Breath of God

V

Fear made thescout’s voice wobble when he rode into the camp. “They’re moving!” he called. “The God-cursed Rulers are moving!”

And, like a spark setting kindling alight, the fear in the Bizogot rider’s voice sent fear racing through the encampment where the Red Dire Wolves and the remnants of the Three Tusk clan dwelt. “They’re moving!” became “They’re coming!” became “They’ll attack us!” became “They’ll kill us all!” became “We have to flee before they can kill us all!”

Trasamund kept his wits about him, at least enough to hear what the scout truly said. “What do you mean, they’re moving?” he shouted through the rising chaos. Hamnet Thyssen couldn’t have found a better question if he tried for a week. Finding out what was really going on came ahead of everything else.

“Well, Your Ferocity, they’re moving south,” the Bizogot rider answered. He pointed east. “They’re heading down into our country – into Red Dire Wolf country – over that way.”

“They’re not coming straight at the camp, then?” Trasamund demanded.

“No, Your Ferocity, or not when I saw em,” the scout said. “But their war mammoths and riding deer are on the move, and the herds of mammoths and musk oxen they’ve stolen here.” He had more diplomacy than most Bizogots; he didn’t remind Trasamund that those stolen mammoths and musk oxen came from the Three Tusk clan.

Totila said, “This is bad enough. They move into the heart of our grazing grounds, may God afflict them with boils. We can’t take our herds that way now, not without fighting.”

“We’re not ready for another fight yet,” Ulric Skakki said in a low voice.

“Now tell me something I didn’t know,” Hamnet Thyssen answered. “Do you think the Bizogots ever will be?”

“Well, if the answer turns out to be no, we both rode a demon of a long way for nothing,” Ulric said, which seemed like another obvious truth.

“What are we going to do?” Liv found one more important question. “Will we go over to the attack? Will we run from the Rulers? Or will we stay here and wait till they strike us?”

“Let’s hit them!” Trasamund boomed.

He might have been a male grouse booming where no females could hear him. The Bizogots didn’t take up the cry. They weren’t eager to strike at the Rulers. One fight with the foe from beyond the Glacier had taught them how misplaced eagerness was. They might fight bravely against the invaders, but few of them would swarm forward to do it.

Trasamund didn’t seem to see that. “Let’s hit them!” he cried again.

Fear had kindled among the Red Dire Wolves. Ferocity wouldn’t. Again, Trasamund’s bellow fell into a deep, dark pool of silence. It raised no echoes. The jarl of the Three Tusk clan turned red with rage when he saw it wouldn’t.

“Are you afraid?” Trasamund shouted, now in disbelief.

No one told him no. He clapped a hand to his forehead. Count Hamnet wondered if he would have a stroke, but he didn’t.

“We know which direction the Rulers will come from now,” Totila said. “We can work out how best to beat them back when they do.”

“But – ” Trasamund looked around. He sent Totila a withering glance, but realized standing fast was as much as he could hope to get from the other Bizogots. He had not a chance in the world of making them go forward. Shaking his head, he said, “We should be able to do more than this.”

“Sometimes doing anything at all is as much as you can ask for,” Hamnet Thyssen told him.

“Maybe.” Trasamund didn’t sound as if he believed it. “But if we’re standing still and they’re still coming forward … The chin stands still. The fist comes forward.”

“And sometimes the fist breaks knuckles when it hits the chin,” Hamnet said.

“Sometimes,” the Bizogot jarl echoed gloomily. He’d broken knuckles on both hands. But he went on, “Most of the time, the fist strikes home and the fellow with the chin goes down.” He looked at the clansmen all around. “By God, Raumsdalian, what do we do if they smash us again? Where do we run? Where can we run?”

“The thing to do, Your Ferocity, is make sure they don’t smash us.” Count Hamnet hoped the Bizogots could do that. Trasamund wasn’t wrong – another defeat would ruin the Red Dire Wolves. Another defeat might also persuade a lot of other clans to roll on their backs for the Rulers. Easier and safer to yield than to go up against an overwhelmingly strong foe in hopeless battle. So the nomads might believe, anyhow.

Or they might not. Hamnet Thyssen knew he was thinking like a civilized man, like a Raumsdalian, himself. The Bizogots were a proud and touchy folk. They might decide they would rather die than admit the invaders from beyond the Glacier were their superiors. He had no way to know ahead of time. He would have to see for himself.

When he said as much to Ulric Skakki, the adventurer said, “Here’s hoping we don’t have to find out, Your Grace.” He turned Count Hamnet s title of nobility into one of faint reproach.

“How do you mean?” Hamnet asked.

“If we can beat the Rulers, we don’t have to worry that they’ll panic the rest of the clans into going belly-up.”

“Oh. Yes. There is that.” Hamnet sounded as dubious as Trasamund had a little while before.

“If you don’t think we can, what are you doing here?” Ulric spoke in a low voice. He took Count Hamnet by the elbow and steered him away from Trasamund and the other Bizogots. The steppe squelched under their boots. The Bizogot country, which had been white for so long, was green now, the green of grass and rocks and tiny shrubs, all splashed with red and yellow and blue flowers. The brief beauty effectively disguised what a harsh land it was.

“What am I doing here?” Hamnet echoed. “The best I can.”

“Don’t make yourself out to be that big a hero,” Ulric said. “You would have stayed down in the Empire if Liv stayed with you.”

“Yes, I like her company,” Hamnet said. “So what? I’m entitled to a little happiness if I can find it.”

“Nobody is entitled to happiness. You’ll lose it if you think you are.” Ulric spoke with unusual conviction. “You may stumble over it now and again, but that’s not because you’re entitled to it.”

He was likely to be right. No – as far as Hamnet could see, he was bound to be right. Recognizing as much, the noble changed the subject: “Even if I’d gone down to my castle instead of coming up here, I would have met the Rulers sooner or later. Or will you tell me I’m wrong about that?”

“I wish I could.” Ulric Skakki sighed. “Well, you don’t always get what you want. Sometimes you’re stuck with things. We’re stuck with the Bizogots now, and with the slim chances they have.”

“See? You think so, too,” Hamnet said.

“They’re doing something, anyhow.” Ulric sighed again, even more mournfully than before. “I wish they were doing more. I wish they knew how to do more. I wish they had some tiny notion of how to work together. And I wish Sigvat would have taken his head out of his . ..” He sighed one more time. “I said it myself a minute ago – you don’t always get what you want.”

“How about what you don’t want?” Count Hamnet asked. Ulric Skakki made a questioning noise. Hamnet explained: “I don’t want to get beaten again.”

“Oh. That,” Ulric said airily. “We’ll find out.”

Fighting among hisown countrymen, Hamnet Thyssen wouldn’t have ridden out as a scout to keep an eye on what the enemy was up to. The Raumsdalians had soldiers who specialized in such things, as they had specialists who had dealt with catapults, sharpshooting archers, and others who could do one thing very well and the others not so well.

Up in the Bizogot country, shamans were the only specialists. Everyone else had to be able to do all the things people needed to do to live on the frozen steppe; there wasn’t enough surplus to let the nomads be able to specialize. In bad years, there was no surplus at all – there wasn’t enough. Starvation was an uncommon misfortune down in the Empire, but a fact of life here.

Motion drew Hamnet s eye. It wasn’t a riding deer or a war mammoth in the distance, but a vole or lemming scurrying from one tussock to another almost under his horse’s hooves. A moment later, a weasel streaked after the other little animal. Most of the weasel’s coat had gone brown, with only a few small white patches left. The beasts needed no calendar to know spring was here.

Birds of all sizes from larkspurs to teratorns crowded the Bizogot country. Most of them fed on the bounty of bugs the springtime ponds brought. Others ate the birds that ate the bugs – hawks and owls lived here, too.

More waterfowl bred on the edges of Sudertorp Lake, south of the Red Dire Wolves’ grazing grounds, than anywhere else. But others found smaller ponds and puddles good enough. A goose rose from a pond and flew away as Hamnet came near. The bird couldn’t know he wasn’t hunting it. If he were hungry, he might have been.

He kept staring east. He was getting close to where the Bizogot had spotted the Rulers. The invaders’ scouts would probably be prowling out this way. They would want to know how alert the Bizogots were.

Ulric Skakki rode somewhere not too far away, though Hamnet couldn’t see him right now. The frozen steppe looked perfectly flat – and well it might, since the Glacier had lain on it so long and left so recently. But it wasn’t, or not quite; it had its gentle swells and dips. Some of those hid the adventurer from sight.

What do I do if four or five enemies come at me? But Hamnet Thyssen knew the answer to that. If he was outnumbered, he would run away. He wasn’t out to be a hero, or even a fierce warrior. All he wanted to do was make sure the Rulers weren’t heading for the Red Dire Wolves’ encampment along this line.

Something out there on the horizon .. . Hamnet’s eyes narrowed. He shaded them with his left hand, trying to see better. “Animals,” he muttered aloud. He urged his horse forward. Were those some of the Rulers’ herds, or perhaps beasts they’d stolen from the Bizogots? Or was that their army on the move? He had to find out.

As he rode forward, he wondered how the Rulers treated enemies they captured. Not very well, was his best guess. He hadn’t been a captured enemy the last time he stayed at one of their encampments. He’d been – what? A curiosity, perhaps, along with the other Raumsdalians and Bizogots who traveled beyond the Glacier.

But what he’d seen and heard made it clear the Rulers didn’t think men and women of other folk were really human beings. They were hard enough on their own kind, casting them out if taken prisoner and expecting them to kill themselves if defeated. On others? Hamnet Thyssen didn’t want to find out the hard way.

He hadn’t gone very far before a couple of small shapes separated themselves from the larger mass there on the horizon and came his way. He nodded to himself. The Rulers were alert. He might despise them – he did despise them – but they made monstrously good warriors.

He kept going a while longer, long enough to satisfy himself that he was just seeing a herd, not the vanguard of the Rulers’ army. That didn’t let those riding deer – he could plainly make out that they were riding deer now – get within bowshot of his horse, but it did let them come closer than he’d intended. No, he didn’t want to find out how the Rulers treated prisoners. He wheeled his horse and rode back more or less in the direction from which he’d come.

Hoarse shouts rang out behind him, faint in the distance. Had the enemy warriors thought he would oblige them by riding straight into their hands? Too bad for them if they had.

When he looked over his shoulder, they were coming after him as fast as their riding deer would go. He booted his horse up from a trot to a gallop. He kept zigzagging a bit, not wanting to show the Rulers exactly in which direction the Red Dire Wolves’ camp lay.

They kept after him. If they ran their antlered mounts into the ground in the pursuit, they didn’t seem to care. He had more trouble pulling away from them than he’d thought he would.

He began looking around for Ulric Skakki. He didn’t want to be rescued, or not exactly, but he wouldn’t have minded knowing where the adventurer was.

Then he found out. He chanced to be looking back again when one of the Rulers threw up his hands and slid off over his riding deer’s tail. A moment later, an arrow struck the other one’s mount. The deer crashed to the ground, pinning the warrior beneath it. Ulric Skakki galloped up, sprang down from his horse, and finished the man with a swordthrust.

By the time Hamnet rode back to him, he was already mounted again. “That was . .. nicely done,” Hamnet said, reflecting that Ulric made a monstrously good warrior, too, even if he wasn’t showy about it the way the Rulers were.

“Thanks,” Ulric answered now. “You made it easy. They didn’t pay any attention to me till much too late.”

“The foxes chased the hare and didn’t notice the dire wolf?” Hamnet wasn’t sure he liked the idea of being nothing more than someone who distracted the foe from a real danger. He wanted the Rulers to think he was dangerous himself.

Ulric winked at him, disconcertingly sharp. “You’ve got the cutest whiskers.”

“I’m so glad you think so.” Hamnet Thyssen batting his eyes made Ulric laugh out loud. Count Hamnet couldn’t keep his mood light for long. He asked, “Did you get a good look at the herd up ahead?” He pointed east. “How many of the Rulers were there with it?”

“At least these two.” The adventurer pointed to one of the corpses. “I didn’t see that many more. Did you?”

“I didn’t think so,” Hamnet answered. “I’d say we’ve proved the main thrust against the Red Dire Wolves won’t come along this path.”

“I’d say you’re right.” Ulric nodded. “And I’d also say we’d better get back to them anyhow. That thrust is coming, whether it’s coming this way or not. I don’t want to ride into camp and find out there’s no camp left, if you know what I mean.”

Hamnet Thyssen understood him much too well. He didn’t want to think of getting back there and finding the Rulers had broken the Bizogots. If anything happened to Liv . .. He especially didn’t want anything to happen to her if he wasn’t there to do all he could to keep it from happening. That probably didn’t make much sense, but he didn’t care. “Let’s ride,” he said harshly.

Again he had the feeling Ulric Skakki knew exactly what he was thinking. He didn’t care. As long as the adventurer kept his mouth shut about Liv, they would get along fine. If Ulric didn’t. ..

If Ulric didn’t, Hamnet would try to hurt him. He wasn’t sure he could. The last time he tried, he flew through the air with the greatest of ease and ended up, suddenly and painfully, on his back on a hard stone floor. He was bigger than Ulric Skakki, and thought he was stronger. Ulric was faster and trickier. More often than not, that gave him the edge.

“We shouldn’t quarrel among ourselves,” Ulric said, not quite out of nowhere. “We should save it for the Rulers.”

“Well, you’re right.” Hamnet Thyssen wasn’t about to let Ulric know he’d been thinking about fighting him.

A short-eared fox trotted across their path. Like the weasel’s, its pelt was going from white to brown. The hares up here were also short-eared and stocky next to the ones that bounded across the Raumsdalian prairie, while northern lynxes were more compact than bobcats. “What about the Bizogots?” Ulric Skakki asked when Count Hamnet remarked on that. “Why aren’t they built like balls?”

“They wear clothes. They build fires,” Hamnet answered. “And take a look at the Rulers. They are broader and thicker than most folk from this side of the Glacier.”

Ulric grunted. “If I never had to look at the Rulers again, it wouldn’t break my heart. You’d best believe that.”

“Nor mine,” Count Hamnet agreed.

“I wonder what their women are like, though,” Ulric said, all at once thoughtful. “We haven’t seen them.”

“They’re here now. Liv saw them in her spirit flight. She called them ugly bitches,” Hamnet Thyssen said. “So the Rulers aren’t just coming to raid. They’re coming to settle.”

“I want to see their women myself, in the flesh, not just in spirit,” Ulric Skakki said. “They would mean we’ve beaten them so badly, we’re coming up to their camps.”

“Or it could mean they’ve captured us and put us to work there,” Count Hamnet said. Ulric made a horrible face. “Besides,” Hamnet went on, “you don’t mean you want to see them. You mean you want to swive them.”

“Well, yes,” Ulric admitted, “but if you say that to a Bizogot girl named Arnora I won’t be very happy with you.”

Count Hamnet had noticed that Ulric had taken up with one Bizogot in particular instead of spreading himself through the mammoth-herders’ women as opportunity, among other things, arose. Hamnet had a horror of infidelity. All the same, he said, “I won’t blab. Sooner or later, though, you’ll give yourself away.”

“Let me worry about that.” Ulric could have said a good many other things. He left them unspoken. Hamnet appreciated his tact, such as it was.

They spotted smoke an hour or so later. Hamnet feared at first it was the smoke of a sack, but soon realized there wasn’t enough for that. It was only the normal smoke that rose above any Bizogot encampment. He breathed a loud, long sigh of relief.

Ulric Skakki sent him a crooked smile. “Now that you mention it, yes.”

When they rode into the camp, the Bizogots cheered to learn they’d slain a couple of warriors from the Rulers. “Two more we won’t have to worry about at the next big battle,” Totila said, sounding a lot like Trasamund.

Arnora embraced Ulric after he got down from his horse. Her blue eyes shone. She was as tall as he was, and almost as wide through the shoulders. “Kill more of them,” she said with Bizogot directness. “Kill many more. I’ll make you glad you do.” She led him off to a tent to attend to that on the spot.

“We only gave them a fleabite,” Hamnet said, scratching as if reminded. “Before long, they’ll try to do worse to us.”

“Let them come!” Trasamund shouted. “Let them do their worst! Do they think we fear them? By God, we’ll teach them a thing or two. Let them

come!

Hamnet Thyssen looked at Liv. She said what was in his mind, too: “Be careful what you ask for, Your Ferocity, or God may decide to give it to you.”

The Rulers cametwo days later, driving in the scouts patrolling to the east and sending them headlong back into the Red Dire Wolves’ encampment in fear for their lives. “Arm yourselves!” the scouts shouted as they rode in. “We have to fight!”

“To me, Three Tusk clan!” Trasamund bellowed. “To me! Another chance for vengeance is here!”

Totila shouted for his warriors, too. Hamnet Thyssen wished other clans had ridden in. That would have given the Bizogots a better chance against their foes. Or maybe, he thought glumly, it would have given the Rulers the chance to get rid of more Bizogots at once. He knew too well that the Bizogots had had little luck against the invaders in battle.

“Can we stop them?” he asked Liv.

“Do you mean, can our fighters stop theirs? Man for man, we can match them,” she said. “When it comes to shamanry, though .. . Well, Audun and Odovacar and I will do our best. I have to hope it will be good enough.”

He gave her a quick kiss. He had to hope whatever magic the shamans and Audun Gilli could muster would be good enough, too. “If you can spook their war mammoths …”

“That would be good, wouldn’t it?” Liv said. “We’ll try. We’ll try everything we can think of.”

“This is our land!” Totila was shouting. “These are our herds! Are we going to let these flyblown mammoth turds steal them from us?”

“No!” the Bizogots yelled back. Their spirits still seemed high. Hamnet Thyssen admired them for that, at the same time wondering where they’d left their memories. The Rulers already held the heart of the Red Dire Wolves’ grazing lands. The invaders had already beaten the clan once. Why did Totila think his countrymen could beat the Rulers now?

Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he just thought they had to make the fight. If they didn’t, if they fled, they would be invaders themselves, trying to take land from other Bizogots. And they would have a brand new war on their hands if they did. Sometimes you needed to fight even when the odds were bad.

“Well, well.” Ulric Skakki looked up from the methodical examination he was giving the arrows in his quiver. “Doesn’t this sound like fun?” His bright, cheery voice matched the wide smile on his foxy features.

Count Hamnet just shook his head. “No.”

“What do you suppose the Bizogots will do if things go wrong again?” Ulric spoke Raumsdalian, so most of the mammoth-herders wouldn’t understand. “What do you suppose we’ll do if things go wrong?”

“Try to stay alive,” Hamnet said, also in Raumsdalian. “What else can we do? What can anybody do when things go wrong?”

“A point. Yes, a distinct point.” The adventurer tapped one of the points sticking up from the quiver. “Not too sharp a point, I hope.”

The Bizogots and the Raumsdalians who’d come north rode out behind the scouts a little later. Women and old men stayed behind to tend the herds, though some women carried bows to battle. Arnora rode beside Ulric Skakki, and seemed as ready to fight as any of the men howling out battle songs.

If the Rulers broke the Red Dire Wolves again, would the herd guards be able to keep the Bizogots’ animals out of the invaders’ hands? Nobody could know something like that ahead of time, but Hamnet had his doubts.

“There!” The shout rose from up ahead. “There they are, the God-cursed rogues!”

“Are you ready?” Hamnet asked Liv.

“I’d better be, but how much difference would it make if I weren’t?” she said.

He had no good answer for that. “Can you do anything about their mammoths?” he asked.

She smiled at him the way a mother might smile at a fussy child. “We can do things,” she replied. “I don’t know whether they’ll work the way we hope, but we can do them.”

He had to be content, or not so content, with that. He worried as he rode forward with the Bizogots. If Liv and Audun and Odovacar couldn’t stop or slow down the mammoths, this battle was lost before it began. They had to see that, didn’t they?

Liv did. Audun probably did. Odovacar? Hamnet Thyssen wasn’t sure how much Odovacar saw, or how much it mattered.

Closer now. The mammoths loomed up ahead like perambulating mountains. The riding deer out to the flanks weren’t nearly so formidable. Where were the Rulers’ wizards? What new deviltry were they planning?

The Bizogots shouted Totila’s name, and Trasamund’s. They shouted for vengeance. They roared out their hatred of the Rulers. They shook their fists. They yelled curses that probably wouldn’t bite. And the Rulers yelled back. Hamnet Thyssen still knew next to nothing of their harsh, guttural speech. All the same, he doubted that the invaders were praising the Bizogots or passing the time of day.

Arrows started to fly. “Do you see?” Ulric Skakki said. “They’ve put more armor on their mammoths.”

Hamnet hadn’t noticed, but Ulric was right. The thick leather sheets did cover more of the enormous beasts. “I don’t care how much they put on,” Hamnet said. “Leather won’t turn a square hit.” As if to try to prove the point, he nocked an arrow and let fly.

Ulric Skakki also began shooting. “I don’t think they can armor their deer, or not very much,” he said. “Those have all they can do to carry men. They don’t have any weight left over for armor, too.”

Down in the Empire, heavy cavalry horses would carry a trooper, his coat of mail, and iron armor of their own. Charges of such knights were irresistible . . . except, perhaps, by mammoths. But the Bizogots had neither such big horses nor such armor. Their warriors wore cuirasses of leather boiled in oil – when they wore armor at all. Their horses had no more protection than the Rulers’ riding deer.

Deer and horses, then, made larger, easier targets than warriors. Wounded animals shrilled out cries of pain that reminded Hamnet Thyssen of women in torment. Listening, he wanted to stuff his fingers in his ears to block out the horrid sounds. But his hands had other things to do.

He methodically drew and shot, drew and shot. His bowstring didn’t break, as it had in the last fight against the Rulers. Liv had set a spell on it, and on many others, to ward against the enemy’s sorcerous mischief. Audun and Odovacar had also seen to the Bizogots’ bows. So far, their charms seemed to be working.

Bizogot horsemen were at least a match for the warriors of the Rulers on riding deer. But horsemen could not withstand the Rulers’ war mammoths. Fight as the Bizogots would, the mammoths drove a great wedge into the center of their line, threatening to split their force in two.

“If you can do anything at all about those God-cursed beasts, this would be a mighty good time!” Hamnet shouted to Liv.

“I’ll try,” she answered, and said something to Audun Gilli, who rode close by. The Raumsdalian wizard nodded. He began what Hamnet recognized as a protective spell, to keep Liv from having to guard herself while she made a different kind of magic.

Count Hamnet wouldn’t have wanted to cast a spell while riding a bucketing horse and hoping no enemy arrow struck home. That was what Liv had to do, though, and she did it as if she had years of practice. Her voice never wavered, and her passes were, or at least seemed, quick and reliable. Hamnet admired her at least as much for her unflustered competence as for her courage.

And suddenly the ground in front of and under the Rulers’ war mammoths began to boil with .. . with what? With voles, Hamnet realized, and with lemmings, and with all the other mousy little creatures that lived on the northern steppe. Some of them started running up the mammoths’ legs. Others squeaked and died as great feet squashed them. Still others started up the mammoths’ trunks instead of their legs.

The mammoths liked that no better than Hamnet would have enjoyed a sending of cockroaches. They did odd, ridiculous-looking dance steps, trying to shake free of the voles and lemmings. If they also shook free of some of the warriors on their backs, they didn’t care at all. The Rulers might, but the mammoths didn’t.

And those mammoths particularly didn’t like the little animals on their trunks. They shook them again and again, sending lemmings flying. They didn’t pay any attention to the battle they were supposed to be fighting.

Where the war mammoths had forced their way into the center of the Bizogots’ line, now they suddenly halted, more worried about vermin than violence. The Bizogots whooped and cheered and fought back hard. Had the confusion in the enemy ranks lasted longer, and had they met with no confusion of their own . . .

Hamnet Thyssen often thought about that afterwards. Much too late to do anything about it then, of course.

In the battle, he shouted, “Ha! See how you like it!” He shot an enemy warrior who’d fallen from his mammoth, and then another one. They would have done the same to him. They’d tried to do the same to him. But he’d succeeded against them. And Liv and Audun and Odovacar had succeeded against their wizards.

No sooner had that thought crossed his mind than he discovered it did not do to count the Rulers’ wizards out too soon. The air suddenly darkened around the Bizogots. Hamnet had thought he knew everything there was to know about bugs in the north when the steppe unfroze. He quickly found out how naive he’d been.

As Liv and her comrades called voles and lemmings to the Rulers’ mammoths, so the enemy wizards called insects to the Bizogots and their horses. Some always buzzed about; all you could do was slap and swear. But now the mosquitoes and gnats and flies descended in a cloud as thick and choking as if woven from the long hairs of the woolly mammoth. Horses bucked and thrashed in torment, lashing their tails against the overwhelming onslaught.

Fighting was next to impossible with so many bugs assailing every unclothed inch of skin. Even breathing wasn’t easy. Hamnet Thyssen coughed and choked. Something nasty that wiggled and tasted of blood crunched between his teeth. Gnats kept getting in his eyes. He rubbed frantically.

The bugs didn’t seem to bother the Rulers or their animals, or no worse than usual. Why am I not surprised? Hamnet thought bitterly. The enemy’s war mammoths were still distracted, but the warriors on riding deer seemed unaffected by either side’s sorcery.

Not far from Hamnet, Liv was slapping and scratching and spitting as desperately as he was. “Make it stop!” he shouted to her. “By God, you have to!”

“If we do, we’ll have to let go of the spell that calls the little animals to their mammoths,” she answered.

He might have guessed that. “I think you’d better do it anyhow,” he said. “They’re hurting us worse than we’re hurting them.” Saying that tasted bad .. . but not so bad as the insects that filled his mouth and furred his teeth.

Liv said something that should have made every insect in the world burst into flames. It should have, but it didn’t. She shouted to Odovacar, who didn’t hear her, then to Audun Gilli, who did. Audun nodded – indistinctly, through the curtain of bugs.

A Bizogot right in front of Hamnet caught an arrow in the throat, gurgling when he tried to scream and drowning in his own blood. That could have been me, the Raumsdalian thought, and shuddered, and got another gnat, or another three, in his eye. He ducked to rub at himself, and an arrow hissed past just above his head. If he were sitting straight on his horse, it would have caught him in the forehead. Sometimes whether you lived or died was nothing but luck.

He could tell when Liv and Audun and possibly Odovacar began to fight the mad swarm of insects the Rulers’ wizards had summoned. The bugs went from impossible to intolerable all the way down to extremely annoying. He could spit bugs out of his mouth faster than they flew in. He wasn’t swallowing or inhaling so many. He could even see, sometimes for a minute or two at a time.

And what he could see was that everything had its price. As soon as the Bizogot shamans and Audun Gilli abandoned their spell to fight the one the Rulers were using, the lemmings and voles they’d called to the battlefield did what anyone would expect little animals to do in the presence of big ones – they ran away. And the war mammoths, no longer bedeviled, surged forward once more.

“We can beat them!” Trasamund shouted again and again. He went on shouting it after he pulled an arrow out of his left hand. He went on shouting it after the Bizogots, having fought as hard as anybody could fight, had to retreat anyhow. He went on shouting it as retreat turned to rout. He went on shouting it – roaring it out at the top of his lungs – long after he must have stopped believing it.

Ulric Skakki was bleeding from a gashed ear – the kind of wound that splattered gore all over the place without meaning much. “How come we’re going the wrong way if we can beat them?” he asked Hamnet Thyssen.

“Oh, shut up,” Count Hamnet explained.

Ulric nodded gravely, as if the explanation meant something. “Makes as much sense as anything I could have come up with myself,” he said.

Hamnet pointed south – actually, a little west of south. “Are those riding deer?” he asked.

“Well, they aren’t glyptodonts – that’s for sure,” Ulric said.

“They’re cutting us off from the other half of the army. They ‘re cutting us off from the Red Dire Wolves’ herds, too,” Hamnet said.

“They’re good at war. They’re better than the Bizogots, because they come into fights with a plan,” Ulric said. “They’re going to be a lot of trouble.”

“They’re already a lot of trouble,” Count Hamnet said. “And they’re herding us the way you’d herd musk oxen – or even sheep.”

“Baaa,” Ulric said – or was it Bah?. Hamnet couldn’t tell. The adventurer went on, “What do you think we can do about it?”

“Right now? Not a cursed thing,” Hamnet answered.

“Well, that’s what I think we can do about it, too,” Ulric Skakki said. “Nice to see we agree about something, isn’t it? And it’s nice to see the Rulers can run a pursuit when they feel like it, eh?”

“Fornicating wonderful,” Hamnet said. Ulric laughed, for all the world as if that were funny … for all the world as if anything were funny.

“Where’s Totila?” Ulric Skakki asked after looking around.

Count Hamnet also looked for the Red Dire Wolves’ jarl. “Don’t see him.”

“He must be with the other bunch – if he’s still anywhere,” Ulric said. Glumly, Hamnet nodded. He didn’t see Odovacar any more, either. Was the shaman still alive? Hamnet wondered if he would ever know.

Then he had more urgent things to worry about. A warrior of the Rulers, shouting something unintelligible, slashed at him with a sword. He parried and gave back an overhand cut. The enemy fighting man turned it with a little round leather buckler he wore on his left arm. His riding deer tried to prod Hamnet’s horse with its antlers. The Raumsdalian cut again. He wounded the deer’s snout. The animal let out a startled snort and started to buck, just the way a horse would have. The man on it had everything he could do to stay in the saddle. Hamnet Thyssen got a good slash home against the side of his neck. Blood spurted. The warrior let out a gobbling wail and crumpled.

A tiny victory – too tiny to mean anything in the bigger fight. The Rulers went right on driving this band of Bizogots north and west, away from the larger group farther south. Every so often, an arrow would bite, and a man or a horse would go down.

Spring days had stretched in a hurry. That let the Rulers push the pursuit longer and harder than they could have at a different season or, say, down in the Empire. After what seemed a very long time, night finally fell.

“We must be backup in the lands of the Three Tusk clan,” Liv said when the Bizogots – and Hamnet, and Ulric, and Audun Gilli – finally stopped to rest. She sounded ready to fall over from exhaustion, or possibly from despair.

“What are they going to do – chase us till they smash us against the Glacier?” Maybe Ulric meant it for a sour joke. But it sounded much too likely to Hamnet Thyssen.

Vl

The sun cameup too early. Count Hamnet munched smoked mammoth meat. He scooped up water with his hands from one of the countless ponds, and hoped it wouldn’t give him a flux of the bowels.

And then one of the rearguard shouted that the Rulers were coming. Swearing wearily, Hamnet climbed up onto his horse. The animal’s sigh sounded all too human, all too martyred. It was weary, too. Hamnet didn’t care. If he didn’t ride, the Rulers would kill him. If he did, he might get away to fight again later on.

“What did we do to deserve this?” Trasamund groaned as they headed north and west again. “Why does God hate us?”

“It hasn’t got anything to do with God,” Ulric Skakki said. “The weather’s warmer, so the Gap melted through. That’s all there is to it.”

“All, eh?” Trasamund said. “And who made the weather warmer? Was it you? I don’t think so. Did God have a little something to do with it? Well, maybe.”

Ulric grunted. The jarl’s sarcasm pierced like an arrow. And the weather was warmer, without a doubt. This would have been a warm day down in Nidaros, let alone here on the frozen steppe. Count Hamnet wondered whether the steppe would stay frozen if weather like this persisted. What kind of country would this be if it ever thawed out all the way?

Up ahead, growing taller every hour, loomed the Glacier. Imagining it gone from the world seemed lunatic. Only a few years earlier, though, imagining it split in two would have seemed just as mad. Whether God had anything to do with it or not, the Glacier was in retreat.

“Does this land belong to the Three Tusk clan?” Hamnet asked. “Or have we come so far west, we’re in the country of – what’s the next clan over?”

“They are the White Foxes,” Trasamund answered. “They are a pack of thieves and robbers, not to be trusted even for a minute.”

To Raumsdalians, all Bizogots were thieves. The harsh land in which they lived made them eager to grab whatever they could, and not worry about silly foreign notions like ownership. If Trasamund thought the White Foxes were thieves even by Bizogot standards, that made them larcenous indeed . .. unless it just said the Three Tusk clan looked down its collective nose at its neighbors.

Ulric Skakki must have had that same thought, for he asked, “And what do the White Foxes say about the Three Tusk clan?”

“Who cares?” Trasamund missed the sly mockery in Ulric’s voice. “With a pack of ne’er-do-wells like that, what difference does it make?”

“You still didn’t say whose land this is,” Hamnet pointed out.

“These are not Three Tusk grazing grounds. That much I know,” Trasamund said. “Maybe they belong to the Red Dire Wolves, maybe to the White Foxes. But I have roamed every foot of our land, and this is none of it. Can you not see how much poorer it is than the lands we use?”

Hamnet Thyssen could see nothing of the sort. He doubted Trasamund could, either. The Three Tusk jarl reflexively boasted about the glories of his clan and its grazing grounds – or rather, the grazing grounds the clan had once held, the grazing grounds now under the Rulers’ sway.

His horse thudded and squelched its way to the northwest. It was tired and blowing. He didn’t know what he’d do if it foundered. He shook his head. That wasn’t so. He knew all too well: he would die.

He was worn himself, worn and nodding. But he jerked upright when a deep rumble, as of distant thunder, came from the direction in which he was riding. He thought at first it was thunder, but thunder from a clear blue sky with the warm sun shining down would have meant God was taking a more direct interest in worldly affairs than he seemed to be in the habit of doing.

“What the – ?” he asked Liv.

“I think it was an avalanche,” she answered. She looked even wearier than he felt, which he would have thought impossible if he weren’t seeing it with his own eyes. But she hadn’t merely fought in yesterdays battle; she’d worked magic all through it, which would drain anyone. After a yawn, she continued, “Sometimes chunks of the Glacier will crash down when the weather is like this. It will melt near the top and sometimes set everything farther down in motion.”

“Lucky it didn’t do that at the Gap,” Hamnet exclaimed.

“Farther north there – it’s usually cooler.” Liv pointed ahead. “Look at all the dust rising from the plain. It was an avalanche, and a big one, too.”

Sure enough, a cloud of dust like the ones that sometimes rolled across the plains of the Empire was climbing into the sky, obscuring what lay behind it. Hamnet looked back over his shoulder. Riding deer and a few war mammoths still pursued, though the Rulers didn’t seem to want to close.

And then, as if to grind the fugitives between two stones, Bizogots rode at them from straight ahead. They were men from the White Fox clan, which answered the question of whose grazing grounds these were. “What are you doing here, you saucy robbers?” one of them shouted angrily. “Get off our land, or we’ll fill you full of holes!”

“Why don’t you ride on by us?” Trasamund yelled back. “Then you can tell the Rulers the same thing. Do you think they’ll listen to you?”

“What are you talking about?” the White Fox Bizogot said. Then he recognized Trasamund. “By God! You’re the Three Tusk clan’s jarl!”

“And much good that’s done me,” Trasamund answered bleakly. “I’ve lost my clan. The Rulers have taken our grazing lands, and the Red Dire Wolves’, too. They’ll come after you next. They’re on the way.” He pointed back over his shoulder.

The White Foxes reined in. They put their heads together. The warrior who’d been shouting was plainly a man of some importance in their clan. Hamnet Thyssen watched him bringing the rest of the White Fox Bizogots around to whatever it was that he thought.

He rode out ahead of them. “Pass on!” he said. “If you come to our herds, you may kill enough to feed yourselves, but no more. If anyone challenges you, tell him I, Sunniulf, have given you leave.” He struck a pose, there on horseback, so they might see what a powerful fellow he was. Still holding himself straight and proud, he added, “As for the Rulers, we’ll deal with them.”

He waved the rest of the White Foxes forward. They trotted past the men fleeing the latest battle lost. “Shall we go with them and do what we can to help?” Count Hamnet asked.

“I wouldn’t help that arrogant son of a rotten mammoth chitterling up on his feet if all the Glacier fell on him,” Trasamund growled. “Did the White Foxes do anything to help us? Let them find out for themselves and see how they like it. The ones who live may have more sense after that.”

Hamnet didn’t like it, but he wasn’t in charge. Trasamund was if anyone was. After the disaster of the day before, Hamnet wasn’t sure anybody could give orders with confidence these Bizogots would follow them. But then, Bizogots generally obeyed orders only when they felt like it.

“We ride!” Trasamund shouted. They rode.

Ulric Skakki looked back a couple of times. “Trying to watch the White Foxes get what they probably will?” Hamnet asked.

“Well, yes.” Ulric sounded faintly embarrassed. “People always stare when a really nasty accident happens. You can’t help yourself.”

“Oh, spare me. You aren’t even trying,” Hamnet Thyssen said.

“Well, what if I’m not?” Ulric retorted. “I didn’t like that Sunniulf item any better than Trasamund did. What about you?”

“He could have done worse. He could have pitched into us instead of the Rulers.”

“As far as his clan is concerned, pitching into the Rulers will be worse. We likely won’t be able to take his name in vain much longer – he’ll be too dead to come back and defend his honor, such as it is.”

Count Hamnet wished he could tell the adventurer he was wrong. But he thought Ulric was right. “Sunniulf’s doing us a favor, though,” he said. “He’s keeping the pursuit off our backs.”

“Huzzah,” Ulric said sourly. “For one thing, he doesn’t know he’s doing us any favors. For another, he won’t keep doing them for very long. He’s not going to run into the Rulers. They’re going to run over him.”

Again, that marched too well with what Hamnet was thinking. He sighed. His breath didn’t burst forth in a puff of steam: proof indeed that spring had come to the frozen steppe. He wondered if he would hear the sounds of battle behind the ragged band of fleeing Bizogots, but the White Foxes and the Rulers clashed too far off to let him.

With another sigh, he said, “Well, we’d better get as far away as we can while the Rulers are busy, and we ought to cover our tracks, too.”

“Now you’re talking,” Ulric Skakki told him.

Concealing a trailin the north country was at the same time simple and next to impossible. Splashing through shallow rills and puddles and pools – and there were no deep ones, thanks to the permanently frozen ground – gave long stretches where travelers showed no hoofprints. On the other hand, the mud all around that standing water showed tracks only too well.

If there were more high ground on the northern plains, concealment would have been hopeless. Anyone on a hill, even a modest hill, could have seen for many miles. But the swells and dips in the landscape were smaller than that. They were just enough to keep the ground from being perfectly flat, enough so that, when riders were in dips, swells helped hide them from those who came after them.

But when riders came up onto swells . . . Looking south and east a few hours after Sunniulf’s White Foxes rode past to battle the Rulers, Hamnet Thyssen spotted war mammoths and riding deer silhouetted against the sky. Even though he swore, his heart wasn’t in it.

Trasamund’s was. “How the glory of the Bizogots is fallen!” he groaned. “These bandits thrash us as if we were naughty boys. How will we ever get away from them?”

Even he could no longer imagine beating the Rulers. Escaping suddenly seemed too much to hope for. Liv, by contrast, stuck to what was still possible. She pointed ahead. “There’s a herd of musk oxen. Let’s kill one and butcher it. We need the meat.”

Three or four White Fox Bizogots and their dogs accompanied the herd. They shouted angrily when they saw strangers on their grazing grounds, and even more angrily when they discovered one of the strangers was the jarl of the Three Tusk clan. But Trasamund, still downcast, used Sunniulf’s name without his own usual display of chest-thumping pride. And it worked . . . well enough, anyhow.

“Where is Sunniulf now?” one of the White Foxes asked. “Why isn’t he with you?”

“He led his men off to fight the Rulers,” Hamnet Thyssen answered when Trasamund hesitated.

“Ah.” The White Fox Bizogot nodded. “That will have taken care of those rogues, then.”

“Well.. . no,” Hamnet said. “Not long ago, we noticed the Rulers were still coming after us.”

That made all the White Foxes exclaim. “They couldn’t have beaten Sunniulf,” one of them said. “Nobody beats Sunniulf!” The others nodded.

Ulric Skakki jerked a thumb towards the southeast. “Maybe you should go tell that to the Rulers,” he said. “I don’t think they’ve got the news.”

“What do you mean?” The White Fox Bizogot lifted his fur cap and scratched his head. “What are you talking about?”

“If you wait around here much longer, you’ll find out,” Ulric said. “Can we have our musk ox?”

“You can have it. Sunniulf said so.” The Bizogot eyed him. “You’re a foreigner. Don’t see many foreigners around here.”

“You will.” Hamnet Thyssen, Ulric Skakki, and Trasamund all said the same thing at the same time. The White Fox scratched his head again.

They killed the musk ox downwind from the herd, then butchered it as fast as they could. The speed of the job meant they left some meat behind that they might have taken otherwise. Clucking, the herders started stripping that flesh from the dead beast’s bones. The Three Tusk Bizogots and Red Dire Wolves and Raumsdalians left them to it. The refugees rode off. The Rulers wouldn’t be far behind.

Liv pointed ahead, towards the Glacier, which loomed higher on the horizon than it had a couple of days before. “You can really see what the avalanche did,” she said.

“You can, by God,” Hamnet Thyssen agreed. It looked as if the collapse had started near the top of the ice sheet and extended all the way down. The jumble of freshly exposed ice boulders was whiter and brighter than the older ice to either side. The Glacier didn’t rise straight up from the edge of the Bizogot steppe there, either; the slope was gentler, more gradual. “We might really be able to climb that if we had to.”

“We might, yes. But why would anyone want to?” Liv said.

Instead of looking ahead, Ulric Skakki looked behind them. Count Hamnet imitated him. Yes, the Rulers’ riding deer and war mammoths had come up over the horizon again. “If our lovely friends keep herding us in this direction, they may give us some reasons to think about it,” Ulric said.

Liv bared her teeth, not at him but at the idea. “Is escape to the top of the Glacier – if we could get there – escape at all?”

“We’ve talked about that before,” Hamnet said. “It depends on whether anything – and anyone – lives up there.”

“If anybody does, getting up to the top may not be escape,” Ulric Skakki said.

That made Hamnet bare his teeth, because it held too much truth and because he hadn’t thought of it. “God grant we don’t have to worry about that,” he said.

Liv nodded. Even cynical Ulric Skakki didn’t say no. Trasamund was the one who grunted and scowled. “God has turned his back on the Bizogots,” he said gloomily. “He pays us no mind, not anymore.”

“Well, if you feel that way, why not ride back to the Rulers and throw yourself at them?” Ulric asked. “You might get two or three before they kill you.”

“That is not revenge enough,” the jarl answered. “Two or three? Pah! I want to kill them all. And if God won’t help me, I’ll cursed well take care of it on my own.”

To Count Hamnet, that was on the edge of blasphemy. He didn’t say so; he understood what drove Trasamund to feel the way he did. And Ulric Skakki slapped Trasamund on the back, saying, “There’s the first sensible thing you’ve come out with since I don’t know when. Why don’t you do it more often?”

Trasamund said something about Ulric’s female ancestors concerning which he could have had no personal knowledge. At another time, it might have started a fight to the death. Now Ulric only laughed and slapped him on the back again. Trasamund said something even more incendiary. Ulric laughed harder.

“If the weather stays so warm, will we see more avalanches like this?” Hamnet asked.

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Liv answered. “We’ll probably start getting a meltwater lake up here, too, like Sudertorp Lake down in the Leaping Lynx country.”

“Yes, that makes sense,” Audun Gilli said. The wizard looked towards the sun, which was going down in the northwest – not far above the avalanche, in fact. “It stays light a long time in these parts, doesn’t it?”

Now Count Hamnet laughed at him. “You were up here last summer, too. You just noticed that?”

Audun smiled ruefully. “It does seem to matter more when the extra daylight means you’re likelier to get killed.”

Hamnet Thyssen grunted. A glance back over his shoulder said the Rulers were still there. A glance ahead said the sun wasn’t going down fast enough to suit him, either. “We’ll need to set plenty of sentries tonight, in case the Rulers try to hit us in the dark.”

“Sounds like something they’d do,” Trasamund growled.

“I would, too, if I thought it would work,” Ulric Skakki said. “Wouldn’t you?”

Trasamund didn’t answer, from which Count Hamnet concluded that he would but didn’t want to admit it to Ulric. The Bizogots and Raumsdalians rode on. Eventually, the sun did set and twilight did fade. On the other side of the Glacier, it was getting towards the season of the year where twilight lingered from sundown to sunup.

Setting fires seemed too great a risk. Raw musk-ox meat wasn’t Ham-net’s idea of a feast, but it was ever so much better than empty. He wolfed down a good-sized gobbet. So did Ulric. Audun Gilli looked revolted, but he ate, too. The Bizogots took raw meat in stride. They ate anything and everything.

The Three Tusk jarl sent Hamnet out to watch as soon as he was done eating. The gleam in Trasamund’s eye, even in the dark, had to mean he was waiting for the Raumsdalian noble to kick up a fuss. Hamnet went without a word. Did Trasamund sigh behind him? He didn’t turn around to look.

He did hope Liv would come out and keep him company while he stood sentry, but she didn’t. He didn’t get angry at that – she had to be wearier than he was – but it disappointed him.

Stars wheeled through the sky in circles set at a different angle from the one he knew down in the Empire. More of them stayed above the horizon all night long than was true in Nidaros. Somewhere off in the distance, a fox yipped at the half-goldpiece moon. Hamnet wondered if the yip was a signal, but it came from due west, a direction from which the Rulers were unlikely to attack. Sometimes a fox was only a fox.

When dire wolves off in the south started howling, Hamnet worried more. But nothing came of that, either. Jumpy tonight, aren’t you? he asked himself with a wry chuckle. Haven’t I earned the right? His answer formed as fast as the question.

He’d begun to wonder whether Trasamund intended him to watch till dawn when a Bizogot came out to take his place. “Anything?” the big, burly blond asked.

“Foxes. Dire wolves,” Hamnet Thyssen answered. “I didn’t see any Rulers or hear any signs of them. I didn’t see any owls, either.”

“Owls?” The Bizogot sounded puzzled.

“Their shamans spy on wings,” Hamnet said. His replacement grunted. Count Hamnet stumbled back towards the encampment, splashing through little pools and rills he didn’t see till too late. He might not have found the resting Bizogots if not for the whickering of their horses and then a small, sudden flare of witchlight.

That led him over to Liv and Audun Gilli, who were sitting close together on the ground and talking in low voices. Liv’s Raumsdalian, by now, was fairly fluent. Audun had learned some of the Bizogots’ tongue, and eked it out when he ran short, as he did now and again. They both looked up when Hamnet drew near.

“Oh, it’s you,” Audun said. “Anything out there?”

“Stars. Half a moon.” Hamnet pointed up to the sky, then waved. “A fox. Dire wolves howling. No Rulers, God be praised – the dire wolves were only wolves. No wizards in the shape of owls, or none that flew close enough for me to see.” Audun had asked the question in Raumsdalian, and Hamnet answered in the same language. His birthspeech felt strange in his mouth; even with Ulric, he’d been using the Bizogot tongue more often than not.

“I didn’t sense any spies,” Liv said, and Audun Gilli nodded. Liv went on, “I don’t know why they’d need them; we’re hardly worth worrying about anyway.”

That held more truth than Hamnet wished it did. “What was the little flash I saw when I was coming into camp?”

“I was showing Liv a spell for piercing illusions,” Audun Gilli answered. “The flash is sorcerous energy dissipating – think of it as steam rising when you boil soup.”

“Steam won’t betray us to the Rulers.” But Hamnet Thyssen relented before either Audun or Liv could complain. “I don’t suppose that little flash would, either, not unless they were already right on top of us.” He yawned. “With any luck at all, I’m going to sleep for a week between now and sunrise.”

With any luck at all, Liv would lie down beside him when he rolled himself in his blanket. With any luck at all, the two of them would lie under the same blanket. He was tired, yes, but not too tired for that. But all she said was, “Sleep well. I do want to learn this charm. It’s better than the one we use.”

Hamnet couldn’t very well say he wasn’t so sleepy as all that. With a martyred sigh – not that he hadn’t done it to himself – he did go off and lie down. Liv and Audun Gilli went on talking quietly. She laughed once, just before Hamnet would have dropped off. The sweet, familiar sound brought him back to wakefulness.

He wondered if he ought to be jealous. Of Audun? he thought, and laughed, too – at himself. Yes, the wizard and Liv had sorcery in common, but if he wasn’t a weed of a man, such a man had never sprouted. Liv, Hamnet Thyssen was comfortably certain, had better taste than that. He twisted and turned and did fall asleep.

Trasamund had to shake him awake. “Are you dead, or what?” the jarl rumbled. “Thought I’d need to kick you.”

“One of us would have been dead after that,” Hamnet Thyssen said. “I don’t think it would be me.”

“After we’ve beaten the Rulers, I’ll fight you if you want,” Trasamund said. “Till then, we’ve got other things to worry about.”

“Why, whatever could you mean?” Count Hamnet asked. The Bizogot’s answering laugh was sour as vinegar. Hamnet rolled up his blanket and ate another chunk of raw musk-ox meat. Then he climbed onto his horse. He hoped the poor animal wouldn’t give out.

Somewhere not nearly far enough away, the Rulers would be climbing onto their riding deer. Before long, they’d be trotting out after the Bizogots. They seemed as stubborn in the hunt as a pack of dire wolves. They kept pressing the quarry till it had nowhere to go. Hamnet Thyssen looked ahead towards the Glacier and the remains of the avalanche. Before long, that would hold true for him and his comrades, too.

With a sad snort, the horse began to walk. It tried to turn its head and look back at him when he urged it up into a trot. It might have been saying, You can’t really mean that, can you? But he could. He did. The horse might fall over dead if it had to work too hard. It would die, and so would he, if the Rulers caught up to them.

By the nature of things, the horse couldn’t understand that. Count Hamnet couldn’t explain it to the animal. All he could do was command. The poor horse, not understanding, had to obey.

Hamnet Thyssen waited for the shout from the rearguard, the shout that said the Rulers were in sight. The skin, even the muscles, between his shoulder blades tensed, as if anticipating an arrow. As if? he wondered. What else was he waiting for from those implacable pursuers?

He looked around, trying to gauge what kind of fight the Bizogots could make if – when – the Rulers attacked in earnest. He didn’t like what he saw. A few men, Trasamund chief among them in spirit as well as rank, still had fight in them. Most of the Bizogots, though, were all too plainly beaten. They’d lost too many battles. They’d fled too much and too long. If – when – the Rulers hit them, they would break … or die.

“We’re a jolly crew, aren’t we?” As happened too often for comfort, Ulric Skakki divined what he was thinking.

“Oh, of course,” Count Hamnet said in a hollow voice. He pointed ahead, towards some of the ice boulders from the avalanche that had bounced and bounded farthest across the Bizogot steppe. “The dance is just past those big rocks, isn’t it?”

Ulric laughed as merrily as if they really were riding towards viols and a drum and plenty of beer and smiling, pretty girls. “It would be a better dance than the one we’ve been making, wouldn’t it?”

“Couldn’t be much worse.” Hamnet looked around again, this time for his pretty girl, even if she had nothing to smile about right now. Liv rode beside Audun Gilli, earnestly talking about something sorcerous. Audun’s hands shaped a pass. Liv tried to imitate it. He corrected her, with a little extra emphasis on the motion she’d missed. She tried again. He nodded.

Had Ulric Skakki not been riding beside him, Hamnet would have done some muttering. He misliked the tenor of his thoughts. Defeat ruined everything, even things that should have had nothing to do with it. But the last thing he wanted was for Ulric to know he had any worries like that. The adventurer might not say anything; he had to know Hamnet would ignite if he did. He would think whatever he didn’t say, though, and that would be bad enough.

Worse than bad enough.

“The Rulers!” There it was, the cry Count Hamnet had waited for. He hunched down in the saddle to make himself a smaller target. He didn’t realize he’d done it till he saw Ulric doing the same thing.

“How many arrows have you got left?” he asked Ulric.

“Some,” the adventurer answered, reaching over his shoulder to feel what was in his quiver. “How about you?”

“Some,” Hamnet Thyssen agreed. “They don’t grow on trees, you know.”

Again, Ulric Skakki produced a cheery laugh from nowhere in particular. “Even if they did, much good it would do us. What could we harvest here? Toothpicks, by God!” That made Count Hamnet smile, too. The birches and willows and other would-be trees that grew on the frozen steppe never got bigger than calf-high bushes.

Setting a hand on his sword, Hamnet said, “This doesn’t shrink.”

“It had better not,” Ulric said. “But can we get close enough to cut up the Rulers, or will they shoot us before we do?”

“We’ll find out,” Count Hamnet said, and not even his argumentative countryman could disagree with that.

More and more riding deer and war mammoths came up over the horizon.

Closer and closer they drew. Till now, they’d seemed content to chase the Bizogots. By the way they came on, they had more than that in mind today.

“Can you summon the voles and lemmings?” Hamnet Thyssen called to Liv. “We’ll have a better chance if they’ve got to fight without their mammoths.”

“We can try,” Liv answered – and then she turned to speak to Audun Gilli. Count Hamnet knew they were only planning their magic together. All the same, he frowned and looked away. That wasn’t what he wanted to see right now.

It turned out not to matter. Liv and Audun had barely started their spell when whatever wizards the Rulers had with them struck first. It wasn’t the spell they’d used before; bugs didn’t choke the Bizogots and torment their animals. Instead, hawks and falcons and owls dove out of the sky, slashing at horses and riders alike. Wounded horses screamed in pain and surprise. A Bizogot not far from Hamnet Thyssen shrieked and clapped his hands to his face. Blood poured out between his fingers. Had cruel talons robbed him of an eye? Hamnet couldn’t be sure, but feared the worst.

Were some of those wheeling, hurtling owls wizards in sorcerous disguise? He had no way to be sure, but he feared the worst there, too. Trasamund actually caught a hawk out of the air, wrung its neck, and flung the corpse to the ground. Hamnet marveled at the feat without imagining for a moment that he could imitate it.

Ulric Skakki slashed a falcon out of the sky. Hamnet thought he might do that, but had no time to dwell on the possibilities. The birds of prey flew off as abruptly as they’d appeared, leaving the Bizogots in disarray and confusion. Then, shouting their harsh war cries, the Rulers rode in for the kill.

Archers shooting from atop a war mammoth pincushioned the Bizogot with the bloodied face. An arrow hissed past Hamnet Thyssen’s head, so close that he felt the fletching brush his beard. He shot at one of the men up there. The warrior of the Rulers jeered as the arrow went wide. Then one from Ulric Skakki caught him in the forehead. He crumpled, a look of absurd surprise the last expression he would ever wear.

Hamnet cut at another warrior on a riding deer. The fighter turned his first stroke, but the second one got home. When the Rulers were wounded, they cried out like any lesser breed. The warrior tried to fight on, but Count Hamnet cut him down.

He looked around again. Some of the Bizogots were still fighting fiercely. Others, though, streamed away from the Rulers as fast as they could. Riding deer trotted after horses. Seeing riding deer get past him sent a chill through Hamnet, a chill more frigid than any winter on the frozen steppe could bring. Surrounded, cut off. ..

“We’ve got to get out of this!” he called to Ulric.

“Well, yes,” the adventurer said. His sword had blood on it. “But how? Do you want to cut and run?”

Yes! Count Hamnet thought. Then he saw Trasamund pull his horse’s head around and ride off towards the northwest. “We can’t stay anymore,” Hamnet said, and pointed after the jarl.

“By God!” Ulric Skakki exclaimed. “What is this world coming to?”

“An end, I think,” Hamnet answered grimly. “When the Gap melted through, when the Rulers invaded . .. Everything we knew before is gone. It’s all different now. Even if we win, even if we find the Golden Shrine, it will never be the same.”

“I didn’t expect a philosophy lesson – which doesn’t mean you’re wrong,” Ulric said. “I’d better go look for Arnora, and you’ll want to find Liv. We’ll make for where the avalanche came down. I’ll meet you there – or I hope I will.”

“Luck,” Count Hamnet said. Ulric Skakki nodded.

Do I need to look for Liv? Won’t Audun take care of that? Hamnet swore at himself. Yes, he was letting defeat poison everything in his life. Before he could even think of finding the Three Tusk clan’s shaman, he needed to fight off another warrior of the Rulers. He wanted to kill the curly-bearded fighting man, but had to content himself with driving him off with a bleeding forearm.

There was Audun Gilli. And, sure enough, not far away was Liv. She wasn’t working wizardry against the Rulers now. She had a bow in her hands, and used it with as much skill if perhaps without quite the same strength as a man might have.

Neither she nor Audun saw the warrior riding up from behind them. Hamnet Thyssen shouted to distract him, then plucked out a dagger and threw it at the enemy. It wasn’t a proper throwing knife; it didn’t pierce him. But the thump against his side made him slow up and look around, which gave Hamnet time to engage him. Metal belled on metal as their swords clashed together.

“You are that one!” the warrior of the Rulers said in the Bizogot language. “They want you bad!”

“Well, they can’t have me,” Hamnet answered. His foe made as if to shout, but Hamnet’s sword went home then. The warrior looked amazed. He slowly crumpled from his riding deer.

Hamnet forgot about him as soon as he stopped being a threat. He grabbed Liv by the arm. “We have to get away!” he yelled.

“We can’t!” she said.

“The demon we can’t. Trasamund’s already gone,” Hamnet answered.

Her eyes widened. Her head swung, as if on a swivel. When she didn’t see the jarl, her features sagged in weariness and dismay. “Truly everything is lost,” she said, her voice quiet and amazed and all but hopeless.

“Not while we’re still breathing. Come on, before the Rulers close the sack around us,” Hamnet said. A heartbeat slower than he might have, he added, “You, too, Audun.”

“Yes,” the wizard said. “Maybe we’ll win another chance later. We can hope, anyhow.” He didn’t hesitate in talking to Hamnet Thyssen. Perhaps that meant he was a good dissembler. In another man, Hamnet would have thought it did. But he’d spent too much time at close quarters with the wizard to find it easy to believe. If Audun thought something, he usually said it. Ulric Skakki could smile and charm and say one thing and mean another. Not Audun.

Thinking of Ulric reminded Hamnet what the adventurer had said. “Let’s ride for the avalanche,” Hamnet said. “We can use the ice boulders for cover.”

“For a while,” Liv said. “We’ll get hungry there. If the Rulers want to sit around and starve us out, they can. And where do we have to go?”

“Up to the top of the Glacier, by God,” Count Hamnet answered. “They won’t look for that, and we may get away. And it’s something maybe no one’s ever done in all the history of the world.” The idea had intrigued him ever since it first crossed his mind.

It didn’t seem to intrigue Liv. “No one’s ever come back from doing it – that’s sure enough.” But she didn’t say no, not straight out. And she did guide her horse towards the northwest. So did Audun. So did Hamnet Thyssen.

Some Bizogots were riding in that direction. Others tried to break out to the southwest. Hamnet supposed they wanted to join up with the White Foxes. If they could, they might stay safe … for a while. He feared climbing the Glacier gave a better long-term hope – and climbing the Glacier was pure desperation.

A few warriors on riding deer had already got between the Bizogots and the Glacier. Liv shot one of them out of the saddle. She had more arrows left than Hamnet. He relied on the sword, and slew a warrior himself. When one of the Rulers started to attack Audun Gilli, his deer seemed to go mad, bounding off across the steppe at random despite his curses and, soon, his fist.

“Nicely done,” Count Hamnet said, his tone as neutral as he could make it. “Would it work for more than one riding deer at a time?”

“I don’t think so.” Audun watched the animal’s antics with solemn fascination. “I was surprised it worked once.”

“So was he,” Hamnet said. Then they were past the Rulers. Hamnet spied Trasamund a couple of bowshots ahead and to the left. He waved and shouted. After a moment, the jarl waved back and steered his horse over towards them. Misery loves company, Hamnet thought.

“What now? Up the Glacier?” Plainly, Trasamund didn’t mean it.

He blinked when Hamnet Thyssen nodded. “Have you got a better idea?” Hamnet asked.

Trasamund spat. “I have no ideas left, and nothing else, either. If you say you want to take it out and piss your way through the Glacier, I’ll try to follow. Everything I’ve tried, everything I’ve done, has turned to dung in my hands.”

Count Hamnet shivered. It wasn’t altogether in response to Trasamund’s despair; here close by the Glacier, it was colder than it had been even a couple of miles farther south. This was where winter lived. The growing warmth might have weakened it, but it was a long way from dead.

They’d ridden past a house-sized chunk when Hamnet heard a shout from Ulric Skakki: “Over here!” Beside him, Arnora pressed a chunk of moss to a cut that split her cheek. She wouldn’t be pretty any more, but that was a worry for later, if there was a later. Now, Ulric said, “Well, here we are, in this jolly place. Where do we go next?”

Hamnet told him.