Audun thought about that. It didn’t take a whole lot of thought. “Well, no,” he admitted, shaking his head.

“Good,” Hamnet said. “If you’d told me yes, I would have thought you were as arrogant as one of the Rulers.”

“I hope not!” Audun exclaimed. “The worst thing about them is, they have the strength to back up their arrogance. That makes them think they have some natural right to it, the way they think they have the right to lord it over all the folk they can reach.”

“No,” Count Hamnet said. “The worst thing about the Rulers is, they can reach folk on this side of the Glacier because of the Gap.”

“I think we said the same thing,” Audun Gilli replied.

“Well, maybe we did.” Hamnet looked north, towards the Gap that had finally melted through the great Glacier and towards the two enormous ice sheets that remained, one to the northwest, the other to the northeast. He couldn’t have seen the opening in the Gap anyway; it lay much too far north. Swirling clouds and blowing snow kept him from getting even a glimpse of the southern edge of the Glacier now. When the weather was clear, those frozen cliffs bestrode the steppe like the edge of any other mountains, but steeper and more abrupt.

He’d had an odd thought not long before. There were mountains in the west. They ran north and north, till the Glacier swallowed them. Did any of their peaks stick out above the surface of the ice? Did life persist on those islands in the icebound sea? Were there even, could there be, men up there? No one had ever seen fires burning on the Glacier, but no one had ever gone up there to look at close range, either.

This time, his shiver had nothing to do with the frigid weather. Trasamund had told him once that Bizogots had tried to scale the Glacier to see if they could reach the top. It had to be at least a mile – maybe two or three – almost straight up. The mammoth-herders hadn’t managed it. They were probably lucky they hadn’t killed themselves. One mistake on that unforgiving climb would likely be your last. You might have too long to regret it as you fell, though.