Steering his horse over to Liv's was a pleasure of sorts. If he was going to die, he preferred dying in good company. When he asked her his question, she said, "It would be a charm like keeping meat fresh, wouldn't it?"
"Yes, it would," he answered, while his hope sank. He hadn't wanted to hear would be. That meant she had no spell ready to use. He wasn't really surprised, only disappointed. If she'd known of such a spell, chances were she already would have been poised to use it.
"Maybe it will turn out all right anyhow," Liv said.
"Maybe it… will." Hamnet Thyssen started to bellow his answer, as he'd been bellowing all along. Halfway through, he realized he didn't need to. The wind was dying. The snow was easing. Back in Raumsdalia, romance writers threw storms that conveniently stopped into about half their tales. People laughed at them, because most of the time storms weren't nearly so considerate.
Most of the time-but not always.
"Well, well," Eyvind Torfinn said, as he had a habit of doing. "Well, well." He said it-and Hamnet Thyssen heard him. One of the horses snorted and shook its head, sending snow flying. Count Hamnet heard that.
He looked around. He felt as dazed and drained as if he'd fought in a battle. The aftermath of a battle, though, was horror, with the cries of the wounded and the stenches of blood and ordure filling the air, with maimed and slaughtered men and beasts sprawled on the ground, with ravens and vultures and teratorns spiraling down out of the sky to glut themselves on flesh before it grew cold. The aftermath of the storm . . . was one of the most beautiful things Hamnet Thyssen had ever seen.
Everything was white.
As far as the eye could see-and it could see farther with each passing moment-everything was covered in snow. Even the travelers were mostly shrouded. Hamnet almost dreaded having the sun come out. Shining off so much whiteness, it would be bound to blind. The Bizogots sometimes wore bone goggles that let in only narrow slits of light to fight against snow-blindness. Hamnet wished for a pair of his own.
To either side, the Glacier loomed up. It was white, too, whiter than he’d ever seen it. The blizzard covered the dirt that clung to the sides of the ice, covered the plants that sometimes grew in crevices when the weather warmed. The way Hamnet's breath smoked reminded him it was anything but warm now.
Trasamund shook himself like a bear emerging from hibernation. The snow he dislodged made the comparison seem more apt. "Well, now I know where south is, by God," he said in a voice not far from a bear's growl. "Let's get to the Gap as soon as we can, and leave the worst of this behind us."
On they rode. Gudrid's back was uncommonly stiff. She wasn't used to getting mocked over and over again for making a mistake; that was something she was more in the habit of doing to other people. Trasamund didn't care. He'd taken what she gave him, and he gave back nothing. No, Gudrid wasn't used to that at all.
What would she do about it? What could she do about it? Nothing that Hamnet could think of, not now, not unless she never wanted to see Nidaros again. But if they got down into safer country.. . Hamnet wondered whether to tell Trasamund to watch his back.
In the end, he decided not to. The Bizogot jarl was a grown man, able to take care of himself. That he'd turned the tables on Gudrid proved as much. If he couldn't see that she might want revenge, he was a fool. To Count Hamnet's way of thinking, Trasamund was a fool, but not that kind of fool.
The sun came out and shone down brightly. Hamnet blinked and narrowed his eyes against the glare. But for the snow everywhere, the blizzard might never have happened. The air grew .. . warmer, anyhow. The travelers slogged on toward the Gap.
XIV
Ham net Thyssen spread his arms wide. Liv laughed at him. "You can't span the Gap with your hands, my love," she said. "It's narrow, but not that narrow."
"I suppose not," Hamnet said. But the urge remained. With those cliffs, those mountains, of ice going up and up and up, the gap between them still seemed tiny-and, on the grand scale of things, it was. But a tiny gap was oh, so different from no gap at all. And then Hamnet stopped and gaped, really hearing in his mind everything Liv had said. "What did you call me?"
"I called you my love," she answered. "You are, aren't you?"
"By God!" The idea still startled him. But he had to nod. "I am, yes. And that would make you mine."
"Well, I should hope so." The shaman sent him a sidelong look. "Not much doubt about what we've been doing, is there?"
"Er-no," Hamnet Thyssen said, and she laughed at him. He didn't think it was so funny. He'd lavished all sorts of words of love on Gudrid.
Much good it did him.
Since his love for Gudrid foundered-no, since her love for him did, if she ever knew any-he hadn't wasted such words on any other woman. He would have sickened himself if he had. Now, with Liv, he could affirm he was her love and she his without wanting to bend down over the snow.
After the travelers got beyond the narrowest part of the Gap, after they returned to the regions Bizogots and Raumsdalians had known since time out of mind, they left the worst of the winter weather behind them, or almost behind them. It was as if they were in the front room of a house where the door wouldn't close all the way. The icy wind gusted and roared at their backs, but ahead of them the sun shone.
"Down in Nidaros, it's hardly even autumn yet," Eyvind Torfinn said wistfully.
"It will be cold enough on the plains, by God." Trasamund's breath smoked as he answered. "Coid enough, yes, but not so cold as this."
"As the Gap widens out, your Ferocity, could we perhaps steer away from the very center of it?" Eyvind asked. "That way, the worst of the blast from the north will pass alongside of us instead of blowing through us." Maybe his shiver was exaggerated for effect; on the other hand, maybe it wasn't. Hamnet Thyssen was cold, too.
But Trasamund shook his head. "By your leave, your Splendor, I'll take a cold breeze on my kidneys. I don't care for that, but I can live with it. If chunks of ice decide to come down, they'll squash me like a louse. The two halves of the Glacier are still too cursed close together-a really big avalanche'll squash us no matter where we are. Still and all, I'd sooner keep the risk as small as I can."
"Makes sense," Ulric Skakki said.
Reluctantly, Eyvind Torfinn nodded. "Yes, I suppose it does. I was hoping for the chance to be warm. Like his Ferocity, though, I should much prefer not to be flat."
Ulric looked back toward the narrowest part of the Gap. It was almost like looking back toward a dragon's mouth, except that what it belched was not fire but scudding clouds and snow. In thoughtful tones, Ulric asked, "Could a big avalanche in the right spot still block the Gap, do you think?"
"Wouldn't be surprised," Trasamund answered. "But I don't think God will give us one. God expects people to solve their own problems. He doesn't go around doing it for them."
Hamnet Thyssen found it hard to quarrel with that. But Audun Gilli inquired, "What good is such a God?"
"Well, I don't know that anyone would say he didn't make the world and all the things in it," Trasamund answered. "It'd be a little hard to get along without this old world, even if your kidneys do get cold."
"Do you suppose God made the Rulers?" Hamnet Thyssen asked, not altogether seriously but more so than he would have wanted.
"If he did, he was having a bad day," Ulric Skakki said. "If he didn't, some demon or other was having a good day. Which choice do you like better?"
"I don't like either one of them," Count Hamnet said.