When you rode to a fight expecting something to go wrong . . . Raumsdalians began slipping away from the army. Maybe they thought they could do better for themselves by giving up the fight and grubbing out a living under the Rulers. Maybe they were right, too.
“We Bizogots don’t quit, by God!” Trasamund told Runolf Skallagrim one cold evening. “Your folk shouldn’t, either.”
“You’re right. They shouldn’t,” Baron Runolf agreed politely. “I don’t know what to do about it, though.”
“Kill anybody who wants to run away.” The jarl was nothing if not direct.
“If we catch them trying to sneak off, we do kill them,” Runolf said. “The trouble is, we don’t catch many.”
“You need to try harder,” Trasamund said.
“We need to do all kinds of things,” Runolf Skallagrim replied. “We need to beat the Rulers again, for instance. If we do that, people will think our chances are better, so they won’t want to run out on us. We can hope they won’t, anyway.” He eyed Count Hamnet. “How do we go about that, Thyssen?”
“I wish I knew,” Hamnet answered bleakly.
“Marcovefa has to wake up,” Trasamund said.
“Well, how do we make that happen?” Runolf asked.
Even more bleakly, Hamnet shrugged. “I wish I knew. Our wizards have tried. I’ve watched them do it. The only trouble is, they’ve had no luck. It’s in God’s hands now, I think.”
“And God’s done nothing but drop things since he let the Glacier melt through so these stinking Rulers could plague us.” Trasamund sounded bleak himself.
Runolf sent him a measuring look, too. “The way you say that, you’ll be the next one to try and run from trouble.”
“No.” Trasamund didn’t even bother to shake his head. “I’m in this till the end. With the Rulers swarming down the way they do, I have nothing to go back to. They hold my clan’s grazing grounds. The few free Three Tusk Bizogots are all here with me. We’re not a big clan any more, but we’re tough.”
“If you’ve got nothing to go back to, you may as well fight,” Hamnet Thyssen said. “The ones who think they can slip away and go back to being peasants with the Rulers taxing them in place of the Empire-”
“They’re all Raumsdalians,” Trasamund broke in.
“That’s not what I was going to say,” Hamnet told him.
“Doesn’t make it any less true,” the Bizogot replied.
“Those are the ones we have to worry about.” Count Hamnet stubbornly finished his own thought.
“But if they desert, what kind of fight can we put up?” Trasamund said.
“We came down here with an army that was mostly Bizogots,” Hamnet said. “We can go on that way if we have to.” We can get driven out of the Empire that way, he thought, but didn’t speak words of ill omen aloud.
Trasamund did it for him: “We came down here with an army that had Marcovefa in it, too. Without her, we’re buggered, is what we are.”
“Well, in that case why do you blame the Raumsdalian soldiers for leaving the fight when they see the chance?” Runolf Skallagrim asked. “They figure they won’t make any difference one way or the other, and it looks to me like they’ve got something.”
“They may not help us lose if they desert,” Hamnet said. “Sure as sure, they won’t help us win.”
“And I’ll tell you what they’ve got,” Trasamund added. “They’ve got yellow bellies, that’s what.”
Runolf scowled at him. The Raumsdalian veteran’s hand began to slide toward the hilt of his sword. “Enough, both of you,” Count Hamnet said wearily. “Too much. We’re all doing the best we can. If we fight amongst ourselves, we only help the Rulers.”
“If they don’t fight, they help the Rulers, too.” Trasamund didn’t want to let it drop.
“Enough, I said.” Hamnet got between the Bizogot and Baron Runolf. “Fight me first, if you have to fight somebody.”
“No, that wouldn’t be a good idea, either.” Ulric Skakki’s voice came from the gloom beyond the firelight. Turning toward it, Hamnet saw that he had a nocked arrow in his bow. “Hamnet has it straight. We’re supposed to fight the enemy, not ourselves.”
“But we can’t fight the Rulers, either,” Runolf said. “That’s why men are slipping off.”
“Yes, we can,” Ulric said. “We can’t do it right now, that’s all. There’s a difference. If your men have too many potatoes in the head to see it, you’ve got to keep banging at ’em till they do.”
“You make it sound easy,” Runolf Skallagrim said.
The adventurer grinned at him, there in the gloom. “It is easy . . . to sound that way. But we aren’t whipped yet . . . quite.”
XVII
Hamnet Thyssen stared glumly at the snow-covered trees. Fires burned in a clearing in the woods. But for Audun Gilli’s small spell to get them started, the men and the handful of women who still remained with him might have had to do without.
Chunks of meat from a short-faced bear toasted over the fires. The bear was a fierce hunter, but no match for hungry men. Hamnet liked bear meat well enough. He wished he didn’t have to eat it now, though. He wished he were closer to Raumsdalia’s heart, close enough to go on eating beef and mutton.
He glanced toward Marcovefa. She still hadn’t come back to herself. He had no idea when-or if-she would. Audun and Liv had done everything they knew how to do. It wasn’t enough. She ate and drank if you put food or water in her mouth. Sometimes she smiled or frowned in her sleep. That was as close as she came to real life. But without her, all of Hamnet’s wishes were in vain.
He couldn’t help thinking she would have laughed and solved the mistletoe spell in a heartbeat-had the arrow struck someone else. That reflection did him no good at all, nor her, either. She didn’t seem to be getting any worse. With such small encouragements Hamnet had to console himself.
None of the short-faced bear went to waste. The Raumsdalians might not have thought to roast the chitterlings, but the Bizogots did. When the Bizogots lit on a carcass, they left nothing but bare bones behind-and they’d split those for the marrow inside. Up on the frozen steppe, everything had a use. It had to have one, because the steppe held so little.
That also held true for the forest, as Count Hamnet knew too well. Towns in these parts had survived because they got grain from farther south. With the Rulers loose in the Empire, the towns wouldn’t get any this winter. How many people would starve before spring?
One worry led to another. Hamnet walked over to Ulric Skakki, who was doing his own rough cooking. “How long can we last in the woods?” Hamnet asked without preamble.
“Why, till we starve, of course,” Ulric answered lightly. He took his gobbet out of the flames and blew on it. When he tried to take a bite, he grimaced. “Still too cursed hot. Well, it won’t be for long, God knows, not in this weather.”
“Can we keep going here till spring?” Hamnet persisted. “Or would we do better to head back up onto the steppe?”
Ulric didn’t answer right away; the meat had cooled enough to let him eat it. After a heroic bite and swallow, he said, “We’d have plenty up there in the springtime-that’s for sure. All those waterfowl coming to nest . . .”
“Yes.” Hamnet Thyssen nodded. That endless profusion of ducks and geese and swans . . . “The question is, how do we keep from starving in the meantime?”