The caravanmaster was a burly man with a gray-streaked black beard tumbling halfway down his chest. His face wore a scowl well, and wore one now. “The news?” he echoed. “By God, stranger, it’s not good. There’s some kind of Bizogot invasion or something up in the woods by the tree line, and I hear tell one of our armies took a demon of a licking.”
He didn’t have everything straight, but what he had was plenty to irritate the sergeant who was admitting him to the city. “Don’t you go talking about our armies that way,” the underofficer growled.
“What? Should I lie to this poor bugger instead?” The merchant pointed at Ulric. “If he gets it in the neck, do I want it on my conscience?”
“He won’t get it in the neck, and you haven’t got a conscience,” the sergeant said. The caravanmaster let out an angry bellow. Ignoring it and reveling in his own petty authority, the sergeant went on, “What you have got is a demon of a lot of horses and mules that need inspecting. Who knows what you might be smuggling if you think our soldiers are no good?”
This time, the caravanmaster’s howls threatened to shake down the icicles hanging like the teeth of a new portcullis from the gate’s gray stonework. With the majesty of the imperial government on his side, the sergeant could afford to ignore those howls, too. And, since he was going to spend some time making the merchant miserable, he considerately waved Hamnet Thyssen’s party of out Nidaros without asking for, much less examining, the order Hamnet had got from Sigvat II.
“Poor bastard.” Ulric Skakki looked back towards the extravagantly unhappy caravanmaster. “Sometimes the worst thing you can do is tell the truth, you know?”
“Really?” Count Hamnet answered, deadpan. “I never heard that before.”
The adventurer laughed out loud. “No, you wouldn’t have, would you? Nobody in the dungeons would say anything like that to you, right? Neither would the Emperor, would he?”
“His Majesty has told me a lot of things,” Hamnet said . . . truthfully. “I don’t believe he ever mentioned that, though.”
“No, eh? Somehow I’m not surprised.” Even a free spirit like Ulric Skakki glanced back over his shoulder to make sure no one not from their party could overhear before going on, “His Majesty doesn’t know enough about telling the truth to know it can be dangerous.”
Hamnet Thyssen laughed then. He wondered why – it wasn’t as if Ulric were lying. Of course, if he didn’t laugh, he would have to weep or swear or ride back to Nidaros and try to assassinate Sigvat. Laughing was probably better.
But he confused Marcovefa. “What is funny?” she asked. . “Nothing much,” Hamnet answered. “We’re taking turns insulting the Emperor, that’s all.”
“Oh.” But she frowned. “He deserves insulting, yes?” She didn’t wait for an answer, but nodded to herself. “Yes, of course. So why is this funny?”
“You never met him,” Count Hamnet said.
“Some people have all the luck,” Ulric Skakki added.
Marcovefa’s eyes twinkled. “Do you say I am lucky, or do you say he is lucky?”
“You’re lucky you never met him – take it from one who has,” Hamnet answered. Then, after a moment’s thought, he went on, “Come to think of it, he’s lucky he never met you, too, or he probably wouldn’t be here anymore.” If Marcovefa could make herself disappear and go elsewhere, could she also do the same to someone else? Hamnet couldn’t see any reason why not.
“If he is like that, why is he your chief – your, uh, jarl?” she asked.
Imagining the color Sigvat would turn if he heard someone call him a jarl made Hamnet laugh all over again. But the question deserved a serious answer, and he tried to give one: “Because his father and grandfather and grandfather’s father ruled before him. Better a ruler from one family than endless wars to see who rules.”
“Most of the time, anyway,” Ulric put in.
“Most of the time, yes,” Hamnet Thyssen agreed.
“Well, maybe,” Marcovefa said. “Our clan chiefs go by blood, too. But we don’t fight wars about who should be chief.” She paused. “Most of the time, anyway.” She did a wicked job of mimicking Ulric Skakki.
Hamnet believed her. “More things to fight about here,” he said, which summed up the difference between a clan of hunters atop the Glacier and the Raumsdalian Empire in half a dozen words. Why would anyone fight to become a clan chief? Even if you won the job, what did you have that you couldn’t have anyway? No one needed to ask that question of Sigvat II or any other Emperor. The palace spoke for itself.
Snow dappled the fields. Most of the trees had lost their leaves. The bare branches made them look like skeletons of their former selves. Crows and jays lingered, as they did in all but the worst of winters. Their cries were raucous in Hamnet’s ears. Cattle pulled up grass the first frosts of fall had turned yellow and crisp. They weren’t so shaggy as musk oxen, but they did have thick coats to ward off the Breath of God. Almost all of them grazed facing away from the wind.
Marcovefa eyed the cattle. She looked down at the horse she rode. She glanced over to a flock of sheep almost out on the horizon. “Even your beasts are things,” she said. “So many. Too many, yes.”
“We don’t go hungry as often as you do,” Hamnet said.
“Not here.” Marcovefa touched her belly. Then she touched her heart and her head. “Here and here? Who knows?”
That made him grunt thoughtfully. He wasn’t sure she was right, but he wasn’t sure she was wrong. Did being desperately poor because of where you lived give you spiritual advantages? Marcovefa’s magic argued that it did. Most of the rest of what he’d seen atop the Glacier suggested that the folk who lived up there were no more spiritual than they had to be.
It was a puzzlement. He owned himself puzzled. Past that. . . Past that, he would probably do better to worry about things he could do something about.
First among those was, what would Raumsdalian soldiers and their officers do when someone they’d never seen before started ordering them around? Count Hamnet knew he wouldn’t find out right away. Except for the imperial guards, no large garrisons were posted in towns close to Nidaros. For one thing, those towns, lying at the Empire’s heart, were unlikely to need large garrisons. For another, large garrisons not under the Emperor’s direct control might give their commanders ideas, especially close to the capital. Most of Raumsdalia’s soldiers, then, stayed near the frontier.
But the northern frontier, in particular, was not a place where garrisons had an easy time feeding themselves. The line where crops wouldn’t reliably grow lay south of the tree line, which marked the border between the Empire and the Bizogot country. Without supply convoys up from the south, the soldiers would start to starve. (That was, incidentally, another way the Emperors could make sure their men stayed loyal and choke off rebellions.)
Hamnet thought about joining one of those convoys. But he didn’t need long to change his mind. Yes, the wagons had large teams of big, stalwart horses drawing them. They wouldn’t have gone anywhere if they hadn’t. Even as things were, they were painfully slow. And that deliberate pace decided him against them.
Instead, his led the travelers off onto the side of the road and past the heavy wagons. The soldiers who rode as flank guards waved to him. He returned the courtesy. The Raumsdalians eyed the Bizogots with him with suspicion all the same. If the guards weren’t alert, those barbarians might descend on the convoy. So it had to seem to the men with the creaking, groaning wagons, anyhow. He knew better, but doubted he could persuade them.
Trasamund summed it up in a handful of words: “We’re wolves, by God. Of course the dogs don’t like us.” He sounded proud of his wildness, his ferocity.
Ulric Skakki raised an eyebrow. “What does that make the Rulers, then?”
Trasamund’s answer was interesting, amusing, and highly profane, but not very informative.