She was looking at him, too. She beckoned. “Now that we have this clean floor thanks to you, we ought to use it. I said I would thank you for that arrow before. Now I will.” She shrugged out of her jacket.
It was still light outside. Bizogots cared much less about privacy than Raumsdalians. Living the way they did, that was no surprise. It also held true for their cousins from atop the Glacier. Hamnet preferred privacy, but he’d spent enough time among the Bizogots to do without it at need.
Had she thanked him any more thoroughly, he thought he would have fallen over dead. He couldn’t imagine a more enjoyable way to go. After his heart stopped thudding quite so hard, he said, “I should save you more often.”
“Why not?” Marcovefa agreed lazily.
She seemed in no hurry to put her clothes back on. When Hamnet was younger, he would have tried for a second round in a little while. Now that he was the age he was, he knew he would have to wait longer. Most of the time, he took that for granted. Sprawling naked beside an inviting woman who was also a powerful shaman, he realized he might not have to.
“Can you do anything magical to get him back into shape again in a hurry?” he asked.
She looked at him sidelong. “What do you want me to do?”
“I don’t know. You’re the wizard,” he said.
“How about this?” She leaned over and did something. It should have raised the dead. Raising the middle-aged proved a bigger challenge. She muttered to herself, then murmured to herself, then began a chant in her own dialect. The tune she chose almost made Hamnet start to laugh. Down to the southwest of the Raumsdalian Empire, the Manche barbarians had wizards who could charm snakes with music. Marcovefa had never seen a snake-well, she’d never seen a two-eyed snake, anyhow-but her tune was a lot like theirs.
And it worked. Like a charmed snake, he rose to the occasion. She nodded to herself. “There it is,” she said. “Now what do you want to do with it?”
He did laugh then, so much that he lost what she’d given him. She didn’t seem too annoyed about repeating the spell. Hamnet found something to do with it after all. Marcovefa seemed contented afterwards, too.
“Again?” she asked then.
Count Hamnet remembered that. He remembered thinking about the answer. He didn’t remember giving it, which was fair enough, because he fell asleep before he could. When he woke up, he found Marcovefa had pulled a blanket cut from a mammoth hide over the two of them. He was still bare under the hide. A moment later, he discovered she was, too.
It was still light outside. No: it was light again. The brief northern night had come and gone, and the sun was shining from a different direction now. Marcovefa stirred only a couple of minutes after Hamnet did. “Happy now?” she asked him. Her voice said she was smugly certain of the answer.
And he nodded. “With you? Yes, I should hope so.” But he went on, “I’d be happier if we could drive the Rulers back beyond the Gap.”
Marcovefa grunted. She got out from under the blanket and, in a marked manner, got into her clothes. She paused only once, to say, “No wonder you lose women.”
“No wonder at all,” Hamnet agreed mournfully, wondering if he’d lost her, too. All he did was answer the question she asked him. He didn’t even forget to say something nice about her. But then he went on to the rest of what was in his mind. Too late-as usual-he realized that was his mistake. When would he ever learn? No. Would he ever learn, late or otherwise?
“You are what you are, that’s all.” Marcovefa seemed to be reminding herself. She shrugged. “Well, who isn’t?”
Since she seemed willing to leave it there, Hamnet Thyssen didn’t push it, either. As he also dressed, he decided not pushing it was a good idea, and progress of a sort. That also would have been too late to do him any good had he decided the other way.
The Bizogots had a fire of dried dung going. They were roasting meat above it. Hamnet’s stomach rumbled. There were appetites, and then there were appetites. Filling your belly wasn’t so much as making love, but you wouldn’t go on making love very long, even with sorcerous assistance, if you were empty.
Hamnet got a musk-ox rib. Instead of gnawing on it, he gave it to Marcovefa. Then he grabbed another one for himself. Maybe she would recognize the peace offering, maybe not.
She certainly ate with good appetite. Bizogots always did, and their close kin from atop the Glacier even more so. And the only way she could have got more off the bone was with a rough tongue like a lion’s. Her tongue wasn’t the least bit rough. Hamnet knew that as well as a man could.
She took another rib, and denuded that one, too. “You people are so lucky to have such big meat-beasts,” she said. “Do you know how lucky you are? Voles, pikas, hares . . . That’s all we knew. Well, that and the beasts that go on two legs.”
“I was up there. I saw how you lived,” Hamnet said. “You did what you could with what you had. People everywhere do the same.” He thought of the Manches again, and of how they scraped a living from their desert. That wasn’t the same as what the Bizogots did, but it wasn’t necessarily easier, either.
“There is so much more to have down here,” Marcovefa said. “The animals . . . The trees . . . The-what do you call them down in the Empire? The crops! That’s it. Plants that aren’t berries, but you can eat them anyhow. And the big berry things that grow on trees-”
“Fruit,” Hamnet said. Apples and pears and plums surprised the Bizogots, too. They had nothing like them.
Marcovefa wasn’t done. “And the head-spinning stuff, the smetyn and the beer and the wine . . . Once in a while, we find mushrooms to send shamans into the spirit world. You go whenever you want. You are so lucky! I am so jealous!”
Count Hamnet wouldn’t have called getting drunk going into the spirit world. When he did it, he mostly did it to forget whatever was troubling his spirit. But it was new and wonderful to the shaman from atop the Glacier. Everything was new and wonderful to Marcovefa. She was like a child in a fairyland. If it sometimes looked like a nightmare to Hamnet, maybe he was the jaded one.
And maybe he’d seen enough of the world down here on the ground to have a better notion of what was what than she did. He suspected that was so, but didn’t make the claim out loud. He didn’t feel like arguing. Besides, he might have been wrong. He rather hoped he was.
Ulric Skakki also snagged a second rib. He took a bite, then nodded to Hamnet. “Cozy little place we’ve got, isn’t it?”
“Till the Rulers find out we’re here,” Hamnet replied. “How long do you think that will take?”
“Depends on whether any of them got away yesterday,” the adventurer said. “I don’t think so, but I’m not sure. Or maybe one of the wizards got word out magically, and they already know. Won’t be long any which way. When the wizards don’t show up wherever they’re supposed to, the Rulers will come see why not.”
That was less palatable than juicy musk-ox meat. “I wish you didn’t make so much sense,” Hamnet said.
Ulric only shrugged. “If you don’t like the answers, don’t ask the questions.”
Hamnet Thyssen sighed. “I don’t like the answers. Who would? But I needed to hear them.”
“Well, there you are, then,” Ulric said. “Now you’ve heard them. I don’t think the Rulers will get here before we finish breakfast-at least if we hurry.” He bit another chunk of meat off the rib. Ears burning, Hamnet ate some more, too.