He found his way to the dining room. Eyvind Torfinn was there, eating sausages and duck eggs and drinking a hot infusion of herbs. Gudrid was there, too. So was Marcovefa. The two of them ostentatiously ignored each other. Hamnet Thyssen nodded to Eyvind Torfinn, then walked up to the cook. “I’ll have what the earl’s having,” he said. “That looks good.”
“Help yourself to the sausages, Your Grace,” the man replied. “I’ll give you your eggs in just a bit. Would you like two or three?”
“Three, please,” Hamnet answered. The sausages were venison, their flavor enlivened with garlic and fennel. When he had his eggs – almost as fast as the cook promised – he sat down by Marcovefa. Catlike, she leaned against him.
Gudrid never missed a signal like that. One of her elegantly plucked eyebrows leaped. “This time, of course, it will be pure happiness,” she said in a voice filled with vitriol.
“I doubt it,” Hamnet answered. “It will be what it is, that’s all.”
Gudrid started to say something, then stopped with her mouth open. She must have expected him to come back with something like, Of course it will. His smile held a certain grim triumph. Sometimes getting the best of her even in tiny things felt more important than driving the Rulers beyond the Glacier.
Marcovefa pointed across at Gudrid. “She catches bugs, yes?” she said in the regular Bizogot tongue. Gudrid understood that well enough to close her mouth with a snap, and to redden in anger.
“Maybe we should all leave aside our quarrels, whatever they may be, until the happy day when the Rulers are defeated,” Eyvind Torfinn said, also in the Bizogot language.
His wife understood that, too, which was not to say she agreed with it. As Count Hamnet s own thoughts showed, he wasn’t sure he agreed with it, either. Beating the Rulers was his duty. Getting one up on Gudrid was a pleasure, and one he didn’t enjoy nearly often enough.
At the moment, though, Gudrid’s anger seemed more likely to be aimed at Marcovefa than at him. Gudrid had squabbled with Liv, too, and hadn’t liked what happened when she did. Would she remember that angering shamans and wizards wasn’t a good idea?
“With the Emperors order in my hand, I want to go north as soon as I finish here, Your Splendor,” Hamnet said. “And with me and the Bizogots out of your house, you should have peace again, God willing.”
“May it be so.” Eyvind Torfinn didn’t sound convinced, and Hamnet had a hard time blaming him for that. Gudrid wasn’t happy that he’d prevailed on Sigvat to open the dungeon. As far as she was concerned, Hamnet and Kormak Bersi could have stayed there till they rotted. She wasn’t shy about making her opinions known, either. No, Earl Eyvind probably wouldn’t have a happy time of it once his guests left.
Ulric Skakki walked into the dining room. He needed only a heartbeat to notice things there weren’t much warmer than they would have been up on the Glacier. “Hello!” he said. “Have you called a truce, or shall I go back and get my sword and shield?”
“We have a truce,” Eyvind Torfinn said, with perhaps more optimism than conviction. “Come on, my friend. Eat. Refresh yourself.”
“I thank you kindly, Your Splendor,” Ulric said. “Better grub here than I’ll get up on the road, that’s for sure. I may as well fill up while I’ve got the chance. Knowing Hamnet, he’ll want to get moving as quick as he can.”
“Your reputation precedes you,” Gudrid murmured to her former husband.
“If you’re very lucky, people won’t say the same thing about you,” Hamnet Thyssen replied. Gudrid bared her teeth at him. Eyvind Torfinn looked as if he wished he were drinking something stronger than his herbal infusion.
Ulric Skakki came back from the cook’s station with enough food for three ordinary men. He was no Bizogot, but he could eat like one. He sat down and methodically started putting it away. Then Liv and Audun Gilli walked in. That might have made things even chillier, but Hamnet didn’t think such a thing was possible.
Liv got a plate of food that rivaled Ulric’s. Audun’s eating habits were more sedate, or more typically Raumsdalian. Do I want him along? Hamnet Thyssen wondered. But that wasn’t quite the right question. Can I really stand to have him along?
He looked over at Liv. She wouldn’t come north if he told Audun to stay behind. Why should she, when the Rulers had already conquered the Bizogots? Next to that, why did she, why should she, care a copper for what happened to the Empire? But Hamnet knew he needed her wizardry, and Audun’s, too. They hadn’t beaten the Rulers, but had challenged them. And if they worked with Marcovefa . . .
If they work with Marcovefa, I’m stuck with them, he thought. Maybe, if he was sleeping with Marcovefa, seeing Liv wouldn’t make him feel as if someone were sticking skewers into his marrow. He could hope it wouldn’t, anyhow.
In strutted Trasamund. The Bizogot jarl had his arrogance back, however much it had suffered up on the frozen steppe. He waved to Count Hamnet, then went over to the cook and came back to the table with two large plates groaningly full of food. As he set them down, he growled, “Let’s go north and kill all those miserable mammoth turds!”
“We will if we can,” Hamnet said. “This ought to be our best chance.”
“Nothing else matters. Nothing,” the Bizogot said, and fell to eating as if there were no tomorrow.
“Nothing?” Gudrid murmured. Did she mean the way he was stuffing himself, or was she thinking of herself first as she so often did? She’d taken him into her bed almost under Eyvind Torfinn’s nose. Was she reminding him of it, again right past her husband? She hadn’t been that shameless even with Hamnet – or, if she had, he hadn’t noticed at the time.
Whatever she was looking for from Trasamund, she didn’t get it. “Nothing!” he said emphatically, his mouth full of sausage.
Marcovefa laughed softly. Did she know what was going on there? Had she heard, or perhaps somehow divined it? Hamnet Thyssen didn’t know. Gudrid couldn’t have known, either, but her baleful stare said she didn’t like any of what she was thinking. Still, all she did was stare. She must not have felt like taking on another wizard just yet.
All the same, Hamnet was anything but sorry to be leaving Eyvind Torfinn’s house.
By the way things looked, Earl Eyvind’s stablehands were anything but sorry to see Hamnet and his companions go. The stables were enormous; Eyvind could afford not only the best but the most. Even so, feeding and grooming and caring for all those extra animals must have been a burden. The good-byes from the grooms and their assistants seemed most heartfelt.
Out through the streets of Nidaros again, this time zigzagging towards the north gate. The Breath of God was blowing. Maybe cities far, far to the south had streets that ran north and south. Nidaros didn’t, and likely never would.
Fog puffed from Count Hamnet’s mouth and nostrils every time he breathed out, but the wind took it and blew it away. He didn’t like getting the Breath of God full in his face. Even here, a long way from the Glacier, it blew bitterly cold. So he thought, anyway. Trasamund and some of the other Bizogots smiled at the familiar blast. Someone – Hamnet thought it was Mar-comer of the Leaping Lynxes – said, “This place is wonderful, but it was too stinking hot before.”
“Some people don’t know when they’re well off,” Ulric Skakki said.
“Like us, riding north?” Hamnet suggested. Ulric sketched a salute, yielding the point.
A caravan from the north was coming into Nidaros when Hamnet and his companions got to the gate. “What’s the news?” Ulric asked. Hamnet supposed he would have thought of the question, too, but certainly not so fast.