"You could say the same thing about mosquitoes." Eyvind Torfinn punctuated the observation by slapping. "You could even say God liked mosquitoes better than mammoths, because he made so many more of them."
"No." Trasamund smiled, but he wasn't in a joking mood. "Any old demon could come up with your mosquito. A mammoth, now, a mammoth takes imagination and power. Isn't that so, Thyssen?"
Hamnet started. He sprawled by the fire for no better reason than that he didn't feel like sleeping. "I don't know what God does, or why," he answered. "If he tells me, I promise you'll be the first to hear."
Ulric Skakki thought that was funny, whether Trasamund did or not. "If God talks to anybody, he'll probably talk to you, your Grace," he said. "Me, I don't wonder so much where these mammoths came from. I wonder who herds them, and when the herders are going to show themselves."
"Haven't seen anyone yet," Trasamund said. "And the mammoths seem wild."
"How can you know that?" Eyvind Torfinn sounded curious, not doubtful. He usually sounded curious.
"One of the ways we tame them—as much as we do tame them—is to give them berries and other things they like," the jarl answered. "They're clever animals—they soon learn we have treats for them. They sometimes come up and try to get treats from us whether we have any or not."
"Back in Nidaros, my cat will do the same thing," Eyvind Torfinn said. "I don't think I would want a woolly mammoth hopping into my lap, though."
That did make Trasamund laugh, but he said, "These mammoths don't seem to think we have berries for them, so I would guess no one tames them."
Ulric Skakki made a dubious noise. Liv didn't look convinced, either; they were speaking the Bizogot language, so she had no trouble following along. Hamnet Thyssen also had his doubts.
"Could people tame mammoths some different way?" Ulric asked.
Trasamund looked down his nose at him. "People could do all kinds of things," the Bizogot replied. "They could waste their time with foolish questions, for instance."
"Thank you so much, your Ferocity," Ulric Skakki murmured.
"Any time." Trasamund was too blunt to recognize sarcasm, or maybe too sly to admit to recognizing it.
"We know there are people here," Liv said. "Either that or the owls in the land beyond the Glacier are sorcerers in their own right." She understood what sarcasm was about, even if not all Bizogots did.
Trasamund refused to let it bother him. "Maybe there are. We haven't seen any people here. That's all I can tell you."
"We have not seen the Golden Shrine, either," Eyvind Torfinn said. "Nevertheless, we are confident it's here somewhere."
"Well, people are probably here somewhere, too," Trasamund allowed with a show of generosity. "I don't think they're anywhere close by, though. You worriers are just trying to use this to get me to turn around and go back." He glowered at Hamnet Thyssen.
"Don't look at me that way," Count Hamnet said. "I didn't even take sides in this argument. You know more about mammoths than I do." You ought to. Your hide and your skull are thick enough.
Even though he didn't say that out loud, Trasamund sent him another suspicious stare. The Bizogot was clever enough to know when someone was thinking unkind thoughts about him. Why wasn't he clever enough to know they were thinking those thoughts because he was acting like a fool?
Instead of going back, they went on, though at the slow, halfhearted pace they'd been using for quite a while. One day seemed much like another—broad plains ahead, behind, and to all sides. People said the sea looked that way, too. Count Hamnet couldn't speak about that; he'd never seen the sea. He did know the low, flat landscape bored him almost to the point of dozing on horseback.
One herd of deer, one herd of mammoths, one flock of ptarmigan or snow buntings came to look much like another, too. The travelers didn't see many of the great striped cats or enormous bears. He wasn't sorry about that, not even a little.
Another reason days all seemed the same was that they blended into one another so smoothly. A stretch of bright twilight for a couple of hours bracketing midnight, and then the sun came up again. You could travel whenever you pleased, rest whenever you pleased, sleep whenever you pleased.
And then, almost before Hamnet consciously realized it, real night returned to the world. The sun didn't come up quite so far in the northeast, didn't set quite so far in the northwest. It stayed below the horizon longer, and dipped farther below. Hamnet got reacquainted with stars he hadn't seen for weeks.
Birds sensed the change before he did. The sky was a murmur, sometimes a thunder, of wings. Flocks from even farther north began coming down upon and past the travelers. They knew winter was on the way, though the sun still shone brightly and days were, if anything, warmer than they had been when summer first began.
When the deer began to grow restless, even Trasamund acknowledged that the time to think things through had come. "We should turn around and head for the Gap again," he said, as if no one had ever suggested that before. "We are not going to find the Golden Shrine. Time to put away things of legend and remember the real world."
Ulric Skakki shook his head. "What a foolish idea! I think we should keep on wandering west through this godforsaken country till we come to the edge of the world and fall off it."
Trasamund glared at him. "Is that a joke? I don't hear anyone laughing."
"Then maybe it's not a joke," Ulric answered. "Maybe turning around is a good idea. Maybe it should have seemed like a good idea to you before this afternoon."
"I know when to turn back," the Bizogot jarl rumbled. "I always said I would know when to turn back."
"People say all sorts of things," Ulric Skakki observed. "Sometimes they mean them. Sometimes they don't. You never can tell ahead of time."
Glaring still, Trasamund said, "When we set out again come morning, I will ride south and east. Others may do as they please. Anyone who wants to fall off the edge of the world is welcome to, as far as I am concerned. Nobody will miss a slick-talking Raumsdalian, not one bit. Some folk are too clever for their own good."
Some folk are too stupid for their own good. But Hamnet Thyssen shook his head. Trasamund, whatever else you could say about him, was nobody's fool. Some folk are too stubborn for their own good. Yes, that fit the Bizogot better.
Hamnet wondered whether Trasamund would have decided to turn around sooner if he himself and Ulric and Liv hadn't kept trying to talk him into it. He wouldn't have been surprised. Trasamund was just the man to dig in his heels and try to go in the direction opposite the one other people urged on him. Count Hamnet was that kind of man himself, so he recognized the symptoms—here, perhaps, more slowly than he might have.
That night was the darkest one Hamnet remembered since passing beyond the Glacier. Maybe his own gloom painted the sky blacker than it was. Maybe the moon's being down added to the way the heavens seemed uncommonly unreachable, the stars small and dim and lost.
And maybe he was feeling something that was really in the air. Audun Gilli and Liv both woke screaming around midnight. That set Gudrid screaming, too. She only wanted to know what was going on, which seemed reasonable enough, but she made an ungodly lot of noise trying to find out.
"Too late!" Audun said.
"Much too late!" Liv agreed. They stared at each other, their eyes enormous and seeming filled with blood in the dim light the embers shed.
Hamnet Thyssen needed a moment to remember that neither of them understood the other's speech. The knowledge sent ice stabbing through him that had nothing to do with the enormous walls of ice he'd passed between.