"My wife burned down, and my house died in the fire," the wizard said, a pretty good sign not all his wits were working the way they should have.
It was also a pretty good sign he did deserve some sympathy. "When did this happen?" Count Hamnet asked, less roughly than before.
"Three years ago," Audun Gilli answered.
Count Hamnet could feel his neck swelling. "Easy, there," Ulric Skakki said. "When he dries out, he'll be fine. He's a student of sorceries from ancient days, so he should be exactly the kind of wizard we want along if we find the Golden Shrine."
"I'll bet he's a student of ancient sorceries," Hamnet said. "He's been pickled from then till now."
"His Majesty sent me out to find a proper wizard. Me," Ulric Skakki replied with a touch—or more than a touch—of hauteur. "I say I've found him."
"I say you couldn't find your arse with both hands if you think so," Count Hamnet growled. They glared at each other.
Forgotten by both of them like a bone abandoned when two dogs go at each other, Audun Gilli stared at the mugs in which his sassafras tea had come. He chanted softly to himself. The language he used hadn't been spoken since long before the Raumsdalian Empire rose, but Hamnet Thyssen didn't notice that. In his quarrel with Ulric Skakki, Hamnet Thyssen didn't notice the wizard at all.
Then two of the mugs started shouting at each other in high, squeaky voices that sounded like parodies of Ulric's and Hamnet s. It wasn't ventriloquism; the mugs suddenly sported faces too much like theirs. The less than flattered models both gaped. So did the third mug, which looked like a sorrowful ceramic version of Audun Gilli.
The wizard chanted again, and the mugs . . . were only mugs again. "You see?" Ulric Skakki said triumphantly.
"I saw . . . something." However little Count Hamnet wanted to, he had to admit it.
"He's a wizard. He's a good wizard. And," Ulric went on pragmatically, "he'll be better the longer he stays sober."
"Who says he'll stay sober? We'll be drinking ale or beer or mead or fermented mammoth's milk as much as we can," Hamnet said. "Even runoff straight from the Glacier can give you a bloody flux. Have you ever been up in the Bizogot country, Ulric? Don't you know about that?"
"I've been there, all right. I know," Ulric said. Count Hamnet wasn't sure he believed him till the other man added, "We'll have to pick our way past the lands where a couple of clans range. They may remember me a little too well."
That held the ring of truth. "Why am I not surprised?" Hamnet Thyssen said. Ulric Skakki gave back a bow, as if at a compliment. Audun Gilli managed a wan smile when he saw it. Count Hamnet threw his hands in the air. When you knew you were going to lose a fight, sometimes the best thing you could do was give it up before it cost you more than you could afford to spend.
If only he'd figured that out with Gudrid. . . .
Earl Eyvind Torfinn was a friendly man. As Raumsdalian nobles were supposed to be, he was openhanded in his hospitality. He lived in a large, rambling two-story house on top of a hill in the western part of Nidaros. From windows on the upper floor, he could look out on what had been Hevring Lake when the great city was but a hunting camp.
Hamnet Thyssen knew that because Earl Eyvind insisted on inviting him to feast with the other members of the upcoming expedition. Refusing would have been churlish—Eyvind Torfinn seemed to think that his acquiring Hamnet s wife was just one of those things, certainly not important enough to get excited about. Visiting that house, though, dripped vitriol on Hamnet s soul.
Gudrid did her best to make sure that it should. She wore outfits that clung and revealed. She smiled. She sparkled. Much of that was aimed at captivating Trasamund. The Bizogot didn't prove hard to captivate. If she could wound Hamnet at the same time—well, so much the better.
He set his jaw and tried not to show he was wounded, as he would have if he'd taken an arrow in the leg. Gudrid knew better. She knew him altogether too well. When they were happy together, the way she knew him pleased him and made him proud. These days, it meant he was vulnerable.
Eyvind Torfinn seemed oblivious to the byplay. Count Hamnet wasn't sure he was, but he seemed that way. Ulric Skakki watched it with wry fascination. He didn't seem to interest Gudrid. Maybe that was because he was only a commoner, maybe because she recognized that he might be as devious and dangerous as she was herself, if less alluring. As for Audun Gilli, he took in everything with a childlike, wide-eyed fascination. But a child who drank the way he did would have been in no shape to take in anything.
Trasamund, for his part, took Gudrid's attentions as no less than his due. "That is quite a woman," he told Hamnet, plainly not knowing they'd once been man and wife. "Not as young as she used to be, maybe, but still quite a woman. Still plenty tight." The jarl leered and rocked his hips forward and back, in case Hamnet could have any doubt about what he meant.
"Is she?" Count Hamnet's voice held no expression whatever. That might have been just as well. If he had let it hold expression, what would have come out? Rage? Bitterness? Jealousy? Longing? Since he revealed even less to Trasamund than he did to Gudrid, the question didn't arise. So he told himself, anyhow.
He drank Eyvind Torfinn's wine and beer. He ate horseflesh and fat-rich camel's meat, and musk ox and strong-tasting mammoth flesh brought down from the north on ice. There was ice in the north, all right, ice and to spare. He nibbled on honey cakes and frozen, sweetened milk. And his stomach gnawed at him, and he wished he were anywhere else in all the world. Sinking into soft asphalt with dire wolves and sabertooths prowling all around? Next to this lavish hospitality, that looked pretty good.
"You hate me, don't you?" Gudrid asked one evening after everyone had drunk a little too much. By the way her eyes sparkled, she wanted him to tell her yes.
"I loved you," Hamnet Thyssen said, which was not an answer—unless it was.
The gleam grew brighter. "And now?"
Count Hamnet shrugged. "We all make mistakes. Some of us make bigger mistakes than others."
"Yes, that's true," Gudrid agreed. "I never should have wed you in the first place."
"You didn't think so then," Hamnet said, and let it go at that. If he told her she'd loved him, she would have laughed in his face. He thought she had. He was convinced she had, in fact. But he was just as convinced that Sigvat Us torturers couldn't tear the confession out of her now.
"We all make mistakes. You said it; I didn't." Gudrid was like a cat, playing and swiping and tormenting before the kill.
"And what mistake did you make with Eyvind Torfinn?" Hamnet inquired.
She breathed sweet wine fumes into his face when she laughed. "Dear Eyvind? I made no mistakes with him. He lets me do whatever I please."
"And you despise him for it," Count Hamnet said. Gudrid did not deny it; she only laughed again. Stubbornly, Hamnet went on, "Wouldn't you call wedding a man you despise a mistake?"
"Of course not. I call it an amusement." She reached out and stroked his cheek with a soft hand. "But don't worry, my sweet. If it makes you feel any better, I despise you, too."
"And Trasamund?" Hamnet asked, trying to ignore the way her touch seared his flesh.
"Ah, Trasamund." She laughed throatily and batted her eyelashes at him. "No one could despise Trasamund. He's much too . . . virile."
"He thinks you're quite something, too," Hamnet said. Gudrid laughed again, this time in complacent amusement. Hamnet added, "For someone who's not as young as she used to be." Even a man with no other tool toward revenge had time on his side.