Runolf Skallagrim spluttered. “We are His Majesty’s soldiers, by God!”
“All the more reason to run, wouldn’t you say?” Ulric replied. Runolf spluttered some more. He looked to Hamnet for support. Hamnet had none to give him: he sided with Ulric here. Seeing as much, Baron Runolf eyed him as if he were in the habit of accosting young girls.
Hamnet sighed. Runolf was a decent sort. Men like him had been Raumsdalia’s backbone for generations. They had their limits, but within them were solid as iron. He’d been a man like that himself, till too much to do with Sigvat turned him into another kind of man altogether. Well, that was nobody’s fault but the Emperor’s. If Sigvat didn’t care for the kind of man Hamnet was now, he had only himself to blame.
Riding up alongside him, Ulric spoke in a low voice: “What do you suppose dear Sigvat will do after you give him the message from the Golden Shrine?”
“Depends on what it means,” Hamnet answered. “I feel like a seed that hasn’t sprouted, but I don’t know if I’m a lily or a stinkweed.”
“Well, Your Grace, I’ve got news for you,” Ulric said. “If those folks in the fancy gold robes have anything good to say about Sigvat—or to him—they’re dumber than I think they are.”
“Or maybe we’re dumber than they think we are, because we can’t see how wonderful Sigvat really is.” Hamnet Thyssen considered that. Then he shook his head. “No. I’m sorry, but no. I’ve been stupid all kinds of ways, but if I were that stupid I would’ve died a long time ago.”
“I feel the same way,” Ulric said. “Of course, we could be wrong.”
“Yes. We could. I used to think the Glacier stretched north forever, so the Gap couldn’t melt all the way through.” Count Hamnet sighed. “Shows what I knew, didn’t it? But if Sigvat’s a good Emperor, if he’s done even a lead slug’s worth of good against the Rulers, I think I’ll go ride off and find a land somewhere that isn’t so wonderfully ruled.”
“Come up to the plains,” Trasamund boomed. “Even if you’re dark, you’d make a pretty fair Bizogot. I’m not trying to butter you up, either—I’ve said the same thing before.”
“So you have,” Hamnet agreed. “And maybe I will. Or maybe I’ll go way down into the south so I don’t have to think about the Glacier at all any more. Ulric here has seen more of that part of the world than I have.”
“Too hot’s as bad as too cold,” Ulric said. “Worse, maybe. When it’s too cold, you can put on more clothes or make a fire. When it’s too hot, what can you do? Sweat—that’s about it. And too hot will kill you just as easy as the Breath of God will.”
“Not too hot right now. Not too cold, either,” Hamnet said. “Let’s ride down toward Nidaros while the weather stays good.”
ON THEIR WAY to the capital, they skirted the badlands Hevring Lake had gouged out after its earthen dam broke. They rode across the rich cropland that had been lakebottom when the edge of the Glacier lay not far north.
“One of these days,” Eyvind Torfinn said, “wheat and barley may grow on the bed of Sudertorp Lake, around the Golden Temple.”
“That’s Bizogot country, by God,” Trasamund declared.
“It is now, yes,” Earl Eyvind said. “When the weather was colder, nomads roamed near Nidaros, too. Two thousand years ago, Nidaros was a hunting camp beside a meltwater lake. No one can say what the weather will be like two thousand years from now.”
Trasamund muttered discontentedly. Ulric Skakki said, “No one, eh? What about the folk in the Golden Temple?”
Eyvind inclined his head. “You have something there—they may be able to do that. But even if they can, I don’t believe they will. Do you?”
After brief consideration, Ulric answered, “Well, Your Splendor, when you’re right, you’re right.”
Gudrid looked from one of them to the other as they talked about the Golden Shrine. Hamnet watched her. She heard them. She understood them. She knew there was such a thing as the Golden Shrine. She seemed to have some idea that they’d gone there. But she hadn’t the faintest notion that she’d been inside the Shrine herself. Hamnet didn’t think she ever would. The priestess there knew what she was doing, all right.
He snorted quietly. As if that were in doubt!
Because the land east of what had been Hevring Lake rose, and because Nidaros’ towers rose even higher, the capital was visible from a long way off. Less smoke rose above it than had been true before the Rulers sacked it. “I wonder if any enemy warriors are still skulking in the ruins,” Hamnet said. “If one of them puts an arrow through dear Sigvat, what the priestess told me back at the Shrine won’t matter.”
“She said you were to give those words to the Emperor,” Marcovefa said. “I think that means you will give them to him. I think it means he will not die before you do it. I think it means you will not, either.”
“In that case, I ought to ride away from Nidaros, not toward it,” Hamnet said.
“If you do, chances are you will find that Sigvat is not in Nidaros,” Marcovefa answered. “And where he is, chances are you will be there, too. You cannot flee your fate. It will find you no matter what you do.”
Hamnet sighed. She was likely right. “Oh, I’ll go on,” he said. “Whatever this word I’m carrying is, I do want to let him have it.”
Ulric grinned wickedly. “How d’you mean that?”
“Just the way I said it,” Hamnet replied. Ulric’s grin got wider.
Raumsdalian guards manned the gates of Nidaros once more. They started to laugh when Hamnet told them Sudertorp Lake was gone and the Golden Shrine had reappeared at last. “You blockheads! Where the demon do you think all the Rulers went?” Runolf Skallagrim demanded angrily.
“Why, we ran ’em out, of course,” said the sergeant, or whatever he was, in charge of the gate crew.
That only got him more abuse from the travelers. He might have used his petty authority to try to keep them out of the capital, in which case he might also have ended up dead in short order. But Marcovefa gestured, and the gate crew and her companions all saw Sudertorp Lake flood free and destroy the Rulers’ host, and then saw the Golden Shrine gleaming on the lakebed.
“What do you think now?” Hamnet Thyssen asked the underofficer, an ominous rumble in his voice.
“Pass in, folks. Pass in,” that worthy replied, and added a sweeping arm gesture to the invitation. “I don’t know whether you’re lying or not, but I don’t intend to mess with people who can work wizardry like that.”
“Congratulations,” Ulric Skakki told him. “Maybe you’re not as stupid as you look.” The underofficer scowled, but he didn’t do anything more than scowl. That might have proved Ulric’s point. The Raumsdalians and Bizogots rode into Nidaros.
COUNT HAMNET HAD traveled through Nidaros’ streets after Sigvat fled and the Rulers plundered the city. Nidaros was better off now than it had been then. If he hadn’t seen it then, he would have given up on it in despair now.
Soldiers seemed to stand on every street corner, swords and spears shining in the sun. Nobody did anything much where the armed men could see. But too many houses and shops were still obviously empty. People could prowl alleyways and break into places like that without much trouble. Maybe some of them were locals returning after they escaped the sack of the city. Maybe others were squatters who’d make good neighbors once they settled in. But Hamnet would have bet most were looters and thieves.
A body hung from a makeshift gibbet. A placard around its neck said I STOLE GRAIN. The corpse was fragrant and bloated enough to have hung there for some time. It might make other ambitious gentlemen thoughtful. Or, on the other hand, it might not.
“I wonder what the palace is like,” Ulric remarked.
“What will you bet it looks better than anything else in the city?” Hamnet said. “If Sigvat has any money left in the vaults, he’ll spend it on himself first and everybody else afterwards.”