“Turn him loose against the Rulers,” Count Hamnet said. “If that’s not the most important thing we’re doing, we’re doing something wrong.”

“We’ve done plenty of things wrong,” the jarl said, which was only too true. “Not that one, though—not lately, anyhow. They taught us their lessons the hard way.”

“So they did.” Hamnet left it there. The hard way was the only way the Bizogots understood—when they understood any way at all.

HAMNET GNAWED ON a roasted goose leg as he rode across the Bizogot steppe. Ulric Skakki was working on a swan’s drumstick. That would have been an expensive delicacy down in the Empire. At Sudertorp Lake, the swans bred in as much exuberant profusion as the smaller waterfowl.

And Sudertorp Lake was merely the largest of the many lakes and ponds and puddles dotting the flat ground that was still frozen a few feet down. Count Hamnet looked toward the northern horizon, but he couldn’t see the Glacier. See it or not, he knew it was there.

Ulric understood what his glance meant. “Do you really think that whole mountain of ice is going to melt away?”

“Before I went through the Gap, I would have told you no,” Hamnet said. “Now? I suppose it will, one of these days. The world will be a different place then. I won’t be here to see it, though, and neither will you.”

“I suppose not,” Ulric said. “Seeing what—and who—was on the other side’s been interesting enough, and then some.”

“Yes. And then some.” Hamnet Thyssen’s gaze focused more sharply on ground much closer. First glances could—and often did—deceive. The steppe had little dips and rises that had a way of hiding trouble till it was right on top of you . . . or, sometimes, right in back of you.

Every time something moved, Count Hamnet’s hand started to go to his sword or his bow. And things did move, again and again. Small birds nested among the small bushes. Voles and lemmings scurried. Weasels chased them. Hares hopped. Short-eared foxes loped after them and noisy-winged ptarmigan.

A snowy owl swooped down. It rose again with a lemming in its claws. Prey still writhing feebly, it flew past Hamnet and Ulric just out of bowshot. Hamnet felt the bird’s golden eyes on him till at last it turned its head in a different direction.

“God-cursed thing,” he muttered.

“If it’s only an owl, I don’t mind it,” Ulric Skakki said. “But if it’s one of the Rulers’ wizards in owl shape, come to look us over the way they do . . .”

“If it is, it just got an eyeful,” Hamnet said. “Two eyes full, in fact.”

“I doubt it was a wizard this time,” Ulric said.

“Oh? Why’s that?” Count Hamnet asked.

The adventurer spread his hands in wry amusement. “Well, it looked us over. It looked us over good. And it didn’t fall out of the sky laughing. That makes me think it must be an ordinary owl.”

“Heh,” Hamnet Thyssen said. “I wish that were the kind of joke that made me laugh.”

“So do I,” Ulric replied. “I don’t like wasting them. We’re in a mess, you know. The Rulers can whip the Bizogots. They can whip the Empire. The only thing they haven’t shown they can whip is Marcovefa, and there’s only one of her. A little bad luck, and we’re all in a lot of trouble.”

“Yes.” Hamnet left it right there. If anything happened to Marcovefa, the Bizogots and Raumsdalia would suffer, true. But so would he. The last woman in the world who thought he was anything out of the ordinary . . . He shook his head. That wasn’t quite right. She was the last woman in the world who made him think he was anything out of the ordinary. That made her a rarer bird yet.

Rare as a wizard from the Rulers magicked into owl’s shape? Hamnet didn’t know. He couldn’t tell. Marcovefa could have if she’d been along. She was busy back at the Leaping Lynxes’ huts: busy with something sorcerous, though Hamnet couldn’t have said what it was.

She didn’t mind working with Liv and Audun Gilli. Sometimes Hamnet could accept that. Sometimes it bothered him. It didn’t bother Marcovefa, though, and she paid no attention to Hamnet’s occasional grumbles.

He supposed he could see the logic behind that. Working against the Rulers counted for more than personal squabbles. It made perfectly good sense. He’d even pointed out as much to Trasamund. Understanding it and liking it were two very different things.

“What’s going on inside your head?” Ulric Skakki asked. “You look like you want to murder somebody.”

“The owl.” Count Hamnet lied without hesitation. Ulric was too good at divining what went on inside him. Hamnet didn’t want the adventurer to know he was worrying about his latest woman. Ulric would only laugh at him and tell him things he didn’t want to hear. Even if they were true—or maybe especially if they were true—he didn’t want to hear them.

Ulric Skakki eyed him now. Hamnet wondered if the adventurer would start telling him things even after he’d lied. That would be humiliating. And if Hamnet lost his temper and turned away, Ulric would laugh at him, and laugh and laugh. That would be more humiliating yet.

But Ulric didn’t twit Hamnet. Instead, he pointed to the northwest. “Something over there,” he said. “Don’t know what, but something.”

“I didn’t see it,” Hamnet Thyssen confessed.

“Well, it’s there,” Ulric told him. “We’d better find out what the demon it is, too, because it’s liable to be dangerous.” He rode off to see what he’d spotted.

“A dire wolf, maybe, or a lion.” Count Hamnet followed. He made sure his sword was loose in the scabbard. He strung his bow and reached over his shoulder to check on the position of his quiver. He adjusted it a little, then nodded to himself.

Ulric laughed harshly, watching him. “You don’t believe that yourself.”

“It may not be likely, but it’s possible,” Hamnet said.

“All kinds of things are possible. It’s possible the Rulers really are nice people who want the best for us,” Ulric said. “It’s possible, sure, but it’s not bloody likely.”

Count Hamnet shut up.

His eyes narrowed as he scanned the ground ahead. Lots of little dips where a man on foot might hide—and the flowers and grasses and little bushes here grew as thick as they ever did on the Bizogot steppe. Hamnet thought of snakes. No real vipers up here—the mammoth-herders thought Raumsdalians were lying when they talked about them. But a man from the Rulers could prove more dangerous than any rattlesnake ever hatched.

“There!” Ulric Skakki pointed. Hamnet was a good hunter, but Ulric was better. He could follow a trail that baffled the noble, and he spotted motion Count Hamnet missed. Hamnet missed it till it was pointed out to him, anyhow. Then he too saw the shifting shrubs up ahead.

“Not a wizard, anyway,” he said as he rode toward them with Ulric.

“No, eh? How come you’re so sure?” the adventurer asked.

“Don’t be stupid.” Hamnet was pleased to get a little of his own back. “If the bastard were a wizard, he wouldn’t be running from the likes of us, would he?”

Ulric grunted. “Not unless he was a cursed stupid wizard, I suppose.”

“The Rulers don’t seem to have many of those,” Hamnet Thyssen answered. “I wish to God they did.”

“Would make life easier, wouldn’t it?” Ulric agreed. “Now, if you were a Ruler stuck on foot, where would you hide from a couple of savage fellows from the wrong side of the Glacier who’re trying to do you in?”

“Right about there—that birch thicket.” Now Hamnet Thyssen pointed. He and Ulric both laughed, even if it wasn’t really funny. None of the birches grew much higher than his knees. They were shrubs, bushes, not the trees they would have been south of the line where the ground stayed frozen all the time. But at this season of the year their leaves gave good cover.

Good, yes, but not quite good enough. The birch bushes stirred; someone was trying to crawl deeper into the thicket. Two bowstrings twanged. Hamnet wasn’t sure whether he or Ulric let fly first. A grunt of dismay, bitten off short, said at least one arrow struck home.