When the horse went over, Gudrid had jumped or been thrown clear. But she wasn't running. Was she paralyzed with fear, or had she hurt herself? Hamnet couldn't begin to guess. It hardly mattered. She was easier to kill than a kicking, thrashing horse. Before long, the bear would figure that out.
Hamnet Thyssen shouted at the top of his lungs. The short-faced bear ignored him. It started eating the horse before the other animal was even dead. If dinner kicked and squirmed and screamed, so what? The bear's muzzle was crimson almost to the eyes. How close to starving was it?
And if it did pay attention to Hamnet and his onrushing horse, what would it do? Run off? He hoped so. Suppose it didn't. Suppose it went for his horse—and him—instead. What would he do then? Think of something fast, he told himself. He'd be on the bear in another few heartbeats.
An arrow hissed past his head—someone had managed to string his bow, or perhaps was traveling with it strung. The shaft thudded into the short-faced bear's hindquarters. That got the beast's attention, where Ham-net's shout hadn't. The bear jumped and reared and roared again, this time in pain and surprise rather than in fury.
As it reared, he swung his sword. The stroke wasn't perfect. He'd intended to strike its muzzle and badly wound it, and all he managed to do was shear off the tip of one ear. Then his horse thundered past. He tugged hard on the reins and guided the horse around with pressure from his knees and thighs. If he had to make another pass at the bear, he would.
He didn't. Two wounds at opposite ends were more than enough for the animal. With a final snarl, it limped off into the forest again. It left a trail of blood behind. Had Hamnet wanted to hunt it down, he would have had an easy time tracking it. He was content to let it go.
"Bravely done!" Ulric Skakki called. He had an arrow nocked and ready to shoot, so Hamnet supposed he'd let fly with the first one. He didn't shoot again as the bear withdrew; like Hamnet, he thought driving it off counted for more than killing it. With a wry grin, he added, "Foolhardy, maybe, but bravely done."
Looking back on things, Hamnet thought he was foolhardy, too. But he'd got away with it. "Are you all right?" he called to Gudrid.
"That horrible monster didn't eat me, so I'm a lot better than I might be. I hurt my ankle when I went off the horse, though." She looked up at him from the snow. "You're the last person I expected to come riding up and save me."
The same thing had gone through his mind while he was booting his horse forward. Shrugging, he said, "I would have done it for anyone. I would have done it for the horse, come to that."
"Nice to know where I stand—er, sprawl," Gudrid said. "What's worse is, I believe you."
"Do you think the ankle's broken or sprained or just twisted?" Hamnet asked.
"I don't know. I think it would hurt more if it were broken, but I never broke one before, so how can I be sure?" Gudrid eyed him again. "Do you want to feel it and find out? God knows you've wanted to get your hands on me again for long enough now."
"Around your neck, maybe," Hamnet Thyssen said grimly. "Around your ankle? No, thanks. Somebody else can check." The poor horse still writhed feebly. He dismounted, bent beside it, and cut its throat—the last favor he could give it. The horse let out a sigh that sounded amazingly human and died.
Trasamund rode up. He glanced at the horse. "Well, the bear didn't get a whole lot," he said. "It can feed us now." Bizogots didn't waste much— didn't waste anything if they could help it. The jarl pointed to Gudrid. "How bad is she hurt?"
"I don't know," Hamnet answered. "Enough so she couldn't run, anyhow. Do you want to see if that ankle's broken?"
"Well, why not?" Trasamund leered. The way he prodded and tugged at Gudrid's ankle was all business, though. She gasped a couple of times, but she didn't scream or burst into tears or even swear. Trasamund looked up from his work. "I think it's sound, but she should lie on her back for a while when she—Mmpf!" Gudrid threw a snowball in his face.
"Serves you right, you nasty man," she said. Trasamund scrabbled at himself. Even after he got rid of some of the snow, he still looked like a frozen ghost.
Hamnet Thyssen turned away so neither Gudrid nor Trasamund would see him laugh. He still had little use for his former wife. He didn't think he ever would. But she had a point—that snowball did serve Trasamund right.
When they came out of the northern forests, the sun was shining brightly. The weather wasn't warm, not by Hamnet s standards, but it was above freezing. Some of the snow on the ground had turned to slush. Some had even melted, exposing patches of bare black earth. They weren't on the Great North Road, but somewhere to the west of it.
Liv laughed out loud. She threw back her hood to let the sun shine on her head. "A thaw in wintertime!" she said. "Who would believe that up in Three Tusk country? Why, the Breath of God hardly blows at all here."
"When it blows, it can blow hard," Hamnet said. Liv laughed again, right in his face. He held up a hand. "Oh, it can. Believe me—it can. Not the way it will in your country at the worst, but bad enough. The difference is, it doesn't blow all the time here. This is about as far north as south winds can reach during the winter."
"South winds in the winter?" A smile bright as the sun, and much warmer, still lit Liv's face. It might have been the funniest thing she'd ever heard. "In the winter, in Three Tusk country, there is no wind. Or, more often, there is the Breath of God." She gave a melodramatic shiver. "Now you have met the Breath of God in truth."
"A lazy wind," Hamnet Thyssen agreed gravely.
"Lazy?" Liv started to scorch him, but then very visibly checked herself. "Wait. You mean something by that. Tell me what."
"What we call a lazy wind is one that blows straight through you because going around is too much bother."
"Ah." She thought it over. After a few heartbeats, her smile came back— she must have decided she liked it. "Truth. That is a truth. Has Trasamund heard it?"
"I don't know," Hamnet answered. "If he has, he hasn't heard it from me."
Liv called to the jarl. "What is it?" Trasamund rumbled.
"Do you know what a lazy wind is?" Liv asked.
"Is that what happens when Jesper Fletti talks?" Trasamund said with a sly grin. Jesper wasn't close enough to hear himself slandered. If he had been, if he'd chosen to take offense .. . Count Hamnet would have bet on Trasamund in a fight.
Liv made a face at her clan chief. "No," she said when they got done scowling at each other. She told him what a lazy wind was.
He weighed it. Then he nodded. "Not bad. No, not bad at all. The Raumsdalians don't lack for wit—no one would ever say they did. Some other things, maybe, but never wit. I wouldn't have come down to Nidaros for help with the Golden Shrine if I thought different." Even on that relatively warm day, steam surged from his lungs when he sighed. "Turned out we didn't need help with the Golden Shrine after all."
"Not this trip," Hamnet Thyssen said. "But chances are we'll go beyond the Glacier again. It may be there. If it is, Eyvind Torfinn knows more about it than any other man alive."
"Eyvind Torfinn knows all sorts of things," Trasamund allowed. Then he spoiled it by asking, "So why doesn't he know his wife disgraces him whenever she pleases?"
"Maybe he doesn't choose to look," Hamnet said. "That can happen, especially when a man who isn't so young has a wife who isn't so old. Or maybe he doesn't care."
"Doesn't care? Do you say he has no ballocks at all, then?" Trasamund demanded.
Count Hamnet shook his head. "No. I wondered about that myself before I got to know him on this journey, but no. He isn't a warrior—he doesn't pretend to be a warrior—but he's no craven, either."
"Well, then, what do you say?" Trasamund's frown was half anger, half incomprehension.
"That men and women and how they get along—or don't get along—are more complicated than you'd guess," Hamnet answered. "I won't judge Eyvind Torfinn, and I hope he won't judge me. Sometimes not judging someone is the biggest kindness you can do him—or her."
"It sounds very pretty," the Bizogot said. "Tell me this, then—do you not judge Gudrid?"
He was a boor, a brute, a barbarian. He was a shrewd boor, a clever brute, a sly barbarian. Hamnet Thyssen’s lips tightened. His hands also tightened on the reins, as if the leather straps were Trasamund's neck ... or possibly Gudrid's. He didn't want to answer the question, and didn't see how he could help it. "I judge her," he said after a pause he hoped wasn't too long. "Yes, I do. But just because I do, that doesn't mean someone else has to. If Eyvind Torfinn wants to, he may. If he chooses not to, who am I to tell him he should? Who are you?"
Trasamund opened his mouth. Someone who spread his wife's legs. That was what he was about to say, that or something like it. But at the last moment, instead of saying anything, he jerked his horse's head to one side and rode off.
"He shouldn't have put you through that," Liv said quietly.
"The only way I could make him stop was to kill him," Hamnet said with a shrug. "It isn't worth that. I've killed one man over Gudrid, but I was married to her then. Now? Now it's Earl Eyvind's worry, if he feels like worrying about it."
"How did it happen that you killed him?"
"About the way you'd expect. I found out he was bedding her. No room for doubt. No room to look away—I'd already done too much of that. We fought a duel. Swords. He would have killed me, too. You've seen that scar on my left arm, up near the shoulder, and the one that streaks my beard with white?"
She nodded. "Oh, yes."
"Ingjald gave me those. Ingjald Oddleif, his name was. But I killed him anyway. I was proud of myself. What a man I was! Gudrid acted like I had a cock the size of a bull mammoth's. For about a week, she acted that way. Then she went out and found somebody else to sleep with. She must have decided I wouldn't kill her."