“You know I haven’t,” Hamnet Thyssen answered angrily.
“You might be surprised. But all right, then. Neither have I. Neither has anybody. So what is the point of getting all upset?”
“We need the Golden Shrine,” Hamnet said. “Won’t it help us against the Rulers? Can we beat them without it?”
“We can do whatever we have to do.” Marcovefa was nothing if not evasive.
More slowly than he might have, Hamnet realized she was being evasive on purpose. “You’re not telling me everything you know.”
“You are not a shaman. I am telling you everything you can grasp.” Marcovefa opened and closed her hands. “I am telling you everything I can grasp, too. I know more than I understand. Does that make any sense to you?”
“No,” Count Hamnet said. A moment later, he amended that: “Maybe.” He’d known something was wrong between Gudrid and him before he understood what it was. He didn’t like to think of the Golden Shrine in those terms. It was supposed to be good and pure and holy. Gudrid . . . wasn’t.
“You worry too much,” Marcovefa said seriously.
Hamnet Thyssen burst out laughing. “Now tell me something I didn’t know!” he exclaimed.
“You should not do this.” The shaman from atop the Glacier made not doing it sound easy as could be.
He bowed to her. “How do you propose that I stop?”
“Wait till we camp tonight,” she answered. “I will stop you from worrying-for a while, anyway.”
That gave him something to look forward to. He would have looked forward to it even more if Marcovefa hadn’t kept on glancing north. She always peered over her left shoulder-never over her right. Maybe that meant something sorcerous. Maybe it was just her habit, and he’d never noticed it before. Now he shrugged. He was too proud-and too stubborn-to ask.
And, when they did camp, she kept her promise with an eager ferocity he did his best to match. Sure enough, making love did stop him from worrying . . . for a while, anyway. You couldn’t worry when the world exploded in joy. Afterwards, though? Afterwards was a different story.
But Hamnet didn’t worry long. Sleep claimed him before his thoughts could get all knotted up. Even as his eyelids sagged shut, he sent Marcovefa a suspicious glance. He wasn’t usually one to start snoring right after love. Not usually, maybe-but tonight he was.
He woke before daybreak the next morning. Marcovefa lay beside him, snoring softly. He smiled-and waited for all his worries to come flooding back. They didn’t, though. His mind felt washed clean, almost as if he’d got over a fever that left him out of his head for a while.
Was that magic? Or only a prolonged afterglow? Was there a difference?
When she woke up, he tried to ask her. She didn’t want to listen to him. “Do what you need to do today, whatever it turns out to be,” she said. “Yesterday is gone. You can’t bring it back. You can’t change it. So what difference does it make? Tell me that.”
“I remember it,” Hamnet said stubbornly. “If not for the skirmish yesterday morning, we wouldn’t be eating venison for breakfast today.”
“You never know.” But Marcovefa smiled.
“I wish you could see this country the way it ought to be,” Hamnet said. “Here south of Nidaros, this is the heart of the Empire. But nothing is the same because of the cursed war.”
Marcovefa shrugged. “It is what it is, that’s all. Every bit of it, even the worst, is better than the mountaintop where my clan lives.” She blinked. “I wonder what will happen when the Glacier melts back and the mountain is part of the rest of the world again. Not in my lifetime, but not so long, either.”
“No, not so long,” Hamnet agreed. If it wasn’t in his lifetime, though, he had trouble worrying about it. He looked south. “I hope your clan doesn’t come down into a world the Rulers are running.”
“Rulers wouldn’t run it once my clan got through with them,” Marcovefa said. Count Hamnet feared she was an optimist. But maybe she knew what she was talking about. Her clansfolk were formidable people. They had to be, to survive at all up on the Glacier. In easier circumstances, they and the other small, thinly scattered clans up there might give anybody a run for his money.
“Come on,” Trasamund said when they emerged from their tent. “We just beat one bunch of those buggers. Let’s ride south and find more of them-lots more.”
Nobody told him no.
No, nobody told Trasamund no. Still, as the Raumsdalians and Bizogots rode away from their camp, Ulric Skakki brought his horse up alongside Hamnet’s and said, “Sometimes God gives you what you ask for-just to show you you’re a fool to ask for it. How many more of the Rulers do you really want to run into?”
“Good question,” Hamnet admitted. “How do you propose to drive them out of the Empire if we don’t run into them, though?”
“Well, that’s a good question, too,” Ulric said. “We’re liable to run into too many of them all at once-that’s what bothers me. They really have swarmed down here, haven’t they? Raumsdalia’s a big, tasty dog, and it draws plenty of fleas.”
“The Rulers are worse than fleas,” Hamnet Thyssen said. “And of course this country is better than the land farther north. Even the Bizogots like it better here than up on their steppe-well, most of them do, anyway.”
“Bread. Beer. Fruit,” Ulric said. “Oh, they’ve got a few berries up there, but that’s about it. Smetyn doesn’t match beer-to say nothing of wine. And without bread . . .” He shook his head, as if to say civilized life was impossible. He wasn’t so far wrong, either.
A large, black plume of smoke rising in the southeast marked some sort of struggle. Pointing toward it, Trasamund said, “We ought to see what that is.”
“He’s been eating meat again,” Ulric Skakki said sadly.
“Mammoth meat and venison,” Count Hamnet agreed. “So have you. Why doesn’t it turn you all bloodthirsty?”
“Because I’ve got more sense than that?” Ulric suggested. That was more polite than saying, Because I’m not a Bizogot barbarian off the frozen steppe, but it amounted to the same thing. He didn’t have more sense than to keep from following the jarl as Trasamund rode toward the pillar of smoke. Neither did Hamnet Thyssen. The Raumsdalian noble caught Marcovefa’s eye. “Are you ready for more trouble?” he asked her.
“As much as these Rulers can give,” she answered. By the way she said it, she didn’t think that would be much. She’d beaten their wizards again and again. On this side of the Gap, she was the only one who had.
Hamnet thought about the lands on the far side of the Gap. The country the Rulers roamed was nothing special-it reminded him of the Bizogots’ territory. Somewhere over there, though, would be better land, land like Raumsdalia and the realms to the south. What kind of people lived on it? And what kind of wizards did they have there, if they could keep the Rulers penned up on those cold and nearly useless plains? That was a worrisome thought.
It was also a thought he didn’t have time for. Now he could see what was burning: a village just too small to be a walled town. Most of the black, greasy smoke poured from one building. An oil store house? Hamnet wondered.
He didn’t have time to worry about that, either. The Rulers were still sacking the village. They were killing the men who fought back-and some of the ones who didn’t-and amusing themselves with the women. Atrocities didn’t seem to change much from one side of the Glacier to the other.