“Yes, he might be, but he isn’t,” Audun said. “I’ve talked with him through Liv. He has one spell down solid – he can take the shape of a dire wolf. But even when he’s in man’s form, he hasn’t got any more sense than a dire wolf. I’m surprised nobody’s caught him sitting on his haunches licking his ballocks.”

That started a laugh out of Hamnet. Even so, he said, “Odovacar must be able to do more than that. Shamans can’t be shamans on so little. Whoever he learned from surely taught him other things, too.”

“Oh, I suppose he can find lost needles and read the weather and do some other little tricks that won’t help us against the Rulers at all,” Audun said. “But the one thing the shaman of the Red Dire Wolves has to do is commune with dire wolves, and by God Odovacar can do that. And since he can, they forgive him for all the things he cursed well can’t do, starting with learning anything he didn’t get from his teacher a thousand years ago.”

“Don’t exaggerate.” Mock severity filled Hamnet Thyssen’s voice. “Odovacar can’t be a day over eight hundred.”

“Ha!” The Raumsdalian wizard laughed for politeness’ sake alone, because he plainly didn’t find it funny. “However old he is, he’s outlived his usefulness. If you don’t believe me, talk to your lady love. She’s as fed up with him as I am.”

Talk to your lady love, Audun Gilli had lost his wife, too, in circumstances more harrowing than Hamnet s. But he didn’t seem jealous that the other Raumsdalian had won Liv’s love. Hamnet was glad he wasn’t. Audun might have made a rival, since he and Liv had sorcery in common. If I thought she cheated on me the way Gudrid used to, I’d worry about Audun now. Hamnet shook his head. If you let thoughts like that grow, they would poison whatever good you’d found in your life.

When he pulled his mind away from that notion, it lit on a different one. “Odovacar communes with real dire wolves, you say?”