O NLY TWO BIZOGOTS died of the sorcerous plague. Audun Gilli and Liv did all they could; Count Hamnet thought they succeeded better than anyone could have expected. They weren’t satisfied. Wizards seldom were satisfied with anything short of perfection.
Marcovefa was not only dissatisfied, she was also furious—and more than a little frightened. “They could have killed me,” she told Hamnet that evening in the hut the two of them shared. “They should have killed me. If they made their plague strike me first, maybe they kill us all, the way they killed the Rock Ptarmigans.”
He nodded. “That’s what enemies try to do, you know. I’m glad they didn’t think to make you sick first—or maybe they couldn’t at long range.”
“Maybe.” She sounded dubious, and still very angry. “They aren’t supposed to be able to do that to me!”
Hamnet Thyssen sighed. “Everybody except you has been saying, ‘The Rulers are dangerous,’ all along. You’re the one who’s been going, ‘No, no, they’re easy. I can beat them with one hand tied behind my back.’ ”
“And I’ve done it, too!” Marcovefa’s pride flared. “Except when I got hit in the head, I’ve done it every time.”
“A good thing, too. We’d be ruined if you hadn’t,” Count Hamnet said. “But even if you have beaten them every time, it won’t always be easy. There are lots of them, and only one of you. And even if you think they’re bad wizards, they’re better than anyone else down here below the Glacier except you. You need to be careful, the same way you would have up on the Ice. The shamans from those other clans up there were as strong as you were, right?”
“Oh, yes. Some of them were stronger,” Marcovefa said at once. “But they were—are—of my own folk. Not these Rulers. Do you like to think your horse is smarter than you are?”
“Hold on!” Hamnet held up a hand. “The Rulers are the ones who call everybody else ‘the herd.’ They think they can do whatever they want with other people because they think other people are just beasts. I don’t want us to think that way. If we do, how are we any better than they are?”
Marcovefa gave him a sharp-toothed grin. “They are much uglier.”
Stubbornly, Count Hamnet shook his head. “That’s not good enough. Curse it, I’m serious about this.”
“Yes, I see you are. But I wonder why,” Marcovefa said. “Is it that important?”
“I think so,” Hamnet said. “Up on the Glacier, suppose another clan made a great magic by eating some of its own people. Would you use that same kind of sorcery yourself?”
“Eat its own people to make magic?” Marcovefa looked revolted, which made Hamnet sure he’d picked a good example. “No, we would never do that. That would be wickedness itself. It—” She broke off and sent Hamnet a sour stare. “All right. I see what you are saying.”
“Good. I’m glad.” Hamnet Thyssen hoped he didn’t show just how glad he was. If Marcovefa hadn’t seen his point, he would have worried about her almost as much as he worried about the Rulers. She wasn’t quite so alien to the Bizogots and Raumsdalians as they were, but she wasn’t far removed from it, either.
He must not have kept his face as still as he hoped, because Marcovefa laughed at him. “After we beat the Rulers, then you can bash me over the head,” she said.
His ears heated. “The Rulers are a menace because they don’t care anything about our ways and don’t want to learn. You do want to learn—and you follow our customs now that you’re down here with us. You haven’t eaten man’s flesh since you came down from the Glacier.”
Marcovefa mimed picking her teeth. “How do you know?”
“Stop that!” Count Hamnet said. “You’re just sticking thorns in me to make me jump.”
“And why not?” Marcovefa replied. “I did some jumping of my own today. That was more of a magic than I thought the Rulers had in them.”
A warrior with a sword and a helmet and a byrnie could easily beat armorless foes who carried only daggers. If he faced a lot of foes like that, who could blame him for getting careless? But if he stayed careless against an enemy with gear like his own, odds were he’d end up bleeding on the ground. Count Hamnet didn’t know magic worked the same way, but he couldn’t see any reason why it shouldn’t.
He wondered if he ought to point that out to Marcovefa. Reluctantly, he decided not to. If she couldn’t see it for himself, she wouldn’t want the lecture. She might need it, but she wouldn’t want it.
“What did you do to the wizards who were sending the sickness?” he asked instead. That seemed safe enough—and he wanted to know.
“I made them stop,” Marcovefa answered. “Past that, I don’t know. I don’t care very much, either.”
“All right.” Hamnet wasn’t sure it was. Up till now, Marcovefa had thrashed the Rulers’ wizards with monotonous regularity. Well, it would have been monotonous, anyhow, if it hadn’t been so essential. If it got to the point where she couldn’t thrash them like that . . .
If it got to that point, the Bizogots and the Raumsdalian Empire were in a lot of trouble. As far as Count Hamnet knew, Marcovefa was the one effective weapon they had against the Rulers. If she wasn’t so effective—what did they have then? As far as he could see, they had nothing.
“I think I need a slug of smetyn,” he said. “It’s been a hard day.”
“Harder for me, so bring me some, too,” Marcovefa said. She drank cautiously most of the time, being new to smetyn and ale and beer and wine. She’d hurt herself the first couple of times she tried drinking. She hadn’t had any idea what a hangover was. She did now, and respected the morning after . . . again, most of the time.
The way she poured the fermented milk down today said she wasn’t worrying about the next morning. Hamnet didn’t suppose he could blame her. She’d just had a brush with a very nasty death. So had he, come to that. He drank more than a slug himself.
Marcovefa sent him an owlish stare. “What are you sitting there for?” She didn’t slur her words, but spoke with exaggerated precision. “Aren’t you going to screw me?”
“Well . . .” That question had only one possible answer, unless he wanted an unholy row. “Yes.” Some time later, he asked, “Is that better?” He rubbed his left shoulder, then sneaked a look at the palm of his hand. She hadn’t bitten him quite hard enough to draw blood.
She stretched like a lion after a kill. “What do you think?”
“If it got any better than that, I don’t know if I’d live through it.” Hamnet was stretching things, but not by much. Never a dull moment with Marcovefa.
Her smile said she liked the answer. She drank more smetyn. Then she said, “In a little while, we do it again.”
“I’ll try,” he said. “I may need some magic to hold up my end of the bargain.”
“I can do that,” Marcovefa said, and he’d seen that she could. She went on, “Or we could do other things besides just screwing.”
“Whatever you please,” Hamnet Thyssen said. They weren’t prudes, up there on top of the Glacier. They didn’t have much in the way of entertainment, so they made the most of what they did have—lovemaking included.
And he ended up doing more than he’d thought he could. There were advantages to having a shaman for a lover. There were also disadvantages. Liv had left him, but she hadn’t hated him. He hoped Marcovefa wouldn’t hate him, either, if she ever decided to leave. If she did hate him, he’d need to look for a place to hide—and he’d need to hope he could find a place like that with a shaman after him.
“WHAT DO YOU suppose the Rulers think about us right now?” Ulric Skakki came up with interesting questions to make time go by while riding on patrol.
“Nothing good, I hope,” Count Hamnet said.
Ulric dropped the reins in his lap for a moment so he could sarcastically clap his hands. “Brilliant, Your Grace! Bloody fornicating brilliant! A lesser mind would be incapable of such analysis.”
“Oh, bugger off,” Hamnet said, which made the adventurer laugh out loud.
But Ulric didn’t give up: “If you were the Rulers, how would you try to get rid of us?”
“Annoy us to death?” Hamnet suggested, and Ulric laughed again. But the question got Hamnet thinking. Slowly, he said, “Magic didn’t work—came close, but it didn’t work. Little raids haven’t worked, either. What’s left? Using an anvil to swat a fly—coming down on us with everything they’ve got. Or do you have some different kind of scheme in mind?”
“No, not me.” Ulric shook his head. “To tell you the truth, I hoped you did.”
“Afraid not,” Hamnet Thyssen said.
“Pity.” Ulric didn’t let the chatter stop him from looking around every few heartbeats. “What do we do if they decide to land on us with both feet like that?”
“Probably can’t fight if they come at us with everybody and his favorite mammoth,” Hamnet said. Ulric Skakki nodded, which disappointed him; he’d wanted the adventurer to tell him he was wrong. Sighing, Hamnet went on, “If we can’t hold them off, we’d better run.”
“Seems logical,” Ulric agreed. “Next question is, where? Sort of all over the landscape, or some place in particular?”
Count Hamnet smiled in spite of himself. “Chances are, going somewhere in particular would be smart.”
“Oh, good! I knew you were a clever fellow.” Ulric made as if to clap his hands again. Hamnet made as if to punch him; sarcasm could wear thin. As if ignorant of that, the adventurer went on, “Now let’s see how clever you really are. If you have to run somewhere, where do you want to run?”
That required some thought. Hamnet Thyssen didn’t like the first answer he came up with, so he tried to see if he could find a better one. To his dismay, he couldn’t. Reluctantly, he gave the first one: “The Empire. Better my own people should jail me than the Rulers should kill me . . . I suppose.”
“Yes, I suppose so, too,” Ulric Skakki said. “And no, I don’t like it any better than you do. But what choice have we got? The Bizogots are shattered, all up and down the plain, and as far across it to east and west as we can reach. The Empire isn’t doing all that well, but it isn’t shattered, either.”
“Well, it wasn’t when that last messenger made it up here, anyhow,” Hamnet said.
“You’re right. It wasn’t then.” Ulric nodded. “He said Nidaros hadn’t fallen. If it has by now, Sigvat II’s bound to be dead, and—”
“And that’s bound to help what’s left of Raumsdalia,” Count Hamnet broke in.
Ulric showed his teeth in what looked like a grin but wasn’t. “How right you are! It’s no wonder His Majesty has brown eyes, is it?”
“Eh?” Hamnet was a beat slow getting the joke. Then he did. “Oh. No, no wonder at all, by God. Whatever they find to take his place—even if it’s the old drunk who sweeps out the stables—is bound to be better.”
“You don’t like Sigvat, do you?”
“He stuck his head up his arse when we found the Rulers. He stuck me in a dungeon when I kept reminding him about that. And he stuck us with Gudrid when we went up through the Gap. Why the demon should I like him?”
“Interesting which one you put last,” Ulric murmured.
“Oh, shut up. So I’m not over Gudrid yet. So chances are I never will be. So what are you going to do about it?” Hamnet said.
“Mm, when you put it that way, probably nothing,” the adventurer replied. “All right—back to the Empire . . . if we can get there. Good-sized army of Rulers already down there, remember. If they move up against us—”
“Why would they do that?” Hamnet said. “It’d be like a sabertooth walking away from a buffalo carcass to chaster after a yappy little fox.”
“A sabertooth wouldn’t be that stupid,” Ulric admitted. “I’m not so sure about people. And we haven’t just yapped at the Rulers. We’ve nipped them a few times—and nobody else on this side of Glacier seems able to do even that much. They have their reasons from coming after us. Besides, they’re afraid of you, remember.”
Hamnet Thyssen laughed bitterly. “If they are, they’re every bit as stupid as you make them out to be. Too much to hope for, though, I fear.”
“They’re smarter than you are, because they’ve got some notion of what’s dangerous to them,” Ulric said.
“Oh, I know what’s dangerous to me, all right,” Hamnet said. “I ought to, after all the mistakes I’ve made with them.”
“You may be dangerous to women. That doesn’t mean they’re dangerous to you,” Ulric told him.
“If they’re not, God save me from running into anything that is,” Count Hamnet said.
“You take things too seriously,” the adventurer said.
“I’ve had things happen to me that need to be taken seriously,” Hamnet retorted. “Not everybody slides through life with a greased hide the way you do.”
“Just goes to show you don’t know me as well as you think.” Ulric shrugged. “Doesn’t matter, not really. We decided what we needed to decide. Only thing left now is convincing Trasamund.”
That sent Hamnet laughing again. “You don’t ask for much!”
“Oh, he’ll come around. He’ll yell and fuss and bellow till he works all the indigestion out of his system, and then he’ll be fine. He doesn’t sit around brooding like some people I could name.” Ulric sent Hamnet a pointed glance.
When Hamnet suggested a few things Ulric could do if he didn’t like it, the adventurer only laughed. That made Hamnet offer more suggestions. Ulric laughed harder. Hamnet knew Ulric was trying to get his goat. The adventurer was good at getting what he wanted, too. Instead of swearing any more, Hamnet subsided into quiet fury.
That wasn’t what Ulric Skakki wanted. “Come on, Thyssen—swear some more,” he said. “You need to get it out of your system, too, and I don’t care if you call me names. You wouldn’t be the first one, God knows.”
“If you don’t care, what’s the point?” Hamnet said.
Ulric started to laugh some more, but broke off. “All right. Fine. I give up. Do what you want to do, no matter how idiotic it looks. Never mind that the Rulers worry about you. They’re nothing but a pack of fools. We’re all a pack of fools. Everybody in the whole stupid world’s a fool—except you.”
That set Hamnet swearing again. Ulric Skakki bowed in the saddle, which only irked Hamnet more. “If the Rulers are so stinking afraid of me, why? What have I done?” he demanded. “They’ve trounced the Bizogots while I was up here. They’ve trounced the Empire while I was down there. I’m useless, is what I am.”
“Are they better wizards than the ones we’ve got, or are they worse?” Ulric asked. “I mean Raumsdalian wizards and Bizogot shamans—leave Marcovefa out of it.”
“They’re better, and you know it as well as I do,” Hamnet Thyssen snapped. “Why talk about what’s obvious?”
Ulric bowed again. “Why? Because it’s so obvious, you don’t want to look at it. If they’ve got better wizards than we do—and they’ve got ’em, all right—then they can see things we can’t. And one of the things they see is that Count Hamnet Thyssen means trouble to them.”
“Only goes to show they’re not smart all the time,” Hamnet said stubbornly.
“You don’t want to believe me. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you it got cold up here in the wintertime,” Ulric Skakki said. “Fine. Don’t believe me. But ask your lady love. If she says it, you’d better believe it.”
“She’s not my lady love,” Hamnet muttered. That was part of his problem, too. He slept with Marcovefa. He kept company with her. He liked her—when she didn’t scare the piss out of him. Love her the way he’d loved Gudrid and Liv? No matter how much he wanted to, he couldn’t come close. She was too strange . . . and she didn’t seem to want him to love her, either.
He didn’t try explaining that to Ulric. He would have had trouble explaining it to himself. But it was there, and it ate at him at the same time as the troubles against the invaders did.
By the way Ulric eyed him, he didn’t need to explain it. The adventurer was alarmingly good at understanding how people worked. To Hamnet, that came close to being magic—dark magic. “Lady love or not, ask her anyway. She’ll give you a straight answer. Maybe she’ll even figure out why the Rulers get all weak in the knees when they think about you.”
“Oh, go howl!” Hamnet said. But the seed, once planted, wouldn’t go away.
MARCOVEFA LOOKED AT him. For all Count Hamnet could tell, she looked into him, looked through him. “Why do the Rulers fear you?” she said. “Why do you care so much about why? Isn’t it enough to know that they do?”
“No, curse it,” Hamnet said. “As far as I can see, it’s nothing but stupidity. They have no reason to do it. Trasamund is more dangerous to them than I’ll ever be. The Bizogots listen to him. Nobody listens to me here. Nobody listens to me down in the Empire, either. God knows that’s true.”
“You worry too much about things,” Marcovefa said.
Hamnet Thyssen laughed harshly. “Now tell me something I didn’t know. But I think the Rulers worry too much about me.”
“If you want me to”—by the way Marcovefa said it, she meant, If you’re daft enough to want me to—“I can try a divination to see why. I don’t know what it will show. I don’t know if it will show anything.”
“Try,” Hamnet said. “If it doesn’t do anything else, maybe it’ll make Ulric Skakki shut up. That’d be worth a lot to me all by itself.”
She raised an eyebrow. “All right,” she said. “We see.” She smiled to herself as she picked up a small earthenware bowl. She admired pottery. So did the Bizogots, who got it in trade from the Empire. Their nomadic way of life didn’t let them build the kilns they would have needed to make their own bowls and pots and jugs. “I will be back,” she told him. “I need water for this divination. I will look into the water in the bowl and see what it shows.”
“All right. We have scryers who work like that,” Hamnet said.
She nodded. “I am not surprised. Anyone who does magic would think of this. Easier to keep water in a bowl than to weave a basket that holds it.”
“Yes.” Count Hamnet nodded, too. The Bizogots also had that art. Raumsdalians didn’t. No need for it in a land where potters worked in every village.
Marcovefa ducked out of their hut. It wasn’t far from the edge of Sudertorp Lake; she soon returned, carrying the bowl carefully so she wouldn’t spill the lakewater. “Come outside,” she told Hamnet. “The sun will help show what there is to see.”
“If you say so.” Hamnet expected the perpetually curious—perpetually nosy—Bizogots to crowd around and watch her work magic. But they didn’t. Maybe keeping them away was another magic. Hamnet couldn’t think of anything else likely to do it.
The shaman from atop the Glacier began to chant in her own dialect. Hamnet Thyssen had learned bits and pieces of it, but not enough to follow her song. Follow or not, he knew about what she had to be saying. She was asking for calm water, in which she could see what would happen in days to come.
She bent low over the bowl, still chanting. The water inside lay utterly still. To Hamnet, it was only water. To Marcovefa, it would show what lay ahead more clearly than a mirror of polished silver down in Nidaros showed a fair lady’s reflection.
Then, without warning, the bowl broke. Marcovefa exclaimed in surprise. The water spilled out and carved a couple of tiny gullies in the dirt in front of the hut.
“I didn’t know it was cracked,” Hamnet said.
“It wasn’t,” Marcovefa answered.
“But it must have been. It wouldn’t have done that if it weren’t,” Hamnet insisted.
She shook her head. “No. That was part of the scrying. Look.” She picked up the pieces of the bowl, then dug something out of the dirt with her fingernail. She held it under Hamnet’s nose.
His eyes crossed as he tried to focus. “A little scrap of crystal. So what?”
“It’s more than that,” she said.
“Well, what is it, then?”
“Something to do with the divination.”
“How could it be? It wasn’t even in the water.”
“It was under the water. That’s what matters.”
“You aren’t making any sense,” Hamnet said impatiently.
Marcovefa looked annoyed—not at him, but at herself. “I can’t make sense about this—not as much as I want to, anyhow. The scrying broke apart when the bowl did.”
“You mean you don’t know what’s ahead?” Hamnet felt like kicking something. “We just wasted the time and the bowl?”
“No.” She shook her head again. “I learned . . . something, anyhow. You will face the Rulers here, in the land of the Bizogots.”
“Not down in Raumsdalia?” Hamnet said in some surprise.
“Maybe there, too. But when it matters most, it will be here.”
“And what happens then?”
“Then . . . the bowl breaks.” Marcovefa gave him a crooked grin he would have thought he’d be more likely to see on Ulric Skakki’s face. “You don’t always find out everything you want to know.”
“Of course not,” Hamnet said. “That would make things too easy.”
Marcovefa nodded, even if he’d meant it for a sour joke. “Yes. It would. But if I do not know what happens after the bowl breaks, neither do the Rulers. I saw that much, anyhow.”
“Can you get another bowl and try again?” Count Hamnet asked.
“I am not brave enough,” the shaman answered. “When the bowl broke and the water spilled, that told me I was not supposed to know any more. But the Rulers know what they are about. Whatever happens here, it happens on account of you.”
“I’m going to go out and punch Ulric in the chops,” Hamnet said.
“Why?”
“For being right.”
“Ah.” Marcovefa nodded once more. “Yes, that makes sense. Not many worse things a man can do.”
Now he thought she was joking—but if she was, she hid it very well. “I still can’t believe it,” Hamnet said. “I’m nobody in particular. Why does this have to land on me?”
“Why not you? It has to land on someone. Or else it lands on no one, and the Rulers win without a real fight,” Marcovefa said. “But you aren’t ‘nobody in particular.’ Who has been beyond the Glacier? Who has been to the top of the Glacier, too?”
“Ulric. Trasamund.” Hamnet Thyssen hesitated, then produced two more names: “Audun Gilli. Liv. So why me?”
“One in five is not ‘nobody in particular,’ ” Marcovefa said. “Who has loved a woman from your folk, from the Bizogots, and from my folk? Only you.”
“Is that why?” Hamnet was more appalled than anything else. He started to blurt, Much good it’s done me, but swallowed the words. He didn’t want to anger Marcovefa.
Swallowing words around a shaman didn’t always help. By Marcovefa’s expression, she knew what he was about to say even if he didn’t say it. “I do not know if that is why or not,” she said. “Maybe. Maybe not. But there is more to you than you want to see.”
“More to land me in trouble,” he said.
“That, too,” she agreed, which didn’t make him any happier. “Maybe also more to get you out, though.”
He laughed. “When was the last time I wasn’t in trouble?” He knew the answer to that, whether Marcovefa did or not: “The day before Sigvat’s courier got to my castle to tell me I had to come to Nidaros, that’s when. One thing after the other.”
“Am I one thing—or the other?” she asked sharply.
“Of course you are,” Hamnet said. “You know it as well as I do, too. You wouldn’t be able to stand yourself if you didn’t make trouble. Go ahead—tell me I’m wrong.”
Marcovefa preened. She tried to pretend she hadn’t, but she couldn’t do it. Then she said, “Well, maybe I am. But not just trouble to you. Trouble to your enemies, too. You have lots of enemies.”
“Who?” Count Hamnet said. “Me?” He was convincing enough to make Marcovefa poke him in the ribs. She didn’t kick him in the ribs: he supposed to show him she wasn’t his enemy . . . yet.
THREE DAYS LATER, another rider from the Empire came into what had been the Leaping Lynxes’ summer village. Per Anders looked relieved to find Hamnet Thyssen there. “God be praised!” he said. “I bring you a letter from His Majesty.” He took a fancy, beribboned, multiply sealed rolled parchment from his saddlebag and presented it to Count Hamnet with the best flourish a weary man could manage.
“Oh, joy,” Hamnet said as he took it.
“Happy day,” Ulric Skakki agreed.
The courier glanced from one of them to the other. “Does the honor of hearing from the Emperor—of having a letter in his own bright hand—not please you?”
“No,” Hamnet said shortly.
“Sorry, Anders—not your fault,” Ulric added. “But either he’s going to lie to us or he’s going to beg from us or he’s going to do both at once.” His voice elaborately casual, he went on, “So tell me—does the Empire still hold Nidaros?”
Per Anders flinched. “How the demon did you know it was lost?”
“Well, it wasn’t the last time a rider made it up here, but we sent that poor bugger off with a flea in his ear,” the adventurer answered. “It’s the logical place for the Rulers to aim at, and they’ve got wizards we mostly can’t match. So . . . Sigvat got away, did he? Where’s he holed up now?”
“Aarhus,” Anders said unwillingly. Count Hamnet whistled under his breath. Aarhus lay a long way south of Nidaros: four or five days’ travel. The small sound drew the courier’s attention back to him. “Aren’t you going to read that?”
“I don’t know. Am I?” Hamnet asked, not at all in jest. Per Anders winced. But Ulric was right—it wasn’t the horse man’s fault. He’d risked his life to obey Sigvat II, a man who, to Hamnet’s way of thinking, had long since proved he wasn’t worth obeying. Hamnet took a certain grim pleasure in tearing the ribbon and cracking the blobby red and green seals.
“Well? What sort of horse manure have we got here?” Ulric asked as Hamnet unrolled the parchment.
Hamnet didn’t answer, not right away. Anders was right: the letter was in the Emperor’s own hand, which made it much harder to read than if one of his secretaries had written it. Where were they now? Dead? Fled? How many poor bastards had the Rulers found in the dungeons under Sigvat’s palace? What did they do with them? Turn them loose? Broil them for supper? Hamnet didn’t think the Rulers were cannibals, but how could you be sure?
Sigvat II swore he’d lost Nidaros by treachery. Maybe it was even true. Count Hamnet couldn’t see that it mattered now one way or the other. The Emperor also swore he would get the capital back by himself, which Hamnet didn’t believe for a minute. Then he wrote, We all need to work together against these savage, barbarous foes. Hamnet Thyssen swore under his breath. Of all the things he hated, agreeing with his much-unloved sovereign stood close to the top of the list.
He wordlessly passed the letter to Ulric. “About what you’d expect,” the adventurer said after going through it faster than Hamnet had. “His toes are scorched, and he wants us to come pull him off the fire.”
“We’re already doing more than he knows about,” Hamnet said. “Not a lot of Rulers getting down to the Empire.”
“The ones already down there are bad enough,” Per Anders said. “More than bad enough. If you and the mammoth-herders here can come south to help us, Sigvat will be grateful.”
Both Hamnet Thyssen and Ulric Skakki burst out laughing. “Do you think we were whelped yesterday?” Ulric asked. “No Emperor’s ever grateful for longer than it takes him to pull up his pants again, and Sigvat’s worse than most.”
“Then you won’t come?” Anders sounded tragic. “God help Raumsdalia.”
“If God would help Raumsdalia, Sigvat wouldn’t need us,” Count Hamnet said. “We didn’t tell you we wouldn’t come. But if we do, we’ll do it for our reasons, not Sigvat’s.”
“What reasons have we got?” Ulric seemed genuinely curious.
“What we’ve got to decide is, do we hate Sigvat worse than the Rulers?” Hamnet replied. “I know what Trasamund and Marcovefa will say. So do you.”
Ulric Skakki grimaced. “Well, yes. They will say that. But they don’t know Sigvat the way we do.”
“No. They’re lucky,” Count Hamnet said.
That got a laugh from the adventurer and another wince from Per Anders. The poor courier seemed to do nothing but flinch, listening to the way Hamnet and Ulric roasted his sovereign—and theirs. “If you won’t do it for Sigvat’s sake, do it for the Empire’s,” he said. “Please. I beg you.” He actually dropped to his knees and held out his hands palms up, as if pleading for mercy from foes who’d beaten him.
“Get up, you donkey,” Hamnet said gruffly.
“Yes, do. This is embarrassing,” Ulric agreed.
“I have no pride. I have no shame,” Per said, staying on his knees. “Why should I be embarrassed? I am trying to serve Raumsdalia.”
“With stewed parsnips on the side, I have no doubt,” Ulric Skakki said. The courier looked blank for a moment, then sent him a reproachful stare. Ulric went on, “His Grace is right. Get up. You won’t just have one barbarian invasion on your hands—you’ll have two.”
“We can deal with Bizogots. We’ve always dealt with Bizogots,” Per Anders said.
“Don’t let Trasamund hear you talk like that, or you’ll be talking out of a new mouth in your neck,” Hamnet Thyssen warned. But Anders was right. The Bizogots were a nuisance to the Empire. The Rulers were a deadly danger to it—and to the Bizogots as well.
“You’ll come south, then?” Now Per did rise, and brushed mud from the knees of his trousers.
“I’m afraid we will.” Count Hamnet spoke without enthusiasm. “As you say, not for Sigvat—be damned to Sigvat—but for Raumsdalia.”
“Reasons don’t matter when you’re doing the right thing,” Anders said.
“Reasons always matter.” Hamnet sounded—and was—very sure of himself. Ulric Skakki looked as if he wanted to argue, but held his tongue.
Marcovefa proved willing to go down into the Empire again. Trasamund proved eager. Neither reaction surprised Hamnet Thyssen. “We’ll go! We’ll clean them out in the south, and then we’ll come back and clean them out here in the north, too,” Trasamund boomed. He drew his big sword and flourished it above his head. “By God, we’ll run them back beyond the Glacier!”
“No, we won’t,” Ulric said. “Don’t be a bigger idiot than you can help. Maybe, if we’re lucky enough, we can beat them down in the Empire. Don’t ask God for what he’s not about to give you.”
“Who are you, to say what God can and can’t do?” the jarl retorted. “Has he been talking to you?”
“He has,” Ulric said solemnly, and Trasamund’s eyes widened. The adventurer went on, “He told me, ‘Don’t listen to the big Bizogot with the bad temper, because he doesn’t know what the demon he’s talking about.’ ”
Trasamund snorted and made as if to cuff him. Hamnet had seen that Ulric could flip anybody who came at him, even if the attacker was much the bigger man. He didn’t bother now. He just ducked away.
Per Anders wanted everyone to jump on a horse and ride off on the instant. That didn’t happen; the courier must have known it wouldn’t. The Bizogots rode out the next day. Hamnet thought that was pretty good.
Ulric didn’t seem to. When Hamnet asked him why, he answered, “How much decent weather have we got left?”
Hamnet grunted. When would the Breath of God start blowing down from the north? Summer up here—summer in Nidaros, for that matter—got cut cruelly short by the frigid wind off the Glacier. Some years, it got cut shorter than others. “Nothing we can do about it any which way except go on as long as we can,” Hamnet said.
“No doubt. No doubt.” By the way Ulric said it, he would have bundled up the Breath of God in a leather sack and stolen off with it if only he could. But some things were beyond even his formidable talents.
“I don’t know how much good we’ll do.” Hamnet looked at the small, makeshift army. Bizogots from half the clans on the steppe rode with Trasamund. Maybe they would follow the jarl’s orders, maybe not—which was true of any force of Bizogots ever put together. They might have counted for something in terms of surprise. In pure fighting terms, they weren’t worth much . . . save only Marcovefa.
She could do things no one else could even hope for against the Rulers. She could, yes—but would she? No way to know, not till she did or she didn’t. And if she didn’t, they were all ruined.
“We’ll find out,” Ulric said, which echoed Hamnet Thyssen’s thoughts much too closely for comfort.