Harry Turtledove - The Golden Shrine

“Somebody’ll grab it before too long,” Ulric said. Hamnet nodded, but he was thinking, As long as it isn’t me!

Hamnet Thyssen didn’t linger long in the imperial palace. True, he’d brought bad news for Sigvat II straight from the Golden Shrine. But he had brought bad news for the Raumsdalian Emperor. The aura of glamour surrounding the first was enough to let him get out of the palace unscathed. He didn’t think he would have lasted more than a few hours at the outside had he tried to hang around.

He didn’t see Sigvat alive or dead. Maybe the Emperor really had got away and was busy memorizing his new name. Stranger things had happened. Before Hamnet first met Trasamund, he would have irately denied the possibility. Since then, he’d gone beyond the Gap. He’d climbed to the top of the Glacier and met the folk who lived up there. He’d gone inside the Golden Shrine. All of those were at least a little stranger than the chance that Sigvat might act like a sensible human being.

Ulric Skakki didn’t overstay his welcome, either. He waited impatiently with Hamnet for grooms to lead their horses out of the stables. “Well, Your Grace, what now?” he asked.

“I’m going home,” Hamnet said simply. “Anybody who tries to drag me out again will have to lay siege to the place . . . if it’s still standing, anyhow.”

“What if it’s not?” The adventurer was as full of annoying questions as ever. His twisted grin said he knew as much.

“God knows, in that case.” Hamnet shrugged. “Maybe I’ll keep on going south, the way I’ve talked about. Or maybe I’ll turn around and go up onto the steppe and see what kind of Bizogot I make.”

He was about to ask what Ulric intended to do, but Ulric beat him to the punch again: “And what about Marcovefa?”

“What about me?” Marcovefa asked from behind them. They both jumped. She went on, “Why do you ask somebody else? Do you think I cannot take care of myself? Are you so foolish?”

“Mm-I hope not.” For once in his life, Ulric sounded faintly embarrassed.

“He asked me what I wanted to do, and I told him I was going home,” Count Hamnet said. “Then he asked about you, and you answered before I could. I didn’t know what you were going to say, anyhow.”

“I will come with you. I will see your home. After all, you have seen mine,” Marcovefa said. “Whether I will stay after that”-she smiled-“we can both find out.”

Ulric nudged Hamnet. “Take her up on it,” he stage-whispered. “You won’t get a better bargain.”

“Do you think I’m too stupid to figure that out for myself?” Hamnet said.

“By your track record, yes,” Ulric answered. The worst of it was, Hamnet could hardly tell him he was wrong.

Marcovefa glared at the palace guards and grooms. “Where is my horse?” she demanded. “Do I have to start turning people into voles to get the rest of you to do what you should be doing anyhow?” The servitors all but stumbled over one another in their haste to do what she wanted.

“This is how it ends,” Ulric said, not sadly but in a matter-of-fact way. “We did what we set out to do-enough of it, anyway-and now we go back to taking care of things for ourselves.” He sketched a salute. “Luck, Thyssen. Maybe we’ll run into each other again one of these years.”

“Maybe we will. Nothing would surprise me any more.” Hamnet clasped the adventurer’s hand while grooms led out their horses-and Marcovefa’s.

“Me, I’m heading south myself. I’ve had enough of ice to last me a long time,” Ulric said. He’d made noises like that before. Maybe he meant them. Or maybe he aimed to throw any possible pursuers off his trail.

He did ride south, which soon separated him from Hamnet and Marcovefa, who made for the east gate. Hamnet could have gone out the south gate just as well; his keep and the lands surrounding it lay far to the southeast. But Ulric Skakki had it right: breaking apart was how things ended.

Or so Hamnet thought, till somebody let out a deep bass yell behind him. He looked back over his shoulder. Here came Trasamund, bulling his horse through traffic so the locals glared at him. “You won’t get away from me like that,” the jarl boomed. “I guested you as long as I could up on the plains. About time you pay me back, the way a guest-friend should by rights.”

Hamnet laughed and sketched a salute. “At your service, Your Ferocity.”

Trasamund bowed in the saddle and started to laugh himself, but abruptly choked it off. “You may as well forget the title. Without a clan to rule, I don’t deserve it any more. The world’s a miserable place.”

“You’ve seen the Golden Shrine-you’ve gone into it-and you say that? Shame on you,” Marcovefa told him.

“It is,” Trasamund insisted. “We never would have seen the Golden Shrine if the Rulers hadn’t wrecked the Bizogots, and they started with my clan.”

“More to the world than your clan,” Hamnet said. “More to the world than Raumsdalia, too.”

“Oh? Then why aren’t you riding off to God knows where with Ulric Skakki?” Trasamund said. “You’re going back to the one little piece of ground that belongs to you. I’d go back to the tents of the Three Tusk clan, except they aren’t there any more.” He wiped away a tear, whether real or rhetorical Count Hamnet wasn’t sure.

“You’re welcome to come along with us if you care to,” Hamnet said, as a guest-friend should. “My home is yours for as long as you care to stay there.”

The jarl bowed in the saddle again. “Well, I do thank you for that. And, like I said, I’ll take you up on it-for now, anyway. If I wander off one of these days, it won’t be on account of anything you’ve done. I don’t expect it will, I mean. But I don’t know if I can stay in one place the rest of my days.”

“Neither do I,” Marcovefa said.

“Well, neither do I,” Hamnet Thyssen said. “We’ll all find out. As long as I stay away from Nidaros-and as long as Nidaros’ troubles stay away from me-I suppose I’ll get along wherever I am.” He reached out and set a hand on Marcovefa’s arm. “The company is pretty good.”

“Are you trying to sweet-talk me?” she asked.

“Not right this moment,” Hamnet said. “When we stop to rest tonight, we’ll see how I do then.” By the way she laughed, he had a good chance of doing well.

But her laugh cut off as shouts and screams and the clash of blade against blade rang out behind them, from the direction of the palace. “Oh, God!” Trasamund said. “It’s starting already, isn’t it? Cursed fools didn’t waste any time.”

“What happens in a Bizogot clan when the jarl dies and nobody’s set to succeed him?” Hamnet asked. Trasamund grunted: as much of a concession as Hamnet was likely to get.

“What do we do now?” Marcovefa asked. The martial racket was getting louder and coming closer.

“We get out of here, quick as we can.” Hamnet urged his horse up into a trot. “The only thing worse than getting stuck in the middle of a war is getting stuck in the middle of a civil war.”

“That makes more sense than I wish it did,” Trasamund said. He and Marcovefa booted their horses forward, too.

To Hamnet’s relief, nobody at the eastern gate recognized him. “What’s going on back there?” a guard asked, pointing in the direction from which he and his companions had come. “Sounds like the whole world’s going crazy.”

“It does, doesn’t it?” Hamnet looked as blank and innocent as he could. “All we want to do is get on our way before whatever it is catches up with us.”

“Smart,” the guard said solemnly.

One of the other soldiers at the gate said, “Somebody who went through a few minutes ago said the Emperor was leaving town again. That doesn’t seem right, does it? I mean, those stupid Rulers or whatever the demon they are haven’t given us so much trouble lately. Why would His Majesty want to leave now, then?”