Not many Raumsdalians had that kind of sense. Maybe they didn’t need it so much. On the other hand, maybe they would have got along better if they had more of it. Hamnet said, “Well, it’s good to see Audun happy, too.”

Was it good to see himself happy? He had to think about that. He wasn’t used to thinking of himself as happy. After what Gudrid did to him – and after the way he spent years brooding and agonizing about what she did to him – he was much more used to thinking of himself as miserable. But he wasn’t, not any more.

“So it is,” Liv said. Did she know how happy she made him? If she didn’t, it wasn’t because he didn’t try to show her. And was that a twinkle in her eye, or only a flicker from one of those odorous lamps? Whatever it was, she asked, “Are you Bizogot enough to think blankets and the sense not to look are enough?”

“I’m not a Bizogot at all, and I never will be.” Count Hamnet paused, but not for long. “I don’t suppose that means I can’t act like one, though. I am here, after all. . ..” Not much later, he did his very best to pretend he and Liv had all the privacy in the world. By the small sounds she made even when trying to keep discreetly silent, his best seemed good enough.

Musk oxen were made for the frozen plains the Bizogots roamed. Their shaggy outer coats and the thick, soft hair that grew closer to the hide warded them against the worst the Breath of God could do. They knew how to scrape snow away with their hooves to uncover plants frozen under the snow. When danger threatened, they formed protective circles, with the formidably horned bulls and larger cows on the outside and the smaller females and calves within. Dire wolves and lions took stragglers now and again, but they had to be desperately hungry to attack one of those circular formations.