"No, I suppose not," Hamnet said. "Now I've seen how you live. Don't you want to come down to the Empire and find out what life is like there? You wouldn't have to stay. I don't think I'll stay forever myself." He drummed his fingers on the outside of his thigh. "I don't think the Rulers will let me peacefully stay there."
Liv bit her lip. "Part of me would like to, but... I don't know. It's a far country, far away and very strange."
"You went through the Gap. You went beyond the Glacier." Hamnet gestured toward the towering ice mountains that shaped the northern horizon. "After that, what is the journey to the Empire? A stroll, a nothing. The way south gets easier, not harder."
She shook her head. "The travel might not be hard. The travel probably isn't hard. But when I went beyond the Glacier, I was still myself. What would I be when I came to the Empire? Nothing but a barbarian." She spoke the last word in the Raumsdalian she was slowly learning.
"If anyone calls you a barbarian, turn him into a lemming," Hamnet Thyssen said. "That will teach the next fool to mind his manners. Or if it doesn't, he's a big enough fool to deserve being a lemming."
"You don't understand." Liv sounded almost desperate. "Chances are no one will call me a barbarian to my face. You people don't come out and say the things you think the way we do. But you think them whether you say them or not—and what can I do about that?"
Count Hamnet grunted. She wasn't wrong. Raumsdalians did think Bizogots were barbarians. He thought so himself. He had good reasons for thinking so. He also had good reasons for making exceptions now and again—as with this shaman with tears standing in her eyes. Would his countrymen make those kinds of exceptions? He feared not.
And what he feared must have shown on his face, for Liv said, "You see? It would be the way I told you." She started to turn away, then looked back at him in angry defiance. "Give me one good reason why I should go down to the Empire. A good reason, I tell you."
She was afraid. He could see that, but for a moment he could find no reasons anyhow, not reasons of the kind she meant. Then he did—and in finding one he discovered Liv was not the only one who could be afraid on this cold autumn morning. If he told her what the reason was .. . But he would lose her if he didn't. He could see that.
Even so, his heard pounded like a kettledrum in his chest as he answered, "Because I love you."
Her eyes widened. Maybe she had some small idea of how hard that was for him to say. She couldn't possibly know all of it, not unless she knew everything about him and Gudrid. Even not knowing everything, she said, "You look as if that was harder than going into battle."
"Maybe it was," Hamnet said.
"How could it be?"
"In a battle, all they can do is kill you. If you love someone and it goes wrong, you spend years wishing you were dead." Hamnet knew how true that was.
"You mean it," Liv said, wonder in her voice.
"I usually mean what I say," he answered. "I meant what I said when I told you I loved you, too. And I meant what I said when I told you I wanted you to come down to the Empire with me. Will you?"
"I don't know," she said, which made him want to shout in frustration. He made himself keep quiet; if he pushed too hard, he would push her away. He could feel that. Instead of pushing, he waited. Slowly, she went on, "But I don't see how I can say no, not with things the way they are, not when I love you, too."
"Ah," he said—a small sound, one that didn't come close to showing how his heart exploded in rainbow delight.
Liv's nod was altogether serious. "Yes," she said. "I do. And because I do, it seems only right I should go south. You've seen how Bizogots live, I should at least see your way, too." She made it sound only reasonable. Hamnet was much too glad to care how it sounded.
XVI
Setting out across the broad plains of the Bizogot country with winter's frozen fingers gripping tighter every day should have chilled Hamnet's heart. It should have, but it didn't.
Snow and sleet and likely hunger and Bizogots who couldn't stand Raumsdalians or the Three Tusk clan or both at once? Hamnet Thyssen didn't worry. Not worrying felt strange, unnatural, almost perverse. All the same, he didn't. He was with someone who mattered to him more than all the possible worries put together.
"I hardly know you with that smile on your face," Ulric Skakki said.
"Ah, well," said Hamnet, who hardly knew himself. "With this smile on my face, I hardly know you, either."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Ulric asked.
"Just what it said, and not a bit more," Count Hamnet answered. Ulric Skakki rode off shaking his head, which suited Hamnet fine.
Gudrid left him alone at the start of the journey south from the Three Tusk clan's encampment, which suited him fine. He waited for her to try to find some way to make him less happy, as she'd done whenever she caught him smiling after she left him.
He’d always stolidly pretended not to care about her, never with much success. Now, though, he truly didn't, an armor he'd never enjoyed before. He was tempted to flaunt his happiness with Liv to get Gudrid's goat.
He wouldn't have minded revenge; Gudrid had put him through too much to leave him immune to its charms. But what he wanted even more was freedom from the hooks she'd set in his soul. She'd been harder to break away from than poppy juice, mostly because he'd always wanted her back more than he'd wanted her to go away and leave him alone.
She couldn't go away now, not till they got back to Nidaros. She could keep on leaving him alone, though. He wanted no more from her—and no less.
But not long after he found what he wanted, Gudrid suddenly decided she couldn't stay away from him. It would have been funny ... if he didn't have so much trouble keeping his hand off the hilt of his sword.
She guided her horse alongside his as they rode south. When he made as if to steer his mount away from her, she stayed with him. "So slumming makes you happy, does it?" she asked.
He looked at her—looked through her, really. "No, I didn't end up happy with you," he replied.
Gudrid laughed. "If you were half as funny as you think you are, you'd be twice as funny as you really are."
"If you don't care for my conversation, you're welcome to find someone else to annoy," Hamnet Thyssen said.
"Here I try to give you good advice, and this is the thanks I get." Gudrid sounded convincingly wounded—but not convincingly enough.
"The only good advice you'd give me is which poison to take and how to jump off a cliff," Count Hamnet said.
"Oh, I expect you can figure out that sort of thing for yourself." Gudrid pulled off a mitten for a moment so she could flutter her fingers at him. "You're clever about matters like that. It's people you have trouble with."
"No doubt," Hamnet Thyssen said. "Look how long I put up with you."
"Just so," Gudrid said placidly as she returned the mitten to her hand. "What makes you think you'll do any better this time around?"
"Well, I could scarcely do worse, could I?" Hamnet said.
"You never know, not till it happens."
"I'll take my chances," Hamnet said. "Why don't you go back to telling Eyvind Torfinn what to do? He's your sport these days, isn't he?"
"You're more amusing, though. It's harder to make him angry."
"I'm sure you could manage if you set your mind—or something—to it."
"Meow," she said. "Jealousy doesn't become you."
"I'm not jealous of Eyvind Torfinn." Hamnet listened to himself. It was true. He wasn't jealous. It so surprised him, he said it again: "I'm not jealous of Eyvind Torfinn, by God. If he wants you so much, he's welcome to you."
Gudrid stared. She must have heard the conviction in his voice, and it must have surprised her as much as it surprised him. She yanked hard at her horse's reins. The luckless beast snorted as she jerked its head away and rode off.
Hamnet Thyssen went on alone for some little while after that. For the time being, he was free from the longing for what once had been. He wasn't sure she entirely believed that, even now, but she would surely begin to suspect it might be so. And when she decided it was .. . What would she do then?