She went right on fuming as they started south and east. She hadn't managed to make the rest of the travelers resent Audun or Liv-particularly Liv, if Hamnet was any judge at all.
The snow went right on falling. Hamnet wondered if it would stop any time before spring. That wasn't his worry, though. All they had to do was get back on their own side of the Glacier ahead of the Rulers, and he thought they could. The mammoth-riders did not seem to have neared the Gap in any large numbers. Roypar and Samoth and the rest would probably have to go back to their main camp or heartland, wherever that was, and persuade their superiors that they'd found something interesting and important. That wouldn't happen in a day or a week or, chances were, a month, either. The Bizogots and the Empire would have some time to get ready.
And how will we use it? Hamnet wondered. Would the Bizogot clans join together under a jarl of all jarls? Would the Bizogots let Raumsdalian soldiers come up onto the chilly plain? Would Sigvat II see a threat from the land beyond the Glacier? Not long before, people had doubted there was any such thing as land beyond the Glacier. Hamnet Thyssen had doubted it himself. Now he had a new doubt-that the Bizogots and Raumsdalians would do anything about the Rulers till urgent danger forced them to.
When he said as much to Ulric Skakki, Ulric only shrugged. "The sun will come up tomorrow, too," he remarked.
"Curse it, I'm not joking," Count Hamnet said.
"Neither am I," Ulric replied. "No one gets excited about a danger he hasn't seen himself."
He was probably right. No, he was certainly right. Hamnet Thyssen knew human nature too well to think anything else. He wished he could have another view of things-it would have given him more hope for the Empires safety.
A herd of deer like the ones the Rulers rode made the travelers hold up. It wasn't as large as the herd of buffalo had been not long before, but Hamnet still started fidgeting before it passed them by. Nor was he the only one. "Are the Rulers trying to slow us down?" Audun Gilli murmured.
"What does he say?" Liv asked Count Hamnet. They'd ridden close together since leaving camp. Gudrid sneered and tossed her head. Hamnet pretended to ignore her. He taught Liv bits of Raumsdalian, as she'd asked him to do. Most of the time, though, he simply enjoyed her company. He wasn't used to doing anything like that. Now he translated for her. She thought it over, then shook her head. "I don't believe it. We've already been through the reasons why the Rulers couldn't reach the Gap ahead of us, no matter how much they might want to. And this is the time of year when animals are on the move, looking for better pasture."
Now Audun asked, "What does she say?"
Again, Hamnet did the honors, adding, "I think she's probably right."
"Well, of course you do." That wasn't Audun; it was Gudrid. "But what would you think if you used your head and not your crotch?"
"You would know more about that than I do," Hamnet said.
Audun Gilli ignored the sniping. Hamnet Thyssen abstractly admired him for that; it took concentration-or possibly blindness. "Yes, I suppose she is likely to be right," the wizard said. Hamnet translated that into the Bizogot language for Liv, who smiled.
On came the deer, emerging from the snow like materializing ghosts and then vanishing into it as if expelled from the everyday world once more. They knew where they were going, whether the travelers did or not. So Hamnet thought for a little while, anyhow. But then he shook his head. It might not be true at all. Chances were that one deer at the front knew, and the others simply followed. Or maybe-and here was a frightening thought-the deer at the front had no idea where he was going, but the others followed anyhow. Were deer that much like people? Hamnet Thyssen wouldn't have been surprised.
At last, they were gone. But for their tracks and dung, but for the receding footfalls that the snow and wind soon muffled, they might not have been there at all. "Come on," Trasamund said. "Let's get moving. We'll go till it gets dark." It definitely did get dark now, even on days when skies were clear. Days shrank and nights stretched and grew. Before long, the sun would become no more than a midday intruder peeking up over the southern horizon and then disappearing again.
The travelers hadn't ridden long before Gudrid held up her hand and said, "I think we're going in the wrong direction. Shouldn't we be heading that way?" She pointed toward what Count Hamnet thought was the northeast.
"No, that's not right, I fear," Trasamund said.
"I believe the Bizogot is correct, my sweet," Eyvind Torfinn added.
Gudrid wasn't convinced-or wasn't about to let herself be convinced. She pointed again. "I'm sure the Gap lies there."
"We're going the way I think is proper, by God, and we'll keep on doing it." Now Trasamund had a harder time staying polite. That he'd bothered even once said Gudrid had a hold on his affections. Affections-that's one word for it, Hamnet Thyssen thought with a wry grin. The Bizogot jarl went on, "Besides, I've been here before, and nobody else has. If I don't know the way, who does?"
Ulric Skakki stirred, but didn't say anything. He did smile at Hamnet, who nodded back. We know something you don't know, went through Hamnet s head-one of the simple pleasures any man could enjoy.
But Gudrid wasn't mollified. Maybe she really thought they were going in the wrong direction, or maybe she just wanted to be the center of attention. "You're going to get us lost," she said shrilly. "Lost in the middle of all this-this nothing!" Her wave took in the whole world on this side of the Glacier.
"Really, my dear, Trasamund knows more about these things than you do," Eyvind Torfinn said in tones no doubt meant to be soothing.
"You're against me, too!" Gudrid burst into tears.
"What is her trouble? She sounds like she needs a kick in the arse," said Liv, who had a straightforward view of the world even for a Bizogot.
"She thinks we're going in the wrong direction," Hamnet Thyssen said. He didn't think that was Gudrid's only trouble, but it was the only one he felt like talking about.
Liv rolled her eyes up to the heavens. "She couldn't find her way back to the Gap by herself if someone soaked the path in mammoth fat and set fire to it. She's making noise for the sake of making noise."
Hamnet thought she was doing that, too. He shrugged. "If Eyvind Torfinn wants to calm her down, he's welcome to ay." And good luck to him, too, he added, but only to himself.
Earl Eyvind did his well-meaning but ineffectual best. "Really, my love, I have every confidence in Trasamund's sense of direction. He is right-he knows this terrain better than you do. And he is more familiar with traveling over roadless country in the snow."
"Oh, you're a fine one to talk about a sense of direction," Gudrid said in a deadly voice. "You can't even find up." Her sneer and the way she gestured left no one wondering what she meant-not even Liv, who spoke no Raumsdalian.
Hamnet didn't know what he would have done after an insult like that. Eyvind Torfinn swung his horse away from Gudrid s. "When you can be civilized, perhaps we'll talk some more," he said. "Perhaps." The repetition told how wounded he was.
Gudrid, just then, cared for no one's wounds but her own. "I still say it's wrong!" she cried. "We'll be lost!"
"Enough!" Trasamund thundered. "If you were my wife, it would have been enough a while ago, let me tell you."
"When did you ever get enough?" Gudrid jeered. Trasamund turned the color of hot iron. Hamnet was amazed the snowflakes striking him didn't steam. "If your sense of direction was as bad there as it is here-"
"Why don't you go your own way, if you're so set on it?" Ulric Skakki asked Gudrid before anything worse could happen. "The rest of us can go with Trasamund, and we'll see who gets to the other side of the Glacier first." He smiled as if he meant the suggestion seriously.