XXII

 

 

 

H AMNET THYSSEN DIDNT linger long in the imperial palace. True, he’d brought bad news for Sigvat II straight from the Golden Shrine. But he had brought bad news for the Raumsdalian Emperor. The aura of glamour surrounding the first was enough to let him get out of the palace unscathed. He didn’t think he would have lasted more than a few hours at the outside had he tried to hang around.

He didn’t see Sigvat alive or dead. Maybe the Emperor really had got away and was busy memorizing his new name. Stranger things had happened. Before Hamnet first met Trasamund, he would have irately denied the possibility. Since then, he’d gone beyond the Gap. He’d climbed to the top of the Glacier and met the folk who lived up there. He’d gone inside the Golden Shrine. All of those were at least a little stranger than the chance that Sigvat might act like a sensible human being.

Ulric Skakki didn’t overstay his welcome, either. He waited impatiently with Hamnet for grooms to lead their horses out of the stables. “Well, Your Grace, what now?” he asked.

“I’m going home,” Hamnet said simply. “Anybody who tries to drag me out again will have to lay siege to the place . . . if it’s still standing, anyhow.”

“What if it’s not?” The adventurer was as full of annoying questions as ever. His twisted grin said he knew as much.

“God knows, in that case.” Hamnet shrugged. “Maybe I’ll keep on going south, the way I’ve talked about. Or maybe I’ll turn around and go up onto the steppe and see what kind of Bizogot I make.”

He was about to ask what Ulric intended to do, but Ulric beat him to the punch again: “And what about Marcovefa?”

“What about me?” Marcovefa asked from behind them. They both jumped. She went on, “Why do you ask somebody else? Do you think I cannot take care of myself? Are you so foolish?”

“Mm—I hope not.” For once in his life, Ulric sounded faintly embarrassed.

“He asked me what I wanted to do, and I told him I was going home,” Count Hamnet said. “Then he asked about you, and you answered before I could. I didn’t know what you were going to say, anyhow.”

“I will come with you. I will see your home. After all, you have seen mine,” Marcovefa said. “Whether I will stay after that”—she smiled—“we can both find out.”

Ulric nudged Hamnet. “Take her up on it,” he stage-whispered. “You won’t get a better bargain.”

“Do you think I’m too stupid to figure that out for myself?” Hamnet said.

“By your track record, yes,” Ulric answered. The worst of it was, Hamnet could hardly tell him he was wrong.

Marcovefa glared at the palace guards and grooms. “Where is my horse?” she demanded. “Do I have to start turning people into voles to get the rest of you to do what you should be doing anyhow?” The servitors all but stumbled over one another in their haste to do what she wanted.

“This is how it ends,” Ulric said, not sadly but in a matter-of-fact way. “We did what we set out to do—enough of it, anyway—and now we go back to taking care of things for ourselves.” He sketched a salute. “Luck, Thyssen. Maybe we’ll run into each other again one of these years.”

“Maybe we will. Nothing would surprise me any more.” Hamnet clasped the adventurer’s hand while grooms led out their horses—and Marcovefa’s.

“Me, I’m heading south myself. I’ve had enough of ice to last me a long time,” Ulric said. He’d made noises like that before. Maybe he meant them. Or maybe he aimed to throw any possible pursuers off his trail.

He did ride south, which soon separated him from Hamnet and Marcovefa, who made for the east gate. Hamnet could have gone out the south gate just as well; his keep and the lands surrounding it lay far to the southeast. But Ulric Skakki had it right: breaking apart was how things ended.

Or so Hamnet thought, till somebody let out a deep bass yell behind him. He looked back over his shoulder. Here came Trasamund, bulling his horse through traffic so the locals glared at him. “You won’t get away from me like that,” the jarl boomed. “I guested you as long as I could up on the plains. About time you pay me back, the way a guest-friend should by rights.”

Hamnet laughed and sketched a salute. “At your service, Your Ferocity.”

Trasamund bowed in the saddle and started to laugh himself, but abruptly choked it off. “You may as well forget the title. Without a clan to rule, I don’t deserve it any more. The world’s a miserable place.”

“You’ve seen the Golden Shrine—you’ve gone into it—and you say that? Shame on you,” Marcovefa told him.

“It is,” Trasamund insisted. “We never would have seen the Golden Shrine if the Rulers hadn’t wrecked the Bizogots, and they started with my clan.”

“More to the world than your clan,” Hamnet said. “More to the world than Raumsdalia, too.”

“Oh? Then why aren’t you riding off to God knows where with Ulric Skakki?” Trasamund said. “You’re going back to the one little piece of ground that belongs to you. I’d go back to the tents of the Three Tusk clan, except they aren’t there any more.” He wiped away a tear, whether real or rhetorical Count Hamnet wasn’t sure.

“You’re welcome to come along with us if you care to,” Hamnet said, as a guest-friend should. “My home is yours for as long as you care to stay there.”

The jarl bowed in the saddle again. “Well, I do thank you for that. And, like I said, I’ll take you up on it—for now, anyway. If I wander off one of these days, it won’t be on account of anything you’ve done. I don’t expect it will, I mean. But I don’t know if I can stay in one place the rest of my days.”

“Neither do I,” Marcovefa said.

“Well, neither do I,” Hamnet Thyssen said. “We’ll all find out. As long as I stay away from Nidaros—and as long as Nidaros’ troubles stay away from me—I suppose I’ll get along wherever I am.” He reached out and set a hand on Marcovefa’s arm. “The company is pretty good.”

“Are you trying to sweet-talk me?” she asked.

“Not right this moment,” Hamnet said. “When we stop to rest tonight, we’ll see how I do then.” By the way she laughed, he had a good chance of doing well.

But her laugh cut off as shouts and screams and the clash of blade against blade rang out behind them, from the direction of the palace. “Oh, God!” Trasamund said. “It’s starting already, isn’t it? Cursed fools didn’t waste any time.”

“What happens in a Bizogot clan when the jarl dies and nobody’s set to succeed him?” Hamnet asked. Trasamund grunted: as much of a concession as Hamnet was likely to get.

“What do we do now?” Marcovefa asked. The martial racket was getting louder and coming closer.

“We get out of here, quick as we can.” Hamnet urged his horse up into a trot. “The only thing worse than getting stuck in the middle of a war is getting stuck in the middle of a civil war.”

“That makes more sense than I wish it did,” Trasamund said. He and Marcovefa booted their horses forward, too.

To Hamnet’s relief, nobody at the eastern gate recognized him. “What’s going on back there?” a guard asked, pointing in the direction from which he and his companions had come. “Sounds like the whole world’s going crazy.”

“It does, doesn’t it?” Hamnet looked as blank and innocent as he could. “All we want to do is get on our way before whatever it is catches up with us.”

“Smart,” the guard said solemnly.

One of the other soldiers at the gate said, “Somebody who went through a few minutes ago said the Emperor was leaving town again. That doesn’t seem right, does it? I mean, those stupid Rulers or whatever the demon they are haven’t given us so much trouble lately. Why would His Majesty want to leave now, then?”

Count Hamnet, Marcovefa, and Trasamund looked at one another. As if animated by the same puppeteer, they shrugged at the same time. Hamnet Thyssen lied straight-faced: “I don’t know anything about that, either.”

“We’ll all find out, I guess.” The guard eyed his colleagues, who nodded. He waved to Hamnet. “Pass on through.”

“Thanks.” This time, Hamnet was altogether sincere. Probably no one since the Golden Shrine had done him a bigger favor than this gate guard who waved him out of Nidaros. What was liable to happen in the capital over the next few days wouldn’t be pretty.

He and Marcovefa and Trasamund hadn’t got more than eight or ten yards out of the gate before one of the guards howled in dismay. Looking back over his shoulder, Hamnet saw the man had clapped a hand to his forehead: a theatrical gesture, but plainly heartfelt. “Those idiots! Those God-cursed idiots!” the guard cried. “They’ve started a fire!”

That only made Hamnet ride harder. He neither knew who they were nor wanted to find out. Whoever they were, he agreed with the guard: anybody who started a fire inside a city was an idiot.

“At least the Breath of God isn’t blowing,” Trasamund said.

If it were, whatever the Rulers hadn’t ruined in Nidaros might go up in flames. And . . . “I don’t think the maniac with a torch cared,” Hamnet said.

“Somebody ought to cut him in half and leave the pieces where people can see them,” Trasamund said. “That’s what we’d do up on the steppe. Anybody else who gets ideas can see what they’d cost him.”

“I hope somebody does,” Count Hamnet said. “But it isn’t my worry, thank God. Raumsdalia can sort it out without me.” He sat straighter on his horse, as if a heavy weight had lifted from his shoulders. “Have you got any idea how good it feels to be able to say that?”

“You can stay in your castle place for a while,” Marcovefa said shrewdly. “Sooner or later, though, the world will come looking for you again.”

Hamnet Thyssen didn’t argue with her; she was much too likely to be right. He just said, “Later, I hope.” He and Marcovefa and Trasamund rode away from Nidaros, and from the new plume of black smoke climbing above it.

 

SWEAT RAN DOWN Marcovefa’s face. “Does it get this hot every summer down here?” she asked.

“Most summers, anyhow,” Hamnet said. He didn’t find the weather especially hot. But then, he hadn’t spent most of his life atop the Glacier.

“How do you stand it?” Marcovefa asked.

“It’s pretty warm, all right,” Trasamund added.

“All what you’re used to.” Hamnet left it there. “People who grow up south of here wouldn’t be able to stand the winters in the Bizogot country.” He didn’t say anything about the winters in Marcovefa’s homeland. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to stand those himself.

“More and more of these broad-leaved trees. I think they look funny.” Suddenly, Marcovefa turned into a connoisseur of forests, although she’d never so much as imagined a tree, broad-leaved or otherwise, till she descended from the Glacier. “What good are they?”

“There’s always the wood,” Hamnet said. He took that for granted, but Marcovefa wouldn’t; even Trasamund might not. “And some of them have nuts that are good to eat. And in the autumn, before the leaves fall off, they turn red and orange and gold. For a little while, the forest looks as if it’s on fire—not in a bad way, you understand. It’s beautiful, but it never lasts.”

“I’ve seen a little of that,” Trasamund said, and Marcovefa nodded. The jarl went on, “I’ve never understood why the leaves change colors before they die.”

“I can’t tell you. I don’t think anyone else can, either,” Hamnet said. “My best guess is, it just happens, the way a man’s hair goes gray when he gets older.”

“Maybe.” Trasamund lost interest in the question. He pointed toward something at the edge of the woods. “Good God! What’s that?”

“A mastodon,” Hamnet answered. “Haven’t you seen them before, coming down into Raumsdalia?”

“I’ve had glimpses, but that’s all.” The Bizogot stared and stared. “It looks like a woolly mammoth, if you can imagine a woolly mammoth made by somebody who’s heard about them but never seen one. Its back is too flat—it ought to slope down like this.” He gestured.

I’ve seen woolly mammoths,” Hamnet pointed out.

He might as well have saved his breath. Trasamund went on as if he hadn’t spoken: “Its ears are the wrong shape. They’re too big, too. And look at the funny way its tusks curl. And mammoths are supposed to be almost black, not that . . . that tree-bark brown, I guess you’d call it.”

“They can be pests,” Hamnet said. “They raid orchards and they trample down grain fields.”

“You don’t bother to tame them, do you?” Trasamund asked.

“I’ve heard that lumbermen sometimes do. Mastodons are big enough and strong enough to shove tree trunks around better than just about any other beasts. But apart from that, no,” Hamnet replied. “We hunt them, though. We use the meat and the hides and the ivory and the hair.”

“Woolly mammoth hair is better,” Trasamund said. “It’s longer and thicker. I like the color better, too.”

“Which is all very well, I’m sure, only we haven’t got any woolly mammoths in Raumsdalia. Plenty of mastodons in the forests near my castle. They’re nuisances there. That’s the other reason we hunt them: to keep them from tearing up the crops.”

“How much farther to your castle?” Marcovefa asked. To her, mastodons were only a little stranger than mammoths; she’d come to know both beasts since descending from the Glacier.

“Maybe a week’s travel: a little less if we were in a tearing hurry,” Hamnet answered.

“How long do you aim to stay?” Marcovefa asked, and then, “How long will we stay?”

“I don’t know how long I’ll stay. A while, anyhow. Till things settle down a bit—if they ever do,” Hamnet said. “And I can’t really say how long you’ll stay, can I?”

“You have something to do with it. If I decide you make me angry and don’t make me happy, I go,” Marcovefa said. But she added, “So far you haven’t—quite.”

Trasamund guffawed. “High praise, Thyssen!”

“Better than I’ve done with women up till now,” Hamnet said, as calmly as he could. “Maybe I’ve learned something. Maybe Marcovefa just puts up with more than Gudrid or Liv did.” He glanced over at her. “What do you think?”

“Me? I think you know me better than to think I put up with much,” Marcovefa replied. “So far you are not too bad, in bed or out.”

Trasamund started laughing again. Hamnet’s ears felt as if they’d caught fire. He made the most of it he could, saying, “Thank you—I think.”

“You’re welcome—I suppose,” Marcovefa told him. But she was smiling when she said it. Now Trasamund laughed at both of them. They took no notice of him; lacking encouragement, he eventually ran down. They all rode on in what was—Hamnet hoped—a companionable silence.

 

SOMEHOW, NEWS OF Sigvat’s fall spread faster than Hamnet had imagined it could. He thought he and Marcovefa and Trasamund would be the outermost ripple of news from the pebble that had dropped in the palace at Nidaros. But they weren’t. Whenever they stopped in a village or a town, people had heard that the Emperor was Emperor no more. Some of them had even heard that he’d fled because the Golden Shrine judged him unworthy to rule.

“I heard that, all right,” said the tapman at a serai about halfway to Hamnet’s keep. “Don’t know that I believe it, but I heard it. Till all this talk started, I don’t know that I believed there was any such thing as the Golden Shrine. People talk about it, sure, but people talk about all kinds of things that aren’t real. But I’ve never heard ’em talk about it the way they do nowadays, so maybe there’s something to it after all.”

“It’s true,” Hamnet said solemnly. Marcovefa and Trasamund nodded. Hamnet went on, “I wouldn’t mind another mug of ale. It’s tasty.”

“I thank you for that—I brew it myself,” the tapman said, not without pride. As he dipped up another mug for Hamnet, he continued, “You folks sound like you know what you’re talking about.” Hamnet had listened to a lot of tapmen in his time. He knew this fellow wasn’t necessarily saying he believed them.

“We do,” Trasamund said. “We were there.”

“Where? At the Golden Shrine or in the palace?” No, the tapman didn’t believe they’d set eyes on either place.

“Both,” Marcovefa told him. He didn’t call her a liar—you had to be very bold or very stupid to do that—but disbelief still stuck out all over him. She nudged Hamnet. “Say the words again—the words you got from the Golden Shrine.”

Mene. Mene. Tekel. Upharsin.” He felt sure he was pronouncing them badly. But chances were no one else born into this age of the world could have done any better. These words were extinct—except, thanks to the priests and priestesses of the Golden Shrine, they weren’t.

Marcovefa murmured a spell. Suddenly, Hamnet saw himself saying those unimaginably ancient words to Sigvat II. By the way the tapman’s jaw dropped, so did he. Hamnet also saw those words on the wall, saw the long-forgotten king’s awe and fear, and Sigvat’s as well, and saw the balance in which they were both weighed and found wanting.

The vision faded fast, which was nothing but a relief. “Well?” Trasamund asked the tapman. “Were we there, or not?”

“You were,” the man whispered. “I don’t know how, but you were. How did you come to be at the heart of—well, everything?”

“Maybe it just worked out that way,” Hamnet said. “Maybe the Golden Shrine or God—if there’s a difference—meant it all along. I don’t know. I don’t expect I ever will. I’m beginning to think the how doesn’t even matter. However it happened, we were there, that’s all.”

“You didn’t even say anything yet about Sudertorp Lake breaking free and drowning all the Rulers and their shamans,” Trasamund observed.

If the tapman’s ears could have pricked erect like a dire wolf’s, they would have. “I didn’t think I should,” Hamnet said. “Marcovefa worked the magic. I only watched it.”

“And keep me alive. And bring me back to myself,” Marcovefa said. The tapman’s eyes got bigger and bigger.

“Anyhow, not quite all of them drowned,” Hamnet said. “But I don’t think they’ll kick up much trouble for a while.”

“By God, you’re not making any of this up, are you?” the tapman said hoarsely. “You really saw those things. You really did those things, too.”

“We saw them,” Hamnet agreed. “We did them.”

“Then what are you doing here?” the tapman said. “Nothing ever happens here. No one who doesn’t live in Gufua knows it’s here or knows its name. Nobody cares to, either.”

“That sounds plenty good to me, at least in a place where we’ll stop for the night,” Count Hamnet said. Marcovefa and Trasamund both nodded. Hamnet went on, “Sometimes, what you want most is not to need to worry. If, uh, Gufua can give us that, we’re glad to take it.” Till the tapman named the hamlet, he hadn’t known what to call it. His companions nodded again.

“If you’ll tell your stories and work your spells for the folk here, you needn’t pay for food and lodging,” the tapman said.

Hamnet looked at Marcovefa and Trasamund. Then he set silver on the bar. “I mean no disrespect, but paying’s the better bargain.” He got more nods from them.

“Have it as you please.” The tapman didn’t seem sorry to scoop up the coins. “It was only a thought. The bedchambers are upstairs.”

After filling his belly with roast pork and barley bread, Hamnet went up to one of those bedchambers. He made sleepy, lazy love with Marcovefa. Then he slept. Nothing bothered him till morning. If he hadn’t had somewhere else to go, he might have been tempted to stay in quiet, forgotten Gufua.

 

AS THE ROAD came out from behind a stand of trees, Trasamund pointed. “Somebody up ahead of us.”

“Well, so there is,” Hamnet said. “What about it? Are you worried about one man? Let him worry about us.”

“I’m not worried about him,” the jarl replied with dignity. “A bit surprised to see him, is all. Not many people on the road these days, or so it seems.”

“Would you go traveling if you thought the Rulers would kill you or ordinary bandits would knock you over the head?” Hamnet said.

“If I had to,” Trasamund said stubbornly.

“This fellow has to.” Marcovefa sounded as certain as only she could.

“Who is he? You sound as though you know,” Hamnet said.

“A traveler.” Maybe Marcovefa was being annoying on purpose. Or maybe whatever told her what she knew about that man also told her to keep it to herself. Hamnet shrugged. If they caught up with the stranger, he’d find out then. And if they didn’t, the fellow didn’t matter.

They were gaining. Hamnet needed a bit to be sure, but eventually had no doubt. Neither did the lone man. He tried to get more out of his horse, but it seemed to have nothing left to give. Either it was a horrible screw to begin with or he’d already ridden it into the ground. By the way it carried itself, Hamnet guessed the latter.

“Bugger me with a thornbush,” Trasamund said after a little while. “I know who that is.”

“So do I.” Hamnet Thyssen clicked his tongue between his teeth. “I didn’t want to say anything. I kept hoping I was wrong. Well, no such luck.”

Marcovefa raised an eyebrow. “After everything that happened, you still believe in luck?” Hamnet had no answer for her.

“We ought to—” But Trasamund broke off, shaking his big, fair head. “Who the demon knows what we ought to do?”

A little more time went by. The man in front of them turned in the saddle and shook his fist. “Weren’t you satisfied in Nidaros?” he shouted furiously. “Do you have to follow me and gloat, too?”

“We didn’t,” Hamnet said. “Only a . . . chance meeting, Sigvat.” He wouldn’t look at Marcovefa. He’d talked about chance to the tapman in Gufua, too. But it was as dead a word as luck. And he’d never imagined calling the Emperor—the former Emperor, now—by his bare, unadorned name.

“Likely tell,” Sigvat jeered. “Well, if you want to kill me, I suppose you can, but I’ll make the best fight I’m able to.” He started to draw his sword.

How many times had Hamnet wanted to kill him? He’d thought he had plenty of reason to do it, too. Sigvat was right—it wouldn’t be hard. But what was the point now? “Go your way,” Hamnet said. “If I never see you again, that will suit me well enough. You might want to take the south fork, not the one that runs southeast. I’m bound for my castle, and I don’t promise you a warm welcome if you turn up there.”

In a low voice, Sigvat said, “I heard Skakki was heading straight south.”

“Too bad,” Trasamund said. “And you made more enemies than just our lot, you know.”

Sigvat’s mouth twisted. “I did what I could.”

“To make more enemies? I believe that,” Hamnet Thyssen said.

“You wouldn’t have dared talk to me that way when I was on the throne,” Sigvat said, flushing angrily.

“The demon I wouldn’t,” Hamnet retorted. “I tried to tell you the Rulers were more trouble than you thought, and I was cursed well right. But you didn’t want to listen, and finally you flung me in your dungeon so you wouldn’t have to. That didn’t make me wrong, though. You found out. Too bad you managed to run from Nidaros after the Rulers beat your armies. I was hoping they’d pitch you in there so you could see what it was like.”

“We’d never had an invasion like that. I thought you were exaggerating things to make yourself seem more important,” Sigvat said.

“You would have done that,” Marcovefa said. “So you judged Hamnet from yourself.”

By the way Sigvat scowled at her, that shot struck too close to the center of the target. “I turned out to be wrong,” he said. “But I thought the chances were good that I was right.”

“And so you almost pissed the Empire straight into the chamber pot,” Hamnet said. “If not for Marcovefa, you would have. No wonder the Golden Shrine didn’t think you measured up.”

“I wouldn’t have believed that, either, if I had any choice,” Sigvat said.

“You have none. None at all,” Trasamund said. “That is not a judgment from man. It is a judgment from God. Everyone who was in your throne room knows it.”

Sigvat wanted to call the jarl a liar. The urge was written all over his face. Only one thing stopped him, Hamnet judged: Trasamund was obviously telling the truth. Instead, Sigvat said, “Go ahead and mock. I hope it makes you happy.” As obviously, he hoped anything but.

To Hamnet, Trasamund said, “We ought to knock him over the head. He’s too stupid to learn anything from all the mistakes he made.”

“If the Golden Shrine had wanted him dead soon, it would have taken care of things,” Hamnet said. “This is worse. He was the Emperor of Raumsdalia. Now no one will hearken to him for the rest of his life, however long he lasts. If he doesn’t learn that much, he won’t live long. But I won’t stain my hands with his blood. As far as I’m concerned, he’s not worth killing.”

Sigvat went from red to white. “Curse you, Thyssen,” he whispered.

“You can’t,” Hamnet said matter-of-factly. “You’ve already cursed yourself. Nothing you throw at me will bite.” He gestured to his companions. “We may as well ride on.”

“What if this—thing—tries to shoot us in the back?” Trasamund said. “He’s got a bow.”

“He won’t. He can’t.” Marcovefa sounded sure, as only she could. Hamnet believed her. Sigvat’s grimace of impotent fury said he did, too.

They rode past Sigvat. Hamnet didn’t look back. No arrows came hissing after him. He never saw Sigvat, once the second Emperor of Raumsdalia of that name, again. He never heard that anyone else did, either.

 

A STONE KEEP warded by a wooden palisade. Fields and orchards around it. Woods of oak and elm and ash and hickory and chestnut off to the east, where Raumsdalia’s border petered out. Hamnet pointed toward the keep. “Hasn’t changed much since I went away,” he said.

“Did you expect it to?” Trasamund asked.

“You never can tell,” Hamnet answered. “If we’ve seen anything the past few years, we’ve seen that.”

Farmers weeding in the fields looked up as the travelers rode by. Not many folk came this way, as Hamnet had reason to know. One of the peasants called, “That you, Count?”

“I think so,” Hamnet said, which made the fellow grin.

“You take care of whatever you needed to do out in the world?” another farmer asked.

“Most of it. For a while,” Hamnet replied.

The man nodded. “About what you can hope for.” He went back to weeding.

Marcovefa eyed Hamnet. “Yes, this is your country. These are your people.”

“I never tried to tell you anything different,” he said.

A shout rolled out from the palisade: “Who comes?”

“Hamnet Thyssen, with friends,” Hamnet answered. “Is everything well, Gris?”

“You’ll see for yourself soon enough,” his seneschal said, and then, not to Hamnet, “Open the gates, by God!”

They creaked open. They’d creaked before Hamnet rode away, too. His retainers stared at his companions. “Are those what they call Bizogots?” a man asked doubtfully. He might have been talking about glyptodonts or other beasts he didn’t look to see in this part of the world.

“We’re Bizogots, sure enough,” Trasamund rumbled. Marcovefa stirred, but she didn’t argue. Her folk sprang from the Bizogots, even if they didn’t think of themselves as belonging to them any more. Mischief in his pale eyes, Trasamund went on, “I wouldn’t be surprised if you were a Raumsdalian.”

“That’s right,” the man said automatically. His friends realized Trasamund was joking half a heartbeat before he did. They laughed at him. He went red.

Hamnet looked around. Everything looked pretty much the way it had before he rode off to answer Sigvat’s summons. He hadn’t thought he’d stay away so long or do so much while he was gone. As he dismounted, all the time between then and now might have fallen away.

Or it might not have. “How much trouble did you have this past year?” he asked.

“Well, there was some,” Gris admitted. “We heard some new barbarians got loose up in the north. Don’t think we saw any ourselves, but plenty of people running from them came by. They going to cause more trouble?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Hamnet answered.

“Thanks to you,” Marcovefa said, and slipped an arm around his waist. The men and women in the courtyard murmured—more at the gesture, Hamnet judged, than at the news. They wanted him wed, or at least attached. They wanted an heir, so things would stay smooth after he was gone.

He put his arm around Marcovefa’s shoulder. “Thanks more to you,” he said. She nodded. She wasn’t shy about taking praise. The locals murmured on a different note. Hamnet went on, “Sigvat’s off the throne.”

That brought surprised exclamations—the news hadn’t got here, anyhow. “Did you cast him off it?” Gris asked.

“No, not really,” Hamnet replied, and the last couple of words brought fresh muttering. Ignoring it, he continued, “The Golden Shrine had more to do with it.”

Outcry this time. He’d known there would be. He told the story, and spoke the words in the forgotten language he’d delivered to Sigvat II. Marcovefa worked her magic again, so his retainers could get some sense of the power those words had. Gris said, “Who’s Emperor, then, if Sigvat isn’t?”

“How come you’re not?” another man asked Hamnet before he could say anything.

“Because I don’t want the throne. Because I’d rather come home,” he answered. Several of the locals nodded. They understood that urge to return to the familiar. It wasn’t always a good urge—Hamnet thought of the trouble he could have missed if Gudrid hadn’t drawn him like a lodestone for so long—but it was strong. He turned back to Gris. “When we left Nidaros, nobody was on the throne. They’ll likely fight it out to see which greedy fool gets to set his fundament there. But we’re so far from the center of things, I don’t think any civil war will touch us here. Hope not, anyhow.”

The seneschal considered. “Odds are decent,” he said at last. “So what will you do now that you’re back?”

“About what I was doing before,” Hamnet replied. “I liked it well enough, except when . . . things got in the way.” Things. Gudrid. Sigvat’s summons. The Gap, melted through. The Rulers. The invasion. The war. The dungeon. Sudertorp Lake, pouring out as if God were pushing it—and maybe God was. The Golden Shrine. Mene. Mene. Tekel. Upharsin .

Things.

“What about you people?” Gris asked Trasamund and Marcovefa. By the way he used the last word, he was giving them the benefit of the doubt.

Trasamund spoke first: “I’ll stay here a while, anyway. I’ve got nothing to go back to up on the plains—the Rulers made sure of that.”

Marcovefa eyed Hamnet as she answered, “I will stay as long as I am happy. If I am not, it will be time to go.”

He nodded. “That’ll do. I hope you stay a long time. I’ll try not to make you unhappy—but you never can tell. If I’ve learned anything since I went away, that’s it. You never can tell.”

“And I will try not to make you too unhappy with me,” Marcovefa said. Hamnet nodded again. That was as close to a promise as he’d ever got from her, and more than he’d come to expect. She looked around. “This is not much like the top of the Glacier, but it is not a bad place.”

“Most of the time, it isn’t,” Hamnet agreed. What more could you say of any place? Not much, not as far as he could see.

“Good to have you back, lord,” Gris said. Heads bobbed up and down in the courtyard. As long as people thought it was good, they would help make it so. Hamnet didn’t know how long he could stay here peacefully—no, you never could tell—but he aimed to make the most of it, however long it turned out to be.