“They sure do,” Audun said. “They ought to be able to see that this is important . . . except they don’t write themselves, and so they don’t understand why it would matter whether or not the Rulers do.”
“If the Rulers start using name magic against them, they’ll understand soon enough,” Count Hamnet said. “Of course, that’ll be too late.” He spat into the mud between his feet. “Amazing how many things we understand too stinking late.” He wasn’t thinking of sorcery, at least not of the usual sort. He was thinking of Gudrid. As usual when he thought of his faithless former wife, he wished he didn’t.
Luckily, Audun Gilli couldn’t read his mind. “Even if we do have escapes,” the wizard said, “it stays light so much longer now. They can’t get a long start in the night. We have a much better chance of hunting them down.”
“So we do,” Hamnet said sourly. “It would still be better if they didn’t get away at all. Can you do anything magical to make sure they stay here?”
“I doubt it. You need a willing subject for sorcery like that,” Audun said.
“Oh, wonderful,” Count Hamnet said, his tone more sour still. “If you’ve got willing subjects, you don’t need to magic ‘em to get ‘em to stay where they’re supposed to.”
“Well, yes, there is that,” the wizard admitted. As if he badly wanted to change the subject, he pointed up into the sky. “Look. The teratorns have come back from the south.”
“So they have,” Hamnet said. The great birds – scavengers big enough to dwarf vultures and even condors – stayed longer around Nidaros than up here in the Bizogot country. But when winter clamped down there, most of them flew south – corpses got too thin on the ground to let them stay.
As if thinking along with Count Hamnet, Audun Gilli said, “They’re liable to have plenty to eat up here this summer.”
“Yes, aren’t they?” Hamnet said. “I hope they don’t sick up the bodies of the Rulers they feed on. And I hope there are plenty of those.”
“May it be so. May God hear your prayer,” the wizard said. Hamnet hadn’t been praying, or not exactly, but he wouldn’t be sorry if God listened to him. God hadn’t done much of that lately. But when he said as much, Audun Gilli cocked his head to one side and studied him like a bright-eyed bird. “No, eh? So you don’t thank God for Liv, then?”
“I do,” Hamnet said at once. “I do, and you’re right. I was thinking of the world’s affairs, not my own.”
“Your own count for more most of the time,” Audun observed.
“Most of the time, but not here,” Hamnet Thyssen said. “If the world’s affairs go to ruin, mine will, too. Down in the Empire, I could live in my castle and tell the world to go hang. I can’t do that here – the world is more likely to hang me. Can we stop the Rulers? Can we even slow them down?”
“Would we be up here if we didn’t think we could?” Audun Gilli answered.
“We thought we could when we came north,” Hamnet said. “That was before we knew they’d crushed the Three Tusk clan. It was before they beat the Red Dire Wolves, too.” He looked uneasily towards the north. How much of a fight could the Bizogots put up when the Rulers decided to strike again? Enough? Any at all?
The wizard’s eyes went in the same direction. “They are strong,” Audun murmured, as much to himself as to Hamnet Thyssen. “They are strong, yes, but we can stop them.”
“How?” Hamnet asked bluntly.
“I don’t know yet,” Audun Gilli replied. “But I think we’ll find out. The very strong have weaknesses in proportion to their strength.”
“Is that so?” Hamnet Thyssen said. “Tell me of a lion’s weaknesses, then.”
“If a lion doesn’t have lots of big animals to kill, it will starve,” Audun said at once. “Foxes or weasels can live well and get fat on land that won’t support a lion.”
He was right. Hamnet couldn’t deny it. Even so … “I don’t see what that has to do with the Rulers.”
“Neither do I,” the sorcerer said. “You were the one who mentioned the lion, though.”
“Well, so I was,” Count Hamnet said gruffly. “What weaknesses do the Rulers have? We haven’t seen many yet.”
“No, we haven’t,” Audun Gilli agreed. “The way they discard captives may be one. If they didn’t, we wouldn’t have learned so much from our prisoners.”
At the moment, Hamnet Thyssen worried more about what Rankarag and the other prisoners had learned from him. No one had tried to escape yet. Maybe the captives thought the Rulers wouldn’t take them back no matter what. Maybe they were right if they did. That did seem to be a weakness to Hamnet.
But was it a weakness the Bizogots could use to beat the Rulers? If it was, he couldn’t see how. Had the Bizogots found any weaknesses like that? If they had, he knew he had no idea what they were.
V
Fear made thescout’s voice wobble when he rode into the camp. “They’re moving!” he called. “The God-cursed Rulers are moving!”
And, like a spark setting kindling alight, the fear in the Bizogot rider’s voice sent fear racing through the encampment where the Red Dire Wolves and the remnants of the Three Tusk clan dwelt. “They’re moving!” became “They’re coming!” became “They’ll attack us!” became “They’ll kill us all!” became “We have to flee before they can kill us all!”
Trasamund kept his wits about him, at least enough to hear what the scout truly said. “What do you mean, they’re moving?” he shouted through the rising chaos. Hamnet Thyssen couldn’t have found a better question if he tried for a week. Finding out what was really going on came ahead of everything else.
“Well, Your Ferocity, they’re moving south,” the Bizogot rider answered. He pointed east. “They’re heading down into our country – into Red Dire Wolf country – over that way.”
“They’re not coming straight at the camp, then?” Trasamund demanded.
“No, Your Ferocity, or not when I saw em,” the scout said. “But their war mammoths and riding deer are on the move, and the herds of mammoths and musk oxen they’ve stolen here.” He had more diplomacy than most Bizogots; he didn’t remind Trasamund that those stolen mammoths and musk oxen came from the Three Tusk clan.
Totila said, “This is bad enough. They move into the heart of our grazing grounds, may God afflict them with boils. We can’t take our herds that way now, not without fighting.”
“We’re not ready for another fight yet,” Ulric Skakki said in a low voice.
“Now tell me something I didn’t know,” Hamnet Thyssen answered. “Do you think the Bizogots ever will be?”
“Well, if the answer turns out to be no, we both rode a demon of a long way for nothing,” Ulric said, which seemed like another obvious truth.
“What are we going to do?” Liv found one more important question. “Will we go over to the attack? Will we run from the Rulers? Or will we stay here and wait till they strike us?”
“Let’s hit them!” Trasamund boomed.
He might have been a male grouse booming where no females could hear him. The Bizogots didn’t take up the cry. They weren’t eager to strike at the Rulers. One fight with the foe from beyond the Glacier had taught them how misplaced eagerness was. They might fight bravely against the invaders, but few of them would swarm forward to do it.
Trasamund didn’t seem to see that. “Let’s hit them!” he cried again.
Fear had kindled among the Red Dire Wolves. Ferocity wouldn’t. Again, Trasamund’s bellow fell into a deep, dark pool of silence. It raised no echoes. The jarl of the Three Tusk clan turned red with rage when he saw it wouldn’t.
“Are you afraid?” Trasamund shouted, now in disbelief.
No one told him no. He clapped a hand to his forehead. Count Hamnet wondered if he would have a stroke, but he didn’t.
“We know which direction the Rulers will come from now,” Totila said. “We can work out how best to beat them back when they do.”