Local farmers, the ones who still survived, had learned their lesson. As soon as they saw armed men in the distance, they fled. They didn’t wait around to find out whose side the warriors were on. As far as they were concerned, no warriors were on their side. Hamnet would have had a demon of a time persuading them they were wrong.

“You got rich. You got fat. You got lazy.” Marcovefa sounded like a judge passing sentence. “You Bizogots, you Raumsdalians. Fat and lazy.”

“Us, rich?” Trasamund said. “Honh! Not likely!”

But his bluster lacked its usual passionate conviction. He’d seen what things were like up on top of the Glacier and in the mountain refuges that stuck up above the ice. By Marcovefa’s standards, even the poorest Bizogots on the frozen steppe were rich beyond the dreams of avarice.

“How much of Nidaros is left, do you think?” Audun Gilli said. “Can we go around the place, or do we need to go through?”

Some small part of Hamnet did want to see the capital in ruins. Nidaros was Sigvat’s city, and Gudrid’s, not his. Back when he was living in his own castle down in the southeast, he wouldn’t have minded if something horrible happened to the place. So he’d told himself then, anyhow. As he’d found before in other ways, getting what you thought you wanted didn’t always make you happy.

Hamnet wondered if anything would ever make him happy. His former wife and the Emperor groveling at his feet? A slow, sour smile crossed his face, like sunshine briefly breaking through on a drizzly day. He might not win lasting happiness from that, but it would do for a little while.

“Well?” Audun persisted. “Do we have to go through Nidaros?”

“We’ll decide when we get closer,” Hamnet said. “We’ll see how things are around the place—that’ll tell us whether we need to go in.”

The wizard nodded. “All right. Good enough. It’s not as if I’ve got family there to worry about.” His mouth twisted. Hamnet remembered that he himself wasn’t the only one to know hard times. Audun had lost house and wife and children in a fire, and spent years after that drinking so he didn’t have to think about it.

Per Anders pointed ahead. “Is that serai still open, or did the Rulers sack it?”

“No smoke from the chimney,” Ulric Skakki said. “That’s never a good sign.”

Sure enough, the serai was deserted. The stench of death lingered in the taproom. A corpse, mostly skeletal, lay behind the bar. “Looks like we’re on our own for supper and drinks,” Hamnet observed.

“Does kind of, doesn’t it?” Ulric said. “Unless this poor bugger died of old age waiting to get served. I’ve known a few serais like that.”

“So have I—but this isn’t one of them.” Hamnet Thyssen pointed to the skull. It bore a dreadful wound, most likely from an axe but perhaps from a sword. The fellow who’d owned it—the tapman?—didn’t die of starvation.

“Yes, that’s a splitting headache, all right,” Ulric agreed. Then he stooped and lifted a couple of stoppered jars the man’s corpse had partly covered. “And the Rulers really are a pack of barbarians from the back of beyond. They don’t even know how to do a proper job of plundering.”

He scraped away at the pitch sealing one stopper with the tip of his dagger. Once he could wiggle the stopper, he worked it free with the dagger and his thumb and forefinger. “What have you got?” Audun Gilli sounded more than a little interested.

Ulric sniffed, then swigged. “Yes, that’s mead, all right. Pretty good mead, too.” He swigged again, as if to make certain. Audun also looked more than a little interested. He looked thirsty, as a matter of fact. Ulric passed him the jar.

He drank, then drank some more, then drank some more after that, and finally delivered his verdict: “You’re right. That is pretty good mead.” He took another swig, just to make sure . . . or just because he wanted to.

“Save some for the rest of us,” Ulric said, snatching the jar back.

“You might want to be able to walk when you’re done, too,” Hamnet said.

“Mm—I might.” By the way Audun Gilli said it, he wasn’t even close to sure he’d care about walking.

“Let me try some of that,” Trasamund said. Looking resigned, Ulric Skakki gave him the jar. The Bizogot raised it to his lips. His larynx worked. He made at least as big a dent in the mead as Audun had. When he finally lowered the jar, he nodded. “Not bad at all.”

“Do I get to try it, too?” Hamnet Thyssen asked pointedly.

“If there’s any left.” Trasamund shook the jar and listened to the slosh inside. “Still some, anyhow.” He held it out to Hamnet.

The Raumsdalian noble shook it, too, and hefted it. “Not bloody much. You’re a pig, Your Ferocity—and so are you, Gilli.” He drank. The mead was as advertised—and there wasn’t bloody much of it. He drained the jar.

“You’ve called me plenty worse than that,” Audun said.

Count Hamnet threw the jar down on the floor, not quite at the wizard’s feet. It smashed, even though the floor was only rammed earth. Audun Gilli sidestepped smartly to dodge one flying sherd. “You deserved what I called you, and more besides,” Hamnet said in the flat voice of formal hostility.

“We’ve been round this barn before—too often.” Ulric Skakki worked at the stopper on the other jar. “We don’t need to hear it all again.” He sniffed. “Besides, this one’s wine.” He thrust it at Count Hamnet. “Here—you go first.”

“Bribing me, are you?” Hamnet said. The adventurer gave back a bland smile and a nod. Instead of making something of it, Hamnet drank. Sweet and strong, the wine ran down his throat. He took his fair share or a little more, then lowered the jar. “Pretty good wine,” he reported, deadpan.

“You—! Give me that!” Trasamund started to snatch the jar out of his hands. So did Ulric. They glared at each other. They didn’t quite square off, but they left the feeling that they would if somebody didn’t do something in the next few heartbeats. Hamnet did something: he gave Audun Gilli the jar.

Trasamund and Ulric both glared at him. Audun looked astonished. Count Hamnet was astonished, at himself. This was the first time he’d done anything for Audun since the wizard took Liv away from him. He hadn’t meant to; all he’d meant to do was annoy Ulric and Trasamund. Well, he’d managed that.

Audun wasted no time before sampling the wine. As Trasamund’s had not long before, his larynx bobbed up and down. “Not bad at all,” he allowed after reluctantly lowering the jar.

Ulric grabbed faster than Trasamund. He drank, and made as if to go on drinking. Trasamund growled deep in his throat, like a lion warning a dire wolf it had better clear off from a carcass. Ulric was not a man to be intimidated like that, but he was a man who would share . . . when he felt like it.

He passed Trasamund the wine jar a bare instant before the jarl would have stolen it from him and perhaps started a real fight. “Ahh!” Trasamund said after his first gulp. “Those grapes died happy, by God!”

“They probably died when pretty girls squashed them with bare feet,” Ulric Skakki said. He raised a more or less leering eyebrow. “Worse ways to go, I daresay. Ugly girls squashing you with bare feet, for instance.”

Trasamund was drinking again, and almost choked. When he stopped spluttering, he said, “Is that really how they smash grapes? Women stepping on them? Or are you making it up to fool a Bizogot who doesn’t know anything about wine except that it tastes good?”

“By God, Your Ferocity, in the fall there are women with purple toes down in the south where the grapes grow,” Ulric said gravely, holding up his hand as if taking an oath. “They have big wooden vats full of grapes, and the women get in there and hike up their skirts and—”

“Trample out the vintage,” Audun Gilli finished for him. “Sometimes the men will do it, too, but it’s mostly women.”

He pointed at the wine jar Trasamund was holding and murmured a charm. The jar grew a face: a pretty, spoiled-looking face. In a squeaky voice, it said, “And you can just quit thinking about looking up my skirt, too, you—you man, you. There I am, working my feet as purple as your nose, and you’ve got your mind in a cesspit!” Animating such things was Audun’s favorite magical sport.