When you got down to it, that was .. . pretty stupid. And he'd only taken forty-odd years to realize it. The really scary thing was, he was doing better than most. A lot of people went to their graves without ever figuring that out.
"No, it's not," he said, and neither Liv nor Audun Gilli had the slightest idea how much effort getting those three words past his lips took.
By Raumsdalian standards, the northern forests changed very slowly. But Liv noticed differences at once. "What are those trees with the white . . . ?" she asked, and gestured because she couldn't remember the Raumsdalian word she needed.
"Trunks," Count Hamnet supplied, and she nodded. "Those are birches," he said.
"They look like skeletons." Liv took off her mittens and raised her hands with fingers widespread. "How do they live? Where are their leaves?" The last word came out in the Bizogot language.
"They'll grow them in spring and keep them into fall," Hamnet answered. "They do that every year. The leaves fall off. They turn brown and die. Most of them are buried under the snow now."
"Why do they do that?" she asked. "It seems like a waste. The . . . the firs and the spruces keep their leaves in this time. Why not the birches, too?"
"I don't know. Maybe you'd have to ask the trees," Hamnet Thyssen said. She made a face at him. He called out to Eyvind Torfinn. "Why do birches and oaks and willows lose their leaves in the fall?"
Eyvind stared on him. "What on earth makes you think I'd know something like that?"
"Well, I don't, your Splendor," Count Hamnet said. "Of all the people here, I thought you had the best chance to tell me. You know all sorts of strange things."
"Not that one, I fear."
"Too bad." Hamnet Thyssen turned back to Liv. "If Earl Eyvind doesn't know, you really do need to talk to the trees."
"I wonder if I could magic out the answer." The Bizogot shaman sounded completely serious. "Use the law of similarity to compare leaf to leaf, branch to branch . . ."
Eyvind Torfinn was no wizard, but he knew a good deal about sorcery-he knew a good deal about anything that happened to catch his interest. "I don't see why you couldn't," he said, surprise and what sounded like wonder in his voice. "I don't believe anyone has ever used wizardry like that. I don't believe anyone ever thought to use wizardry like that."
"What are you going on about in that horrible language?" Gudrid asked. Most of the time, she paid as little attention to her husband as she could. Seeing him talking with Liv, though, drew her notice-and her ire.
"Deciduous and evergreen trees," Eyvind replied in Raumsdalian.
"What about them?" Gudrid still sounded suspicious.
"Why there are such things, why they're different, and how one might go about finding out through sorcery."
His wife stared at him. "You're joking."
"No. Why would I be?" Eyvind Torfinn sounded confused.
"Because if a man talks to a woman, only a sap talks about trees." Gudrid rode down the path ahead of Eyvind and Liv and Hamnet Thyssen.
"What was that all about?" Liv asked. "She talked too fast for me to follow much."
"You're lucky," Hamnet said.
"My wife has a short temper sometimes," Eyvind Torfinn said. "Once in a while, she lets it get away from her."
Hamnet Thyssen coughed a couple of times, in lieu of snorting or breaking into wild-into mad-laughter. What Earl Eyvind said was true. And the Glacier was chilly, and the sun warm, and this forest rather wide. Sometimes understatement was the most effective way to lie-even to yourself.
Did Eyvind know-did he even suspect-she was no more faithful to him than she had been to Hamnet? I can't very well ask, Hamnet thought. This wasn't the first time he'd wondered, though-far from it.
Usually, the man was the one who wandered, and also the one who bristled if the woman so much as looked at anybody else. Count Hamnet did laugh then, even if not in the gales he'd almost loosed a moment before. Trust Gudrid to do things backwards.
And then she screamed, and he forgot about his musings.
He didn't need to hear the short-faced bear's growling roar to guess what was wrong. The great bears haunted these northern woods, and often didn't sleep through the winter. A horse-and a woman-would be just what a hungry bear was looking for.
Gudrid screamed again. No, this time it was more of a shriek. She'd bragged about what an archer she was, but that seemed forgot now-or maybe she never had a chance to string and draw her bow.
Hamnet Thyssen yelled, too, as he rode toward her. He drew his sword- no time for him to string his bow, either. Maybe he could distract the bear, keep it from attacking. … He shouted once more, and laughed while he did. The world turned upside down again. More often than not, he would have been happy to see Gudrid dead. And here he was, riding to her rescue. If that wasn't insane, what was?
The short-faced bear had Gudrid's horse down. If the horse had tried to run, it didn't have much luck. Short-faced bears had longer legs than grizzlies and ordinary black bruins. A horse with a running start might escape them. But if the bear was already charging and the horse just ambling along, the bear could-and this bear had-outrun its intended prey before the horse got up to speed.
When the horse went over, Gudrid had jumped or been thrown clear. But she wasn't running. Was she paralyzed with fear, or had she hurt herself? Hamnet couldn't begin to guess. It hardly mattered. She was easier to kill than a kicking, thrashing horse. Before long, the bear would figure that out.
Hamnet Thyssen shouted at the top of his lungs. The short-faced bear ignored him. It started eating the horse before the other animal was even dead. If dinner kicked and squirmed and screamed, so what? The bear's muzzle was crimson almost to the eyes. How close to starving was it?
And if it did pay attention to Hamnet and his onrushing horse, what would it do? Run off? He hoped so. Suppose it didn't. Suppose it went for his horse-and him-instead. What would he do then? Think of something fast, he told himself. He'd be on the bear in another few heartbeats.
An arrow hissed past his head-someone had managed to string his bow, or perhaps was traveling with it strung. The shaft thudded into the short-faced bear's hindquarters. That got the beast's attention, where Ham-net's shout hadn't. The bear jumped and reared and roared again, this time in pain and surprise rather than in fury.
As it reared, he swung his sword. The stroke wasn't perfect. He'd intended to strike its muzzle and badly wound it, and all he managed to do was shear off the tip of one ear. Then his horse thundered past. He tugged hard on the reins and guided the horse around with pressure from his knees and thighs. If he had to make another pass at the bear, he would.
He didn't. Two wounds at opposite ends were more than enough for the animal. With a final snarl, it limped off into the forest again. It left a trail of blood behind. Had Hamnet wanted to hunt it down, he would have had an easy time tracking it. He was content to let it go.
"Bravely done!" Ulric Skakki called. He had an arrow nocked and ready to shoot, so Hamnet supposed he'd let fly with the first one. He didn't shoot again as the bear withdrew; like Hamnet, he thought driving it off counted for more than killing it. With a wry grin, he added, "Foolhardy, maybe, but bravely done."
Looking back on things, Hamnet thought he was foolhardy, too. But he'd got away with it. "Are you all right?" he called to Gudrid.
"That horrible monster didn't eat me, so I'm a lot better than I might be. I hurt my ankle when I went off the horse, though." She looked up at him from the snow. "You're the last person I expected to come riding up and save me."