if it was luck – he didn’t have to find out.

The forest’s northern edge was clear-cut: there was a line past which trees simply could not grow. Its southern border was more ambiguous. Men could farm on south-facing slopes even in the midst of the trees. In good years, in warm years, in years when the Breath of God didn’t blow too hard, they’d bring in a crop. Chances were they could bring in enough to last out one bad year. Two long, hard winters in a row, though, and they would start to starve.

More farmers seemed to be trying to carve out steadings up here than had been true before Count Hamnet’s beard started going gray. More seemed to be making a go of it, too. In his grandfather’s day, the forest’s lower edge lay miles to the south.

Go back enough generations and it hadn’t been forest here at all, but frozen steppe. Go back further than that, and the Glacier had ground forward and back, and who could say what it ground into oblivion? Only a few legends and – maybe – the Golden Shrine survived from those days.

If I found the Golden Shrine, could I make Liv love me again? Hamnet wondered. God, could I make Gudrid love me again? Could I make myself not care if I couldn’t make either one of them love me again? Without love, poppy juice for the soul seemed plenty good.

He looked around, as if he would find the Golden Shrine in the middle of this frontier district. That would have been funny if it weren’t so sad. He hadn’t found the Golden Shrine even beyond the Glacier. What chance of stumbling over it in these mundane surroundings did he have? None, and he knew it.

What chance do I have? he wondered bitterly. The question was hard enough to answer all by itself.

He looked back over his shoulder, back past the forest, back towards the Bizogot steppe. He wondered why he cared so much about beating the Rulers. What did he care if they smashed the Bizogots and hurled Raumsdaliadown in ruins?

Part of the answer to that seemed plain enough. If the Rulers smashed the Empire, he was all too likely to get caught and killed in the collapse. Even if he didn’t, he would have to bend the knee to the invaders from beyond the Glacier. Every fiber in his being rebelled against that. Better to fight them for…

For what? For the love of a woman? Gudrid lay in Eyvind Torfinn’s arms – and in any other arms she happened to fancy. And now Liv had thrown Ham-net over, too – and for whom? For a wizard lost in the real world. Why care whether he lived or died himself, let alone the Bizogots or the Raumsdalian Empire?

Another question easier to ask than answer.

Big, sharp-nosed, rough-coated dogs that looked to be at least half dire wolf ran snarling at the travelers from a farm cabin near the woods. Almost without thinking, Hamnet strung his bow and let fly. The arrow caught a wolf-dog in the flank. Its snarls turned to yelps of pain. It ran off faster than it had come forward. The other beasts, hearing their friend wounded, seemed to think twice.

“What did you go and do that for?” The farmer shook his fist at Count Hamnet. “He’s a good dog!”

“Good dogs don’t act like they want to tear my throat out,” Hamnet answered. He nocked another shaft. If he had to shoot again, it might not be at a dog.

But the farmer, no matter what he thought, had better sense than to pick a fight with a band of thirty or so Bizogots and Raumsdalians. He went back to weeding. Each stroke of the hoe against some poor, defenseless plant said what he would have done to Hamnet Thyssen if only he were a hero.

Hamnet glanced up at the sky. It was blue – a watery blue, but blue. A few puffy clouds sailed across from west to east. No sign of dark clouds, threatening clouds, riding the Breath of God down from the north. But if the wind changed, when the wind changed … It could happen any day, any time. Hamnet Thyssen knew that well. The farmer had to know it, too. To Hamnet, it was a fact of life. To the farmer, it was a matter of life and death.

Which brought Hamnet back to the question he’d asked himself before. Why did he want to hold on to the one and hold off the other? He looked over at Liv, who was chatting happily with Audun Gilli. Yes, why indeed?

Once they came out of the forest and down into country where crops would grow most years, Marcovefa started marveling all over again at the richness of the landscape. Boats with sails astonished and delighted her, as the mere idea of them had delighted Liv a year before. Hamnet Thyssen wished he hadn’t had the earlier memory; it meant he took no pleasure from the shaman’s discovery.

“What happens in winter?” Marcovefa asked.

“About what you’d think. The rivers and lakes freeze. They haul the boats out of the water.” Hamnet illustrated with gestures. Marcovefa followed well enough.

They were well to the west of Nidaros, and had to work their way southeast. Hamnet didn’t think local officials in this part of the Empire were warned against them. He didn’t see any couriers hotfooting it off to the capital to say he’d presumed to come back.

When he remarked on that to Ulric Skakki, the adventurer shrugged and said, “Well, no. But if these people have any idea what they’re doing, you wouldn’t see it. They’d make sure of that.”

“If they knew what they were doing, they wouldn’t be here,” Count Ham-net said. “They’d be in the capital or somewhere else that mattered.”

“Most of the time, you’d be right.” Now Ulric was the one looking north. “If the Rulers come down – no, when the Rulers come down – it won’t be like an ordinary Bizogot raid, though. The Bizogots likely wouldn’t get this far anyway. I don’t know if the Rulers can, either. I don’t know … but they might.”

“Yes. They might.” Hamnet Thyssen’s scowl covered the invaders and the Empire impartially. “I don’t even know if I care.”

“You need to spend some silver,” Ulric Skakki said seriously.

The quick change of subject confused Hamnet. “What are you talking about?”

“You need to spend some silver,” Ulric repeated. “Go to a whorehouse or pick a pretty serving girl who’s easy – God knows there are enough of them. Once you lay her or she sucks your prong or whatever you happen to want, you won’t hate the whole cursed world.”

Hamnet shook his head. “It wouldn’t mean anything.”

“A pretty girl’s got you in her mouth, it doesn’t have to mean anything,” Ulric said. “It feels good. Nothing wrong with that.”

“Nothing wrong with it while it’s going on,” Count Hamnet said gloomily. “But afterwards you know she only wanted money, and she’d spit in your eye if you didn’t pay her. If she doesn’t care about you to begin with, why bother?”

“Because it feels good?” Ulric suggested with exaggerated patience.

“Not reason enough,” Hamnet said. Ulric threw his hands in the air.

They came to the town of Burtrask just as the sun was setting. Burtrask had outgrown its wall; suburbs flourished outside the gray stone works. The gate guards hardly bothered to question the newcomers. Burtrask was used to prosperity, and seemed to have not a care in the world.

Touts just inside the gate bawled out the virtues of competing serais. Others bawled out the vices of competing bawdy houses. Count Hamnet felt Ulric’s ironic eye on him. He didn’t give the adventurer the satisfaction of looking back. Ulric’s chuckle said he knew exactly what Hamnet wasn’t doing, and why. Hamnet went right on ignoring him.

The seraikeeper they chose seemed surprised to have so many people descend on him at once, but he didn’t let it faze him. “We’ll have to set out pallets in the taproom for some of you, I’m afraid,” he said. “We’ll keep the fire going all night – no need to worry about that. I don’t believe in freezing my guests. Neither do the girls down the street.” The brothel stood a few doors away. That was also true of the other serais in Burtrask. They knew what travelers wanted. Most travelers, anyhow.

Thunk! Thunk! A hatchet came down on the necks of chickens and ducks out back. No doubt supper would be fresh. A couple of servants rolled barrels of beer into the taproom. Everybody in the Empire’s northern provinces knew how Bizogots could drink.

Food and drink did make Count Hamnet feel better, but not enough. He bedded down on the taproom floor himself. Ulric Skakki and Arnora stayed together, and Trasamund had found a friendly serving girl without needing any suggestion from Ulric.

Strangers coming in for breakfast woke Hamnet not long after sunup. The seraikeeper, with work to do, didn’t bother keeping quiet. He rattled pots and pans and thumped mugs down on the counter. Anyone who didn’t like it, his attitude declared, was a lazy slugabed who should have paid for a room far from the racket. That his serai didn’t have rooms enough for all his guests bothered him not a bit.

As Hamnet sat up and yawned, one of the men who’d come in for breakfast walked over to him: a nondescript fellow, not too tall or too short, not too fat or too thin, not too young or too old, with features altogether un-memorable except for gray eyes of uncommon alertness. “You are Count Hamnet Thyssen,” he said. It was not a question.

Count Hamnet got to his feet. Here we go, he thought as he belted on his sword, which had lain beside him. “That’s right,” he said aloud. “I’m afraid you have the advantage of me, sir.” That sounded politer than Who the demon are you? even if it meant the same thing.

“I’m Kormak Bersi,” the man replied – a name as ordinary as his looks. “I have the honor to serve His Majesty.”

That was a polite phrase, too. It meant I’m an agent, though it sounded nicer. “Well, what Raumsdalian doesn’t?” Hamnet said. He pointed to the oatcakes and mug of beer Kormak was carrying. “Do you mind if I get myself some breakfast, too? Then we can talk, if talk is what you’ve got in mind.”

“By all means, Your Grace, feed yourself,” Kormak said. “And talk is the only thing I have in mind, believe me. I’m a peaceable man.”

“That’s nice,” Hamnet said. “But whenever somebody says, ‘Believe me,’ I usually take it as a sign I shouldn’t. I hope that doesn’t offend you . . too much.”

Kormak Bersi’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Not. . too much, Your Grace.” He had a blade on his hip, and looked to be in good shape. Count Hamnet thought he could take him if he had to, but didn’t want it to come to blood. He stepped over a couple of Bizogots who kept snoring away despite the noise and got a breakfast like the one the Emperor’s man had bought. Kormak sat down at a small table. “Will this do?”

“As well as anywhere.” Hamnet perched on a stool across from him. “Well? What’s on your mind?” He tore off a chunk of oatcake, put it in his mouth, and deliberately began to chew.

Kormak also ate and drank a little before answering. Then, steepling his fingers in front of him, he said, “A bit of a surprise, discovering you back in Raumsdalia.”

“Life is full of surprises,” Hamnet said stolidly. He had to fight a scowl as he raised his mug to his lips. The surprises he’d got lately weren’t pleasant ones.

“What do you suppose Sigvat II will think of your return?” Kormak Bersi asked, as if it mattered no more than the price of a jug of wine.

“I hope he’ll think I wouldn’t come back unless it was important,” Hamnet replied. “You know about the Rulers?”

“I’m familiar with what you said last year,” Kormak answered, which was no surprise at all. “And some, ah, wild rumors have also come down from the Bizogot country more recently.”

“I’ll bet they have. Most of what you’ve heard is less than what’s really going on.”

“Oh? How do you know what I’ve heard?”

“Have you heard that the Rulers have already conquered most of the steppe?” Hamnet demanded. “Have you heard they’ve smashed the Leaping Lynxes? They’re that far south, and getting closer.”

“I don’t believe it!” Kormak Bersi exclaimed. “You’re making that up so you can watch me jump and shout like a man a wasp just stung.”

“By God, servant of His Majesty” – Hamnet laced what should have been a proud title with scorn -”I am not. Some of these Bizogots lying here in the taproom are Leaping Lynxes. They’re what’s left of the Leaping Lynxes now, or what’s left that’s still free.” He switched to the Bizogot tongue: “Marcomer! Are you awake there?”

“Afraid I am,” Marcomer answered glumly. “Why? What do you want? Who’s that sour-looking fellow with you? I don’t know enough Raumsdalian to follow the two of you going back and forth, jabber, jabber, jabber.”

“His name’s Kormak Bersi, or that’s what he says, anyway,” Hamnet replied, drawing a glare from Kormak and proving the imperial agent understood the Bizogots’ language. Hamnet went on, “He serves Sigvat II. He doesn’t believe you’re from the Leaping Lynxes. He doesn’t believe what happened to them, either.”

“Well, he’s a bloody fool if he doesn’t,” Marcomer said, ambling over to join them.

“Watch your mouth, you.” Kormak not only understood the Bizogot tongue, he spoke it well – and arrogantly.

“Oh, go bugger a weasel,” Marcomer said. “What the demon do you think you can do to me that the God-cursed Rulers haven’t already done?”

“What did they do?” Kormak Bersi demanded. “So far, I’ve heard nothing but noise. What really happened?”

“Most of the noise is your own jaws flapping, seems like. Raumsdalians like to hear themselves talk, don’t they?” the Bizogot said. If he was trying to annoy Kormak even more, he succeeded. In fact, he succeeded even if he wasn’t trying. But while the imperial agent steamed, Marcomer told him of riding back to the stone huts at the eastern edge of Sudertorp Lake and discovering that the Rulers had got there ahead of him. He told of rescuing a tiny fragment of his clan and then riding after the band Trasamund led. And he finished, “Here we are in the Empire. If you think the Rulers are very far behind us, you’re even stupider than I give you credit for.”

Kormak Bersi didn’t seem any angrier, which proved he’d got caught up in Marcomer’s tale. “His Majesty must hear of this, and quickly,” the imperial agent said. “Our officers up in the forest need to know of it, too.”

“If they don’t know already, it isn’t because we haven’t spread the word,” Hamnet Thyssen said. “Of course, they may not want to listen. We can’t do anything about that.”

“When do Raumsdalians ever listen to Bizogots?” Marcomer sounded more resigned than bitter.

“I’m no Bizogot,” Count Hamnet reminded him. “Neither is Ulric Skakki. . . and neither is Audun Gilli.” The last name tasted like bad fish in his mouth; he spat it out as fast as he could, and wiped his lips with the back of his sleeve afterwards.

“If what I hear is true. .” Kormak Bersi began, and then stopped in alarm, for Marcomer’s growl sound much like an angry dire wolf’s. The Raumsdalian agent had nerve, for after gathering himself he repeated, “If this is true, it changes the nature of the orders I have.”

“What kind of orders are those?” Hamnet asked. “Lock me up, lose the key, and God forbid you should pay attention to anything that comes out of my mouth?”

“Something like that.” Kormak could sound almost as dry as Ulric Skakki. “But I may have to think twice.”

“That would be nice. Most people have trouble enough thinking once,” Count Hamnet said.

“Your precious Emperor must, if he doesn’t believe the things he’s heard about the Rulers,” Marcomer said.

Kormak looked at him – looked through him, really. “You will find it a good policy not to speak ill of His Majesty,” he said, his voice as chilly as if blown on the Breath of God.

“Why? If somebody’s an idiot, how’s he going to find out he’s an idiot unless somebody else tells him so?” Bizogots didn’t waste a lot of respect on their clan chiefs. To Marcomer, Sigvat II was nothing but a jarl writ large.

To Kormak Bersi, the idea that the Emperor might be an idiot wasn’t far from blasphemous. “His Majesty is not an idiot,” he said stiffly. “His Majesty cannot be an idiot.”

“Why not?” Now Marcomer sounded honestly puzzled. “Isn’t that like saying he can’t shit? Everybody’s an idiot now and again, on one thing or another. Over women, usually, or over men if you’re a woman, but other stuff, too.”

“His Majesty is not an idiot,” Kormak repeated in tones more gelid than ever. “Anyone who says otherwise will be very, very sorry.”

By Marcomer’s expression, he thought the threat was idiotic, too. Hamnet Thyssen kicked him under the table to keep him from saying so. Hamnet also thought the threat was idiotic, or at least juvenile, but he knew the agent could enforce it. Marcomer glowered but, for a wonder, took the hint.

Ulric Skakki came down then, looking indecently – and that was probably just the right word – pleased with himself. He stopped and grinned. “Well, well! Kormak Bersi, as I live and breathe!”

“Hullo, Skakki,” Kormak answered. “Have you really been daft enough to hook up with these fools and renegades? I heard it, but I didn’t want to believe it.”

“You may as well, because it’s true.” Ulric’s grin got wider and more engaging – and, if you knew him the way Hamnet did, less reliable. “Life would be dull if you did the same old things over and over. Besides, there’s real trouble loose up there, no matter what His Majesty thinks – or even if he thinks.”

“Don’t you start!” Kormak exclaimed.

Ulric looked more innocent than ever. “Who, me? What did I do?”

“You imagined that the Emperor might not be perfect,” Hamnet said. “Now Bersi here has to decide whether to roast you over a slow fire or just cut off your head.”

“Well, if he does cut it off, I can’t very well tell him the Rulers are on the way down to cut off His Majesty’s,” Ulric said. “You’d think that was something people would want to know, but maybe not.” His shrug was a small masterpiece of its kind.

“So you people plan on going to Nidaros and telling the Emperor he’s been wrong all along?” Kormak said.

“You’d think he could see it for himself, but somebody’s got to tell him if he can’t,” Ulric replied. “Since nobody else seems to want to, we’ll do it.”

“I’d better come with you,” the imperial agent said.

“Why not? The more, the merrier.” Ulric nodded to Count Hamnet. “Isn’t that right, Your Grace?”

“How could I be any merrier?” Hamnet replied. “It’s only my face that doesn’t know it.”

Kormak Bersi gave him a tired and dutiful smile. Marcovefa came downstairs just then, and Kormak forgot about everything but her. His focus was so quick and so intent, Hamnet wondered if he was something of a wizard himself – enough to sense that she was one, at any rate. “Where are you from?” he asked her in the Bizogot language.

“On top of the Glacier,” she answered. “What about you?”

“Me? From Nidaros.” Kormak looked surprised that he’d told her. “Are you really from atop the Glacier? Does that mean the stories these rogues were telling are true?”

“I don’t know their stories,” Marcovefa said. “But why would they lie?”

“Plenty of reasons.” Kormak Bersi sounded sure of that. “How did you live, up there on top of everything?”

Marcovefa shrugged. “As best I could. We did not know we had little. No one else up there has more. Only when I come down here do I see there is more to have.”

“What don’t you have?” Kormak asked. “Up there, I mean.”

“Bread. Meat from beast larger than fox. Hide from beast larger than fox.” Marcovefa didn’t mention meat from men, which was bound to be just as well. She went on, “Smetyn. Beer. These are great wonders.”

By the way the agent smiled, he didn’t think so. He took them all for granted, as Hamnet had before he saw how the clans atop the Glacier lived. “What do you think of the sorcery you’ve seen down here?”

Marcovefa snapped her fingers. ‘About that much. You are puny shamans. You have so many things, you do not trouble with wizardry the way you should.”

That rocked Kormak Bersi back on his heels. He must have expected her to praise it to the skies. “What will you do now that you’re down here among civilized people?” he asked.

“Don’t know. Knock some sense into you, maybe,” Marcovefa replied.

Kormak cast about for another question. He seemed to have trouble finding one that wouldn’t land him in trouble. At last, he said, “Would you like to see Nidaros? Would you like to meet the Emperor?”

“Nidaros, yes. Big buildings … We have no big buildings. You must be clever, to make them so they don’t fall down,” Marcovefa said. Then she shrugged. “Your clan chief? Who cares? I have met plenty of clan chiefs. Man like other men, yes?”

“His Majesty Sigvat II, Emperor of Raumsdalia, is no clan chief,” Kormak Bersi said haughtily.

“That’s true. Most clan chiefs have better sense,” Ulric Skakki said.

“Not you, too!” Kormaks scowl said he might have expected such things from Hamnet Thyssen, but not from Ulric.

“Yes, me, too,” Ulric said. “What am I supposed to think when the Emperor’s flat-out wrong and doesn’t want to set things right?”

“Anything you say will be remembered,” Kormak warned.

“That would be nice,” Hamnet said. The agent stared at him. He explained: “Up till now, everyone’s forgotten what we’ve said. Otherwise, somebody would have paid a little attention to it. I can hope so, anyhow.”

“You aren’t helping yourself,” Kormak Bersi said.

“Take us to Nidaros. Tell the Emperor how naughty we’ve been,” Count Hamnet said. “My guess is, he already knows.”