"Men?" All three Raumsdalians asked the question at the same time.

"I didn't meet any. Maybe I was lucky not to," Trasamund answered. "I'd say there are some, for the animals were wary of me. They've been hunted. I have no doubt of that. But the way northwest is open. If the weather doesn't turn cold enough to make the ice sheets grow together again, it'll stay open."

"Did you see any sign—any sign at all—of the Golden Shrine?" Sigvat II asked.

Again, the Emperor and Hamnet Thyssen and Ulric Skakki leaned toward Trasamund as if a lodestone were drawing them. People who claimed this land south of the Glacier was promised to those who lived in it said the Golden Shrine was what had kept their enemies from following them all those ages ago. People who claimed this land was in the hands of evildoers or their descendants said the Golden Shrine was made to keep them in. People who claimed the Glacier went on forever mostly didn't think there was any such thing as the Golden Shrine. Count Hamnet hadn't. Now . . . How could anyone know what to believe now?

"I saw nothing of that sort myself," Trasamund answered. "But it's on account of the Golden Shrine that I came down here to Nidaros with the word. You Raumsdalians know more about old things than we do. If it's there, and if we find it... I wouldn't want to touch off a curse, you understand, not even knowing I was doing it. Next time I go north, I ought to have Raumsdalians along, too. Just in case, you might say."

To turn aside any curses, Hamnet wondered, or to make sure we get our fair share of them? Were Bizogots devious enough to think that way? Hamnet wasn't so sure about most of the barbarians. The jarl of the Three Tusk clan struck him as sly enough and then some.

"Here you have two bold men who will go anywhere a Bizogot will," the Emperor said, nodding to Count Hamnet and Ulric Skakki in turn. "Both have traveled widely in the north of the world, and both are presently, ah, at liberty."