The jarl went on, "Guide us back to the tents of the clan. We have things to do before faring north again."
"Just as you say, so shall it be," Gelimer replied.
"Of course," Trasamund said complacently. Sigvat II, Emperor of Raumsdalia, could have sounded no more certain.
The encampment of the Three Tusk clan was ... a Bizogot encampment. Hamnet Thyssen was long familiar with them. Even if he weren't, the journey up across the frozen steppe would have taught him as much as he needed to know.
Mammoth-hide tents sprouted here and there, scattered higgledy-piggledy across the ground. Horses were tied nearby. By Raumsdalian standards, Bizogot horses were short-legged and stocky and shaggy. They needed to be, to get through the long, hard winters in these parts. Some of them would wander with the clan's musk oxen during the winter, to forage on whatever they could dig up. Others would winter in and near the tents, feeding on hay the Bizogots harvested while the weather was good, and on the frozen grasses the nomads found beneath the snow. So it went in good winters, anyway. When times were not so good, the Bizogots ate horse and rebuilt their herds as they could.
For the moment, the camp boiled with excitement. The nomads would not eat horse any time soon. They'd killed a cow mammoth not long before Trasamund and the Raumsdalians rode up, and were butchering the mountain of meat. They would roast and boil what they could, and eat it on the spot. The rest would be cut into thin strips and salted and dried in the sun and the wind.
Hamnet Thyssen eyed Ulric Skakki. "Here's to gluttony," he said. "Are you up for it?"
"I'll try my best," Ulric answered. "But any civilized man will explode if he tries to keep up with the Bizogots. They're better at stuffing themselves than we are."
"They're better at doing without than we are, too," Hamnet said. "On average, I suppose it's about the same, but they swing further in both directions than we do."
Even the arrival of their jarl, even the arrival of strangers from the south, distracted the nomads only a little. They greeted Trasamund with bloody handclasps. He took it in good part; he knew meat mattered more than he did.
Women scraped fat from the back of the mammoth hide. Some of them used iron knives that had come north in trade, others flint tools that might have been as old as time or might have been made that morning. The Bizogots never had as much iron as they wanted, and eked it out with stone tools.
Dogs danced and begged by the edge of the hide. Every so often, a woman would throw some scraps their way. The dogs yelped and snapped at the food and at one another. The women laughed at the sport.
They carefully saved the rest of the fat. Some of it would get cooked in the feast. The rest would be pounded with lean mammoth meat and berries to make cakes that would keep for a long time and would feed a traveling man.
Once the hide had not a scrap of fat or flesh clinging to it, the women rubbed it with a strong-smelling mix. Audun Gilli s nose wrinkled. "What's that stuff?" he asked.
"Piss and salt, to cure the hide," Count Hamnet answered.
"Oh." The wizard looked unhappy. "Why don't they use tanbark, the way we do?"
Both Hamnet and Ulric laughed at him. "Think about it," Ulric said.
Audun did. "Oh," he said again, this time in a small voice. Tanbark required oaks, and all the oaks grew well south of the tree line.
"What is the news?" Trasamund asked. "Who has died? Who still lives? Who is born? Who is well? Who is sick or hurt?" He had a lot of catching up to do, and was trying to do it all at once. In the Empire, that would have been impossible. The Three Tusk clan was small enough to give him a fighting chance.
"Who are these mouths up from the south?" a Bizogot asked him. That was how the Raumsdalians seemed to the locals—people who had to be fed as long as they were here. Hamnet Thyssen wondered how he liked being called a mouth. Not very well, he decided.
Trasamund named names, which would mean little to a clansman. He called most of the Raumsdalians warriors, styling Audun Gilli and Eyvind Torfinn as shamans. The Three Tusk shaman, easily identifiable by the same kind of fringed and embroidered costume as Witigis had worn, eyed them with interested speculation.
"What about the woman?" another Bizogot called. Actually, he said, What about the gap? That made Hamnet look north toward the gap between the two great sheets of ice that had once been one. This time, Gudrid didn't show any signs of understanding.
"Is she just yours, or can we all have her?" still another mammoth-herder asked. A woman gave him an elbow in the ribs. Was she his wife, or just jealous of competition?
"She is the old shaman's woman," Trasamund answered. Count Hamnet glanced over to see how Eyvind Torfinn liked hearing that again and again. By the fixed smile on his face, he didn't like it much. Trasamund went on, "They are all our guests. They are not to be stolen from."
"Ha!" Ulric Skakki said. Hamnet Thyssen nodded. Guest-friendship would keep the Raumsdalians' persons safe while they stayed with the Three Tusk clan. Their personal property? No. Having so little themselves, Bizogots were born thieves.
"My guests, will you feast with my folk?" Trasamund said.
"We will," answered Hamnet, Ulric, and Eyvind, the only three Raumsdalians who spoke any useful amount of the Bizogot language. "We thank you."
After the Raumsdalians dismounted, Bizogot youths led their horses off to the line where those belonging to the mammoth-herders were tied. The shaman made a beeline for Audun Gilli and spoke to him in the Bizogot tongue. His eyebrows leaped. "A woman!" he exclaimed in Raumsdalian.
"I thought you could tell the difference before they talked," Hamnet Thyssen said dryly. "She's got no beard, and that's a pretty good hint."
The shaman turned to him. "You speak your language, and you speak ours. Will you interpret for me?"
"If I can," Hamnet answered. "If you speak of secret things, I will not know your words for them, and I may not know ours, either. I am no spellcaster."
She looked at him. "You think not, do you?" While he was wondering what to make of that, she went on, "Ask his name for me, please, and tell him I am Liv."
"He is Audun Gilli," Hamnet said. He translated for the wizard.
"Tell her I am glad to meet her," Audun said. "Tell her I hope we can learn things from each other."
"I hope the same." Liv eyed Hamnet again. "And who are you!" He gave her his name. She shook her head with poorly hidden impatience. "I did not ask you for that. I ask who you were. It is not the same thing."
Hamnet Thyssen scratched his head. He wondered if the shaman for Trasamund's clan was slightly daft, or more than slightly. "I am a soldier, a hunter, a loyal follower of my Emperor." Did she know what an emperor was? "Think of him as a jarl ruling many clans."
"Yes, yes." Liv brushed the explanation aside. She looked at him again. She didn't just look at him—she looked into him, with the same disconcerting directness a Raumsdalian wizard might have shown. Lie tried to look away; he had the feeling she was seeing more than he wanted her to. But those cornflower-blue eyes would not release his ... until, all at once, they did. He took a deep breath, and then another one. Facing up to her felt like running a long way with a heavy pack on his back. But all she said was, "You are not a happy man."
"No," Hamnet agreed. "I am not." She didn't need to be sorcerer or shaman to know that. Anyone who spoke with him for a little while realized as much.
He waited for her to ask him why not. But she found a different question instead, inquiring, "Why did you come to the Bizogot country?"
"You will know of the Golden Shrine." He didn't quite make it a question. He didn't quite not make it a question, either. Almost everyone on both sides of the border agreed that Raumsdalians and Bizogots worshiped the same God. Everyone on both sides of the border agreed they did not always worship him the same way.