“And why not?” Trasamund demanded.

“Because we’ll need you for the fight against the Rulers.” Now Count Hamnet found the words he needed. “Because if you kill yourself it will be the same as if they won a great battle.”

“They ride woolly mammoths to war,” Trasamund said. “I swore I would do the same. I will ride this beast. You shall not stop me.”

Maybe Hamnet and Ulric could have tackled him and sat on him. But, even if he didn’t try to draw his great two-handed sword and kill them both, what good would that do? He would only come out and try to ride a mammoth while they weren’t around. If he fell, if he was thrown clear, they might be able to save him before the beast crushed the life out of him. Hamnet didn’t believe it, but it was possible.

“Now,” Trasamund said, and advanced on the mammoth. Its hairy ears flapped – what was this man-thing up to? Trasamund was a big man, but seemed tiny beside the cow mammoth.

When he took hold of two big handfuls of mammoth hair and started scrambling up the beast’s side, Hamnet thought he would die, and about as unpleasantly as a man could. The mammoth’s trunk flew up into the air and blared out a startled note. The animal could have used the trunk to pluck off Trasamund and throw him down to the snow-covered ground. One of its great feet descending on his head or his chest, and that would be that.

“If I were mad enough to try to ride a mammoth, I wouldn’t be mad enough to try it that way,” Ulric Skakki said. “By God, I hope I wouldn’t, anyhow.”

“I don’t think there’s enough gold in the world to get me up on a mammoth’s back,” Count Hamnet agreed. “Not unless I’m up there with somebody who knows what he’s doing, I mean. And since the Rulers are the only ones who ride mammoths . .. Well, there you are.”

“No, there Trasamund is,” Ulric said. “I’m here where I belong – on the ground, and far enough away from that shaggy monster.”