"Not this trip," Hamnet Thyssen said. "But chances are we'll go beyond the Glacier again. It may be there. If it is, Eyvind Torfinn knows more about it than any other man alive."

"Eyvind Torfinn knows all sorts of things," Trasamund allowed. Then he spoiled it by asking, "So why doesn't he know his wife disgraces him whenever she pleases?"

"Maybe he doesn't choose to look," Hamnet said. "That can happen, especially when a man who isn't so young has a wife who isn't so old. Or maybe he doesn't care."

"Doesn't care? Do you say he has no ballocks at all, then?" Trasamund demanded.

Count Hamnet shook his head. "No. I wondered about that myself before I got to know him on this journey, but no. He isn't a warrior—he doesn't pretend to be a warrior—but he's no craven, either."

"Well, then, what do you say?" Trasamund's frown was half anger, half incomprehension.

"That men and women and how they get along—or don't get along—are more complicated than you'd guess," Hamnet answered. "I won't judge Eyvind Torfinn, and I hope he won't judge me. Sometimes not judging someone is the biggest kindness you can do him—or her."

"It sounds very pretty," the Bizogot said. "Tell me this, then—do you not judge Gudrid?"

He was a boor, a brute, a barbarian. He was a shrewd boor, a clever brute, a sly barbarian. Hamnet Thyssen’s lips tightened. His hands also tightened on the reins, as if the leather straps were Trasamund's neck ... or possibly Gudrid's. He didn't want to answer the question, and didn't see how he could help it. "I judge her," he said after a pause he hoped wasn't too long. "Yes, I do. But just because I do, that doesn't mean someone else has to. If Eyvind Torfinn wants to, he may. If he chooses not to, who am I to tell him he should? Who are you?"

Trasamund opened his mouth. Someone who spread his wife's legs. That was what he was about to say, that or something like it. But at the last moment, instead of saying anything, he jerked his horse's head to one side and rode off.

"He shouldn't have put you through that," Liv said quietly.

"The only way I could make him stop was to kill him," Hamnet said with a shrug. "It isn't worth that. I've killed one man over Gudrid, but I was married to her then. Now? Now it's Earl Eyvind's worry, if he feels like worrying about it."

"How did it happen that you killed him?"

"About the way you'd expect. I found out he was bedding her. No room for doubt. No room to look away—I'd already done too much of that. We fought a duel. Swords. He would have killed me, too. You've seen that scar on my left arm, up near the shoulder, and the one that streaks my beard with white?"

She nodded. "Oh, yes."

"Ingjald gave me those. Ingjald Oddleif, his name was. But I killed him anyway. I was proud of myself. What a man I was! Gudrid acted like I had a cock the size of a bull mammoth's. For about a week, she acted that way. Then she went out and found somebody else to sleep with. She must have decided I wouldn't kill her."

"You loved her," Liv said.

"So I did." Hamnet Thyssen shook his head like a musk ox the Bizogots were slaughtering. They'd herded it and tended it and warded it all its life— why were they doing this to it now? The beast couldn't understand. Even after all this time, part of Hamnet couldn't, either. "So I did," he repeated heavily. "And much good it did me, eh?"

"Maybe for a while," she said.

He shook his head again. "I used to think so, but I don't any more. What good is love when the person you love is laughing behind your back? You're only fooling yourself. I was a fool. I'm not the first. I won't be the last, God knows." He rode on.

XVIII

As Liv went deeper into the Raumsdalian Empire, as the travelers made their way over to the Great North Road and went down it, she saw plenty of towns larger and finer than Naestved. Each seemed grander than the one just farther north had been. Each time, she would ask, "And is Nidaros like this?"

And each time, Hamnet Thyssen would smile and say, "No, not really. Wait till you see the capital. Then you'll understand."

But when at last they came to the city on the long-vanished shore of long-outflooded Hevring Lake, Liv could see very little, and neither could any of the rest of the weary travelers. The blizzard roaring down from the north would not have been despised in the Bizogot country—would not have been despised in the land of the Three Tusk clan. The Breath of God could reach all the way down to Nidaros and beyond. It didn't always, but it could.

Hamnet got a glimpse of Nidaros' great gray frowning walls through swirling snow, but only a glimpse. Of the towers and spires that showed above the walls in good weather, he could see nothing at all. As they neared the city, Liv said, "The wall is very tall, isn't it?" A little later, she added, "The gate seems very strong."

"It is," Hamnet said. She might as well have been examining a mammoth by closing her eyes and feeling first its trunk, then a tusk, then a leg, and finally its tail. She would know something about mammoths after she did that, but probably not as much as she thought.

The guards had as much trouble spying the travelers as Count Hamnet and Liv did seeing the city—maybe more, for the guards had to peer straight into the storm. The travelers were almost on them before they cried, "Halt! Who comes?"

"I am Earl Eyvind Torfinn," Eyvind said. "With me ride Count Hamnet Thyssen, Jarl Trasamund of the Three Tusk clan, and the rest of our comrades. We have come to report success to his Majesty. We have gone beyond the Glacier, and we are here to tell the tale."

"Well, they're here to tell a tale, anyhow," one of the guards said to another, not bothering to keep his voice down. "You really think there's anything beyond the Glacier?"

"How could there be?" the other guard returned. "You keep on going north, it's just Glacier forever. Only stands to reason."

Audun Gilli muttered to himself. His hands twisted in a few quick passes. One of the soldiers' spearheads grew a face that was a nasty caricature of the man holding it. "D'you suppose there are really such things as guards?" it asked in a shrill, squeaky voice.

"How could there be?" the other guard's spearhead answered. It too now looked like its owner... its owner as seen by somebody with a wicked sense of humor. "We fly through the air all by ourselves. Birds do, so we must. Only stands to reason." It crossed its eyes and stuck out an iron tongue.

Both guards goggled. So did their sergeant. Hamnet Thyssen and Ulric Skakki looked at each other. Told you so, Ulric mouthed. Hamnet nodded, remembering when Audun Gilli worked that same spell on their winecups.

"I think you had better pass on in," the sergeant said. "They can deal with you at the palace, by God." His spearhead blew him a wet, slobbery kiss. He looked as if he wanted to wring its wooden neck. The other guards' spearheads made more sarcastic gibes.

"Maybe you'd better let them quiet down," Hamnet Thyssen murmured as the travelers rode into the city.

"They will as soon as I get far enough away," Audun Gilli answered. "That spell takes work to keep up, and I'm not going to bother."

"It is a good magic, a funny magic," Liv said in her new and halting Raumsdalian. "You teach me? Make people laugh when I go north again."

Not if I go north again, Hamnet noted. When. She sounded very sure of what she wanted to do. And he couldn't suppress a stab of jealousy when Audun walked her through the spell step by step. Her face was bright and shiny, full of excitement. She and Audun shared something she never could with him.

He scowled and muttered and clasped the reins tightly. He hadn't left himself open to a woman's wounding since Gudrid left him. Liv wasn't hurting him on purpose, which didn't mean she wasn't hurting him.