“Resentment isn’t the word, Your Splendor,” Hamnet Thyssen answered. “What I want to do is, I want to hunt him with hounds. Since I didn’t get the chance to do that, I wouldn’t have minded if the Rulers hunted him with mammoths. Which they did. The only trouble is, they haven’t caught him yet.”
More stiffly still, Eyvind said, “I fail to see why you continue to prosecute this war against the invaders, then.”
“For Raumsdalia. Not for Sigvat. For Raumsdalia,” Hamnet said. “There’s a difference, whether you can see it or not.”
“And what would Raumsdalia be without Sigvat?” Eyvind asked coldly.
“Better off, by God!” Count Hamnet said. “Better off!” Ulric Skakki whooped and clapped his hands.
Early Eyvind looked from one of them to the other as if he’d just discovered them in his apple. “Let me rephrase that. What would the Empire of Raumsdalia be without its Emperor?”
“Oh, the Empire needs an Emperor, no doubt about it,” Hamnet said. “But it needs Sigvat the way a man with a bloody flux needs a purge.” He set Ulric laughing and clapping again.
Eyvind Torfinn looked pained. “He is doing the best job he can.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Hamnet said. Not only Ulric but Trasamund laughed then. Even Runolf Skallagrim smiled.
“If the times ever settle down, His Majesty will not thank you for the way you speak of him,” Eyvind said.
“When he did thank me, I wound up in his God-cursed dungeons,” Hamnet exclaimed. “I don’t want his thanks. If he leaves me alone, I’ll thank him.”
“Don’t hold your breath, Your Grace,” Ulric said. He rounded on Earl Eyvind. “And if the times ever do settle down, Your Splendor, you’ll know whom to thank, won’t you? Not Sigvat! He got Raumsdalia into this mess because he didn’t want to listen to Count Hamnet or to me or to Trasamund or to anybody else who actually had some notion of what was going on. And I hope you recall who rescued you from the Rulers. That wasn’t the Emperor, either. That was Hamnet here.”
“I am not ungrateful.” Eyvind’s words couldn’t have had sharper edges if he’d chipped them out of ice. “Nevertheless, he is not the rightful sovereign of this realm. Sigvat is.”
“And if that’s not a judgment on Raumsdalia, bugger me with a mammoth tusk if I know what would be,” Trasamund said.
Earl Eyvind threw up his hands. “This discussion is pointless,” he said, and walked away.
“He means we don’t think he’s right,” Trasamund said. “He’s not used to anybody who doesn’t.”
“I’ll tell you something,” Ulric said. “Hamnet here would bloody well make a better Emperor than Sigvat. Even a blind man can see that.”
“I should hope so!” Trasamund said. “A blind man? Even a blind musk ox could see that!”
Hamnet started to laugh. Then he saw Runolf nodding, too, and realized it was no laughing matter. If Runolf could nod at the idea of replacing Sigvat, plenty of other people would do the same thing. He had to nip it in the bud if he was going to nip it at all. “I don’t want to be Emperor,” he said.
“But Raumsdalia needs you.” Yes, that was Runolf Skallagrim.
“Raumsdalia needs somebody who isn’t Sigvat. Raumsdalia needs almost anybody who isn’t Sigvat. But Raumsdalia doesn’t need me,” Hamnet said. “I won’t sit on that throne, no matter what.”
“If we proclaim you, everyone will accept you,” Ulric said. “Sigvat’s made his name stink like a dead ground sloth.”
“I will not sit on that throne,” Hamnet repeated.
“You may not have a choice,” Baron Runolf said. “We wouldn’t do it for your sake. We’d do it for Raumsdalia.”
“No.” Hamnet Thyssen drew his sword. The blade had some nicks and some rust; he needed to hone it. But the point was still sharp, which was all that mattered now. “If you try to name me Emperor, I’ll fall on this thing. You know me. Every one of you knows me. Am I lying? If you want to get rid of me, keep on in the direction you’re already riding.”
Ulric and Runolf and Trasamund eyed him. They eyed the sword. They eyed one another. Runolf Skallagrim let out a long sigh. “I think he means it.”
“I know bloody well he means it.” Ulric Skakki sounded disgusted. He scowled at Count Hamnet. “You’re stubborn when it does you good, and you’re stubborn even when it doesn’t. You might as well be a mountain sheep, the way you always want to butt heads.”
“Your servant, sir.” Hamnet bowed, as Ulric often did. He didn’t let go of the sword.
“If you were my servant, maybe you’d listen to me once in a while.” Ulric flicked a finger toward the blade. “Put that silly thing away. We won’t make you ventilate your liver, no matter how tempting it is.”
“If he won’t do it, one of you other Raumsdalians ought to,” Trasamund said. “How about you, Skakki? You’re sneaky enough and to spare.”
“You are joking, my dear fellow-aren’t you?” Ulric said in convincing amazement. “A cabbage has as much noble blood as I do: which is to say, not a drop.”
“So what? If you don’t tell people, who’ll know?” Trasamund said.
“Most of the time, you would be right,” Ulric said. “But you’d be wrong often enough to fill Raumsdalia full of civil wars. All the real nobles would look down their noses at me.”
“I wouldn’t, by God,” Hamnet said. “If you can do the job, you’re welcome to it, far as I’m concerned. You couldn’t be worse than Sigvat.”
“There. You see?” Trasamund said triumphantly. “Hurrah for Ulric I!”
“Oh, shut up, you blond fool!” Ulric said. “I see Runolf here looking like grim death, is what I see. And Runolf is more your usual kind of noble than Hamnet is.”
“I would want an Emperor of noble blood,” Runolf Skallagrim said slowly. “What’s the point to noble blood, if not to show who deserves to rule?”
“Well, then, why don’t you take the crown?” Ulric said. “You’re a baron, so you’re fit enough. And you’re not Sigvat, which gives you a leg up all by itself. You wouldn’t need to worry that you’re stealing the throne from me, because I don’t want it any more than Thyssen does.”
“Me? Emperor of Raumsdalia. Me?” Runolf sounded flabbergasted. Then he started to laugh. “That’s the funniest thing I’ve heard in I don’t know when. Ever, I bet!” He laughed some more.
“Maybe Eyvind Torfinn would take it on,” Trasamund said.
Hamnet started to say something about that, but swallowed it. He had nothing in particular against the idea of Emperor Eyvind. The idea of Empress Gudrid? If she were Empress, how long would he last? As long as he could outrun her henchmen, he guessed, and not a heartbeat longer.
But his comrades already knew as much. What point to beating them over the head with it? If Gudrid’s word became law, Ulric was another man with a fine future behind him.
“Well . . .” Trasamund said, and then, “Maybe not.”
“I do believe that’s one of the smarter things you’ve ever come out with,” Ulric said. “I wouldn’t have thought you had it in you.”
Trasamund said something pungent. Ulric grinned and nodded, which spoiled it for the jarl-as Ulric no doubt intended.
“Hrmph,” Trasamund said. “All I want to tell you is, this Empire can’t be anything much if none of you bastards wants to take charge of it.”
Nobody argued with him there, either. That also seemed to disconcert him.
Snow. Sleet. Cold rain. Snow again, more and more of it. Yes, the Breath of God was blowing. Hamnet Thyssen thought longingly of Raumsdalia’s far southwest, where thing like this didn’t happen. Of course, the far southwest had Manche raiders and poisonous serpents and scorpions, to say nothing of earthquakes that could flatten towns in the blink of an eye.
Count Hamnet thought of serpents again when Gudrid came up to him and said, “I need to talk with you.”
“So what?” He turned away. “I don’t need to talk with you.”
&
nbsp; “Oh, yes, you do.” She sounded very sure of herself. But then, when didn’t she?
He didn’t care. “I don’t need to listen to you, either,” he said, and walked away.
She came after him. She set a hand on his arm to slow him down. Angrily, he shook her off; the last thing he wanted to feel was her touch. “You are going to hear me,” she said, expecting as usual to get her way.
“I should have left you for the Rulers,” he said harshly. “You could try telling them what to do, and see how they like it.”
“Don’t be more stupid than you can help,” Gudrid said with a shudder.
“I’ve already done that,” Hamnet answered. “You cured me of it-I hope.”
“Will you please listen to me?”
When was the last time she’d said please to him? He couldn’t remember. It had been years; he was sure of that. He shook his head anyhow. “If you’ve got anything that needs saying, you can tell it to Ulric or Trasamund. And you can leave me the demon alone.”
“Don’t you care about Raumsdalia?”
“Yes, and I know you don’t. All you care about is you-and sticking pins in me so you can watch me jerk and twist and bleed. Well, find somebody else, because I don’t want to play any more.”
“You fool! You could be Emperor!”
He stared at her. Then he laughed in her face, which made her stare at him. “Are you out of your mind? I don’t want the bloody job. I wouldn’t take it on a golden platter. I’ve been saying so to everyone who wanted to listen. I suppose that lets you out, but I mean every word of it.”
“You could be Emperor,” Gudrid repeated, as if he hadn’t spoken. “How can anybody not want to be Emperor?”
“Believe me, it’s easy,” Hamnet answered. “I don’t want to, I won’t, and nobody can make me. Not you, not Trasamund, not Ulric-nobody.”
“Not Marcovefa, either?” Gudrid’s voice was sly.
But Hamnet shook his head. “Not Marcovefa, either. She has the sense to believe me when I say something like that-unlike some people I could name.”
She ignored his sarcasm. He might have known she would. She always did. “Think what you could do if you were Emperor,” she said. “Everyone would have to do what you told him to do, or else he’d pay for it.”
The look he gave her made the Breath of God seem warm by comparison. “I could send you to the dungeon. I could take your head and nail it to the north gate to warn other people not to be like you.”
“Don’t be silly. You wouldn’t do that.” She might have been talking to a foolish little boy. Before he could tell her that he would, she went on, “If you really wanted me dead, you would have killed me yourself a long time ago. You had your chances. Nobody would have said anything much, not then.”
Hamnet Thyssen bit down on that like a man unexpectedly biting down on a cherrystone. Why hadn’t he killed her when he found out she was unfaithful, not just once but again and again? “I loved you, fool that I was,” he growled.
Now Gudrid laughed at him. “You just wanted somebody around who could make you feel bad. You made a mess of things with Liv the same way, and you’ll do the same thing with Marcovefa. You can’t be happy unless you’re unhappy.”
“What sort of nonsense is that?” Hamnet said. But, like what she’d come out with a moment earlier, it sounded much less nonsensical than he wished it did.
She laughed again, knowingly this time. “You can tell it isn’t nonsense. If you weren’t such a fool, you would have figured it out for yourself long since.”
Did she want him to hit her? Would she get perverse pleasure of her own from seeing what she could goad him into? He breathed out hard through his nose. “Say whatever you please. You will anyhow. But I can prove you’re wrong.”
“How?” Her chin lifted defiantly.
He took a certain sour pleasure in noting how the flesh under her jawbone had started to sag. She wasn’t-quite-immune to time. “Except for being married to you again, nothing would make me unhappier than being Emperor,” he said. “And I still don’t want to do it. So much for your fancy talk.”
“Think of all the women you could have, just with the wave of a hand,” Gudrid said.
“Screwing is one thing. Caring is another-not that you know anything about that,” Hamnet said.
“Not that you know anything about either one,” Gudrid retorted.
Hamnet didn’t hit her then, either, though his hands balled into fists. He turned and walked away once more. When she started to come after him again, he walked faster. Pretty soon, he left her behind. He stood out in the middle of a trampled field, wondering how much good that did him.
Inside the Empire, warfare slowed down during the winter. Food and fodder were hard to come by. That didn’t always stop the Bizogots, who could get by with less than Raumsdalians could. And it didn’t stop the Rulers, either. The country they sprang from was no richer than the Bizogot steppe.
They kept striking at Count Hamnet’s band, sometimes with warriors, sometimes with wizards, sometimes with both. They didn’t try to wipe out all the Bizogots and Raumsdalians in arms against them-they’d learned the hard way that that didn’t work, not when Marcovefa was involved. But their nuisance raids went on.
He posted a couple of Bizogots out in a temptingly open position, and put himself and Marcovefa and half a troop of Raumsdalian archers and lancers in a forest not far away. Marcovefa cast a light masking spell to try to make sure the Rulers wouldn’t notice the ambush.
“What if their shaman spots the spell?” Hamnet asked her.
“I don’t think he can. But if he does, those Bizogots out there”-she pointed toward the exposed men-“are lucky, because the Rulers go and bother us somewhere else.”
He didn’t want the invaders to do that, but held his peace. If Marcovefa didn’t think an enemy sorcerer could detect her magic, she was likely right. If she turned out to be wrong, Hamnet would try something else, that was all.
He’d guessed right or baited his trap the right way. Inside of a couple of hours, a dozen or so Rulers came out of the bare-branched woods to the south. The Bizogots out in the open played dumb a little longer than they would have if they were nothing but ordinary pickets, but only a little. They weren’t out there to throw their lives away, but to get the Rulers to do that instead.
When they couldn’t ignore the men bearing down on them any more, they turned their horses and trotted off in Hamnet’s direction. One of the Rulers pointed at them. The horses slowed, then stopped.
“Baby magic,” Marcovefa said scornfully. “A pika could do this.”
“You can break the spell, then?” Hamnet asked.
“Oh, yes. But not yet. No point yet,” Marcovefa said. “Let them get closer.”
Up came the Rulers on their riding deer. They soon could have shot the Bizogots out of the saddle, but they didn’t. Chances were they wanted to have fun with them. Because of their own horror of being captured, they often amused themselves by tormenting prisoners.
The Bizogots should have dismounted and run when their horses faltered. They just sat there instead. The spell must have seized them, too. It didn’t seem like baby magic to Hamnet Thyssen, but Marcovefa had different standards.
Her face wore a foxy look of intense concentration. Hamnet peered out toward the Rulers. They were in easy archery range, close enough for him to see their grins. One of them nodded toward the two Bizogots. They all laughed. The laughs sounded nasty to Hamnet. Maybe that was his imagination. Maybe not, too.
They seemed to have no idea his troop was anywhere nearby. Marcovefa’s masking spell was working, anyhow.
When things happened, they happened all at once. One instant, the Rulers’ wizard was laughing and joking with his friends. The next, his riding deer’s antlers caught fire. Hamnet heard his startled squawk and the animal’s screech of pain.
At the same time, the magic holding the Bizogots and their horses dissolved. They galloped for the cover of the woods.
“Loose!” Hamnet called. His men’s bowstrings thrummed. Several ordinary Rulers tumbled off their riding deer. The ones who didn’t fall turned and raced south as fast as their mounts would go. “Charge!” Hamnet bellowed at the top of his lungs.
Horses were faster than riding deer-not much, but enough. None of the Rulers made it into the trees from which they’d emerged. Some went down fighting. Others, seeing themselves about to be captured, cut their own throats or plunged daggers into their chests.
Their wizard had somehow suppressed the flames that sprang from his riding deer’s antlers. Like a short-faced bear at bay, he turned to face Marcovefa and the Raumsdalians with her. He yammered something in his unintelligible language.
Marcovefa only laughed. That seemed to infuriate him more than anything else she might have done. Instead of aiming a spell at her, he drew his sword and charged. The riding deer obeyed him as if it were unhurt. That impressed Hamnet more than he wanted to admit.
It did the wizard no good at all. Bows twanged. His magic turned a few arrows, but it couldn’t turn them all-not when Marcovefa worked against him, it couldn’t. He and the riding deer went down together. Their blood steamed in the snow.
“Too bad, in a way,” Hamnet said. “We might have got some interesting answers if we’d been able to question him.”
“He’s dead. That is interesting enough,” Marcovefa said. “They are all dead. Let the Rulers worry about them. Let the Rulers try to guess what happened to them. Yes, let the Rulers worry.”
Count Hamnet might have liked it better had one enemy warrior got away to tell his friends exactly what had happened. Then, he could hope, they would stop trying to pick off sentries. But leaving them in the dark about their fellows’ fate wasn’t the worst thing in the world, either.
“Look!” A lancer pointed up into the sky. “The ravens are already circling, waiting for us to leave.”
“And the vultures,” Hamnet said, and then he spotted a truly enormous bird high in the air. “And a teratorn.”
“Cursed scavengers,” the trooper said. “Don’t want them gnawing my bones when I’m gone.”
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