"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?"
Trasamund and Hamnet Thyssen had to drag Eyvind away from the wizard of the Rulers. If they hadn't, he would not have ridden south and east. He would have stayed there and plied Samoth with questions for as long as the sorcerer could stand it.
Hamnet glanced over to Roypar. The chieftain looked unmistakably pleased with himself. The Rulers thought of themselves as conquerors beyond compare. Had he lain with a woman of a lesser breed the night before? Hamnet guessed he had. Gudrid showed nothing one way or the other. She was good at making her indiscretions discreet-unless she dropped the mask and showed them off.
Hamnet looked away. She laughed softly. So she knew what he was thinking, did she? She'd always been good at that. Hamnet Thyssen turned his back, which only made her laugh again, louder this time. Too bad, he thought.
Roypar really did let them ride away. That surprised Count Hamnet. It seemed to surprise and dismay Samoth, who muttered into his thicket of beard. The way he muttered sparked suspicion in Hamnet even before the Rulers' encampment dropped below the horizon behind the travelers. He rode over first to Audun Gilli and then to Liv, asking each of them, "Is the wizard back there tracking us by magic? Are we taking along some little spell that lets him spy on us?" He had to repeat himself, using Raumsdalian and then the Bizogots' language. Lie wished the two people among the travelers who knew sorcery could understand each other. As happened too often in life, what he wished for had nothing to do with what he got.
Ulric Skakki understood him both times he asked the question. "You have a nasty, distrustful turn of mind, your Grace," Ulric said-in the Bizogot language, a choice Hamnet found interesting. "I only wish I'd thought of that myself."
"Don't worry," Hamnet said. "You would have before long."
"That kind of spell is possible, I suppose." Audun Gilli didn't seem to think Samoth had actually done such a thing.
Liv did. "Yes, of course. A sorcerous flea, you might say, coming along with us. Maybe it will bite, too, when the time is right."
"Can you find it?" Count Hamnet asked. "Can you kill it?" Again, he had to use the mammoth-herders' language and then his own.
So did Ulric Skakki when he added, "Can you find it and kill it without letting Samoth know it's gone?" Hamnet Thyssen thumped his forehead with the heel of his hand. Now he was angry that Ulric had an idea before he did.
"Who knows what all shamanry the strangers have?" Liv said. "They think it is stronger than ours. They may be right-remember how Samoth shattered Audun's opal. But we can try."
"What does she say?" Audun Gilli asked. "I heard my name in that, whatever it was." When Count Hamnet translated for him, he sniffed. "I am sure I could have stopped Samoth if I'd been looking for him to do that. Liv worries over nothing."
Now the Bizogot shaman wondered why Audun was using her name. Hamnet Thyssen turned Audun's words into her tongue. She sniffed on a note almost identical to the one the Raumsdalian sorcerer had used. "He says I worry over nothing, does he? Well, he thinks there is nothing to worry about, and that worries me."
It worried Hamnet Thyssen, too. Having the two sorcerers squabble again also worried him, the more so since they had to do their squabbling through him or through Ulric. Hoping to distract them, he said, "The flea," first in the Bizogot language, then in Raumsdalian.
"Trust a Bizogot to think of fleas," Audun said. Since he was scratching as he spoke-he didn't seem to notice he was doing it-he proved Raumsdalians weren't immune to the pests. Count Hamnet s itches already told him that.
"Never mind the snide cracks," Ulric said. "Can you find the magic?" Now he used Raumsdalian, and didn't translate for Liv. She sent Hamnet a look of appeal. He didn't translate, either. She glared at him.
"If it is here, it should be simple enough to find," Audun Gilli said.
"Please go ahead and do it, then," Hamnet Thyssen said, and then, to Liv, "I would also like you to check." By now, he was resigned to going back and forth between languages.
"I will do it if Audun fails." The Bizogot shaman glanced over at the Raumsdalian wizard. "I wish we could understand each other. It might mean much if we have to work together. Would you teach me Raumsdalian, Hamnet Thyssen?"
"If you like," Count Hamnet answered. "You will have to learn the fancy magical terms from Audun, though. I might make mistakes, and mistakes in that kind of thing can be dangerous. I am no wizard, but at least I know it."