He was right about that. Even so early in the season, the air was murmurous with the sound of fluttering wings. Birds of every size, from larkspurs and flycatchers up to swans, came to the Bizogot plains to breed and to feast upon the brief bounty they offered when they thawed out.
Ulric Skakki only shrugged. “They don’t eat all the bugs. They don’t even eat enough of them. Plenty of bloodsuckers left alive. Anybody who comes up here when the sun shines has reason to know about that.” He mimed smacking at himself.
Count Hamnet nodded. “Not just bloodsuckers on the plains these days,” he said. “We’ve got bloodspillers, too.” As usual, his gaze turned to the north.
“We’ve done everything we could,” Ulric said. “We’ve got scouts out. They’ll warn us when the Rulers move. The Red Dire Wolves are as ready to fight as they ever will be. And we’ve sent messengers to the clans close by. Maybe we’ll get reinforcements.”
“Yes, maybe we will.” Hamnet didn’t sound as if he believed it. And he didn’t. “We can’t make the other Bizogots join us. Since we can’t, chances are they won’t.”
“Well, why should they?” As it often did, acid rode Ulric Skakki’s voice. “They’re free. If you don’t believe me, just ask them. They can do whatever they choose, whatever they please – no matter how idiotic it is.”
They spoke Raumsdalian, which kept most of the mammoth-herders around them from following what they said. Trasamund, though, was an exception. “You don’t understand my folk,” he told Ulric.
“By God, Your Ferocity, I hope I don’t,” the adventurer answered.
“You Raumsdalians are a servile people. You need people to tell you what to do,” said the jarl of the Three Tusk clan.
Both Ulric and Hamnet Thyssen burst out laughing. Trasamund scowled first at one, then at the other, then at both of them together. “Oh, yes, Your Ferocity, I obey orders like any other slave,” Hamnet said. “When Sigvat commanded me to come back to Nidaros, I turned around and went. That’s why I’m sleeping in silk sheets on a feather bed in the capital now, instead of up here getting ready to fight the Rulers.”
“And everyone down in Raumsdalia told me how smart I was to come north again,” Ulric Skakki added. “Everyone there knows how important this fight is. Everyone cheered me on.”
Trasamund’s scowl darkened. “You make fun of me.”
“Wouldn’t you say that’s the chance you take when you come out with something funny?” Ulric said.
“But you are not like most of your folk,” the Bizogot said.
“Then why talk about us as if we were?” Hamnet Thyssen asked.
They might have gone on bickering, but someone at the northern edge of the encampment raised a shout: “Scout coming in!”
Hamnet Thyssen tensed. He could think of only one reason a scout would come back to the Red Dire Wolves’ camp – to warn that the Rulers were on the move at last. He hurried forward, wondering what the man would say. Several Bizogots waved to the scout. “Is it war?” they cried.
“It’s war!” the scout yelled back, and hope and fear went to war inside Count Hamnet. The rider went on, “Where are the others? Haven’t you heard before me? I’m the third one who set out with the news.”
“You’re the first who got here,” Totila said, and Hamnet’s fear jeered at his hope. What had the Rulers done to the other scouts? Reached out with their dark magic? He couldn’t think of anything else likely. Totila, meanwhile, continued, “You have seen the Rulers face-to-face. What do you make of them?”
“What we heard before from the strangers and foreigners seems to be true, Your Ferocity,” the scout replied. “They have lancers and archers on mammoths. The rest of their warriors ride deer. They keep in straight lines where we would ride in groups.”
Discipline, Hamnet Thyssen thought, not for the first time. The Rulers had it – had, perhaps, even more of it than the Empires soldiers. The Bizogots? The Bizogots didn’t even have a word for it, and had to talk around it when they saw it.
But the Bizogots were fierce. Totila shook his fist. “Straight lines, is it? Well, we’ll put some kinks in them, by God! See if we don’t!” His clansmen bawled their approval. “To horse!” he roared, and they ran for their mounts.
Liv asked the scout, “Did you see anything of their magics? Did you feel as if something passed close to you but didn’t strike?”
“No, lady shaman.” The man touched his right fist to his forehead in token of respect. “But may the teratorns take me if I know what happened to the other two men who rode south with the news.”
“How lucky are we that even one got through?” Ulric Skakki murmured to Count Hamnet. “And what will we be riding into when we go against those devils?”
“We beat them once, up in Three Tusk country,” Hamnet said.
“Yes? And so? A raid. And we caught them by surprise,” Ulric said. “This time, they’ll know we’re coming. And they’ll be ready.”
“If you don’t think we have a chance, maybe you’d better not come along,” Hamnet said.
“Oh, no. I might be wrong. I don’t think so, but I might.” Ulric grinned a crooked grin. “And if admitting that doesn’t prove I’m no Bizogot, demons take me if I know what would.”
“Well, we’ll know pretty soon,” Hamnet said. “Sometimes finding out is better than waiting.”
“So it is. And sometimes it’s worse, too,” Ulric said, which, unfortunately, was also true. Instead of answering, Hamnet went to mount. So did Ulric Skakki. The smile on the adventurer’s face might have meant anything.
Most of the Red Dire Wolves and all the surviving men from the Three Tusk clan rode with Totila and Trasamund. The rest of the Red Dire Wolves were driving their musk oxen and mammoths off to the south and west to give them something to fall back on if they had to. Part of Hamnet Thyssen said that that was wrong, that the Bizogots should act as if they were sure of winning.
He soon decided that part was being stupid. Wasn’t it the part that had clung to Gudrid, the part that had refused to see anything wrong? Wasn’t it the blind part, the brainless part? He thought it was. The Red Dire Wolves were only being sensible.
But even as he nodded to himself, he worried. If you planned for the worst thing that could happen, weren’t you more likely to bring it about? Wouldn’t your warriors be more cautious, thinking, Well, even if we lose here, it isn’t the end of the world? If you went into battle, shouldn’t you go into it thinking you had to win no matter what?
Wasn’t that, in fact, what made Bizogots fiercer than Raumsdalians most of the time? Raumsdalians, with all the resources of the Empire behind them, could more easily afford to lose than the mammoth-herders could. The Empire’s soldiers could come back and win another day. The Bizogots lived, and fought, in the moment.
And the Rulers? What of them? As far as Hamnet could see, they couldn’t afford to lose here. They had to go forward. Back, back towards the Gap and even beyond it, would be nothing but disaster for them.
Someone pointed. Shouts rang out. “There they are!” the Bizogots yelled. “Now we’ll get them!” Totila’s men were brave enough, no doubt of that.
“Revenge!” Trasamund bellowed. All his clansmen took up that cry. Liv’s voice rang clear and high among the deeper ones. She was his woman, but she was a Three Tusk Bizogot, too, and always would be.
Mammoths in the center, riding deer on the outthrust wings. If Hamnet had commanded the Rulers, he would have deployed his forces the same way. Where were their wizards? That was another worry. Hamnet glanced to Liv, to Audun Gilli, to Odovacar farther away. They’d held off the spirit hawks, whatever those were. They’d barely done it, but they had. Could they withstand the invaders once more?
They’d better, Hamnet Thyssen thought. We all go down if they fail. He looked over at Liv again. If she failed, she wouldn’t just be in danger of losing a battle. She risked dying a dreadful death by sorcery. His mind shied from that thought like a horse shying from a snake.