Harry Turtledove - The Golden Shrine

One thing she didn’t seem to realize was that her captors wanted her to get away. They couldn’t make that obvious without making her wonder why. One day soon, though, she probably would contrive to escape. Count Hamnet hoped so, anyhow. Then everyone here could relax.

Hamnet spoke to Trasamund about that. The jarl heard him out, then grinned and laid a finger by the side of his nose. “It might work,” he said. “Has a halfway decent chance, anyhow, which is more than I can say for some other notions that have come up.”

They feted Gunnlaug Kvaran. They gave him a fresh horse. Hamnet and Ulric and Trasamund and even Audun Gilli gave him encouraging messages to take back to Sigvat II.Why not? Count Hamnet thought cynically. Talk is cheap.

Gunnlaug proved less eager to leave after tasting Bizogot hospitality. Hamnet Thyssen didn’t know if one of the big blond women with the band took him into a hut and gave him something to remember her by, but he wouldn’t have been surprised. The mammoth-herders were an earthy folk, and took-and gave-their pleasures as they saw the chance.

Almost all of them turned out to say farewell to Gunnlaug when he finally did ride off to the south once more. Men clasped his hand and clapped him on the back. Women hugged him and kissed him and wished him well. A little wistfully, Ulric Skakki said, “The only times I ever got fancy sendoffs were when lots of nasty people were chasing me. Gunnlaug doesn’t know how lucky he is.”

“He’s getting a fancy sendoff for a reason, too,” Hamnet replied. “If we’re all here telling him what a fine fellow he is-”

“Yes, I know,” Ulric broke in. “If we’re all making much of Kvaran, we’ve got an excuse for not paying attention to Tahpenes. Now we see if she’s smart enough to figure that out, too.”

Gunnlaug Kvaran rode away. Some of the Bizogots trotted after him for as far as half a mile. As far as Count Hamnet was concerned, if they wanted to work that hard, it was up to them. He just watched the Raumsdalian messenger get smaller and smaller in the distance.

When he went to look for Tahpenes after the farewells, she was nowhere to be found. He went and told Trasamund. The jarl told the Bizogots. The mammoth-herders made a great show of beating the bushes for their escaped captive. Everyone was so disappointed when they didn’t catch her.

“May I talk to you, Your Grace?” Audun Gilli asked.

“You’re doing it,” Count Hamnet answered gruffly. “Go ahead.”

“Er-right.” The wizard was hangdog and slapdash at the best of times. Since Liv had gone to him from Hamnet Thyssen, this wasn’t the best of times. But he forged ahead: “I don’t want you to be my enemy.”

“I’m not,” Hamnet said, which was . . . partly true, anyhow. He went on, “If you expect me to be your friend, you ask for too much, though.”

“I suppose so,” Audun said. “But I would like to be able to put my head together with yours without worry about its getting bitten off.”

“Would you?” Hamnet Thyssen said. Audun Gilli gave back an eager nod. Hamnet shrugged. “People want all kinds of things they aren’t likely to get.”

“Do you, uh, still want Liv back?” the Raumsdalian wizard asked.

That question was more interesting than Hamnet wished it were. He was contented enough with Marcovefa. She had her quirks, but she was bound to think he had quirks of his own. And even if he was contented with her, that didn’t mean he didn’t want Liv back. It didn’t mean he didn’t want Gudrid back, either, and she was hundreds of miles away, married to Eyvind Torfinn, and despised him to boot. Losing a woman meant something was wrong with you. So it seemed to Count Hamnet, at any rate.

He knew his answer was evasive: “If she doesn’t want me back-and she doesn’t-what difference does it make?”

“It makes a difference.” Audun spoke with doleful conviction. “I didn’t expect this to happen, you know.”

“I’m willing to believe you.” Count Hamnet wished he’d turned his back and walked away when the wizard started talking to him.

Then the hilt of his sword and the hilt of the dagger next to it on his belt started chattering to each other. “He says he believes us.” The dagger hilt’s voice was a high, squeaky version of Audun Gilli’s.

“He says all kinds of things. What do I care?” The sword hilt sounded a little like the way Hamnet had before his voice broke.

He didn’t think he was losing his mind. Audun Gilli had a gift for endowing inanimate objects with sarcastic personalities. It was a small magic, but one that sometimes had its uses. “Well, if he says he believes us, why doesn’t he sound like he believes us?” the dagger hilt asked peevishly.

If Hamnet looked down, he suspected he would see his face on the sword hilt, Audun’s on the dagger. He didn’t look down. The shrill voice that sounded like his said, “He’s not that good a liar, I guess.”

Hamnet Thyssen snorted. He tried to hold it in, but he couldn’t. Then he tried not to laugh out loud, and found he couldn’t do that, either. “Tell my cutlery to shut up, will you, please?” he said to Audun Gilli.

“He wants us to shut up!” The voice that sounded like Audun’s sounded properly indignant.

“He’s got his nerve, he does!” said the voice that sounded like Hamnet himself. “If he thinks I’m going to shut up, he’s-” It cut off.

“Right,” Audun Gilli finished for it.

“You have an interesting way of making your points sometimes,” Count Hamnet said.

The wizard’s narrow shoulders went up and down in a shrug. “People who wouldn’t pay attention to me on a bet start listening when their tools do the talking. I’m not your enemy, Your Grace. I don’t want to be your enemy. We already have the same enemy. All this other business was getting in the way of that.”

After a considerable pause, Hamnet said, “You shame me.”

“I don’t want to do that, either,” Audun answered. “You don’t have to love me-you’re not going to love me, and who could blame you? But for God’s sake will you stop treating me like I’m not there?” Hamnet hit him, not quite hard enough to knock him down. “What was that for?” the wizard squawked.

“Well, you can’t say I was treating you like you weren’t there,” Hamnet answered stolidly.

“No, I can’t-and I bloody well wish I could,” Audun said.

“Hrmp.” Now Count Hamnet seemed affronted. “First you want it one way, then you want it the other.”

“I wanted you to talk to me, not punch me!”

“What should I say to you after you took my woman away? A lot of people talk with their fists after something like that.”

Audun Gilli sighed. “Your Grace, I didn’t take Liv away from you. Nobody can do anything like that with her. If you don’t know I’m telling the truth, you never knew her at all. She decided she didn’t want to stay with you. After that”-he kicked at the dirt-“she took me, not the other way round.”

He hadn’t tried not to get taken-Hamnet Thyssen was sure of that. What man in his right mind would try not to get taken if a woman like Liv decided she wanted him? The wizard wasn’t wrong. The wizard was much too poignantly right.

“You aren’t talking again,” Audun pointed out.

“Afraid not,” Count Hamnet agreed. “Trying to count all the different ways I’m a jackass. There are a lot of them.”

“Welcome to humanity, Your Grace,” Audun said. “I often wonder why God bothered with us in the first place.”

“Maybe we’ll know if we ever find the Golden Shrine.” Hamnet looked out across Sudertorp Lake, as if he expected the legendary temple to rise from its waters. Whether he expected it or not, he didn’t get it.