Harry Turtledove - The Golden Shrine

“We’d never had an invasion like that. I thought you were exaggerating things to make yourself seem more important,” Sigvat said.

“You would have done that,” Marcovefa said. “So you judged Hamnet from yourself.”

By the way Sigvat scowled at her, that shot struck too close to the center of the target. “I turned out to be wrong,” he said. “But I thought the chances were good that I was right.”

“And so you almost pissed the Empire straight into the chamber pot,” Hamnet said. “If not for Marcovefa, you would have. No wonder the Golden Shrine didn’t think you measured up.”

“I wouldn’t have believed that, either, if I had any choice,” Sigvat said.

“You have none. None at all,” Trasamund said. “That is not a judgment from man. It is a judgment from God. Everyone who was in your throne room knows it.”

Sigvat wanted to call the jarl a liar. The urge was written all over his face. Only one thing stopped him, Hamnet judged: Trasamund was obviously telling the truth. Instead, Sigvat said, “Go ahead and mock. I hope it makes you happy.” As obviously, he hoped anything but.

To Hamnet, Trasamund said, “We ought to knock him over the head. He’s too stupid to learn anything from all the mistakes he made.”

“If the Golden Shrine had wanted him dead soon, it would have taken care of things,” Hamnet said. “This is worse. He was the Emperor of Raumsdalia. Now no one will hearken to him for the rest of his life, however long he lasts. If he doesn’t learn that much, he won’t live long. But I won’t stain my hands with his blood. As far as I’m concerned, he’s not worth killing.”

Sigvat went from red to white. “Curse you, Thyssen,” he whispered.

“You can’t,” Hamnet said matter-of-factly. “You’ve already cursed yourself. Nothing you throw at me will bite.” He gestured to his companions. “We may as well ride on.”

“What if this-thing-tries to shoot us in the back?” Trasamund said. “He’s got a bow.”

“He won’t. He can’t.” Marcovefa sounded sure, as only she could. Hamnet believed her. Sigvat’s grimace of impotent fury said he did, too.

They rode past Sigvat. Hamnet didn’t look back. No arrows came hissing after him. He never saw Sigvat, once the second Emperor of Raumsdalia of that name, again. He never heard that anyone else did, either.

A stone keep warded by a wooden palisade. Fields and orchards around it. Woods of oak and elm and ash and hickory and chestnut off to the east, where Raumsdalia’s border petered out. Hamnet pointed toward the keep. “Hasn’t changed much since I went away,” he said.

“Did you expect it to?” Trasamund asked.

“You never can tell,” Hamnet answered. “If we’ve seen anything the past few years, we’ve seen that.”

Farmers weeding in the fields looked up as the travelers rode by. Not many folk came this way, as Hamnet had reason to know. One of the peasants called, “That you, Count?”

“I think so,” Hamnet said, which made the fellow grin.

“You take care of whatever you needed to do out in the world?” another farmer asked.

“Most of it. For a while,” Hamnet replied.

The man nodded. “About what you can hope for.” He went back to weeding.

Marcovefa eyed Hamnet. “Yes, this is your country. These are your people.”

“I never tried to tell you anything different,” he said.

A shout rolled out from the palisade: “Who comes?”

“Hamnet Thyssen, with friends,” Hamnet answered. “Is everything well, Gris?”

“You’ll see for yourself soon enough,” his seneschal said, and then, not to Hamnet, “Open the gates, by God!”

They creaked open. They’d creaked before Hamnet rode away, too. His retainers stared at his companions. “Are those what they call Bizogots?” a man asked doubtfully. He might have been talking about glyptodonts or other beasts he didn’t look to see in this part of the world.

“We’re Bizogots, sure enough,” Trasamund rumbled. Marcovefa stirred, but she didn’t argue. Her folk sprang from the Bizogots, even if they didn’t think of themselves as belonging to them any more. Mischief in his pale eyes, Trasamund went on, “I wouldn’t be surprised if you were a Raumsdalian.”

“That’s right,” the man said automatically. His friends realized Trasamund was joking half a heartbeat before he did. They laughed at him. He went red.

Hamnet looked around. Everything looked pretty much the way it had before he rode off to answer Sigvat’s summons. He hadn’t thought he’d stay away so long or do so much while he was gone. As he dismounted, all the time between then and now might have fallen away.

Or it might not have. “How much trouble did you have this past year?” he asked.

“Well, there was some,” Gris admitted. “We heard some new barbarians got loose up in the north. Don’t think we saw any ourselves, but plenty of people running from them came by. They going to cause more trouble?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Hamnet answered.

“Thanks to you,” Marcovefa said, and slipped an arm around his waist. The men and women in the courtyard murmured-more at the gesture, Hamnet judged, than at the news. They wanted him wed, or at least attached. They wanted an heir, so things would stay smooth after he was gone.

He put his arm around Marcovefa’s shoulder. “Thanks more to you,” he said. She nodded. She wasn’t shy about taking praise. The locals murmured on a different note. Hamnet went on, “Sigvat’s off the throne.”

That brought surprised exclamations-the news hadn’t got here, anyhow. “Did you cast him off it?” Gris asked.

“No, not really,” Hamnet replied, and the last couple of words brought fresh muttering. Ignoring it, he continued, “The Golden Shrine had more to do with it.”

Outcry this time. He’d known there would be. He told the story, and spoke the words in the forgotten language he’d delivered to Sigvat II. Marcovefa worked her magic again, so his retainers could get some sense of the power those words had. Gris said, “Who’s Emperor, then, if Sigvat isn’t?”

“How come you’re not?” another man asked Hamnet before he could say anything.

“Because I don’t want the throne. Because I’d rather come home,” he answered. Several of the locals nodded. They understood that urge to return to the familiar. It wasn’t always a good urge-Hamnet thought of the trouble he could have missed if Gudrid hadn’t drawn him like a lodestone for so long-but it was strong. He turned back to Gris. “When we left Nidaros, nobody was on the throne. They’ll likely fight it out to see which greedy fool gets to set his fundament there. But we’re so far from the center of things, I don’t think any civil war will touch us here. Hope not, anyhow.”

The seneschal considered. “Odds are decent,” he said at last. “So what will you do now that you’re back?”

“About what I was doing before,” Hamnet replied. “I liked it well enough, except when . . . things got in the way.” Things. Gudrid. Sigvat’s summons. The Gap, melted through. The Rulers. The invasion. The war. The dungeon. Sudertorp Lake, pouring out as if God were pushing it-and maybe God was. The Golden Shrine. Mene. Mene. Tekel. Upharsin .

Things.

“What about you people?” Gris asked Trasamund and Marcovefa. By the way he used the last word, he was giving them the benefit of the doubt.

Trasamund spoke first: “I’ll stay here a while, anyway. I’ve got nothing to go back to up on the plains-the Rulers made sure of that.”

Marcovefa eyed Hamnet as she answered, “I will stay as long as I am happy. If I am not, it will be time to go.”

He nodded. “That’ll do. I hope you stay a long time. I’ll try not to make you unhappy-but you never can tell. If I’ve learned anything since I went away, that’s it. You never can tell.”