To Hamnet Thyssen, it was only a moving squiggle at the edge of visibility. But he wasn't at home here, any more than Trasamund knew all the ins and outs of life in Nidaros, or even in the distant keep where Hamnet would rather have spent his time. Accepting that Trasamund knew and he didn't, Hamnet braced himself for an onslaught.
He didn't have to wait long. Just as the Bizogot recognized a distant moving squiggle as danger, so the dire wolf saw distant moving squiggles as meat. It couldn't take their scent; the wind was with them. But before long, a formidable pack of dire wolves trotted purposefully toward the travelers.
Dire wolves were half again as big as their cousins that skulked through the eastern forests. Their fur was thicker, and of a paler gray so as not to stand out against the snow. Some people said timber wolves were smarter than their larger cousins. Hamnet Thyssen didn't know about that one way or the other. People also said dire wolves ate more carrion than timber wolves did. Count Hamnet thought that was true. But it didn't mean dire wolves turned up their noses at fresh meat. If Count Hamnet hadn't known that, he would have found out now.
The pack leader stood there right at the edge of bowshot, eyeing the travelers. The dire wolf grinned a doggy grin at them, long pink tongue lolling out of his mouth. Even at that distance, though, Hamnet could make out the animal's teeth, long and sharp and yellow. Dire wolves needed to be wary around men. Any animal bigger than a bedbug needed to be wary around men. But men needed to be wary around dire wolves, too.
After a moment's appraisal, the dire wolf lifted its head and let out a howl. If it were speaking a human tongue, Hamnet would have thought that howl meant, All right. Let's try it and see what happens.
And it seemed to mean just that. The dire wolves trotted forward again. They might have been trying to cut a weak musk ox or a baby mammoth out of the herd. Almost of their own accord, Hamnet's eyes went to Gudrid. That was a tempting thought, but he didn't suppose she would appreciate it.
"Shout at them," Trasamund called. "Sometimes you can scare them off."
Hamnet yelled at the top of his lungs. So did the rest of the travelers. Some of the dire wolves skidded to a stop. A few even went back onto their haunches. But the rest kept coming. Seeing their comrades advance, the frightened wolves got up and went on, too. It was as if they didn't want their friends to think them cowards.
In some ways, dire wolves were much too much like men.
VI
Trasamund's bowstring twanged. An arrow hissed through the air. It just missed the lead dire wolf and stood thrilling in the ground. The wolf kept coming without so much as a sideways glance. Dire wolves weren't just like men. The pack leader wasted no time dwelling on what might have been. It dwelt only in the real world. Hamnet Thyssen didn't know whether to pity it or envy it.
He and Ulric Skakki let fly at the same instant, half a heartbeat behind Trasamund. Both their arrows struck the pack leader, one in the snout, the other not far from the base of the tail. "Well shot!" they cried together, at the same time as the dire wolf let out a startled yip of pain. The wolf didn't know how the men had hurt it, but it knew they had. It turned and ran from them.
The rest came on. They weren't hurt. And then, in short order, several of them were. Their anguished howls persuaded their fellows this was not a good place to be. When Trasamund led the horsemen forward against them, everyone still shouting, the dire wolves took it as a challenge they didn't care to meet. Unlike people, they wasted no time on useless heroics. If the travelers weren't prey, the wolves wanted nothing to do with them.
One dire wolf, struck in the eye, lay dead on the ground. "Here's meat for tonight," Trasamund boomed.
Gudrid made a revolted noise. Some of the imperial guardsmen looked a trifle green. Hamnet Thyssen had eaten dire wolf before. Nothing on the frozen plains went to waste. "It's not so bad," he said. "Just think that it's food, not where it comes from." His countrymen didn't seem convinced.
Jesper Fletti rounded on Audun Gilli. "You're supposed to be a wizard, aren't you?" the guard captain said. "Why didn't you magic away those dire wolves?"
"We were doing well enough without wizardry," Audun answered. "It takes a toll, the same as any other hard work does. If we needed it, I would have tried something. Since we didn't—well, thank God, I say."
"You're a lazy wizard, or a weak one," Jesper told him.
"No doubt," Audun Gilli said mildly. "But from now on, will you ever dare turn your back on me again? You take your chances, you know, insulting even a lazy wizard, or a weak one."
Jesper Fletti turned red. "I'm not afraid of you!"
"Then you're a fool," Hamnet Thyssen said. "And that will be enough of that."
"Who do you think you are, to tell me what I am?" Jesper demanded, glowering at Hamnet. "And who do you think you are, to tell me what to do?"
"I'm a man who recognizes fools. I'd better—I've been one often enough." Hamnet looked toward Gudrid as he answered. She deliberately looked away from him. He hadn't expected anything else. "As for telling you what to do," he went on, "well, let's see. For one thing, I outrank you. You should say, 'Who do you think you are, your Grace?' For another, I've been up here in the north before. Have you? And, for a third, I hope I know better than to get any wizard angry at me."
Jesper Fletti glowered and spluttered. Whatever he was feeling, he didn't try to put it into words. Hamnet Thyssen had landed too heavy a load of truth on him. He looked away from Hamnet, too. Gudrid did it with more panache.
"I thank you, your Grace," Audun Gilli said in a low voice.
"You're welcome. I've seen you aren't lazy or weak," Count Hamnet answered. "If he asked if you were drunk or hungover, I would have had less to say to him."
Audun's mouth tightened. "Don't you think saying something like that might make a wizard angry at you?"
"I hope not," Hamnet replied. "A man who gets angry at the truth will have a hard time in life, don't you think?"
"It could be so," Audun Gilli answered after considering the question longer and more seriously than Hamnet had looked for. "Yes, it could be so. Of course, you might say the same about a man who gets drunk whenever he finds the chance."
"Yes, you might," Hamnet agreed. "Far be it from me to deny that. But there's a simple answer, don't you think? An obvious answer, too."
"For almost every problem, there is an answer that is simple, obvious— and wrong," Audun said. Hamnet Thyssen pondered that, then inclined his head. The wizard left him with no good comeback.
Trasamund got down from his horse, tossing the reins to Ulric Skakki. He walked over to the dire wolf and butchered it. "Anyone but me want a chunk of raw liver?" he asked, holding up the dripping purplish organ. Plainly, he was ready to laugh at effete Raumsdalians when they told him no.
Gudrid gulped. When she looked away this time, she wasn't acting or posing; she was truly revolted. But Audun Gilli said, "Give me some. What better way to take in the spirit of this land?"
"I'll eat some, too," Hamnet said. "The dire wolf would have gnawed my liver. The least I can do is pay him back."
"Now that—that is spoken like a Bizogot, by God!" Trasamund said. Count Hamnet knew the jarl meant it for praise. If it felt like an insult, he could keep that to himself.
"I'll eat wolf liver. Why not? It's meat," Ulric Skakki said. He might well have eaten it before, but he didn't want Trasamund to know this wasn't his first visit to the frozen plains.
Trasamund turned to Eyvind Torfinn. "What about you, your Splendor?"
"With respect, your Ferocity, I will decline," Eyvind answered. "I have my own land, and do not wish to become mystically attuned to this one. Besides, unless starving and without choice I prefer my meat cooked."
The jarl took it in good part, saying, "Well, you know your own mind, anyway." He ate his gobbet with every sign of relish, then passed another one to Audun Gilli—the wizard was the first Raumsdalian volunteer.
Audun screwed up his face and stuffed the bloody meat into his mouth. He chewed. "Could be worse," he said once he got it down.
'At least that wasn't, 'Tastes like chicken,'" Ulric Skakki murmured.
Dire-wolf liver didn't taste like chicken. Hamnet Thyssen had no time to point that out to Ulric, for Trasamund handed him his own chunk of still-warm meat. He ate it without thinking about what he was doing, and swallowed it without too much trouble. When he saw Gudrid’s mocking expression, he smiled back at her with his mouth still full. That made her turn away in a hurry.
Ulric Skakki ate his ragged slice of liver without any fuss. Jesper Fletti and the rest of Gudrid's guardsmen declined to partake. They were less smooth about it than Earl Eyvind, but Trasamund didn't harry them on account of that. He'd got three Raumsdalians to try his delicacy, which was probably three more than he expected.
Trasamund went back to his butchery. He wrapped the meat in the dire wolf's hide and tied it on a pack horse. The animal snorted and rolled its eyes at the scent of blood and the smell of dire wolf, but did not try to bolt. Trasamund left the wolf's entrails steaming on the ground.
"Let's go," he said. "Maybe the others will come back to feed on their friend."
"I think not." Ulric Skakki pointed up into the sky. "Are those just ordinary vultures, or are they teratorns?"
"Teratorns." Eyvind answered before Trasamund could. "You can tell by the pattern of white and black under the wings."
"By the size, too, when they get lower," Trasamund added. "But they won't, not while we're hanging around the offal."
Sure enough, when the travelers rode north, the three or four teratorns spiraled down out of the sky to squabble over the bounty Trasamund left behind. They were enormous birds, with a wingspan as wide as two tall men. And down in the south, Hamnet Thyssen had heard, there were bigger teratorns still, their grotesque naked heads wattled and striped in shades of blue and yellow. All vultures were ugly. Those southern teratorns seemed to take ugliness to an almost surreal level, one where even grotesqueness took on a beauty all its own.