“Try our hostel! Best in town!” a tout yelled.
Trasamund and Ulric Skakki and Count Hamnet and Kormak Bersi looked at one another. They all nodded at the same time. “Take us there,” Hamnet called. The best hostel in Nidaros would cost more than an ordinary one, but he would have bet the tout didn’t really work for one of the fancy places the capital boasted.
The man looked astonished and delighted and dismayed, all at the same time. “What? The lot of you?” he said.
“Yes, the lot of us, by God,” Hamnet answered. “You’re not the best hostel in town if you can’t make us fit.”
“Well, we’ll try,” the tout said. “Come with me, and I’ll show you what we’ve got.”
Merchants had to stop their wagons and pack trains as the travelers turned off the main thoroughfare and onto a little side street. The traders sent some hard looks their way, but no one seemed inclined to quarrel with a small army of mounted and armed Bizogots – and the handful of Raumsdalians with the northern barbarians looked like dangerous customers, too.
The hostel turned out to be better than Hamnet Thyssen had expected, but it was still a long way from the best. No southern wines graced the taproom, only beer and ale and mead. The rooms were cleaner than most, but small and plain, not as opulent as chambers in the palace, the way they would have been at a first-class establishment. And the proprietor proved willing to haggle, which he wouldn’t have in a fancy place. In one of those, you went somewhere else if you couldn’t afford what the landlord asked.
Hamnet made sure he didn’t get a room next to Ulric and Arnora. The Bizogots between whom he tried to sleep didn’t rut their way through the night. Instead, the big blond man on one side invited in friends, and they all started to sing. The racket was appalling, but Count Hamnet wasn’t appalled. It wasn’t the kind of noise he had to pay attention to, the way lovemaking would have been. Even though drunken discords woke him a couple of times, they didn’t infuriate him or leave him quivering with unslaked lust. He had no trouble dropping off again.
After breakfast the next morning, he nodded to Kormak Bersi. “Well, you’ve captured me, or near enough,” he said. “Take me to the palace. Let’s get this over with.”
“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” the imperial agent asked.
“No, but then neither does Sigvat, and it doesn’t stop him. It doesn’t even slow him down,” Hamnet answered. “We’ll see what he says when he finds out I’ve come back in spite of everything.”
“Yes, we will, won’t we?” On that encouraging note, Kormak rose from the table. Hamnet Thyssen followed him.
They walked to the palace. Count Hamnet would have ridden, but Kormak Bersi didn’t seem to think it was a good idea. Hamnet thought about arguing, but let it go. Approaching anyway at all was arrogant enough. Sigvat II was bound to see it like that, anyhow.
A Raumsdalian in Bizogot furs and leather walking through the streets of the capital got his share of curious looks and more. Hamnet Thyssen stolidly ignored them. He hadn’t trimmed his hair and beard, either.
When he and Kormak came to the palace, the gate guards gaped at him, too. Kormak displayed his emblem for them. That got him respect, at least. “Who’s the wild man with you, sir?” a guard asked.
“I am Count Hamnet Thyssen,” Hamnet growled, sounding like the proudest of nobles. “And who the demon are you?”
The guard’s jaw dropped. His eyes all but bugged out of his head. “By God, you are him,” he choked out. “What are you doing here?”
Kormak Bersi had asked him the same question in different words. Couldn’t anybody in Nidaros see out past the city walls? It didn’t look that way. “Reporting to His Majesty,” Hamnet answered. “I know more about what’s going on in the Bizogot country than anybody he’s talked to lately. I hope he’ll listen to me, for the Empire’s sake.”
“But he’s angry at you. Didn’t you know that?” the guard said.
Count Hamnet shrugged. “I’ll take the chance. I have to. If I can come back for the Empire’s sake, he can listen to me.”
“Go report that Count Hamnet has returned to the palace,” Kormak Bersi said.
The guard didn’t do it himself. Instead, he told off a couple of his men and sent them hotfooting it down the corridor. Hamnet Thyssen knew what that meant: this fellow didn’t want to be associated with bad news. Had Hamnet been in good odor here, the squad leader would have done the job himself.
A couple of disbelieving courtiers came back with the guards. They stared at Count Hamnet as if at some fierce animal unaccountably running loose instead of being caged in a zoological garden. “Good day, gentlemen,” he said, as if to show them he could be civilized after all.
They flinched from the sound of his voice. “What the demon did you come back here for, Thyssen?” one of them said. “Don’t you know the Emperor would just as soon kill you as look at you?”
“Well, he can do that,” Hamnet said. “The Empire won’t be better off if he does, but he can.”
“You don’t care whether you live or die, do you?” the courtier croaked.
After examining what lay inside himself, Count Hamnet shook his head. “Now that you mention it, no.”
That made the courtiers back away in a hurry. He didn’t suppose he could blame them. Self-preservation did matter to most people, and especially to people who had anything to do with princes and potentates. It would have mattered to him, too, if Liv weren’t giving herself to a no-account wizard.
But she was. Next to that, anything Sigvat or his torturers could do hardly seemed worth getting excited about.
Another courtier came out, this one with a fat gold chain around his neck to show what an important fellow he was. “So you want to see the Emperor, do you?” he said in a voice that sounded barely alive.
“That’s right,” Hamnet answered. “Can you take me to him?”
“I can. I doubt I would be doing you a favor, but I can.”
“Let me worry about that,” Count Hamnet said.
“I intend to. And you have more to worry about than you can imagine,” the courtier replied. “But, if you must, come with me.”
Hamnet Thyssen did. The palace seemed badly overdecorated; he was too used to serais and to Bizogot tents. It also seemed too warm. How much wood did Sigvat and his servitors go through every day? Is that why I came back? To preserve such waste? Hamnet wondered.
The courtier with the gold chain led him to the throne room. There he and Kormak Bersi had to stand and wait for a while. Sigvat II was busy talking to an elderly merchant whose fur robe celebrated his wealth. At last, the fellow bowed and tottered away. The courtier stepped forward. In ringing tones, he announced Count Hamnet.
“Your Majesty.” Hamnet went to one knee before the Emperor. Beside him, Kormak, who was not a noble, dropped to both knees.
“So. You came back to mock me, did you?” Sigvat’s voice was too thin and light to give him a proper growl. He was at least ten years younger than Hamnet Thyssen, and perhaps had more than his share of a young man’s worry about whether his elders respected him as much as he thought they ought to.
“No, Your Majesty.” Count Hamnet shook his head. “I came back to warn you. The Rulers turn out to be even more dangerous than I thought they were last year.”
“So you say,” Sigvat jeered. “I say one set of barbarians up beyond the woods is the same as another. And I say you disobeyed me when you went north last fall. You weren’t supposed to do that. How do you propose to defend yourself, eh?”
“By telling you it was necessary,” Hamnet Thyssen answered. “I understood the frozen plains better than you did, since I’ve been there and you haven’t.”
“Your Majesty, what’s happening on the plains now shows that Count Hamnet has a point,” Kormak Bersi said. “He -”