“Now you’re talking,” Ulric Skakki told him.
Concealing a trailin the north country was at the same time simple and next to impossible. Splashing through shallow rills and puddles and pools – and there were no deep ones, thanks to the permanently frozen ground – gave long stretches where travelers showed no hoofprints. On the other hand, the mud all around that standing water showed tracks only too well.
If there were more high ground on the northern plains, concealment would have been hopeless. Anyone on a hill, even a modest hill, could have seen for many miles. But the swells and dips in the landscape were smaller than that. They were just enough to keep the ground from being perfectly flat, enough so that, when riders were in dips, swells helped hide them from those who came after them.
But when riders came up onto swells . . . Looking south and east a few hours after Sunniulf’s White Foxes rode past to battle the Rulers, Hamnet Thyssen spotted war mammoths and riding deer silhouetted against the sky. Even though he swore, his heart wasn’t in it.
Trasamund’s was. “How the glory of the Bizogots is fallen!” he groaned. “These bandits thrash us as if we were naughty boys. How will we ever get away from them?”
Even he could no longer imagine beating the Rulers. Escaping suddenly seemed too much to hope for. Liv, by contrast, stuck to what was still possible. She pointed ahead. “There’s a herd of musk oxen. Let’s kill one and butcher it. We need the meat.”
Three or four White Fox Bizogots and their dogs accompanied the herd. They shouted angrily when they saw strangers on their grazing grounds, and even more angrily when they discovered one of the strangers was the jarl of the Three Tusk clan. But Trasamund, still downcast, used Sunniulf’s name without his own usual display of chest-thumping pride. And it worked . . . well enough, anyhow.
“Where is Sunniulf now?” one of the White Foxes asked. “Why isn’t he with you?”
“He led his men off to fight the Rulers,” Hamnet Thyssen answered when Trasamund hesitated.
“Ah.” The White Fox Bizogot nodded. “That will have taken care of those rogues, then.”
“Well.. . no,” Hamnet said. “Not long ago, we noticed the Rulers were still coming after us.”
That made all the White Foxes exclaim. “They couldn’t have beaten Sunniulf,” one of them said. “Nobody beats Sunniulf!” The others nodded.
Ulric Skakki jerked a thumb towards the southeast. “Maybe you should go tell that to the Rulers,” he said. “I don’t think they’ve got the news.”
“What do you mean?” The White Fox Bizogot lifted his fur cap and scratched his head. “What are you talking about?”
“If you wait around here much longer, you’ll find out,” Ulric said. “Can we have our musk ox?”
“You can have it. Sunniulf said so.” The Bizogot eyed him. “You’re a foreigner. Don’t see many foreigners around here.”
“You will.” Hamnet Thyssen, Ulric Skakki, and Trasamund all said the same thing at the same time. The White Fox scratched his head again.
They killed the musk ox downwind from the herd, then butchered it as fast as they could. The speed of the job meant they left some meat behind that they might have taken otherwise. Clucking, the herders started stripping that flesh from the dead beast’s bones. The Three Tusk Bizogots and Red Dire Wolves and Raumsdalians left them to it. The refugees rode off. The Rulers wouldn’t be far behind.
Liv pointed ahead, towards the Glacier, which loomed higher on the horizon than it had a couple of days before. “You can really see what the avalanche did,” she said.
“You can, by God,” Hamnet Thyssen agreed. It looked as if the collapse had started near the top of the ice sheet and extended all the way down. The jumble of freshly exposed ice boulders was whiter and brighter than the older ice to either side. The Glacier didn’t rise straight up from the edge of the Bizogot steppe there, either; the slope was gentler, more gradual. “We might really be able to climb that if we had to.”
“We might, yes. But why would anyone want to?” Liv said.
Instead of looking ahead, Ulric Skakki looked behind them. Count Hamnet imitated him. Yes, the Rulers’ riding deer and war mammoths had come up over the horizon again. “If our lovely friends keep herding us in this direction, they may give us some reasons to think about it,” Ulric said.
Liv bared her teeth, not at him but at the idea. “Is escape to the top of the Glacier – if we could get there – escape at all?”
“We’ve talked about that before,” Hamnet said. “It depends on whether anything – and anyone – lives up there.”
“If anybody does, getting up to the top may not be escape,” Ulric Skakki said.
That made Hamnet bare his teeth, because it held too much truth and because he hadn’t thought of it. “God grant we don’t have to worry about that,” he said.
Liv nodded. Even cynical Ulric Skakki didn’t say no. Trasamund was the one who grunted and scowled. “God has turned his back on the Bizogots,” he said gloomily. “He pays us no mind, not anymore.”
“Well, if you feel that way, why not ride back to the Rulers and throw yourself at them?” Ulric asked. “You might get two or three before they kill you.”
“That is not revenge enough,” the jarl answered. “Two or three? Pah! I want to kill them all. And if God won’t help me, I’ll cursed well take care of it on my own.”
To Count Hamnet, that was on the edge of blasphemy. He didn’t say so; he understood what drove Trasamund to feel the way he did. And Ulric Skakki slapped Trasamund on the back, saying, “There’s the first sensible thing you’ve come out with since I don’t know when. Why don’t you do it more often?”
Trasamund said something about Ulric’s female ancestors concerning which he could have had no personal knowledge. At another time, it might have started a fight to the death. Now Ulric only laughed and slapped him on the back again. Trasamund said something even more incendiary. Ulric laughed harder.
“If the weather stays so warm, will we see more avalanches like this?” Hamnet asked.
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Liv answered. “We’ll probably start getting a meltwater lake up here, too, like Sudertorp Lake down in the Leaping Lynx country.”
“Yes, that makes sense,” Audun Gilli said. The wizard looked towards the sun, which was going down in the northwest – not far above the avalanche, in fact. “It stays light a long time in these parts, doesn’t it?”
Now Count Hamnet laughed at him. “You were up here last summer, too. You just noticed that?”
Audun smiled ruefully. “It does seem to matter more when the extra daylight means you’re likelier to get killed.”
Hamnet Thyssen grunted. A glance back over his shoulder said the Rulers were still there. A glance ahead said the sun wasn’t going down fast enough to suit him, either. “We’ll need to set plenty of sentries tonight, in case the Rulers try to hit us in the dark.”
“Sounds like something they’d do,” Trasamund growled.
“I would, too, if I thought it would work,” Ulric Skakki said. “Wouldn’t you?”
Trasamund didn’t answer, from which Count Hamnet concluded that he would but didn’t want to admit it to Ulric. The Bizogots and Raumsdalians rode on. Eventually, the sun did set and twilight did fade. On the other side of the Glacier, it was getting towards the season of the year where twilight lingered from sundown to sunup.
Setting fires seemed too great a risk. Raw musk-ox meat wasn’t Ham-net’s idea of a feast, but it was ever so much better than empty. He wolfed down a good-sized gobbet. So did Ulric. Audun Gilli looked revolted, but he ate, too. The Bizogots took raw meat in stride. They ate anything and everything.
The Three Tusk jarl sent Hamnet out to watch as soon as he was done eating. The gleam in Trasamund’s eye, even in the dark, had to mean he was waiting for the Raumsdalian noble to kick up a fuss. Hamnet went without a word. Did Trasamund sigh behind him? He didn’t turn around to look.