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, such 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!”

“Now tell me something I didn’t know,” Hamnet answered bitterly. “Do you have any notion how much I hate running away from those whoresons again, though? Any notion at all?”

“I probably don’t,” Runolf admitted. “But how do you feel about them murdering the lot of us?”

“I’m against it,” Hamnet said, which jerked a laugh from Baron Runolf. “I didn’t say I wouldn’t run—just that I didn’t like it. And I cursed well don’t.”

“Well, neither do I,” Runolf said. “But I’m with you—I like getting murdered even less. And that’s what’ll happen to us if we stick around much longer.”

“I know.” Hamnet Thyssen hated admitting that, which didn’t mean he had any choice. He asked the most important question he could find: “Is Marcovefa still safe?”

“She is,” Runolf assured him, adding, “Skakki’s got her up onto a horse.”

He didn’t mean mounted; he meant tied aboard a pack horse like a sack of dried peas. All the same, Count Hamnet nodded. “Ulric will know how to take care of it, all right.” An arrow from nowhere hissed through the air between them. Hamnet nodded again, in spite of himself. “Yes, we’d better get moving.”

“About time,” Runolf Skallagrim said, nothing but relief in his voice. “I only hope it isn’t past time.”

It turned out not to be. The Rulers had had as much of the fight as they wanted, at least for the moment. If their pincer claws had worked better . . . It was, Hamnet supposed, ever so slightly reassuring to find they could make mistakes like anyone else.

They didn’t pursue very hard. The forest wasn’t their favorite ground, any more than it was the Bizogots’. At another time, Hamnet would have tried to turn that against them. As things were, he had to content himself with taking advantage of it.

Liv and Audun Gilli and a Raumsdalian soldier who’d been a doctor’s helper did what they could for the injured. They extracted arrows from wounds, bandaged and sutured, and used both leechcraft and sorcery to stop bleeding. Against pain they could offer very little. “Has anyone got any poppy juice?” called the soldier, whose name, Hamnet thought, was Narfi.

No one said anything. After a small silence, Narfi swore. So did the man whose hurts he was tending.

Hamnet Thyssen was too worn and weary and gloomy to swear. He kept looking north. How long before they were out on the Bizogot steppe again? What could they hope to do if the Rulers pushed them out of Raumsdalia altogether? Not much, he thought. Not bloody much. But they’d already spilled too much blood to be able to give up now.

And chances were the Rulers wouldn’t let him give up anyway. For whatever reason, they were convinced he was somehow especially dangerous to them. So was Marcovefa. Hamnet only wished he could see why.

Marcovefa was dangerous to them. He knew that. And they’d found a way to silence her. Only luck no stray arrows in the last fight pierced her. She couldn’t do anything to defend herself against them, not now.

Nobody seemed able to do much against the Rulers. Maybe they would end up holding everything from the Gap down to Raumsdalia. If they ended up knocking Sigvat II over the head, that might almost be worth it.

Hamnet sighed. Almost was one of the cruelest words in the language.

HE’D HOPED THE Rulers would be satisfied with trouncing their foes once and would leave them alone for a while afterward. But he’d also seen how wide the gap between what you hoped for and what you got could yawn.

He kept scouts as far south in the forest as he could, to give warning in case he didn’t get what he hoped for. And he didn’t, as he discovered sooner than he wanted to.

The scouts were all Raumsdalians. The Bizogots, by the nature of things, knew little of woodscraft. One of Runolf Skallagrim’s men rode back to the camp calling, “They’re coming. God help us, they’re all coming!”

“What do you mean, all?” Hamnet asked, hoping the scout meant anything but what it sounded like he meant.

No such luck. “Every Ruler in the world,” the excited man gasped. “War mammoths! Everything! I just saw the front end of it, but there’s got to be a demon of a lot of it I didn’t stick around to see!”

“Have they gone mad?” Trasamund rumbled. “They don’t need all that to squash us. It’s like dropping a musk ox on a mosquito.”

“Maybe the Emperor is dead,” Eyvind Torfinn said. “With Sigvat gone, they’d have nothing to fear in the south, and could concentrate all their power against us. We may be the last force in the field against them.”