She talked to her husband the way she might have talked to a majordomo back in Nidaros—as someone who did know about things, yes, but who had better not presume to be her equal. And Eyvind Torfinn put up with it. Gudrid had ways of making men put up with things. Earl Eyvind coughed and said, "You must understand, my dear, this is the first time a real exploring party has come north of the Glacier—this is the first time an exploring party could have come north of the Glacier. We don't know just where the Golden Shrine is. Truth to tell, we don't know it's here at all. We hope to find out."
That made good sense to Hamnet Thyssen. He thought it would quiet Gudrid down, but she only sniffed again. "What nonsense!" she said. "All we need to do is grab somebody up here and squeeze him. On this side of the Glacier, they'll know just where the silly old Shrine is."
Count Hamnet stared. So did Ulric Skakki. Eyvind Torfinn looked as amazed as if a teratorn were writing in the sky with characters of fire. Even Trasamund, who had his full measure of straightforward Bizogot brutality, seemed taken aback. But then he guffawed. "You've got all the answers, don't you, my sweet?"
"Well, this isn't a very hard question," Gudrid said.
Trasamund laughed some more. Earl Eyvind held his head in both hands. He'd spent most of his life looking for lore about the Golden Shrine. He knew how much he didn't know. Gudrid had no idea about any of that. Instead of untying a knot, she wanted to slash it through with a sword. Maybe that would work. On the other hand . . .
"If we grab a local and squeeze him, that won't make his clan love us," Ulric Skakki observed.
But nothing fazed Gudrid. She waved the worry aside. "Who says he has to get back to his clan? We leave him out for the dire wolves, or whatever they have here."
"I would not care to approach the Golden Shrine with blood on my hands," Eyvind Torfinn said.
"If we can't find it without doing whatever we have to do, then we'll do it, that's all." Gudrid sounded very sure of herself. She commonly did.
"Remember the owl," Audun Gilli said. "Whoever lives here has powers of his own. We are only visitors. We would do well to remember that."
She looked down her straight nose at the wizard. "Who here is the man, and who the woman?" Audun blushed like a child.
But even Jesper Fletti shook his head. "The sorcerer is right," he said. "We're a long way from the Bizogot country, even, and a demon of a lot farther from the Empire. We couldn't fight a war up here. Keeping any kind of army supplied as it goes up through the Gap . . ." He shook his head. "I wouldn't care to try it."
Gudrid only sniffed again. She didn't worry when someone disagreed with her, because she was always sure she was right. "What are we going to do?" she said. "Turn around and go home without finding the Golden Shrine? I don't think so."
Hamnet Thyssen feared they would have to do exactly that. Summer didn't last long up here. The Bizogots knew how to winter next to the Glacier, but he and his countrymen didn't. They'd never had to. Before they froze and starved, they would need to head back to a more tolerable clime.
The Golden Shrine ... He looked around, as if expecting to spy it on the northern horizon. That made him laugh at himself. They weren't even out of the Gap yet. This ground had lain under the Glacier for years uncounted. Wherever the Golden Shrine might be, it wasn't here.
And he had no idea what it would look like if and when they did find it. It would, presumably, be white. Past that. . . Past that, who could say? He pictured it as standing all alone on something that looked like the frozen plains where the Bizogots roamed. He pictured it that way, yes, but he knew his picture might be wrong. Maybe it would be the center of a town, maybe even the center of a city like Nidaros. Then, like Jesper, he shook his head. That seemed unlikely. How would you feed a town—how would you feed anything more than a band of nomads—in country like this?
Despite all his logic, he scanned the northern horizon again. He stiffened in the saddle. His finger stabbed out. "What's that?"
"Lion," said Ulric Skakki, who rode not far away.
"I suppose so," Hamnet said. That small shape in the distance did move with a sinuous, feline grace.
"It's seen us," Trasamund said. Sure enough, the big cat trotted toward the travelers.
The closer it got, the more they stared at it. "By God," Audun Gilli said, "that's no lion!"
"It isn't," Jesper Fletti agreed. "What is it? It's no sabertooth, either—it doesn't have short hind legs the way they do."
"It is something new," Eyvind Torfinn said. "It is a creature from beyond the Glacier." Awe suffused his voice.
A creature from beyond the Glacier. That was plenty to awe Hamnet Thyssen, too. And itwasasingularlydeadly-lookingcreature.lt looked more like a lion than anything else, but it was bigger than any lion Hamnet had ever seen. It was so big, it surely had to be a male, but it did not bear a mane.
Audun Gilli was right—it was no lion. Instead of a tawny coat, it had a pale golden one, broken by dark stripes that helped confuse its outline till it came quite near. When it yawned, it displayed formidable fangs, but more like a lion's than a sabertooth's.
It trotted alongside the travelers for a while, but showed no inclination to attack. In fact, it showed no inclination to come within bowshot of the horses. Hamnet Thyssen had seen similarly wary lions down in the south. "It knows men," he said. "It knows what weapons can do."
"Looks that way," Ulric Skakki said. "Well, no great surprise, not after some of the other things we've seen—and not after your magical owl."
"Not mine," Hamnet said. "Liv woke me up, so I helped chase it away."
"That'll do." Ulric pointed out toward the big striped cat. "Do you suppose they hunt in prides the way lions do?"
"I hadn't thought about that," Hamnet said. "We'll find out. Where there's one of those things, there are bound to be more."
"Well, you're right about that," Ulric Skakki said. "They might as well be tax collectors, except they don't take such big bites."
"Heh," Count Hamnet said, for all the world as if Ulric were joking.
The striped cat studied the travelers with as much curiosity as they showed it. Coming up from the other side of the Glacier, did they smell strange? Hamnet knew he smelled bad. All the travelers did, and got worse by the day. But he had no reason to believe anyone on this side of the ice was any more fragrant.
After a few minutes, the striped cat seemed to decide the humans were too alert to make good prey. It trotted purposefully off toward the northwest, leaving the horses behind. The animals seemed glad it was gone. Whatever the travelers smelled like to the cat, it smelled like danger to the horses.
"Was that a real cat?" Trasamund asked. "Or was it a man in cat shape, spying on us like the owl?"
He spoke first in his own language, then in Raumsdalian. Both Liv and Audun Gilli looked surprised. "I felt nothing out of the ordinary," the Bizogot shaman said.
Audun looked a question at Hamnet Thyssen, who translated for him. Audun nodded. "I thought it was an ordinary animal, too," he said. Hamnet translated that into the Bizogot tongue for Liv.
"I'm glad to hear it," Trasamund said, again in both languages. "And by God, I hope you're right."
They'd come so far north, full darkness never descended on the world. Not long before midnight, the sun sank below the horizon in the far northwest. Not long after midnight, it rose again in the far northeast. During its brief journey below the edge of the earth, the northern sky stayed light. Nothing deeper than twilight settled over the land, and only a few of the brightest stars came out—and then not for long.