Now her eyes stopped sparkling. They flashed instead. "You'll pay for that," she said.
Hamnet Thyssen shrugged. "I've been paying for knowing you for years. What's a little more?"
"If I tell Eyvind to stay home-"
He laughed in her face. "You hurt the Empire if that happens-not that you care, I'm sure. But it doesn't worry me at all. Your husband probably knows more about the Golden Shrine than any man alive. I know he knows more than I thought anybody could. He'd be useful to have along, yes. But he's still your husband, Gudrid. If you think I want his company, youd better think twice."
She made what sounded like a lion's growl, down deep in her throat. She didn't like being thwarted, didn't like it and wouldn't put up with it. She'd taken up with Eyvind Torfinn not long after Hamnet killed her earlier lover. He judged it was at least as much to show him he couldn't get the better of her as for any attraction Earl Eyvind held.
"I suppose you know I've had your wizard as well as the Bizogot," she said. Her red-painted lip curled. "He wasn't what you'd call magical."
She told him to hurt him. She couldn't have any other reason. "You're not my worry any more," he said. It wasn't true; she would go on worrying him till his dying day. He added, "You've given us all something to talk about on the way north, anyhow."
Gudrid smiled-she liked that. "Something warm, instead of the Glacier."
Count Hamnet shook his head. "Something so cold, it makes the Glacier seem warm beside it."
Fast as a striking serpent, her hand lashed out. However fast she was, she wasn't fast enough. Count Hamnet caught her wrist before she could slap him or claw him. "Let go of me," she said in a low, furious voice.
I've been trying to, ever since I found out what you are, Hamnet thought. He opened his hand. The memory of her flesh remained printed on his palm. She didn't feel cold. Oh, no. You had to know her to understand what he meant.
Then again, he wondered if he'd ever known her at all.
"You're harder than you were," she remarked.
"If I am, whose fault is that?" he asked harshly.
"May the Bizogots eat you," Gudrid said. The mammoth-herders didn't eat men, even if a lot of Raumsdalians thought they did. A lewd question rose in Hamnet s mind. He stifled it. She went on, "May you fall off the edge of the world when you go beyond the Glacier. May one of the white bears Trasamund goes on about gnaw your bones."
His bow was stiff as a wooden puppet's. "I love you, too, my sweet," he said, and tried to match her venom so she wouldn't realize he was telling the truth-the painful and useless truth.
He must have done what he set out to do, for her laughter this time was jagged as shattered ice, sharp as sabertooth fangs. She stalked away, if stalking was the right word to use for something with so much hip action. Even without words, she reminded him what he was missing. He looked down at the rug. As if l didn't know, he thought, and kicked at the embroidered wool.
III
Riding out of Nidaros came as nothing but a relief for Hamnet Thyssen. He could deal with Ulric Skakki and Audun Gilli. He could deal with Trasamund the jarl. He could even deal with Eyvind Torfinn, though he would rather not have to. As long as he didn't have to deal with Gudrid, he felt he could do anything.
The Great North Road ran from the Raumsdalian capital toward the imperial border-and toward the Bizogot country beyond it. Armies had moved up that road more often than Hamnet could easily count, ready to repel invaders from the north. And the barbarians had spilled into the Empire more often than he could easily count, too. Its riches and the better weather it enjoyed drew them like a lodestone.
One of these days, Hamnet supposed, the Bizogots would win, and either put one of their own on the Raumsdalian throne or topple the Empire altogether. Nothing lasted forever. It seemed not even the Glacier lasted forever, although a couple of lifetimes earlier everyone would have thought the Glacier the one surely eternal thing God made.
Was God himself eternal? Hamnet Thyssen uneasily looked up into the steel-blue sky. If God himself might pass away, who rose to power after he was gone? Men intent on their affairs? Women intent on their affairs? (Gudrid was certainly intent on hers.) Or older, darker Powers God had long held in check?
What was the Golden Shrine, anyway?
Ulric Skakki chose that moment to remark, "A copper for your thoughts, your Grace." Hamnet was a man who made a habit of saying what was in his mind, even-perhaps especially-when no one had asked him. He told Ulric Skakki exactly what he was thinking about. The younger man blinked; whatever he was expecting, that wasn't it. He reached into his belt pouch and pulled out a copper coin. Offering it to Count Hamnet, he said, "Well, your Grace, I got my money's worth."
Hamnet solemnly stowed the coin. "We endeavor to give satisfaction. It doesn't always work, mind you, but we do endeavor." He thought of Gudrid again. But it wasn't that he hadn't satisfied her. He had, as far as he could tell. She'd wanted something else, something more, from him. Whatever it was, it seemed defined not least by his inability to give it to her.
Did her first lover, the one who laughed? Did Eyvind Torn Torfinn? Did Trasamund? Did having them give her what she craved? Was having them what she craved?
If Ulric Skakki had chosen that moment to ask him for his thoughts, he would have lied without the least hesitation. He didn't mind talking about the death of the Empire, or about the death of the Glacier, or even about the death of God. The death of the one real love of his life? That was different.
Farmers weeded their young, hopeful crops of rye and oats off to either side or the road. Barley rarely succeeded north of Nidaros, even now. Wheat? Maize? Those were crops for softer, more luxurious climes. The farmers always seemed to have one eye on the north. If the Breath of God blew against them for long, their crops would wither and freeze and fail, even here. Then they would live on what they'd stored in better years, and on what they could hunt.
Or they would die. It happened, in hard years. Oh, yes-it happened.
No one hurried. Neither Trasamund nor Audun Gilli was any sort of a horseman, while Eyvind Torfinn might have been once upon a time but wasn't any more. Some of the Raumsdalians in the party might not have been anxious to leave the Empire behind-not in their hearts, anyway, no matter what their heads might tell them.
Hamnet Thyssen knew perfectly well what lay beyond the border. Nomad huts on the tundra-land crushed flat by the Glacier that had lain on it for so many centuries. Herds of half-tame musk oxen and mammoths guided-when they could be guided-by half-tame men. Meltwater lakes. Cold beyond what even Nidaros ever knew. Wind almost always from the north, almost always with frigid daggers in it. Snow and ice at any season of the year.
And then-the Glacier itself.
Yes, it was wounded. Yes, if Trasamund spoke truly, the Gap had at last pierced it to the root. Not the Glacier any more, but Glaciers, divided east and west. Count Hamnet shook his head in slow wonder at that. But still, any man who ever saw the Glacier, even diminished as it was, knew in his belly what awe meant. It went forward and back-more back than forward of late-like alive thing, but it swallowed the whole north of the world.
Well, most of the north of the world, anyhow. If the Gap ran all the way through it… That was why they were here.
The Golden Shrine. Hamnet glanced over at Earl Torfinn. No, he hadn't believed in the Golden Shrine. Even if he had believed in it, what difference would that have made? With the Glacier between Raumsdalia and the Golden Shrine, whether it was real might trouble scholars, but not ordinary men. Count Hamnet was not exactly an ordinary man, but he was no scholar, either, and just as glad not to be one.