“We’ve both got the scars to prove it,” Hamnet said, and Ulric nodded. Hamnet went on, “Better to dish them out than to wait while they heal up, though.” Ulric Skakki nodded again. So did the Raumsdalian soldiers rejoining the fight.
And so did Trasamund. “Always better to give than to receive,” he said, and reached over his shoulder to touch the hilt of his two-handed sword.
“I have a question,” Hamnet said. Everybody looked at him. He asked it: “How long before the Rulers figure out they’ve got trouble behind them as well as in front of them? What do they do once they realize it?”
“That’s two questions,” Ulric pointed out.
“If you’ve got two answers, I’ll listen to them,” Count Hamnet said.
Ulric made as if to turn out his pockets and go through his belt pouches. Hamnet Thyssen waited. He knew the adventurer was trying to annoy him, and would win a point if he succeeded. When Hamnet just stood there, Ulric said, “My guess is, it won’t be long. And when they do realize it, they’ll turn on us. It’s not like they’ve got any reason to be afraid of Sigvat.”
“Too right it isn’t,” Hamnet said. “And that’s about what I was thinking, too. We’ve better be ready for the worst they can do to us.”
“Why are you telling me? You need to talk to your lady love,” Ulric said. “Without her, the best we can hope for is to hightail it off to some place where the Rulers won’t come for a while.”
“Not so bad as that.” But Trasamund didn’t sound as if he believed it himself.
“We usually say things won’t be so bad when we bump up against the Rulers,” Ulric said. “And they usually aren’t. They’re usually worse.”
Trasamund had brightened till he finished. Then the jarl glowered at him. “Curse it, why can’t you leave that part out?”
“Because I’m trying to tell the truth?” Ulric suggested. “I know Bizogots don’t always understand the word-”
“What do you mean?” Trasamund said indignantly.
“Oh, you know it’s true as well as I do.” Ulric sounded impatient, to say nothing of tired. “What gets you people through the winters up there except lies swapped back and forth? Don’t tell me any different, either. I know better. Anyone who’s passed a winter up on the plains knows better.”
“Those are just for the sport of it. Nobody believes them. Nobody expects to believe them,” Trasamund said. “When we need to tell the truth, we can do it as well as anybody else. I’ve heard plenty of Raumsdalian liars, too.” He fixed Ulric with a significant stare.
“Who, me?” the adventurer said. “If you can prove anything I’ve ever said is a lie, go ahead and do it.”
“How am I supposed to? You talk about places nobody else has ever been to. You’re the only one who knows if there’s any truth in you at all.”
“Hamnet’s been to some of those places,” Ulric said. “He knows whether I’m telling the truth or not.”
Thus prodded, Hamnet said, “I’ve told you before, Trasamund: Ulric hasn’t lied about any places where I’ve been, anyhow. I would have let you-and him-know about it if he had.”
“Huh.” Trasamund didn’t want to believe him, either. “But he talks about places you’ve never seen, too, Thyssen. As far as anybody knows, he’s making all that up as he goes along.”
“I don’t think so, and I’ll tell you why,” Count Hamnet said. Trasamund could have looked no more dubious had he practiced in front of a mirror. Ignoring his expression, Hamnet went on, “Here’s why. When we went up onto the Glacier, Ulric could talk with the people we met there. How? Because he’d run into Bizogots who spoke a dialect like theirs way over by the western mountains.”
“He didn’t talk about that before we went up onto the Glacier,” Trasamund protested.
“No, but he’d done it. He’s done some things you haven’t done, Your Ferocity, and seen some things you haven’t seen, and you might as well get used to it,” Hamnet said.
“Oh, don’t tell him that,” Ulric said. “Now I’ll be able to lie as much as I please, and he’ll have to swallow all of it. Where’s the challenge in that? Where’s the sport? Making somebody believe a really juicy lie shouldn’t be easy. You should have to work at it.”
Count Hamnet exhaled through his nose. “You’re not helping, you know.”
“How about that?” Ulric said cheerfully. “Anybody would think I was trying to be difficult or something.”
“Anybody would think you were trying to be Skakki,” Trasamund said. Ulric bowed, as if at a compliment. Trasamund threw his hands in the air.
Marcovefa kept looking back over her left shoulder so often that Hamnet asked, “Did you get a crick in your neck when you slept last night?”
“No.” She shook her head. “I keep looking to find the way north.”
He pointed out the obvious: “We’re riding south.”
“Not always,” Marcovefa said.
“What does that mean? What do you sense?” Hamnet asked.
“One day, we will ride north again. We will need to know the way.” Marcovefa sounded like most of the shamans and wizards Hamnet had known: she obviously knew what she meant, and she just as obviously had trouble telling him. Or maybe she simply didn’t want to.
He tried his best to make sense of it. “When will we ride north again? How far north will we ride? Back to Nidaros? Back to the woods? Back to the Bizogot steppe?”
“Back to the Golden Shrine,” Marcovefa answered.
That told him both more and less than he wanted to know. “Where is the Golden Shrine? How will we find it?”
“It is where it is. We will find it when we need to find it.” Marcovefa shook her head again. “We will find it when it wants to be found.” She looked back over her shoulder once more, as if she expected it to spring up from the wheatfield they’d just passed, a field that might never be harvested.
“You’re not helping,” Count Hamnet complained, as he had with Ulric.
“I am giving you the best answer I can,” Marcovefa said. “It is true. Do you want me to lie instead?”
“It may be true, but it doesn’t tell me anything,” Hamnet complained.
Marcovefa shrugged. “Before I came down from the Glacier, if I asked you where Nidaros was, what could you have told me? You would have said, ‘It is far to the south.’ If you talked about the Bizogot steppe or the forest or the badlands where Hevring Lake spilled out, what would they have meant? Nothing. Less than nothing. I did not know what any of those things were.”
Count Hamnet thought about that. Slowly, he asked, “Are you telling me I’m still up on the Glacier as far as the Golden Shrine is concerned?”
“Yes, I tell you that.” Marcovefa looked pleased that he’d understood so well. “When you need to know, you will know. Till you need to know, you don’t need to worry about it.”
She might have been pleased, but Hamnet wasn’t. “You make it sound like I’m a little child.”
“When it comes to the Golden Shrine, we are all little children.” Now Marcovefa spoke with what sounded like exaggerated patience. She paused. “Maybe your Eyvind Torfinn is a big child. He know more about the Golden Shrine than most people. But no one is more than a big child. How could it be otherwise? For now, the Golden Shrine is hidden. Who has seen it, to say what it is like? Have you?”