“Can we stop them?” he asked Liv.
“Do you mean, can our fighters stop theirs? Man for man, we can match them,” she said. “When it comes to shamanry, though .. . Well, Audun and Odovacar and I will do our best. I have to hope it will be good enough.”
He gave her a quick kiss. He had to hope whatever magic the shamans and Audun Gilli could muster would be good enough, too. “If you can spook their war mammoths …”
“That would be good, wouldn’t it?” Liv said. “We’ll try. We’ll try everything we can think of.”
“This is our land!” Totila was shouting. “These are our herds! Are we going to let these flyblown mammoth turds steal them from us?”
“No!” the Bizogots yelled back. Their spirits still seemed high. Hamnet Thyssen admired them for that, at the same time wondering where they’d left their memories. The Rulers already held the heart of the Red Dire Wolves’ grazing lands. The invaders had already beaten the clan once. Why did Totila think his countrymen could beat the Rulers now?
Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he just thought they had to make the fight. If they didn’t, if they fled, they would be invaders themselves, trying to take land from other Bizogots. And they would have a brand new war on their hands if they did. Sometimes you needed to fight even when the odds were bad.
“Well, well.” Ulric Skakki looked up from the methodical examination he was giving the arrows in his quiver. “Doesn’t this sound like fun?” His bright, cheery voice matched the wide smile on his foxy features.
Count Hamnet just shook his head. “No.”
“What do you suppose the Bizogots will do if things go wrong again?” Ulric spoke Raumsdalian, so most of the mammoth-herders wouldn’t understand. “What do you suppose we’ll do if things go wrong?”
“Try to stay alive,” Hamnet said, also in Raumsdalian. “What else can we do? What can anybody do when things go wrong?”
“A point. Yes, a distinct point.” The adventurer tapped one of the points sticking up from the quiver. “Not too sharp a point, I hope.”
The Bizogots and the Raumsdalians who’d come north rode out behind the scouts a little later. Women and old men stayed behind to tend the herds, though some women carried bows to battle. Arnora rode beside Ulric Skakki, and seemed as ready to fight as any of the men howling out battle songs.
If the Rulers broke the Red Dire Wolves again, would the herd guards be able to keep the Bizogots’ animals out of the invaders’ hands? Nobody could know something like that ahead of time, but Hamnet had his doubts.
“There!” The shout rose from up ahead. “There they are, the God-cursed rogues!”
“Are you ready?” Hamnet asked Liv.
“I’d better be, but how much difference would it make if I weren’t?” she said.
He had no good answer for that. “Can you do anything about their mammoths?” he asked.
She smiled at him the way a mother might smile at a fussy child. “We can do things,” she replied. “I don’t know whether they’ll work the way we hope, but we can do them.”
He had to be content, or not so content, with that. He worried as he rode forward with the Bizogots. If Liv and Audun and Odovacar couldn’t stop or slow down the mammoths, this battle was lost before it began. They had to see that, didn’t they?
Liv did. Audun probably did. Odovacar? Hamnet Thyssen wasn’t sure how much Odovacar saw, or how much it mattered.
Closer now. The mammoths loomed up ahead like perambulating mountains. The riding deer out to the flanks weren’t nearly so formidable. Where were the Rulers’ wizards? What new deviltry were they planning?
The Bizogots shouted Totila’s name, and Trasamund’s. They shouted for vengeance. They roared out their hatred of the Rulers. They shook their fists. They yelled curses that probably wouldn’t bite. And the Rulers yelled back. Hamnet Thyssen still knew next to nothing of their harsh, guttural speech. All the same, he doubted that the invaders were praising the Bizogots or passing the time of day.
Arrows started to fly. “Do you see?” Ulric Skakki said. “They’ve put more armor on their mammoths.”
Hamnet hadn’t noticed, but Ulric was right. The thick leather sheets did cover more of the enormous beasts. “I don’t care how much they put on,” Hamnet said. “Leather won’t turn a square hit.” As if to try to prove the point, he nocked an arrow and let fly.
Ulric Skakki also began shooting. “I don’t think they can armor their deer, or not very much,” he said. “Those have all they can do to carry men. They don’t have any weight left over for armor, too.”
Down in the Empire, heavy cavalry horses would carry a trooper, his coat of mail, and iron armor of their own. Charges of such knights were irresistible . . . except, perhaps, by mammoths. But the Bizogots had neither such big horses nor such armor. Their warriors wore cuirasses of leather boiled in oil – when they wore armor at all. Their horses had no more protection than the Rulers’ riding deer.
Deer and horses, then, made larger, easier targets than warriors. Wounded animals shrilled out cries of pain that reminded Hamnet Thyssen of women in torment. Listening, he wanted to stuff his fingers in his ears to block out the horrid sounds. But his hands had other things to do.
He methodically drew and shot, drew and shot. His bowstring didn’t break, as it had in the last fight against the Rulers. Liv had set a spell on it, and on many others, to ward against the enemy’s sorcerous mischief. Audun and Odovacar had also seen to the Bizogots’ bows. So far, their charms seemed to be working.
Bizogot horsemen were at least a match for the warriors of the Rulers on riding deer. But horsemen could not withstand the Rulers’ war mammoths. Fight as the Bizogots would, the mammoths drove a great wedge into the center of their line, threatening to split their force in two.
“If you can do anything at all about those God-cursed beasts, this would be a mighty good time!” Hamnet shouted to Liv.
“I’ll try,” she answered, and said something to Audun Gilli, who rode close by. The Raumsdalian wizard nodded. He began what Hamnet recognized as a protective spell, to keep Liv from having to guard herself while she made a different kind of magic.
Count Hamnet wouldn’t have wanted to cast a spell while riding a bucketing horse and hoping no enemy arrow struck home. That was what Liv had to do, though, and she did it as if she had years of practice. Her voice never wavered, and her passes were, or at least seemed, quick and reliable. Hamnet admired her at least as much for her unflustered competence as for her courage.
And suddenly the ground in front of and under the Rulers’ war mammoths began to boil with .. . with what? With voles, Hamnet realized, and with lemmings, and with all the other mousy little creatures that lived on the northern steppe. Some of them started running up the mammoths’ legs. Others squeaked and died as great feet squashed them. Still others started up the mammoths’ trunks instead of their legs.
The mammoths liked that no better than Hamnet would have enjoyed a sending of cockroaches. They did odd, ridiculous-looking dance steps, trying to shake free of the voles and lemmings. If they also shook free of some of the warriors on their backs, they didn’t care at all. The Rulers might, but the mammoths didn’t.
And those mammoths particularly didn’t like the little animals on their trunks. They shook them again and again, sending lemmings flying. They didn’t pay any attention to the battle they were supposed to be fighting.
Where the war mammoths had forced their way into the center of the Bizogots’ line, now they suddenly halted, more worried about vermin than violence. The Bizogots whooped and cheered and fought back hard. Had the confusion in the enemy ranks lasted longer, and had they met with no confusion of their own . . .
Hamnet Thyssen often thought about that afterwards. Much too late to do anything about it then, of course.