They let out loud, indignant croaks now, because they couldn’t get at the food they craved. Lions and dire wolves were stuffing themselves with mammoth meat. Whenever a teratorn tried to rush up and steal some, the beasts that could also kill snarled threats. The great birds retreated.
Every so often, one of them would leap into the air. Foxes prowled around the dead mammoth, too. They also wanted their share of the scraps—or a vulture would do, if they couldn’t get anything else.
“Well, this was a waste of time,” Hamnet Thyssen said.
“How right you are,” Ulric agreed readily. “We could have written epic poetry or gone to a fine eatery or played a couple of games of draughts while we rode across the steppe if it weren’t for those miserable teratorns.”
Hamnet’s ears heated. “You know what I mean. We didn’t accomplish anything coming here.”
“Right again!” Ulric Skakki sounded more enthusiastic than ever, always a bad sign. “If not for this dead mammoth, we could’ve chased the Rulers back beyond the Gap by now.”
“You’re making yourself annoying on purpose,” Hamnet said.
“That’s better than doing it by accident, wouldn’t you say?” the adventurer returned. “At least I know what I’m up to.”
Audun Gilli pointed north across the frozen steppe. “Someone else is heading this way. Maybe we weren’t the only ones to wonder what was dead here and how it got that way.”
“This way, that way, any way at all,” Ulric Skakki said. “When somebody writes the history of this war nobody will ever write, he can call this fight the Battle of the Dead Mammoth.”
“Somebody writes the history nobody will . . .” Count Hamnet gave it up as a bad job. He looked to his weapons instead. With them, he had a better notion of what he was doing.
“Have they got a wizard with them?” Trasamund asked Audun, reaching over his shoulder to draw his two-handed sword.
That, Hamnet realized, was an important question—maybe the important question. If the Rulers had no wizard along, then Audun Gilli gave the Bizogots the edge. But if the Rulers did . . . If they did, Audun was liable to be in over his head. Marcovefa might scoff at the sorcery the men from beyond the Gap used, but it was stronger than Bizogot shamans or Raumsdalian wizards could match.
Count Hamnet imagined himself riding back to the Leaping Lynxes’ huts and telling Liv Audun had died valiantly fighting the Rulers. He wouldn’t sound as if he was gloating. He’d give Audun all the credit he deserved, and more besides. And Liv would dissolve in tears, and he would hold her and try to console her. . . .
He laughed sourly, realizing what an idiot he was. For one thing, Liv would be furious if Audun died while he survived. For another, if the Rulers slew Audun they were much too likely to slay him, too.
“Well, we found them,” Ulric Skakki said, methodically examining his arrows. “Not quite the way we expect to, but we found them. And now we get to see how sorry we end up that we did.”
“I thank you.” Hamnet bowed in the saddle. “Whenever I think things are bad, you always remind me they’re really worse.”
Courteous as a cat, Ulric returned the bow. “Nice to know I’m of some use to you anyhow, Your Grace.”
“Let’s ride!” Trasamund bellowed. Hamnet Thyssen wasn’t sorry to follow him. He wasn’t just riding away from the dead mammoth and the scavengers clustered around it. He was riding away from his own imagination . . . and getting away from it might be the best thing he could do.
The Rulers might have been drawn by the teratorns gliding down to try to steal mammoth flesh, but they didn’t need long to realize they weren’t the only ones who had been. They shook themselves out into a battle line. Some of them were on their riding deer, others on horses they must have seized since coming into the Bizogot country. They didn’t have any live war mammoths with them. That by itself raised Hamnet’s spirits, and probably those of everyone else in the war band.
Audun Gilli gasped. “They—have a wizard!” he choked out.
“Hold him off,” Hamnet said urgently. “We’ll see if we can kill him.”
He glanced over to Ulric, who nodded. They’d done this before, or tried to. Killing enemy wizards was the best way to make sure they couldn’t use their spells against you. The best way if you could do it, that is.
Surveying the Rulers’ line, he had no trouble picking out the wizard. As usual, he was the one who hung back behind his comrades. Maybe that was cowardice. It was bound to be good sense. Killing the wizard hurt the enemy much more than killing one of their warriors would have.
As archers on both sides started to shoot, Ulric asked, “Are you game?”
“Not especially, but I don’t think we’ve got much choice. Do you?” Hamnet said.
“No. I only wish I did. Well . . .”
The adventurer spurred his horse forward at a gallop, spurting out ahead of the Bizogots’ line. Hamnet Thyssen went with him. As his horse thundered toward the Rulers, he tried not to think about what a tempting target he made.
“Three Tusks! The Three Tusk clan!” Trasamund roared, and he joined the charge, too. Hamnet had no idea whether the jarl intended to go after the wizard, too, or whether he just wanted to close with the hated Rulers as fast as he could.
Wherever the truth lay, Trasamund distracted the foe from Hamnet and Ulric. Trasamund could distract anybody from anything. Count Hamnet had thought the Bizogot was larger than life ever since he first met him two years earlier in Sigvat’s palace down in Nidaros. Two years! Was that all? Hamnet Thyssen had to think about it, but he nodded a moment later. It seemed much longer.
An arrow thrummed past his head. A moment later, so did another one, even closer. He stopped worrying about how long it had been since he met Trasamund. Worrying about how long he’d keep breathing was more urgent.
A Ruler on horse back swung to try to block his path. Hamnet cut at the swarthy, curly-bearded man. Their swords belled off each other. Sparks flew as iron grated against iron. Then Count Hamnet was past. His foe looked comically surprised. The Ruler must have thought Hamnet was after him in particular.
Well, fellow, you’re not as important as you think you are, Hamnet thought. That probably hurts worse than a sword cut would have.
There was the wizard, astride a riding deer—no newfangled mounts for him. For the moment, he seemed to have no idea Hamnet was closing in on him. His attention was aimed at the Bizogots’ line, and likely at Audun Gilli.
Then Ulric Skakki shot an arrow into the riding deer’s flank. No doubt he’d aimed for the wizard. But archery from horse back was a tricky business. The riding deer didn’t shriek the way a wounded horse might have. But it did jerk and jump and buck like a wounded horse. And the wizard, who’d expected no such thing, went off the deer and onto the dirt with a thump.
The deer bounded away. The wizard scrambled to his feet—which might have been a mistake, because it made him an easier target for Hamnet Thyssen’s sword. The sharp edge glittered in the sun as Hamnet swung the blade. It bit into the wizard’s neck with a noise straight from a butcher’s shop. The impact almost tore the sword from his hand.
Blood sprayed, then fountained. The wizard let out a bubbling scream. Hamnet urged his horse into as tight a turn as it could make, in case he needed to strike again. He saw at once that he didn’t. He had no idea how the wizard stayed on his feet with blood gushing from him that way.
Stand the wizard did. The Rulers, say what you would of them, seemed as hard to kill as serpents. The man’s eyes speared Hamnet. His lips shaped a word. Hamnet had learned only tiny fragments of the Rulers’ language, but he thought he knew what that word was.
You.