“Oh.” Hamnet Thyssen put no stress on the word. He didn’t think it needed any. By Ulric Skakki s crooked smile, neither did he.
Did vultures and teratorns come up here to the top of the Glacier? Hamnet couldn’t remember seeing any overhead. If he had, he would have thought they were waiting for him to keel over. Marching and fighting in this thin air left him crushingly weary.
“We went to war for this clan,” he told Ulric. “They owe us help getting down, if they have any to give.”
The adventurer translated his words for the man of the Glacier. The barbarian shrugged. He spoke. “He says to wait for another avalanche,” Ulric Skakki said.
“No, thanks,” Count Hamnet answered. Scavenger birds might or might not come up here. But small-eared foxes, no doubt drawn by the scent of blood, already stood waiting just out of bowshot to clean up the remains the men of the Glacier didn’t want.
Pointing to them, Ulric Skakki said, “They show these people have been up here for a long time, poor devils.”
“How do you mean?” Hamnet asked.
“They know how far a bow shoots, and they know not to come that close.”
“That makes them smarter than a lot of warriors I’ve run into.” Hamnet pointed to the puddles of blood now freezing on the ice.
“Heh,” Ulric said. “That’s one of those jokes that would be funny if only it were funny – know what I mean?”
“Who said I was joking?” Hamnet Thyssen answered.
The mountaintop refugeto which the men of the Glacier led the Raumsdalians and Bizogots was larger and more hospitable than the one they’d found on their own. It had a broad, low south-facing slope that caught as much sun as there was to catch. Flowers and berries and other greens grew as thickly as they could at that height and in that weather.
Stone pens housed hares and pikas and voles. The men of the Glacier did everything they could to make themselves at home here. And everything they could do still left their little world terrifyingly bleak to anyone who came to it anew.
Count Hamnet saw his first women and children of the Glacier there. The only difference between them and their menfolk he could find was that they grew no beards, so their faces were only filthy, not shaggy. They hid behind rocks when they saw oddly dressed strangers accompanying their kinsmen, but came out with glad cries when the men of the Glacier told of the battle they’d fought and showed off the meat they’d brought back.
They used dried dung for their fires, as the Bizogots did down on what Hamnet had thought of as the frozen plain till he came to the top of the Glacier. Some of the dung was rabbit pellets. The rest… Well, the men of the Glacier couldn’t even afford to waste waste.
“We can’t stay here long,” Trasamund said in a low voice.
“I wouldn’t want to, God knows,” Hamnet answered. “But why do you say we can’t?”
“Because we’ll eat them empty if we do,” the jarl said. “I’ll bet some of them starve every winter the way things are. Pretty soon they’ll see they can’t keep us, if they haven’t seen it by now. And then they’ll kill us and cook us, or try.”
As soon as Hamnet heard that, he knew it had to be true. “We’d best keep sentries up while the rest of us sleep, then,” he said.
“Already thought of it,” Trasamund replied.
“Good,” Hamnet said. “We don’t want to be pushy about it. If we are, we’re liable to give them ideas they don’t need. But we don’t want to let them talk us out of it, either.”
“That’s about how I see things, too,” the Bizogot said. “We can whip them if we have to, I think.”
“Maybe,” Hamnet said. “But even if we do, so what? Do you want to be lord of this mountain?” He didn’t come out and ask,
The idea appalled Trasamund. “I want to come down off the Glacier. I want to fight the Rulers. I want to beat them, by God. I’m jarl of the Three Tusk clan, and that’s what I aim to grow old being.”
No matter how he aimed, Hamnet Thyssen feared he was unlikely to hit his target. His clan was shattered beyond repair. So was the Bizogots’ whole way of life on much of the frozen steppe, if not on all of it. Hamnet could hardly blame the jarl if that hadn’t sunk in yet. Sooner or later, though, it would have to.
He looked around to see what Liv was doing. He seemed to be doing that more and more lately, and wished he weren’t. She and Audun Gilli were both trying to talk to a scrawny woman of the Glacier with long, stringy blond hair. The woman’s fur tunic and trousers were decorated with fringes and bits of sparkling crystal tied on with rawhide or cord. He nodded to himself. If she wasn’t this clan’s shaman, he would have been very much surprised.
“Can you translate?” Audun Gilli called to Ulric Skakki. “You’re the only one of us who knows their language.”
“It’s a little like what I speak, but only a little,” Liv added. “When I guess, I guess wrong half the time. And you don’t want to guess wrong when you’re talking about shamanry. A mistake can kill you.”
“A shame you don’t want to put any pressure on me,” Ulric said with one of his lopsided smiles. “I’ll try, but I don’t know how much I can help. I didn’t have a lot to do with the Crag Goats’ shaman.”
He squatted down beside the stringy-haired woman and spoke to her in her language. Listening, Count Hamnet felt he ought to be able to understand it, but couldn’t except for a word here and there. It was at least as far from the regular Bizogot tongue as the old-fashioned Raumsdalian priests used in their liturgies was from the everyday speech of Nidaros.
A moment later, he forgot about the fine points of dialect, for the smell of roasting pork brought spit flooding into his mouth. He’d marched and fought on very little food, and that savory smell reminded him of it.
But it wasn’t pork. He realized that a moment too late, a moment after the smell dug down deep and made his belly growl. Nausea and hunger warred within him. He’d wanted man’s flesh. He hadn’t quite known what it was, but he’d wanted it. Part of him still did, and that was worst of all.
Trasamund went from smile to scowl in a way that suggested the cooking cannibal feast had smelled good to him, too. The men of the Glacier watched their enemies’ flesh sizzle with eager anticipation. They didn’t think they were doing anything wrong by eating it. Had the men of the other clan won the fight, these barbarians would have been bur.chered.
“Ulric!” he called.
“What is it?” The adventurer looked up from his colloquy with the shaman.
“Ask if we can eat some hares or whatever else they have instead of. .. that.” Hamnet pointed to the meat cooking above the fires.
“Oh. Right.” Ulric Skakki went back to the language the men of the Glacier could follow. The shaman sounded surprised as she answered. Ulric said, “She wants to know why, when man’s flesh is so much sweeter. She says there’s nothing better than the flesh of foes you’ve killed yourself.”
“Wonderful,” Count Hamnet said tightly. “Well, tell her it’s not our custom or whatever you have to say to get us out of it. God knows you aren’t lying.”
“I’ll do my best.” Again, Ulric returned to the other dialect. The shaman shrugged and tapped her forehead with a callused finger as she said something in reply. “She thinks foreigners are crazy,” Ulric translated unnecessarily.
“Well, we love her, too,” Hamnet said, which made Ulric bark laughter and earned the Raumsdalian noble a sharp glance from the shaman. Hamnet Thyssen looked back impassively, and the woman of the Glacier was the first to turn her eyes away.
Instead of hares, the men of the Glacier fed their guests pikas and voles. Hamnet guessed they were being given the glove, but he wasn’t inclined to fuss about it. He would have eaten worms and earwigs instead of the meat that smelled so damnably tempting.
The men of the Glacier didn’t worry about it. Hamnet could see why. Life here was impossibly hard. They probably didn’t recognize the folk of other clans as human beings at all. But when he watched them cut flesh with their stone knives and greedily stuff it into their mouths, he almost lost his own appetite.
Almost, but not quite. He was so hungry, before long he
