But his comrades already knew as much. What point to beating them over the head with it? If Gudrid’s word became law, Ulric was another man with a fine future behind him.
“Well . . .” Trasamund said, and then, “Maybe not.”
“I do believe that’s one of the smarter things you’ve ever come out with,” Ulric said. “I wouldn’t have thought you had it in you.”
Trasamund said something pungent. Ulric grinned and nodded, which spoiled it for the jarl—as Ulric no doubt intended.
“Hrmph,” Trasamund said. “All I want to tell you is, this Empire can’t be anything much if none of you bastards wants to take charge of it.”
Nobody argued with him there, either. That also seemed to disconcert him.
SNOW. SLEET. COLD rain. Snow again, more and more of it. Yes, the Breath of God was blowing. Hamnet Thyssen thought longingly of Raumsdalia’s far southwest, where thing like this didn’t happen. Of course, the far southwest had Manche raiders and poisonous serpents and scorpions, to say nothing of earthquakes that could flatten towns in the blink of an eye.
Count Hamnet thought of serpents again when Gudrid came up to him and said, “I need to talk with you.”
“So what?” He turned away. “I don’t need to talk with you.”
“Oh, yes, you do.” She sounded very sure of herself. But then, when didn’t she?
He didn’t care. “I don’t need to listen to you, either,” he said, and walked away.
She came after him. She set a hand on his arm to slow him down. Angrily, he shook her off; the last thing he wanted to feel was her touch. “You are going to hear me,” she said, expecting as usual to get her way.
“I should have left you for the Rulers,” he said harshly. “You could try telling them what to do, and see how they like it.”
“Don’t be more stupid than you can help,” Gudrid said with a shudder.
“I’ve already done that,” Hamnet answered. “You cured me of it—I hope.”
“Will you please listen to me?”
When was the last time she’d said please to him? He couldn’t remember. It had been years; he was sure of that. He shook his head anyhow. “If you’ve got anything that needs saying, you can tell it to Ulric or Trasamund. And you can leave me the demon alone.”
“Don’t you care about Raumsdalia?”
“Yes, and I know you don’t. All you care about is you—and sticking pins in me so you can watch me jerk and twist and bleed. Well, find somebody else, because I don’t want to play any more.”
“You fool! You could be Emperor!”
He stared at her. Then he laughed in her face, which made her stare at him. “Are you out of your mind? I don’t want the bloody job. I wouldn’t take it on a golden platter. I’ve been saying so to everyone who wanted to listen. I suppose that lets you out, but I mean every word of it.”
“You could be Emperor,” Gudrid repeated, as if he hadn’t spoken. “How can anybody not want to be Emperor?”
“Believe me, it’s easy,” Hamnet answered. “I don’t want to, I won’t, and nobody can make me. Not you, not Trasamund, not Ulric—nobody.”
“Not Marcovefa, either?” Gudrid’s voice was sly.
But Hamnet shook his head. “Not Marcovefa, either. She has the sense to believe me when I say something like that—unlike some people I could name.”
She ignored his sarcasm. He might have known she would. She always did. “Think what you could do if you were Emperor,” she said. “Everyone would have to do what you told him to do, or else he’d pay for it.”
The look he gave her made the Breath of God seem warm by comparison. “I could send you to the dungeon. I could take your head and nail it to the north gate to warn other people not to be like you.”
“Don’t be silly. You wouldn’t do that.” She might have been talking to a foolish little boy. Before he could tell her that he would, she went on, “If you really wanted me dead, you would have killed me yourself a long time ago. You had your chances. Nobody would have said anything much, not then.”
Hamnet Thyssen bit down on that like a man unexpectedly biting down on a cherrystone. Why hadn’t he killed her when he found out she was unfaithful, not just once but again and again? “I loved you, fool that I was,” he growled.
Now Gudrid laughed at him. “You just wanted somebody around who could make you feel bad. You made a mess of things with Liv the same way, and you’ll do the same thing with Marcovefa. You can’t be happy unless you’re unhappy.”
“What sort of nonsense is that?” Hamnet said. But, like what she’d come out with a moment earlier, it sounded much less nonsensical than he wished it did.
She laughed again, knowingly this time. “You can tell it isn’t nonsense. If you weren’t such a fool, you would have figured it out for yourself long since.”
Did she want him to hit her? Would she get perverse pleasure of her own from seeing what she could goad him into? He breathed out hard through his nose. “Say whatever you please. You will anyhow. But I can prove you’re wrong.”
“How?” Her chin lifted defiantly.
He took a certain sour pleasure in noting how the flesh under her jawbone had started to sag. She wasn’t—quite—immune to time. “Except for being married to you again, nothing would make me unhappier than being Emperor,” he said. “And I still don’t want to do it. So much for your fancy talk.”
“Think of all the women you could have, just with the wave of a hand,” Gudrid said.
“Screwing is one thing. Caring is another—not that you know anything about that,” Hamnet said.
“Not that you know anything about either one,” Gudrid retorted.
Hamnet didn’t hit her then, either, though his hands balled into fists. He turned and walked away once more. When she started to come after him again, he walked faster. Pretty soon, he left her behind. He stood out in the middle of a trampled field, wondering how much good that did him.
INSIDE THE EMPIRE, warfare slowed down during the winter. Food and fodder were hard to come by. That didn’t always stop the Bizogots, who could get by with less than Raumsdalians could. And it didn’t stop the Rulers, either. The country they sprang from was no richer than the Bizogot steppe.
They kept striking at Count Hamnet’s band, sometimes with warriors, sometimes with wizards, sometimes with both. They didn’t try to wipe out all the Bizogots and Raumsdalians in arms against them—they’d learned the hard way that that didn’t work, not when Marcovefa was involved. But their nuisance raids went on.
He posted a couple of Bizogots out in a temptingly open position, and put himself and Marcovefa and half a troop of Raumsdalian archers and lancers in a forest not far away. Marcovefa cast a light masking spell to try to make sure the Rulers wouldn’t notice the ambush.
“What if their shaman spots the spell?” Hamnet asked her.
“I don’t think he can. But if he does, those Bizogots out there”—she pointed toward the exposed men—“are lucky, because the Rulers go and bother us somewhere else.”
He didn’t want the invaders to do that, but held his peace. If Marcovefa didn’t think an enemy sorcerer could detect her magic, she was likely right. If she turned out to be wrong, Hamnet would try something else, that was all.
He’d guessed right or baited his trap the right way. Inside of a couple of hours, a dozen or so Rulers came out of the bare-branched woods to the south. The Bizogots out in the open played dumb a little longer than they would have if they were nothing but ordinary pickets, but only a little. They weren’t out there to throw their lives away, but to get the Rulers to do that instead.
When they couldn’t ignore the men bearing down on them any more, they turned their horses and trotted off in Hamnet’s direction. One of the Rulers pointed at them. The horses slowed, then stopped.