Harry Turtledove - The Golden Shrine

“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.

“Give up!” Count Hamnet shouted-one of the fragments of the Rulers’ language he’d acquired. He added another one: “We no kill captives!” To the Rulers, any kind of yielding looked like shameful weakness. Many of them preferred death to surrender. Many-but not all. The fights across the frozen plain and inside the Empire had taught Hamnet as much. He might despise and distrust the invaders, but he’d found that some of them were ordinary enough to go on breathing if they saw the chance.

All Hamnet got this time was more wiggling among the leaves. He and Ulric Skakki looked at each other. They didn’t bother nodding, but both shot at about the same time again. Another involuntary grunt of pain told of a wound-or of someone desperate who was cunningly bluffing.

But Hamnet didn’t think so. He slid down from his horse and drew his sword. “Let’s find out what the”-he added an obscenity-“knows.”

Ulric also dismounted. “Let’s make sure one of those things isn’t that you’re a real idiot.”

Count Hamnet gave the adventurer a mocking bow. “I never need to worry about the different nasty things that might happen to me, not when you’re around. You come up with more of them than I ever could.”

“Always at your service, Your Grace.” Ulric sounded more like a trusted retainer than a comrade-in-arms.

They plunged into the low thicket together. They both made plenty of noise, hoping to panic their quarry into moving and showing them where to go. And it worked. The leaves not far from where they’d shot the Ruler started thrashing. The Raumsdalians hurried that way.

“Embarrassing if four or five of the buggers are hiding under there,” Ulric remarked.

“ Embarrassing is hardly the word,” Hamnet Thyssen said. Ulric laughed, for all the world as if they were trading quips at an elegant salon-say, Earl Eyvind Torfinn’s-down in Nidaros, goblets of wine in their hands instead of sword hilts.

But only one Ruler hid in the birch bushes. When Hamnet and and Ulric split up to attack from two directions at once, the invader from beyond the Gap called out, “Don’t kill me! I yield!” in the Bizogot language.

“Good God!” Count Hamnet burst out. Ulric Skakki didn’t say anything, but he looked as astonished as Hamnet felt. That harsh, guttural accent was familiar, but not in a woman’s contralto.

“I bleed,” she said. “You said you would spare me. Will you help me, and not-?” She broke off. Not rape me and then cut my throat or knock me over the head was what she had to mean.

Bleed she did. She had an arrow through her right hand and another in her left calf. Raping a wounded woman wasn’t Hamnet Thyssen’s idea of sport. He wondered whether it was Ulric’s. If it was, the adventurer gave no sign of it. “I will draw the arrow in your leg,” he said, and drew out a spoonlike device. He’d left one of those with a Bizogot shaman, but must have got another down in the Empire. As he got to work, he added, “By the way, what’s your name?”

“Tahpenes,” she said through clenched teeth.

Well, well. isn’t this intriguing?” Ulric Skakki said as he extracted the arrow from Tahpenes’ leg. She kept her teeth clenched and didn’t let out a peep all through the unpleasant process. Hamnet had seen that the Rulers’ warriors were made of stern stuff. The same appeared to hold for their women.

“Intriguing? Not the word I’d use,” he said, using Raumsdalian like Ulric. They wanted Tahpenes worried, or he supposed they did; not being able to understand them would push her down that road.

He eyed her with more than a little curiosity of his own. She was the first woman of the Rulers he’d seen close up. Liv had spoken slightingly of their looks. They weren’t tall and blond. They weren’t even tall or blond. Tahpenes had hair so black it was almost blue, dark brown eyes, and a formidable blade of a nose. She also had broad shoulders and formidable arms. If she weren’t multiply wounded, she might have been dangerous.

She might be dangerous anyhow.

Ulric bandaged her with matter-of-fact competence. “What will you do to me? Uh, with me?” she asked in the Bizogots’ tongue.

“Whatever we want,” Ulric said before Count Hamnet could answer. Had the adventurer done some raping and knocking over the head in his time? Hamnet Thyssen wouldn’t have been surprised. He didn’t want to ask, even in Raumsdalian.

“Right now,” he said, “we’ll take you back for questioning.”

Tahpenes winced. Count Hamnet had no trouble figuring out why. When the Rulers questioned people, they put them to the question. By all accounts, they were good at that kind of thing, and they seemed to enjoy it, too.

“We don’t intend to torture you right now,” Hamnet said, trying to reassure the new captive.

“Not unless you show us we need to, anyhow,” Ulric Skakki added, trying to do anything but. Hamnet sent him an aggrieved look. If that bothered Ulric, he concealed it very well. In Raumsdalian, he said, “We may have to do some nasty things to her. You never can tell. And even if we don’t, she’d better think we’re ready to. Otherwise, she’ll just decide we’re soft.”