They rode east as if they never once thought about the price. Hamnet and Ulric rode with them. If Ulric worried, he didn’t show it. Hamnet Thyssen looked worried even when he wasn’t. He was now. He rode close to Marcovefa, to protect her if he could. He understood she was more likely to protect him than the other way around, but he would do what he could.
Audun Gilli and Liv also rode together. Which one of them would protect the other was anyone’s guess. A couple of other Bizogot shamans, dressed like Liv in clothes all fringed and decorated with little bells, rode with the fighters, too. Maybe they could help, maybe not. Hamnet didn’t think they could do any harm.
The land was as flat as if a heavy weight had lain on it not long before. And so one had: the Glacier had lingered far longer here than down in the Empire. Every so often, Hamnet rode past a boulder left behind by the retreating ice.
If the Rulers had a scout up on top of a frost heave-a pingo, the Bizogots called such a thing-he could spot the oncoming horsemen from a long, long way. Count Hamnet didn’t think they would. That was a ploy for an army staying in one spot, not for men moving south as fast as they could.
“Here’s hoping they’re just warriors, with no wizard along,” he said to Ulric Skakki.
“Yes, here’s hoping,” Ulric replied. “We could use an easy fight for a change.”
Snowshoe hares bounded away from the Bizogots. Ptarmigans flew off, wings whirring. The hunting up here was marvelous, especially in the brief burgeoning season of the year. Hamnet thought it was a shame he was hunting a quarry that could hunt him, too.
“They they are!” An outrider pointed due east.
To Hamnet Thyssen, those wiggles on the horizon might have been anything. His eyes weren’t particularly bad, but they weren’t particularly good, either. Before long, he made out mammoths, mammoths with men atop them. Those could only be Rulers. The Bizogots herded mammoths and used them, but didn’t ride them. Till they saw the Rulers in action, riding mammoths had never occurred to them. Now they were wild to learn the art. If they survived and stayed free, maybe they would.
If.
Before long, the Rulers spied the Bizogots, too. They stopped heading south and swung toward the west. They used their common battle formation: mammoths anchoring the center of their line, with warriors on riding deer out to either wing. Horses were better riding animals than deer, even if they lacked antlers. But fighting against mammoths was like fighting the Glacier.
The Glacier is melting, Hamnet reminded himself. The Bizogots could beat mammoths. They could, yes, but it wouldn’t be easy.
II
As little armies closed with each other, Trasamund harangued the Bizogots: “This is our chance for revenge! We can hurt them! We can kill them! It doesn’t matter that they beat us before! We are the Bizogots, the lords of this land! Time to offer up some blood to God!”
The blond barbarians cheered. They wanted to believe they could beat the Rulers. They wanted to forget their clans were shattered and they were pounded together into a makeshift fighting force the way bits of meat got stuffed into a sausage casing. At least till the arrows-and the spells-started flying, they could.
But Ulric Skakki caught Count Hamnet’s eye. “How often have we heard that speech?” he asked.
Hamnet shrugged. “What’s he supposed to say? ‘We might as well give up, because they’re going to wallop the snot out of us’? I don’t think so.”
“Well, when you put it that way, maybe not,” Ulric allowed. “But I’ve listened to the same bluster too often before a losing battle.”
“We won’t lose. We’ll win.” That wasn’t Hamnet Thyssen. It was Marcovefa, who sounded even more sublimely confident than Trasamund did.
“With you working magic for us, we have a chance, anyhow,” Hamnet said. She made a face at him. He wasn’t a confident man. He didn’t shrink from a fight against the Rulers, but he’d seen too many of them go wrong.
Marcovefa only laughed. “Now they try a spell to throw insects at us. They think we cannot beat the likes of that?” She laughed again.
She might have thought it was funny, but alarm trickled through Hamnet. The Rulers had used that spell in a battle the year before, and the swarms of bugs they threw at the Bizogots and their animals drove them mad and paved the way for the invaders’ victory. Liv and Audun Gilli had had to abandon their own magic to weaken the enemy sorcery even a little. Would Marcovefa be able to do anything else while she fought it?
Even if she couldn’t, Liv and Audun rode with the Bizogots today. If Marcovefa could keep the Rulers’ wizards busy, the two of them might work magic on the enemy. That Liv had once worked a different kind of magic on Hamnet . . . he shoved down in his mind. He didn’t have time to fret about Liv now, any more than he had time to fret about Gudrid.
A gnat flew into his left eye. He rubbed his face and sent Marcovefa a reproachful look. Maybe it was a natural gnat, not one the Rulers had inspired. Maybe Marcovefa was just weakening the spell, not blocking it altogether. He supposed he could forgive her a gnat or two. But why did this one have to find his eye?
Trasamund drew his blade and brandished it over his head. It was a two-handed sword, which meant he needed a well-trained horse to use it. He couldn’t hang on to the reins and swing it at the same time. While he used it, he had to guide his mount with knees alone.
Arrows started flying. Hamnet shot again and again, emptying his quiver as fast as he could. The Rulers had used spells to break bowstrings, too. Not this time, or, if they were trying that magic, Marcovefa wasn’t letting it get anywhere.
Here and there, invaders and riding deer crashed to the ground. Some lay still, others writhed and thrashed in pain. Bizogots also went down. Whatever Marcovefa was doing, she wasn’t interfering with the Rulers’ archery. Therein lay her greatest danger: one of those flying shafts might find her.
No sooner had that thought crossed Hamnet’s mind than Marcovefa caught an arrow out of the air. She kissed the tip and threw it back at the Rulers-maybe at the man who’d shot it. Hamnet was able to watch, because it glowed as it flew . . . and it flew faster than any shaft ever launched from a horn-backed bow. It caught an enemy warrior square in the chest, and he didn’t move after he slid off over his riding deer’s tail.
“How did you do that?” Hamnet shouted.
She winked at him. “Magic,” she answered, as if he didn’t know.
“Could you hit a war mammoth with an arrow like that?” he asked. In any fight between Rulers and Bizogots, the invaders had the edge because they could ride mammoths and fight from them.
Marcovefa thought about it. “Maybe,” she said at last. “Those long-nosed marmots have a lot of protection, though.” Did she mean the thick leather armor the mammoths wore or the Rulers’ ward spells? Hamnet didn’t know.
He didn’t have much time to wonder, either. The rival forces came to close quarters. Trasamund worked fearsome execution with that two-handed blade. Hamnet drew his own sword and traded cuts with an enemy warrior till their mounts carried them past each other.
Trasamund guided his horse toward a mammoth. Hamnet wondered if battle fury had driven the Three Tusk jarl out of his wits, but there was method to his madness. He sprang down from the horse and hewed at the mammoth’s left hind leg. The huge beast let out a horrid bleat of pain and toppled, hamstrung.