rode on.
XIX
Getting any of the soldiers fleeing from disaster in the woods to stop long enough to say exactly what had gone wrong up in the north was Hamnet’s biggest problem. The men who’d escaped wanted nothing more than to put distance between themselves and the Rulers. They didn’t want to talk: that slowed them down.
Some of them warned of mammoths. Some babbled about magic. None of that told Hamnet Thyssen anything he didn’t already know. He finally had to capture a Raumsdalian soldier as if the man belonged to an enemy army, not the one Hamnet was going to command.
“Who the demon are you? What do you think you’re doing?” the cavalry trooper demanded. He stared at the Bizogots who made up most of Hamnet’s strength. Seeing that they were northerners, he went on, “Are you in league with the devils in the woods?”
“No, you idiot,” Hamnet said. “The Rulers attacked the Bizogots before they ever got down here.”
“I won’t get in trouble?” the trooper asked warily.
“Not if you give me straight answers and stop wasting my time,” Hamnet said.
“Well, my name’s Ingolf Rokkvi,” the rider said. “I was part of Count Steinvor’s army. We heard the barbarians had done something nasty up near where the trees stop, but we didn’t know just what was going on. We figured it was Bizogots kicking up their heels like they do sometimes.”
“Oh, good,” Ulric Skakki said. “That’s the way to guarantee you win your battles – make sure your soldiers know exactly what they need to do.”
Ingolf scratched his head. “Is he joking, uh, Your Grace?” he asked Hamnet Thyssen.
“I wish he were,” Hamnet said, while Ulric snorted. Waving the adventurer to silence, Count Hamnet nodded to the trooper. “Go on.”
“Well, I was trying to,” Ingolf Rokkvi said. “We rode north up the forest tracks, looking for the savages. We figured we’d give them a hiding, and they’d run like they usually do, and then we could go home.”
Trasamund and Marcomer and several other Bizogots growled at that scornful assessment of their prowess. Count Hamnet waved them to silence, too. His glare was enough to keep them from reaching for their weapons. He told Ingolf Rokkvi, “Go on,” again.
“I will, if you let me,” Ingolf said. “We were riding along, and all of a sudden the worst blizzard in the world blows up, right in the middle of the woods. You wouldn’t think something like that could happen, but it did.”
Hamnet glanced at Liv and Audun Gilli and Marcovefa. They all nodded. Liv and Audun looked worried, which meant they wouldn’t have wanted to try a spell like that – Hamnet supposed that was what it meant, anyhow. Marcovefa looked amused, which could have meant.. . anything at all. “Then what happened?” Hamnet asked Ingolf Rokkvi.
“Mammoths happened, that’s what!” Ingolf said. “By God, they did. Mammoths with soldiers on em. They were built like bricks, with big curly beards.”
“The mammoths?” Ulric Skakki asked.
“The soldiers,” Ingolf Rokkvi said reproachfully. “They speared us, they trampled us – you can’t make a horse stand against a mammoth, on account of he’s just not big enough – and they laughed while they did it.”
“What happened then?” Count Hamnet asked.
“What do you think happened?” Ingolf’s look told him he was short on brains. “We tried to get away from them. That’s what you do when you haven’t got a chance of winning, and we cursed well didn’t. There was more horrible weather in the woods, and short-faced bears and dire wolves jumping out at us like they had no business doing, and all the time it was like we heard those savages laughing at us, like they thought we were the biggest joke in the world.”
“Would you fight them again?” Hamnet asked.
Ingolf Rokkvi needed some time to think about that. “Maybe I would,” he said at last, “if I thought we had some kind of prayer of winning. A lot of the ones who weren’t on mammoths were on these funny deer, and they weren’t anything special. A regular horseman doesn’t hardly need to worry about ‘em. But the mammoths, and the magic . ..” He scowled. “That’s a pretty scary business.”
“We can beat them. By God, we can,” Hamnet said. Ingolf Rokkvi’s scowl got deeper. He didn’t believe a word of it. After what he’d been through, Hamnet had a hard time blaming him. A little desperately, the Raumsdalian nobleman went on, “We have a wizard who can match anything they do.” He pointed to Marcovefa.
Ingolf eyed her the way a man will eye a good-looking woman, not like a soldier eyeing someone who might help his cause. “Well, if you say so,” he said after a moment: he didn’t believe a word of it.
His horse looked back at him and said, “Don’t be dumber than you can help. She really can. She’s not running from them the way you are, is she?”
That wasn’t Marcovefa’s style of magic. Audun Gilli enjoyed putting words in the mouths of things that didn’t normally have mouths, or at least had no business talking. Audun looked innocent when Hamnet Thyssen glanced his way – ostentatiously innocent, as a matter of fact. Hamnet didn’t love him and never would, but for the time being decided he wasn’t sorry to have him along.
Ingolf’s eyes almost bugged out of his head. “How did you do that?” he demanded of Marcovefa.
She really was innocent – of this, anyway. In her accented Raumsdalian, she said, “Is my fault if beast has more sense than you do?”
The cavalry trooper gathered himself. Hamnet had feared he might go to pieces – he’d been through a lot lately. But he didn’t. “All right. I’ll try,” he said. “If I end up dead … I reckon the lot of you will be there beside me. Have I got that right?”
“Yes,” Hamnet said simply. “The next town ahead is Kjelvik, isn’t it? Does it have a decent garrison?”
“Not too bad,” Ingolf answered. “I don’t know whether they’ll want to fight or bug out, though.”
“We’ll see,” Hamnet Thyssen said. They all rode north.
They came across more soldiers fleeing the Rulers before they got into Kjelvik. Some of them they persuaded to turn around and resume the fight. Others, seeing a body of armed men coming their way from out of the south, rode around them no matter how far out of their way that took them. Hamnet didn’t try to round up those soldiers; they were too far gone to be of much use.
Kjelvik sat on a low hill. There were no tall hills or steep slopes in the northern part of the Empire. The Glacier had lain here too recently, and had ground such things down under its immense weight. As Count Hamnet neared the top of the hill, he could look ahead and see the dark smudge of the north woods out on the horizon. He was getting close. So were the Rulers.
He got a less than overwhelming reception from the gate guards. “Who the blazes are you, and why are you coming the wrong way?” a sergeant asked.
Instead of answering with words, Count Hamnet displayed Sigvat’s commission, all adorned with seals and gorgeous with ornate calligraphy. “What’s it say, Sergeant?” one of the guards asked. “I can’t read for beans.”
“What? You think I can?” the underofficer said. “I went to work when I was a brat, same as most people. I didn’t have the time to waste on my letters.”
“This is an order from His Majesty, the Emperor,” Hamnet Thyssen said. “It gives me command in the north against the new invasion of the barbarians.”
“Right. And rain makes apple-sauce,” the sergeant jeered. “Nobody in his right mind’d
And so did Count Hamnet, who had also seen it with his own eyes. He growled, “Go get an officer – someone who actually can read. He’ll tell you whether I’m lying or not, by God.”
Grudgingly, the sergeant sent off one of his guards. In due course, the man returned with a young officer. “I am Osvif Grisi,” he said. “What do you want, stranger? What do you need?”
“I want to drive the barbarians out of the Empire. I need Kjelvik’s garrison to help me do it,” Hamnet
