those black mammoth-hide tents.
Bizogots swarmed out of the tents to greet the travelers. 'Welcome back!' they shouted. 'Welcome home!' It
The Bizogots slaughtered and butchered a plump young musk ox. Spit flooded into Hamnet Thyssen's mouth. Trasamund scooped out a handful of the raw brains and ate it, blood running down into his beard. Hamnet did the same. He'd learned to tolerate the Bizogot delicacy on his first trip up beyond the tree line, years earlier. On this trip, he'd learned to enjoy it. And he was hungry enough now to find it delicious beyond compare.
Ulric Skakki took some of the brains, too. 'Always glad when my stomach is smarter than my head,' he said.
'Mine is most of the time, I think,' Hamnet said, licking his lips.
None of the other Raumsdalians wanted anything to do with raw brains, though Liv came up to eat some. Trasamund clapped Hamnet and Ulric on the back in turn—gingerly, for his hands were still sore. 'By God, the two of you make pretty fair Bizogots,' he said.
'Thank you, your Ferocity.' Hamnet knew the jarl meant it for praise, and some of the highest praise he could give.
'Thank you so much, your Ferocity,' Ulric Skakki said. If Trasamund listened to the words, he would find nothing wrong with them. If he listened closely to the tone, he would find he'd given praise Ulric didn't want.
For a mammoth-herder, Trasamund was a sophisticate. Beside Ulric Skakki, he might have been a child; the irony went over his head. He was frank as a child, too, for he went on, 'Maybe not as good as the real thing, but pretty fair even so.'
This wasn't the Three Tusk clan's main camp—that lay farther south. These Bizogots had followed their herd of musk oxen into the Gap. Most animals went south for the winter. Musk oxen, shielded against cold and blizzards by their long, shaggy hair and soft, thick underwool, could head the other way if they chose.
Even though this was only a small band of Bizogots—a couple dozen men, fewer women, a handful of children—Hamnet Thyssen felt as if he'd suddenly come into Nidaros after a long sojourn in his castle. Unfamiliar faces talked about unfamiliar things in unfamiliar voices. So much chatter almost made him want to flee the tents for the quiet and solitude of the frozen plain beyond them.
Roasting musk-ox meat sent up a delicious aroma. Count Hamnet's stomach growled like a short-faced bear. Even if he did feel slightly overwhelmed, he decided to stay around.
He didn't mind half-raw meat at all. He did mind waiting for it to cook all the way through. So did the other travelers. He overheard one Bizogot say to another, 'I thought these folk from the south couldn't put it away like real people do. I guess I was wrong.'
'I thought the same thing,' the second Bizogot answered. 'Only goes to show you shouldn't believe everything you hear, doesn't it?'
Eyvind Torfinn stared in mild astonishment at the pile of rib bones in front of him. 'I never could have eaten like this before I set out from the Empire,' he said. 'Never, I tell you. Amazing what practice will do, isn't it?'
'Amazing what hunger will do, isn't it?' Ulric Skakki said. Hamnet Thyssen thought that came closer to hitting the mark, though what Earl Eyvind said also held some truth. Without practice, Hamnet didn't think he could have gorged himself like this. Without being hungrier than he ever got down in the Raumsdalian Empire, he wouldn't have wanted to.
The Bizogots passed around skins of smetyn to celebrate the travelers' return. The fermented mammoths milk tasted good to Hamnet, which only showed how long he'd been away from anything with a kick to it. It also mounted straight to his head, which showed the same thing.
Audun Gilli drank himself to sleep in short order. The Bizogots took such things in stride. They draped a mammoth hide over the sodden wizard and shoved him near the edge of the tent, where people were less likely to trip over him or step on him.
'Well, your Ferocity?' Hilderic said. 'Tell us of the lands beyond the Glacier. Are there people there? Did you find the Golden Shrine?'
'There are people. There are indeed,' Trasamund answered. He spoke of the Rulers, and of how they not only herded but rode mammoths. That made all the Bizogots buzz, as he must have known it would.
'Can we do that?' Three of them asked the same question at the same time.
'I don't see why not,' the jarl said. 'But we won't do it today, and we won't do it tomorrow, either. We'll have to figure out everything that goes into it, and we'll have to get the mammoths used to carrying men on their backs. The time will come, though, and I think it will come soon.'
Gudrid and the Raumsdalian guardsmen who'd never learned the Bizogot tongue began to follow Audun Gilli's example. Hamnet Thyssen didn't suppose he could blame them—not in one sense, anyway. Listening to a language you couldn't follow had to be boring. But they'd traveled with Bizogots for months. They—and Audun—should have learned more than they did.
He glanced over to Liv. She'd waited longer than she might have to start learning Raumsdalian, too. But she was doing well with it now.
In the flames that came from butter-filled lamps, Hilderic's eyes glowed like a wild beast s. 'If we learn this art, we'll ride roughshod over the rest of the Bizogots!' His fellow clansmen rumbled approval at the idea.
But Trasamund regretfully shook his head. 'Once we learn this art, I fear we'll have to show it to the rest of the Bizogots.'
'What? Why?' Hilderic demanded.
'Because the Rulers, God curse them, are full of greed,' Trasamund said. 'We see the opening of the Gap as a chance to go north, to see what lies beyond the Glacier.
'They can't do that!' Hilderic wasn't the only Bizogot to say that—far from it. Several of the big blond men shook their fists at the north.
'I hope they can't,' Trasamund said. 'But they have tricks we know nothing of yet. This mammoth-riding is bound to be but the beginning.'
'The jarl speaks truly,' Liv added. 'One thing we saw while we were with them—their magic is strong, very strong, perhaps stronger than any we know ourselves. If the Raumsdalian shaman were awake, he would tell you the same.'
'Still and all, they can be beaten,' Hamnet Thyssen said. 'His Ferocity proved as much.'
A reminiscent smile spread across Trasamund's battered features. 'Well, so I did,' he said, and then waited till his people clamored for him to tell them more. He was indeed a sophisticate—for a Bizogot. He spoke of his battle with Parsh, finishing, 'And after I beat him, the poor fool killed himself for shame.'
'Killed himself? For what?' Hilderic said. 'For shame, you say? What shame in losing a straight-up fight, as long as you gave your best? Did he?'
'He did.' By the way Trasamund rubbed his chin, he had no doubt of that. He stopped smiling. 'Oh, yes. He did.'
'For shame of losing to a man not of the Rulers,' Hamnet said.
'They are a serious folk, then, the Rulers.' Hilderic sounded impressed in spite of himself. By the way several other Bizogots, both men and women, nodded, he'd put into words what they were thinking.
'They are a danger, a great danger,' Liv said. 'We would do well to put warriors at the narrowest part of the Gap, to make sure they cannot break through and come down into the richer country we mostly roam.'
The Bizogots who hadn't traveled beyond the Glacier stared at her. So did Trasamund. 'Meaning no offense, wise woman,' he said, 'but we of the Three Tusk clan have not the warriors to hold the Gap. Even if we sent all our men, I doubt we would have enough. And if we did that'—he chuckled as if humoring a madwoman—'who would tend the beasts?'
'Let everything be as you say, your Ferocity, but the Gap still needs to be held,' Liv replied. 'If we have not men enough to do it, let other clans send warriors to our aid. Let even the Raumsdalians send warriors to our aid, so long as we hold the Gap.'
'Let other clans' warriors cross the land of the Three Tusk clan in arms?' That wasn't the jarl. It was Hilderic, horror in his voice. 'Let the
