“What happened then?” Count Hamnet asked.
“What do you think happened?” Ingolf’s look told him he was short on brains. “We tried to get away from them. That’s what you do when you haven’t got a chance of winning, and we cursed well didn’t. There was more horrible weather in the woods, and short-faced bears and dire wolves jumping out at us like they had no business doing, and all the time it was like we heard those savages laughing at us, like they thought we were the biggest joke in the world.”
“Would you fight them again?” Hamnet asked.
Ingolf Rokkvi needed some time to think about that. “Maybe I would,” he said at last, “if I thought we had some kind of prayer of winning. A lot of the ones who weren’t on mammoths were on these funny deer, and they weren’t anything special. A regular horseman doesn’t hardly need to worry about ‘em. But the mammoths, and the magic . ..” He scowled. “That’s a pretty scary business.”
“We can beat them. By God, we can,” Hamnet said. Ingolf Rokkvi’s scowl got deeper. He didn’t believe a word of it. After what he’d been through, Hamnet had a hard time blaming him. A little desperately, the Raumsdalian nobleman went on, “We have a wizard who can match anything they do.” He pointed to Marcovefa.
Ingolf eyed her the way a man will eye a good-looking woman, not like a soldier eyeing someone who might help his cause. “Well, if you say so,” he said after a moment: he didn’t believe a word of it.
His horse looked back at him and said, “Don’t be dumber than you can help. She really can. She’s not running from them the way you are, is she?”
That wasn’t Marcovefa’s style of magic. Audun Gilli enjoyed putting words in the mouths of things that didn’t normally have mouths, or at least had no business talking. Audun looked innocent when Hamnet Thyssen glanced his way – ostentatiously innocent, as a matter of fact. Hamnet didn’t love him and never would, but for the time being decided he wasn’t sorry to have him along.
Ingolf’s eyes almost bugged out of his head. “How did you do that?” he demanded of Marcovefa.
She really was innocent – of this, anyway. In her accented Raumsdalian, she said, “Is my fault if beast has more sense than you do?”
The cavalry trooper gathered himself. Hamnet had feared he might go to pieces – he’d been through a lot lately. But he didn’t. “All right. I’ll try,” he said. “If I end up dead … I reckon the lot of you will be there beside me. Have I got that right?”
“Yes,” Hamnet said simply. “The next town ahead is Kjelvik, isn’t it? Does it have a decent garrison?”
“Not too bad,” Ingolf answered. “I don’t know whether they’ll want to fight or bug out, though.”
“We’ll see,” Hamnet Thyssen said. They all rode north.
They came across more soldiers fleeing the Rulers before they got into Kjelvik. Some of them they persuaded to turn around and resume the fight. Others, seeing a body of armed men coming their way from out of the south, rode around them no matter how far out of their way that took them. Hamnet didn’t try to round up those soldiers; they were too far gone to be of much use.
Kjelvik sat on a low hill. There were no tall hills or steep slopes in the northern part of the Empire. The Glacier had lain here too recently, and had ground such things down under its immense weight. As Count Hamnet neared the top of the hill, he could look ahead and see the dark smudge of the north woods out on the horizon. He was getting close. So were the Rulers.
He got a less than overwhelming reception from the gate guards. “Who the blazes are you, and why are you coming the wrong way?” a sergeant asked.
Instead of answering with words, Count Hamnet displayed Sigvat’s commission, all adorned with seals and gorgeous with ornate calligraphy. “What’s it say, Sergeant?” one of the guards asked. “I can’t read for beans.”
“What? You think I can?” the underofficer said. “I went to work when I was a brat, same as most people. I didn’t have the time to waste on my letters.”
“This is an order from His Majesty, the Emperor,” Hamnet Thyssen said. “It gives me command in the north against the new invasion of the barbarians.”
“Right. And rain makes apple-sauce,” the sergeant jeered. “Nobody in his right mind’d want to go fight these savages. They ride mammoths, I hear. Ride ‘em – would you believe it?” Ingolf Rokkvi shuddered – he believed it, all right.
And so did Count Hamnet, who had also seen it with his own eyes. He growled, “Go get an officer – someone who actually can read. He’ll tell you whether I’m lying or not, by God.”
Grudgingly, the sergeant sent off one of his guards. In due course, the man returned with a young officer. “I am Osvif Grisi,” he said. “What do you want, stranger? What do you need?”
“I want to drive the barbarians out of the Empire. I need Kjelvik’s garrison to help me do it,” Hamnet answered. Osvif gaped. Hamnet displayed his commission again.
“Is he a fraud, sir?” the sergeant asked. “If he is, we’ll give him what-for like he wouldn’t believe.”
Osvif Grisi stared at the impressive parchment. He reached Sigvat’s peremptory commands, his lips moving. Count Hamnet didn’t think the less of him for that; he read the same way himself, as did most people who could read at all. The more Osvif read, the wider his mouth fell open. By the time he finished, his thinly bearded chin was hanging on his chest.
“Well?” Hamnet said.
The youngster’s jaw shut with an audible click. He stiffened to a parade-ground attention. “Give me whatever orders you think right, Your, uh, Grace,” he said. “I am at your service in all ways, as is Kjelvik.”
“He’s real?” Now the sergeant’s jaw dropped.
“He’s real, all right,” Osvif said grimly. “If he told me to hang you from a pole off the battlements, you’d be hanging there now.” The sergeant gaped. Osvif Grisi turned back to Hamnet. “What do you want from Kjelvik, sir?”
“Every soldier you can put on a horse,” Hamnet Thyssen answered. “We’re going to have to scrape together some kind of army to fight the Rulers, you know.”
“I suppose so, yes.” The young officer licked his lips. “I think you’d better talk to the town’s commandant.”
“Yes, I think so, too,” Hamnet Thyssen agreed. “I’ve been trying to do that, and people keep getting in my way.” He eyed the sergeant, who did his best to hide in plain sight. Maybe he imagined himself kicking his life away up on the battlements. Hamnet wouldn’t have ordered him hanged, but he didn’t have to know that. The noble nodded to Osvif. “Take me to him.”
Kjelvik’s garrison wasn’t big enough to hold the walls for long against a determined foe. The keep wasn’t strong enough to keep out an invader once he’d broken into the city. So Hamnet s professional eye told him, anyhow. The guards outside the keep’s portcullis stared at the Bizogots behind him.
“I thought some different barbarians were loose in the north,” one of them said to his friend.
“Me, too. Shows what we know,” the other guard said. Then he noticed Osvif with Hamnet’s party. “What’s going on, sir?”
“This noble” – Osvif pointed to Hamnet – ”is in charge of all defenses in the north, by His Majesty’s command.” That made all the guards spring to attention. Osvif went on, “I am taking him to Baron Runolf.”
“Is that Runolf Skallagrim?” Hamnet asked. He hoped so – if the local commander was a man he knew, things would go smoother.
And Osvif nodded. “That’s right. You’ve met him?”
“Awhile ago, but yes,” Hamnet replied.
Runolf Skallagrim was about his own age, a little heavier, a little softer – a little happier-looking, if you wanted to get right down to it. “By God,” he said when Osvif led Count Hamnet into his chamber. “Look what the hound dragged in!” As he rose to clasp Hamnet s hand, he went on, “What the demon are you doing here? Last I heard, you’d got jugged.”