When Hamnet and Ulric and their companions strode into the city, somebody took a look at them and then dashed around a corner. “Well, what does that mean?” Ulric wondered. “Are we too tough to mess with? Or is he getting reinforcements? We’ll find out—soon, I expect.”

“Let them come,” a Bizogot said. “Been a while since I killed anything.”

“You’re a friendly fellow, aren’t you?” Hamnet said.

“I am, by God—to my friends,” the blond barbarian said seriously.

Along with the magic that melted the walls, Nidaros had seen several fires. The wind must have been quiet: they hadn’t spread very far, and they hadn’t come together in a firestorm. Still, the sour scent of stale smoke lingered in the air. The Bizogots grumbled—charred rubble offered scant loot.

“What if this happened to Eyvind’s house?” Hamnet worried.

“Then we go back,” Ulric said. “Then we wasted our time coming in. That’s all anybody can say. We didn’t know till we tried. If the house is gone, we think about what we ought to do next.”

That made sense. And what else could anyone say? They would know when they got there. Till they got there, they wouldn’t.

If they got there. The Bizogots hadn’t gone more than a few steps into Nidaros before they drew their swords and nocked arrows. No one had attacked them. No one but that one fellow had even shown himself. But the air shouted danger.

Hamnet took what he thought was the most direct route. And it would have been—if not for the barricade across it. Something moved behind the barricade. “Feel like a fight?” Ulric asked.

“No,” Hamnet said.

He waited for the Bizogots to say they wanted nothing more. They didn’t, not even the “friendly” warrior. Along with the others, he shook his big blond head. Hamnet didn’t think they were afraid of whatever robbers had set up the barricade. Nidaros—all the buildings in Nidaros—was what intimidated them.

Ulric Skakki didn’t feel like a fight, either. “Good,” he said. “Let’s see if we can slide around instead. If I remember how these alleys work . . .”

He soon proved he knew Nidaros far better than Count Hamnet had ever dreamt of doing. “Why were you following me?” Hamnet asked him.

“Why not? You were heading in the right direction. If we could do it the easy way, I didn’t mind,” the adventurer answered. “Since we can’t—”

“You should have been a burglar.”

“I have been, a time or three,” Ulric said equably. He raised his voice a little: “Keep an eye on the doors, you Bizogots. If we run into trouble, it’ll pop out of them.” To Hamnet alone, he added, “I wouldn’t have to say that to Raumsdalians. They’d know. But most of these boys never saw a door before they rode down into the Empire.”

Not five minutes after he delivered his warning, three men leaped into the alley in front of his group. Two of them carried swords. The other had an axe. They were skinny and tough—and looked horrified, like a cougar that suddenly discovered it was facing a sabertooth.

Bowstrings thrummed behind Hamnet. Two arrows hit the axeman. One got one of the swordsmen. Another flew past the second swordsman. The Bizogot who’d loosed it cursed—a short shot, but he’d missed it.

The brigand with the axe crumpled. The swordsmen ran back into the building from which they’d emerged. One was swift as a weasel. The other—the wounded man—hobbled through the door. They slammed it behind them.

“That was easy,” a Bizogot said. “Even if Kolli can’t shoot straight.” Kolli let out an indignant yelp.

“It was easy,” Hamnet agreed. “But it wouldn’t have been if four or five more of those bastards had jumped out behind us, too.”

The Bizogot was thoughtfully silent. Ulric went up and prodded the axeman with his boot. The robber groaned, lost in his own wilderness of pain. He wouldn’t get up again. Ulric took his weapon. “Anybody want this?” he asked. “You can make a lot of trouble with it.”

Two Bizogots played a finger game to see who got it. “Are you going to finish him?” Hamnet asked while the winner brandished his new toy.

“No,” Ulric said. “He wouldn’t have done it for me, so demons take him. If his friends haven’t run away, let them take care of it. Come on.”

They all strode past the axeman. A little to Hamnet’s surprise, nobody kicked him or did anything else to make him hurt worse. He was dying anyhow, so that was only a small mercy.

Hamnet wondered whether the three robbers had friends who would aim to avenge them. His hand tightened on the leather-wrapped hilt of his sword. But the men seemed to have been on their own.

He and his comrades passed through another block that had burned. The Bizogots muttered among themselves. They’d seen grass fires before, no doubt. Maybe they’d seen a tent or two burn. But, as with doors, big fires, fires that chewed up lots of buildings, were new to them since they’d come to Raumsdalia. They didn’t like them. Well, Hamnet didn’t, either. And, to his sorrow, he’d seen a lot more of them than they had.

“We’ll look foolish if Eyvind’s house is nothing but charcoal,” he said.

“Yes, we’ll have made ashes of ourselves, sure enough,” Ulric agreed. Count Hamnet winced.

“Let’s go find out.” Maybe Per Anders didn’t notice the atrocious pun. Maybe he just didn’t care. If he didn’t, Hamnet admired his detachment.

Earl Eyvind’s house still stood. But the front door hung open. Hamnet didn’t think that was a good sign. Ulric said, “Don’t worry about it. Can you see some Ruler or local thief staggering out of here with his arms full of books?” He laughed the idea to scorn.

Hamnet’s hand tightened again on the hilt of his sword. “I keep thinking that, if I go in there, the first thing I’ll do is run into Gudrid.”

“Well, you bloody well won’t,” Ulric Skakki said impatiently. “She isn’t here, and good riddance to her.”

Or did he say Gudriddance? Count Hamnet eyed him, but Ulric’s cheery smile was proof against his scrutiny. They went inside. The adventurer proved right: Gudrid wasn’t there.

Someone had looted the house. Hamnet had no idea whether it was the Rulers or Raumsdalian robbers. Whoever it was seemed to have done a good, thorough job. All the rich ornaments that had adorned the place were gone. So were most of the paintings and woven wall hangings. The rest were slashed, or else thrown on the floor and trampled.

When Hamnet Thyssen saw them, he got a bad feeling about Earl Eyvind’s books. And sure enough, the scrolls and codices Eyvind had spent a lifetime accumulating lay torn and despoiled on the floor of his bedchamber. Hamnet sadly shook his head, knowing how much labor a scribe needed to copy a book.

“Sometimes people are no cursed good,” he growled.

Ulric raised one eyebrow. “You only noticed just now?”

“As a matter of fact—no,” Hamnet answered.

“Is anything here worth salvaging?” Per Anders asked.

“Sure doesn’t look like it.” Ulric started to turn away and head back toward the entrance.

But Count Hamnet said, “Wait.” Ulric Skakki did, this time with both eyebrows high. Hamnet went on, “When I knew Gudrid, she’d always have secret hiding places for . . . things. They’d be clever ones, too, places where most people wouldn’t think to look. Somewhere in this house, she’ll have more hidey-holes.”

“Yes, but will they hold anything we want?” Ulric asked.

“How do we know ahead of time?” Hamnet replied with a shrug.

“How do we know where to look for these, ah, hidey-holes?” Per Anders said. “Do we tear the whole place to pieces?”

“A lot of that’s taken care of,” Ulric pointed out.

“Look at things out of the corner of your eye,” Hamnet said. “I make no promises, but I think it’s worth trying. Gudrid’s . . . sly. She’s not too smart—even if she’d say the same thing about me—but she has her own kind of cleverness.”