Had Trasamund not beaten Parsh, Hamnet Thyssen wondered if the Rulers would have fed the Bizogots and Raumsdalians. As things were, the men from beyond the Glacier treated the travelers, if not like themselves, then at least with a certain circumspection. We may be beasts, Count Hamnet thought, but we've shown we're beasts with claws and fangs.
The meat came from the deer that roamed these plains. Maybe the Rulers were fancy cooks in encampments that held women and children. Here by themselves, the warriors cooked about the same way Bizogots or Raumsdalian soldiers would have—they roasted their meat over flames. The flames came from a fire of dried dung, as they would have in the Bizogot country. Instead of holding the meat on sticks, the men used skewers made from mammoth bone. Again, the Bizogots would have done something similar, though they sometimes got wood in trade from the Empire. Hamnet Thyssen judged no trees grew anywhere close to lands the Rulers ruled.
They did have salt; perhaps the edge of a sea lay not too far off, or perhaps it came from an outcrop of rock salt. And they had spices the likes of which none of the travelers had ever tasted. The black flakes the curly-bearded men sprinkled on the meat reminded Hamnet Thyssen of chills because they bit the tongue, but their flavor was different.
Eyvind Torfinn thought so, too. "What do you call this spice?" he asked the leader of the Rulers, a hawk-faced, middle-aged man named Roypar.
Roypar scratched his cheek and then tugged at the gold hoop he wore in his left ear. None of the other men of the Rulers wore such an ornament. Was it a badge of rank? A sign of wealth? Was there a difference? Count Hamnet wasn't sure about that, even among Raumsdalians. Among the Rulers? He could only guess.
"Is name of pepper," Roypar answered. He spoke only a little of the Bizogot tongue. In any case, the important word came from his own speech.
"Pepper." Earl Eyvind repeated, the unfamiliar name several times. Roypar nodded. Over meat, he seemed less ferocious than his fellows had before. "Do you raise this yourself?" Eyvind inquired. "Or do you trade for it?"
"Trade," Roypar said, "is come from far away." He pointed south and west. "Far, far away. Many days, many months."
"I see," Eyvind Torfinn said gravely. "And how far in that direction do the Rulers rule?"
"Long way. Very long way," Roypar replied. Was he clever enough to dodge Eyvind's probe or too naive to notice it was a probe at all? Hamnet Thyssen couldn't tell. That made him guess Roypar might be clever, even if he had no proof.
Eyvind went on, "And do you have it in mind to stretch your rule to the south and east now that there is a way through the Glacier?"
Now Roypar looked at him as if he were a witling. "Well, of course," said the chieftain or officer or whatever he was. "Of course. We are the Rulers. Where we can reach, we rule."
"Anyone who tries to rule the Bizogots will be sorry," Trasamund said. His voice was still a thick mumble through split and swollen lips. "Maybe you can kill us. Maybe we kill you instead." The roasted venison was tough. He chewed slowly and carefully, and on the side where he hadn't just lost a tooth.
"Maybe." That wasn't Roypar; it was Samoth the sorcerer. "You are strong. You are fierce. But your magic"—he sneered—"your magic is nothing much."
Audun C2iilli had no idea what he was saying; the Raumsdalian wizard knew nothing of the Bizogot language. Liv, of course, understood Samoth well enough. She'd said next to nothing herself up till then. Now, swallowing a bite of meat, she looked across the smoky fire at Samoth and hooted three times like an owl.
He jerked as if bitten by a mosquito the size of a falcon. "So you had somewhat to do with that, did you?" he growled. His comrades who could follow the Bizogot tongue sent him curious looks. Maybe he hadn't told them he'd had to fly from the travelers' magic down in the Gap.
Liv gave him a sweet smile. "Why, yes," she said, all innocence. "We did."
Samoth muttered into his curled mat of beard. Hamnet Thyssen sent Liv a small nod. He thought she'd found a fine way to prick the Rulers' pomposity. They were so very, very sure of themselves—anything that made them doubt was bound to be on the right track.
Ulric Skakki was sitting next to Audun. When the wizard whispered to him, he provided a translation. He hadn't spoken long before Audun Gilli twitched as violently as Samoth had. "Nothing much!" Audun said in Raumsdalian. "By God, I'll—"
"You'll shut up, is what you'll bloody well do," Ulric said, much more sharply than he was in the habit of speaking. Audun blinked at him, and then did shut up, though his eyes said he didn't understand why Ulric required it of him.
Hamnet Thyssen did. Ulric Skakki's little finger understood more of intrigue than all of Audun Gilli put together. If Audun showed Samoth how good a wizard he could be, that would alert the Rulers to a problem they didn't know they had right now.
And Hamnet Thyssen also saw something he wasn't sure whether either Ulric or Audun did. If Audun tried to impress Samoth and failed again, as he'd failed with the opal . . . That would give the travelers a serious problem.
"So you aim to bring our folk under your rule, do you?" Eyvind Torfinn asked Roypar. Now the Count frowned, wondering if the other Raumsdalian noble wasn't pushing too hard.
"Is right," Roypar said complacently. The Rulers ruled other folk. To him, that was a law of nature.
Voice elaborately casual, Eyvind Torfinn went on, "Perhaps you would do well to let us return to the south, then, so the Bizogot jarls and my Emperor, apprised of your imminent arrival, can prepare for you the most appropriate and honorable reception."
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?"