Breath of God

XVII

The innkeeper was carving a roast goose when Hamnet Thyssen and Kormak Bersi walked into the taproom. “Oh. You two,” he said, looking up from his work. “Your friends aren’t here anymore.”

“Where are they?” Hamnet hoped he kept the alarm from his voice, but he wasn’t sure. Would Sigvat do something really monstrous like releasing him while arresting Ulric Skakki and Audun Gilli and the Bizogots? Maybe the Emperor would think that was funny, not monstrous.

“They all went to what s-his-name’s house a few days ago,” the innkeeper replied.

Valiantly resisting the impulse to pick up the goose carcass and crown the fellow with it, Count Hamnet asked, “Whose house?”

“What’s-his-name’s,” the innkeeper repeated, and Hamnet did take a step towards the steaming, juicy bird on its pewter platter. But then the man went on, “Old foof. White beard. Kind of a big belly. Throws big words around.”

“You know this guy?” Kormak asked.

“Eyvind Torfinn,” Hamnet said, aiming the words at the innkeeper and the agent both and so turning them into half a question.

Both men nodded. “That’s him,” the innkeeper said. “You know where he lives? You better, if you’re after your pals, cause I sure don’t.”

“As a matter of fact, it’s not too far from here, which is nothing but luck.” Hamnet Thyssen paused. “Did somebody take my gear out of my room?”

must have, because it’s sure not there now,” the innkeeper said. “Don’t know if it was your pals, though.”

“Thanks,” Hamnet said dryly. Had Ulric or Audun or Liv remembered his sackful of chattels? Or had the innkeeper made them disappear? Count Hamnet couldn’t imagine that the fellow would leave them around for some new lodger to find.

He went out into the cold again, Kormak Bersi at his heels. It wasn’t much warmer than it would have been on the Bizogot steppe, if at all. The big difference was, it got cold sooner on the steppe, stayed cold longer, and rarely warmed up in between times. The Breath of God dominated winter there. It did the same here a lot of times, but not always. Here in Nidaros, other, warmer winds warred with it.

“So where is this foof’s place?” Kormak asked, breath-fog streaming from his mouth and nose with the words.

“Here on the west side, on the higher ground closer to the palace,” Hamnet answered. “His terrace looks out on the farm country that used to be at the bottom of Hevring Lake.”

“This time of year, he’s welcome to his stinking terrace,” Kormak said with an exaggerated shiver. Hamnet Thyssen nodded. He wouldn’t have wanted to stand around freezing his nose off, either. Kormak went on, “Well, we might as well go there. Can’t very well get started if we don’t.”

“No, I guess not.” Count Hamnet would almost rather have faced the Rulers in battle than gone to Earl Eyvind’s home. The Rulers were honest enemies. Eyvind Torfinn was, or acted like, a friend. Facing Gudrid. . .

A grim smile spread across his face. It might not be so bad. He could tell her Sigvat wouldn’t let her trouble him when he went north again. That was worth something, anyhow.

“Where exactly is this place?” Kormak Bersi asked after they’d wandered for a while.

“I’ll find it,” Hamnet said. And, after one more false start, he did.

Eyvind’s house was almost as big as the castle Count Hamnet wondered if he’d ever see again. Hamnet knew the older noble had about as many servitors, too. And books took up the space servants didn’t. Hamnet could read and write. He even enjoyed reading now and again. But Eyvind Torfinn’s collection would probably take more than a year to read through, even if you read for a couple of hours a day. Hamnet had trouble understanding why anyone would surround himself with so many words.

And Eyvind’s got Gudrid, too, he thought sourly. That really means he has no time for words of his own.

Kormak Bersi couldn’t have known what was in his mind. The imperial agent set a mittened hand on the door knocker and rapped four times. Had he seized the brass knocker with fingers and palm uncovered, he would have left skin behind when he let go.

A panel above the knocker slid back behind a grate much like the ones on dungeon doors. Hamnet Thyssen and Kormak looked at each other, without any doubt sharing the same thought.

The eyes behind the grate widened. “You!” a male voice exclaimed. The panel slammed shut. To Hamnet s annoyance, the door didn’t open. Instead, he heard running footsteps and that same voice shouting, “Earl Eyvind! Earl Eyvind! Thyssen’s here!”

“Well?” Kormak said. “Is he going to let us in or drop boiling oil on our heads?”

Count Hamnet looked up. There was a murder hole above the entrance. Eyvind Torfinn and his servants could do that if they wanted to. Hamnet wasn’t so sure Sigvat wouldn’t thank them, too, even if the Emperor had turned him loose.

No boiling oil, no hot water, no heated sand came from above. A few minutes later, the door did open. Instead of Eyvind Torfinn’s majordomo, there stood Ulric Skakki, the usual mocking grin playing across his lips. “Well, well,” the adventurer said. “Look what the scavengers dug up and left on our doorstep.”

“Is that an invitation, or shall we just go away?” Hamnet asked.

Ulric made as if to close the door in his face. Hamnet Thyssen made as if to draw his sword. They both grinned, and then stepped forward and embraced. Ulric also thumped Kormak on the shoulder. “You two may as well come in,” he said. “I already bothered to open the door.”

“Sorry to put you to the trouble,” Hamnet said, and Ulric’s grin got wider.

“If you are going to let them in, do it, by God,” the officious servitor said from behind Ulric. “Think how much heat you’re letting out standing there gabbing with the door open.”

Hamnet and Kormak hurried inside. Ulric Skakki closed the door after them. Earl Eyvind’s servant might have been grouchy, but plenty of people in Nidaros would have voiced the same complaint. Heat, in wintertime, was always a serious business, even for the rich.

“You’ll take us to Eyvind?” Hamnet asked.

Ulric shook his head. “No, of course not. I was going to bring you to Gudrid. I’m sure you have so much to tell each other.”

“That’s not even funny as a joke,” Count Hamnet growled.

“Well, maybe not,” Ulric allowed. “You have my apology, for whatever you think it’s worth.”

“I’m sure it’s worth its weight in gold,” Hamnet said. Ulric started to nod, then broke off with a quizzical expression on his face. Kormak Bersi also looked bemused.

Earl Eyvind waited in the best-appointed study Hamnet had ever seen. It had a lot of books and a desk with a south-facing window. Few houses anywhere in the Empire had a window that looked north. The Breath of God militated against that. Several lamps and candles made the room bright even when the weather turned too harsh to leave the shutters over the window open.

Heaving himself to his feet, Eyvind Torfinn said, “Good to see you, by God.”

“Good to be seen, Your Splendor.” Hamnet Thyssen clasped Eyvind’s hand. “And I think I have a lot to thank you for.”

“My pleasure, Your Grace – please believe me,” Eyvind said.

Kormak coughed. Hamnet introduced him to Eyvind Torfinn. “I also owe you a lot, Your Splendor,” the agent said.

“Don’t worry about it,” Eyvind Torfinn said. “Don’t worry about anything. Are you hungry? Are you thirsty? We can fix it if you are.”

“His Majesty fed and watered us,” Hamnet answered. “Now he’s going to turn me loose against the Rulers. Amazing what getting an army pounded to pieces will do, isn’t it?”

“Possibly. Possibly. I dare hope he would have let you go even absent a defeat,” Earl Eyvind said. “I bent my efforts towards that end, I assure you.”

“I’m grateful,” Hamnet said, “and all the more so because …” His voice trailed away. He didn’t want to talk about Gudrid with her current husband. He never had wanted to do anything like that. Just thinking about it made him acutely uncomfortable.

But Eyvind Torfinn understood what he didn’t say. With some embarrassment, the older man said, “These things happen, you know.” Did he mean his marriage to the woman who had been Hamnet s wife? Or did he mean that Gudrid had hoped Hamnet would rot in the dungeon? Or both at once? That would have been Hamnet s guess.

“Oh, yes. They do indeed,” he said in a voice like stone. Were Audun Gilli and Liv sharing a bedchamber in Eyvind’s home? How could they be doing anything else?And where does that leave me? Alone.

He knew the answer. He knew it, and he hated it. Spacious though this place was, it would be far more crowded than an inn. And that would only make him feel more lonely, because he would be here without anybody. Next to solitude in the midst of a crowd, going off and fighting the Rulers seemed easy. While he was on campaign, he would have so much time to think, so much time to brood. He could hope he wouldn’t, anyhow.

“Is that woman Marcovefa, the one who speaks the strange dialect… Is she really from a tribe atop the Glacier?” Eyvind Torfinn had naturally noticed her.

“Oh, yes.” Count Hamnet nodded. “Do you understand her?”

“Not so well as I wish I did, but well enough. Some of the Bizogots who live near the western mountains talk the way she does,” the scholarly earl replied. Ulric Skakki had said the same thing, but Ulric had lived among those clans. Eyvind, as far as Hamnet Thyssen knew, had just studied them. However he knew what he knew, he did know it.

“If you can follow her language, can you follow why her magic is so strong?” Count Hamnet asked.

“Well, I haven’t seen much of it with my own eyes, you understand, so anything I know of it is at second hand,” Eyvind answered. “I’d only be guessing, and my guess would be that her sorcery is strong because her folk don’t have much else. If they need to do something up there, they have to do it with spells. I gather they don’t know how to smelt metal any more. They have no crops. They don’t even have large beasts to tame. What does that leave them but wizardry?”

“I had the same notion,” Hamnet said slowly. “In a way, it makes sense. In another way, I wonder if it’s too simple.”

Eyvind Torfinn’s shrug set his jowls wobbling. “It may well be. I said I don’t know enough to be sure. We need more research, if we ever find the chance for it.” He looked unhappy. “We have more urgent worries closer to Nidaros, I fear.”

“You never tried climbing up to the top of the Glacier, either,” Hamnet Thyssen said. “Even with the avalanche that made it easier for us, it’s still nothing I’d care to try more than once.”

“I believe you,” Earl Eyvind said. “How does it compare to a stretch in His Majesty’s dungeons?”

“I’ve never tried climbing the Glacier, Your Splendor,” Kormak Bersi said before Hamnet could reply, “but I wouldn’t care to do more than one stretch in a cell.”

“I didn’t care for even one,” Hamnet agreed. “His Majesty is a great many things” – most of which he couldn’t stand -”but an innkeeper he is not.”

“Which, I have no doubt, is an understatement the size of a mastodon.” Eyvind Torfinn smiled to show he’d made a joke. He was a good-hearted man. He was also a man who’d seen a dungeon cell from the outside but never, so far as Count Hamnet knew, from within. Despite that lack – or that luck – he did have a certain grasp on essentials: “Even if the Emperor did give you a meal, I daresay you’ll be thirsty for something better than musty water.”

“Yes, by God!” Again, Kormak spoke before Hamnet could. Hamnet didn’t mind; he couldn’t have put it better himself.

Eyvind Torfinn’s reception hall would not have been too small for the imperial palace. With all the Bizogots guesting at his home, he’d given one servant tapman duty. A couple of dozen Bizogots would be plenty to keep a tapman busy at all hours of the day and night, or so it seemed to Count Hamnet. With beer and wine and mead to choose from in place of fermented mammoth and musk-ox milk, the Bizogots might drink even more than they did up on the frozen plain, too.

Trasamund had a drinking horn – actually, a silver rhyton in the shape of a mountain sheep’s horn – of beer in his hand when he saw Hamnet. “It is you!” the jarl boomed, rushing over to fold Hamnet into an embrace that made him think of a hug from a short-faced bear. “Ulric said Eyvind had got you loose, but Ulric lies the way most people fart – he can’t help himself.”

“I know some people who break wind through the mouth, but I’m not one of em,” Ulric Skakki said with dignity. He sent Hamnet one of his crooked grins. “I hope I’m not, anyhow.” His cup was smaller and plainer than Trasamund’s, but he chose wine to fill it. He could rough it with the best of them, but he didn’t when he didn’t have to.

Liv was also there, and she came up to Hamnet, too. Taking both his hands in hers, she said, “I am glad to free you again. I wish you no harm, no ill – only the best. I am sorry we didn’t end up fitting together the way you hoped. I hoped we could, too. Sometimes things don’t work out the way you wish they would, that’s all.”

How was he supposed to answer that? It was gracious, and he believed it, but it still felt like a sawblade thrust through his liver. “Sometimes things don’t,” he agreed in a voice rough as shagreen. He squeezed her hands once, then let them go.

“That was well done,” Ulric Skakki said quietly. Liv nodded.

For a moment, knowing how useless and how foolish it was, Hamnet hated both of them. “Well done or not…” he said, and made for the tap-man. As he came up, the fellow raised a politely curious eyebrow. “Wine,” Count Hamnet told him. “Whatever you’ve got that’s sweet and strong.”

“Coming up, sir,” Eyvind Torfinn’s servant said as he filled a cup. If Earl Eyvind was making his bountiful cellars available to his guests, Hamnet, like Ulric, aimed to take advantage of them. And wine was stronger than beer and ale and smetyn; even a determined drinker needed to pour down less to make the world go away.

Of course, the determined drinker would still regret it the next morning or whenever he finally sobered up. Right now, the morning seemed a million years and a million miles away from Hamnet Thyssen. The wine in his cup might not have been a great vintage, but it was sweet and it was strong. Hamnet wondered what the southern wine growers got that they thought worth as much as their marvelous elixir. A poet could do something with that conceit, he thought. No poet himself, he made do with savoring the smooth, blood-red richness as it slid down his throat.

“So what are you going to have to do for Sigvat to keep from decorating his dungeons again?” Ulric Skakki asked, sidling up to him.

“Nothing much,” Hamnet asked. Unlike the tapman’s a moment before, Ulric’s elevated eyebrow was redolent of skepticism. “Nothing much, by God,” Count Hamnet said again. “Just drive off the Rulers, that’s all. They’re inside the Empire, in case you haven’t heard, and they’ve beaten the stuffing out of an imperial army and a bunch of imperial wizards. Believe it or not, that even got His Majesty’s attention.”

“And they said it couldn’t be done!” Ulric said in mock – Hamnet supposed it was mock – astonishment. “He won’t do anything to you if you don’t manage it, either, I’m sure. Maybe cut off your fingers and toes one at a time and then start in on anything else that still happens to stick out. Like I say, nothing much. D’you suppose your balls’d count as one cut or two?”

“I hadn’t worried about it – up till now.” Hamnet spoke the last three words in as shrill a falsetto as he could muster.

He caught Ulric Skakki by surprise. The adventurer’s laugh was high-pitched, too – almost a giggle. “You’re not supposed to do things like that,” Ulric said severely.

The others who understood Raumsdalian were laughing, too. Marcovefa chose that moment to walk into the dining hall. “What is the joke?” she asked. “Why do I always come in right after the joke?”

Some of that was in her own tongue, some in the regular Bizogot language. “Hamnet made it,” Ulric said, and pointed to the newly released nobleman.

“Say it again,” Marcovefa told him.

He did, in the Bizogot tongue this time. It sounded stronger in that language than it did in Raumsdalian. Hamnet wondered why that should be so, but had no doubt it was. Marcovefa laughed and laughed. Pointing to her, he said, “When I do go against the Rulers, I’ll need you beside me.”

She batted her eyes at him, for all the world like a coquette of the kind he couldn’t stand. “Why, darling, I didn’t know you cared,” she murmured in surprisingly good, if still accented, Raumsdalian.

People in the dining hall laughed much harder at that than they had at Count Hamnet’s joke. Ulric Skakki dropped his cup. Quick as a cat, he caught it before it smashed, but wine spilled on the floor. A servant scurried away and came back with a rag. Hamnet groped for an answer, even after the fellow was down on his knees wiping up the wine. Just then, he would sooner have embraced a rattlesnake than a woman, but he could see how Marcovefa might not appreciate that kind of reply.

“I want you for your magic, not for your -” he began, and then broke off again. His mouth seemed determined to land him in trouble whether he wanted to end up there or not.

“Twat?” Marcovefa suggested, in the regular Bizogot language – maybe she hadn’t learned how to say that in Raumsdalian yet.

“Well, yes,” Hamnet muttered, which brought on fresh gales of merriment from the Bizogots – Liv very much included – and Ulric Skakki. Where was Audun Gilli? Count Hamnet didn’t see him, which spared him complete humiliation … but only by the tiniest of margins.

Or so he thought, anyhow, but then Marcovefa leaned up and forward and brushed her lips across his as if they were old lovers. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I promise not to give you anything you don’t want.”

“Ah, but will you give him everything he does want?” Trasamund bellowed. He thought his own sally was the funniest thing he’d ever heard, funnier than whatever had gone before. Hamnet Thyssen had rather a different opinion.

If he showed Trasamund he was angry, he lost. He saw that much. “I want to beat the Rulers,” he said. “I want to drive them out of Raumsdalia. I want to drive them off the Bizogot plains.”

“You do all that, and so many women will want to say thank-you with their legs open, you’ll need a club to keep them off,” Ulric said.

“Maybe not,” Trasamund said before Hamnet could answer. “Maybe the sour look on his face will do it.” He guffawed.

“You’re your own best audience,” Hamnet told him.

“Drive off Rulers? Not so hard,” Marcovefa said. “Everyone makes big fuss about Rulers. Feh! This to Rulers.” She snapped her fingers.

“The reason everyone makes a fuss about them is that they keep beating everyone,” Ulric said. “It’s a reprehensible habit, I know, and one from which they should be discouraged by any means necessary.”

“What is reprehensible?” Marcovefa asked.

“Why, deserving of reprehension, of course,” Ulric answered blandly.

“And what does reprehension mean?” Was her patience wearing thin? Hamnet Thyssen knew his would have been.

But Ulric went right on playing. “Reprehension is that which is reprehensible.”

Maybe Marcovefa would have turned him into a newt. More likely, since there were no newts atop the Glacier, she would have chosen something like a pika instead. Before she could do anything she might – or might not – regret later, Hamnet said, “What Ulric is doing now is reprehensible. It deserves reprehension.”

“Ah. I understand. Thank you,” Marcovefa said.

Ulric Skakki sent Hamnet a jaundiced stare. “You’re no fun.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Hamnet said. “But then, I’ve just come out of His Majesty’s dungeons. The sport down there isn’t everything it might be.”

“Well, that’s true enough,” the adventurer agreed. “I didn’t enjoy the stretch I put in under the throne room, either.”

“You never told me you got jugged.” Count Hamnet didn’t know whether to believe him, either. Ulric had done a lot of things, but he hadn’t done everything … had he?

“I never told you it snowed in the wintertime up in the Bizogot country, either. I never saw the need.” He spoke with exaggerated patience. And then he went on to talk about what things were like in the dungeons. He’d been there; he left Hamnet Thyssen in no possible doubt about that. He knew more about what went on in the bowels of the imperial palace than Hamnet did himself. He knew guards by name and by habit. He knew those cells as if he’d lived in them for years. Maybe he had.

“How did you get out?” Count Hamnet asked when he finished.

“Same way you did,” Ulric answered. “His Majesty found something where he thought I might be useful. As a matter of fact, it was that bit of business we did together six or eight years ago.”

“You didn’t tell me you were just out of the dungeon!” Hamnet exclaimed.

“You didn’t ask me,” Ulric said. “I’d washed most of the stink off, same as you did. I thought you’d get all sniffy if you knew I was coming up for air for the first time in … well, in a while, anyway. I’d say I was right, too.”

Was he? Looking into himself, Hamnet thought he might well have been. “I’m sorry,” the Raumsdalian noble mumbled.

“What? For being what you are? That’s foolish,” Ulric said. “Besides, you’re … a little better now. And you’ve done a stretch yourself, which doesn’t hurt.”

Count Hamnet bowed. “Thank you so much.”

Ulric Skakki also bowed, with a sinuous elegance Hamnet couldn’t hope to match. “My privilege, Your Grace.”

Before Hamnet could take the next step in the politer-than-thou dance, a servant came in and said, “His Splendor requests that I announce a meal is being served. If you will be so kind as to accompany me. ..”

All things considered, Hamnet Thyssen would rather have gone on sparring with Ulric. It wasn’t that Eyvind Torfinn didn’t set an elegant, even an extravagant, table. No, the problem was who would be sitting at it.

And, sure enough, Gudrid waited there when he walked in.

Ignoring her would have been rude, especially since he was a guest in her present husband’s home. Glancing over towards Earl Eyvind, Hamnet thought the older noble awaited this meeting with more than a little apprehension of his own. If there’s a fight, I won’t start it, Hamnet decided. That being so, he bowed to Eyvind Torfinn and to Gudrid and took his seat without speaking to either of them.

Trasamund sat down to his left, Marcovefa to his right. Liv was some little distance down the table, between Ulric Skakki and a Leaping Lynx Bizogot Count Hamnet barely knew. Gudrid never failed to notice things like that. And of course she already knew Liv and Audun Gilli were sleeping together. Her mouth stretched into what looked like a smile of genuine pleasure.

“How does it feel to have lost another woman?” she asked.

“These things happen,” Hamnet said stolidly.

“Oh, indeed.” Gudrid’s smile widened. “Anything can happen to anybody – once. If something happens to someone again and again, though, chances are it’s his own fault.”

You can’t please a woman. She didn’t shout it, not in so many words. She let the guests of her husband’s generosity figure it out for themselves instead. And what she said might well have held a cruel barb of truth. But it was a barb that could also have stung her. Count Hamnet could have made some pointed gibes about her sport of infidelity … if he’d wanted to insult the man who’d got him out of Sigvat’s dungeon. Since he didn’t, he just shrugged.

Gudrid drew in another anticipatory breath. Hamnet Thyssen wondered how long he could go on giving mild answers if she kept baiting him. Not long enough, he feared. But Eyvind Torfinn beat Gudrid to the punch. “That will be enough of that, my dear,” he said in tones that brooked no argument.

Gudrid blinked. She wasn’t used to hearing such tones from her husband – or anyone else. “But he -” she began.

“That will be enough of that,” Eyvind Torfinn repeated. “We are none of us perfect. Reminding one another how we fall short does nobody any good. And the Empire needs Count Hamnet, whether he is perfect or not. You may think what you please, of course, but I will thank you to stay courteous in what you say.”

Servitors began bringing in the meal. Trays of mutton and spicy pork and goose filled the table. An edge sharper and more dangerous than the one on any carving knife filled Gudrid’s voice: “And if I don’t?”

If she intimidated Eyvind Torfinn, he didn’t show it. Waving to one of the servants, he said, “My wife won’t be dining with us after all, I’m afraid. Be so kind as to escort her to her bedchamber.”

“Yes, Your Splendor,” the servant said.

“But I don’t want to go to my bedchamber,” Gudrid said, which would surely do for an understatement till a bigger one came along.

“Will you mind your manners, then?” Earl Eyvind asked with surprising firmness.

“I will do and say whatever I need to do and say,” Gudrid answered, as if no other reply were possible. Plainly, she thought none was.

“Rorik . ..” Eyvind said. The servant touched Gudrid on the shoulder.

She screamed at him, and at her husband. Hamnet Thyssen looked down at the tabletop. He’d seen Gudrid’s temper kindle before. He’d been on the receiving end of it more often than he cared to remember. In a way, he still was. This fracas was about him, even if he didn’t happen to be at the center of it.

Ulric Skakki yawned. “A little politeness would fix everything. Too bloody much to ask for, I suppose.”

Gudrid didn’t intend to be polite. She grabbed a knife. Rorik knocked it away from her before she had the chance to try to stab him. That made Gudrid screech like a dire wolf with an arrow in its rump. For his part, Count Hamnet didn’t blame the servant one bit. His former wife didn’t take kindly to being thwarted by anybody.

“You may stay… if you’ll stay civil,” Eyvind Torfinn told her. “Will you?”

Her eyes blazed. She wasn’t about to forgive her husband any time soon, either. But she nodded and spat out three words: “Oh, all right.”

Earl Eyvind beamed, which struck Hamnet as misplaced optimism. He kept his mouth shut, though. “Thank you, my dear,” Gudrid’s current husband said.

She answered with something low-voiced, something Count Hamnet couldn’t quite make out. If Eyvind Torfinn did hear what it was, he affected not to. A certain amount of forbearance was an asset in any husband – or wife. The earl seemed to grasp that. Gudrid didn’t, and probably never would. As for Hamnet himself.. . He felt he’d used all his forbearance and more besides, trying to stay married to Gudrid. Her opinion of that might have differed.

Gluttony seemed safe here. Gluttony, after the musty water and the small loaves of bad bread in Sigvat’s dungeon, seemed all but obligatory. Hamnet might not have been able to match the Bizogots in his relentless pursuit of a full belly, but he did his level best.

Eyvind Torfinn reminded him of one of the reasons he was feasting so extravagantly, asking, “How soon do you expect to depart for the north?”

“As soon as I can,” Hamnet answered. “As soon as His Majesty gives me orders I can show people, orders that let them know I really do hold command there.”

Though Eyvind nodded, the cynical Ulric Skakki asked, “Will he give you orders like that in writing?”

“I don’t know. I don’t much care, either,” Count Hamnet said. “If he does give me what I need, I’ll go off and do my best with it. And if he doesn’t, I’ll go down to my castle instead – and wait for the Rulers to come to me.”

“What does he say?” Marcovefa asked. Both Ulric Skakki and Eyvind Torfinn started to translate Hamnet’s words into her dialect. Each waved for the other to go on. After a moment, Ulric did. Marcovefa listened, frowning, then said, “Does he really think they can do that?”

She spoke mostly in the usual Bizogot tongue. Hamnet Thyssen had no trouble following that. “You may think the Rulers are easy meat,” he told her, “but, if you do, you’re the only one who does.”

“Too many things down below the Glacier.” Marcovefa said that in her own dialect, but Hamnet had heard it often enough to have no trouble understanding it. Believing it was another story.

Hamnet Thyssen ate for a while. Eyvind Torfinn’s chefs, as always, set a high standard. And, because Hamnet was just out of the dungeon, good food seemed even better to him. After a while, though, he looked across the table and spoke to Gudrid: “May I ask a favor of you?”

Her eyes widened in surprise not, he judged, altogether feigned. “What is it?”

“Don’t ask His Majesty not to give me the orders I need,” he said.

This time, the way she batted her eyelashes was much too familiar. “Why would I do that?” she cooed, as if she didn’t know.

“To stop me. To make me go back to my castle. To make me fail,” Hamnet said bluntly. “We both know that would make you happy. By all the signs, though, I’m more likely to fail if I do go up against the Rulers than if I don’t. But if by some chance I don’t fail, that will be good for the Empire. What happens to me doesn’t matter much, not on that scale of things. What happens to Raumsdalia does.”

Eyvind Torfinn nodded. So did Trasamund. So, rather grudgingly, did Ulric Skakki, who worried about himself ahead of most things. So did Liv, without the least hesitation. And so did Audun Gilli, although Count Hamnet made a point of not looking at him.

Gudrid? Gudrid stared at Hamnet as if he’d started speaking in Marcovefa’s dialect. “Why on earth should I care what happens to Raumsdalia?” she demanded. “I care about what happens to me … and I care about what happens to you.” The way she bared her small white teeth said she didn’t want anything good happening to him.

Eyvind Torfinn took a sip of wine before speaking. The white-bearded scholar didn’t usually have any idea how to control Gudrid. As if anyone does, Hamnet thought. He feared whatever Eyvind said would only make things worse. Appealing to Gudrid’s patriotism was like appealing to a dire wolf’s sense of poetry. You could if you wanted to, but it wasn’t likely to do you any good.

But all Earl Eyvind said was, “If you wish disaster upon your former husband, my sweet, the surest thing to do is let him go north and find it. That the Rulers have crossed the Bizogot plain in one campaigning season, that they have invaded the Empire, clearly shows anyone who stands against them is unlikely to stand for long.”

His words held more truth than Hamnet Thyssen might have wished. Hamnet wanted to beat the Rulers, not to throw himself away as so many Bizogots – and, now, a Raumsdalian army – had done before him. Whether he could do what he wanted was a different question.

With Eyvind Torfinn’s help, Gudrid saw that, too. She sent Count Hamnet one of her poisonously sweet smiles. “All right,” she said, and then, “All right,” again, her soft red lips and moist tongue giving the words a lewd caress as they escaped. “Sometimes the worst you can do to someone is to give him what he thinks he wants and then stand back and watch him ruin himself with it. If you want to play the hero going after the Rulers, be my guest. I won’t tell Sigvat to stop you. I’ll just laugh when you come back after you’ve made a fool of yourself. So will everyone else.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Hamnet said. “I’ll have to do my best not to make a fool of myself, then, won’t I?”

Gudrid’s laugh was loud and rich. “But darling, we all know your best is nowhere near good enough, don’t we?”

He shrugged. “All I can do is all I can do.”

“This is true of all of us,” Eyvind Torfinn said. “For myself, I think doing our best against the Rulers is more important than anything that has faced the Empire for many, many years. I am so convinced of this that, if I see anyone operating on a contrary principle, I shall feel compelled to change my will.”

The Bizogots, even the Bizogots who spoke Raumsdalian, might have followed his words, but they didn’t grasp the thought behind those words. Hamnet Thyssen did. And so did Gudrid. If she kept trying to turn Sigvat against Hamnet, Eyvind would cut her off after he died. Maybe she could get around that, but it wouldn’t be easy. She looked daggers at him. He smiled in return, which did nothing to reassure her.

She put the best face on things she could: “If dear Hamnet wants to go north and kill himself, he’s welcome to for all of me.”

“Thank you,” he said.

Marcovefa set a hand on his arm. “You do what you do. It will be all right. I will help,” she said.

“Good. Thank you, too,” he said.

Gudrid laughed again. “Your lovers get more barbarous every time, sweetheart. The next one will be a jungle ape.”

“No, you taught me all I need to know about those,” Hamnet replied. “Besides, she’s not a lover – only a friend. Not that you would know much about friends, or what they mean.” Gudrid bared her teeth at him. He thought his shot actually went home. That wouldn’t be a first, but it didn’t happen very often, either.