“Well, that’s a good question, too,” Ulric said. “We’re liable to run into too many of them all at once—that’s what bothers me. They really have swarmed down here, haven’t they? Raumsdalia’s a big, tasty dog, and it draws plenty of fleas.”
“The Rulers are worse than fleas,” Hamnet Thyssen said. “And of course this country is better than the land farther north. Even the Bizogots like it better here than up on their steppe—well, most of them do, anyway.”
“Bread. Beer. Fruit,” Ulric said. “Oh, they’ve got a few berries up there, but that’s about it. Smetyn doesn’t match beer—to say nothing of wine. And without bread . . .” He shook his head, as if to say civilized life was impossible. He wasn’t so far wrong, either.
A large, black plume of smoke rising in the southeast marked some sort of struggle. Pointing toward it, Trasamund said, “We ought to see what that is.”
“He’s been eating meat again,” Ulric Skakki said sadly.
“Mammoth meat and venison,” Count Hamnet agreed. “So have you. Why doesn’t it turn you all bloodthirsty?”
“Because I’ve got more sense than that?” Ulric suggested. That was more polite than saying, Because I’m not a Bizogot barbarian off the frozen steppe, but it amounted to the same thing.
He didn’t have more sense than to keep from following the jarl as Trasamund rode toward the pillar of smoke. Neither did Hamnet Thyssen. The Raumsdalian noble caught Marcovefa’s eye. “Are you ready for more trouble?” he asked her.
“As much as these Rulers can give,” she answered. By the way she said it, she didn’t think that would be much. She’d beaten their wizards again and again. On this side of the Gap, she was the only one who had.
Hamnet thought about the lands on the far side of the Gap. The country the Rulers roamed was nothing special—it reminded him of the Bizogots’ territory. Somewhere over there, though, would be better land, land like Raumsdalia and the realms to the south. What kind of people lived on it? And what kind of wizards did they have there, if they could keep the Rulers penned up on those cold and nearly useless plains? That was a worrisome thought.
It was also a thought he didn’t have time for. Now he could see what was burning: a village just too small to be a walled town. Most of the black, greasy smoke poured from one building. An oil store house? Hamnet wondered.
He didn’t have time to worry about that, either. The Rulers were still sacking the village. They were killing the men who fought back—and some of the ones who didn’t—and amusing themselves with the women. Atrocities didn’t seem to change much from one side of the Glacier to the other.
The Rulers might have laughed when they saw the Raumsdalians and Bizogots riding toward them. More easy enemies to get rid of, they must have thought. A man came out on a riding deer to face the oncoming foes alone. He was either a wizard or a maniac. Hamnet knew which way he would have bet.
When the wizard pointed at the incoming arrows, they fell out of the sky. Then, all at once, they didn’t any more. One of them just missed puncturing the enemy shaman. Every line of his body shouted astonishment. He pointed again, as if to say, Listen when I tell you something!
But the arrows, thanks to Marcovefa, didn’t listen. One of them grazed the Ruler’s riding deer. The animal bucked. Hamnet was sure he would have done the same thing. He was also sure he would have been ready for it. It caught the Ruler by surprise, though. Next thing he knew, he was sitting on the ground with Raumsdalians and Bizogots thundering toward him on horse back.
He pointed at a lancer, and the Raumsdalian’s spearpoint missed him. The next attacker’s sword bit. The wizard let out a shrill shriek that seemed to hold more indignation than pain. How could this be happening to him? Weren’t such torments reserved for folk of the herd?
Evidently they had been . . . up till now. No longer. Once the first swordstroke went home, the Ruler’s magic seemed to melt away like snow in springtime. By the time the army swept past him and into the village, he wasn’t good to look at any more.
The Rulers in the village cried out, too, in surprise and dismay. Their wizard hadn’t been used to seeing his magic fail. They weren’t used to going unprotected against their enemies’ magic. But Marcovefa filled them with terror. They couldn’t even fight back with their usual dogged courage. They ran pell-mell, throwing aside their swords to flee the faster.
Killing them as they ran didn’t seem sporting to Hamnet Thyssen. Then he remembered the battle in the woods the year before. When a glancing blow from a slingstone put Marcovefa out of action, the Rulers had used a spell much like this against the Raumsdalian army Hamnet led. They hadn’t been embarrassed to terrify their foes, or to slay them even though they couldn’t fight back.
Marcovefa had held that spell at bay till she got knocked cold. Was sending it back at the Rulers now a measure of revenge? If it was, Hamnet hoped she found it sweet.
Not all the Raumsdalians had been panicked by the Rulers’ magic. So, now, a few of the enemy fought back in spite of Marcovefa’s spell. Hamnet got a stinging cut on the back of his hand from one stubborn warrior. The man lay sprawled in death on the grass—much good his courage did him.
The last thing the villagers had expected was to be delivered from their tormentors. They cheered and capered at the same time as they mourned. Some of the women seemed eager to give their rescuers what the Rulers would have taken by force. Nine months from now, some of the babies would probably have the fair hair and light eyes that marked the Bizogots . . . and their byblows.
“Now this is a welcome,” Trasamund said as he disappeared with a buxom brunette. “I’ll give her something to remember me by.”
Ulric Skakki raised an eyebrow. “And we’ll hope she doesn’t give him something to remember her by.” He mimed scratching furiously at an intimate place.
“You take a chance whenever you lie down with a woman.” Count Hamnet paused, considering. “And I suppose she takes a chances whenever she lies down with you.”
“Of course she does.” Ulric mimed a bulging belly this time.
“Well, yes, that, too, but it isn’t what I meant.” Hamnet hesitated again, wondering exactly what he did mean. Slowly, he went on, “You can wound a lover in ways you can’t wound somebody who isn’t. You take a chance that you’ll get hurt, or that you’ll hurt the other person.”
“Life is full of chances. So you bet—and sometimes you lose,” Ulric said. “If you don’t bet at all, no one notices when you die, because you were hardly alive to begin with.”
Hamnet Thyssen grunted. He’d gone years not betting—not betting his heart, anyway. He’d risked his life again and again. With a hole in the center of it, the chance of losing it hardly seemed to matter. At last, he fell in love again . . . and then he fell on his face again.
“Women are strange creatures. You can’t live with them, but you can’t live without them, either,” he said. “Do you suppose they say the same thing about us?”
“Why are you asking me?” Ulric Skakki returned. “People have called me a lot of different things, but I don’t think anybody ever said I had to squat to piss.”
“Thank you,” Hamnet said. The adventurer raised a questioning eyebrow. Hamnet explained: “If I ever needed a cure for romantic thoughts, you just gave it to me.”
“We aim to please,” Ulric said loftily. “And you don’t need a cure. You just need better aim yourself sometimes.” That gave Hamnet something new to chew on.
XI
A RAUMSDALIAN SCOUT galloped back toward Hamnet Thyssen. “Mammoths!” he shouted. “Stacks of mammoths!”
Hamnet tried to imagine mammoths piled one atop another. He felt himself failing, which was bound to be just as well. “How far are they?” he asked. “Do the Rulers know we’re here? Are they heading this way?”