"This one was a bear, and now he's dead," Trasamund said. "We still live, no matter how strange and dark he was, the son of a scut. And we'd better get up to the north and put a stop to the trouble the Rulers are causing."
Hamnet Thyssen wondered what Sigvat II would have done if he knew the Rulers were already inside the Empire. He laughed bitterly as he remounted. Seeing that the wizard or shaman or whatever he was had tried to kill him, Sigvat might have congratulated the fellow, or even ennobled him.
"Will the horse be all right?" Ulric asked. "We still might be able to buy you another one."
"I think he will," Hamnet said. "I think Trasamund s right, too. We need to get up to the Gap as fast as we can."
"Why?" Ulric Skakki said. "The Rulers are already here." On that cheery note, the travelers rode north again.
XXI
In the middle of winter, Hamnet Thyssen saw only a little difference ! between the Bizogot country and the Glacier farther north. Snow blanketed everything. On days when the sun shone, the reflections from all that white could dazzle and overwhelm the eye. Trasamund and Liv had no goggles, but rubbed streaks of ash from a campfire under their eyes to cut the glare. Before long, the Raumsdalians with them started doing the same thing. It was ugly, but it helped.
"I'm wearing musk-ox dung." Ulric Skakki sounded more cheerful than he had any business being.
"Well, we've been eating it whenever we cook up here," Hamnet said. "Why not wear it, too?"
"I wish you hadn't reminded me," Audun Gilli said.
"I wish for all kinds of things that won't come true—good sense from the Emperor, for instance," Ulric said. "What's one more wasted wish?"
Hamnet Thyssen looked around, as if to see who might have overheard Ulric. Down in Raumsdalia, someone could have betrayed him to the Emperor's servants, in which case he would not have a happy time of it. Up here, he was among friends, and had the sense to realize it before Hamnet did.
Trasamund saw the Raumsdalian's glance, and knew what it meant. "No spies up here, your Grace," he said. "No informers. You're in Bizogot country again. You're in the free lands. Breathe deep. Breathe free."
"What if someone back in the Three Tusk clan has been talking about you behind your back, your Ferocity?" Ulric Skakki asked in his most innocent tones.
Beneath the dirt and ashes on his face, Trasamund turned red. "If I hear about it, I'll knock the son of a mammoth turd's teeth out!" he growled.
"Welcome to the free lands. Welcome to Bizogot country," Ulric said.
"And what's that supposed to mean?" the jarl demanded.
"What do you think it means?" Ulric asked.
"I think it means you're making fun of me on the sly, you Raumsdalian hound," Trasamund said, and he wasn't wrong. "Didn't I ask you when you chose to come north if you would obey me?"
"How am I disobeying you? Did you ever tell me not to make fun of you? Did you ever tell me not to make fun of silly ideas?" Ulric sounded mild, which didn't mean he wasn't serious.
"If you obey, you have to respect. You are not respecting," Trasamund said.
Ulric Skakki went to his knees before the jarl. Then he went to his belly, knocking his forehead in the snow. "Your Ferocity! Your Wonderfulness!" he cried. "Your Highness! Your Majesty! Your exalted Magnificence! May I please be allowed to kiss some of the musk-ox dung from the sole of your boot?"
Liv giggled helplessly. That meant Trasamund's venomous glaze divided itself between Ulric and her, and lost some of its effect. He stirred Ulric with the toe of his—with luck—clean boot. "Get up, you fool. Give me the respect I deserve, not this stupid show of more."
"I was trying to do that." The adventurer brushed snow off his front. "You didn't seem to like it very well, either."
"No one likes to be made fun of," Trasamund said accurately.
"Well, your Ferocity, if you say something silly, can't I let you know I think it's silly?" Ulric Skakki asked. "If I can't, what's your famous Bizogot freedom worth? I might as well have stayed in the Empire after all."
Trasamund started to answer, then stopped. This time, Ulric got the full force of his glare. He seemed to have no trouble enduring it. "You twist things up," Trasamund complained. "I am the jarl. I know what I can do, and I know what I am not supposed to do. And I know what my clansfolk can do, too. You go past that."
"He is a foreigner, your Ferocity," Liv said. "He did not suck in our ways with his mother's milk."
"Do you follow all our Raumsdalian customs when you come down into the Empire?" Hamnet Thyssen added. "I don't think so."
"Maybe not," Trasamund said. "But I don't dance on them for the sport of it, either. Ulric was trying to pull my prong for the sport of it. I won't put up with that." A Raumsdalian would have talked about getting his leg pulled. As usual, the Bizogot idiom was gamier.
And the jarl was probably right. Ulric Skakki did make trouble for no better reason than that he liked making trouble. He'd certainly annoyed Count Hamnet more than once. Now he said, "I'll be mild as milk. You can rely on it."
"You'll be as mild as smetyn, and like smetyn you'll make everyone around you wild," Trasamund predicted. "The only reason I tell you to come along is the hope you will madden the Rulers more than the Three Tusk clan."
"That's good enough," Ulric Skakki said cheerfully, and on they went.
The Breath of God reached down to Raumsdalia in the winter. Ham-net Thyssen thought he knew what blizzards could do. After the first couple he went through on the plains, he owned himself an amateur.
He was as warmly dressed as any man could be, in furs with mittens on his hands and baggy felt boots with more loose felt in them on his feet. Only his eyes showed. His hood came down low on his forehead. A thick musk-ox wool scarf covered his nose and mouth. When snow came roaring down from the north riding a wind almost strong enough to knock a man off his feet, it hardly seemed to matter.
Trasamund and Liv took being out and about in such weather for granted. "We're still a long way from the Glacier," Liv screamed in Hamnet's ear, that being the only way to make herself heard through the wind's howls. "This is nothing."
"It seems like something to me," he shouted back. Her eyes showed amusement, or he thought they did. When they were the only part of her he could see, he had trouble being sure.
It was blowing too hard for them to hope to set up their tents when they stopped for the evening. Trasamund and Liv started making snow huts, lumping snow into blocks and building inward to form a dome. They left a tiny opening in the roof to let smoke out. The entrance faced south and had a dogleg to break the force of the wind.
"What about the horses?" Audun Gilli asked.
But the Bizogots were already piling up more snow blocks into a windbreak. Liv used a little magic to melt some snow on the ground and let it re-freeze as ice around the poles she used to tether the horses. "They won't be able to go anywhere," she said confidently.
"Suppose bears come? Or wolves? What do we do then?" Audun asked.
"We walk," Trasamund answered with withering scorn. The idea didn't seem to worry him. It worried Hamnet Thyssen, but he didn't say anything about it. What could he say? The wizard also kept quiet.
No one said anything about how the travelers would occupy the snow huts, either. But Hamnet and Liv ended up in one, with the other two Raumsdalians and Trasamund in the other. Just getting out of the ravening wind made Hamnet feel warmer. He fumbled for flint and steel in the darkness inside. He had a little leather pouch with tinder in it on his belt. The sooner he got a fire going, the happier he would be.
Liv did it before him. A few murmured words were enough to set a lamp alight. He gave her a seated bow. "Handy traveling with a shaman," he said.
"Up here, any Bizogot will know that spell," she said. "We need it too often, and not knowing it can kill."
"Can Bizogots who aren't shamans work it?" Hamnet asked. "Is the power in the spell or in the spellcaster?"
"This spell works most of the time for most people," Liv answered. "Whether that means most people have some power or the spell itself is strong ... I don't know. I never thought about it."
Most of the time, Hamnet wouldn't have thought about it, either. It was the kind of question more likely to interest Eyvind Torfinn. But here, in the snow hut, fire was naturally on his mind. He and Liv didn't need much of a blaze. The heat from their bodies warmed the cramped space surprisingly well. The lamp gave more light than heat.
Liv even had a chunk of musk-ox meat with her. As she sliced off frozen strips, she sent Hamnet a sly look. "Can you eat raw meat?"