"Can you find it?" Count Hamnet asked. "Can you kill it?" Again, he had to use the mammoth-herders' language and then his own.
So did Ulric Skakki when he added, "Can you find it and kill it without letting Samoth know it's gone?" Hamnet Thyssen thumped his forehead with the heel of his hand. Now he was angry that Ulric had an idea before he did.
"Who knows what all shamanry the strangers have?" Liv said. "They think it is stronger than ours. They may be right—remember how Samoth shattered Audun's opal. But we can try."
"What does she say?" Audun Gilli asked. "I heard my name in that, whatever it was." When Count Hamnet translated for him, he sniffed. "I am sure I could have stopped Samoth if I'd been looking for him to do that. Liv worries over nothing."
Now the Bizogot shaman wondered why Audun was using her name. Hamnet Thyssen turned Audun's words into her tongue. She sniffed on a note almost identical to the one the Raumsdalian sorcerer had used. "He says I worry over nothing, does he? Well, he thinks there is nothing to worry about, and that worries me."
It worried Hamnet Thyssen, too. Having the two sorcerers squabble again also worried him, the more so since they had to do their squabbling through him or through Ulric. Hoping to distract them, he said, "The flea," first in the Bizogot language, then in Raumsdalian.
"Trust a Bizogot to think of fleas," Audun said. Since he was scratching as he spoke—he didn't seem to notice he was doing it—he proved Raumsdalians weren't immune to the pests. Count Hamnet s itches already told him that.
"Never mind the snide cracks," Ulric said. "Can you find the magic?" Now he used Raumsdalian, and didn't translate for Liv. She sent Hamnet a look of appeal. He didn't translate, either. She glared at him.
"If it is here, it should be simple enough to find," Audun Gilli said.
"Please go ahead and do it, then," Hamnet Thyssen said, and then, to Liv, "I would also like you to check." By now, he was resigned to going back and forth between languages.
"I will do it if Audun fails." The Bizogot shaman glanced over at the Raumsdalian wizard. "I wish we could understand each other. It might mean much if we have to work together. Would you teach me Raumsdalian, Hamnet Thyssen?"
"If you like," Count Hamnet answered. "You will have to learn the fancy magical terms from Audun, though. I might make mistakes, and mistakes in that kind of thing can be dangerous. I am no wizard, but at least I know it."
"You're right," Liv said. "I should have started learning your language a long time ago, but you and I didn't always get on well."
"Ulric Skakki could have taught you, or Eyvind Torfinn—or Trasamund, come to that," Hamnet said.
"I think you are more patient than they are," Liv said. Hamnet doubted whether anyone in the world was more patient than Eyvind Torfinn. He didn't want to say so, not when Liv paid him such a compliment.
Audun Gilli, meanwhile, was rummaging through the pouches he wore on his belt. He muttered and mumbled as he rummaged—all in all, he might have posed for a picture of a distracted wizard. At last, though, he came up with what he needed and seemed to come back to the real world.
"Here is the dried head of a plover," he said, and held it up. Hamnet Thyssen looked away from the sunken eye sockets. Audun Gilli went on, "It has the virtue that, if used with the proper spell, it prevents deception."
"What does he say?" Liv asked. Hamnet translated for her. She nodded, though a little doubtfully. "We use a different bird for what sounds like the same charm," she said, "and a certain stone as well." She shrugged. "Well, let us see what his shamanry shows."
Audun Gilli held up the plover's head in his left hand. He made passes with his right while chanting in Raumsdalian almost too old-fashioned for Count Hamnet to understand. A moment later, Hamnet blinked. Were the bird's eyes suddenly bright and shiny and full of life? So it seemed.
And the dead, dried plover's head cried out, too—a shrill piping, such as the live bird might have used when frightened. "Well, well." Audun Gilli's voice rose in surprise. "We do have ourselves a flea, you might say."
"Where?" Hamnet Thyssen asked.
"That will take another charm," the wizard replied. He might have asked the plover's head a question. And it seemed to answer him, and to twist in his hand to point the way. It pointed straight toward the horse Gudrid was riding. "Well, well," Audun Gilli said again. "This could be, ah, awkward."
"Yes." Hamnet Thyssen was even less eager to break the news to his former wife than Audun seemed to be. Liv couldn't do it; she and Gudrid had no language in common. Hamnet looked at Ulric Skakki. "Would you be so kind as to . . . ?"
"I'll remember you in my nightmares," Ulric said with a grimace. But he rode over to Gudrid. She accepted his arrival as no less than her due. The way she looked at the world, everything revolved around her and paid her tribute.
Ulric spoke. Hamnet Thyssen couldn't make out exactly what he said; despite morbid curiosity, the Raumsdalian noble didn't go close enough to eavesdrop. Count Hamnet did note the exact instant when Ulric shifted from pleasantries and small talk to the reason he'd gone over to Gudrid. She stiffened in the saddle, then started to laugh. "But that's ridiculous!" she said—Hamnet had no trouble hearing her.
Shaking his head, Ulric Skakki went on talking quietly, doing his best to explain why it wasn't ridiculous. His best wasn't going to be good enough. Hamnet knew his former wife well enough to be sure of that.
And he was right. Gudrid shook her head, too. "I don't know where you get your ideas," she said, "but you can go and put them back there again, because you don't have the faintest notion what you're talking about." She made as if to ride away from Ulric Skakki.
He was not so easily detached. Unlike Gudrid, he still didn't make a lot of noise. But he did point in Eyvind Torfinn's direction. Earl Eyvind was chatting with Jesper Fletti, and not paying any particular attention to Gudrid at the moment. Hamnet Thyssen had a pretty good notion of what Ulric was saying. Don't be difficult, or I'll tell your husband what you were doing last night. If that wasn't it, Count Hamnet would have been astonished.
Gudrid was astonished, but not in any pleasant way. "You wouldn't dare," she said shrilly. That was the wrong answer to give Ulric Skakki. He twitched the reins and guided his horse away from hers, toward Eyvind Torfinn's. "Wait!" Gudrid screeched.
Courteously, Ulric did wait. The look Gudrid sent him was anything but courteous. Ulric was either made of stern stuff or a fine actor—maybe both—because he seemed undamaged.
"Do what you want to do," Gudrid snapped, and she might have added, And demons take you afterwards.
Again, Ulric affected not to notice. He bowed in the saddle and said something else too low for Hamnet to catch. Then he turned and called, "Liv, sweetheart, would you do the honors here?" He used Raumsdalian, even though Liv didn't speak it. But she had no trouble with his come-hither gesture. And Gudrid, of course, understood both the gesture and the words. She had plenty of reasons for disliking Liv, chief among them that the Bizogot shaman was the only other woman in the party. And now Liv was going to do something sorcerous around her, and she couldn't stop it? She had to hate that.
Hamnet Thyssen almost sent Ulric a formal salute. The adventurer had found a very smooth way to avenge himself.
Liv smiled at Gudrid, and kept the smile although Gudrid didn't return it. Even without a language in common, Liv was bound to know some of what Gudrid felt. What did she feel herself? Hamnet had never had the nerve to ask her.
For the moment, the Bizogot woman seemed all business. She murmured to herself and made several swift passes at Gudrid and the horse. "Ah!" she said brightly. "There it is." Hamnet and Ulric understood her. Gudrid didn't. Liv pointed at Gudrid s tunic. She gestured. "Take it off."