Then she asked, “How much is a lot?”
That was harder to answer. Hamnet said, “It’s different from one person to the next. It depends on how big you are and how much you usually drink and on who knows what.”
“Have to find out, then.” Marcovefa finished her mug and waved to the tapman for another. She was starting to figure out how things worked here. But when Ulric gave the fellow a coin for the fresh mug, she got puzzled all over again. To her, copper and silver and gold made good ornaments, but that was all. Trying to explain why money was money wasn’t easy. “What good is it?” she asked, over and over.
The way she asked it made Hamnet Thyssen wonder himself. “We make lots of different kinds of things – you’ve seen that,” Ulric said after several false starts. He got a cautious nod from Marcovefa. Thus encouraged, he went on, “We find it easier to give coins for things than to trade things all the time. It makes dealing simpler.”
“How did you decide to do that?” she asked.
Now he shrugged. “I don’t know. I do know we’ve been doing it for a long time. Everybody down here does it. That makes it work.”
“You have strange customs,” Marcovefa said seriously. A Raumsdalian talking about the ways of the folk who lived up on the Glacier would have used the exact same tone of voice.
Up on the Glacier, it was impossible to be rich. There wasn’t enough for anyone to get a surplus. Having enough wasn’t easy. Trading with one another and with the Empire, Bizogots could get rich – Trasamund had been, before his clan fell on hard times – but it wasn’t easy. For that matter, it wasn’t easy in the Empire, but it was easier, because there were more goods to move around – and because there was money to make the moving easier.
Was that good or bad? Hamnet had never wondered before. It was what Raumsdalia and every other civilized land had, and what the Bizogots and other barbarians aspired to. If the clans atop the Glacier had lost it, that was only because they’d lost so many other things as well.
“Everyone has strange customs – to people who don’t have the same ones,” he said, and waited to see if the shaman would need Ulric to translate for her. Her nod said she followed on her own.
Audun Gilli emptied his mug of ale, yawned, and went upstairs. Several Bizogots had already drunk themselves sleepy. Ulric Skakki grinned. “They haven’t got the head for real drinking,” he said.
“Seems that way,” Hamnet agreed, glad he was drinking ale instead of smetyn.
“Who says?” Trasamund demanded, and shouted for a fresh mug. Ulric also waved for a refill. So did Hamnet.
“Drink yourselves foolish if you please, but I’m going upstairs.” Liv set down her mug and did just that.
After Hamnet Thyssen had more ale in front of him, he found he didn’t feel like getting getting blind drunk just to make a point. He knew what he could hold, and so did Ulric and Trasamund, the people he would have been most interested in impressing. He drained the mug in a hurry – no point in letting it go to waste, after all – then pushed back his stool and stood up. “I’m going upstairs, too,” he said.
His friends jeered at him. He’d known they would, so he had no trouble ignoring them. The room spun a little as he walked to the stairs. Yes, he’d already had plenty.
He climbed the steps with exaggerated care and quiet. At the top of the stairs, he stopped dead. There stood Liv and Audun Gilli, kissing in the hallway.
XIV
Sometimes when you were wounded, you didn’t feel the pain for the first few heartbeats. Sometimes it pierced you right away. When Hamnet Thyssen heard a noise like a dire wolf’s growl, he needed that handful of heartbeats to realize it came from his own throat.
The other two also needed a moment to hear it through their more enjoyable distraction. It reached Audun before Liv. He sprang away from her with a gasp of horror. “I can explain,” he gabbled. “You have to understand -”
“Understand what?” Hamnet said, still growling. “Understand how many pieces I’m going to cut you into?” His hand already lay on the hilt of his sword, though he didn’t remember telling it to go there.
“Don’t be foolish, Hamnet,” Liv said. “It’s over. You know it is. It’s been over for a while now. You know that, too.”
He did know it, even if he hadn’t wanted to look at it. That made things worse, not better. “It can’t be!” he said. He’d lost Gudrid. How could he stand losing another woman? “I loved you! You loved me!” He wished that hadn’t come out in the past tense. Maybe his mouth was wiser than his brain.
Liv nodded. “I did, for a while. But when you started herding me the way dogs herd musk oxen, when you started wondering whether I was faithful every time I breathed . . . You caused what you wanted to cure. Killing Audun won’t get me back, even if you can. It’s too late for that.”
“I ought to kill you, too,” he ground out. He should have done that with Gudrid. Then she wouldn’t have been able to torment him all these years after they broke apart. Would Liv do the same? Would she revel in it the way Gudrid had?
“You can try,” she said. “But what good would it do? It won’t bring me back to you. Nothing can do that now. What we had was good while it lasted. Why not remember it that way?”
Hamnet started to say that killing her and Audun would make him feel better. But he wasn’t even sure that was true. It might make him feel better for a little while, but he knew he would be sorry afterwards if he did it. He couldn’t tell them he hoped they would be happy together; he didn’t. He didn’t see much point in telling them he hoped they would be unhappy together – they could figure that out for themselves.
And so he pushed past them without a word. Audun Gilli shrank from him. Liv didn’t. She had as much courage as any Bizogot. She looked as if she wanted to say something, but she didn’t do that, either. After their first spell of intoxication with each other, neither of them had been able to find enough to say to each other. That was part of the trouble, though Hamnet didn’t realize it.
When he walked into the mean little room he’d thought he would share with Liv, he found she’d already taken her meager belongings out. He said something that should have made the roof cave in and the walls collapse. Everything stayed up, though, and the bed didn’t collapse when he threw himself down on it, even if the frame did groan.
After losing Gudrid, he’d wept for days – weeks, in fact. He wept now, too, but even he knew the tears were more drunken self-pity than anything else. Gudrid had had a hold on him that Liv couldn’t match. Knowing he would probably be all right before too long made him all the more mournful.
One good thing: Audun Gilli’s chamber lay halfway down the hall. If he’d had to listen to the mattress in the next room creaking rhythmically, he really might have drawn his sword and done his best to slaughter the wizard and the shaman.
Instead, he fell asleep with his boots still on, sprawled out across the bed. After that, he didn’t hear a thing.
When he came downstairs the next morning, some of the Bizogots were already eating breakfast. So was Ulric Skakki. He sat next to Trasamund. Both of them cautiously spooned up porridge of rye and oats and sipped from mugs of beer. By their sallow skins and red-tracked eyes, they hoped the beer would soothe aching heads. By the way the corners of their mouths turned down, it hadn’t done the job yet.
Trasamund stared at Count Hamnet. “By God, man, what ails you?” the jarl burst out. “You went to bed long before we did, but you look worse than either one of us.”
Ulric, by contrast, had a way of cutting to the chase. He did it now with two words: “He knows.”
Hamnet scowled at him. How long had they known? How long had everybody known? How long had people been laughing at him behind his back? Hadn’t he had enough of that with Gudrid? Evidently not.
“What’ll it be, friend?” The tapman sounded cheerful. Why not? He hadn’t just lost his woman.