But in spite of trumpeting in surprise and alarm, the mammoth didn’t dash Trasamund to the ground and trample him. The Red Dire Wolf Bizogots said they’d chosen the gentlest animal in their herd, and they seemed to mean it. Count Hamnet wouldn’t have let a cat climb him. That had to be what it was like for the mammoth.

With a shout of triumph, the jarl straddled the beast’s broad back. “I’m here!” he roared. “I really am up here! Look at me!” He let out a loud, wordless whoop almost as discordant as the mammoth’s trumpeting.

“By God, I don’t think I got that excited the first time I went into a woman,” Ulric said. “Of course, if you’d seen the woman I did it with the first time, you wouldn’t have got very excited, either.”

Hamnet Thyssen had a hard time not laughing. “What did she think of you?”

“She thought I’d paid her, and she was right.” Ulric raised his voice to a shout. “Now that you’re up there, Your Ferocity, how do you make the mammoth go?”

“You think I haven’t got an answer,” Trasamund yelled back. “Shows what you know.” He pulled a stick from his belt. “The Rulers use a goad to make the beasts obey, and I can do the same.” He thwacked the mammoth’s right side. “Get moving!”

“The Rulers probably start training their mammoths when they’re calves,” Hamnet said. “The animals know what the signals are supposed to mean. This mammoth’s never run into them before. What will it do?”

“You can see that, and I can see that, but do you really expect a Bizogot to see that?” Ulric Skakki answered. “Well, the beast’s hair is thick. Maybe it won’t think he’s hitting it hard enough to be really annoying. He’d better hope it doesn’t, because otherwise the last thing he’ll ever say is ‘Oops!’“

After Trasamund belabored the mammoth for a bit, it did start to walk. He whooped again – too soon. The mammoth was going where it wanted to go, not where he wanted it to go. And it was going there faster and faster, too, first at a trot, then at what had to be a bone-shaking gallop. Trasamund had no saddle and no reins. All he could do was hang on to handfuls of mammoth hair for dear life – and he did.