Count Hamnet suddenly stopped thinking of Eyvind as an old man wise only in the things that had to do with books. He was an intriguer in his own right. Ulric Skakki's abrupt alertness argued that he was thinking the same thing. By the smug look on Roypar's face, he thought Eyvind Torfinn meant the Bizogots and the Raumsdalian Empire would get ready to surrender as soon as they found out the Rulers were on the way. Hamnet Thyssen would have been mightily surprised if that was what Earl Eyvind really had in mind.
Would Parsh have seen otherwise? He was much more fluent in the Bizogots' language, which argued that he had understood foreigners better than his superior. It didn't matter now, though, not when he was dead—he hadn't understood Trasamund, or at least the strength of Trasamund's jaws and of his fists, well enough.
Samoth stirred. The wizard said something in the language of the Rulers. / have to learn that tongue if I can, Hamnet Thyssen thought. Roypar snorted and shook his head. Samoth spoke again, more urgently this time. He saw that Eyvind Torfinn wasn't as submissive as he seemed.
He saw it, yes, but he couldn't make Roypar see it. The chieftain sounded angry when he answered this time. Samoth bit his lip. He muttered into his beard, then subsided—for the moment. A couple of men of the Rulers stirred and eyed Roypar in exactly the same way Hamnet Thyssen would have eyed him if he'd belonged to their folk. A leader who got a wizard angry at him was either a man of extraordinary personal qualities and confidence ... or a blustering blowhard.
Which was Roypar? Hamnet admitted he couldn't know, judging a man he'd just met, a man from a folk with whom he was not in the least familiar, a man who barely had a language in common with him, was a fool's game. Well? Aren't I a fool? Hamnet asked himself with wry amusement—the only kind he knew these days.
His gaze flickered to Gudrid. She was watching Roypar with the sort of fascination that raised Count Hamnet's hackles. He quickly looked away. His eyes went to the chieftain, too. He thought a clever man would have seen through Eyvind Torfinn's ploy, so maybe he'd been wrong before. Samoth had seen through it—and much good it did him.
"You go south, yes," Roypar said. "You go. You tell your folk, the Rulers come. You tell, bring out gold, bring out women, bring out fine mammoths, fine deer for Rulers to take."
"Deer?" Eyvind Torfinn's frown said he wasn't sure he'd understood the stranger.
"Deer." Roypar nodded. "For riding. Deer."
"Oh. Of course. Deer." Butter wouldn't have melted in Earl Eyvind's mouth. No, the Rulers knew nothing of horses. Hamnet Thyssen didn't know much of the deer they rode, either, but the animals weren't as large as horses and didn't seem as strong. On the other hand, the Rulers could do things with mammoths that even the Bizogots only dreamt of.
Strangers, Hamnet thought. It was a truth he always had to bear in mind. The Bizogots were cousins to the Raumsdalians. All the folk south of the Glacier were in effect their neighbors if not their kin. But had his folk's ancestors ever had anything to do with the forebears of the Rulers? Surely not since the Glacier last ground down out of the north.
How long ago was that? How many thousands of years had gone by since? Count Hamnet had no idea. Eyvind Torfinn might be able to make a pretty good guess. So might Audun Gilli, come to that; sorcerers needed a better notion of the distant past than most people. It was a long, long, long time—Hamnet was sure of that.
Roypar pointed toward the travelers' horses, which were tied alongside the riding deer the Rulers used. "Why you cut horns off your big deer?" he asked. "You no use horns to fight with?" No, he didn't understand about horses at all.
Neither did Samoth, who said, "And how did you remove the antlers so neatly? There is no trace of a scar. After we rule you, that is a trick your leeches must show us." He had as much confidence as any other man of the Rulers.
"There is no trick, I fear," Hamnet Thyssen said. "The animals are born without antlers." He didn't see how the truth could hurt here.
Samoth smiled—unpleasantly. "I might have guessed. Not likely that the lesser breeds could know anything important that we do not."
None of the travelers said anything. Even if they had, Samoth and the rest of the Rulers there wouldn't have heeded them. The Rulers knew what they knew, and didn't want to know anything else—even if it happened to be true.
Later in the evening, Hamnet Thyssen noticed Roypar trying to talk to someone who spoke even less of the Bizogots' tongue than he did. Hamnet took a couple of steps toward the chieftain, thinking to be helpful. Then he heard Gudrid's throaty chuckle, and drew back without drawing Roypar s notice or hers. He slept not a wink all night.
XII
WE will ride south and east," Eyvind Torfinn said, no irony audible in his voice. "We will let the other Bizogot jarls and the Raumsdalian Emperor know that the Rulers follow behind us. We will make sure our lands are ready to meet you as you deserve."
"Is good," Roypar said. "Is very good." By Samoth's expression, he didn't think it was very good, but he held his peace. Roypar led here. Anyone else challenged him at his own peril.
Parsh's body lay where it had fallen. "Will you burn him?" Hamnet Thyssen asked. "What is your custom with your dead?"
"He will lie there till the foxes and bears and tigers have feasted on him," Samoth answered. "He failed as a man—he deserves nothing better than to feed beasts. No doubt his spirit, when it is born again, will be born into the body of such a one."
"You believe in reincarnation, then?" Eyvind Torfinn asked eagerly. "Have you evidence to support your belief?"
Trasamund and Hamnet Thyssen had to drag Eyvind away from the wizard of the Rulers. If they hadn't, he would not have ridden south and east. He would have stayed there and plied Samoth with questions for as long as the sorcerer could stand it.
Hamnet glanced over to Roypar. The chieftain looked unmistakably pleased with himself. The Rulers thought of themselves as conquerors beyond compare. Had he lain with a woman of a lesser breed the night before? Hamnet guessed he had. Gudrid showed nothing one way or the other. She was good at making her indiscretions discreet—unless she dropped the mask and showed them off.
Hamnet looked away. She laughed softly. So she knew what he was thinking, did she? She'd always been good at that. Hamnet Thyssen turned his back, which only made her laugh again, louder this time. Too bad, he thought.
Roypar really did let them ride away. That surprised Count Hamnet. It seemed to surprise and dismay Samoth, who muttered into his thicket of beard. The way he muttered sparked suspicion in Hamnet even before the Rulers' encampment dropped below the horizon behind the travelers. He rode over first to Audun Gilli and then to Liv, asking each of them, "Is the wizard back there tracking us by magic? Are we taking along some little spell that lets him spy on us?" He had to repeat himself, using Raumsdalian and then the Bizogots' language. Lie wished the two people among the travelers who knew sorcery could understand each other. As happened too often in life, what he wished for had nothing to do with what he got.
Ulric Skakki understood him both times he asked the question. "You have a nasty, distrustful turn of mind, your Grace," Ulric said—in the Bizogot language, a choice Hamnet found interesting. "I only wish I'd thought of that myself."
"Don't worry," Hamnet said. "You would have before long."
"That kind of spell is possible, I suppose." Audun Gilli didn't seem to think Samoth had actually done such a thing.
Liv did. "Yes, of course. A sorcerous flea, you might say, coming along with us. Maybe it will bite, too, when the time is right."