He was as warmly dressed as any man could be, in furs with mittens on his hands and baggy felt boots with more loose felt in them on his feet. Only his eyes showed. His hood came down low on his forehead. A thick musk-ox wool scarf covered his nose and mouth. When snow came roaring down from the north riding a wind almost strong enough to knock a man off his feet, it hardly seemed to matter.
Trasamund and Liv took being out and about in such weather for granted. "We're still a long way from the Glacier," Liv screamed in Hamnet's ear, that being the only way to make herself heard through the wind's howls. "This is nothing."
"It seems like something to me," he shouted back. Her eyes showed amusement, or he thought they did. When they were the only part of her he could see, he had trouble being sure.
It was blowing too hard for them to hope to set up their tents when they stopped for the evening. Trasamund and Liv started making snow huts, lumping snow into blocks and building inward to form a dome. They left a tiny opening in the roof to let smoke out. The entrance faced south and had a dogleg to break the force of the wind.
"What about the horses?" Audun Gilli asked.
But the Bizogots were already piling up more snow blocks into a windbreak. Liv used a little magic to melt some snow on the ground and let it re-freeze as ice around the poles she used to tether the horses. "They won't be able to go anywhere," she said confidently.
"Suppose bears come? Or wolves? What do we do then?" Audun asked.
"We walk," Trasamund answered with withering scorn. The idea didn't seem to worry him. It worried Hamnet Thyssen, but he didn't say anything about it. What could he say? The wizard also kept quiet.
No one said anything about how the travelers would occupy the snow huts, either. But Hamnet and Liv ended up in one, with the other two Raumsdalians and Trasamund in the other. Just getting out of the ravening wind made Hamnet feel warmer. He fumbled for flint and steel in the darkness inside. He had a little leather pouch with tinder in it on his belt. The sooner he got a fire going, the happier he would be.
Liv did it before him. A few murmured words were enough to set a lamp alight. He gave her a seated bow. "Handy traveling with a shaman," he said.
"Up here, any Bizogot will know that spell," she said. "We need it too often, and not knowing it can kill."
"Can Bizogots who aren't shamans work it?" Hamnet asked. "Is the power in the spell or in the spellcaster?"
"This spell works most of the time for most people," Liv answered. "Whether that means most people have some power or the spell itself is strong ... I don't know. I never thought about it."
Most of the time, Hamnet wouldn't have thought about it, either. It was the kind of question more likely to interest Eyvind Torfinn. But here, in the snow hut, fire was naturally on his mind. He and Liv didn't need much of a blaze. The heat from their bodies warmed the cramped space surprisingly well. The lamp gave more light than heat.
Liv even had a chunk of musk-ox meat with her. As she sliced off frozen strips, she sent Hamnet a sly look. "Can you eat raw meat?"
"If I'm hungry enough, I can—" He broke off. He almost said he could eat anything if he got hungry enough. But, since the Bizogots ate stomachs and guts with their contents still in them when they got hungry enough, that might prove more bragging than he cared to back up.
To his relief, Liv took what he did say for a complete sentence. She started passing him strips of meat. He had no trouble eating them. They might even have been a delicacy down in Nidaros. And the company here was better than any he would have known in the imperial capital.
"What's it like making love when the wind is screaming outside?" he asked.
Liv smiled. "You want to find out, I suppose. Well, why not? It's warm enough, and the work will make us warmer."
As long as they lay on their clothes and blankets, it was fine. When Ham-net stuck his foot in the snow for a couple of heartbeats, it put him off his stroke, but he quickly recovered. Afterwards, he dressed in a hurry, and so did Liv. They wrapped themselves in their blankets and fell asleep.
It was dark inside the hut when Count Hamnet woke—the lamp had gone out. The wind still howled and screeched outside. Within the hut, though, it was snug and more than warm enough. The Bizogots knew what they were doing, all right. He yawned, twisted, and went back to sleep.
The next time he woke up, a little light was coming in through the smoke hole. He needed a moment to realize the storm had died. It was almost eerily quiet. Beside him, Liv said, "It's blown itself out. I hoped it would."
"I wondered if it would bury the hut before it did," Hamnet said.
"No—too windy for that. The snow wouldn't stick enough," she said. "We may have to dig out of the entrance, though."
They did. As they shoveled snow with mittened hands, Hamnet Thyssen said, "I hope the horses came through all right."
"So do I. They're your southern beasts, not the ones we breed ourselves." Liv went on digging as she spoke. She broke out into fresh air. "We'll know soon."
Standing up came as a relief to Hamnet. He'd felt as crowded in the snow as he felt small and insignificant traveling across the frozen plains. Everything was frozen now, the ground as far as the eye could see robed in white. Even his furs and Liv's had snow all over them.
He trudged through snow that crunched under his boots to the windbreak Trasamund and Liv had built. The horses were still there, still alive, and eager for food. He had a little sugar made from maple sap down in the Empire. The animals snuffled up the treat and snorted for more.
Liv started digging out the snow in front of the other hut's entrance. Somebody inside said something. Hamnet couldn't make out what it was, but Liv s tart answer told him. "No, I'm not a bear," she said. "It would serve you right if I were."
Audun Gilli, Ulric Skakki, and Trasamund emerged a moment later. "Good thing the sun's in the sky," Ulric said. "Otherwise we wouldn't have any idea which way north was."
"I could use the spell with the needle," Audun said. "It wouldn't be perfect, not up here"—he was ready to admit that now—"but it would give us the right idea."
"If the water didn't freeze before you could finish chanting." Trasamund sounded altogether serious. Hamnet decided he had a right to be. With the air this cold, water would turn to ice in a hurry.
"We've got the sun," the Raumsdalian noble said. "Let's use it." They mounted and rode north. The southern horses did know enough to paw forage up from under the snow. Hamnet hadn't been sure they would. One less thing to worry about, anyhow.
Only last summer's frozen marsh plants sticking up from the snow here and there told the travelers they'd come to the edge of Sudertorp Lake. No screeching waterfowl now—nothing but the silent grip of winter. Count Hamnet looked west, then east. The frozen lake stretched as far as he could see in either direction.
"Which is the shorter way around?" he asked.
"They both look pretty long," Ulric said.
"That both will cost us time," Hamnet said fretfully. The sense that it was slipping away gnawed at him.
"See the southerners," Trasamund said to Liv in the Bizogot language. She grinned and nodded. Whatever amused the jarl, she found it funny, too.
"What's the answer, then?" Hamnet Thyssen asked with as little sarcasm as he could.
"We don't go around," Trasamund answered. "We go straight across, by God. This season of the year, musk oxen and mammoths cross lakes and rivers. If the ice holds them, it will hold us, too."
Hamnet and Ulric and Audun exchanged glances. Hamnet had skated on frozen ponds in winter—what Raumsdalian hadn't? But sending horses across? That was a different story.
"What happens if we fall in?" Audun Gilli asked the question on Ham-net's mind, and surely on Ulric's, too.