"Really? Tell me more about these things, and I'll taste what you have to say." Unlike Trasamund, Hamnet Thyssen didn't miss sarcasm aimed his way. He didn't put up with it, either.

"There!" The Bizogot jarl pointed. "I saw something move behind that tree."

Hamnet peered in that direction. He wasn't sure which tree Trasamund meant, but he didn't see anything moving. Was a short-faced bear clever enough to hide behind a tree trunk and peek out at its intended prey? He wouldn't have thought so, but maybe he was wrong.

Then the bear came out. It wasn't very big, not as far as short-faced bears went, but they went a long way in that direction. When it rose on its hind legs to growl at the travelers, Hamnet saw it wasn't a sow, as Ulric Skakki had guessed—and as Hamnet had thought himself—but a boar.

Ulric let fly. His bowstring thrummed. The bear dropped down in that same instant, so the arrow hissed over its head and thumped into a tree trunk, where it stood thrilling. Ulric swore. He reached over his shoulder to grab another shaft from his quiver.

At the same time as the short-faced bear ducked under the arrow, Liv gasped and Audun Gilli let out a wordless exclamation. Then he said, "Magic!" and her hands twisted in a sign Bizogots used against evil.

All that Hamnet noted only out of the corner of his ear, so to speak. His attention centered on the bear. If he gave it an arrow in the face, that might hurt it enough to make it run away. He drew his bow—and the bowstring snapped. His curses made Ulric Skakki's seem a beginner's beside them.

The bear let out a deep growl and sprang forward, straight toward him. Ulric shot again in that same moment, but only grazed the bear's right hind leg. Count Hamnet just had time to draw his sword before the bear was on him. It reared again, perhaps to smash him off his horse.

He swung first. His blade bit into its right paw, severing three claws.

Blood spurted and splashed the snow with red. The bear roared, opening its fang-filled mouth enormously wide. As it did, Ulric shot an arrow straight into that inviting target. This time, the short-faced bear's roar was more like a scream. It came down on all fours, raking Hamnet's horse with the claws on its left paw as its forelegs lowered.

The horse screamed, too, more shrilly than the bear had. It sprang away. Hamnet Thyssen tried with all his strength to keep it under some kind of control, and also tried to stay on its back. The bear lumbered after him. The wound on its front paw must have slowed it; short-faced bears could usually outsprint horses.

Ulric Skakki had a perfect shot this time—right at the bear's heart. But his bowstring also broke. This time, he outcursed Count Hamnet.

Trasamund rode up and slammed his sword down just behind the bear's ears. The animal had hardly seemed to notice his approach—all its attention was on Hamnet Thyssen. It let out a startled grunt and slumped to the snow, dead. No wonder—Hamnet heard its skull break.

And then all the travelers swore at once. The dead bear writhed in the snow. Its shape changed. After a couple of minutes, it was a dead bear no more, but rather a dead man. "That fellow comes from the Rulers," Audun Gilli said. No one tried to contradict him; that strong-featured, heavily bearded face plainly belonged to one of the men from beyond the Glacier.

"What in blazes is he doing here?" Ulric said, fitting a new string to the bow that had let him down.

Hamnet Thyssen was doing the same thing. "The way it looks," he said, "I think he was trying to kill me."

"You don't think well of yourself, do you?" Ulric Skakki mocked as automatically as he breathed.

"I think Thyssen is right," Trasamund said. "When it was a bear, it let you shoot it. It let me strike it. It wanted only the count. No one else, nothing else, mattered to it."

"Why would that be?" Ulric asked.

"I see only one answer—they think he is dangerous to them." That wasn't Trasamund, who'd raised the point. It wasn't Liv, who might have been expected to take Hamnet's side. It was Audun Gilli. His objectivity helped make him convincing.

"Aren't we all dangerous to them? By God, we'd better be," Ulric Skakki said. "Should I write them an angry letter complaining that they don't think enough of me to try murdering me? I'm tempted, if only I could find somebody to deliver it." He sounded affronted that the Rulers might not find him worth killing.

"Believe me, I could do without the honor," Hamnet Thyssen said as he dismounted to look at the wounds the bear had scored in his horses flank. They were long but not deep—plenty to pain and frighten the animal, but not crippling. He thought they would heal well. The horse trembled when he put his hands anywhere near the gashes. He bent down, scooped up some snow, and pressed it against the animal's wounds. The horse snorted and started to shy. Then it seemed to decide the cold felt good, and let out what sounded like a sigh of relief.

"Bear grease might help," Ulric said.

"How about shaman grease?" Trasamund said. "You can slit that bastard's belly and use what he's got." He wasn't joking, not in the least. Bizogots wasted nothing. They couldn't afford to.

"This would be the same sort of spell that wizard used when he turned into an owl, wouldn't it?" Hamnet asked Liv.

"I would say so, yes," she answered, her voice troubled. "It is a more thorough spell than we use. It is a more thorough spell than we know, though some of ours do the same thing."

"How did he get down here?" Trasamund said. "A long way from the far side of the Gap to this forest."

"Maybe he was an owl till not long ago. Maybe he flew," Audun Gilli said.

"I doubt it," Liv said. "With us, at least, a shaman has a spirit animal. If the animal is a dire wolf, say, the shaman may howl when the moon is full. But he will not hop like a snowshoe hare, and he will not take wing like a ptarmigan."

"Is it the same for the Rulers? Would it have to be?" Audun asked.

"if it is not the same, they are even stranger and darker than I thought." Liv sounded more troubled than ever.

"This one was a bear, and now he's dead," Trasamund said. "We still live, no matter how strange and dark he was, the son of a scut. And we'd better get up to the north and put a stop to the trouble the Rulers are causing."

Hamnet Thyssen wondered what Sigvat II would have done if he knew the Rulers were already inside the Empire. He laughed bitterly as he remounted. Seeing that the wizard or shaman or whatever he was had tried to kill him, Sigvat might have congratulated the fellow, or even ennobled him.

"Will the horse be all right?" Ulric asked. "We still might be able to buy you another one."

"I think he will," Hamnet said. "I think Trasamund s right, too. We need to get up to the Gap as fast as we can."

"Why?" Ulric Skakki said. "The Rulers are already here." On that cheery note, the travelers rode north again.

XXI

In the middle of winter, Hamnet Thyssen saw only a little difference ! between the Bizogot country and the Glacier farther north. Snow blanketed everything. On days when the sun shone, the reflections from all that white could dazzle and overwhelm the eye. Trasamund and Liv had no goggles, but rubbed streaks of ash from a campfire under their eyes to cut the glare. Before long, the Raumsdalians with them started doing the same thing. It was ugly, but it helped.

"I'm wearing musk-ox dung." Ulric Skakki sounded more cheerful than he had any business being.

"Well, we've been eating it whenever we cook up here," Hamnet said. "Why not wear it, too?"

"I wish you hadn't reminded me," Audun Gilli said.

"I wish for all kinds of things that won't come true—good sense from the Emperor, for instance," Ulric said. "What's one more wasted wish?"