Well, almost nothing goes to waste on the Bizogot steppe, Hamnet thought. Marcovefa’s clan, up atop the Glacier, thought nothing of eating dead enemies. Life there was even harsher than it was here.
He shook his head. “People down here don’t do that.” Or if they did do it, they never talked about it. Who could say what went on in poor clans in harsh winters? Even the folk who might have talked wouldn’t; the strongest taboo possible lay on admitting one had tasted man’s flesh.
“Seems a shame to let them lie there for your birds and big foxes.” Marcovefa used the name she’d made up for dire wolves.
They’d gone round that pingo before. Instead of doing it again, Hamnet asked: “How strong was the magic the Rulers threw at you?”
“Nothing special,” she answered. “If my folk could ever come down from the top of the Glacier, they would show the Rulers and everyone else what real rulers are.”
She was probably right. It might happen one day, as the ice continued to melt and avalanches offered easier paths down. Hamnet Thyssen refused to worry about it. His great-great-grandchildren could do that, if he ever had descendants of his own. Marcovefa had just been talking about dining on his main worry.
She wouldn’t get away from it, either. “You know,” she said, “with the enemy inside you, you can work real magic against him. You know him in a way you never would without eating him.”
“No,” Hamnet said again. “Not unless you think you can beat the Rulers all by yourself. No one down here wants anything to do with a cannibal. It may be all right for you, but we have strong bans against eating people.”
The alarming thing was, Marcovefa thought about it. Only after that consideration did she reluctantly shake her head. “Maybe not by myself,” she said. “Too much might go wrong. But it is a foolish ban.”
“All customs look foolish to people who don’t follow them.” That wasn’t Hamnet—it was Ulric. “But if you laugh at them, that’s one of the easiest ways I know to make everybody hate you.”
“When we were up on the Glacier, we stayed polite to your clan,” Hamnet added. “We gave them the meat we carried with us—”
“So they wouldn’t eat you instead,” Marcovefa broke in.
“Well, yes,” Hamnet said. “But we didn’t try to stop them from butchering their enemies after a fight we helped them win. And we didn’t say anything when they ate men’s flesh. We just didn’t eat any ourselves.”
“Our customs are right,” Marcovefa maintained.
“For you,” Ulric said. “Not for everybody. Same with ours.”
If he hadn’t added the last three words, the shaman from atop the Glacier would have got angry at him. Hamnet Thyssen could see the warning signs on her face. He wouldn’t have wanted to anger any wizard, let alone one as powerful as Marcovefa. But Ulric managed to disarm her. She gave him a grudging nod. “Maybe,” she said.
The butchery went on. Even if the Bizogots left the hamstrung mammoths alone, they had plenty of meat. Once they saw that, they stopped caring so much about leaving some behind.
“Not elegant, maybe, but it’s a victory,” Ulric said.
“We need victories. We don’t see them often enough,” Hamnet replied. “Now we’ve given the Rulers a poke, and we’ll see what they do next.”
“You have a knack for making everything sound so delightful. You always did.” Ulric Skakki batted his eyes. Count Hamnet picked up a pebble and threw it at him. Ulric’s hand dropped to the hilt of his sword, but he was laughing. So was Hamnet Thyssen. You could do that after you won a battle.
Somewhere to the north, the Rulers wouldn’t think anything was funny right now.
DAYS STRETCHED AS spring advanced. Nights shrank. The air was murmurous with birds and with bugs. Down at Sudertorp Lake, the reed-choked waters by the shore would be full of nesting ducks and geese and swans.
For years, the Leaping Lynx Bizogots had lived well off the waterfowclass="underline" so well that they built stone houses to live in during the spring and summer, though they had to follow the herds the rest of the year. But the Rulers had shattered the Leaping Lynxes the year before.
“Who’s holding Sudertorp Lake now?” Hamnet asked Trasamund. “Anyone? Have the Rulers garrisoned it?”
“I don’t think so,” the jarl answered. “By the time they got down there, most of the birds would have flown. They’re strangers here. They might not even know how rich it gets come spring.”
“Then we ought to go there,” Hamnet said. “If they are taking the waterfowl, we should drive them off if we can. If they aren’t, we ought to take the birds ourselves. The hunting is easy—the Leaping Lynxes show that. We could spend less time tending the herds and more time rousing the Bizogots against the Rulers.”
Trasamund plucked at his beard. “It could be. I hate to walk in on a clan’s territory when I’m not at war with it, but—”
“You know the Leaping Lynxes are shattered,” Count Hamnet said. “We’ve got some of them with us. Put it to them, if you want. Ask if they’d rather see the Rulers eating their waterfowl, or if the birds should go to their own kind.”
The Bizogot chieftain rumbled laughter. “You’re sneakier than you look, Thyssen. If I ask them like that, by God, I know what they’ll say.”
“That’s the idea,” Hamnet said. “If you ask the question the right way, you’ll get the answer you want.”
“Unless I don’t,” Trasamund said. “With Bizogots, you never can tell. We are a free people, we are.” He sounded proud of his folk’s freedom.
Hamnet Thyssen nodded somberly. “Yes. That’s so. And I can’t think of anything that’s done you more harm in your fight against the Rulers. If you made war as a unit instead of by clans that didn’t want to stand with other clans, wouldn’t you have had more luck?”
He strode off, leaving Trasamund staring after him. As he walked, he wondered, too late, if he’d just sunk his own scheme. If the Three Tusk jarl got angry at him, wouldn’t he be less likely to want to follow a suggestion no matter how sensible it was? Why didn’t that occur to me sooner? he wondered unhappily.
But he knew the answer. If something came to him, he was likely to say it. He’d helped ruin things with Liv by blurting out questions he should have swallowed. That might have gone wrong anyway, but he’d sure given it a push.
He must have still been scowling when he came up to Ulric Skakki, because the adventurer said, “What’s gnawing at you now? You look like somebody just told you you’d have rocks for supper.”
“No, the rocks are in my head. I’ve been stupid.” Hamnet explained how he’d botched things with Trasamund.
Ulric raised a quizzical eyebrow. “At least you know you messed up. Most people never figure that out.”
“But how do I keep from making the same mistakes over and over?” Hamnet asked.
Ulric looked at him. “If I knew the answer to that, don’t you think I’d do it myself? If you find out, let me know.”
Count Hamnet must not have offended Trasamund too badly. The jarl shouted the rest of the Bizogots into moving toward Sudertorp Lake. On they went, driving their herds before them. They crashed into what had been the grazing grounds of several tribes, but no one complained.
“Can you imagine the wars we would have started if we tried this journey before the Rulers came?” Trasamund asked, and he let out a gusty sigh.
“You don’t need to sound so disappointed,” Ulric Skakki said.
“Scoff all you please,” the jarl said. “The glory of the Bizogot folk is shattered forever.”
“Not if we can beat the Rulers,” Hamnet said. “Then you can get back a lot of what you lost. . . . Well, some it it, anyhow.”
“Some, maybe. But so many clans have broken up. So many fine grazing grounds are up for grabs now. The steppe will never be the same.” Trasamund sighed again. “Nothing can ever be the same. When the world crashes down, you don’t lift it up onto your shoulders again.”