“Well, I don’t know,” Hamnet Thyssen said, cautious now – cautious too late, the way people usually are cautious. “Is there?”
“You’re jealous,” Liv said. “Aren’t you?”
“No,” he answered, the way anyone asked that question would answer. And that question, answered that way, was almost always a lie. He knew it was here. As if to prove as much, he added, “Of course not.”
“Uh-huh,” Liv said, which could have meant anything at all – anything that wasn’t good for the two of them. She went on, “Don’t you think we have more important things to worry about right now?”
“Yes,” he said, which couldn’t – and didn’t – mean anything but no.
“Staying alive, for instance,” Liv said, as if he hadn’t spoken. “Seeing if we can find a way down from the Glacier – with or without magic – that doesn’t get us killed.”
“I said yes,” Hamnet reminded her. He needed to remind himself, too.
“I know you did.” Liv sighed again. “I’m going to sleep – or I’m going to try to go to sleep, anyhow. Good night.”
“Good night.” He set a hand on her shoulder. She didn’t shake it off. She just acted as if it weren’t there. That might have been worse. He took it away himself, marveling that it wasn’t charred to the wrist.
Before long, she started breathing deeply and regularly. If she wasn’t asleep, she had a promising future on the stage – if any of them had a promising future anywhere, which seemed unlikely.
Hamnet Thyssen wondered whether sleep would find him. No matter how weary he was, he was also upset – with himself, for charging out onto thin ice and falling through; and with Liv, for not giving him the reassurance he craved. But, no matter how upset he was, he was also weary. He went from wondering how he could have put things better to complete unconsciousness without even noticing.
When he woke in the middle of the night, he was startled to find how dark and cold it had got and how many stars crowded the sky – even more than had on the way up the Glacier. And he was even more startled to hear several foxes yowl and yip out on the ice, not far from the base of the mountain. He opened his eyes to see Trasamund feeding the fire. Then he closed them and stopped thinking altogether.
He woke up again a little before sunup. Twilight already brightened the eastern sky, and would for some little while before the sun actually rose. He looked over at Liv. Had she been awake, they could have taken up where they’d left off the night before. That would have been a mistake, which wouldn’t have stopped Count Hamnet from doing it.
Luck, or something like it, was with him, though he didn’t think so at the time: Liv went on snoring. The longer Hamnet listened to her, the slower and more regular his own breathing got. Pretty soon, he was asleep again. Why not? he thought as he dozed off. It wasn’t as if the refugees were going anywhere very far today.
He woke with the sun shining in his face. But sunshine wasn’t what woke him. A kick in the ribs was. He started to grab for his sword, then froze when he saw that the man who’d kicked him had an arrow aimed at his chest from a stride away and couldn’t possibly miss if he let fly.
Very slowly, Hamnet raised his hands. His captor recognized the gesture and nodded. A glance told Hamnet the whole camp was overrun. The fugitives hadn’t imagined they needed to set sentries here atop the Glacier. That only proved their imaginations weren’t so good as they might have been.
These weren’t the Rulers. These men plainly lived on the Glacier all the time. They were short and stocky, with great barrel chests to take in all the thin air they could. They wore clothes pieced together from hare and fox hides. Their arrowheads and knives were of stone, which was primitive but would serve. Fear pierced Hamnet like an arrow. Would they think strangers in their frigid domain were anything but meat?
VIII
Do you knowthis speech?” Hamnet Thyssen asked in the Bizogot language. The strangers looked something like Bizogots, though they didn’t come close to matching them for size. They were fair-skinned and pale-eyed, with hair and matted beards of yellow or red or light brown.
One of them said a few words in his own tongue. It sounded something like the Bizogot speech. Count Hamnet couldn’t make anything of it, though. By their frowns, neither could Trasamund or Liv or any of the other mammoth-herders.
To his amazement, Ulric Skakki said something in what sounded like the same language, or one much like it. And if Hamnet was amazed, the barrel-chested men of the Glacier were astonished. They all pointed at Ulric and said something that had to mean, How can you talk with us?
He replied, haltingly. Count Hamnet could almost follow him, but meaning somehow flitted away. Then Ulric spoke in the ordinary Bizogot language: “There’s this little clan bumped up against the western mountains – the Crag Goats, they call themselves. They speak a dialect God couldn’t follow. It’s as old as those hills, and twice as dusty. That’s what I’m using.”
“Even if God couldn’t, you learned it,” Vulfolaic said.
A man of the Glacier shouted angrily and raised his bow in plain warning: the captives weren’t supposed to talk in a tongue he couldn’t readily follow. Then the man spoke to Ulric Skakki again.
Ulric answered yes. That much Hamnet Thyssen could make out, but no more. What he answered yes to, Hamnet had no idea. Ulric Skakki and the men of the Glacier went back and forth. He spoke slowly, feeling for words.
They answered at their usual speed. They seemed to have trouble grasping the idea of someone who spoke only a little of their language.
After pointing to his comrades, Ulric got some grudging nods from their captors. “All right,” he said in the usual Bizogot language, though slowly and with an antique turn of phrase. “They give me leave to speak somewhat to you. I think their ancestors came up here the same way we did, and then found they could not return.”
“How long ago?” Trasamund and Audun Gilli asked at the same time. They looked at each other in surprise; two men less likely to think alike were hard to imagine.
It did them no good. Ulric shrugged and spread his hands. “I have no idea,” he answered. “They don’t know, either. Longer ago than any of them remember – that’s all I can tell you.”
“What will they do with us?” Liv asked. What will they do to us? had to be what she meant. She was wise to phrase the question the way she did. No telling how much of the normal Bizogot tongue they might be able to grasp.
“Well, I don’t think we’re breakfast right now,” Ulric said. Hamnet Thyssen’s stomach did a slow lurch. That had already crossed his mind.
“Should we give them the meat we have left?” Arnora asked.
“That’s a good idea. You’re as smart as you’re beautiful,” Ulric told her, and she blushed like a girl. He went on, “They’ll find it anyway. Better we give it to them than that they take it from us.”
He spoke again in the ancient dialect the men of the Glacier used. The Bizogots had lived north of the Raumsdalians for a couple of thousand years. When in that time did these people’s forebears come up here? Were they fleeing some disaster, or were they just exploring? Hamnet Thyssen shrugged a tiny shrug. If they didn’t know any more, he was unlikely ever to find out.
When they understood Ulric Skakki, they could hardly hide their excitement. The strangers had meat? The strangers would give them meat? One of them pointed to his ear, as if to say he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He answered Ulric quickly. Count Hamnet couldn’t be sure what he said, but thought it likely to mean, If you’re really going to do this, you’d better do it.