"Some do," Hamnet said. "Some have to, in the Empire. If they didn't, we'd be as barbarous as the Bizogots."
"Do you think we're not?" Before Count Hamnet could respond to that, Ulric Skakki held up a hand. "Never mind, never mind. I know what you're saying. But people like that are thinner on the ground than you think, your Grace. Not everyone comes with your sense of duty nailed inside his chest."
"You make it sound so wonderful," Hamnet Thyssen said.
"Oh, it is, it is." Ulric smiled a crooked smile that showed a great many sharp teeth. "If you don't believe me, ask Gudrid."
For a red moment, Count Hamnet wanted to kill him. Then, grudgingly, he nodded, saying, "You have a nasty way of making your points."
"Why, thank you," Ulric Skakki said with another carnivorous smile. Hamnet had no answer for that at all.
When the travelers found the Three Tusk clan's main encampment, everyone celebrated—everyone but Hamnet Thyssen, For him, it seemed more an end than a beginning, and an end he didn't want.
The smile on Liv's face flayed him. "This is my home," she said, and the words cut like flensing knives. "How I've missed these tents!" she went on, carving another chunk from his happiness. He wasn't used to being happy. Back before he was, he would have borne up under anything. Now . ..
"Would you like to see Raumsdalia?" he asked, and worked with his tongue to free a chunk of musk-ox meat caught between two back teeth.
She looked surprised. "I hadn't even thought of that. I hadn't thought of anything past coming back to the tents of my clan."
Ulric Skakki knew what he was talking about, sure enough, Hamnet thought. "I don't want to leave you," he said. "I... hoped you didn't want to leave me."
"I don't," Liv said, and peered at the dung fire over which the meat cooked. "No, I don't. But I don't think I can turn into a Raumsdalian, either."
"No more can I make myself into a Bizogot," Hamnet Thyssen said.
"Are you sure?" Liv asked. "You would be an ornament to my folk, an ornament to my clan. You are strong and brave and wise—and a man, as I should know." She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. "What holds you to the Empire?"
"Loyalty," he said at once. "I must go down to Nidaros and let the Emperor know what I have seen, what I have done, and what I think we need to do in times to come."
Liv gave him a nod that was almost a bow. "Your answer does you honor. But once you've shown your loyalty, why not come north again and lead the free life of the tents with me? What would you be losing?"
Hamnet had never thought of himself as a man who set much store by material things. But things were what sprang to mind when he asked himself why he didn't want to live the mammoth-herders' life for the rest of his days. Books. Beds. Linen. Bread. Ale. Beer. Wine. Mead. Even the language he'd known from his cradle was a thing ot sorts. He could get along in the Bizogot tongue—he could, indeed, do better than get along—but it wasn't his, and never would be. He laughed a little when he thought of tobacco. It was Ulric's vice, not his; he'd smoked only enough to convince himself he didn't want more. But the herb came up to Raumsdalia from the south, and it hardly ever came any farther north. The only Bizogots who used it were men who'd learned the habit in the Empire. But never having the chance to smoke again . . . That seemed a bigger thing.
How much would he miss the society of his fellow Raumsdalians? Not much, not most of the time; he was honest enough to own up to that. But, most of the time, he stayed in his castle, and his countrymen had the courtesy to leave him the demon alone. Escaping the Bizogots if he came north to live would be much harder. It might well prove impossible. For all the vast plains they roamed, the barbarians lived in clumps and knots of people, especially in winter. If they were going to survive, they had to. Hamnet Thyssen imagined himself cooped up with a tentful of nomads for months on end. The picture didn't want to form. The more he thought about it, the less that surprised him.
He sighed. "You have your place; I have mine. Maybe you wouldn't fit in mine. I don't know if that's so, but I can see how it might be. But I'm sure I would never make a Bizogot. I need to be by myself too much."
He wondered if that would make any sense to her. To his relief, and a little to his surprise, she nodded at once. "Yes, I saw as much when we traveled," she said. "Few Bizogots have such a need. Is it common in your folk?"
"Not very," Hamnet admitted. Liv nodded again; all the other Raumsdalians up here, even hapless Audun Gilli and scholarly Eyvind Torfinn, were more outgoing than he. He continued, "But what others of my folk feel is not the problem. What I feel is."
"You seem to want my company." Liv didn't mean only that he wanted to sleep with her, though that was in her voice, too.
And now Hamnet Thyssen nodded. "I do," he said. "Aside from that"— he wasn't going to deny it was there; he hardly could, things being as they were—"I like talking with you. And one of the reasons I like talking with you is that you don't feel as if you have to talk all the time. You . .." He groped for words. "You keep quiet in a pleasant tone of voice."
He waited. That would have said what he wanted to say in Raumsdalian. He wasn't so sure it did in the Bizogot language. When Liv smiled, so did he, in relief. "I thank you," she said. "I'm not sure I ever got higher praise."
Now Hamnet wasn't sure whether she was sincere or sarcastic. "I meant it for such."
She smiled again. "I know you did. Bizogots do live in each other's pockets, don't we? We can't help it, you know. If we didn't help each other all the time, if we didn't stay close so we could help each other, we couldn't live up here at all."
"No, I suppose not," Hamnet said. "Now I've seen how you live. Don't you want to come down to the Empire and find out what life is like there? You wouldn't have to stay. I don't think I'll stay forever myself." He drummed his fingers on the outside of his thigh. "I don't think the Rulers will let me peacefully stay there."
Liv bit her lip. "Part of me would like to, but... I don't know. It's a far country, far away and very strange."
"You went through the Gap. You went beyond the Glacier." Hamnet gestured toward the towering ice mountains that shaped the northern horizon. "After that, what is the journey to the Empire? A stroll, a nothing. The way south gets easier, not harder."
She shook her head. "The travel might not be hard. The travel probably isn't hard. But when I went beyond the Glacier, I was still myself. What would I be when I came to the Empire? Nothing but a barbarian." She spoke the last word in the Raumsdalian she was slowly learning.
"If anyone calls you a barbarian, turn him into a lemming," Hamnet Thyssen said. "That will teach the next fool to mind his manners. Or if it doesn't, he's a big enough fool to deserve being a lemming."
"You don't understand." Liv sounded almost desperate. "Chances are no one will call me a barbarian to my face. You people don't come out and say the things you think the way we do. But you think them whether you say them or not—and what can I do about that?"
Count Hamnet grunted. She wasn't wrong. Raumsdalians did think Bizogots were barbarians. He thought so himself. He had good reasons for thinking so. He also had good reasons for making exceptions now and again—as with this shaman with tears standing in her eyes. Would his countrymen make those kinds of exceptions? He feared not.
And what he feared must have shown on his face, for Liv said, "You see? It would be the way I told you." She started to turn away, then looked back at him in angry defiance. "Give me one good reason why I should go down to the Empire. A good reason, I tell you."