"Well, not altogether," Hamnet said. "The silver he's got lets him do what he pleases. He wouldn't be able to buy his books and learn his lore without it."
"I suppose so," Ulric said. "But he isn't the kind of scholar I had in mind, anyway. I meant the hole-and-corner kind, the ones who have to stuff a rag into the toe of their felt boots in wintertime because they can't afford to patch them. That sort is good enough to teach boys how to read and write and count, but not for much more."
"Plenty of them around," Count Hamnet agreed. "They call themselves scholars, but I'm not sure how many other people do."
Ulric Skakki surely said something in reply. Whatever it was, Count Hamnet didn't hear it. His eyes went to an owl flying past the travelers from out of the north, white and swift and strong. Samoth? Hamnet's heart pounded. No wizard himself, he couldn't tell. His gaze went to Liv. She noticed him no more than he'd heard Ulric. All her attention pursued the bird till it streaked out of sight to the south.
Only then did she turn in the saddle and look for him. Even before she spoke, he saw the relief lighting her fine features. "Sometimes a white owl is only a white owl," she called.
"A good thing, too," Hamnet answered. They smiled at each other.
"Sometimes I think I don't know everything that's going on," Ulric Skakki said in tones full of mock self-pity.
Count Hamnet reached out and set a consoling hand on his arm. "Don't worry about it. Sometimes I don't think you know what's going on, either."
"Thank you. Thank you so much," Ulric said. Hamnet waved modestly.
On they went, farther and farther south. Another horse died, and another. They cut up the animals and ate them. The meat was strong-flavored and there wasn't a great deal of it; the horses had got very scrawny before finally failing.
"Do you think we'll make it?" Jesper Fletti asked Hamnet. The guards officer had never been up in the north before this journey. All things considered, he'd acquitted himself well enough. Hamnet Thyssen could ... almost forget that he'd come along to protect Gudrid.
"I think so," Hamnet answered. "We can't be far from outriders from the Three Tusk clan. I would have guessed we'd run into them already, truth to tell." That they hadn't worried him, though he didn't say so. Had some disaster befallen Trasamund's clan while the jarl journeyed beyond the Glacier? That was the worst kind of bad news he could imagine.
The words were hardly out of his mouth, the thought hardly through his head, before Trasamund let out a bellow that might have come from the throat of a bull musk ox. That dot on the southern horizon was a mounted man, and he was riding toward them.
XV
Seeing a new face, hearing a new voice, felt strange to Count Hamnet. The Rulers hardly counted. Most of them hadn't spoken the Bizogot language, and the ones who did showed themselves to be outright enemies. Hilderic wasn't. He and Trasamund kissed each other on both cheeks in the usual greeting of Bizogots who hadn't seen each other for a longtime.
"By God, your Ferocity!" Hilderic said. "By God! It's good to see you! You've been gone a long time. Some people were starting to wonder if you'd ever come back."
"Oh, they were, were they?" the jarl said. "I'm not so easy to get rid of as all that, and they'd best believe I'm not. Who are these fools who have no faith in Trasamund?"
Hilderic suffered a sudden coughing fit. "Uh, that is ... Well. . . You see . . ."
Trasamund laughed. "All right. Never mind. You don't need to tell me. I can understand that you don't want a name as a snitch. But I'll find out sooner or later—have no fear of that. And when I do, I'll make those doubters pay." He thumped his chest with a mittened fist. "Yes, / will take care of them. You don't need to worry about it."
"May it be as you say, your Ferocity," Hilderic replied. Hamnet Thyssen and Ulric Skakki exchanged covert smiles. Trasamund always saw himself as larger than life. Because he did, he could make other people see him the same way most of the time. Hilderic, though plainly a seasoned man, certainly did.
Liv worried less about how important other people thought she was and more about things that really mattered. "Where is the camp you rode out of, Hilderic?" she asked. "We've traveled long and hard. We aren't at the end of our tether, but we aren't far from it, either."
"It's not far, lady," Hilderic said. Then he stopped and blinked. The face of every traveler who understood the Bizogot language must have lit up. Hamnet Thyssen knew how happy he was. Hilderic went on, "The guesting will be good, too. The herds have done well through the summer and into fall."
"Lead on!" Trasamund boomed.
Hamnet soon found that something he already knew remained true— what a Bizogot meant by not far was different from what a Raumsdalian would have meant. But they did reach the encampment just before darkness fell. Hamnet wondered whether he'd ever seen anything more beautiful than those black mammoth-hide tents.
Bizogots swarmed out of the tents to greet the travelers. "Welcome back!" they shouted. "Welcome home!" It was home only to Trasamund and Liv, but none of the Raumsdalians complained or contradicted. These tents might not be home, but they came much closer than the endless expanse of wilderness the travelers had crossed.
The Bizogots slaughtered and butchered a plump young musk ox. Spit flooded into Hamnet Thyssen's mouth. Trasamund scooped out a handful of the raw brains and ate it, blood running down into his beard. Hamnet did the same. He'd learned to tolerate the Bizogot delicacy on his first trip up beyond the tree line, years earlier. On this trip, he'd learned to enjoy it. And he was hungry enough now to find it delicious beyond compare.
Ulric Skakki took some of the brains, too. "Always glad when my stomach is smarter than my head," he said.
"Mine is most of the time, I think," Hamnet said, licking his lips.
None of the other Raumsdalians wanted anything to do with raw brains, though Liv came up to eat some. Trasamund clapped Hamnet and Ulric on the back in turn—gingerly, for his hands were still sore. "By God, the two of you make pretty fair Bizogots," he said.
"Thank you, your Ferocity." Hamnet knew the jarl meant it for praise, and some of the highest praise he could give.
"Thank you so much, your Ferocity," Ulric Skakki said. If Trasamund listened to the words, he would find nothing wrong with them. If he listened closely to the tone, he would find he'd given praise Ulric didn't want.
For a mammoth-herder, Trasamund was a sophisticate. Beside Ulric Skakki, he might have been a child; the irony went over his head. He was frank as a child, too, for he went on, "Maybe not as good as the real thing, but pretty fair even so."
This wasn't the Three Tusk clan's main camp—that lay farther south. These Bizogots had followed their herd of musk oxen into the Gap. Most animals went south for the winter. Musk oxen, shielded against cold and blizzards by their long, shaggy hair and soft, thick underwool, could head the other way if they chose.
Even though this was only a small band of Bizogots—a couple dozen men, fewer women, a handful of children—Hamnet Thyssen felt as if he'd suddenly come into Nidaros after a long sojourn in his castle. Unfamiliar faces talked about unfamiliar things in unfamiliar voices. So much chatter almost made him want to flee the tents for the quiet and solitude of the frozen plain beyond them.
Roasting musk-ox meat sent up a delicious aroma. Count Hamnet's stomach growled like a short-faced bear. Even if he did feel slightly overwhelmed, he decided to stay around.
He didn't mind half-raw meat at all. He did mind waiting for it to cook all the way through. So did the other travelers. He overheard one Bizogot say to another, "I thought these folk from the south couldn't put it away like real people do. I guess I was wrong."
"I thought the same thing," the second Bizogot answered. "Only goes to show you shouldn't believe everything you hear, doesn't it?"
Eyvind Torfinn stared in mild astonishment at the pile of rib bones in front of him. "I never could have eaten like this before I set out from the Empire," he said. "Never, I tell you. Amazing what practice will do, isn't it?"
"Amazing what hunger will do, isn't it?" Ulric Skakki said. Hamnet Thyssen thought that came closer to hitting the mark, though what Earl Eyvind said also held some truth. Without practice, Hamnet didn't think he could have gorged himself like this. Without being hungrier than he ever got down in the Raumsdalian Empire, he wouldn't have wanted to.
The Bizogots passed around skins of smetyn to celebrate the travelers' return. The fermented mammoths milk tasted good to Hamnet, which only showed how long he'd been away from anything with a kick to it. It also mounted straight to his head, which showed the same thing.
Audun Gilli drank himself to sleep in short order. The Bizogots took such things in stride. They draped a mammoth hide over the sodden wizard and shoved him near the edge of the tent, where people were less likely to trip over him or step on him.
"Well, your Ferocity?" Hilderic said. "Tell us of the lands beyond the Glacier. Are there people there? Did you find the Golden Shrine?"
"There are people. There are indeed," Trasamund answered. He spoke of the Rulers, and of how they not only herded but rode mammoths. That made all the Bizogots buzz, as he must have known it would.
"Can we do that?" Three of them asked the same question at the same time.
"I don't see why not," the jarl said. "But we won't do it today, and we won't do it tomorrow, either. We'll have to figure out everything that goes into it, and we'll have to get the mammoths used to carrying men on their backs. The time will come, though, and I think it will come soon."
Gudrid and the Raumsdalian guardsmen who'd never learned the Bizogot tongue began to follow Audun Gilli's example. Hamnet Thyssen didn't suppose he could blame them—not in one sense, anyway. Listening to a language you couldn't follow had to be boring. But they'd traveled with Bizogots for months. They—and Audun—should have learned more than they did.
He glanced over to Liv. She'd waited longer than she might have to start learning Raumsdalian, too. But she was doing well with it now.
In the flames that came from butter-filled lamps, Hilderic's eyes glowed like a wild beast s. "If we learn this art, we'll ride roughshod over the rest of the Bizogots!" His fellow clansmen rumbled approval at the idea.
But Trasamund regretfully shook his head. "Once we learn this art, I fear we'll have to show it to the rest of the Bizogots."