“You’d have to ask His Majesty about that,” Hamnet replied. “I really couldn’t tell you.” He didn’t want to shout that Sigvat was a purblind idiot, even if that explanation made more sense than any other.
“Well, it’s too bad any which way,” Runolf said.
Count Hamnet nodded – that too was an understatement. The sky was gray and lowering, with clouds that seemed almost close enough to the ground to let him reach up and touch them. Snow swirled through the air – not a lot, but enough to compress the horizon to not much farther than bowshot. The wind blew out of the north. It didn’t have the howl of the true Breath of God, but it was no gentle zephyr, either. The season felt like what it was: autumn well north of Nidaros, heading towards winter.
Sheep and cattle huddled in the fields, scraping up what fodder they could from under the snow. Army outriders scooped them up as they came across them. Outraged herders howled protests. Hamnet paid them for the animals the army took. That made them less angry, but didn’t end all their rage.
Scowling down at the silver in his mittened palm, one shepherd snarled,
“Why shouldn’t we pull for the stinking barbarians, when the soldiers who’re supposed to be protecting us pull a stunt like this?” By the way he said it, Count Hamnet might have been paying him for the corpses of his family.
“Why? I’ll tell you why,” Hamnet answered. “Because the Rulers, if they come this far, will take your sheep, they won’t give you even a copper, and they’ll cut your throat if you complain, or maybe just if they spot you. That’s why.”
“You say so, anyhow,” the shepherd growled, calling the noble a liar without quite using the word.
“Yes, by God, I do say so,” Hamnet replied. “I’ve fought them before, which is more than you have. You don’t know anything about them.”
“I sure don’t,” the shepherd said. “But I know more than I want to about the likes of you.” He spat in the snow at Hamnet Thyssen’s feet and stumped off, his oversized Bizogot-style felt boots leaving equally oversized footprints behind him.
“Nice to know you’ve charmed the natives, isn’t it?” Ulric Skakki remarked.
“We need the meat,” Hamnet said. “He really doesn’t know how lucky he is.”
“And it’s our job to make sure he doesn’t find out, too.” Ulric winked. “Aren’t we lucky?”
“Speak for yourself,” Count Hamnet said, which only made Ulric laugh. Annoyed, Hamnet went on, “If I were really lucky – ”
“You wouldn’t have me bothering you,” the adventurer put in.
Hamnet Thyssen nodded. “Well, that, too, but it isn’t what I was going to say. I was going to say, if I were really lucky, I’d have an honest-to-God army with me, not a garrison that doesn’t know how to fight and a bunch of odds and sods who’ve already run away once and don’t want to fight.”
“I don’t follow that at all,” Marcovefa said. “Say in the Bizogot language, please.”
“Why not?” Hamnet translated his own words.
The shaman from atop the Glacier rode up alongside him and kissed him on the cheek. “Sometimes you get what you wish for,” she said, as if she were personally responsible for arranging it. No matter how much Hamnet looked around, though, he saw only the men he’d mustered in Kjelvik. They were better than nothing – but, as far as he was concerned, not nearly enough better.
On he rode. They might not have been enough better than nothing, but they were what he had. The storm got stronger. Now the wind did start to feel like the Breath of God. The snow swirled thicker. Just staying on the road towards the northern woods was anything but easy.
Another road, a broader highway, came up from the southeast to join the one Hamnet and his men were on, which ran almost straight north. If Runolf Skallagrim hadn’t warned Count Hamnet the crossroads was coming up, he never would have known it. “Which road do we take?” Runolf asked.
Hamnet wanted to laugh, or maybe to cry. “You’d do better to ask some of the men who came south,” he answered. “They have a better notion where the Rulers are than I do. And they have a much better notion where the Rulers are than Sigvat does, not that that’s saying much.”
Runolf’s coughs sent steam rising from his lips and nostrils. They also suggested that Count Hamnet had said quite enough, or maybe too much.
Before Runolf could ask anything of the soldiers, Hamnet heard hoofbeats – lots of them – off to the right. He would have caught them sooner if the falling snow hadn’t muffled them. He peered in that direction, but the snowflakes dancing on the north wind kept him from seeing much.
His first thought was that a caravan of merchants was coming to the crossroads on the other highway. That was close to laughable, too. The traders would be sorry if they got in front of his force and found the Rulers first. And they would slow him down if they blocked the road. He didn’t want to have to swing out into the fields to get around them.
And then a peremptory shout came through the howling wind: “You there! Strangers! Clear the road for His Majesty’s soldiers!”
“What?” If Hamnet hadn’t been wearing mittens, he would have dug a finger in his ear to make sure he’d heard straight. When he decided he had, he shouted back: “The demon you say! We’re His Majesty’s soldiers!”
“D’you know what’ll happen to you for lying?” In case he didn’t, the still invisible man at the head of the – other army? – went into grisly detail.
“I’m no liar, you – ” Hamnet Thyssen shouted back something even nastier. It seemed to shock the other side’s herald into silence. Hamnet gestured to Runolf Skallagrim, Ulric Skakki, and Trasamund, and, a moment later, to Marcovefa. “Ride with me,” he told them. He raised his voice and called “Hold up!” to the rest of his force.
He and his handful of companions trotted towards the challenge. He wasn’t overwhelmingly surprised to find a party coming out from the other host to see who he was. An officer wearing the hame of a dire wolf as a headpiece shouted, “What do you think you’re doing, interfering with His Majesty’s army?”
“I told you – we’re His Majesty’s army!” Hamnet produced the orders he had from Sigvat II and thrust them at the other man. “Here. Do you read?”
“Yes,” the officer in the wolfskin said angrily. He snatched the parchment away from Count Hamnet. Then fear filled Hamnet for a moment. What if Sigvat had reneged on his promises? What if this force had orders to ignore one Hamnet Thyssen, or to clap him in irons? If Gudrid had been working to get her way with the Emperor, it wasn’t impossible. It wasn’t even unlikely, as Hamnet knew all too well.
But, by the way the other officer’s eyes widened, it hadn’t happened. Hamnet blew out a fog-filled sigh of relief. “You see?” he said.
“I see,” the other officer said unhappily. “You’d better come with me and show this . . this thing to Count Endil.”
“Endil Gris?” Hamnet asked.
“That’s right,” the officer said. “You know him, uh, Your Grace?”
“We’ve met,” Hamnet answered. Endil Gris was a warrior with a considerable reputation for his wars against the savages who raided Raumsdalia’s southwestern frontier. So far as Hamnet knew, Endil had never fought in the north before. Sigvat must have figured a capable general on one border would prove just as capable on another. Maybe the Emperor was right. On the other hand, maybe he wasn’t.
“Come with me, then,” the officer said, “you and your, ah, friends.” His gaze lingered longest on Trasamund and Marcovefa when he said that. After a moment, though, he added, “You have some experience against these new barbarians, I’ve heard. Is that right?”
“Yes, it is,” Hamnet answered. “Not happy experience, not a lot of wins, but experience. I gather that puts me one up on Count Endil?”
Instead of answering, the man in the wolf-hame only grunted. Endil Gris’ army put him one up, or more than one, on Count Hamnet. Endil had more soldiers than Hamnet did, many more, and they were men with the look
of regulars, tough and composed and ready – they thought – for whatever lay ahead of them. Quite a few of Endil’s men also had suntans that said they’d come up from the south with him. They couldn’t have turned so brown on northern duty, anyhow.
Endil himself wore a black leather patch over his left eye. “Thyssen, by God!” he said. “What are you doing here?” Even in mittens, his handclasp felt odd; along with his eye, he was also missing his right middle finger.
“Show him what I’m doing here,” Hamnet told the officer in the wolf-hame, who still carried his orders. Reluctantly, the man passed the parchment to Endil Gris.
Count Endil held it out at arm’s length to read it. Count Hamnet had to do more and more of that himself. When Endil finished, one of his bushy eyebrows leaped. “How the demon did you get the Emperor to appoint you god of the north? That’s what this amounts to.”
“Hamnet always did have a charming smile,” Ulric Skakki said.
Endil glanced at him. “Skakki, isn’t it?” As Ulric nodded, the veteran soldier went on, “I’ve heard of you, for good and for … well, for not so good.”
Ulric Skakki nodded again, unembarrassed. “That’s what life is all about, don’t you think? I could say the same thing about you.”
“I wouldn’t doubt it.” But Endil Gris gave his attention back to Hamnet. “You’ve got all the authority you need, don’t you?” Before Hamnet could answer, Endil continued, “You’ve got it if I say you’ve got it, anyway. Otherwise, you’re just a beggar with a bowl, looking for a handout anywhere you can.”
How to answer that? If Hamnet tried to bluff here, he reckoned he would lose his man. Endil was not a man who gave way to bluffs; if anything, they enraged him. And so Count Hamnet shrugged and said, “Yes, that’s about the size of it. His Majesty’s right about one thing – I know more about the Rulers and how they fight than you do.”
“You couldn’t very well know less. I’ve never seen one of the buggers, not yet,” Count Endil replied. “All I’ve heard about ‘em is from people who ran away from them. So I was going to do the best I could, but. .. .” He shrugged and spread his mittened hands.
“I’ve seen them. I’ve talked with them. I’ve fought them. I’ve run from them, too. It’s what you do when you lose,” Hamnet Thyssen said. “But some of the forces I was with almost won, and I think we’ve got a wizard now who can stand up to anything they throw at us.” He gestured towards Marcovefa.
“The Rulers, they are not so much of a much,” she said in her curiously accented Raumsdalian.
Endil Gris’ long, somber, mutilated face crinkled into an unexpected grin. “Nice to know somebody thinks so, anyway,” he rumbled. “Everybody down in Nidaros was shrieking about how they ate us up without salt.” He swung his good eye back towards Count Hamnet. “I’ll serve under you, Thyssen. I think you’ve got a better chance of making this come out right than I do, and what else matters?”
Plenty of other officers would have made that question anything but rhetorical. To them, their chance for fame and glory came ahead of anything else. Hamnet thought Endil Gris was a man of a different, sterner, school. He hoped Endil was. If the one-eyed noble claimed he was, Hamnet couldn’t afford to do anything but take him at his word. “Thanks,” he said. “As long as we’ve got that settled, let’s go after the barbarians and give them what they deserve.”
“Sounds good to me,” Endil said.
One of his aides had been listening with more and more agitation. “But, Your Grace!” the junior officer burst out. “This is your army! Are you going to let some … some stranger take it away from you?”
“Thyssen’s no stranger,” Endil Gris replied. “Why did we come up here, Dalk? To whip these Rulers right out of their boots, yes? If Count Hamnet can do that, I’ll stand behind him, because I’m not sure I can.”
“But – ” Dalk didn’t want to let it drop.
“Would you like to take it up with His Majesty?” Endil asked. “Would you like to go back to Nidaros and take it up with His Majesty?”
His aide recognized danger when it blew his way. “Uh, no, Your Grace.”
“Very good. Very good.” Count Endil was ponderously sarcastic. “In that case, would you like to salute Count Hamnet Thyssen and do everything you can to help him against these barbarians? That’s what I aim to do, by God.” He did it.
After a moment, so did Dalk. But rebellion still glittered in his eyes as he said, “May you lead us to victory, Your Grace.”
Count Hamnet knew what that meant. He gave the unhappy Dalk a thin smile. “Don’t worry about telling tales to the Emperor if I lose. He’ll hear them from better men than you, I promise. And he pulled me out of the dungeon to do this. If he throws me in again, what have I lost? What has he lost?”
Dalk’s eyes went big and round. “He … pulled you out of the dungeon?”
“I’d heard that,” Endil Gris said. “I hoped it wasn’t true. You’re not the kind of man who ends up in one, except maybe for telling the truth.”
“Well, you got the crime right the first time,” Ulric Skakki said. “Such men are dangerous – and if you don’t believe me, ask Sigvat.”
“Enough.” Hamnet held up a hand. “Only the Rulers get anything if we start slanging each other.”
“You’re right, by God,” Trasamund said. “We Bizogots did that, and we paid for it.” Dalk and Endil Gris both eyed him as if to say, So what? They didn’t want to listen to a Bizogot. Do they really want to listen to me? Hamnet Thyssen wondered. I’ll find out.
Then he realized Marcovefa had told him he would get a real army before he got it. How the demon had she known? How could she have known? She’s a shaman, that’s how, Hamnet thought. A strong one, too, by God. Maybe we’ve got a chance in spite of everything.
XX
Hamnet’s army reached the southern edge of the forest before the Rulers broke out of it. The Raumsdalians rounded up more soldiers fleeing from the mammoth-riders. Count Hamnet wasn’t sure he was glad to have them. He feared they hurt morale more than they swelled numbers. Some of them were eager enough to try conclusions against the Rulers again. More, though, babbled about barbarians spearing them from mammothback, and about magic shaking ground and twisting weather.
In summer, the forest – mostly pine and fir and spruce – was a dark green wave across the north of the Raumsdalian Empire. In the winter, snow cast a white veil of beauty over the same inhospitable countryside. The trees thrived where even oats and rye wouldn’t grow, and went on thriving up till the ground stayed frozen the year around and the Bizogot plains began.
Within five minutes of Count Hamnet’s ordering the army to halt before going into the woods, Ulric Skakki, Runolf Skallagrim, and Endil Gris all asked him the same question: “Are you going to go in there after them or wait till they come out and hit them on better ground?”
“That’s what I’m thinking about,” he answered . . . and answered . . . and answered. Suddenly, he tried to snap his fingers inside his mittens. It didn’t work, but he still smiled. “Marcovefa!” he called.
“What do you want?” she asked.
“Can you find out where in the forest the Rulers are lurking?”
She nodded. “Yes, I think I can. They not belong here. They leave trail, show where they go, where they are.”
“Do that, then, please,” Hamnet said, in case she thought he was only asking a hypothetical question.
Marcovefa muttered to herself in the strange dialect the folk who lived atop the Glacier used. She rubbed her horses ears – why, Count Hamnet couldn’t have said, unless it was to touch something that did belong to this part of the world. After a moment, she pointed north and a little west. “They are there,” she said in clear Raumsdalian.
Hearing her, Hamnet Thyssen had no doubt she was right. He looked to Endil Gris and Runolf Skallagrim. He would have been ready to argue with either one or both had they chosen to disbelieve, but they didn’t. Each of them nodded in turn: her certainty
brought conviction with it.
“How far?” Hamnet asked.
Marcovefa frowned and muttered to herself again. “A day’s journey, no more,” she answered. “But they are not standing still. They are heading this way.”
She spoke in Raumsdalian once more. “How do you know that?” Runolf Skallagrim asked her.
Marcovefa’s frown got deeper. She tried to explain, and she did go on using the imperial language, but what she said made little sense to Hamnet – or, he could see, to Baron Runolf or Count Endil. What did blue fringes have to do with anything? And why would there have been red fringes had the Rulers been moving away instead of forward?
“Fringes on what?” Runolf asked. “Their clothes?”
“No, no, no.” Marcovefa sounded frustrated. “Their…” She couldn’t find the Raumsdalian word she wanted, or even one in the regular Bizogot tongue. Finally, biting her lip in annoyance, she came out with one in her own dialect. That did neither Hamnet nor Runolf nor Endil any good.
“Their auras?” Ulric Skakki suggested, and went back and forth with her in her tongue for a few sentences.
She beamed. “Yes. Their auras. I thank you. The way their spirits rub against the fur of the world.”
“The fur of the world?” Endil Gris still sounded confused, and Count Hamnet couldn’t blame him, not when he was confused himself.
“I think someone who spoke Raumsdalian from birth would say, the fabric of the world.” Again, Ulric did the interpreting. “Where Marcovefa comes from, there are no fabrics except felt.”
Runolf Skallagrim asked a genuinely important question: “Do they know we’re so close, with an army that’s ready for them?”
“No.” Regardless of how strange Marcovefa’s sorcery was, she could be completely convincing when she wanted to. By Runolf’s grin, she convinced him now. Count Endil also seemed satisfied. Even Dalk – whose family name, Hamnet had learned, was Njorun – nodded thoughtfully.
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