The Rulers might have laughed when they saw the Raumsdalians and Bizogots riding toward them. More easy enemies to get rid of, they must have thought. A man came out on a riding deer to face the oncoming foes alone. He was either a wizard or a maniac. Hamnet knew which way he would have bet.
When the wizard pointed at the incoming arrows, they fell out of the sky. Then, all at once, they didn’t any more. One of them just missed puncturing the enemy shaman. Every line of his body shouted astonishment. He pointed again, as if to say, Listen when I tell you something!
But the arrows, thanks to Marcovefa, didn’t listen. One of them grazed the Ruler’s riding deer. The animal bucked. Hamnet was sure he would have done the same thing. He was also sure he would have been ready for it. It caught the Ruler by surprise, though. Next thing he knew, he was sitting on the ground with Raumsdalians and Bizogots thundering toward him on horse back.
He pointed at a lancer, and the Raumsdalian’s spearpoint missed him. The next attacker’s sword bit. The wizard let out a shrill shriek that seemed to hold more indignation than pain. How could this be happening to him? Weren’t such torments reserved for folk of the herd?
Evidently they had been . . . up till now. No longer. Once the first swordstroke went home, the Ruler’s magic seemed to melt away like snow in springtime. By the time the army swept past him and into the village, he wasn’t good to look at any more.
The Rulers in the village cried out, too, in surprise and dismay. Their wizard hadn’t been used to seeing his magic fail. They weren’t used to going unprotected against their enemies’ magic. But Marcovefa filled them with terror. They couldn’t even fight back with their usual dogged courage. They ran pell-mell, throwing aside their swords to flee the faster.
Killing them as they ran didn’t seem sporting to Hamnet Thyssen. Then he remembered the battle in the woods the year before. When a glancing blow from a slingstone put Marcovefa out of action, the Rulers had used a spell much like this against the Raumsdalian army Hamnet led. They hadn’t been embarrassed to terrify their foes, or to slay them even though they couldn’t fight back.
Marcovefa had held that spell at bay till she got knocked cold. Was sending it back at the Rulers now a measure of revenge? If it was, Hamnet hoped she found it sweet.
Not all the Raumsdalians had been panicked by the Rulers’ magic. So, now, a few of the enemy fought back in spite of Marcovefa’s spell. Hamnet got a stinging cut on the back of his hand from one stubborn warrior. The man lay sprawled in death on the grass-much good his courage did him.
The last thing the villagers had expected was to be delivered from their tormentors. They cheered and capered at the same time as they mourned. Some of the women seemed eager to give their rescuers what the Rulers would have taken by force. Nine months from now, some of the babies would probably have the fair hair and light eyes that marked the Bizogots . . . and their byblows.
“Now this is a welcome,” Trasamund said as he disappeared with a buxom brunette. “I’ll give her something to remember me by.”
Ulric Skakki raised an eyebrow. “And we’ll hope she doesn’t give him something to remember her by.” He mimed scratching furiously at an intimate place.
“You take a chance whenever you lie down with a woman.” Count Hamnet paused, considering. “And I suppose she takes a chances whenever she lies down with you.”
“Of course she does.” Ulric mimed a bulging belly this time.
“Well, yes, that, too, but it isn’t what I meant.” Hamnet hesitated again, wondering exactly what he did mean. Slowly, he went on, “You can wound a lover in ways you can’t wound somebody who isn’t. You take a chance that you’ll get hurt, or that you’ll hurt the other person.”
“Life is full of chances. So you bet-and sometimes you lose,” Ulric said. “If you don’t bet at all, no one notices when you die, because you were hardly alive to begin with.”
Hamnet Thyssen grunted. He’d gone years not betting-not betting his heart, anyway. He’d risked his life again and again. With a hole in the center of it, the chance of losing it hardly seemed to matter. At last, he fell in love again . . . and then he fell on his face again.
“Women are strange creatures. You can’t live with them, but you can’t live without them, either,” he said. “Do you suppose they say the same thing about us?”
“Why are you asking me?” Ulric Skakki returned. “People have called me a lot of different things, but I don’t think anybody ever said I had to squat to piss.”
“Thank you,” Hamnet said. The adventurer raised a questioning eyebrow. Hamnet explained: “If I ever needed a cure for romantic thoughts, you just gave it to me.”
“We aim to please,” Ulric said loftily. “And you don’t need a cure. You just need better aim yourself sometimes.” That gave Hamnet something new to chew on.
XI
A raumsdalian scout galloped back toward Hamnet Thyssen. “Mammoths!” he shouted. “Stacks of mammoths!”
Hamnet tried to imagine mammoths piled one atop another. He felt himself failing, which was bound to be just as well. “How far are they?” he asked. “Do the Rulers know we’re here? Are they heading this way?”
The scout pointed south over his shoulder. “Not very far,” he said as he reined in his blowing horse. “Not far enough, by God! When you get to the top of the next little swell of ground, you’ll see ’em yourself. They didn’t spot me-or I hope like anything they didn’t, anyhow-but they were coming toward us like they mean business. And I bet they do. How the demon do we stop ’em?”
“Marcovefa!” Count Hamnet called. “Did you hear what he said?”
“I heard,” she answered. “What do you want me to do about it?”
“Narfi asked a good question. How the demon do we stop them?” Hamnet said. “Will the spell you used against the war mammoth in the last fight work again? Can you use it over and over, till all the Rulers’ mammoths fall down dead?”
“If nothing wards them, it will work.” Marcovefa seldom lacked for confidence. “I can use it again and again. If they have stacks of mammoths, I cannot kill them all, though. I get too tired. It is like screwing-sometimes all you can do is all you can do.”
“Heh,” Hamnet said uneasily. Only Marcovefa would have connected lovemaking and murderous magic. It never would have occurred to him, anyway. In his mind, the two amounted to the same thing, regardless of whether or not they really were. “Form line of battle!” he yelled. “The Rulers are heading this way with mammoths! Marcovefa will take care of them for us.” I hope, he added, but only to himself. “We’ll finish off the buggers on riding deer or horses or rabbits.”
“Rabbits?” Ulric Skakki said, stringing his bow.
“You never can tell,” Hamnet answered. He pointed south himself. “There are the ones on mammoths.”
Those war mammoths might not have come in a stack, but they surely came in a swarm. Hamnet Thyssen wasn’t sure he’d ever seen so many of them all in a line. Several Rulers sat atop each one: the man who guided it, a lancer with a long spear, and anywhere from one to three archers. They shouted when they spied the Raumsdalians and Bizogots ahead of them.