“Your body is a-” Trasamund broke off. He was bigger than Ulric Skakki, and thicker through the shoulders, but no one could accuse the adventurer of being soft. “A temple to your foul mouth,” the Bizogot finished, and looked pleased with himself for coming up with something.
“While you’re as pure as snow is black,” Ulric said.
Trasamund started to nod, then almost hurt himself stopping when he heard the whole gibe. He sent Ulric a venomous stare. “I did not believe there really were things like snakes till I finally saw one down here, no matter what some fast-talking Raumsdalian traders said. When I got to know you, though, I understood what they meant.”
“Ah, well.” Ulric gave back an elaborate shrug. “For a long time, your Ferocity, I felt the same way about vultures.”
Trasamund purpled. Before they could turn insults into a brawl, Count Hamnet said, “Now, children . . .” That made them both glare at him, which was-he supposed-better than having them glare at each other. He went on, “The idea is to fight the Rulers-remember? If we fight each other, we help them? We don’t do ourselves any good.”
“But we can have some fun.” Ulric was in no mood to be helpful.
“You want fun, go to a brothel,” Trasamund growled. “This is war, curse it. We have to smash the Rulers-smash them, do you hear?”
“Think so, do you?” Ulric wasn’t about to give up his sport. “And here all the time I thought the idea was to hand them flowers when they came by.”
“Flowers, is it?” Trasamund told him what he could do with his flowers. It struck Hamnet as uncomfortable, especially if he used roses.
“You, too,” Ulric said. “Sideways.” He paused for a moment. “We didn’t kill all of them, I don’t think. Some will go on south and tell the rest of the Rulers where we are.”
“That’s part of the idea, eh?” Trasamund said. “We want them to come after us. Then we can deal with them.”
“I wish the Raumsdalian armies down south would give us a little help,” Hamnet Thyssen said. “They haven’t yet, not so far as anybody can tell.”
“Too right they haven’t,” Ulric agreed. “The generals are probably afraid of the Rulers, and we know too bloody well that Sigvat’s afraid of them.”
“We have to do it on our own, then.” Trasamund spoke with a certain lonely pride. Every Bizogot jarl saw his clan as being alone against its neighbors. Trasamund was bound to see this force as alone against the world. He wasn’t so far wrong, either.
“What if we can’t do it on our own?” Ulric Skakki went on trying to get under his skin.
This time, it didn’t work. Trasamund eyed the adventurer with something close to infinite scorn. “Then we die,” he said. “Bravely, I hope.” Not even Ulric found a good comeback for that. Count Hamnet didn’t even try. He didn’t want to die bravely. He wanted the Rulers to die bravely.
And, if such a thing were possible, he wouldn’t have minded seeing Sigvat II die bravely, too.
Raumsdalians and Bizogots turned and moved south again. Hamnet pushed them to move fast. He had his reasons, though he didn’t speak of all of them. If the warriors moved fast enough, maybe they would leave the followers behind. He could hope he would leave Eyvind Torfinn and Gudrid behind, anyhow.
But, no matter what he hoped, it didn’t happen. Gudrid had kept up as they traveled through the Gap and beyond the Glacier. And she kept up now. Every once in a while, she even grinned at him. She knew he didn’t want her around. His not wanting her around had to give her one more reason to stay.
The Rulers took a while, but they proved able to learn from experience. They stopped sending big armies against the band Marcovefa backboned. Instead, they began to put raiders all around them, the way dire wolves would if they were harrying a herd of musk oxen. Now one outriding Bizogot, now two or three Raumsdalians, would go missing. Sometimes they would take enemies with them, sometimes not. But the band began to shrink.
Hamnet didn’t want to push Marcovefa about it. It seemed too small a matter to fuss about, too small a matter to draw the notice of a large talent. After the fourth time a small party of outriders got picked off, he changed his mind. The force needed scouts. If he couldn’t send them out without sending them out to get killed, he had a problem, and so did his little army.
“I see what I can do,” Marcovefa said when he told her what was wrong. “Maybe I ride with some scouts, see if I can lure the Rulers into coming after us. They get a surprise then, yes?”
That made Hamnet wish he’d kept his mouth shut. “We can’t afford to lose you. You know that,” he said.
“Foolishness,” Marcovefa sniffed. “Any shaman who knows anything should be able to beat these foolish Rulers.” Then she sighed. “But your shamans and wizards don’t know much, do they?”
“We used to think so,” Hamnet said. “Now . . . You and the Rulers have taught us some lessons we’d rather not have had.”
“You were like this.” Marcovefa closed one eye and squinted through the other one. “You were all like this, so you didn’t know it. The Rulers are like this.” She opened the one eye a little wider. “You need to be like this.” She opened both eyes very wide. Then she winked at Hamnet.
“You’re bound to be right,” he said, ignoring the wink. “But even if you are, you can’t always stay away from arrows or slingstones. And we can’t do without you, even if you think we should be able to.”
“You have a trouble, a problem. You bring it to me. Now you don’t want me to fix it,” Marcovefa said. “Where is the sense in that?”
“Losing scouts is a problem,” Hamnet Thyssen agreed. “Losing you is a catastrophe.” Then he had to explain what a catastrophe was: “Worse than a problem. Much worse.”
“But you won’t lose me,” Marcovefa said. “Don’t think so, anyway.”
“You don’t think so,” Hamnet echoed discontentedly. “Don’t you see? That isn’t good enough. Without you, we’re nothing.”
“You are more than you think you are,” Marcovefa said. “You don’t know how much you are. You have no idea.”
“Do you mean me, or do you mean all of us?” Hamnet’s wave encompassed the ragtag army he’d helped build.
“Yes,” Marcovefa answered, making herself as annoying as if she were Ulric Skakki.
Count Hamnet fumed, but only to himself. “Which?” he asked.
“I mean you, and I mean everyone,” Marcovefa said. “It is not a question with only one answer. If you were not stronger than you think, the Rulers would have won a long time ago. Don’t you see that?”
“Well . . . maybe.” Hamnet Thyssen wasn’t sure he wanted to see it. He’d got used to looking down on himself. Why not, when everyone else did. That was how his thoughts ran, anyway. Losing first Gudrid and then Liv did nothing to make him feel better about himself, either.
“No maybe,” Marcovefa said. “It is a truth. An important truth, too.”
“Maybe,” Hamnet said again-he didn’t want anyone making him happy against his will. “All I know is, whenever we went up against the Rulers in any kind important fight before we climbed to the top of the Glacier and found you, we lost. The only reason we climbed it was because it gave us one chance in a thousand to get away from the Rulers. If we stayed down on the Bizogot steppe, the mammoth-riders would have killed us all.”