“Nothing wrong to the north? You’re sure?” Liv said.

He shook his head. “There’s plenty wrong to the north, and we both know it. But I didn’t see any sign that the Rulers were about to swoop down on the Red Dire Wolves.”

“That’s what I meant,” Liv said. “But I don’t think they’ll wait much longer.”

Hamnet Thyssen liked the flavor of that even less than he liked the flavor of dung-cooked mammoth liver. “Is that your feeling?” he asked. “Or is it what your magic tells you?”

“Not mine. Audun Gilli’s,” the shaman answered. “His seems better at piercing the wards the Rulers use than mine does.” She didn’t sound jealous, merely matter-of-fact.

“Where is Audun, anyway?” Hamnet asked. The Raumsdalian wizard usually stayed in the jarl’s tent, too. He’d never learned much of the Bizogot tongue, and needed another Raumsdalian or Liv or Trasamund to translate for him.

“He’s with Theudechild, in the tent where she stays,” Liv said.

“Oh.” Hamnet left it there. He wondered what the Bizogot woman saw in Audun Gilli, who was short and slight and unprepossessing and could hardly talk to her. Whatever it was, she doted on him. And Audun seemed to like her well enough. He’d lost his family some years earlier, and lived in a drunken stupor till Ulric Skakki plucked him from the gutter – literally – and made him dry out.

Getting drunk among the Bizogots took dedication. Except for beer and wine brought up from the south, their only tipple was smetyn – fermented musk-ox or mammoth milk. It was sour and not very strong. The mammoth-herders poured it down, though.

Something else occurred to Hamnet. “He’s with Theudechild? The lamps are still lit.”

“So what?” Liv said. “People look the other way. They pretend not to hear. When you live in crowded tents most of the year, you have to do things like that. I’ve seen your houses with all their rooms.” She dropped in a couple of Raumsdalian words for things the Bizogots didn’t have and didn’t need to name. “You can get away from one another whenever you please. All we have are blankets – and the sense not to look when it’s none of our business.”