"We have no quarrel with the Musk Ox men . . . now." Trasamund sounded as grudging as Sarus.
"And we have no quarrel with the Empire," Sarus added after taking a look at the men- and woman-- accompanying Trasamund. He didn't qualify that with a now. Hamnet Thyssen wasn't sure Trasamund noticed, but he did himself.
Eyvind Torfinn held the highest rank among the Raumsdalians. "Nor does the Empire quarrel with the Musk Ox clan," he said in the Bizogot tongue, speaking slowly but clearly. As well as a round man could, he bowed in the saddle.
"What did you do to the dogs?" asked the mammoth-herder who'd put the question before.
"We kept them from troubling us," Eyvind Torfinn answered.
"You have a shaman with you." By the way Sarus said it, it was not a question.
"And why should we not?" Eyvind Torfinn spoke in even terms. After Trasamund's bombast, Count Hamnet wondered if Sarus would pay any attention to him. Eyvind went on, "The world is full of spirits. The world is full of other shamans, too. Are we not allowed to ward ourselves as we would?"
Sarus mulled that. The son of the Musk Ox jarl was big and fair, like most of the Bizogots who rode with him and like Trasamund. Though he couldn't have been older than twenty-five, he had a warrior's scars and a nose that leaned to the left. "You will come to our camp," he said at last. "My father will decide."
It was not a request but a command. The only way to say no was not to speak but to fight. Sarus had more men with him than the Raumsdalians and Trasamund. Even if the northbound travelers somehow vanquished Sarus and his followers, the Musk Ox men could easily summon reinforcements. Hamnet Thyssen could not prove there were any other Raumsdalians north of the ill-defined border.
"Are we to be guests at your father's camp?" he asked before either Trasamund or Eyvind Torfinn could speak. People formally admitted to be guests had a special status among the Bizogots. They couldn't be killed for the sport of it, for instance. If any of them were female, they couldn't be thrown down on the cold ground and gang-raped for the sport of it, either.
If Sarus said no, then fighting to the death now might make a better bet than whatever the Musk Ox jarl's son had in mind. But, after no more than a heartbeat's hesitation, Sarus nodded. "Yes, you will be guests at my father's camp. You will eat of our meat and salt. You will drink of our smetyn." That was the name they gave to fermented mammoth's milk-indeed, to any fermented milk. A Raumsdalian would have spoken of bread and salt and beer or, if he was rich, of wine. But the same principle held.
"We thank you for your kindness," Hamnet Thyssen said. "We are glad to accept. Should you come to the lands we roam, we will gladly guest you there."
Sarus smiled to see a foreigner fulfill ritual so well. Trasamund bared his teeth at Count Hamnet in what looked also like a smile, but wasn't. He did not want ties of guesting to bind him to the Musk Ox clan. Want it or not, though, he was stuck with it unless he wanted to charge Sarus's clansmates singlehanded.
Maybe he wanted to. But he didn't do it.
Hamnet Thyssen chuckled, down deep in his chest. So did Ulric Skakki. Audun Gilli looked from one of them to the other. Neither offered to explain. In some clans-Hamnet didn't know if the Musk Ox was one of them-hospitality went further than meat and salt and smetyn. Some of the mammoth-herders shared their wives with guests.
And the Bizogots expected visitors to their tents to do the same if they ever appeared as guests themselves. Every so often, a Raumsdalian marriage burned like a dry, dead fir after a man who'd gone up to the frozen plains unexpectedly had to try to meet his obligations to a traveler from the north.
What would Gudrid make of such a demand? Count Hamnet suspected it would depend on what she thought of the individual Bizogot. She certainly hadn't turned her back on Trasamund-at least, not with her clothes on.
To Hamnet's relief, Sarus son of Leovigild said, "We ride, then," and wheeled his horse to the northwest, the direction from which he and his comrades had come. The Raumsdalians and Trasamund rode after him.
The dogs that had loped along with Sarus's followers clung close to their horses. They didn't trouble the travelers. Hamnet didn't hear any more barks from the outsized magical dog, but he wondered whether Audun Gilli was keeping some of the nonexistent animal's definitely existent smell in the air. No denying it-Audun was a wizard.
When the barbarians passed a herd of grazing musk oxen, most of the dogs peeled off to help tend it. The musk oxen didn't seem to need much help. Whenever men or wild beasts approached, they formed a circle with the formidably horned bulls facing out on the perimeter. Cows and calves sheltered within. The defense wasn't perfect, but what in this world was? It was usually more than good enough.
Sarus rode back to the Raumsdalians and fell in beside him. "May I ask you something?" the Bizogot said in Raumsdalian not quite as good as Trasamund's.
"You may ask. I do not promise to answer." Count Hamnet went on speaking the Bizogot tongue. He wanted the practice.
Maybe Sarus did, too, for he continued in Raumsdalian, "This woman you have with you-who is she? What is she doing here?"
Hamnet understood his curiosity. If anything, saying women from the Empire seldom came to the frozen steppe was an understatement. "Gudrid is Earl Eyvind Torfinn's wife," Hamnet answered. That was true now. What was once true didn't concern the Bizogot.
"I thought he said that, the old man. I was not sure it could be so." Sarus shrugged. "But then again, why not? Our strong old men take younger women when they can, too. So he brought her with him to keep him warm when the Breath of God blows strong, did he?"
"It is not as simple as that," Hamnet said, another good-sized understatement.
"I should say it is not!" Sarus exclaimed. "A good-looking woman who is not so old when the man who has her is … How much trouble has she caused you?"
"Some," Hamnet answered. "Less than she might have, I suppose. But that is not quite what I meant. Eyvind Torfinn did not bring this woman here, not the way you think. She came north because it was her will that she come north. She follows her own will, no one else's." One more understatement.
"I have heard that you imperials are soft with your women. I see it is so," Sarus said. "Beat her a few times and she will follow her husband's will, no one else's." He folded one large hand into a hard fist. "It works for us."
Hamnet had hit Gudrid when he first found out she was unfaithful to him. She tried to give him hemlock in his beer. She tried to slip a knife between his ribs while he slept. He hit her again, and told her he wouldn't do it any more if she stopped trying to do away with him. She did. Did that mean beating her worked? He didn't think so.
It didn't stop her from being unfaithful, not to him. And nothing stopped her from being unfaithful to Eyvind Torfinn, either.
What was he supposed to tell Sarus? He didn't want to admit Gudrid was once his-and his worry-so he said, "You have your ways, we have ours. Some ways work for some folk, others for others."
"It could be so," the Bizogot said politely. "But what if ways do not work for a folk? What then?"
"Nothing in this world is perfect," Hamnet Thyssen said, and smiled a little. Who would have dreamt that what held true for the defensive herds of musk oxen also held for women? He wondered what Gudrid would have thought of that. Not much, most likely.
"God is perfect," Sarus said. "How could God not be perfect? He would not be God."
"God is perfect," Hamnet agreed. "But is God in this world or above it?"