"Ulric Skakki is searching Nidaros for the best man," Hamnet answered.
"You know this Skakki, don't you?" Eyvind Torfinn said. "I confess I had not met him before. He seems . . . versatile."
"A sneak, a thief, a cutpurse, a knife in the dark, a pretty song to woo the ladies." Trasamund delivered his judgment before Hamnet Thyssen could. "A good man at your side, maybe not so good at your back." He mimed taking a knife in the kidney.
"And what do you think, your Grace?" Eyvind Torfinn asked Count Hamnet—he valued a Raumsdalian's opinion more than the jarl's.
But Hamnet said, "I think his Ferocity is a keen judge of men." He bowed to Trasamund. "I rode with Ulric Skakki once. We had some business to attend to for his Majesty—this was toward the end of the first Sig-vat's days." He made a sour face. "It was one of those nasty little things you wish you didn't have to do, the kind you don't like talking about afterwards. And we took care of it, and Ulric was .. . everything you said he was, Trasamund."
"Did you let him get behind you?" the Bizogot inquired.
"No. I'd already decided that wasn't a good idea," Count Hamnet answered. "As long as I could keep an eye on him, everything was fine."
Trasamund nodded. That satisfied him. And hearing his cleverness and judgment praised pleased him no less than it would have pleased a Raumsdalian. He likes himself pretty well, Hamnet thought. No, Bizogots were no more immune to vanity than the folk of the Empire. Many people would have said they were less immune to it.
"How far did you travel after you passed through the Gap?" Eyvind asked him.
"I stayed beyond the Glacier for about three weeks all told," Trasamund said. "I wasn't heading out in a straight line to see how far I could go, you understand. I was wandering here and there, wandering wherever I pleased."
"Drunkard's walk," Eyvind Torfinn murmured.
"By God, I wasn't drunk!" Trasamund's cheeks flamed with anger. "I drank water all through that journey—well, almost all through it."
Eyvind held up a plump, placating hand. "No, no—I meant no offense. The drunkard's walk tries to answer the question of how far from where you start you will end up if you travel at random for such and such a time."
Trasamund's face remained thunderously suspicious. "How can anyone know that? And why would anyone care?"
"It takes a good deal of calculating," Earl Eyvind allowed. "And why? Well, people like to find out whatever they can. Haven't you seen that?"
"Didn't you come down to Nidaros, your Ferocity, because you knew Raumsdalians know more different kinds of strange things than you Bizogots do?" Hamnet Thyssen added.
Trasamund made a discontented noise down deep in his broad chest. He had said something like that, so he couldn't very well deny it. "I meant you people know useful things, though," he said. If he couldn't deny, he could deflect.
Count Hamnet looked over to Earl Eyvind. He thought the notion of a drunkards walk sounded silly, too, so he didn't know how to defend it. "Knowledge is strange," Eyvind Torfinn said. "You never can be sure ahead of time what you may need. Someone who is going to a strange place will carry different tools on his belt. Should he not carry different tools in his head as well?"
Instead of answering him straight out, the jarl of the Three Tusk clan strode over to a sideboard and poured himself a goblet of mead. He drank it down in one heroic draught. Hamnet Thyssen suspected that was an answer of sorts.
When Ulric Skakki brought a wizard back to the palace, Count Hamnet's first thought was of the drunkard's walk Eyvind Torfinn had mentioned. The sorcerer's name was Audun Gilli. He didn't look or act drunk. He looked like a man drying out after a long binge instead—and not like a man happy to be drying out, either.
Count Hamnet recognized that look. He knew it better than he would have liked. He'd gone on a bender or two of his own as his troubles with Gudrid got worse. He'd been sober when he killed. That was something— not much, but something.
Of course, if he were drunk when he faced Gudrid's first lover (or the first one he caught, anyhow), the other man probably would have killed him. At the time, he would hardly have minded. Now he saw living on without her as revenge of sorts.
He also saw that Audun Gilli was in a bad way. He shouted for a palace servant. "Bring this man a mug of sassafras tea," he said, pointing to the wizard. "No, bring him about three. By the time he gets to the bottom of the last one, he may be a bit better off."
"Bring me the hair of the hound—sassafras tea be damned." Audun Gilli's voice was a sorrowful whine.
The servant looked toward Hamnet Thyssen. "Tea!" Hamnet snapped. The man bowed and hurried off. Audun Gilli's sigh said it was just one more defeat in a lifetime full of them. Count Hamnet paid no more attention to him—but then, how many people ever did? Hamnet rounded on Ulric Skakki. "By God, Ulric! Which gutter did you drag him out of, and why?"
"Why? Because he'll do what we need, that's why," Ulric Skakki answered. "More to him than meets the eye." He sounded very sure of himself. From what Hamnet remembered, Ulric always sounded sure of himself. That didn't mean he was always right, though he had trouble recognizing the difference.
"There could hardly be less to him than meets the eye," Count Hamnet said with something between a sneer and a cry of despair. "Look at him!"
He glared at Audun Gilli himself. The wizard flinched under that fierce stare. Audun was a small, weedy man, the sort who didn't stand out in a crowd. He had a long, weathered-looking face, a scraggly beard—brown going gray—and a nose that was his largest but not best feature. The whites of his gray-blue eyes were yellowish and tracked with red. His hands trembled.
They were a wizard's hands but for the tremor; Hamnet Thyssen could not deny that. They had narrow palms and long, delicate fingers—perfect hands for the complex passes some spells required. A wizard with the shakes, though, was like a blind archer; he was more likely to be dangerous to his friends than to his foes.
The servant came in with three steaming mugs on a tray. He'd taken Hamnet literally, then. Good, Hamnet thought. He thrust a mug at Audun Gilli. "Here. Drink!"
With a martyred sigh, the wizard obeyed. He did need more than one mug before Hamnet saw any improvement. He was on the third one before he seemed to see any improvement himself. "I never thought I'd be warm inside again," he murmured.
"Well, that proves he wasn't drinking mulled wine," Hamnet said to Ulric Skakki. "What was he drinking? Anything he could get his hands on, that's plain. And why was he drinking it by the bloody wagonload? And, since he was drinking wagonloads of anything he could get his hands on, what in God's name makes you think he's worth even a counterfeit copper as a wizard?"
"I don't do this all the time," Audun Gilli protested feebly.
"Of course you don't. If you did, you would have been dead in the gutter where Ulric Skakki tripped over you, not just lying in it." Count Hamnet rounded on Ulric. "Now answer me—or else I'll throw him out on his worthless ear and take the cost of three cups of sassafras tea out of his worthless hide."
"How can you take cost out of something worthless?" Audun asked, the first sign Hamnet Thyssen had that whatever he'd drunk hadn't curdled his wits for good.
"He's had a hard time," Ulric Skakki said. "If you'd had that hard a time, you would drink, too."
Since Hamnet had drunk when times got hard for him, and since Ulric Skakki probably knew as much, denying that didn't seem a good idea. Instead, Hamnet turned back to Audun Gilli. "Well?" He made that more a challenge than a question.