“We should be able to beat them. We’d better be able to.” Liv’s shiver had nothing to do with the Breath of God; it could have come at high summer. “If we can’t, what’s to stop them from stomping us underfoot like a mammoth stepping on a vole? Or if they don’t do that, what’s to keep them from driving us back through the trees and up onto the Bizogot steppe again?”
Nothing, Hamnet thought.Not a single, solitary thing. But he didn’t want to make Liv feel worse than she did already, so he said, “Why does that worry you? It’s your homeland, after all.”
“But it’s so much poorer than Raumsdalia. I didn’t understand that before I came down here, but I do now.” Liv had never been one to hide from unpleasant or inconvenient truths. “If the Rulers hold the Empire, they can come after us up on the steppe any time they choose-especially since more and more of them keep riding down through the Gap. They can squeeze us from north and south-squeeze us till there’s nothing left.” The shadows under her proud cheekbones might have been shadows of fear-or maybe Hamnet’s imagination, usually no more energetic than it had to be, was for once running away with him.
“I hope things don’t work out that way,” he said.
“So do I,” Liv answered. “But, however wonderful I think hope is, keeping it gets hard.” She looked at him. Was she . . . hoping he would tell her she was wrong? If she was, he had to disappoint her.Again, he thought bitterly.
What’s to keep the Rulers from stomping us underfoot? What’s to keep them from driving us back through the trees and out onto the Bizogot steppe? As winter went on, Count Hamnet remembered Liv’s questions again and again. He also remembered the response that had formed in his mind when he heard them. Nothing.
Liv turned out to know which questions to ask. And Hamnet turned out to know the answer.
He counted staying alive a victory. He counted every time his ragtag force managed to sting the Rulers another. Retreats, on the other hand . . .
Ulric Skakki joked about them: “This country looked a lot better from north to south than it does from south to north.”
Hamnet didn’t laugh, which seemed to irk the adventurer. Hamnet also didn’t much care whether Ulric was irked or not. By then, they were north of Nidaros again. They hadn’t passed right by the capital. That distressed Eyvind Torfinn and, even more loudly, Gudrid. To Hamnet, it didn’t matter one way or the other.
Marcovefa drank. She ate. She sometimes smiled, though she hardly ever opened her eyes. She gave no sign of coming fully to herself. Without her, the Raumsdalians and Bizogots did what they could against the Rulers. What they could do wasn’t enough, or even close.
The Rulers’ confidence swelled with every new triumph, too. They regained the arrogance they’d shown before Marcovefa taught them they didn’t know everything there was to know. And when you rode to a fight expecting to win, you were more likely to do just that.
When you rode to a fight expecting something to go wrong . . . Raumsdalians began slipping away from the army. Maybe they thought they could do better for themselves by giving up the fight and grubbing out a living under the Rulers. Maybe they were right, too.
“We Bizogots don’t quit, by God!” Trasamund told Runolf Skallagrim one cold evening. “Your folk shouldn’t, either.”
“You’re right. They shouldn’t,” Baron Runolf agreed politely. “I don’t know what to do about it, though.”
“Kill anybody who wants to run away.” The jarl was nothing if not direct.
“If we catch them trying to sneak off, we do kill them,” Runolf said. “The trouble is, we don’t catch many.”
“You need to try harder,” Trasamund said.
“We need to do all kinds of things,” Runolf Skallagrim replied. “We need to beat the Rulers again, for instance. If we do that, people will think our chances are better, so they won’t want to run out on us. We can hope they won’t, anyway.” He eyed Count Hamnet. “How do we go about that, Thyssen?”
“I wish I knew,” Hamnet answered bleakly.
“Marcovefa has to wake up,” Trasamund said.
“Well, how do we make that happen?” Runolf asked.
Even more bleakly, Hamnet shrugged. “I wish I knew. Our wizards have tried. I’ve watched them do it. The only trouble is, they’ve had no luck. It’s in God’s hands now, I think.”
“And God’s done nothing but drop things since he let the Glacier melt through so these stinking Rulers could plague us.” Trasamund sounded bleak himself.
Runolf sent him a measuring look, too. “The way you say that, you’ll be the next one to try and run from trouble.”
“No.” Trasamund didn’t even bother to shake his head. “I’m in this till the end. With the Rulers swarming down the way they do, I have nothing to go back to. They hold my clan’s grazing grounds. The few free Three Tusk Bizogots are all here with me. We’re not a big clan any more, but we’re tough.”
“If you’ve got nothing to go back to, you may as well fight,” Hamnet Thyssen said. “The ones who think they can slip away and go back to being peasants with the Rulers taxing them in place of the Empire-”
“They’re all Raumsdalians,” Trasamund broke in.
“That’s not what I was going to say,” Hamnet told him.
“Doesn’t make it any less true,” the Bizogot replied.
“Those are the ones we have to worry about.” Count Hamnet stubbornly finished his own thought.
“But if they desert, what kind of fight can we put up?” Trasamund said.
“We came down here with an army that was mostly Bizogots,” Hamnet said. “We can go on that way if we have to.” We can get driven out of the Empire that way, he thought, but didn’t speak words of ill omen aloud.
Trasamund did it for him: “We came down here with an army that had Marcovefa in it, too. Without her, we’re buggered, is what we are.”
“Well, in that case why do you blame the Raumsdalian soldiers for leaving the fight when they see the chance?” Runolf Skallagrim asked. “They figure they won’t make any difference one way or the other, and it looks to me like they’ve got something.”
“They may not help us lose if they desert,” Hamnet said. “Sure as sure, they won’t help us win.”
“And I’ll tell you what they’ve got,” Trasamund added. “They’ve got yellow bellies, that’s what.”
Runolf scowled at him. The Raumsdalian veteran’s hand began to slide toward the hilt of his sword. “Enough, both of you,” Count Hamnet said wearily. “Too much. We’re all doing the best we can. If we fight amongst ourselves, we only help the Rulers.”
“If they don’t fight, they help the Rulers, too.” Trasamund didn’t want to let it drop.
“Enough, I said.” Hamnet got between the Bizogot and Baron Runolf. “Fight me first, if you have to fight somebody.”
“No, that wouldn’t be a good idea, either.” Ulric Skakki’s voice came from the gloom beyond the firelight. Turning toward it, Hamnet saw that he had a nocked arrow in his bow. “Hamnet has it straight. We’re supposed to fight the enemy, not ourselves.”
“But we can’t fight the Rulers, either,” Runolf said. “That’s why men are slipping off.”
“Yes, we can,” Ulric said. “We can’t do it right now, that’s all. There’s a difference. If your men have too many potatoes in the head to see it, you’ve got to keep banging at ’em till they do.”
“You make it sound easy,” Runolf Skallagrim said.
The adventurer grinned at him, there in the gloom. “It is easy . . . to sound that way. But we aren’t whipped yet . . . quite.”
XVII
Hamnet Thyssen stared glumly at the snow-covered trees. Fires burned in a clearing in the woods. But for Audun Gilli’s small spell to get them started, the men and the handful of women who still remained with him might have had to do without.
Chunks of meat from a short-faced bear toasted over the fires. The bear was a fierce hunter, but no match for hungry men. Hamnet liked bear meat
well enough. He wished he didn’t have to eat it now, though. He wished he were closer to Raumsdalia’s heart, close enough to go on eating beef and mutton.
He glanced toward Marcovefa. She still hadn’t come back to herself. He had no idea when-or if-she would. Audun and Liv had done everything they knew how to do. It wasn’t enough. She ate and drank if you put food or water in her mouth. Sometimes she smiled or frowned in her sleep. That was as close as she came to real life. But without her, all of Hamnet’s wishes were in vain.
He couldn’t help thinking she would have laughed and solved the mistletoe spell in a heartbeat-had the arrow struck someone else. That reflection did him no good at all, nor her, either. She didn’t seem to be getting any worse. With such small encouragements Hamnet had to console himself.
None of the short-faced bear went to waste. The Raumsdalians might not have thought to roast the chitterlings, but the Bizogots did. When the Bizogots lit on a carcass, they left nothing but bare bones behind-and they’d split those for the marrow inside. Up on the frozen steppe, everything had a use. It had to have one, because the steppe held so little.
That also held true for the forest, as Count Hamnet knew too well. Towns in these parts had survived because they got grain from farther south. With the Rulers loose in the Empire, the towns wouldn’t get any this winter. How many people would starve before spring?
One worry led to another. Hamnet walked over to Ulric Skakki, who was doing his own rough cooking. “How long can we last in the woods?” Hamnet asked without preamble.
“Why, till we starve, of course,” Ulric answered lightly. He took his gobbet out of the flames and blew on it. When he tried to take a bite, he grimaced. “Still too cursed hot. Well, it won’t be for long, God knows, not in this weather.”
“Can we keep going here till spring?” Hamnet persisted. “Or would we do better to head back up onto the steppe?”
Ulric didn’t answer right away; the meat had cooled enough to let him eat it. After a heroic bite and swallow, he said, “We’d have plenty up there in the springtime-that’s for sure. All those waterfowl coming to nest . . .”
“Yes.” Hamnet Thyssen nodded. That endless profusion of ducks and geese and swans . . . “The question is, how do we keep from starving in the meantime?”
Ulric took another bite. In due course, he said, “Eating something is a pretty good plan.”
“You’re being annoying on purpose,” Hamnet said.
“You noticed!” The adventurer made as if to kiss him.
“Enough foolishness. Too much foolishness,” Hamnet growled. Ulric Skakki looked at him as if he’d just said something very foolish. Ignoring that, Hamnet stubbornly pushed ahead: “The foraging isn’t good here. You know it as well as I do, maybe better.”
“It isn’t good anywhere during the winter,” Ulric pointed out, which was nothing less than the truth. “This is the hard time of year. Lots of people go hungry before the snow melts.”
“Do you think the Rulers are hungry?” Hamnet asked.
“I hope so,” Ulric said, which was something less than a yes.
“What are we going to do?” Hamnet asked: a question better aimed at God, perhaps, than at Ulric Skakki.
“Fight. Give up. Do whatever you please. Me, I’m going to make sure I don’t go hungry, at least for a while.” The adventurer took another large bite of bear meat. Thus encouraged, Hamnet Thyssen went away.
Runolf Skallagrim crouched in the snow in front of another fire, talking with Eyvind Torfinn. Hamnet supposed he was glad Eyvind had stuck with them; the earl knew a lot that might prove useful. The only drawback to having him along was having Gudrid along with him.
She was also eating a chunk of bear. Grease ran down her chin. Count Hamnet turned away before their eyes could meet. If he talked to her, they would only have another row. He didn’t feel like it right this minute. He didn’t feel like much of anything, except maybe lying down in a snowdrift and not getting up again.
Trasamund methodically stropped his sword blade. The jarl looked like a man who expected more fighting and aimed to do the best he could with it. He nodded to Hamnet Thyssen. Crouching beside him, Hamnet nodded back. He might quarrel with Trasamund, but it wouldn’t be the soul-scarring kind of slanging match he’d have with Gudrid.
“Did you think, when we met in the Emperor’s palace, it would come to this?” he asked the Bizogot.
“Not me, by God!” Trasamund hardly looked up from his careful stropping. “I never dreamt there were folk who could beat the Bizogots.” Fog spurted from his nostrils as he snorted. “Shows what I know, eh?”
“Shows what we all knew,” Hamnet answered. “Do you still think we can win?”
“If Marcovefa comes back to herself, we’ve got a good chance-a decent chance, anyway. Otherwise . . .” Trasamund shrugged. “Well, who knows?” He left off stropping, tested the edge with his thumb, and grunted in satisfaction. Then he glanced over to Hamnet. “Have you tried horning her awake?”
“No.” Hamnet’s mouth twisted in distaste. “It would be like lying with a corpse.”
“You wouldn’t be doing it for fun,” Trasamund said deliberately. “You’d be doing it because it might work.”
“If I thought it would, that’d be different,” Hamnet said. “But I haven’t go any reason to think so-and neither do you.”
“Something’s got to,” the jarl said.
“If magic doesn’t, screwing’s not likely to.” Hamnet almost wished he’d picked a fight with Gudrid. “And magic cursed well doesn’t-our magic, anyway.”
“I know. That’s why I think we should try something else,” Trasamund said.
“She wouldn’t even know it was going on.” Hamnet scowled at the Bizogot. “I’ve never been one to enjoy laying women who were too drunk even to know I was there.”
“It wouldn’t be sport,” Trasamund insisted.
Hamnet Thyssen got to his feet. “Too right it wouldn’t.” He strode away before Trasamund could say anything more.
Maybe Trasamund would have taken up the argument again the next morning. He never got the chance, though, because the Rulers struck at the Raumsdalians and Bizogots at first light, riding out of a snowstorm and sending clouds of arrows ahead of them as they came. One sentry came out of the swirling snow a couple of minutes before the invaders from beyond the Gap struck the main encampment. How he escaped ambush-or perhaps the Rulers’ sorcery-Hamnet never found out. He never would, either, because the man died in the fighting that followed. But if the sentry hadn’t brought at least a little warning, the Rulers would have stormed in by surprise, and that would have ended that.
As things were, a countervolley greeted the attackers. It tumbled several of them off their riding deer and slowed the charge from the rest. That let some of the men Hamnet led jump on their horses and storm forward. And it bought enough time for the rest to retreat.
Instead of getting caught in their clearing, the Bizogots and Raumsdalians could shoot from the cover of the trees. More Rulers and riding deer went down. For a while, Hamnet hoped the enemy had bitten off more than he could chew.
But then more Rulers struck the defenders from the east. Hamnet realized that they’d planned a two-pronged assault, but the prongs hadn’t come together at quite the right moment. Struck from the front and the flank now, he found himself in a poor position to criticize the foe for faulty generalship.
“What are we going to do?” Runolf Skallagrim howled.
“Fight as much as we have to, then try to get away,” Hamnet answered. “If you’ve got a better notion, I’d love to hear it.”
“I was hoping you did,” Runolf said.
Had the attack gone the way the Rulers doubtless drew it up before they launched it, it would have finished things even without surprise. Again, something must have gone wrong somewhere. Hardly anything in war ever worked just the way you planned it. Hamnet had learned that the hard way many years earlier. Now he reaped the benefits of it, suc
h as they were.
Survival. Considering the alternative, he wasn’t sorry to take it, even if he would have wanted more. “Why weren’t you ready for this?” Gudrid screamed at him. “They might kill me!”
“Wouldn’t that be a shame?” Hamnet nocked an arrow and shot at a shape he saw dimly through blowing snow. Harsh, guttural curses said he’d hit someone. They also said he hadn’t killed his man. He wished he would have.
“Why weren’t you ready?” Gudrid asked again.
“If you’re so unhappy, go back to where we rescued you from the Rulers,” Hamnet said. “I’m sure they’d take you again.”
“Oh!” She spat at him, but it fell short in the snow. “You are the most hateful man in the world!”
“Now maybe you understand why I always thought we were so well matched,” Count Hamnet returned. Gudrid said something that should have steamed all the snow for miles around. Hamnet bowed, which only made her come back with something hotter yet.
He paid less attention to her than she no doubt wanted him to. Another Ruler on a riding deer came out of the swirling snow. Hamnet’s arrow caught the deer in the neck. Blood fountained, all the redder for being displayed against the white. The deer went down. So did the warrior atop it.
Hamnet Thyssen urged his horse forward, drawing his sword. The Ruler was still scrambling to his feet when Hamnet’s cut caught him just below and in front of the left ear. He let out a bubbling shriek and clutched at the spouting wound. Hamnet slashed again. The Ruler fell, scrabbling in the snow. He tried to push himself upright once more, but crumpled instead.
Satisfied he was out of the fight, Count Hamnet rode back and nocked another arrow. He was glad the bow hadn’t fallen in the snow in his charge.
Runolf Skallagrim was bleeding from a nicked ear. Like scalp wounds, ears bled so much that anything that happened to them seemed much worse than it really was. Runolf might not even have noticed how much blood spattered his mailshirt. “We’ve got to pull back, Thyssen!” he said. “We’re for it if we stand and fight much longer!”
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