But Liv nodded. "Oh, yes. What of it?"
"I came to seek it, along with your jarl."
"Oh." If he thought that would impress her, he was disappointed. Later, he found that very little impressed her, and that she admitted to even less. For now, she looked into him again. He scowled. He didn't like it, even if it was somehow not the violation it could have been. After a bit, she asked, "What do you look to find there?"
"I don't know." Hamnet Thyssen frowned. He hadn't worried about that. Finding the ages-lost Golden Shrine seemed worry enough. "Truth. Knowledge. Happiness. God."
"Yes," Audun Gilli said softly when Hamnet remembered to translate that for him.
"Maybe," Liv said. "Yes, maybe. But why do you think these things are there?"
"Where else would they be?" Hamnet burst out.
Liv didn't answer, not in words. Instead, she smiled. Hamnet Thyssen gave back a pace, and he was not a man in the habit of retreating from anything or anyone. Sober, Liv was another Bizogot—stranger than most, but apart from that nothing out of the ordinary. When she smiled . .. her whole face changed. It was as if the sun came out from behind the clouds, and hardly less dazzling. For a heartbeat, altogether in spite of himself, he fell in love.
Angrily, he turned away from her. Wizards and shamans had their tricks, yes. Try as he would, he couldn't imagine one more monstrously unfair than that.
He saw he was not the only one turning away. Audun Gilli couldn't face her, either. "She has more strength than she knows," the wizard whispered. "She has more strength than she even dreams of. What such a one would be in Raumsdalia . . ."
"What would she be but Gudrid?" Hamnet Thyssen snarled. Audun flinched as if Hamnet had hit him. Hamnet didn't care. He would rather have hit Liv. No, nothing could be crueler than reminding him of love.
Little by little, Hamnet Thyssen's temper eased. Filling his belly helped, even if he wouldn't have filled it on mammoth meat, mushrooms fried in musk-ox butter, and berries back in the Empire. Getting somewhere close to drunk helped, too, although he would have used beer or ale or mead or even wine to do the job farther south. If smetyn was what the Bizogots had, Count Hamnet would drink it.
He kept a wary eye on Liv despite his full belly and muzzy head. She didn't do anything especially noteworthy. She ate. She drank. She talked with her fellow clansmen and women, and with some of the Raumsdalians who could use her language. She left Hamnet alone. That suited him fine, or better than fine.
He wanted to ask Trasamund how long it would be before they fared north. He wanted to, yes, but the newly returned jarl was otherwise occupied. Trasamund ate enough for three hungry Raumsdalians, and drank enough for five. When he went off to the tent the Bizogots had run up for him, he went with three big blond women from the clan. Mammoth hide might be thick enough to keep out cold, but it couldn't keep in the moans and sighs that came from that tent.
"He's been away from his own people a long time," Ulric Skakki remarked.
"Well, so he has," Hamnet said. "By the sound of things, he's making some more people in there right now—or trying his hardest, anyhow."
"His hardest, indeed," Ulric murmured, and Hamnet swallowed wrong with a swig of fermented mammoth milk. Ulric had to pound him on the back to get him to stop choking.
"You're a demon, you are," Hamnet wheezed.
Ulric Skakki batted his not very long, not very alluring eyelashes. "You say the sweetest things, my dear." Count Hamnet almost—almost—sent another swallow down the wrong pipe.
Gudrid was left all alone. Worse—she was left with Eyvind Torfinn. Trasamund, at least for the time being, had forgot all about her. Now that he was back in the Three Tusk clan, he preferred his own women. That had to be a bitter pill for Gudrid to swallow. You're not indispensable after all, my not so dear, Hamnet thought. Yes, the only one who cares right now is your husband. Such a comedown. Catching his eye on her, Gudrid snapped out something he was too far away and too drunk to make out. He smiled at her, which didn't make her look any happier.
Eyvind said something to her, probably doing his best to calm her down. She snapped at him, too. He drew back, a wounded look on his usually placid features. If God had given her a sabertooth's fangs, chances were she would have bitten his head off in truth, not just as a figure of speech.
"What is the trouble?" Liv asked Eyvind. Somehow, Hamnet heard her clearly even though Gudrid s words were just noise to him. Maybe that had to do with her being a shaman. Maybe it had to do with how much he'd poured down. Drunks had selective hearing, and drunk he was.
The Raumsdalian noble only shrugged. "My wife is out of sorts," he answered. Well, so she was, but did he know why? Did he know how regularly Gudrid cuckolded him?
What would he do when he found out? Anything? That was an interesting question. Count Hamnet was glad it wasn't his worry ... or wouldn't have been, if he didn't worry about Gudrid all the time.
"All things considered, I'd rather share a tent with you," he told Ulric Skakki when the two of them snuggled under skins for the night.
"What? Me instead of three pretty girls who aim to please? I didn't know your tastes ran in that direction, my dear." Ulric batted his eyelashes again. It made him look ridiculous, which was bound to be what he had in mind.
"No!" Count Hamnet's ears heated. His tastes didn't run in that direction, and Ulric did know it. "I was thinking of. . ." He didn't even want to say her name.
"Of Liv?" Ulric Skakki seemed bound and determined to be as difficult as he could. "I'd like her better if she bathed, but the Bizogots mostly don't. Up here, I mostly don't, either. I'd like me better if I did, too." He held his nose.
Hamnet Thyssen wouldn't have minded a bath himself, but he missed bathing less than he thought he would when he set out from Nidaros. He didn't smell any worse than the people around him, which was all that really mattered. As for Liv . . . "She's strange."
"Of course she's strange. She's a shaman, and she wouldn't be if she weren't." Ulric paused to work out whether that really said what he wanted it to. Deciding it did, he went on, "Doesn't mean she's not pretty. She has a nice smile, don't you think?"
"I didn't notice." Hamnet didn't like to lie, but telling Ulric Skakki how much he noticed Liv's smile would only leave him open for more ribbing. Instead, he said, "I wasn't really thinking of her, anyway." That was true enough.
"Who, then?" Ulric didn't need long to answer his own question. "Gudrid? By God, you don't want to think about her, do you? I wouldn't, if I were you."
"No, I don't want to," Hamnet answered. "But what you want to do and what you end up doing aren't always the same beast."
"I always do what I want," Ulric Skakki said, which had to be a bigger lie than the one Hamnet told him. He added, "What I want to do now is go to sleep. Good night." He blew out the lamp. The smell of hot butter filled the tent. In moments, Ulric was snoring. He did what he wanted then, anyhow. Hamnet Thyssen lay awake brooding—but not very long.
People outside the tent were shouting at each other. The racket pried Hamnet's eyes open. One of the people shouting was Jesper Fletti, the other Gelimer. Hamnet understood both sides of the quarrel. Yawning, he needed a moment to realize neither of them was likely to.
"Keep your hands off me, you barbarous hound!" Jesper yelled.
"What do you think you're doing, fool of an outlander?" Gelimer shouted back.