XX
Hamnet’s army reached the southern edge of the forest before the Rulers broke out of it. The Raumsdalians rounded up more soldiers fleeing from the mammoth-riders. Count Hamnet wasn’t sure he was glad to have them. He feared they hurt morale more than they swelled numbers. Some of them were eager enough to try conclusions against the Rulers again. More, though, babbled about barbarians spearing them from mammothback, and about magic shaking ground and twisting weather.
In summer, the forest – mostly pine and fir and spruce – was a dark green wave across the north of the Raumsdalian Empire. In the winter, snow cast a white veil of beauty over the same inhospitable countryside. The trees thrived where even oats and rye wouldn’t grow, and went on thriving up till the ground stayed frozen the year around and the Bizogot plains began.
Within five minutes of Count Hamnet’s ordering the army to halt before going into the woods, Ulric Skakki, Runolf Skallagrim, and Endil Gris all asked him the same question: “Are you going to go in there after them or wait till they come out and hit them on better ground?”
“That’s what I’m thinking about,” he answered . . . and answered . . . and answered. Suddenly, he tried to snap his fingers inside his mittens. It didn’t work, but he still smiled. “Marcovefa!” he called.
“What do you want?” she asked.
“Can you find out where in the forest the Rulers are lurking?”
She nodded. “Yes, I think I can. They not belong here. They leave trail, show where they go, where they are.”
“Do that, then, please,” Hamnet said, in case she thought he was only asking a hypothetical question.
Marcovefa muttered to herself in the strange dialect the folk who lived atop the Glacier used. She rubbed her horses ears – why, Count Hamnet couldn’t have said, unless it was to touch something that did belong to this part of the world. After a moment, she pointed north and a little west. “They are there,” she said in clear Raumsdalian.
Hearing her, Hamnet Thyssen had no doubt she was right. He looked to Endil Gris and Runolf Skallagrim. He would have been ready to argue with either one or both had they chosen to disbelieve, but they didn’t. Each of them nodded in turn: her certainty brought conviction with it.
“How far?” Hamnet asked.
Marcovefa frowned and muttered to herself again. “A day’s journey, no more,” she answered. “But they are not standing still. They are heading this way.”
She spoke in Raumsdalian once more. “How do you know that?” Runolf Skallagrim asked her.
Marcovefa’s frown got deeper. She tried to explain, and she did go on using the imperial language, but what she said made little sense to Hamnet – or, he could see, to Baron Runolf or Count Endil. What did blue fringes have to do with anything? And why would there have been red fringes had the Rulers been moving away instead of forward?
“Fringes on what?” Runolf asked. “Their clothes?”
“No, no, no.” Marcovefa sounded frustrated. “Their…” She couldn’t find the Raumsdalian word she wanted, or even one in the regular Bizogot tongue. Finally, biting her lip in annoyance, she came out with one in her own dialect. That did neither Hamnet nor Runolf nor Endil any good.
“Their auras?” Ulric Skakki suggested, and went back and forth with her in her tongue for a few sentences.
She beamed. “Yes. Their auras. I thank you. The way their spirits rub against the fur of the world.”
“The fur of the world?” Endil Gris still sounded confused, and Count Hamnet couldn’t blame him, not when he was confused himself.
“I think someone who spoke Raumsdalian from birth would say,
Runolf Skallagrim asked a genuinely important question: “Do they know we’re so close, with an army that’s ready for them?”
“No.” Regardless of how strange Marcovefa’s sorcery was, she could be completely convincing when she wanted to. By Runolf’s grin, she convinced him now. Count Endil also seemed satisfied. Even Dalk – whose family name, Hamnet had learned, was Njorun – nodded thoughtfully.
“We know where they are. They don’t know where we are,” Hamnet said. “What could be better? Let’s go get them.”
Nobody told him no or tried to talk him out of it. He always remembered that. The army was in good spirits as they rode into the woods. He always remembered that, too.
Count Hamnet always liked going into the northern forests. He liked it all the better now that he had an army around him. The clean, spicy smells that came from the conifers fought the stink of soldiers and horses. The fighting men and their mounts didn’t smell so bad as they would have in the summertime, but they smelled bad enough. Firs and spruces were better.
“Set scouts out ahead and to all sides,” Ulric Skakki advised. “We want to surprise them. We don’t want them surprising us.”
“Yes, Mother, dear,” Hamnet answered. Ulric laughed and stuck out his tongue. He didn’t care if he annoyed Count Hamnet. He only cared about not getting ambushed – which, Hamnet had to admit, was reasonable enough.
Sending scouts up the road ahead of the army was easy enough. Sending them out on the flanks was anything but. The road, after all, was there to make travel easier. The horsemen trying to pick their way through the trees had a harder time of it.
Audun Gilli rode up alongside of Count Hamnet. The wizard still acted nervous and embarrassed around him – and still had good reason to. Nervous or not, he spoke up now: “I can’t feel the Rulers anywhere ahead of us.” Licking his lips, he added, “Neither can Liv.”
“What are they doing?” Hamnet Thyssen asked Marcovefa. “Are they hiding themselves with magic?”
“If it’s a masking spell, it’s a good one,” Audun said. “Better than any we use on this side of the Glacier.”
Marcovefa’s nostrils flared as she breathed in deeply. She might have been tasting the air, trying to find the flavor of the Rulers. She pointed ahead and a little to the left: the direction in which the road was taking the Raumsdalian army. “They are there,” she said. “It
Audun started to chant a spell. Marcovefa gave him a different tune with words from her dialect. He imitated them as best he could. By the third try, his pronunciation was good enough to suit her. Instead of practicing the charm any more, he aimed it at the road ahead. His jaw dropped in astonishment.
“They really are there!” he exclaimed. “Or the emptiness around them is, anyhow.” He gave Marcovefa an awkward bow in the saddle. “Thank you. I’ll take this back to Liv, by your leave.”
“However it pleases you,” Marcovefa said indifferently.
That indifference pleased Hamnet Thyssen. How had Audun wormed his way into Liv’s good graces, and then into her bed? By sharing magic with her, by learning spells he didn’t know and teaching ones she didn’t. Hamnet didn’t believe Audun Gilli could teach Marcovefa anything.
But he did ask, “If the Rulers use magic to look for us, they’ll find us, won’t they?”
“I have a small masking on us. Maybe it serve, maybe not. Better than their junk, though,” Marcovefa answered. “Only a small one. Don’t think we need any more. The Rulers too stupid even to think to look.”
They weren’t stupid, not to Hamnet s way of thinking. But they were arrogant. They always seemed to underestimate their foes. That could amount to the same thing. It could … if Hamnet could bring home a victory.
“Push the scouts forward,” he ordered. “Does anyone know if there’s a large clearing anywhere between the Rulers and us? If there is, I want to form my battle line there.”
A couple of the men who’d run from the invading barbarians stirred. “There’s a wide place in the road two, maybe three miles up,” one of them said. “You’re going to face those bastards anywhere, that’s a pretty good
