Once he thought he heard an owl through the wolves' din. That really alarmed him, where the wolves only annoyed him. The wolves might possibly be demons, but even if they were he had no reason to think they were more interested in the travelers from the far side of the Glacier than in, say, the Rulers. A seeming owl, though, might be Samoth the wizard in owl's plumage flying out after the travelers on discovering his fetish had failed.
Hamnet Thyssen peered into the night, looking now this way, now that. Try as he would, he couldn't spot the owl, if owl it was. He muttered to himself, wondering what that meant. Was it just an owl that called once and then fell silent? Or was it Samoth mocking him, mocking all the travelers, and trying to spook him?
If it was the wizard, he was doing a good job. Hamnet chuckled mirthlessly. Even if it wasn't the wizard, he was still doing a good job.
Because Count Hamnet was searching for the owl that might or might not have been there, he didn't notice soft footsteps behind him till they drew very close. Then he whirled, hand flashing to the hilt of his sword. "Who the-?" he blurted, and then went on, "Oh, it's you." He felt foolish.
"Yes, it's me," Liv said quietly. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to startle you."
"It's all right," Hamnet said. "You shouldn't have startled me. I should have heard you coming sooner." Now he was angry at himself, not at the Bizogot shaman.
"The wolves woke me." She pointed back toward the fire, which had died back to embers. "The others are snoring away. I don't know how they do it."
"I was thinking the same thing not long ago," Count Hamnet said. "Did you hear the owl, too?"
Liv nodded. "I hope it was only an owl." Hamnet almost told her that thought matched his, too, but judged her too likely to know it already. She went on, "I think it was. But even if it wasn't, we've made Samoth work harder than he expected to. Showing him we're not to be despised can't hurt."
"I hadn't looked at it that way," Hamnet said. "Of course, he'll despise us anyway. We aren't of the Rulers, so how can he help it?"
"They make much of themselves, sure enough." Liv's voice was troubled. "I hope they don't have good reason for their bragging and boasting and preening."
"From what I've seen, people who brag a lot are usually trying to convince themselves even more than other people," Hamnet said.
"Yes, that's so. It's one of the things shamans find out about people." Liv cocked her head to one side. "How did you come to see it?"
"By getting to be as old as I am and keeping my eyes open," Hamnet answered with a shrug. "I don't know what else to tell you."
"Plenty of people older than you who never notice such things," the Bizogot shaman said.
Hamnet Thyssen shrugged. "Plenty of people are fools." He laughed harshly. "I'm a fool, too, but not that particular way. You can be a fool all kinds of different ways."
"How are you a fool?" Liv's voice was serious; she really meant the question.
But Hamnet Thyssen only laughed some more, on an even more bitter note than before. "How do you think? She's asleep over there by the fire."
Liv glanced back toward the rest of the travelers. "How long since the two of you parted?"
"Sometimes it seems like a thousand years. Sometimes it seems as if it happened this afternoon," he said. "Sometimes it seems like both at once. It's worst then."
"She is . .." Liv paused, looking for words. '"If she were a Bizogot, she wouldn't last long. You Raumsdalians have more room for useless people than we do."
"Gudrid's not useless." Hamnet Thyssen's mouth twisted. "Ask Eyvind Torfinn if you think I'm wrong. Ask Trasamund. Ask Audun Gilli. Go back and ask Roypar. God! You can ask me, too." He remembered the last time he'd lain with her. He hadn't known it would be the last then. I should have, he thought. She yawned when we finished, and she wasn't sleepy. She'd slipped out of the castle the next day. He hadn't seen her since, only heard about her . . . till Sigvat II summoned him to Nidaros.
In the pale moonlight, Liv's face was unreadable. "You never found another woman after that, plainly," she said.
"I sleep with women now and again. You know I do," Hamnet said.
"That isn't what I meant," she said. "You never found one who mattered to you."
"No. I never did," Hamnet Thyssen agreed. "I can't say I've looked very hard, though. If things go wrong once, that's bad. If things go wrong more than once . .. If things go wrong more than once, why do you go on living?"
"Why do you think they would go wrong?" Liv asked.
"Why? Because they already did once. I have practice being stupid, you might say." Hamnet tried to make a sour joke of it. Even with that, he was surprised to be saying as much as he was.
"Not all women are like Gudrid," Liv said.
"No doubt you're right," he answered. "But how do I tell beforehand? I didn't think Gudrid was like Gudrid, either, you know."
"Do you think I am like her?" Liv asked quietly.
He laughed once more, this time in sheer surprise. "No," he answered. "I can think of a lot of things I might say about you, but that isn't one of them."
"Well, then," she said.
Well, then-what? But he needed only a heartbeat to realize he was being thick. He put an arm around Liv. She sighed and pressed herself against him. "Are you sure?" he asked.
"How can anyone ever be sure?" she said. "The chance seems good, though. And if you don't bet, how do you expect to win?"
Hamnet Thyssen didn't look at things that way. To him, not betting meant you couldn't lose. He hadn't even thought of winning. He still didn't, not really. He wondered how badly he would get hurt, some time later on. But later didn't seem to matter, not right this minute. He bent his head to Liv-not very far, because she was a tall woman.
Nothing either one of them did after that was surprising-only the things men and women have done as long as there have been men and women. They surprised each other a few times, because neither of them knew the other that way. Those weren't bad surprises; they were both trying to see what pleased the other.
"Easy, there," Hamnet whispered after Liv dropped to her knees. "Not too much of that, or. . ."
She paused. "I wouldn't mind."
"I would," he said, and laid her down on the clothes they'd shed. She inhaled sharply when he went into her, and wrapped her arms and legs around him. He thought he would spend himself almost at once, especially after what she'd been doing, but instead he went on and on, almost as if he were outside himself. Liv's breath came short; her back arched. He covered her mouth with his when she started to cry out-that might have brought the other travelers on the run. Her joy came, and then, a moment later, his.
She kissed him on the end of the nose. Then she said, "You're squashing me," sounding, well, squashed.
"Sorry." He took his weight on his elbows and then leaned back onto his knees. All at once, he noticed it was chilly. It must have been chilly all along, but he'd had other things on his mind. "We'd better get dressed," he said.
"Yes, I suppose so." Liv seemed sorry, which made him feel about ten feet tall. Then she remarked, "That woman was the fool," which made him wonder why he didn't float off the ground and drift away on the breeze.
He glanced back toward the fire. No one was stirring around it. Either the other travelers hadn't noticed what was going on or they were too polite to let on that they had. Which didn't matter to Hamnet Thyssen. Hardly anything mattered to him right then.
"There. You see?" Liv effortlessly picked up the conversation. "It just. . . makes things better for a while."
"For a while," Hamnet admitted.
Liv laughed. "That's all it does," she said. "I'm not trying to steal your soul or anything like that."