It was a good question, and one Hamnet hadn’t thought of. After a moment, he said, “Back in the day, the birds must have come to Hevring Lake the same way. Hevring Lake went away, but we still have waterfowl. I suppose we still will once Sudertorp Lake dries out, too.”
“Mm, you’re likely right,” Trasamund replied. He turned to Marcovefa. “If the Rulers hadn’t broken the Leaping Lynx clan, the Lynxes would all want to kill you for ruining their hunting grounds.”
“If the Rulers hadn’t broken the Leaping Lynxes and done everything else they did, Marcovefa wouldn’t have needed to break the dam,” Hamnet said. “Sooner or later, it would have melted through by itself, though. They couldn’t have kept their easy springs and summers forever.”
They’d had them. He thought fondly of all the duck and goose fat he’d eaten near Sudertorp Lake. But Trasamund was right. This hunting ground would never be the same. Even now, waterfowl and shorebirds were flying up in alarm as the meltwater lake drained.
Ulric pointed off to the west. “A mammoth just washed ashore over there. Must be a mammoth-I couldn’t see anything smaller that far away.”
“Is it moving?” Hamnet asked. He couldn’t spot it. Maybe he didn’t know where to look.
“No,” Ulric said, and then, “I don’t know about the water birds, but the teratorns and the vultures and the ravens will feast like never before.”
“Let them eat the Rulers. Let them eat the war mammoths. Let them raise their chicks on the riding deer,” Trasamund said. “I rejoice that they enjoy this bounty from the invaders.”
Eyvind Torfinn and Gudrid came up to stare at the spectacle Marcovefa had unleashed. “My, my,” the earl said. “What an amazingly opportune coincidence . . . Excuse me. Did I say something funny?”
No one answered him for some little while. Hamnet and Marcovefa and the others were too busy laughing. “Don’t you pay attention to anything?” Ulric asked at last. “Didn’t you see the thunderbolts coming down out of the sky? Didn’t you hear them? Or are you blind and deaf?”
“Neither, I hope,” Eyvind replied with dignity. “But surely those thunderbolts could not have caused-this.”
“They didn’t.” Hamnet pointed to Marcovefa. “She did.”
“Probably luck, with her taking the credit for it,” Gudrid muttered.
“What do you say?” Marcovefa needed only four words to suggest that, if she didn’t like the answer, Gudrid would go into Sudertorp Lake and come out the way Ulric’s distant war mammoth had.
Gudrid did own a first-class sense of self-preservation. “Uh, nothing,” she said quickly. “Nothing at all. Just-clearing my throat.” She nodded. “Yes, that’s all I was doing.”
Nobody called her on it. Marcovefa had to know she was lying. But putting her in fear must have been almost as good as pitching her into what was left of Sudertorp Lake.
Hamnet Thyssen looked back at the lake. Was he imagining things, or was the water level already a good deal lower? “I wonder how long it’ll take to empty out altogether,” he said.
“If we knew the volume and the rate of flow, it would be easy to calculate,” Earl Eyvind replied.
“And if a teratorn knew how to play the trumpet, he might end up Emperor Sigvat’s bandmaster,” Ulric said. Eyvind Torfinn sent him a reproachful look. The adventurer took no notice of it.
Trasamund bowed low to Marcovefa. “This is vengeance. I thank you for it. All the Bizogots thank you for it.”
“This is better than vengeance,” Marcovefa said.
“You are a wise woman. No one doubts it.” As if to emphasize that, the jarl bowed again. “But tell me, if you will, what can be better than vengeance?”
“Victory is better,” Marcovefa answered. “In getting vengeance, you can throw yourself away to no purpose but killing. Here you have vengeance, and you have not thrown yourself away.”
Trasamund weighed her words. “It is so,” he said at last, wonder in his voice. “By God, it is so!” He bowed even lower this time.
Count Hamnet looked out to the west again. All he could see where the Rulers’ army had been were raging waters. How many miles did the flood already stretch? How many more would it reach? Wandering Bizogots and beasts and perhaps even the odd Ruler who hadn’t joined in this attack would get swept away without ever knowing how or why the dam at the west end of Sudertorp Lake had broken down.
That would matter to them-for a very little while. In the larger scheme of things, it hardly counted. “The Rulers are ruined. They’re wrecked,” Hamnet said. He liked the sound of that so much, he repeated it.
Liv and Audun Gilli shyly approached Marcovefa. “Forgive us for not offering help, but-” Liv began.
“We thought you could take care of it for yourself,” Audun broke in.
“And we were right,” Liv said.
“By God, were we ever!” Audun stared in awe at the rampaging lake. He whistled in admiration. “We didn’t know what you were going to do. Whatever it might be, we didn’t expect this.” His wave encompassed the torrent.
“How could anyone expect-this?” Liv said. Turning back to Marcovefa, she asked, “Did you?”
The shaman from atop the Glacier shook her head. “I knew we could beat the Rulers. I knew we would beat the Rulers. How? They showed me themselves, when they threw thunderbolts and fire toward me and I sent them into the dam. That showed me the way. I told them they were digging their own graves, and I was right.”
As Trasamund had before her, Liv bowed to Marcovefa. “I am glad it showed you the way.” Then, to Hamnet’s surprise, she also bowed to him. “If you hadn’t helped keep her safe, and if you hadn’t brought her back to herself, we wouldn’t have won. This is why the Rulers feared you-and had reason to.”
“It would have been all right without me,” Hamnet said.
“Yes, I think so, too.” If anyone was less ready to give Hamnet Thyssen credit than he was himself, it had to be Gudrid.
“I do not.” That was Marcovefa, and not even Gudrid thought arguing with her was a good idea. Sometimes Marcovefa sounded like anyone else. Others . . . Hamnet wondered whether God spoke through her. She wouldn’t have said so. She would have laughed at him. But how else could she seem so knowing, so authoritative? She awed and alarmed even other wizards.
She’d awed and alarmed the Rulers, and with reason. They’d tried their best to kill her, only their best turned out not to be good enough. When she finally turned the tables, they found out how good her best could be. That lesson wouldn’t need repeating.
As if thinking along with him, Trasamund said, “With luck, we can deal with the ones who trickle through the Gap now. I think most of the Rulers who were going to come already got here.”
“And most of the ones who’d already got here got swept away,” Hamnet added.
“Yes.” The jarl nodded. He smiled. “Amazing how happy one word can make you, isn’t it?”
“If you have to pick one word, that one’s more likely to than most,” Hamnet answered. Smiling still, Trasamund nodded.
While everyone else kept looking west and watching the floodwaters rampage across the Bizogot steppe, Eyvind Torfinn chose to look east. He suddenly stiffened, as if transfixed by an arrow. Only his right arm moved, to point out into what had been the middle of Sudertorp Lake.