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.