“A wolf? Yes, of course I can shape myself into a wolf,” he said. Many old men’s teeth were worn down almost flat against their gums. Not his – they were still long and sharp and white, suggesting his ties to the Red Dire Wolves’ fetish animal.
Getting him to understand what to do after he went into dire wolf’s shape took the best – or maybe the worst – part of an afternoon. It wasn’t that Odovacar was stupid. Hamnet Thyssen didn’t think it was, anyhow. But he heard so little that getting anything across to him was an ordeal.
With Audun Gilli or another Raumsdalian wizard, Count Hamnet could have written down what he wanted. Nothing was wrong with Odovacar’s eyes, but writing didn’t help him, for the Bizogots had no written language. Hamnet and Liv had to keep shouting over and over again till, one word at a time, one thought at a time, they tunneled through the wall deafness built between Odovacar and the folk around him.
“Ah,” he said at last, his own voice too loud because he wanted to have some chance of hearing himself. “You want me to lead the dire wolves against the invaders from the north.”
“Yes.” Hamnet Thyssen hoped it was yes. Or did Odovacar think he and Liv meant they wanted him to take command of the Red Dire Wolves’ human warriors? By then, nothing would have surprised Hamnet overmuch.
But Odovacar had it right. “I can do it,” he said in that loud, cracked, quavering old man’s voice. He began to sway back and forth, chanting a song that sounded as if it was in the Bizogot language but that Hamnet couldn’t follow. Liv’s nod said she could.
He slowly rose and started to dance, there inside his tent. At first, the dance seemed little more than swaying back and forth while on his feet, more or less in rhythm to the song he chanted. But it got more vigorous as the song went on. The chant grew more vigorous, too. Hamnet still couldn’t understand it, but growls and snarls began replacing some of the sounds that seemed like Bizogot words. The tune, though, stayed the same.
Odovacar’s fringes shook. His long white beard whipped back and forth. In the lamplight, his eyes blazed yellow.
Yellow? Hamnet Thyssen rubbed at his own eyes. Like almost all Bizogots, Odovacar had ice-blue eyes. But was this still Odovacar the man? Hamnet shook his head. No, not wholly, not any more.
Liv was nodding in understanding and, Hamnet thought, in admiration as she watched the change sweep over the other shaman. She was used to seeing such things. She’d probably shifted shape herself, though Count Hamnet didn’t think she’d done it since he’d known her. She might take it for granted, but it raised the Raumsdalians hackles.
Odovacar dropped down onto all fours. His wolfskin jacket and trousers and his own beard all seemed to turn into pelt. His teeth, already long and white, grew whiter and much longer while his tongue lolled from his mouth. His nose lengthened into a snout. His ears grew pointed and stood away from his head. He wore a wolf’s tail attached to the seat of his trousers. As the spell took hold, it was still a wolf’s tail – it was his tail, attached to him as any beast s tail was attached to it. As if to prove as much, it lashed back and forth.
“Can you hear me?” Hamnet Thyssen asked in a small voice. Odovacar the dire wolf was doubtless still old, but seemed much less decrepit than Odovacar the man. And he swung his fierce head towards Hamnet and nodded somewhat as a dog might nod, but also somewhat as a man might. Shapeshifters kept some of their human intelligence in beast form. How much? Hamnet wasn’t sure even they could answer that question once they returned to human shape.
“You know what you are to do?” Liv sounded far more respectful of the shaman as a dire wolf than she had of him as a man.
Odovacar nodded again. A sound that wasn’t a word but was agreement burst from his throat. Hamnet Thyssen had heard an owl that was also a wizard use human speech, but that was under the influence of the magic Liv used to capture it, not through the spell the wizard used to transform himself.
“Good,” Liv said. “Go, then, and God go with you.”
One more nod from Odovacar, who bounded out through the south-facing tent flap. He made another sound once he was out in the open air, a canine cry of joy pure and unalloyed. To a dire wolf’s senses, the inside of the tent had to be cramped and smelly. Unlike people, wolves weren’t made to be confined in such places. Hamnet Thyssen stuck his head out into the cold. Odovacar trotted purposefully off to the west, wagging his tail as he went. Yes, he was glad to get away.
“He seems happier as a dire wolf,” Hamnet said.
“I suppose he is,” Liv answered. “But he will die sooner if he keeps that hide and not the one he was born with. He knows that. Even as a wolf, he knows it. He will do what needs doing – what he can recall of it in beast shape. And we will see how much good it does us.”
“Quite a bit, I hope.” Hamnet Thyssen stuck his head out into the cold again. Like Odovacar, he was sometimes glad to get free of the Bizogot tents himself. Living through the long northern winters in the enforced close company of the mammoth-herders wasn’t easy for a man of his basically solitary temperament. If he weren’t in love with Liv, he wondered if he could have done it.
“Don’t get frostbite,” she told him – in this climate, an even more serious warning than it would have been down in the Empire.
“I won’t.” He wanted to twist around so he could look north towards the Gap, north towards the grazing grounds of the Three Tusk clan, the grazing grounds the Rulers had stolen. In his mind’s eye, he saw swarms of dire wolves raiding those grounds, feasting on the Rulers’ riding deer, dragging down musk oxen that couldn’t keep up with the herds, maybe even killing mammoth calves if they wandered away from their mothers. And he saw something else, even if it wasn’t so clear as he wished it were.
When he ducked back into the big black tent again, some of what he imagined he’d seen must have shown on his face, for Liv said, “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know,” he answered. “But we’ve thought a lot about how we can hit back at the Rulers. What have they been thinking about all this time? I don’t know that, either, and I wish I did. Whatever it is, I don’t think we’re going to like it.”
The sun had turned in the sky. Days were still short, shorter than they ever got in Nidaros, but they were getting longer. Each day, the sun rose a little farther north and east of due south, swinging away from the tiny arc it made in the southern sky around the solstice. Each day, it set a little farther north and west of due south. And each day became more of a day, not just a brief splash of light punctuating the long hours of darkness.
Hamnet Thyssen would have hoped the longer daylight hours meant warmer weather. In that, he was disappointed but not much surprised. Down in the Empire, the worst blizzards usually came after the turning of the year, but before longer days finally led to the spring thaw. Those blizzards started here, when the Breath of God howled down off the Glacier. Spring would take longer to get here, and would have a looser grip when it finally did.
Odovacar returned to the Red Dire Wolves’ tents. Hamnet Thyssen saw him ambling in, still in dire-wolf shape. He was heavier than he had been when he set out, but he walked with a limp. A long, half-healed gash scored his left hind leg.
For a moment, the shaman didn’t seem to know Count Hamnet. Lips lifted away from those formidable fangs. A growl sounded deep in the Odovacar-wolf’s throat. The Bizogots told of shamans who turned beast so fully, they couldn’t come back to man’s shape again.
But Odovacar hadn’t gone that far. With a human-sounding sigh, he went into the tent that had been his. A moment later, Totila joined him. Word must have spread like lightning, for Liv and Audun Gilli ducked in together inside of another couple of minutes.
By then, Odovacar the dire wolf was already swaying back and forth in a beast’s version of the dance the shaman had used to change shape. The growls and barks and whines that came from the animal had something of the same rhythm as the song Odovacar had used when he was a man.
And he became a man again. His muzzle shortened. His beard grew out on his cheeks and chin – he had a chin again. His ears shrank; the light of reason came back to his eyes. The hair on his back and flanks was a pelt no more, but fringed and tufted wolfskin jacket and trousers. His dire wolf’s tail now plainly had been taken from a wolf, and was a part of him no more.
He let out a long, weary sigh – more regret than relief, if Hamnet Thyssen was any judge. “Well, I’m back,” he said, his voice as rusty as a sword blade left out in the rain. “I’m back,” he repeated, as if he needed to convince himself. After so long in beast shape, chances were he did.
“Have you harried the foe?” Totila asked. “Can you do it again at need?”
“We have . . . done what we could,” Odovacar answered slowly. Speech still seemed to come hard for him. “It is less than I hoped, better than nothing.” He shrugged stooped shoulders – yes, he was old. “Such is life. And the Rulers . . . The Rulers are very strong, and very fierce, and they are gathering. They are mustering. The time is coming, and coming soon.” His eyes – blue again, not wolf-amber – found first Liv and then Count Hamnet. “Well, you were right, the two of you. I wish you were wrong, but you were right. They are a danger. They are a deadly danger.”
“What did you do … when you were a dire wolf?” Hamnet asked in a low voice.
Odovacar heard him without trouble; maybe some of the dire wolf’s sharper senses stayed with him for a little while. “Hunted. Killed. Mated. Slept. Ran. Those are the things a dire wolf does,” he said. “Harried the Rulers’ herds. Fled when they hit back at us. I told you – they are strong and fierce. I smelled – watched, too, but scent matters more – too many wolf-brothers die. I was still man enough inside the dire wolf’s head to sorrow, not just to fear. And I watched the foe gather, and I smelled their muster, and I came back. And it might be better had I stayed a wolf.” A tear ran down his cheek.
II
By God, I will do this thing, or I will die trying,” Trasamund said. The mammoth from the Red Dire Wolves’ herd pawed at the ground with a broad, hairy forefoot, looking for whatever forage it could find under the snow. The hump on the mammoths back was far flatter than it would have been in warm weather; the beast had burned through most of the fat reserve it carried from the good times. It couldn’t understand what the Three Tusk Bizogots’ jarl was saying, which was just as well.
Hamnet Thyssen and Ulric Skakki looked at each other. Hamnet had trouble putting what he wanted to say into words. Ulric, as usual, didn’t. “Do you have to do this thing right now, Your Ferocity?” he asked.
“And why not?” Trasamund demanded.
“Because we’ll need you for the fight against the Rulers.” Now Count Hamnet found the words he needed. “Because if you kill yourself it will be the same as if they won a great battle.”
“They ride woolly mammoths to war,” Trasamund said. “I swore I would do the same. I will ride this beast. You shall not stop me.”
Maybe Hamnet and Ulric could have tackled him and sat on him. But, even if he didn’t try to draw his great two-handed sword and kill them both, what good would that do? He would only come out and try to ride a mammoth while they weren’t around. If he fell, if he was thrown clear, they might be able to save him before the beast crushed the life out of him. Hamnet didn’t believe it, but it was possible.
“Now,” Trasamund said, and advanced on the mammoth. Its hairy ears flapped – what was this man-thing up to? Trasamund was a big man, but seemed tiny beside the cow mammoth.
When he took hold of two big handfuls of mammoth hair and started scrambling up the beast’s side, Hamnet thought he would die, and about as unpleasantly as a man could. The mammoth’s trunk flew up into the air and blared out a startled note. The animal could have used the trunk to pluck off Trasamund and throw him down to the snow-covered ground. One of its great feet descending on his head or his chest, and that would be that.
“If I were mad enough to try to ride a mammoth, I wouldn’t be mad enough to try it that way,” Ulric Skakki said. “By God, I hope I wouldn’t, anyhow.”
“I don’t think there’s enough gold in the world to get me up on a mammoth’s back,” Count Hamnet agreed. “Not unless I’m up there with somebody who knows what he’s doing, I mean. And since the Rulers are the only ones who ride mammoths . .. Well, there you are.”
“No, there Trasamund is,” Ulric said. “I’m here where I belong – on the ground, and far enough away from that shaggy monster.”
But in spite of trumpeting in surprise and alarm, the mammoth didn’t dash Trasamund to the ground and trample him. The Red Dire Wolf Bizogots said they’d chosen the gentlest animal in their herd, and they seemed to mean it. Count Hamnet wouldn’t have let a cat climb him. That had to be what it was like for the mammoth.
With a shout of triumph, the jarl straddled the beast’s broad back. “I’m here!” he roared. “I really am up here! Look at me!” He let out a loud, wordless whoop almost as discordant as the mammoth’s trumpeting.
“By God, I don’t think I got that excited the first time I went into a woman,” Ulric said. “Of course, if you’d seen the woman I did it with the first time, you wouldn’t have got very excited, either.”