"Maybe. Maybe not, too," Hamnet said. "All we know about the Rulers is from their bragging and the little we saw."
"They don't just herd mammoths. They really tame them, the way we tame horses," Ulric said. "Samoth is a stronger wizard than Audun Gilli dreams of being."
"Well, yes." Hamnet Thyssen looked around to make sure Audun was out of earshot. "But how much does that say about the one, and how much does it say about the other?"
Ulric Skakki gave him a dirty look—and well he might have, when he'd dragged Audun Gilli from the gutter for the journey beyond the Glacier. "Audun will be fine when we really need him."
"I hope so. We all hope so," Count Hamnet said. "But the Rulers are a problem, and you're right—no one who hasn't seen them can understand how big a problem they could be."
"Well, that may take care of itself," Ulric said.
Hamnet frowned. "How do you mean?"
"By next year, chances are that everyone will have seen them, don't you think?" Ulric said. Hamnet only grunted, like a man who takes a fist in the pit of the stomach. Ulric Skakki seemed to think that a full answer. And so perhaps it was.
Before long, Hamnet Thyssen wondered whether he and the other travelers would make it back to the Gap, let alone through the narrow opening that was the only way home. The two sides of the divided Glacier shaped a funnel with that opening as the sole outlet. All the bad weather beyond the Glacier seemed to pour into the funnel—and had no way out.
Snow piled up thick on the ground. This, sages said, was how the Glacier formed in the first place—snow that fell faster than it melted, that never melted from year to year, that hardened into the solid Glacier as the weight of more snow above it squeezed out the air. Finding or forcing a way through got harder by the day.
"Are we going to have to wait till the blizzards stop?" Hamnet asked Trasamund.
"I hope not," the Bizogot answered. Hamnet Thyssen had wanted more. Maybe his face said as much, for Trasamund went on, "This is new for me, too, you know. I'm used to weather that has more, ah, room to move around."
"Think on the bright side," Jesper Fletti said. "If we freeze to death or starve to death up here, chances are the Rulers will, too."
"Oh, joy." Hamnet Thyssen did not like Jesper, and so he took a certain sour pleasure in showing up the other man. "That isn't so, anyhow. The Rulers aren't likely to come through the Gap during winter. Chances are they'll travel when the weather is good—or as good as it gets up here."
Like the rest of the travelers, Jesper was bundled up so only his eyes and a bit of his forehead and the bridge of his nose were exposed to the air. By the way his rime-whitened eyebrows came down and pulled together at the center, Count Hamnet's dart hit home.
"One way or another, we'll manage." Trasamund didn't sound worried— but how a leader sounded and what he really thought could be two different things, as Hamnet knew full well. The Bizogot continued, "If we have to, we'll build shelters from snow blocks and wait it out. We've got plenty of deer flesh on the horses' backs."
"Have we got enough fodder to keep the beasts alive for long?" Hamnet asked, knowing the answer was no. By the way Trasamund grimaced, he knew the same thing. "Can we go forward on foot if the horses die?" Hamnet continued.
"We can, yes," Trasamund said. "It wouldn't be fast, and it would be dangerous. Hunting in thick snow's not easy, and you need to eat a lot, or the weather sucks the strength out of you like a vampire."
"You have a way with words, your Ferocity." By the way Jesper Fletti said it, that wasn't necessarily praise.
"We hope for the weather to get better, that's all." If bluff, hearty Trasamund could offer nothing more, he was worried, or worse than worried.
Hamnet Thyssen let his horse fall back alongside Ulric Skakki's. "You came back through the Gap in the wintertime," he said, making it sound almost like an accusation.
"Guilty," Ulric agreed, so he caught the tone despite the howling wind.
"How?" Hamnet asked.
"I waited for a spell of decent weather, and one came along before I got too hungry," Ulric answered. "Then I squirted through as fast as I could go. The weather on the other side was a lot milder, I will say."
"Well, I believe that." Hamnet Thyssen saw no way for the full fury of this storm to squeeze through that narrow opening. "What were things like where the two halves of the Glacier came closest together?"
Ulric considered. "Windy."
"Thank you so much. I never would have guessed." Hamnet laid on the sarcasm with a shovel. Ulric Skakki only chuckled. He probably grinned, too; the way his eyes narrowed suggested as much. But he too kept himself well covered up, so Hamnet couldn't be sure.
"You'll find out," Ulric said. "Either that or the good weather won't come soon enough—in which case, our meat will stay fresh till the animals find it next spring."
"You always did know how to cheer me up," Hamnet Thyssen said. Ulric laughed. For a moment, the wind howling down from the north let Hamnet hear his mirth. Then the frozen blast seized the laughter and flayed it on knives of ice and swept it away.
Hamnet wished he thought Ulric were joking. They could die up here. If they did, no one would know but the striped cats—the tigers—and the wolves and the little foxes . . . and possibly the Rulers, if they came this way when brief spring and summer set this land ablaze with flowers.
Asking a wizard to work against such weather was asking too much. Count Hamnet already understood that—understood it in his bones, which grew colder by the moment. He did wonder whether Audun Gilli or Liv could work with it, could craft some sort of preserving spell that would keep the travelers not quite frozen to death till the storm eased enough to let them travel some more.
Steering his horse over to Liv's was a pleasure of sorts. If he was going to die, he preferred dying in good company. When he asked her his question, she said, "It would be a charm like keeping meat fresh, wouldn't it?"
"Yes, it would," he answered, while his hope sank. He hadn't wanted to hear would be. That meant she had no spell ready to use. He wasn't really surprised, only disappointed. If she'd known of such a spell, chances were she already would have been poised to use it.
"Maybe it will turn out all right anyhow," Liv said.
"Maybe it... will." Hamnet Thyssen started to bellow his answer, as he'd been bellowing all along. Halfway through, he realized he didn't need to. The wind was dying. The snow was easing. Back in Raumsdalia, romance writers threw storms that conveniently stopped into about half their tales. People laughed at them, because most of the time storms weren't nearly so considerate.
Most of the time—but not always.
"Well, well," Eyvind Torfinn said, as he had a habit of doing. "Well, well." He said it—and Hamnet Thyssen heard him. One of the horses snorted and shook its head, sending snow flying. Count Hamnet heard that.
He looked around. He felt as dazed and drained as if he'd fought in a battle. The aftermath of a battle, though, was horror, with the cries of the wounded and the stenches of blood and ordure filling the air, with maimed and slaughtered men and beasts sprawled on the ground, with ravens and vultures and teratorns spiraling down out of the sky to glut themselves on flesh before it grew cold. The aftermath of the storm . . . was one of the most beautiful things Hamnet Thyssen had ever seen.
Everything was white.
As far as the eye could see—and it could see farther with each passing moment—everything was covered in snow. Even the travelers were mostly shrouded. Hamnet almost dreaded having the sun come out. Shining off so much whiteness, it would be bound to blind. The Bizogots sometimes wore bone goggles that let in only narrow slits of light to fight against snow-blindness. Hamnet wished for a pair of his own.
To either side, the Glacier loomed up. It was white, too, whiter than he’d ever seen it. The blizzard covered the dirt that clung to the sides of the ice, covered the plants that sometimes grew in crevices when the weather warmed. The way Hamnet's breath smoked reminded him it was anything but warm now.
Trasamund shook himself like a bear emerging from hibernation. The snow he dislodged made the comparison seem more apt. "Well, now I know where south is, by God," he said in a voice not far from a bear's growl. "Let's get to the Gap as soon as we can, and leave the worst of this behind us."
On they rode. Gudrid's back was uncommonly stiff. She wasn't used to getting mocked over and over again for making a mistake; that was something she was more in the habit of doing to other people. Trasamund didn't care. He'd taken what she gave him, and he gave back nothing. No, Gudrid wasn't used to that at all.
What would she do about it? What could she do about it? Nothing that Hamnet could think of, not now, not unless she never wanted to see Nidaros again. But if they got down into safer country.. . Hamnet wondered whether to tell Trasamund to watch his back.
In the end, he decided not to. The Bizogot jarl was a grown man, able to take care of himself. That he'd turned the tables on Gudrid proved as much. If he couldn't see that she might want revenge, he was a fool. To Count Hamnet's way of thinking, Trasamund was a fool, but not that kind of fool.
The sun came out and shone down brightly. Hamnet blinked and narrowed his eyes against the glare. But for the snow everywhere, the blizzard might never have happened. The air grew .. . warmer, anyhow. The travelers slogged on toward the Gap.
XIV
Ham net Thyssen spread his arms wide. Liv laughed at him. "You can't span the Gap with your hands, my love," she said. "It's narrow, but not that narrow."
"I suppose not," Hamnet said. But the urge remained. With those cliffs, those mountains, of ice going up and up and up, the gap between them still seemed tiny—and, on the grand scale of things, it was. But a tiny gap was oh, so different from no gap at all. And then Hamnet stopped and gaped, really hearing in his mind everything Liv had said. "What did you call me?"