Fuck’s sake stop brooding, will you. Count your Sky-given blessings.

He scratched beneath his buffalo-hide cap with one hard-nailed finger and watched the twilit figures of Runi and Klarn as they prodded the herd back toward the encampment. Every buffalo he could see was his, not to mention the shares he held in the Ishlinak herds farther to the west. The red-and-gray clan pennants he and the other two flew at the necks of their staff lances bore his name in Majak script. He was known throughout the steppes; every encampment he went to, women fell at his feet with open legs. About the only thing he really missed these days were hot-water baths and a decent shave, neither of which the Majak had a lot of use for.

Couple of fucking decades ago, my son, you didn’t have much use for them, either. Remember that?

True enough. Twenty years ago, Egar’s outlook, near as he could recall, wasn’t much different from that of his clan fellows. Nothing wrong with cold water, a stoked communal sweat bath every few days, and a good beard. Not like these effete fucking southerners with their perfumed manners and woman-soft skins.

Yeah. But twenty years ago you were an ignorant fuck. Twenty years ago you didn’t know your dick from a sword hilt. Twenty fucking years ago—

Twenty fucking years ago, Egar was no different from the next wispy-chinned Majak buffalo herdboy. He’d seen nothing of the lands beyond the steppes, believed himself sophisticated because his elder brothers had taken him to Ishlin-ichan to lose his virginity, and could not have grown a beard to save his life. He believed implicitly in what his father and brothers told him, and what they told him was, basically, that the Majak were the roughest toughest drinkers and fighters on earth, that of all the Majak clans, the Skaranak were the hardiest, and that the northern grasslands were the only place any real man would even consider living.