The Golden Shrine Read online

  “You poor, sorry bastard.” Even Trasamund sounded sympathetic, no matter how rough his words were.

  They left Hrafn staring after them as they rode past Fagersta. “He is a sorry bugger,” Ulric said. “He doesn’t know whether to crap or go blind.”

  “He’s already blind,” Hamnet Thyssen said. “The question is whether he’s better off that way. What he has to see these days isn’t pretty, and he only got a glimpse of it when the Rulers went through there.”

  “He would have seen more if they stayed longer,” Trasamund said.

  “That’s Hamnet’s point,” Ulric told him. “Yours, on the other hand, is under your hat.” Trasamund needed a moment to understand what he meant. When the jarl did, he and Ulric had a fine time sniping at each other as they rode south in pursuit of the Rulers.

  AFTER A WHILE, Ulric came up with something new to talk about. “All right,” he said. “We’ve driven the Rulers away. Raumsdalia is free again.”

  “What about the Bizogots?” Trasamund demanded.

  “Oh, the Rulers slaughtered them all. They aren’t there any more,” Ulric said. Trasamund bellowed irately. The adventurer held up a hand. “Fine. Fine. The Bizogots are free again, too.”

  “That’s more like it,” Trasamund said.

  “But I’m still talking about Raumsdalia,” Ulric Skakki said. He turned to Hamnet. “The Rulers are gone. The Empire is free.”

  “Yes, you already said that,” Hamnet said. “What am I supposed to do? Shout huzzah?”

  “Suppose you already did,” Ulric said. “What happens next? How do we make something that’s broken stand on its own two feet again?”

  “Sigvat won’t think there’s any trouble,” Hamnet answered. “He’ll just start giving orders and expect everybody else to follow them. And anybody who doesn’t want to will end up in a dungeon.”

  “If Sigvat tries that now, he’ll end up in a dungeon—if he’s lucky,” Ulric said. “More likely, he’ll end up dead.” He nodded toward Runolf Skallagrim. “Or am I wrong?”

  “Depends on which orders he gives,” Runolf said uncomfortably. He was as loyal as they came—if not to Sigvat, then to the idea of the Raumsdalian Empire. “If he starts throwing his weight around, he’s in a lot of trouble. You aren’t wrong about that, Skakki. I can hope he’s too smart to try it.”

  Ulric and Count Hamnet both guffawed. So did Trasamund. “Tell us what’s so funny,” Eyvind Torfinn said, walking up. “We could all enjoy a joke like that.”

  Laughing still, Ulric did tell him. “Have you ever heard anything more ridiculous in all your born days?” he finished.

  “One could do worse than His Majesty has done,” Earl Eyvind said.

  “Sure. He could have killed me outright instead of leaving me to rot in that hole under the palace,” Count Hamnet said. Eyvind Torfinn turned red. Hamnet went on, “I was hoping the Rulers would chuck him into the same cell I had, but no such luck.” He spread his hands. “Too bad, eh?”

  “I can certainly understand how you have cause to feel resentment toward him, Your Grace,” Eyvind said stiffly.

  “Resentment isn’t the word, Your Splendor,” Hamnet Thyssen answered. “What I want to do is, I want to hunt him with hounds. Since I didn’t get the chance to do that, I wouldn’t have minded if the Rulers hunted him with mammoths. Which they did. The only trouble is, they haven’t caught him yet.”

  More stiffly still, Eyvind said, “I fail to see why you continue to prosecute this war against the invaders, then.”

  “For Raumsdalia. Not for Sigvat. For Raumsdalia,” Hamnet said. “There’s a difference, whether you can see it or not.”

  “And what would Raumsdalia be without Sigvat?” Eyvind asked coldly.

  “Better off, by God!” Count Hamnet said. “Better off!” Ulric Skakki whooped and clapped his hands.

  Early Eyvind looked from one of them to the other as if he’d just discovered them in his apple. “Let me rephrase that. What would the Empire of Raumsdalia be without its Emperor?”

  “Oh, the Empire needs an Emperor, no doubt about it,” Hamnet said. “But it needs Sigvat the way a man with a bloody flux needs a purge.” He set Ulric laughing and clapping again.

  Eyvind Torfinn looked pained. “He is doing the best job he can.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” Hamnet said. Not only Ulric but Trasamund laughed then. Even Runolf Skallagrim smiled.

  “If the times ever settle down, His Majesty will not thank you for the way you speak of him,” Eyvind said.

  “When he did thank me, I wound up in his God-cursed dungeons,” Hamnet exclaimed. “I don’t want his thanks. If he leaves me alone, I’ll thank him.”

  “Don’t hold your breath, Your Grace,” Ulric said. He rounded on Earl Eyvind. “And if the times ever do settle down, Your Splendor, you’ll know whom to thank, won’t you? Not Sigvat! He got Raumsdalia into this mess because he didn’t want to listen to Count Hamnet or to me or to Trasamund or to anybody else who actually had some notion of what was going on. And I hope you recall who rescued you from the Rulers. That wasn’t the Emperor, either. That was Hamnet here.”

  “I am not ungrateful.” Eyvind’s words couldn’t have had sharper edges if he’d chipped them out of ice. “Nevertheless, he is not the rightful sovereign of this realm. Sigvat is.”

  “And if that’s not a judgment on Raumsdalia, bugger me with a mammoth tusk if I know what would be,” Trasamund said.

  Earl Eyvind threw up his hands. “This discussion is pointless,” he said, and walked away.

  “He means we don’t think he’s right,” Trasamund said. “He’s not used to anybody who doesn’t.”

  “I’ll tell you something,” Ulric said. “Hamnet here would bloody well make a better Emperor than Sigvat. Even a blind man can see that.”

  “I should hope so!” Trasamund said. “A blind man? Even a blind musk ox could see that!”

  Hamnet started to laugh. Then he saw Runolf nodding, too, and realized it was no laughing matter. If Runolf could nod at the idea of replacing Sigvat, plenty of other people would do the same thing. He had to nip it in the bud if he was going to nip it at all. “I don’t want to be Emperor,” he said.

  “But Raumsdalia needs you.” Yes, that was Runolf Skallagrim.

  “Raumsdalia needs somebody who isn’t Sigvat. Raumsdalia needs almost anybody who isn’t Sigvat. But Raumsdalia doesn’t need me,” Hamnet said. “I won’t sit on that throne, no matter what.”

  “If we proclaim you, everyone will accept you,” Ulric said. “Sigvat’s made his name stink like a dead ground sloth.”

  “I will not sit on that throne,” Hamnet repeated.

  “You may not have a choice,” Baron Runolf said. “We wouldn’t do it for your sake. We’d do it for Raumsdalia.”

  “No.” Hamnet Thyssen drew his sword. The blade had some nicks and some rust; he needed to hone it. But the point was still sharp, which was all that mattered now. “If you try to name me Emperor, I’ll fall on this thing. You know me. Every one of you knows me. Am I lying? If you want to get rid of me, keep on in the direction you’re already riding.”

  Ulric and Runolf and Trasamund eyed him. They eyed the sword. They eyed one another. Runolf Skallagrim let out a long sigh. “I think he means it.”

  “I know bloody well he means it.” Ulric Skakki sounded disgusted. He scowled at Count Hamnet. “You’re stubborn when it does you good, and you’re stubborn even when it doesn’t. You might as well be a mountain sheep, the way you always want to butt heads.”

  “Your servant, sir.” Hamnet bowed, as Ulric often did. He didn’t let go of the sword.

  “If you were my servant, maybe you’d listen to me once in a while.” Ulric flicked a finger toward the blade. “Put that silly thing away. We won’t make you ventilate your liver, no matter how tempting it is.”

  “If he won’t do it, one of you other Raumsdalians ought to,” Trasamund said. “How about you, Skakki? You’re sneaky enough and to
spare.”

  “You are joking, my dear fellow—aren’t you?” Ulric said in convincing amazement. “A cabbage has as much noble blood as I do: which is to say, not a drop.”

  “So what? If you don’t tell people, who’ll know?” Trasamund said.

  “Most of the time, you would be right,” Ulric said. “But you’d be wrong often enough to fill Raumsdalia full of civil wars. All the real nobles would look down their noses at me.”

  “I wouldn’t, by God,” Hamnet said. “If you can do the job, you’re welcome to it, far as I’m concerned. You couldn’t be worse than Sigvat.”

  “There. You see?” Trasamund said triumphantly. “Hurrah for Ulric I!”

  “Oh, shut up, you blond fool!” Ulric said. “I see Runolf here looking like grim death, is what I see. And Runolf is more your usual kind of noble than Hamnet is.”

  “I would want an Emperor of noble blood,” Runolf Skallagrim said slowly. “What’s the point to noble blood, if not to show who deserves to rule?”

  “Well, then, why don’t you take the crown?” Ulric said. “You’re a baron, so you’re fit enough. And you’re not Sigvat, which gives you a leg up all by itself. You wouldn’t need to worry that you’re stealing the throne from me, because I don’t want it any more than Thyssen does.”

  “Me? Emperor of Raumsdalia. Me?” Runolf sounded flabbergasted. Then he started to laugh. “That’s the funniest thing I’ve heard in I don’t know when. Ever, I bet!” He laughed some more.

  “Maybe Eyvind Torfinn would take it on,” Trasamund said.

  Hamnet started to say something about that, but swallowed it. He had nothing in particular against the idea of Emperor Eyvind. The idea of Empress Gudrid? If she were Empress, how long would he last? As long as he could outrun her henchmen, he guessed, and not a heartbeat longer.

  But his comrades already knew as much. What point to beating them over the head with it? If Gudrid’s word became law, Ulric was another man with a fine future behind him.

  “Well . . .” Trasamund said, and then, “Maybe not.”

  “I do believe that’s one of the smarter things you’ve ever come out with,” Ulric said. “I wouldn’t have thought you had it in you.”

  Trasamund said something pungent. Ulric grinned and nodded, which spoiled it for the jarl—as Ulric no doubt intended.

  “Hrmph,” Trasamund said. “All I want to tell you is, this Empire can’t be anything much if none of you bastards wants to take charge of it.”

  Nobody argued with him there, either. That also seemed to disconcert him.

  SNOW. SLEET. COLD rain. Snow again, more and more of it. Yes, the Breath of God was blowing. Hamnet Thyssen thought longingly of Raumsdalia’s far southwest, where thing like this didn’t happen. Of course, the far southwest had Manche raiders and poisonous serpents and scorpions, to say nothing of earthquakes that could flatten towns in the blink of an eye.

  Count Hamnet thought of serpents again when Gudrid came up to him and said, “I need to talk with you.”

  “So what?” He turned away. “I don’t need to talk with you.”

  “Oh, yes, you do.” She sounded very sure of herself. But then, when didn’t she?

  He didn’t care. “I don’t need to listen to you, either,” he said, and walked away.

  She came after him. She set a hand on his arm to slow him down. Angrily, he shook her off; the last thing he wanted to feel was her touch. “You are going to hear me,” she said, expecting as usual to get her way.

  “I should have left you for the Rulers,” he said harshly. “You could try telling them what to do, and see how they like it.”

  “Don’t be more stupid than you can help,” Gudrid said with a shudder.

  “I’ve already done that,” Hamnet answered. “You cured me of it—I hope.”

  “Will you please listen to me?”

  When was the last time she’d said please to him? He couldn’t remember. It had been years; he was sure of that. He shook his head anyhow. “If you’ve got anything that needs saying, you can tell it to Ulric or Trasamund. And you can leave me the demon alone.”

  “Don’t you care about Raumsdalia?”

  “Yes, and I know you don’t. All you care about is you—and sticking pins in me so you can watch me jerk and twist and bleed. Well, find somebody else, because I don’t want to play any more.”

  “You fool! You could be Emperor!”

  He stared at her. Then he laughed in her face, which made her stare at him. “Are you out of your mind? I don’t want the bloody job. I wouldn’t take it on a golden platter. I’ve been saying so to everyone who wanted to listen. I suppose that lets you out, but I mean every word of it.”

  “You could be Emperor,” Gudrid repeated, as if he hadn’t spoken. “How can anybody not want to be Emperor?”

  “Believe me, it’s easy,” Hamnet answered. “I don’t want to, I won’t, and nobody can make me. Not you, not Trasamund, not Ulric—nobody.”

  “Not Marcovefa, either?” Gudrid’s voice was sly.

  But Hamnet shook his head. “Not Marcovefa, either. She has the sense to believe me when I say something like that—unlike some people I could name.”

  She ignored his sarcasm. He might have known she would. She always did. “Think what you could do if you were Emperor,” she said. “Everyone would have to do what you told him to do, or else he’d pay for it.”

  The look he gave her made the Breath of God seem warm by comparison. “I could send you to the dungeon. I could take your head and nail it to the north gate to warn other people not to be like you.”

  “Don’t be silly. You wouldn’t do that.” She might have been talking to a foolish little boy. Before he could tell her that he would, she went on, “If you really wanted me dead, you would have killed me yourself a long time ago. You had your chances. Nobody would have said anything much, not then.”

  Hamnet Thyssen bit down on that like a man unexpectedly biting down on a cherrystone. Why hadn’t he killed her when he found out she was unfaithful, not just once but again and again? “I loved you, fool that I was,” he growled.

  Now Gudrid laughed at him. “You just wanted somebody around who could make you feel bad. You made a mess of things with Liv the same way, and you’ll do the same thing with Marcovefa. You can’t be happy unless you’re unhappy.”

  “What sort of nonsense is that?” Hamnet said. But, like what she’d come out with a moment earlier, it sounded much less nonsensical than he wished it did.

  She laughed again, knowingly this time. “You can tell it isn’t nonsense. If you weren’t such a fool, you would have figured it out for yourself long since.”

  Did she want him to hit her? Would she get perverse pleasure of her own from seeing what she could goad him into? He breathed out hard through his nose. “Say whatever you please. You will anyhow. But I can prove you’re wrong.”

  “How?” Her chin lifted defiantly.

  He took a certain sour pleasure in noting how the flesh under her jawbone had started to sag. She wasn’t—quite—immune to time. “Except for being married to you again, nothing would make me unhappier than being Emperor,” he said. “And I still don’t want to do it. So much for your fancy talk.”

  “Think of all the women you could have, just with the wave of a hand,” Gudrid said.

  “Screwing is one thing. Caring is another—not that you know anything about that,” Hamnet said.

  “Not that you know anything about either one,” Gudrid retorted.

  Hamnet didn’t hit her then, either, though his hands balled into fists. He turned and walked away once more. When she started to come after him again, he walked faster. Pretty soon, he left her behind. He stood out in the middle of a trampled field, wondering how much good that did him.

  INSIDE THE EMPIRE, warfare slowed down during the winter. Food and fodder were hard to come by. That didn’t always stop the Bizogots, who could get by with less than Raumsdalians could. And it didn’t stop the Rulers, either. Th
e country they sprang from was no richer than the Bizogot steppe.

  They kept striking at Count Hamnet’s band, sometimes with warriors, sometimes with wizards, sometimes with both. They didn’t try to wipe out all the Bizogots and Raumsdalians in arms against them—they’d learned the hard way that that didn’t work, not when Marcovefa was involved. But their nuisance raids went on.

  He posted a couple of Bizogots out in a temptingly open position, and put himself and Marcovefa and half a troop of Raumsdalian archers and lancers in a forest not far away. Marcovefa cast a light masking spell to try to make sure the Rulers wouldn’t notice the ambush.

  “What if their shaman spots the spell?” Hamnet asked her.

  “I don’t think he can. But if he does, those Bizogots out there”—she pointed toward the exposed men—“are lucky, because the Rulers go and bother us somewhere else.”

  He didn’t want the invaders to do that, but held his peace. If Marcovefa didn’t think an enemy sorcerer could detect her magic, she was likely right. If she turned out to be wrong, Hamnet would try something else, that was all.

  He’d guessed right or baited his trap the right way. Inside of a couple of hours, a dozen or so Rulers came out of the bare-branched woods to the south. The Bizogots out in the open played dumb a little longer than they would have if they were nothing but ordinary pickets, but only a little. They weren’t out there to throw their lives away, but to get the Rulers to do that instead.

  When they couldn’t ignore the men bearing down on them any more, they turned their horses and trotted off in Hamnet’s direction. One of the Rulers pointed at them. The horses slowed, then stopped.

  “Baby magic,” Marcovefa said scornfully. “A pika could do this.”

  “You can break the spell, then?” Hamnet asked.

  “Oh, yes. But not yet. No point yet,” Marcovefa said. “Let them get closer.”

  Up came the Rulers on their riding deer. They soon could have shot the Bizogots out of the saddle, but they didn’t. Chances were they wanted to have fun with them. Because of their own horror of being captured, they often amused themselves by tormenting prisoners.