“Baby magic,” Marcovefa said scornfully. “A pika could do this.”
“You can break the spell, then?” Hamnet asked.
“Oh, yes. But not yet. No point yet,” Marcovefa said. “Let them get closer.”
Up came the Rulers on their riding deer. They soon could have shot the Bizogots out of the saddle, but they didn’t. Chances were they wanted to have fun with them. Because of their own horror of being captured, they often amused themselves by tormenting prisoners.
The Bizogots should have dismounted and run when their horses faltered. They just sat there instead. The spell must have seized them, too. It didn’t seem like baby magic to Hamnet Thyssen, but Marcovefa had different standards.
Her face wore a foxy look of intense concentration. Hamnet peered out toward the Rulers. They were in easy archery range, close enough for him to see their grins. One of them nodded toward the two Bizogots. They all laughed. The laughs sounded nasty to Hamnet. Maybe that was his imagination. Maybe not, too.
They seemed to have no idea his troop was anywhere nearby. Marcovefa’s masking spell was working, anyhow.
When things happened, they happened all at once. One instant, the Rulers’ wizard was laughing and joking with his friends. The next, his riding deer’s antlers caught fire. Hamnet heard his startled squawk and the animal’s screech of pain.
At the same time, the magic holding the Bizogots and their horses dissolved. They galloped for the cover of the woods.
“Loose!” Hamnet called. His men’s bowstrings thrummed. Several ordinary Rulers tumbled off their riding deer. The ones who didn’t fall turned and raced south as fast as their mounts would go. “Charge!” Hamnet bellowed at the top of his lungs.
Horses were faster than riding deer—not much, but enough. None of the Rulers made it into the trees from which they’d emerged. Some went down fighting. Others, seeing themselves about to be captured, cut their own throats or plunged daggers into their chests.
Their wizard had somehow suppressed the flames that sprang from his riding deer’s antlers. Like a short-faced bear at bay, he turned to face Marcovefa and the Raumsdalians with her. He yammered something in his unintelligible language.
Marcovefa only laughed. That seemed to infuriate him more than anything else she might have done. Instead of aiming a spell at her, he drew his sword and charged. The riding deer obeyed him as if it were unhurt. That impressed Hamnet more than he wanted to admit.
It did the wizard no good at all. Bows twanged. His magic turned a few arrows, but it couldn’t turn them all—not when Marcovefa worked against him, it couldn’t. He and the riding deer went down together. Their blood steamed in the snow.
“Too bad, in a way,” Hamnet said. “We might have got some interesting answers if we’d been able to question him.”
“He’s dead. That is interesting enough,” Marcovefa said. “They are all dead. Let the Rulers worry about them. Let the Rulers try to guess what happened to them. Yes, let the Rulers worry.”
Count Hamnet might have liked it better had one enemy warrior got away to tell his friends exactly what had happened. Then, he could hope, they would stop trying to pick off sentries. But leaving them in the dark about their fellows’ fate wasn’t the worst thing in the world, either.
“Look!” A lancer pointed up into the sky. “The ravens are already circling, waiting for us to leave.”
“And the vultures,” Hamnet said, and then he spotted a truly enormous bird high in the air. “And a teratorn.”
“Cursed scavengers,” the trooper said. “Don’t want them gnawing my bones when I’m gone.”
“What difference does it make then?” Marcovefa asked. “Better that the scavengers eat you than that the enemy does.” The lancer stared at her, no doubt thinking she was joking. She smiled back, knowing she wasn’t.
XV
EVEN WELL SOUTH of Nidaros, the Breath of God pressed hard. Hamnet Thyssen had expected nothing else. The Glacier might fall back. One day, it might vanish altogether. But it still ruled the weather through most of Raumsdalia.
Life went on. So did the war against the Rulers. Raumsdalians and Bizogots knew how to handle themselves in blizzards. The invaders from beyond the Gap did, too. Bands of curly-bearded men on riding deer appeared out of the swirling snow. When they met Marcovefa, they soon regretted it. When they didn’t, their warriors were a fair match for Hamnet’s men and their wizards had more strength than Liv and Audun and the handful of other sorcerers who’d joined them.
Hamnet found his army getting forced north no matter what he did. He—and, more to the point, Marcovefa—could only be in one place at one time. If the Rulers struck in two or three places at once, they were bound to break through somewhere. They were bound to, and they did.
He hated going north. Not only did it mean the Rulers had retaken the initiative, it also made the weather worse. Every mile seemed to mean more snow, thicker clouds, and worse cold. And every mile farther north also seemed to mean worse foraging. He got tired of listening to his belly growl.
“Everything will turn out all right. This is still rich country,” Marcovefa said.
“To you, maybe,” Count Hamnet said irritably—yes, he was hungry, all right. “You’re happy if you can charm mice out from under the snow.”
“Why not? Meat is meat,” Marcovefa said. She’d done that more than once. She ate mouse stew and toasted mouse with every sign of enjoyment. She’d eaten voles and pikas up on top of the Glacier, and mice and rabbits weren’t much different. Raumsdalians and Bizogots caught rabbits, but they drew the line at mice. If they got too much hungrier, though, they might have to undraw it. Marcovefa went on, “Up on the Glacier, not so much snow to hide under. Animals here have it easy. People here have it easy, too.”
“Yes, yes.” Hamnet had heard that, too, often enough to get tired of it. “But what seems easy for you doesn’t always seem easy to us. You don’t seem to have figured that out yet.”
“As long as everything will be all right, what difference does it make?” Marcovefa said.
“As long as!” Hamnet drummed his fingers on his thigh. “Things don’t look all right to me, by God.”
“You don’t see far enough,” said the shaman from atop the Glacier.
“Well, how am I supposed to?” Hamnet Thyssen waved a mittened hand through the blowing snow. “I’m lucky if I can see the nose in front of my face.” As a matter of fact, he couldn’t see it right now. A woolen scarf helped—some—to keep it from freezing.
Marcovefa (who also covered her nose and mouth) laughed at him. “That is not what I meant. I am talking about time.”
“If I’m going to live happily ever after, God’s hidden it from me mighty well,” Hamnet agreed.
She looked at him. All he could see were her eyes, and eyes by themselves showed surprisingly little expression. Even so, he guessed he’d disappointed her. Sure enough, she said, “No one lives happily ever after. Living hurts. Dying hurts. If you are lucky enough to find someone to love, you die or the other person dies, and that hurts, too. That hurts maybe worse than anything.”
“Or you stop loving each other,” Hamnet said harshly.
“Yes. Or that,” Marcovefa agreed. “So why talk nonsense about happily ever after?”
“You always do know how to cheer me up,” Hamnet told her. “I think I’ll go fall on my sword now.”
If he was looking for sympathy—and he was—he didn’t get much. Marcovefa shook her head. “Not yet,” she said. “You still have too many things to do first. Later, if you want to, but not yet.”
“No, eh?” Nothing made Hamnet more intent on doing something than being told he couldn’t. “Who the demon would stop me? Who the demon would care?”
I would! That was what he wanted to hear. Marcovefa only shrugged and said, “Go ahead and try. You see then.”