“Of course you are,” Hamnet said. “You know it as well as I do, too. You wouldn’t be able to stand yourself if you didn’t make trouble. Go ahead-tell me I’m wrong.”
Marcovefa preened. She tried to pretend she hadn’t, but she couldn’t do it. Then she said, “Well, maybe I am. But not just trouble to you. Trouble to your enemies, too. You have lots of enemies.”
“Who?” Count Hamnet said. “Me?” He was convincing enough to make Marcovefa poke him in the ribs. She didn’t kick him in the ribs: he supposed to show him she wasn’t his enemy . . . yet.
Three days later, another rider from the Empire came into what had been the Leaping Lynxes’ summer village. Per Anders looked relieved to find Hamnet Thyssen there. “God be praised!” he said. “I bring you a letter from His Majesty.” He took a fancy, beribboned, multiply sealed rolled parchment from his saddlebag and presented it to Count Hamnet with the best flourish a weary man could manage.
“Oh, joy,” Hamnet said as he took it.
“Happy day,” Ulric Skakki agreed.
The courier glanced from one of them to the other. “Does the honor of hearing from the Emperor-of having a letter in his own bright hand-not please you?”
“No,” Hamnet said shortly.
“Sorry, Anders-not your fault,” Ulric added. “But either he’s going to lie to us or he’s going to beg from us or he’s going to do both at once.” His voice elaborately casual, he went on, “So tell me-does the Empire still hold Nidaros?”
Per Anders flinched. “How the demon did you know it was lost?”
“Well, it wasn’t the last time a rider made it up here, but we sent that poor bugger off with a flea in his ear,” the adventurer answered. “It’s the logical place for the Rulers to aim at, and they’ve got wizards we mostly can’t match. So . . . Sigvat got away, did he? Where’s he holed up now?”
“Aarhus,” Anders said unwillingly. Count Hamnet whistled under his breath. Aarhus lay a long way south of Nidaros: four or five days’ travel. The small sound drew the courier’s attention back to him. “Aren’t you going to read that?”
“I don’t know. Am I?” Hamnet asked, not at all in jest. Per Anders winced. But Ulric was right-it wasn’t the horse man’s fault. He’d risked his life to obey Sigvat II, a man who, to Hamnet’s way of thinking, had long since proved he wasn’t worth obeying. Hamnet took a certain grim pleasure in tearing the ribbon and cracking the blobby red and green seals.
“Well? What sort of horse manure have we got here?” Ulric asked as Hamnet unrolled the parchment.
Hamnet didn’t answer, not right away. Anders was right: the letter was in the Emperor’s own hand, which made it much harder to read than if one of his secretaries had written it. Where were they now? Dead? Fled? How many poor bastards had the Rulers found in the dungeons under Sigvat’s palace? What did they do with them? Turn them loose? Broil them for supper? Hamnet didn’t think the Rulers were cannibals, but how could you be sure?
Sigvat II swore he’d lost Nidaros by treachery. Maybe it was even true. Count Hamnet couldn’t see that it mattered now one way or the other. The Emperor also swore he would get the capital back by himself, which Hamnet didn’t believe for a minute. Then he wrote, We all need to work together against these savage, barbarous foes. Hamnet Thyssen swore under his breath. Of all the things he hated, agreeing with his much-unloved sovereign stood close to the top of the list.
He wordlessly passed the letter to Ulric. “About what you’d expect,” the adventurer said after going through it faster than Hamnet had. “His toes are scorched, and he wants us to come pull him off the fire.”
“We’re already doing more than he knows about,” Hamnet said. “Not a lot of Rulers getting down to the Empire.”
“The ones already down there are bad enough,” Per Anders said. “More than bad enough. If you and the mammoth-herders here can come south to help us, Sigvat will be grateful.”
Both Hamnet Thyssen and Ulric Skakki burst out laughing. “Do you think we were whelped yesterday?” Ulric asked. “No Emperor’s ever grateful for longer than it takes him to pull up his pants again, and Sigvat’s worse than most.”
“Then you won’t come?” Anders sounded tragic. “God help Raumsdalia.”
“If God would help Raumsdalia, Sigvat wouldn’t need us,” Count Hamnet said. “We didn’t tell you we wouldn’t come. But if we do, we’ll do it for our reasons, not Sigvat’s.”
“What reasons have we got?” Ulric seemed genuinely curious.
“What we’ve got to decide is, do we hate Sigvat worse than the Rulers?” Hamnet replied. “I know what Trasamund and Marcovefa will say. So do you.”
Ulric Skakki grimaced. “Well, yes. They will say that. But they don’t know Sigvat the way we do.”
“No. They’re lucky,” Count Hamnet said.
That got a laugh from the adventurer and another wince from Per Anders. The poor courier seemed to do nothing but flinch, listening to the way Hamnet and Ulric roasted his sovereign-and theirs. “If you won’t do it for Sigvat’s sake, do it for the Empire’s,” he said. “Please. I beg you.” He actually dropped to his knees and held out his hands palms up, as if pleading for mercy from foes who’d beaten him.
“Get up, you donkey,” Hamnet said gruffly.
“Yes, do. This is embarrassing,” Ulric agreed.
“I have no pride. I have no shame,” Per said, staying on his knees. “Why should I be embarrassed? I am trying to serve Raumsdalia.”
“With stewed parsnips on the side, I have no doubt,” Ulric Skakki said. The courier looked blank for a moment, then sent him a reproachful stare. Ulric went on, “His Grace is right. Get up. You won’t just have one barbarian invasion on your hands-you’ll have two.”
“We can deal with Bizogots. We’ve always dealt with Bizogots,” Per Anders said.
“Don’t let Trasamund hear you talk like that, or you’ll be talking out of a new mouth in your neck,” Hamnet Thyssen warned. But Anders was right. The Bizogots were a nuisance to the Empire. The Rulers were a deadly danger to it-and to the Bizogots as well.
“You’ll come south, then?” Now Per did rise, and brushed mud from the knees of his trousers.
“I’m afraid we will.” Count Hamnet spoke without enthusiasm. “As you say, not for Sigvat-be damned to Sigvat-but for Raumsdalia.”
“Reasons don’t matter when you’re doing the right thing,” Anders said.
“Reasons always matter.” Hamnet sounded-and was-very sure of himself. Ulric Skakki looked as if he wanted to argue, but held his tongue.
Marcovefa proved willing to go down into the Empire again. Trasamund proved eager. Neither reaction surprised Hamnet Thyssen. “We’ll go! We’ll clean them out in the south, and then we’ll come back and clean them out here in the north, too,” Trasamund boomed. He drew his big sword and flourished it above his head. “By God, we’ll run them back beyond the Glacier!”
“No, we won’t,” Ulric said. “Don’t be a bigger idiot than you can help. Maybe, if we’re lucky enough, we can beat them down in the Empire. Don’t ask God for what he’s not about to give you.”
“Who are you, to say what God can and can’t do?” the jarl retorted. “Has he been talking to you?”
“He has,” Ulric said solemnly, and Trasamund’s eyes widened. The adventurer went on, “He told me, ‘Don’t listen to the big Bizogot with the bad temper, because he doesn’t know what the demon he’s talking about.’ ”
Trasamund snorted and made as if to cuff him. Hamnet had seen that Ulric could flip anybody who came at him, even if the attacker was much the bigger man. He didn’t bother now. He just ducked away.
Per Anders wanted everyone to jump on a horse and ride off on the instant. That didn’t happen; the courier must have known it wouldn’t. The Bizogots rode out the next day. Hamnet thought that was pretty good.
Ulric didn’t seem to. When Hamnet asked him why, he answered, “How much decent weather have we got left?”
; Hamnet grunted. When would the Breath of God start blowing down from the north? Summer up here-summer in Nidaros, for that matter-got cut cruelly short by the frigid wind off the Glacier. Some years, it got cut shorter than others. “Nothing we can do about it any which way except go on as long as we can,” Hamnet said.
“No doubt. No doubt.” By the way Ulric said it, he would have bundled up the Breath of God in a leather sack and stolen off with it if only he could. But some things were beyond even his formidable talents.
“I don’t know how much good we’ll do.” Hamnet looked at the small, makeshift army. Bizogots from half the clans on the steppe rode with Trasamund. Maybe they would follow the jarl’s orders, maybe not-which was true of any force of Bizogots ever put together. They might have counted for something in terms of surprise. In pure fighting terms, they weren’t worth much . . . save only Marcovefa.
She could do things no one else could even hope for against the Rulers. She could, yes-but would she? No way to know, not till she did or she didn’t. And if she didn’t, they were all ruined.
“We’ll find out,” Ulric said, which echoed Hamnet Thyssen’s thoughts much too closely for comfort.
VIII
Trees! Thank God!” Per Anders pointed toward the southern horizon. Sure enough, a dark smudge of evergreen forest showed up there. The Raumsdalian courier went on, “Up here in the Bizogot country, I keep thinking everything is too big, too wide. I might as well not be there at all-nobody would notice if I disappeared.”
“Well, I know what you mean,” Hamnet Thyssen said. “Too much landscape, no edges anywhere. And the sky is even bigger.”
“No edges anywhere,” Per repeated. “Yes, that’s about right. It was better when I got to those shabby little huts by the lake. Then, at least, I could tell where things started and stopped.”
“What do you mean, Anders? ‘Shabby little huts’?” Trasamund said ominously. “I tell you, there is nothing else like them in all the Bizogot country.” He’d complained that the Leaping Lynxes’ permanent dwellings made them seem like Raumsdalians. But, to a man from the Empire he didn’t know well, he naturally seemed proud of what his own folk had done.
“You’ve seen Nidaros, Your Ferocity.” Per Anders tried to stay polite without backing down. “Next to the palaces and mansions there, these, uh, houses aren’t impressive.”
“Yes, I’ve seen Nidaros,” Trasamund agreed. “So what? All those fancy palaces and mansions . . . the Rulers hold ’em now.”
Per bit his lip. That shot went home. And it moved Count Hamnet’s thoughts in a direction they hadn’t found before. “Tell me,” he said, as casually as he could, “do you happen to know whether Earl Eyvind Torfinn got out of Nidaros before the Rulers took the place?”
“I couldn’t say, Your Grace,” Anders answered. “I don’t think he was one of the band who broke free with the Emperor, though.”
“All right. Thanks,” Hamnet said. So maybe Eyvind got away and maybe he didn’t. But that wasn’t really what Hamnet was thinking. So maybe Gudrid got away and maybe she didn’t-that was more like it. Most of the time, you could count on Gudrid to land on her feet . . . or on her back, if that was what she needed to do. But in the chaos of a sack, who could say?
What if she was dead, knocked over the head or forced to serve a gang of men till they got tired of swiving her and cut her throat for one last thrill? I ought to laugh. It would serve her right, Hamnet thought. And part of him did feel like laughing-but not all, not all.
Looking around, he found Ulric Skakki gazing at him with ironic speculation. Did the adventurer know what was going through his mind? He wouldn’t have been surprised. Ulric knew more than was good for him about all kinds of things. Deliberately, Hamnet looked away. Ulric chuckled. No, he wasn’t easy to evade.
As they neared the firs and spruces, some of the Bizogots muttered among themselves. The forest was as strange and unwelcoming to them as the frozen steppe was to Raumsdalians. The mammoth-herders complained that they felt all closed in when trees surrounded them. Some Raumsdalians felt the same way, but not so many.
“Well, Thyssen? Shall we look for a border post or just plunge into the woods?” Trasamund asked.
“Better to look for a post, I think,” Hamnet said. “They have roads leading south from them.”
The jarl grunted. “All right. Makes sense.”
They found what was left of a border station, though it had been burned. White bones in the ruins said the guardsmen hadn’t got away. A road-or at least a track-did lead south from it. As the Bizogots rode in amongst the trees, they did more muttering. Dark, aromatic branches hid the sun and most of the sky. “It’s like riding inside a tent,” one of the big blond men said.
“Like riding inside mammoth guts,” another put in.
“Smells a good deal better,” Ulric said. That didn’t seem to encourage them.
“Watch out for short-faced bears,” Hamnet said. “They like to hide behind tree trunks and then jump out at whatever they think they can kill. Chances are they won’t bother a big band like ours, but you never can tell.” The Bizogots didn’t like hearing that. Up on the steppe, most of the time you could see danger coming from a long way off. That didn’t always mean you could get away from it, but you could see it. The mammoth-herders didn’t care for the idea that it might lurk behind trees.
Neither did Hamnet Thyssen. Short-faced bears weren’t the only danger, or the worst one. If the Rulers wanted to lay an ambush here, they could. Marcovefa likely had the best chance of sniffing one out. But she looked no more comfortable in the forest than most of the Bizogots did. She’d come down into the Empire once before, which didn’t mean she liked it here.
“What’s the first town down this road?” Hamnet asked Ulric. The adventurer might not have been everywhere, but he came close.
“It’s Lonsdal, isn’t it?” Ulric sounded uncertain, but only, Hamnet was sure, for politeness’ sake.
“Lonsdal. That’s right,” Hamnet said. “I’ve heard the name, but I don’t think I ever went through the place.”
“You didn’t miss much,” Ulric Skakki said. “It’s about what you’d expect up here: a hole in the ground with a stockade around it. If the Rulers have come through, I don’t suppose it’s the better for that.”
“Not many places are.” Count Hamnet thought of the Rulers plundering Earl Eyvind’s mansion down in Nidaros. He thought of them laughing drunkenly as they threw ancient codices into the fire one after another. He thought of them leering as they pulled Gudrid’s provocative gowns out of her closet. Would they throw those away? Would they put them on women of their own, or on Raumsdalian women staying alive by doing what they could for the new conquerors?
Or would Gudrid, wearing one of those gowns, somehow charm the invaders into leaving Eyvind Torfinn’s home intact? She wouldn’t do it for Eyvind’s sake; Hamnet was sure of that. But for her own? A different story altogether.
Could she bring it off? Hamnet only shrugged. He had no way to know. But it was possible, maybe just as possible as the mental picture of her corpse naked in a gutter, raped to death.
When they got to Lonsdal, they found the Rulers had been here before them. The stockade was down: not undermined, but blasted by some sorcery. Much of the town seemed to have burned. The stench of death lingered in the air, though the carrion birds had taken what they could.
Some people still lived here. They peered from the doorways of buildings that survived. “Good God! More barbarians!” somebody shouted in what sounded like despair.
“We’ll fight!” someone else yelled. An arrow arced through the air. It landed well short of the Raumsdalians and Bizogots, but served as a warning even so.
“You idiots! We’re not invading you! We’re here to fight the God-cursed Rulers,” Hamnet Thyssen bellowed.
“You always did know how to make friends,” Ulric Skakki said, much more quietly. Hamnet waved him to silence.
The locals went back and forth
with one another. At last, warily, one of them came out into the open and approached the newcomers. “You don’t talk like a damned foreigner,” the fellow said.
“I’m not,” Hamnet answered. “We’re at war with the people who did this to you. Have you got any food at all you can spare us?”
“Maybe a little,” the man said dubiously.
“Or maybe more than a little,” Trasamund rumbled. “Do you want to see what damned foreigners can do if you make them angry?”
“No,” the local said. “But we already had one set of robbers go through here. How much do you think they left us?”
And you’re another set of robbers. He didn’t say that. Trasamund didn’t catch it in his voice. Count Hamnet did. By the way one corner of Ulric’s mouth quirked up, so did he. And, by the way Marcovefa raised an eyebrow, so did she.
“Do what you can,” Hamnet said. “We came south off the Bizogot steppe to fight the Rulers. We can’t do it on empty bellies, though.”
“Oh, joy,” the local told him. “Well, if you whip ’em, don’t chase ’em back this way. Don’t reckon we could live through it if they came through Lonsdal one more time-or if you were right behind ’em again.”
The locals coughed up some bread and some flat rounds made from rye and oat flour and some smoked meat. Even more reluctantly, they produced a little beer. Hamnet would have bet they had more than they were showing. He couldn’t blame them too much for holding back, though. They had to go on living, too.
They didn’t invite any newcomers to use their houses or their beds. In fact, they made it plain the Bizogots and the Raumsdalians with them had better keep clear unless they wanted a fight. Hamnet worked hard to keep the mammoth-herders from losing their tempers. More often than not, Bizogots responded to a challenge with a fist in the teeth.
“We’ll post guards tonight around our own camp,” Trasamund declared, “the same as we would anywhere in enemy country.” He glared at Hamnet as if daring him to say they were anywhere else.
Hamnet didn’t. All he said was, “Sounds like a good idea to me.”
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