Shouting out his orders, urging his men forward on the flanks, and doing what he could to keep the mammoths from smashing through in the center, Count Hamnet began to sense a certain agitation among the Rulers, even if their courage did not falter. They were used to prevailing by strength of sorcery as well as strength of arms. Whatever they were used to, though, they weren’t having their magical way today.
Off behind the enemy line to the right, Hamnet watched one of the Rulers who carried himself with even more arrogance than was usual for that arrogant breed screaming at four or five other men. They had to be wizards, even if they didn’t deck themselves out in fringes like Bizogot shamans or in the fancy gowns Raumsdalian sorcerers sometimes wore. And, at the moment, they were mightily unhappy wizards, too.
One of them pointed towards the Raumsdalian line – pointed in Marcovefa’s general direction, in fact. Hamnet Thyssen couldn’t hear what he said and didn’t speak his language anyhow. That didn’t mean Hamnet didn’t understand – oh, no. They’ve got a wizard who’s holding us up. That’s what the trouble is.
The enemy officer didn’t buy a word of it. He did some more screaming. He did everything but jump up and down in the trampled snow. When screaming didn’t satisfy him, he slugged the wizard who’d dared tell him the truth. He kicked him when he was down, too, then stepped away in magnificent contempt.
Hamnet watched the wizard slowly and painfully rise. He wasn’t so sure he would have wanted to be that officer. High-ranking men who made their subordinates hate them suffered a startling number of unfortunate accidents. That was true among Raumsdalians and Bizogots, anyway. If the Rulers partook of ordinary human nature, it was probably so for them, too.
He glanced over to Marcovefa, who seemed to be enjoying herself in the thick of the fighting. “Maybe you should get back,” he told her. “They know what you’re doing. They’ll try to get you.”
“Let them try,” she said gaily.
Hamnet Thyssen would have argued with her more, but Endil grabbed him by the arm and pointed to the closest mammoth. “Come on, Thyssen!” the other count yelled. “If we swing in behind that bugger, we can hamstring it.”
“Do you think so?” Hamnet said, but he was already booting his horse forward alongside Endil Gris’.
He slashed at the mammoth’s hairy column of a leg. So did Endil. The mammoth didn’t crumple, as he’d seen one of the great beasts do. But it did scream in pain and lumber away from its tormentors. The warriors of the Rulers on top of the mammoth shouted in their guttural, incomprehensible tongue. They tried to get it to return to its duty. A mammoth was not like a man, though. It understood nothing of such notions. All it wanted to do was get away from what pained it.
“Not bad,” Endil Gris said, and then, “Why do these curly-bearded maniacs ride deer instead of horses?”
“I don’t think there are any horses beyond the Glacier,” Count Hamnet answered. “I don’t remember seeing any, anyhow. I suppose they tamed the best beasts they could find, that’s all.”
“You may be right. You sound like you make sense, anyhow,” Endil said. “They aren’t as good as horses, though. We can whip these bastards. How did they beat us before? We must have messed up.”
“Magic,” Hamnet Thyssen said. “They have better wizards than we do – or they did, till Marcovefa.”
He looked around to make sure she was all right. She’d never seen a horse till she came down from the Glacier, either. She’d never seen any beast larger than a fox. She made a pretty good rider, though. And she had no trouble staying away from the Rulers – and, much more to the point, fending off the spells their wizards threw at her.
As long as Hamnet saw her well and unhampered, he could go back to the business of fighting the enemy without a worry. If he fell, Endil Gris or Runolf Skallagrim would take over and make about as good a general as he did. He was valuable to the Raumsdalian cause. Marcovefa was indispensable. He understood the difference. He hoped she did, too.
Not far away, Audun Gilli traded swordstrokes with a warrior of the Rulers on a riding deer. No one would even think Audun was a first-rate horseman or a first-rate swordsman. He was keeping the enemy fighting man from killing him, but that was about all. Hamnet Thyssen rode towards them. The warrior of the Rulers steered his deer away, not wanting to fight two at once.
Audun Gilli gave Hamnet a wry grin. “I didn’t think you cared, Your Grace,” the wizard said.
Count Hamnet couldn’t even say he would be sorry to see Audun dead, because he could imagine plenty of ways he wouldn’t. He could say, “I don’t want anyone from the Rulers to do you in,” without telling any lies, so he did.
“You’d rather do it yourself, if it gets done,” Audun suggested.
“As a matter of fact, yes,” Hamnet Thyssen answered. The wizard bit down on his lower lip. If he’d thought he would get some soothing hypocrisy, he need to think again.
Another slingstone buzzed past Hamnet. He pointed towards the dismounted men behind the enemy line. “Can you do anything about them?” he asked. “They’re hurting us.”
“I can try.” Audun’s quick spell was only a small one. It did no more than whip up snow into the slingers’ faces. But that put them off – for a while, anyhow. He sent Hamnet a real smile this time – maybe the first one he’d given him since taking Liv away. “It’s nothing big, and it works mostly because the strong wizards are all busy doing other things.”
“It does what it needs to do, and no one’s complaining – except those God-cursed slingers,” Hamnet said. “If you stay up at the front of the battle line, try not to get yourself killed right away, all right?”
“I’ll do my best,” Audun answered. “Are you sure you mean it?”
“Right away, I told you,” Count Hamnet said. “Liv wouldn’t come back to me even if you did, so you may as well live – for now. We need you – for now.”
“Would you want her back, since you’ve got Marcovefa?” the wizard asked.
That question probably deserved more serious consideration than it would get on the battlefield. “I don’t know if I want her back so much,” Hamnet Thyssen said. “I want not to have lost her in the first place, if you know what I mean. D’you see the difference?”
“I may. Yes, I think so,” Audun Gilli replied. “I wasn’t trying to steal her from you, you know. If she didn’t want to go, she wouldn’t have looked at me – not that way, anyhow.”
Count Hamnet believed him. But what was meant to be reassuring proved more dismaying than otherwise. Gudrid had been ready to go, and she went. Liv had been ready to go, and she went, too. Why can’t I keep a woman? What will make Marcovefa decide it’s time for her to leave?
Those questions wouldn’t get answered on a battlefield, either. The lull that had given him a minute or two to talk with the wizard ended. More warriors of the Rulers swarmed towards him on their riding deer. The mounts weren’t everything they might have been, but the men on them were as fierce as short-faced bears. Hamnet had to fight for his life again, slashing with his sword, keeping his shield between his vitals and the enemy’s weapons, and once smashing it into the face of a soldier he couldn’t stop any other way. He picked up a cut over his eye that stung like vitriol and half blinded him as it bled. His sole consolation was that it could have been worse – it could have split his skull, and it almost had.
A slingstone thudded off his shield. He felt it all the way up his arm to his shoulder. Audun was fighting hard, too – fighting too hard to keep on harassing the slingers. Count Hamnet swore under his breath. Not keeping that spell on would get Raumsdalians hurt, but he didn’t know what he could do about it. Audun Gilli was, he grudgingly supposed, allowed to keep himself alive if he could.