T HIS TIME, IT was the Breath of God. The wind howled down from the north, howled down off the Glacier. The ice might have retreated, but it was a long way from gone. The wind might have traveled a long way, too, but it was as cold as if it had blown but a few miles.
Hamnet Thyssen had cold-weather gear. So did every other Raumsdalian in his ragtag army. Down in the far south, beyond the Empire’s reach, Ulric Skakki insisted, there were countries the Breath of God never touched. Hamnet had traveled far enough south to find that likely, even if he couldn’t testify to it from personal experience. But men in these parts knew they had to stay warm through the winter or die.
So Hamnet donned furs with resignation. Most of the other Raumsdalians felt the same way. The Bizogots, by contrast, gloried in the cold weather. “Snow!” Trasamund exclaimed. “About time! Everything up in the Three Tusk country would be covered in white by now.”
“God’s dandruff,” Ulric said. He could take as much cold as anyone—slipping through the Gap to the lands beyond the Glacier in the middle of winter proved that. But he didn’t enjoy it the way the Bizogots did.
“Why, you blasphemous vole!” Trasamund blurted. A Raumsdalian would have called Ulric a toad or a snake, but creatures like that couldn’t survive up on the frozen steppe. The jarl did the best he could with what he knew.
“Your servant, Your Ferocity.” Ulric gave back a mocking bow.
Trasamund had put on mittens, which made it hard for him to wag a finger under the adventurer’s nose. Again, he did his best. “You should not speak so,” he said severely. “If you do, maybe God will not choose to show us where the Golden Shrine lies. Don’t you think we should be pure of mind, pure of heart, pure of speech, to deserve to learn where the Shrine is?”
To Count Hamnet’s amazement, Ulric shook his head. Hamnet hadn’t thought of Trasamund’s argument, and it seemed to him to carry weight. But Ulric said, “If God is waiting for people who are pure of mind and heart and speech, the Golden Shrine will stay hidden to the end of time. A good thing, too, because people who are that pure are hardly people at all.”
“You turn everything upside down and inside out!” Trasamund complained.
Ulric gave him another bow. “Your servant,” he repeated.
Trasamund swung at him. Hamnet could have told the Bizogot that was a mistake, even if he had been baited. But Hamnet never got the chance. Ulric Skakki turned Trasamund upside down and almost inside out: he grabbed the jarl’s arm, then dipped, wheeled, and threw. Trasamund’s startled shout cut off abruptly when he hit the ground. Not enough snow had stuck yet to soften his landing.
Count Hamnet helped him up. “How the demon did he do that?” Trasamund mumbled, shaking his head to try to clear it.
“He’s done the same thing to me,” Hamnet said, reasoning that misery loved company. And it was true. “He knows some wrestling tricks I’ve never seen before.”
“I know a trick, too,” Trasamund growled. “How about Bizogot stand-down?” He’d won that brutal game against the Rulers, as Hamnet had told Tahpenes while she was a prisoner.
“No, thanks,” Ulric said. “If you want me to admit your head is harder than mine, I’ll do it. You don’t have to prove it on me.”
“You—” But Trasamund couldn’t call him a coward, not after all they’d been through together. Since the word stuck in his throat, the jarl tried a different tack: “Will you show me that flip?”
“One of these days, maybe. Not right now,” Ulric answered. “Don’t you think we ought to ride?”
Most of the Bizogots and Raumsdalians were already mounted. Quite a few of them had watched Trasamund’s sudden, unexpected overthrow. No one had seen Hamnet fly through the air, though the thud he made on landing brought palace servants running to see what had collapsed. Neither of them had got badly hurt, but Trasamund’s dignity and pride took a worse beating.
The Bizogot did some more muttering. “Another time, then,” he said aloud. “In the meanwhile, I will take out on the Rulers what I think about you.”
“It’s all right by me,” Ulric said cheerfully. “If I were the Rulers’ chief, I’d start running right now.” Trasamund muttered yet again.
“Don’t push him too hard,” Hamnet said.
“Why not? What other fun do I have these days?” Ulric eyed him with a mild and speculative air. “Or should I start in on you instead?”
“If you want to,” Hamnet answered stolidly. “I can take it better.”
“But that means you don’t give so much sport.”
“Take what you can get,” Count Hamnet advised. “We need Trasamund—without him, the Bizogots fall apart like a snowball slamming into a rock. Nobody cares whether I’m happy or not. Nobody even cares whether I’m here.”
“Well, I would have said the same thing,” Ulric told him—if Hamnet left himself open for a thrust, the adventurer would deliver. So Hamnet thought, anyhow, till Ulric went on, “But Marcovefa thinks you’re wrong, remember? I’ll argue with you any day. I think twice before I decide she’s made a mistake.”
Hamnet Thyssen did remember what Marcovefa had said about him. Remembering it didn’t mean he believed it. It made him profoundly uneasy—he didn’t want to carry so much weight in the scales of the world. What he mostly wanted was to go back to his castle down in the far southeast and be left alone. He knew he was no more likely to get that than any of his other wishes.
“Marcovefa doesn’t know everything there is to know,” he said after a pause he hoped wasn’t too obvious—if it was, it would make a liar out of him all by itself.
Ulric Skakki’s knowing smirk said it did. “She may not know everything, but she knows a demon of a lot more about this business than you do. Go on—tell me she doesn’t. Make me believe it.” He folded his arms and waited.
However much Count Hamnet wished he could, he didn’t even try. He couldn’t make Ulric believe it . . . and he couldn’t make himself believe it, either. Whether he liked it or not, whether he wanted to or not, he did carry weight. He wondered if he would have any say in how it got used.
You won’t if the Rulers kill you, he thought. That was as true for him as it was for Marcovefa. Her safety mattered to him. His own didn’t seem to.
Try as he would, he couldn’t get very excited about it. With a slow shrug, he said, “We needed to ride a while ago. We’re still gabbing instead.”
“Yes, your Grace,” Ulric said—mockery in the guise of respect, one of his favorite barbs. Hamnet didn’t rise to it. Ulric sighed. “Sure as the demons, Trasamund gives better sport.”
“Pity.” Hamnet methodically checked his horse’s cinches and girths. When he was satisfied, he swung up into the saddle. Ulric was only a moment behind him. The Raumsdalians and Bizogots rode in a mass compact enough to let them keep an eye on their outriders. The Rulers wouldn’t have an easy time picking off a few men, anyhow.
Hamnet’s eyes went this way and that, this way and that. They kept coming back to Marcovefa. She might think he was important in the fight against the Rulers. He knew she was.
FAGERSTA WAS A town of no particular importance. Hamnet Thyssen had a hard time believing even the people who lived there would have said anything else. It wasn’t very big or very small. It wasn’t very rich. It sat by a stream deep and wide enough for small boats, but not for ships. Because it was right in the middle of the Empire and no foreign foes had come anywhere near it for at least two hundred years, people had torn down the wall that once surrounded it and used the timber and stone for buildings.
The Rulers had gone through Fagersta some time earlier in the year. They hadn’t razed it; why bother? They’d plundered some, they’d stolen livestock from the surrounding farms, they’d killed and raped enough to keep themselves both safe and amused, and then they’d gone on their way.
As soon as the locals saw the mix of Raumsdalians and Bizogots approaching from the north, they sent out a man with a flag of truce. That was about the only thing they could have done. The Breath of God swirled snow all around, so Fagersta didn’t discover it had new visitors—and the visitors didn’t discover there was such a place as Fagersta—till they were almost on top of it.
“Oh!” the herald exclaimed in glad surprise when he got a better look at the newcomers. “You aren’t . . . those people.” He didn’t say what he really thought of the Rulers, perhaps in case he proved wrong about who these strangers were.
“No, we aren’t,” Hamnet agreed gravely.
“In fact, we want to kill those people,” Trasamund added.
His accent and his long, golden beard announced that, while he wasn’t a Ruler, he wasn’t a Raumsdalian, either. The local herald eyed him as warily as a shepherd might eye a sabertooth. That was sensible of the man, as Trasamund was at least as deadly as one of the big cats. The local soon noticed other big blond warriors among those who might be of his own kind.
“You aren’t those people,” he said again. This time, he added, “But who the demon are you?” Under the circumstances, it was a more than reasonable question.
“I am Trasamund, jarl of the Three Tusk clan.” Trasamund struck a pose on his horse. He was wasting his time; the Raumsdalian knew more of Bizogot clans and their jarls than he did about riding a war mammoth. After a moment, Trasamund saw as much. He simplified things: “I’m with you Raumsdalians. The Rulers are my enemies.”
“Oh.” The man from Fagersta seemed to understand that, anyhow. Whether he believed it was liable to be another question. “But you’re a foreigner,” he said, and waited, as if hoping Trasamund would deny it. When Trasamund didn’t, the local sighed. “Didn’t know much about foreigners till a couple of weeks ago. Don’t much fancy what we found out, neither.”
“There are different kinds of foreigners,” Hamnet Thyssen said. The local only grunted. He wasn’t disagreeing, but he also wasn’t enthusiastic about the prospect. Hamnet asked, “What did the Rulers do to this place? And who are you, anyway?”
“Well, my name’s Hrafn Maering,” said the man from Fagersta. He let out a bleak chuckle. “What did they do to this place? Anything they pleased, pretty much. You can see Fagersta’s got some chunks bit out of it.” His wave took in the burned and overthrown buildings all over town. Glumly, he went on, “Me, I was lucky, if you want to call it luck. They killed one of my second cousins, and they forced my wife’s sister—but only two or three of ’em, and they weren’t especially trying to hurt her, just to have a good time. She’ll be all right, we expect, soon as she gets over the worst of the horrors, and she isn’t with child.”
Count Hamnet nodded soberly. Hrafn was right: as these things went, his family was lucky. One death, one not too brutal rape—you could pick up the pieces and go on after something like that. There still was a family to pick up the pieces and go on. Some lines in Fagersta would be destroyed altogether. Others would have a handful of people trying to recover after much worse disasters.
“When did the Rulers ride out of here?” Ulric Skakki asked. “Which way did they go?”
Hrafn Maering eyed him doubtfully, too; his sharp features weren’t those of a typical Raumsdalian. But he spoke the imperial language without accent, and he also spoke with the air of a man entitled to get answers from other people. “It was only maybe ten days ago,” Hrafn said. “They went that way.” He pointed somewhere between south and southeast.
“Have any idea how many of them there were?” Runolf Skallagrim inquired.
“Not for sure,” Hrafn said. “They rode these funny deer, you know?” By the way he said it, the deer were harder to count than horses would have been. But then he added, “They had eight, maybe ten, war mastodons with ’em.”
Chances were he’d never seen a mammoth in his life till the Rulers rode theirs down into the Empire. Mammoths were creatures of the frozen steppe, beyond the evergreen woods to the north. Mastodons, by contrast, roamed the forests of the Empire and the lands on its borders; they were common in the mixed woods near Hamnet’s castle. No wonder, then, that Hrafn called the Rulers’ great mounts by the wrong name.
Somebody none too familiar with sabertooths might easily call them lions by mistake. He’d be wrong, but he wouldn’t be very wrong. You could end up dead as easily, and in most of the same ways, from a saber-tooth as from a lion. And the Rulers would have been just as much trouble riding mastodons as they were on mammothback.
Hamnet wondered what the invaders thought of mastodons. They would surely have found some by now. He also wondered whether the Rulers could turn mastodons into riding animals. They would have a new supply of mounts if they did.
When he asked the first question out loud, Ulric said, “They probably think mastodons are delicious.”
And Hamnet couldn’t even tell him he was wrong, because a mastodon, like a mammoth, was a lot of meat ambling around in one con ve nient package. Taming mastodons would take a long time. Killing and cooking them, on the other hand . . .
“Well, let’s go after the buggers,” Trasamund said.
Hrafn Maering surely spoke for all the survivors in Fagersta: “What about giving us a hand?”
“You’re here. You’re alive. You can put the town back together yourselves,” Hamnet said. “The best thing we can do for you is kill the Rulers—if we can.”
“Sigvat would do better by us,” Hrafn said.
He looked very surprised when all the Raumsdalians and Bizogots within earshot started laughing fit to burst. He got mad when none of them would explain why.
“I’m going to report this to the mayor,” Hrafn said. “He’ll tell the chief of the diocese, and he’ll tell the provincial governor. Then the governor will report you to the Emperor, and then you’ll be in trouble.”
Hamnet and his companions laughed harder than ever. Hrafn Maering looked bewildered. He’d come out with the most fearsome threat he knew how to make, and these people . . . took it for a joke? Count Hamnet didn’t know whether to envy the local or feel sorry for him. He still lived in his secure little world, or thought he did.
The great virtue of the Raumsdalian Empire was that it had let generations of people just like Hrafn live out their lives without needing to worry about barbarians coming down over the border. Its drawback was that, when order broke down, the locals had no idea what to do.
“Good luck to you,” Hamnet told him, and meant every word of it.
“God keep you,” Ulric Skakki added, also in tones of great sincerity.
“You poor, sorry bastard.” Even Trasamund sounded sympathetic, no matter how rough his words were.
They left Hrafn staring after them as they rode past Fagersta. “He is a sorry bugger,” Ulric said. “He doesn’t know whether to crap or go blind.”
“He’s already blind,” Hamnet Thyssen said. “The question is whether he’s better off that way. What he has to see these days isn’t pretty, and he only got a glimpse of it when the Rulers went through there.”
“He would have seen more if they stayed longer,” Trasamund said.
“That’s Hamnet’s point,” Ulric told him. “Yours, on the other hand, is under your hat.” Trasamund needed a moment to understand what he meant. When the jarl did, he and Ulric had a fine time sniping at each other as they rode south in pursuit of the Rulers.
AFTER A WHILE, Ulric came up with something new to talk about. “All right,” he said. “We’ve driven the Rulers away. Raumsdalia is free again.”
“What about the Bizogots?” Trasamund demanded.
“Oh, the Rulers slaughtered them all. They aren’t there any more,” Ulric said. Trasamund bellowed irately. The adventurer held up a hand. “Fine. Fine. The Bizogots are free again, too.”
“That’s more like it,” Trasamund said.
“But I’m still talking about Raumsdalia,” Ulric Skakki said. He turned to Hamnet. “The Rulers are gone. The Empire is free.”
“Yes, you already said that,” Hamnet said. “What am I supposed to do? Shout huzzah?”
“Suppose you already did,” Ulric said. “What happens next? How do we make something that’s broken stand on its own two feet again?”
“Sigvat won’t think there’s any trouble,” Hamnet answered. “He’ll just start giving orders and expect everybody else to follow them. And anybody who doesn’t want to will end up in a dungeon.”
“If Sigvat tries that now, he’ll end up in a dungeon—if he’s lucky,” Ulric said. “More likely, he’ll end up dead.” He nodded toward Runolf Skallagrim. “Or am I wrong?”
“Depends on which orders he gives,” Runolf said uncomfortably. He was as loyal as they came—if not to Sigvat, then to the idea of the Raumsdalian Empire. “If he starts throwing his weight around, he’s in a lot of trouble. You aren’t wrong about that, Skakki. I can hope he’s too smart to try it.”
Ulric and Count Hamnet both guffawed. So did Trasamund. “Tell us what’s so funny,” Eyvind Torfinn said, walking up. “We could all enjoy a joke like that.”
Laughing still, Ulric did tell him. “Have you ever heard anything more ridiculous in all your born days?” he finished.
“One could do worse than His Majesty has done,” Earl Eyvind said.
“Sure. He could have killed me outright instead of leaving me to rot in that hole under the palace,” Count Hamnet said. Eyvind Torfinn turned red. Hamnet went on, “I was hoping the Rulers would chuck him into the same cell I had, but no such luck.” He spread his hands. “Too bad, eh?”
“I can certainly understand how you have cause to feel resentment toward him, Your Grace,” Eyvind said stiffly.
“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.”
“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.”
“What difference does it make then?” Marcovefa asked. “Better that the scavengers eat you than that the enemy does.” The lancer stared at her, no doubt thinking she was joking. She smiled back, knowing she wasn’t.