Grinning, Ulric blew him a kiss. So much for the not very warm glance. “If you were half as funny as you think you are, you’d be twice as funny as you really are,” Hamnet said.

“And I’d still be funnier than you,” Ulric said. Hamnet shook his head like a man bedev iled by bees. He was unlikely to need to worry about bees this far north. Soon enough, though, midges and flies and mosquitoes would spring to life in every pond and rill and puddle left by melting snow and ice. Everything on the Bizogot steppe burst with life in the springtime—including the pests. Ulric Skakki seemed to be trying his best to get himself included in their number.

More Bizogots rode up from the southwest to take over the watch. Hamnet Thyssen was glad enough to head back to camp. He made a point of talking with Marcovefa and Trasamund, and of ignoring Ulric. The adventurer noticed. He laughed at Hamnet, who ignored him harder than ever. Ulric Skakki kept right on laughing. Hamnet kept right on fuming.

“If you let him bother you, he wins, you know,” Marcovefa said.

“I suppose,” Hamnet answered. “But if I don’t let him bother me, that says I shouldn’t have been bothered to begin with, and he wins anyhow. So what am I supposed to do?”

“You could kill him.” Marcovefa wasn’t joking. The Bizogots brawled at any excuse or none. Her own clan, like the others scattered over the top of the Glacier, had grown more ruthless than the folk from whom they were descended. They’d had to; life up there gave them even less margin for error than the ordinary Bizogots had. To Marcovefa, the frozen steppe was a land of riches and abundance. If that didn’t say how desperately impoverished her folk were, nothing could.