Audun sent him a quizzical look—or maybe a look a little more than quizzical. "You don't seem surprised by what I tell you."
"Nothing you tell me ever surprises me," Count Hamnet said—let Audun make of that what he would.
The wizard scratched his head. "When we get back to Nidaros, I will buy myself scented soap and a tub of hot water," he said. "And then . .." He didn't go on, not with words, but his smile was blissful.
"Sounds good to me," Hamnet said, nodding. "Buy one more thing while you're at it."
"What's that?" Audun Gilli asked.
"A brush with at least medium-strong bristles," Hamnet answered. "We've been up here a long time, and the soap will need some help."
"You're right." Now Audun nodded, as if making sure he would remember. "I'll do that." Hardly noticing, he went on scratching.
Watching him made Hamnet scratch, too, the way someone else yawning might make him do the same. And once he started scratching, he also went right on. "You wizards don't have a sorcerous cure for bugs, eh?" he said.
"Not one that does much good," Audun Gilli said mournfully. "If we did, we'd be richer than we are, I'll tell you that."
Hamnet Thyssen scratched some more—thoughtfully at first, and then just because scratching felt good. "Speaking of rich . . . Meaning no offense, but Ulric Skakki found you in the gutter. How do you aim to buy your soap and your soak and your brush?"
Now Audun Gilli looked appalled. "Won't the Emperor pay us, reward us, for going beyond the Glacier in his name?"
"Well, I don't know." Hamnet made his hand stop scratching, lest he rub himself raw. It wasn't easy. He went on, "He may think we can live on fame." He could himself. Eyvind Torfinn could, easily. Jesper Fletti and the other guardsmen would go back to the duty they'd had before setting out. Ulric Skakki? Count Hamnet didn't know how much Ulric had stashed away, but Ulric was enough like a cat to be able to land on his feet no matter what happened.
Audun Gilli. . . wasn't. "I hope you're wrong," he said in what had to be one of the most desperately tense understatements of all time. "Times were . . . hard for me before I started this journey."
"I know," Hamnet said. "No matter what, you have a story people will want to hear, likely a story people will pay to hear. That will help you carry on your trade, too. You'll be a known man, even a famous man."
"Do you think that will stop me from ending up in the gutter again?" Audun asked. It was a serious question; he sounded as if he really wanted to know.
"Well, I can't answer that. Only you can," Hamnet Thyssen said. "If you can't keep yourself out of the gutter, who else will?"
"I suppose you're right." Audun Gilli sighed, almost as wearily as Liv had the night before. "I don't know whether it's good news or bad, though. Well, I expect I'll find out." As the Bizogot shaman's had, his breath filled the air with fog.
The travelers hadn't left winter behind. The wind didn't howl so hard on this side of the Glacier, but the cold still reached into Hamnet Thyssen's bones in spite of the furs that muffled him.
"Before long, we should run into bands of my folk and their herds," Trasamund said. "It will good to see my clansmen's faces again. It will be good to see the faces of the women, too," he added in a different tone of voice. Gudrid's back stiffened.
They started to run low on meat. Things might have got serious if they hadn't come upon a herd of musk oxen. Ulric Skakki slew one bull with an arrow through the eye, a perfect shot that dropped the big beast in its tracks.
"You couldn't do that again in a hundred years," Jesper Fletti said as they started the gory job of butchery.
Ulric studied him with a mild and speculative gaze. "Would you like me to try?" he asked in a voice so mild that no one could possibly take offense at it. Despite that mildness, Jesper was quick to shake his head. Maybe he didn't think Ulric was talking about shooting musk oxen. Hamnet Thyssen certainly didn't.
They gorged themselves on the meat once they cut it off the bones. People needed much more food in this climate just to fight the cold. Hamnet Thyssen was amazed at how much half-scorched, half-raw flesh he put away. It was as if he were doing hard physical labor even while only riding. When he actually did have to work hard ... he needed even more.
The horses were in worse shape than their riders. They had trouble finding enough fodder under the snow. When one of them went down and would not rise, Trasamund knocked it over the head. The travelers butchered it as they'd butchered the musk ox. Hamnet had eaten horse before after similar misfortunes. It was chewy, almost gluey, but ever so much better than nothing.
Chewing—and chewing, and chewing—Eyvind Torfinn smiled wryly. "I don't believe my cook down in Nidaros has any recipes for this particular meat."
"I hope he doesn't," Gudrid said.
"It may not be wonderful food," Ulric Skakki said, "but any food is better than going hungry."
"All Bizogots know this, for we know how hard life can be when winter clamps down," Trasamund said. "I was not sure a man from the south, where you have bread and grain as a cushion against bad times, would understand it."
"I've been hungry a time or two, your Ferocity," Ulric answered. "Believe me, having food is better."
"To food!" Trasamund said. "A toast I will make in earnest when I can."
After they ate, they rode. Hamnet Thyssen had never spent so much time in the saddle before this journey. He wondered if he was growing bowlegged, the better to fit his shape to the horse's. He also wondered how long he would be able to go on riding. If the horses kept getting weaker, he and the other travelers might have to dismount and lead them. They might have to slaughter them one by one. The thought of more meals like the one he'd just eaten did not appeal. He patted the side of his mount's neck.
"Sizing up how tender the beast will be when the time comes to roast it?" Ulric Skakki asked.
"God, don't listen to this man!" Hamnet Thyssen exclaimed.
Ulric laughed. "Can't say as I blame you. Not the finest supper I've ever got down. But swallowing anything is better than not."
"Some people will certainly swallow anything," Count Hamnet said.
That drew another laugh from Ulric Skakki. "You're in a cheerful mood, aren't you, your Grace?" These days, he used Hamnet s title only for sardonic effect. They'd all traveled too far with one another for the formalities to matter any more.
"No." Hamnet wasn't laughing. "We've come an awfully long way. I'd hate to see us fall just short of getting back to ... to Trasamund's clan." He almost said, Back to civilization. No matter how far he'd come, no matter what he'd seen, he wasn't about to confuse the way the Bizogots lived with civilization.
By Ulric Skakki's mischievous grin, he had a pretty good notion of what Count Hamnet didn't say. With his pointed nose and narrow, foxy eyes, he was good at sniffing his way past all kinds of deceptions and evasions. "Better to have the Bizogots with us than against us," he said, and Count Hamnet could hardly quarrel with that. Then, looking even more sly than usual, Ulric added, "You've got one Bizogot on your side, all right."
Hamnet refused to rise to the bait. "You already teased me about that. If you do it over and over again, people will say you're boring."
"People? What do people know?" Ulric said. "Or did you mean the Rulers? They know everything—and if you don't believe me, you can bloody well ask them."
"I don't want to ask them anything. I hope I never see them again." Ham-net Thyssen feared that was a forlorn hope.
"Now that you mention it, so do I." But Ulric sounded no more hopeful than Hamnet. He looked to the east and to the west. The Glacier still loomed tall on both horizons, but a broad expanse of land lay between the two walls of ice—the Gap was widening out. Then Ulric Skakki stared south. "I never want to see the Rulers again, no, but I wouldn't mind meeting a Bizogot besides our ferocious jarl and the admittedly charming Liv."
"Neither would I," Hamnet allowed. "We're far enough south that we could any day now."
"There is some small difference between could and will," Ulric said. "You may perhaps have noticed."
"Why, no." Hamnet tried to play the game of irony himself. "Explain it to me, if you'd be so kind."
One of Ulric's gingery eyebrows rose. "I could say you're being difficult. I will say you're doing it on purpose."
"Very neat," Hamnet said with a mounted bow. "You should be a scholar."
"Thank you, but no," Ulric Skakki said. "No silver in it."
"Oh, I don't know. Look at Earl Eyvind." Hamnet Thyssen did look at him. Eyvind Torfinn was talking earnestly with Gudrid. For the moment, playing a subdued, demure wife seemed to suit her.