“You can have it. Sunniulf said so.” The Bizogot eyed him. “You’re a foreigner. Don’t see many foreigners around here.”
“You will.” Hamnet Thyssen, Ulric Skakki, and Trasamund all said the same thing at the same time. The White Fox scratched his head again.
They killed the musk ox downwind from the herd, then butchered it as fast as they could. The speed of the job meant they left some meat behind that they might have taken otherwise. Clucking, the herders started stripping that flesh from the dead beast’s bones. The Three Tusk Bizogots and Red Dire Wolves and Raumsdalians left them to it. The refugees rode off. The Rulers wouldn’t be far behind.
Liv pointed ahead, towards the Glacier, which loomed higher on the horizon than it had a couple of days before. “You can really see what the avalanche did,” she said.
“You can, by God,” Hamnet Thyssen agreed. It looked as if the collapse had started near the top of the ice sheet and extended all the way down. The jumble of freshly exposed ice boulders was whiter and brighter than the older ice to either side. The Glacier didn’t rise straight up from the edge of the Bizogot steppe there, either; the slope was gentler, more gradual. “We might really be able to climb that if we had to.”
“We might, yes. But why would anyone want to?” Liv said.
Instead of looking ahead, Ulric Skakki looked behind them. Count Hamnet imitated him. Yes, the Rulers’ riding deer and war mammoths had come up over the horizon again. “If our lovely friends keep herding us in this direction, they may give us some reasons to think about it,” Ulric said.
Liv bared her teeth, not at him but at the idea. “Is escape to the top of the Glacier – if we could get there – escape at all?”
“We’ve talked about that before,” Hamnet said. “It depends on whether anything – and anyone – lives up there.”
“If anybody does, getting up to the top may not be escape,” Ulric Skakki said.
That made Hamnet bare his teeth, because it held too much truth and because he hadn’t thought of it. “God grant we don’t have to worry about that,” he said.
Liv nodded. Even cynical Ulric Skakki didn’t say no. Trasamund was the one who grunted and scowled. “God has turned his back on the Bizogots,” he said gloomily. “He pays us no mind, not anymore.”
“Well, if you feel that way, why not ride back to the Rulers and throw yourself at them?” Ulric asked. “You might get two or three before they kill you.”
“That is not revenge enough,” the jarl answered. “Two or three? Pah! I want to kill them all. And if God won’t help me, I’ll cursed well take care of it on my own.”
To Count Hamnet, that was on the edge of blasphemy. He didn’t say so; he understood what drove Trasamund to feel the way he did. And Ulric Skakki slapped Trasamund on the back, saying, “There’s the first sensible thing you’ve come out with since I don’t know when. Why don’t you do it more often?”
Trasamund said something about Ulric’s female ancestors concerning which he could have had no personal knowledge. At another time, it might have started a fight to the death. Now Ulric only laughed and slapped him on the back again. Trasamund said something even more incendiary. Ulric laughed harder.
“If the weather stays so warm, will we see more avalanches like this?” Hamnet asked.
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Liv answered. “We’ll probably start getting a meltwater lake up here, too, like Sudertorp Lake down in the Leaping Lynx country.”
“Yes, that makes sense,” Audun Gilli said. The wizard looked towards the sun, which was going down in the northwest – not far above the avalanche, in fact. “It stays light a long time in these parts, doesn’t it?”
Now Count Hamnet laughed at him. “You were up here last summer, too. You just noticed that?”
Audun smiled ruefully. “It does seem to matter more when the extra daylight means you’re likelier to get killed.”
Hamnet Thyssen grunted. A glance back over his shoulder said the Rulers were still there. A glance ahead said the sun wasn’t going down fast enough to suit him, either. “We’ll need to set plenty of sentries tonight, in case the Rulers try to hit us in the dark.”
“Sounds like something they’d do,” Trasamund growled.
“I would, too, if I thought it would work,” Ulric Skakki said. “Wouldn’t you?”
Trasamund didn’t answer, from which Count Hamnet concluded that he would but didn’t want to admit it to Ulric. The Bizogots and Raumsdalians rode on. Eventually, the sun did set and twilight did fade. On the other side of the Glacier, it was getting towards the season of the year where twilight lingered from sundown to sunup.
Setting fires seemed too great a risk. Raw musk-ox meat wasn’t Ham-net’s idea of a feast, but it was ever so much better than empty. He wolfed down a good-sized gobbet. So did Ulric. Audun Gilli looked revolted, but he ate, too. The Bizogots took raw meat in stride. They ate anything and everything.
The Three Tusk jarl sent Hamnet out to watch as soon as he was done eating. The gleam in Trasamund’s eye, even in the dark, had to mean he was waiting for the Raumsdalian noble to kick up a fuss. Hamnet went without a word. Did Trasamund sigh behind him? He didn’t turn around to look.
He did hope Liv would come out and keep him company while he stood sentry, but she didn’t. He didn’t get angry at that – she had to be wearier than he was – but it disappointed him.
Stars wheeled through the sky in circles set at a different angle from the one he knew down in the Empire. More of them stayed above the horizon all night long than was true in Nidaros. Somewhere off in the distance, a fox yipped at the half-goldpiece moon. Hamnet wondered if the yip was a signal, but it came from due west, a direction from which the Rulers were unlikely to attack. Sometimes a fox was only a fox.
When dire wolves off in the south started howling, Hamnet worried more. But nothing came of that, either. Jumpy tonight, aren’t you? he asked himself with a wry chuckle. Haven’t I earned the right? His answer formed as fast as the question.
He’d begun to wonder whether Trasamund intended him to watch till dawn when a Bizogot came out to take his place. “Anything?” the big, burly blond asked.
“Foxes. Dire wolves,” Hamnet Thyssen answered. “I didn’t see any Rulers or hear any signs of them. I didn’t see any owls, either.”
“Owls?” The Bizogot sounded puzzled.
“Their shamans spy on wings,” Hamnet said. His replacement grunted. Count Hamnet stumbled back towards the encampment, splashing through little pools and rills he didn’t see till too late. He might not have found the resting Bizogots if not for the whickering of their horses and then a small, sudden flare of witchlight.
That led him over to Liv and Audun Gilli, who were sitting close together on the ground and talking in low voices. Liv’s Raumsdalian, by now, was fairly fluent. Audun had learned some of the Bizogots’ tongue, and eked it out when he ran short, as he did now and again. They both looked up when Hamnet drew near.
“Oh, it’s you,” Audun said. “Anything out there?”
“Stars. Half a moon.” Hamnet pointed up to the sky, then waved. “A fox. Dire wolves howling. No Rulers, God be praised – the dire wolves were only wolves. No wizards in the shape of owls, or none that flew close enough for me to see.” Audun had asked the question in Raumsdalian, and Hamnet answered in the same language. His birthspeech felt strange in his mouth; even with Ulric, he’d been using the Bizogot tongue more often than not.
“I didn’t sense any spies,” Liv said, and Audun Gilli nodded. Liv went on, “I don’t know why they’d need them; we’re hardly worth worrying about anyway.”
That held more truth than Hamnet wished it did. “What was the little flash I saw when I was coming into camp?”
“I was showing Liv a spell for piercing illusions,” Audun Gilli answered. “The flash is sorcerous energy dissipating – think of it as steam rising when you boil soup.”
“Steam won’t betray us to the Rulers.” But Hamnet Thyssen relented before either Audun or Liv could complain. “I don’t suppose that little flash would, either, not unless they were already right on top of us.” He yawned. “With any luck at all, I’m going to sleep for a week between now and sunrise.”
With any luck at all, Liv would lie down beside him when he rolled himself in his blanket. With any luck at all, the two of them would lie under the same blanket. He was tired, yes, but not too tired for that. But all she said was, “Sleep well. I do want to learn this charm. It’s better than the one we use.”
Hamnet couldn’t very well say he wasn’t so sleepy as all that. With a martyred sigh – not that he hadn’t done it to himself – he did go off and lie down. Liv and Audun Gilli went on talking quietly. She laughed once, just before Hamnet would have dropped off. The sweet, familiar sound brought him back to wakefulness.
He wondered if he ought to be jealous. Of Audun? he thought, and laughed, too – at himself. Yes, the wizard and Liv had sorcery in common, but if he wasn’t a weed of a man, such a man had never sprouted. Liv, Hamnet Thyssen was comfortably certain, had better taste than that. He twisted and turned and did fall asleep.
Trasamund had to shake him awake. “Are you dead, or what?” the jarl rumbled. “Thought I’d need to kick you.”
“One of us would have been dead after that,” Hamnet Thyssen said. “I don’t think it would be me.”
“After we’ve beaten the Rulers, I’ll fight you if you want,” Trasamund said. “Till then, we’ve got other things to worry about.”
“Why, whatever could you mean?” Count Hamnet asked. The Bizogot’s answering laugh was sour as vinegar. Hamnet rolled up his blanket and ate another chunk of raw musk-ox meat. Then he climbed onto his horse. He hoped the poor animal wouldn’t give out.
Somewhere not nearly far enough away, the Rulers would be climbing onto their riding deer. Before long, they’d be trotting out after the Bizogots. They seemed as stubborn in the hunt as a pack of dire wolves. They kept pressing the quarry till it had nowhere to go. Hamnet Thyssen looked ahead towards the Glacier and the remains of the avalanche. Before long, that would hold true for him and his comrades, too.