Breath of God

XXI

Hammnet Thyssen and what was left of his army made it out of the woods again. The one and only piece of good news he took from the lost battle was that the Rulers didn’t press their pursuit. Maybe that showed how close they’d come to losing. If it did .. . well, so what? They hadn’t lost.

And when would the Empire get out of the woods? Not soon, Count Hamnet feared. He’d had his chance to stop the barbarians, had it and failed with it. Now Raumsdalia lay open to invasion once more. He wouldn’t get this army to fight again, not the way it had.

He looked around to see who’d lived through the battle. He didn’t see Endil Gris, or Kormak Bersi, either. Where was Marcomer, the Leaping Lynx Bizogot?

Liv was here. She had a bandage on her forehead. A sword slash, someone had told Hamnet. Even though she wasn’t his anymore, he didn’t like to think of that stern beauty marred. Maybe Audun Gilli knew a spell to hide scars or defeat them altogether. Hamnet could hope so, anyhow.

Trasamund was telling anyone who would listen about the slaughter he’d wreaked on the Rulers. All the slaughter in the world, though, wouldn’t give him back his clan. He had to know that. Maybe the tale kept him from brooding about it… so much.

Silent as a snowflake, Ulric Skakki appeared behind Hamnet. The adventurer had a cut on his right arm, and one on his right cheek. He spoke out of the left side of his mouth: “She’s awake.”

“By God!” Count Hamnet said. “That’s the first thing that’s gone right in awhile. How is she?”

“She asked the same thing about you,” Ulric answered. “She wanted to come see you, but she’s still too wobbly on her pins.”

“I’ll go to her.” Hamnet hurried away.

Marcovefa sat on a wounded horse that had foundered and died. They’d laid her on the animal when they stopped here, to keep her out of the snow and in the hope that what was left of its warmth would help her. Maybe it had. Hamnet wasn’t sure about anything anymore – except that he was glad to see her with reason in her eyes.

“How are you?” He and she asked the same question at the same time. They both smiled. If his smile was as shaky as hers … he wouldn’t have been a bit surprised.

“My head hurts.” Marcovefa touched her temple very lightly, then jerked her hand away.

“I believe it,” Hamnet Thyssen said. “A slingstone got you. I told you to move farther back from the fighting.”

To his amazement, her smile got wider. “So you people say, ‘I told you so,’ too? Not just us on top of the Glacier?”

“We say it,” Hamnet answered. “Sometimes we have reason to say it.”

“Well, yes.” She waved that aside as casually as if they’d been married for years. “What happened after I got hurt?”

“They threw magic at us. They threw fear at us. We lost,” Hamnet said. “Why do you think we’re down here? Without you … we lost. Without you …” He wondered how to go on. “Without you, it wouldn’t have mattered so much if we won.”

“I like you, too, but fight is more important now,” Marcovefa said. Count Hamnet bit his lip, but he couldn’t even tell her she was wrong. She looked around. “Can we fight more?”

“No,” Hamnet said bluntly. “Even with your magic, I don’t think we could make the men stand and fight again soon. The stone knocked you out. You didn’t feel the fear the Rulers threw at us.”

“I felt it. I held it off,” she said. What that would have been like hadn’t occurred to Hamnet Thyssen. Maybe he was lucky. Marcovefa shook her head very, very carefully. “Don’t think I can do it again now. Head hurts too much. All scrambled up in there.”

“I believe it. You almost got scrambled for good,” Hamnet said. “This much over” – he held his hands maybe three digits apart – ”and the stone doesn’t hit you sideways.”

“I know.” Marcovefa looked unhappy. “I fight the magic to a standstill, and a stupid rock does for me. Not seem fair.” Count Hamnet wouldn’t have argued. Where was God while all this was going on? Probably on holiday at the Golden Shrine – there was no sign of him here. Marcovefa went on, “What do we do now, then?”

“Well, I suppose I have to send messengers back to Nidaros and let Sigvat know we lost.” Hamnet sighed. “I’m really looking forward to that.”

“You did everything you could. We all did everything we could,” Marcovefa said. “We lost. It happens. Happens up on top of the Glacier, too.”

“When the Emperor sends someone he doesn’t like out to do a job, that fellow better do it,” Hamnet Thyssen said. “If he doesn’t, the Emperor will blame him. Otherwise, Sigvat would have to blame himself, and the next time he does that will be the first.”

“As long as I don’t get my head knocked, we win,” Marcovefa said.

“But you did,” Hamnet Thyssen answered. “And we didn’t.”

“Don’t do it,” Ulric Skakki said when Count Hamnet chose a messenger to deliver the bad news.

“I have to,” Hamnet said stolidly.

“No, don’t,” Runolf Skallagrim agreed. “We’ll go back to Kjelvik. If we hold there, everything will look a lot better.”

“How many of the towns in the woods held?” Hamnet said. “What does the Rulers’ magic do to walls?”

“What will Sigvat do to you when he finds out you lost?” Ulric Skakki returned, which echoed Hamnet’s thoughts uncomfortably well.

“Won’t the wizard from the north hold those buggers off?” Runolf asked.

“Not for a while. She can’t do anything much in the way of magic now,” Hamnet answered. “She came too close to getting her head broken like a dropped egg.”

“How long do we have to wait?” Runolf sounded suddenly apprehensive.

“No way to tell,” Ulric Skakki said before Count Hamnet could reply. “You get hit in the head, you could be all right in a day or two, or you could go on having headaches and such for weeks.”

“You sound like someone who knows what he’s talking about,” Hamnet remarked.

“And don’t I wish I didn’t!” Ulric said. “I’ve got clobbered more times than I wish I had – I’ll say that. Probably why I’m the way I am today.”

Hamnet, by contrast, had got hit in the heart too often. He reflected that he probably would again. Did you ever get used to such wounds? Could you? Liv hadn’t hurt him so badly as Gudrid, but that wasn’t because he’d got hardened in the intervening years. Far from it. The only difference was, Gudrid took a malicious glee in tormenting him, while Liv seemed sorry she’d decided she had to go.

Being sorry didn’t stop her, of course. When did it ever?

Trasamund methodically cleaned blood from his sword and honed it against a whetstone to sharpen the edge and get the nicks out. He nodded to Hamnet. “We’ll have another go at them,” he said. “We almost licked em this time, by God.”

“Yes.” Hamnet let it go at that. He didn’t want to lower the spirits of anyone who stayed ready to carry on. But he couldn’t help thinking that a horse which almost escaped a sabertooth got eaten just the same.

And, no matter what Ulric said, Count Hamnet sent the courier off to Nidaros. Sigvat II needed to know what had happened up in the woods. For better or for worse – for better and for worse – the fate of the Empire rested in his hands. And after that. .

Hamnet hunted up Runolf Skallagrim. “Tomorrow morning,” he said, “we’ll go down to Kjelvik, the way you said.”

“About the best thing we can do,” agreed the commandant of that town. “At least we’ll have somewhere to fight from. The wall’s in tolerable shape – you’ve seen it, for God’s sake. And we’ve still got a lot of food in the granaries . . and we’ll be bringing back some more in the supply wagons.”

“That was my next question,” Hamnet Thyssen said.

How good were the Rulers at siege warfare? They were nomads like the Bizogots. He couldn’t imagine them settling down around Kjelvik and building catapults and siege towers, the way a Raumsdalian army would. But, after a little thought, he could imagine them knocking down the walls with sorcery. How soon would Marcovefa be able to stop them if they tried?

Runolf had a different thought: “What if they just go on by us, go deeper into the Empire?”

“They wouldn’t do that!” Hamnet exclaimed – by which he meant he wouldn’t do that himself. But the Rulers? They might be a different story. So what if they had enemy soldiers behind them? If they were confident they could beat any force that came up against them, why would they worry? And wouldn’t they have more warriors moving down into Raumsdalia off the Bizogot plains?

I’m full of cheerful notions today, Hamnet Thyssen thought. Nothing like losing a battle to bring such ideas bubbling to the surface like noxious gases from the asphalt pits of the far southwest.

Wounded men’s moans did nothing to lift his spirits. He spotted Audun Gilli doing what he could to help some of the worst-hurt men with his magic. After a while, Audun looked up and nodded to him. The wizard looked weary, and who could blame him?

A yawn that surprised Count Hamnet told him how weary he was himself. He also realized how hungry he was. He had a couple of hard rolls in a belt pouch – they were even harder now than they had been when they went in there. Men were carving steaks from dead horses and roasting them.

If you were used to beef and mutton, horsemeat tasted like glue. If you’d eaten all kinds of strange things to keep your belly full, horsemeat wasn’t half bad. Count Hamnet took out his belt knife and haggled a chunk off the haunch of an animal dead on its side in bloody snow. The meat, burnt on the outside, raw in the middle, wasn’t good even of its kind. He ate it anyway.

Then he got a chunk for Marcovefa. She didn’t show her usual wolfish appetite. That worried him. “Head hurts too much,” she said. He grimaced. He couldn’t do anything about that, however much he wished he could.

They slept Bizogot-style, with furs over them and snow heaped up to the north to hold away the Breath of God. The wind didn’t blow too hard. It was as if even God had forgotten about Raumsdalia. And as for Hamnet Thyssen, he’d never spent a lonelier night in someone else’s arms.

When morning came, he asked for volunteers to go north and spy out what the Rulers were doing. He wondered if he would get any. More than a little to his own surprise, he did. “We’re like fleas,” one of them said. “A lot of the time, we aren’t worth smacking.” He grinned. He couldn’t have been more than eighteen; to him, it had to seem more like an adventure, a game, than something where he could lose his life.

With the bulk of the army – with the bulk of what was left of the army – Count Hamnet marched south and east towards Kjelvik. He rode close by Marcovefa, in case she needed help staying in the saddle. Up till this summer, she’d never ridden, or even imagined riding was possible. She didn’t look happy now – who with a nearly broken skull would have? But she rode.

And Kjelvik didn’t seem particularly happy to see the returning soldiers, either. Fleeing men had got there before the army did, and had spread word of the disaster it suffered. “Why did you go out there to lose?” someone yelled at Hamnet Thyssen when he rode back into the town.

Were his bow strung, he would have shot the obnoxious, leather-lunged pest. No one went out to lose a battle. Half the commanders who fought, though, ended up with what they didn’t want. Hamnet had wound up in that unhappy number, even if not on purpose.

A stone in the house behind the hecklers head suddenly sported a mouth. In a vicious, whiny imitation of his voice, it squawked, “Why did you screw that broad next door?”

“What? I never – ” But the local looked horrified. And the man standing next to him, who was both larger and better muscled, looked first suspicious and then furious.

Hamnet Thyssen rode on before he learned how that drama turned out. He looked around for Audun Gilli. When he spotted the wizard, he nodded his thanks. He’d never thought he would do that, not after Audun took Liv from him, but he did. Life was full of surprises, not all of them as nasty as one would think.

The garrison cooks came up with meals tastier than charred horseflesh. A bed in a room off the barracks made a better place to sleep with Marcovefa than snow-covered ground. A charcoal brazier gave the chamber at least a little warmth.

“How are you?” he asked as the two of them sat down on the bed.

“Hurts,” Marcovefa answered matter-of-factly.

Not tonight – I have a headache. Hamnet wondered if he was losing his wits or just too tired to see straight. He’d seldom felt less lecherous. He might want to hang on to Marcovefa through the night for reassurance – and warmth, which was in short supply despite the brazier. Anything more could wait… for the next year or two, by the way his eyelids sagged.

Sometimes things looked better after you woke up in the morning. This wasn’t one of those times for Count Hamnet. The brazier had run out of fuel during the night, which left the room as cold as the inside of a snowball, almost as cold as the inside of Sigvat s heart. Hamnet still remembered defeat much too well. And when he looked over at Marcovefa lying there beside him, the bruise on the side of her head was much too plain.

He lay quiet, letting her sleep as long as she would. Her eyes opened about half an hour later. She smiled at him and said, “I need to piss.”

“So do I,” he answered. “I didn’t want to bother you. How do you feel?”

“Not so bad,” Marcovefa said, but she winced when she sat up and then stood. “Not so good, either.” She used the pot first. As usual, she was much less self-conscious about such things than Raumsdalians, or even ordinary Bizogots. On that mountain up above the Glacier, privacy wasn’t even a word. “What do we do now?” she asked as Hamnet got up and eased him-self.

Lick our wounds, was the first thought that came to mind. “Try to find out what the Rulers are doing,” he said out loud: it had the virtue of sounding better, anyhow. “See if we have to stand siege here.”

“Can we?” Marcovefa asked – a much too pointed question.

“For a while, anyhow,” Hamnet Thyssen said. “Till we’re relieved, or till their magic knocks down the wall, or till your magic comes back. If yours comes back soon, we can last a lot longer.”

She frowned in concentration, then shook her head, then winced again, regretting that. With a sigh that puffed fog from her mouth even indoors, she said, “Not there yet. Like my head all clogged up inside.”

“You’re lucky you really don’t have a rock in there,” Hamnet said.

“This is luck?” Marcovefa started to shake her head once more, but thought better of it. “With luck, the stone misses. With luck, we win the fight.”

Hamnet had had those thoughts when someone told him something bad was really lucky. All it boiled down to was, Well, things could be worse. He supposed they could. That didn’t make them wonderful the way they were.

“Let’s go get something to eat,” he said.

“Yes,” she said, but the thought of breakfast didn’t cheer her up, either. “Food makes me . .” She couldn’t find the word, but mimed puking.

“Nauseated,” Hamnet supplied.

“Nauseated. Yes. I thank you,” she said. “But I try to eat. I am a fire inside. I need dung to burn.”

A plains Bizogot would have said the same thing. It still sounded odd in Hamnet s ears. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s see what they’ve got.”

As in most towns where armies have suddenly arrived, breakfast was uninspiring. Oat-and-rye porridge with not enough butter or salt and a mug of sour beer didn’t satisfy Hamnet’s tongue. His stomach, though, quieted down. There was enough for the moment, anyhow.

Marcovefa ate without complaint, even though the food was strange to her. “You have so much,” she said. “You get food, and you don’t have to hunt for it even in wintertime. Do you know how lucky you are?”

Plains Bizogots said the same thing. They had enough themselves to appreciate how much more the Raumsdalians enjoyed, and to want it for themselves. Marcovefa’s tone was different. Her folk had so little up there atop the Glacier, she might have come to the Empire from the dark side of the moon. She was beyond jealousy. Everything she saw surprised her.

She didn’t always admire it: “Because you don’t hunt so much, I see some of you sit around and get fat. You had better watch out. Such people are good only for roasting. Your foes will feast on you if you are not careful.”

Count Hamnet’s stomach did a slow lurch. He’d managed to make himself forget his prized shaman, his prized lover, had eaten enemy clansmen. No doubt those foes had also devoured men from her clan. Did that mean what she’d done was any better? Maybe a little, Hamnet thought.

And then she said, “If I ever catch the scut who hit me with that stone, I’ll eat his liver without salt.” A Raumsdalian would have meant it for a joke. An ordinary Bizogot would have, too, though a Raumsdalian who heard her might have wondered. Marcovefa was dead serious. And if she did find that slinger, he would be dead, too, dead and butchered.

Toward noon, a scout rode in. “They’re out of the woods,” he reported. “We skirmished a little, and then fell back.”

“Are they heading for Kjelvik?” Count Hamnet demanded tensely. Could he stand siege here? If he couldn’t, he would have to retreat now. If he did, Sigvat II would have one more reason not to love him.

But the scout shook his head. “No, uh, Your Grace. They’re going southeast across country. You ask me, sir, they’re heading straight for Nidaros.”

“Can we strike at their flank, then?” Hamnet aimed the question more at himself than at the rider who’d just come in. Regretfully, he rejected the idea. His men had no spirit for another fight yet. And, without Marcovefa’s sorcerous aid, they might as well have gone into battle without shields against an army of archers.

“What do we do if we don’t hit them, Your Grace?” the scout asked.

The question was more pointed than Hamnet Thyssen wished it were. Wait for the axe to drop was the first answer that sprang to mind. He didn’t come out and say that; he feared the scout would believe him. Worse, he feared he would believe himself. “I’ll talk with the others,” was what he did say, and that satisfied the scout, who didn’t see – or didn’t want to see – how little it told him.

When Count Hamnet gathered Ulric Skakki, Trasamund, and Runolf Skallagrim, none of them seemed eager to assail the advancing enemy. If Trasamund in particular held back, that told Hamnet the thing couldn’t be done. And the Bizogot jarl did. “No point hitting em unless we hit ‘em hard, and we can’t right now, curse it,” he said unhappily.

“Looks that way to me, too, I’m afraid,” Ulric Skakki said.

“And to me,” Runolf agreed. “If we’re going to get squashed if we poke our noses outside the walls . . well, then we don’t, that’s all.”

Had Hamnet Thyssen had any great hopes of victory, he would have argued against the others. Since he didn’t, he accepted their argument. Sometimes the best thing you could do was nothing.

He did send another courier down to Nidaros, warning that the Rulers were loose in the Empire below the northern woods and that he lacked the force to do anything about it. “Maybe a miracle will happen,” he told Ulric. “Maybe the Emperor will send me more soldiers.”

“Don’t wait up expecting them, or you’ll get mighty sleepy,” the adventurer replied. “He’ll probably yell for your head instead, for not doing enough with what he was generous enough to give you before.”

“Yes, that thought crossed my mind, too,” Count Hamnet said. “What am I supposed to do then?”

“Well, if you want to go to the chopper or back to the dungeon, you just do what dear, sweet, lovable Sigvat tells you to do,” Ulric said. “If you don’t, you do something else. If you don’t feel like getting chopped, I’ll go with you, for whatever you think that’s worth. If you do, you’re on your own.”

Hamnet Thyssen set a hand on his shoulder, a gesture of affection and appreciation he rarely used. “Thanks. I’m not going to let Sigvat wreck me or the Empire, not if I can help it.”

“You’ve got a chance to keep him from wrecking you,” Ulric Skakki said. “If he doesn’t wreck you, he’ll have a harder time wrecking Raumsdalia, anyway. But you’ve got to worry about yourself first. You can do something about yourself. Right this minute, you can’t do much about the whole bloody Empire.”

The Empire was going to get bloodier. Count Hamnet couldn’t do much about that, either, not till Marcovefa’s wits unscrambled – if they ever did. Congratulations, he told himself. You just found something brand new to worry about.

He sighed. “Up till now, I’ve always put the Empire first. I still do, I guess, but . .”

“Yes. But,” Ulric said. “One thing you still need to figure out is, there’s a difference between the Empire and the Emperor. Raumsdalia can go on without Sigvat II, even if Sigvat’s too cursed dumb to see that for himself.”

Since Hamnet Thyssen hadn’t seen if for himself, he maintained what he hoped was a discreet silence. Even if not just Sigvat but his dynasty perished, the Raumsdalian Empire could go on. Sometimes a truth was too obvious to be easy to see. Sometimes, in the woods, a mastodon was next to invisible. But then it would lift its trunk and trumpet, and everyone for a long way in all directions would know where it stood.

At least I know where I stand, Hamnet thought. That would have to do for now. “Who do you think hates me more right this minute?” he asked Ulric. “The Rulers or His Majesty?”

“Well, it depends,” Ulric said judiciously.

“On what?”

“On whether your messenger has got to Nidaros yet.”

“Oh.” Count Hamnet weighed that. Then he nodded. “Yes, I’m afraid so.”

“You’re not afraid enough to suit Sigvat,” Ulric said. “That’s one of the reasons he doesn’t like you.” There was an understatement of almost cosmic proportions. Even the adventurer seemed relieved to change the subject: “How’s your lady love?”

“About how you’d expect after almost getting her head smashed,” Hamnet replied. He hesitated, then asked, “How’s Liv doing?”

“She’ll heal. She’ll have a scar. It’s a shame – she’s a nice-looking woman. And no, in case you’re trying to find some reason to come after me with a hatchet, I never slept with her. She is anyway.” Ulric Skakki raised an eyebrow. “You don’t need to ask me, you know. You could talk with her yourself. She’s not like Gudrid – she doesn’t aim to carve chunks off you every time she opens her mouth.”

“I understand that,” Hamnet said, as steadily as he could. “I still haven’t decided whether it makes things better or worse.” Even the glib Ulric Skakki had no quick and clever retort for that.

Count Hamnet was doing up his trousers as he came out of the garderobe when one of Runolf Skallagrim’s junior officers spotted him. “Oh, there you are, Your Grace!” the very young subaltern exclaimed.

“Here I am, all right,” Hamnet agreed. “And why does it make any difference that I happen to be here?”

“Because the baron needs to see you right away, sir,” the junior officer said. “He’s got six or eight men out looking for you.”

“Does he?” Hamnet said with a marked lack of enthusiasm. That could only mean something had gone wrong. Two possibilities leaped to mind; he wondered which was the more appalling. “Well, I suppose I’d better go see him, then.”

“Follow me, Your Grace.” The youngster hurried off so fast, Hamnet Thyssen had very little choice but to follow him. He stopped in front of Runolf’s door as abruptly as he’d sped away. When Hamnet came up a few heartbeats later, the fellow said, “Go on in, sir. I know he’s expecting you.”

“I’m so glad to hear it,” Hamnet said. What a liar I’m turning into in my old age. He wasn’t that old, but some days felt as if they added years. He worked the latch and went inside.

As he’d feared, a man with the look of an imperial courier waited with Runolf Skallagrim. “Morning, Thyssen,” Runolf said, trying to pretend he knew Hamnet not at all well.

“It certainly is,” Hamnet said, more or less at random. He inclined his head to the man who looked like a courier. “I don’t think we’ve met.”

“No, I don’t think so, either. I’m Gunnlaug Jofrid,” the man said. “I have orders to take you back to Nidaros.”

Hamnet looked at him. “No.”

“What?” By the way Gunnlaug gaped, Hamnet might have used a word in the language of the Rulers.

“It’s a technical term,” Hamnet explained, not unkindly. “It means, well, no.”

“You can’t say that!” Gunnlaug burst out. “His Majesty commands it!”

“Listen carefully. Watch the way my lips move. . . No.”

“But you can’t disobey the Emperor,” Gunnlaug Jofrid said, as if it were a law of nature.

“Oh, I can’t, eh? I’m afraid we’ll just have to see about that,” Hamnet said.

“What will you do? Where will you go? Every man’s hand will be raised against you, all over the Empire.”

“Then I’ll leave,” Hamnet Thyssen said. “I’ve done it before. His Majesty won’t be sorry to see me do it again.”

Gunnlaug looked doubtful, to say the least. “That’s not what my orders say. And how do I know you’ll really do it, anyhow? How do I know you won’t turn around and go somewhere and raise a rebellion? That would be worth my neck.”

He wasn’t wrong. He was, in fact, bound to be right. “Well, you can come with me,” Hamnet suggested. “Then you’ll be able to say you saw me ride up onto the Bizogot plain with your own eyes.”

“You’d rather go up there than down to Nidaros?” Gunnlaug seemed to have trouble believing his ears.

“If I go down to Nidaros, Sigvat will either throw me back in the dungeon or kill me,” Count Hamnet said. “If I go up into the Bizogot country, maybe the Rulers will kill me. But maybe they won’t, too. And at least I’ll be able to fight back. Any which way, I’m better off. Is that plain enough, or shall I get a stick of charcoal and some parchment and draw you a picture?”

“You’re making fun of me!” Gunnlaug Jofrid’s voice went shrill.

Hamnet looked at Runolf Skallagrim. “Nothing gets by him, does it?” Gunnlaug spluttered indignantly. Ignoring him, Count Hamnet went on, “Sorry this is awkward for you.”

“I can see how you might not want to meet the chopper just yet – or any time at all, to tell you the truth,” Runolf said.

“If you think I’m going to go to the back of beyond with you -” Gunnlaug began.

“The other choice is killing you right now,” Hamnet Thyssen broke in. The courier shut up with a snap. Hamnet eyed Runolf again. “I didn’t know I was so persuasive.”

“Maybe I’d better stash the poor fellow in the guardhouse till you’re ready to leave,” Runolf said. “Wouldn’t want him complicating your life even worse than it is already, would we?”

“This is an outrage!” Gunnlaug said. “An outrage, I tell you! When the Emperor finds out what you’ve done -” He broke off.

Had Count Hamnet the courier’s boots, he would have stopped some time sooner. The snow wouldn’t melt for months up here. A body that went into a drift wouldn’t see the light of day till spring, and spring came late in these parts. Hamnet wondered whether he could afford to take the courier along. If the fellow kept trying to escape . . Well, there was plenty of snow up in the forest, too.

“Do stick him in the guardhouse, Runolf,” Hamnet said. “That will give me time to see who all wants to come along and to load pack horses. Easier than running off before we’re ready.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Runolf promised, and he did.

Hamnet rode out of Kjelvik the next day. Marcovefa rode with him. So did Ulric Skakki. Audun Gilli and Liv came out side by side. Trasamund went along, as did a few of the other Bizogots. Most of the Leaping Lynxes who still lived stayed behind, though, judging their chances better inside the Empire than back up on the frozen steppe. Hamnet Thyssen had to hope they were wrong.

Also accompanying his band was Gunnlaug Jofrid. The imperial courier said, “Do you really imagine you can get away with this?”

“As a matter of fact, yes,” Count Hamnet answered. “I can’t believe Sigvat will send an army up into the Bizogot country after me. Can you?”

“He’d better not!” Trasamund rumbled. “He’d better not even think about it, by God! We’d swarm down into Raumsdalia and tear his precious Empire up by the roots if he tried. The very idea!” He snorted in disgust.

Ulric Skakki snorted, too, though quietly. An amused smile played over his features for a moment. Hamnet understood why: poor Trasamund had forgotten something. With the Bizogot clans shattered by the Rulers, the big blonds would swarm into the Empire only as refugees, or perhaps as vassals and hirelings of the mammoth-riders. The Bizogots’ independent power would be a long time reviving, if it ever did.

The Rulers were still trickling down into Raumsdalia. Count Hamnet s band rode past several small groups of them even before it reached the edge of the woods. Hamnet led enough men to make the Rulers think twice about quarreling with him. He wasn’t sure whether that pleased Trasamund or disappointed him.

Plunging into the forest again felt strange. Not far ahead lay the clearing where his army had battled the Rulers to a standstill. . till that one unlucky slingstone took Marcovefa out of the fight and let the wizards from beyond the Glacier use the spells she’d blocked up till then.

She didn’t remember much about what had gone on here. Hamnet doubted she ever would. He’d seen that loss of memory before in people who’d taken blows to the head. More often than not, it was a mercy.

Marcovefa didn’t look at it that way. “I want to know what I did!” she complained. “I want to know what all they magicked at me. I want to know what I magicked at them. I know I was doing good – these Rulers are not so tough. But I want to know!”

“Maybe . .” Hamnet Thyssen had to pause, because talking while he was gritting his teeth was hard. He made himself unclench his jaw and go on: “Maybe you could ask Liv and Audun Gilli. If anyone on our side knows, they’re the ones.”

Marcovefa kissed him. That made him glad he’d said what he had; he hadn’t thought anything could. “I do that!” she said. She rode over to the Raumsdalian wizard and the Bizogot shaman. Count Hamnet turned his head and looked the other way. He could suggest it, but he couldn’t like it.

She was still talking with them when Hamnet s band came to the battlefield. Ravens flew away, croaking like big, black frogs. A short-faced bear looked up from a meal of . . well, Hamnet hoped the beast was eating a dead warrior of the Rulers. The bear growled a warning at the newcomers. When they took no notice of it, it loped away, long legs carrying it off at least as fast as a horse could trot.

Marcovefa came back to Count Hamnet. Yes, she does now – but for how long? he wondered. Would he ever be able to get these doubts out of his head? She said, “This is where we fought?”

“That’s right.” He nodded.

“I remember the place. I remember the – the mammoths.” She had to cast about for the word. “I remember the fear the foe threw. But even after I talk, I don’t remember the fight.” She slammed a fist down on her thigh in frustration. “I want to!”

“I don’t know what to do about that,” Hamnet said, in lieu of, I don’t think anyone can do anything about that

They pressed on to the north. A strange truce held whenever they passed bands of Rulers coming down into Raumsdalia. Once, a fellow who was pretty plainly a wizard stared at Marcovefa. Even in her damaged state, he knew her for what she was. When she bared her teeth at him in what was almost a smile, he flinched. The Rulers were made of stern stuff, whatever else you said about them; that didn’t happen every day.

The trees began to thin out. The customs post at the tree line was a burned ruin. To the north, as far as the eye could see – and, Hamnet knew, far beyond that – stretched the snow-covered, gently rolling terrain of the Bizogot steppe.

“Here we are again,” he said to Ulric Skakki.

“Never loses its charm, does it?” the adventurer returned.

“How can you lose what you haven’t got?” Hamnet Thyssen said. Ulric laughed.