"Someone will have to make him into a man again," Liv said. "Even in owl shape, he will know enough to go back where he came from."
"What does she say?" Audun asked. When Hamnet told him, he said, "Yes, it would have to work like that. And the spy will have to hope he knows enough to go back where he came from. Otherwise, he'll catch rabbits and voles and lemmings for the rest of his days."
Now Liv had to wait for the translation. When she had it, she sketched a salute to Audun Gilli. "That can happen to Bizogot shamans, too," she said. "Some people say short-faced bears are as sly as they are because they have men's blood in them, blood from shamans who never went back to men's shape."
Count Hamnet's shiver had nothing to do with the chilly night. He tried to imagine living the rest of his life as a beast, slowly forgetting he was ever a man. Only one thought occurred to him. How Gudrid would laugh!
Trasamund grunted when he heard the folk from beyond the Glacier had spies on this side of the Gap. After a bit, he unbent enough to say, "If we catch them, we'll kill them." His large, hard hands opened and closed several times; he seemed to look forward to it.
"We're going up to spy on them," Ulric Skakki murmured when he and Hamnet rode a little apart from the rest of the travelers. "Why shouldn't they come down to spy on us?"
Put that way, it seemed logical enough, fair enough. But it didn't feel fair to Hamnet Thyssen. What the Empire was doing—with some help from the Bizogots—was only fitting and proper. So it looked to him, anyhow. For other folk to come down into those familiar lands, though ... If that wasn't an invasion, what was it?
When Count Hamnet said as much, Ulric Skakki smiled one of his sardonic smiles. "Of course, we're not invading their lands when we go north of the Gap—eh, your Grace?"
"We're not invading." Hamnet waved an arm at the Bizogots and Raumsdalians riding north. "Does this look like an army to you?"
Ulric laughed. "Well, no," he said. "But does one man who turns himself into an owl look like an army to you?"
"That's different," Hamnet Thyssen insisted.
"How?" Ulric sounded genuinely curious.
Try as Hamnet would, he couldn't come up with a good answer. The only one that came to him was, Because it's on this side of the Gap. It was an answer plenty good enough for him. He was sure as sure could be, though, that Ulric Skakki would only laugh some more if he brought it out. And so he rode along in glum silence—and Ulric Skakki laughed at him anyway.
After a while, Ulric said, "They'll have a demon of a time trying to bring an army through here."
That touched on Count Hamnet s professional expertise. "Oh, yes," he said without a moment's hesitation. "It's not just the narrow gate they'll have to pass through. How will they keep a host of men and beasts fed?"
"Nobody can raise enough to keep a host fed till you get down into the Empire, where crops will grow," Ulric agreed. "The Bizogots would be a lot more trouble than they are if they were hosts instead of bands—and they're trouble enough as is."
"Really? I never would have noticed." Count Hamnet's voice was dry. When Ulric laughed this time, it was with him, not at him. Hamnet thought so, anyhow.
Closer and closer together came the two cliffs that marked the edges of the Glacier. Once upon a time, within the memory of chroniclers and bards though certainly not within that of living men, the Glacier had had only a southern edge. Would it really keep melting till the Gap was a broad highway—till, perhaps, there was no Glacier at all, only bare ground? Ham-net Thyssen tried to imagine that, tried and felt himself failing. Even somewhat diminished as it was, the Glacier still seemed to him a natural and all but inevitable part of the world.
As those tall cliffs of ice drew closer, they also towered higher into the sky. Count Hamnet was not a nervous man, or not a man who showed his nerves, but his voice wobbled a little when he asked Trasamund, "Are there ever avalanches up here?" He couldn't imagine how many tons of ice might come thundering down on him.
"I'm sure there are—there must be," the Bizogot jarl answered. "I've never been in one, though." He chuckled. "If I ever was, I’d be too flat to talk to you now."
"Er, yes," Hamnet said. That marched too well with what he was thinking.
And then, the next morning, he couldn't see the edges of the ice at all. He couldn't see anything. Mist shrouded the campsite. It was cold and gray and thick, thicker than he’d ever known mist to be down in the Raumsdalian Empire. The air he inhaled felt soggy. When he exhaled, he added his own fog to that which swirled around him.
"Which way is north?" he asked. His voice sounded strangely muffled.
"North?" Ulric Skakki said from not far away—but Count Hamnet couldn't see him. "In this, I have trouble being sure of up and down."
That would have been funny if it didn't hold so much truth. The air above, the air all around—the same shade of gray everywhere. It was like being in the middle of a wet sheep's wool. And when Hamnet Thyssen looked down, he could barely see his own boots.
"I ran into this myself the last time I came north," Trasamund said from somewhere in the fog. "I was stuck for two or three days, because I couldn't tell which end was up. Of course, I didn't have a shaman with me, and now we've got two."
"I know a spell for finding north," Audun Gilli said. "An iron needle floating in a cup of water will show you the way."
"What does he say?" Liv asked from farther away. Count Hamnet translated for her. When he finished, she said, "I know this spell. A Raumsdalian trader showed it to me. It may work down in your country, but not so well up here. He said it lied more and more the farther north he went."
"That's so, by God—I've seen it, too," Trasamund agreed, also in the Bizogot tongue.
Inevitably, Audun Gilli asked what they said. With a mental sigh, Hamnet translated for him, too. The wizard let out an indignant sniff. "How can a spell that works well in one place not work in another? The idea is ridiculous."
Trasamund, of course, understood Raumsdalian. "It may be ridiculous, but it's true. If you go the way you think north is, you'll smack your nose into the Glacier instead of heading on up into the Gap."
"I don't believe it," Audun said.
"Fine," Trasamund told him. "Don't believe it. Work your magic. Go the way you think is north. But watch out for your nose." He laughed. Audun Gilli sniffed more indignantly than ever. Laughing still, Trasamund went on, "Go ahead. Try your spell. We'll come along. Why not? We'll be going somewhere, even if it's in the wrong direction."
Hamnet Thyssen hadn't known a needle would float on water. But Audun was right—the thin one he used did. And it pointed steadily in a direction he insisted was north. Off the travelers went, moving slowly through the impenetrable fog, calling to one another again and again to keep from getting separated.
When the ground under the horses' hooves grew muckier than ever, Hamnet began to suspect Trasamund knew what he was talking about. Wetter ground meant more meltwater, and more meltwater meant they were getting closer to the Glacier. The mist did thin a little as the day wore along, and a swirl of breeze showed the great cliff of ice dead ahead and seeming unimaginably tall.
"You see?" Trasamund sounded as if he would tear Audun Gilli's head off if the wizard denied seeing.
But Audun didn't. "I see," he said sadly. He sounded chastened.
"We went more west than north, did we not?" Eyvind Torfinn said.
"Plainly." Audun Gilli sounded more chastened yet. "But we should have gone north." Was he staring at the needle as if wondering why it betrayed him? He was only a dim outline to Hamnet Thyssen, but the nobleman knew he would have stared at the needle that way.
Eyvind Torfinn, by contrast, sounded cheerful. "If we know the needle points somewhere close to west instead of north, then if we go in the direction the needle says is somewhere closer to east than north, we'll really be heading toward the true north after all, won't we?"
A considerable silence followed, from both Audun Gilli and Trasamund. When Audun said, "By God, your Splendor, I think we will," he seemed amazed.
Trasamund's laugh might almost have blown the fog away by itself. "By God, your Splendor, you've worked a magic to make any shaman jealous!" he boomed. "You've made a liar tell the truth in spite of himself! Well done!"
"What do they say?" Liv asked plaintively. She was the only traveler who knew no Raumsdalian. Count Hamnet translated for her. "Ah," she said when he finished. "The old man is clever."
She forgot Earl Eyvind was fluent in the Bizogot language. "I am not as old as all that, wise woman," he said in her tongue, "or at least I hope I am not."
Hamnet Thyssen couldn't see her turn red, either, but he would have bet she was blushing. "I crave your pardon," she said in a small voice.
"Come on—let's get going," Trasamund told Audun Gilli. "Your precious needle can lie as much as it pleases. You will tease the truth out of it even so."
"Maybe I will. I really think I will." Audun seemed astonished but happy. "A wizard ought to travel about with a charmed needle, and compare what it calls north to what the sky shows at a great many places. Once a chart was made, anyone would be able to use the needle anywhere and have it tell him the truth."
"That sounds like a good idea," the Bizogot jarl said. "It sounds like a good idea for somebody with all the time in the world. As much as I would like to have so much time, I don't—and neither do you."
Audun took the hint. He murmured the charm over the needle once more, perhaps to encourage it. Then he began to ride. "This way," he called. He was dimly visible through the thinning mist, but hearing him did help the others follow.