Hamnet refused to believe it. “They had nothing to fear in the south with Sigvat alive,” he said. “They proved it, too, again and again. They might need to worry if they did knock the sorry scut over the head. Then they’d run the risk that somebody who knows what he’s doing would take over and start fighting back.”
Earl Eyvind looked sorrowful. Hamnet didn’t care. As far as he knew, Sigvat had never thrown Eyvind into a dungeon for the horrendous crime of being right. Hamnet feared he himself had to plead guilty to that one.
Gudrid, by contrast, lapped up his words with vampire avidity. He knew exactly what that meant. If by some accident the Rulers didn’t slaughter everyone here, and if by some bigger accident Sigvat triumphed in the south, she would tell the Emperor everything Hamnet had said. Then Hamnet would go back to the dungeon, or maybe to the chopping block, and she would have her reward.
At some other time, Hamnet would have hated her for that. He couldn’t afford to indulge himself now. “There’s no chance we can fight them?” he asked the Raumsdalian.
The man shook his head. His eyes were wide and frightened. “I didn’t know there were that many of the buggers around,” he replied.
Clutching at straws, Count Hamnet turned to Liv and Audun Gilli. “Any hope it’s a fancy bluff, with magic blowing up their numbers the way you blow up a pig’s bladder before you put it on a stick?”
Bizogot shaman and Raumsdalian wizard both turned south in the same motion. They made a more natural pair than Hamnet ever had with Liv. He could see as much, however little he relished what he saw. The two of them tasted the frigid air like hunting hounds seeking a scent. Liv’s lips moved as she murmured a spell. Audun’s hands twisted in quick, abbreviated passes.
They both stiffened at the same time. Audun flinched as if someone had slapped him. Liv went nearly as pale as the snow that lay all around. “It’s no bluff,” she said softly. “They really are that strong. They want us to be able to feel how strong they are.”
“God help us,” Audun added.
“What do we do, then?” Hamnet asked.
“Run!” they said together. Liv went on, “If Marcovefa were awake, she might be able to slow them down. Since she isn’t . . .” She shook her head. Even her lips had gone colorless.
“If we run, we’ll likely have to leave the woods—leave Raumsdalia,” Hamnet said.
“Wouldn’t break my heart,” Trasamund said.
“I know. But you aren’t a Raumsdalian,” Count Hamnet said.
“And thank God for that!” the Bizogot exclaimed.
“We do, almost every day.” Ulric Skakki was rarely shy about dipping his oar in the water.
Trasamund glared at him. “Should I be so glad you’re no clansman of mine?” He answered his own question: “You’d best believe I should. You’d make nothing but trouble in among the mammoth-hide tents.”
“I can’t help it if your women like my looks,” the adventurer said blandly, which won him another glare from Trasamund.
“Enough, both of you,” Hamnet said. “Do you think we can fight the Rulers and hope to win?”
Ulric and the jarl looked at each other. Ulric shook his head without the least hesitation. Trasamund’s response was slower and more reluctant, but in the end the same.
Hamnet didn’t think they could fight the invaders, either. He thought they’d have to be suicidal to try. But the others might have disagreed with him. Since they didn’t, he said, “Then let’s get away while we still can.”
“That’s the smartest thing I’ve heard from you for a long time,” Ulric told him.
“I love you, too—but not right now,” Hamnet said. Ulric Skakki’s laugh seemed equal parts scorn and appreciation. He ambled off to see to his horse.
They got moving before the Rulers came down on them. Count Hamnet stayed behind to command the rear guard. “You shouldn’t,” Liv told him. “If anything happens to you, our cause is ruined. Marcovefa said so, and I think she’s right.”
He shrugged. “You can’t go on asking other people to put their lives on the line for you unless you put yours on the line with them every so often. They won’t follow your orders if you don’t, and demons take me if I see why they ought to.”
“Some things are more important than a little fight like this,” Liv insisted. Hamnet shrugged again. The glare she gave him put to shame the ones Trasamund had aimed at Ulric Skakki. Blue, blue eyes blazing, she went on, “All right, then. If you must stay behind, I will, too, and I will keep you alive if I can. You dunderhead.”
“And I’ll stay,” Audun Gilli added.
“No. You go on. The rest will need magic, too, and you’ve got more than any of the others with them,” Liv said.
Audun looked mutinous, which was putting it mildly. He was no hero, but he didn’t want his woman in more danger than he was—and who could blame him for that? No doubt he also didn’t want Liv staying behind with her former lover—and who could blame him for that, either?
But when he tried to protest, she said, “Go. Just go.” She looked as if she would draw her dagger if he said another word. Sometimes all the argument in the world wouldn’t do you a corroded copper’s worth of good. Audun Gilli had the sense to recognize that this was one of this times. He mooched off, kicking at the snow because he could find no better vent for his feelings.
“You don’t have to do this,” Hamnet said to Liv. “Not for my sake.”
“Don’t talk about what you don’t understand,” she answered, a response that almost precluded conversation.
As he waited for the Rulers, he eyed the troop of Bizogots and Raumsdalians who waited with him. They seemed steady enough. If they were impressed that he’d chosen to stay behind, too, they hid it very well. Liv’s glance said, I told you so. She wasn’t his lover any more, though, so he could ignore her without suffering for it later. Audun wasn’t so lucky.
Mastodons roamed the woods by Hamnet’s castle in southeastern Raumsdalia. They ate acorns and chestnuts and other nuts along with leaves and roots. There wasn’t enough to support them, or the mammoths of the northern steppe, in these northern forests. That made the sight of eight or ten war mammoths coming through the firs and spruces toward him all the more jolting. They don’t belong here! his mind shouted. The Rulers on the mammoths’ backs didn’t care what he thought.
The invaders shouted to one another in their harsh, braying language. First one, then another, pointed straight at him. How they could pick him out from anybody else in the rear guard he didn’t know, but they could.
“You see?” Liv said quietly. She got I told you so into half as many words—not a bad trick.
Hamnet didn’t answer. What could he say? When the Rulers started shooting, all the arrows seemed to head straight for him. Every soldier on every battlefield since the beginning of time had to feel the same way, but Hamnet feared it was literally true this time.
He threw up his shield just in time to deflect one that would have got him in the face. The arrow skipped off the bronze facing and over his head. He breathed a sigh of relief. Then he wondered why he bothered. No matter what Marcovefa thought, whether he lived or died mattered little to him.
But he was too obstinate not to make the best fight he could. He shot a Ruler off a riding deer, then—more by luck than by design—hit a war mammoth in the trunk with another arrow. The woolly mammoth wore armor of leather dipped in boiling wax, as did a lot of the Rulers. It was almost as good as chain mail, and much lighter. But the mammoth’s masters hadn’t tried to armor that sinuous, flexible trunk (Hamnet wouldn’t have wanted to try, either).
And the trunk was as sensitive as a man’s nose, or perhaps as sensitive as his hands. The war mammoth trumpeted in pain and indignation. One of the men on its back patted it—roughly, through the boiled leather. Count Hamnet thought the Ruler meant to show sympathy: more than they were in the habit of doing for any men not of their own kind.