The sun had turned in the sky. Days were still short, shorter than they ever got in Nidaros, but they were getting longer. Each day, the sun rose a little farther north and east of due south, swinging away from the tiny arc it made in the southern sky around the solstice. Each day, it set a little farther north and west of due south. And each day became more of a day, not just a brief splash of light punctuating the long hours of darkness.

Hamnet Thyssen would have hoped the longer daylight hours meant warmer weather. In that, he was disappointed but not much surprised. Down in the Empire, the worst blizzards usually came after the turning of the year, but before longer days finally led to the spring thaw. Those blizzards started here, when the Breath of God howled down off the Glacier. Spring would take longer to get here, and would have a looser grip when it finally did.

Odovacar returned to the Red Dire Wolves’ tents. Hamnet Thyssen saw him ambling in, still in dire-wolf shape. He was heavier than he had been when he set out, but he walked with a limp. A long, half-healed gash scored his left hind leg.

For a moment, the shaman didn’t seem to know Count Hamnet. Lips lifted away from those formidable fangs. A growl sounded deep in the Odovacar-wolf’s throat. The Bizogots told of shamans who turned beast so fully, they couldn’t come back to man’s shape again.

But Odovacar hadn’t gone that far. With a human-sounding sigh, he went into the tent that had been his. A moment later, Totila joined him. Word must have spread like lightning, for Liv and Audun Gilli ducked in together inside of another couple of minutes.

By then, Odovacar the dire wolf was already swaying back and forth in a beast’s version of the dance the shaman had used to change shape. The growls and barks and whines that came from the animal had something of the same rhythm as the song Odovacar had used when he was a man.

And he became a man again. His muzzle shortened. His beard grew out on his cheeks and chin – he had a chin again. His ears shrank; the light of reason came back to his eyes. The hair on his back and flanks was a pelt no more, but fringed and tufted wolfskin jacket and trousers. His dire wolf’s tail now plainly had been taken from a wolf, and was a part of him no more.

He let out a long, weary sigh – more regret than relief, if Hamnet Thyssen was any judge. “Well, I’m back,” he said, his voice as rusty as a sword blade left out in the rain. “I’m back,” he repeated, as if he needed to convince himself. After so long in beast shape, chances were he did.

“Have you harried the foe?” Totila asked. “Can you do it again at need?”

“We have . . . done what we could,” Odovacar answered slowly. Speech still seemed to come hard for him. “It is less than I hoped, better than nothing.” He shrugged stooped shoulders – yes, he was old. “Such is life. And the Rulers . . . The Rulers are very strong, and very fierce, and they are gathering. They are mustering. The time is coming, and coming soon.” His eyes – blue again, not wolf-amber – found first Liv and then Count Hamnet. “Well, you were right, the two of you. I wish you were wrong, but you were right. They are a danger. They are a deadly danger.”

“What did you do … when you were a dire wolf?” Hamnet asked in a low voice.

Odovacar heard him without trouble; maybe some of the dire wolf’s sharper senses stayed with him for a little while. “Hunted. Killed. Mated. Slept. Ran. Those are the things a dire wolf does,” he said. “Harried the Rulers’ herds. Fled when they hit back at us. I told you – they are strong and fierce. I smelled – watched, too, but scent matters more – too many wolf-brothers die. I was still man enough inside the dire wolf’s head to sorrow, not just to fear. And I watched the foe gather, and I smelled their muster, and I came back. And it might be better had I stayed a wolf.” A tear ran down his cheek.

II

By God, I will do this thing, or I will die trying,” Trasamund said. The mammoth from the Red Dire Wolves’ herd pawed at the ground with a broad, hairy forefoot, looking for whatever forage it could find under the snow. The hump on the mammoths back was far flatter than it would have been in warm weather; the beast had burned through most of the fat reserve it carried from the good times. It couldn’t understand what the Three Tusk Bizogots’ jarl was saying, which was just as well.

Hamnet Thyssen and Ulric Skakki looked at each other. Hamnet had trouble putting what he wanted to say into words. Ulric, as usual, didn’t. “Do you have to do this thing right now, Your Ferocity?” he asked.

“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.”

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?”