The snowy owl swooped. It rose again with something writhing in its claws. It wouldn't go hungry for a while—or maybe it had nestlings that would feast on the mouse or vole or rabbit it had caught. By the purposeful way it flew, Hamnet Thyssen guessed it was off to share its prey.
He glanced over at Gudrid. To his relief, she didn't notice him doing it. Her eyes were on the owl. They glowed. They sparkled. He supposed it was the pleasure of watching the kill. That was like her, sure enough. The chilly wind painted roses on her cheeks. She looked uncommonly vivacious, uncommonly beautiful. In spite of everything Hamnet knew, his manhood stirred.
Angrily, he looked away.
When the dogs came bounding toward the travelers, Hamnet first took them for a pack of dire wolves. They were as fierce as dire wolves, baying and howling and showing their yellow fangs. They were almost as big as dire wolves; several of them looked big enough to bridle and saddle. And, by the way they loped forward, they were as hungry as their wild cousins, too.
Trasamund stood up in the stirrups and roared curses at them in his own language. Men would have cringed. The dogs took no notice. On they came.
Ulric Skakki proved himself the relentless pragmatist Count Hamnet thought him to be—he strung his bow and nocked an arrow. That seemed like such a good idea, Hamnet imitated it. He didn't think killing a couple of these brutes would scare off the rest. That could work with men, but wouldn't with beasts. But the living might feed on the dead, which would make them less enthusiastic about attacking the travelers.
Off to one side as usual, Audun Gilli muttered to himself. Hamnet Thyssen thought nothing of it; Audun spent too much time muttering to himself, maybe as consolation for drinking less. This muttering, though, proved different.
From the air in front of Trasamund came a growl that might have burst from God's throat if God happened to be a dog. Hard on the heels of the growl followed a snarl like ripping canvas, then another growl, and then some furious barks that almost deafened Hamnet and spooked his horse.
He wouldn't have made a useful archer. How was he supposed to shoot when he had all he could do to keep from getting pitched off the horse and onto his head? Next to him, Ulric Skakki also fought to stay in the saddle.
It turned out not to matter. The onrushing dogs stopped so short, they dragged their bottoms on the ground as they dug in their hind legs. They seemed to decide they had urgent business elsewhere—with their lawyer, perhaps, or at the tailor's. They ran the other way as fast as they'd charged ahead—and much less noisily.
A few more growls and woofs right behind them spurred them on their way. Audun Gilli stopped muttering. The dog the size of God fell silent, too. Hamnet Thyssen was no scholar. He left that to Eyvind Torfinn, who was welcome to it. Scholar or not, Hamnet recognized cause and effect when he saw them.
Once he persuaded his horse that the God-sized dog wouldn't devour it in the next heartbeat, he bowed in the saddle to Audun. "That was fine wizardry," he said. "You know I've had my doubts about you, but you just buried a lot of them."
"My thanks." Sweat beaded on Audun's face despite the chill. "The sounds weren't hard, though getting them loud enough took a little doing. But I think the scent worked even better."
"Good God!" Ulric Skakki said. Count Hamnet nodded—he couldn't have put it better himself. What would a dog that sounded like that smell like? Not having a dog's nose, he couldn't fully understand the answer. But he had some idea of what it must be, anyhow. A dog that sounded as if it was the size of God smelled .. . intimidating.
Trasamund pointed north. "Here come the dogs those dogs belong to. Musk Ox clan." His curled lip said what he thought of the approaching Bizogots.
The riders wore furs, as he did. But on their heads they had woolen caps in gaudy zigzag stripes. They hadn't made those themselves; the caps were products of Raumsdalian bad taste. But they'd traded for them, so they had bad taste of their own.
"Next question is, are they at war with Trasamund's clan, or does he just think they wear ugly headgear?" Ulric Skakki murmured.
"We'll find out," Hamnet Thyssen said, a sentiment that had the advantage—or, too often, the disadvantage—of being true almost all the time.
"Who are you people?" one of the oncoming Bizogots shouted. "Why are you crossing our grazing lands?" Count Hamnet hadn't heard the Bizogot language for a few years. He was glad he could still understand it.
"What did you do to our dogs?" another mammoth-herder added.
"We drove them off," Trasamund yelled back, "Better than they deserve, too. If dogs trouble us, we treat them . . . like dogs." He didn't quite tell the Musk Ox men they were dogs themselves, but he didn't miss by much, either. Bizogots lacked a lot of things Raumsdalians took for granted, but not arrogance. Never arrogance. Trasamund struck his broad chest with a big fist. "I am Trasamund son of Halkel, jarl of the Three Tusk clan. These are my friends." He threw his arms wide to include his companions from the Empire. Then he pointed straight at the man who'd challenged him. "Hinder us at your peril!"
"Subtle," Ulric Skakki murmured.
"It's how Bizogots do things," Hamnet Thyssen answered, and Ulric nodded. Hamnet went on, "In his own way, Trasamund has style." Ulric Skakki nodded again. It wasn't the sort of style Hamnet would have wanted, but that had nothing to do with anything.
The Bizogots from the Musk Ox clan reined in. It didn't look like an immediate fight—a good thing, too, because Trasamund and the Raumsdalians were likely to lose. "I am Sarus son of Leovigild," said the blond barbarian who spoke for the Musk Ox men. "I am the jarl's son." He wore a cap with rings of red and deep blue and saffron. It couldn't have got much uglier if it tried for a year. "We have no quarrel with the Three Tusk men . . . now." The concession was grudging, but it was a concession.
"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?"