“What will it take before they do?” Hamnet asked. “War mammoths trampling the lot of them?”

“Maybe.” Ulric Skakki didn’t sound as worried or as wearied as most of the men around him. “That would bring the Rulers down to the Empire’s northern border – and Sigvat II hasn’t realized this is no game, either.”

“Marvelous,” Hamnet Thyssen said. “By your logic, almost everyone ought to be almost ready to fight just when it’s too late to do any good.”

“Yes, that sounds about right,” Ulric agreed. “Or don’t you think so?”

The trouble was, Hamnet did think so, even if he didn’t want to. “We have to find some way to beat them. If we don’t, we’re ruined.”

“No one has to do anything. Haven’t you noticed that yet?” Ulric Skakki said. “It would be nice if we did, but there’s no guarantee.” He gestured at the misery all around. “You can see for yourself there isn’t.”

Hamnet Thyssen winced. “You know what I mean.”

“So what?” Ulric said. “Where’s the connection between what you mean and what is? If you can’t find one, what does what you mean have to do with the price of peas? We’re in trouble. Wishing we weren’t won’t get us anywhere. Am I right or wrong?”

“Oh, you’re right, sure enough,” Hamnet said. “Do you suppose wishing you’d shut up anyway would get me anywhere?” Ulric Skakki laughed, for all the world as if he were joking. Any sort of cheery sound made most of the people who heard it stare at him, plainly wondering if he’d lost his wits.

Totila came up to Count Hamnet and Ulric. “Is it true that you Raumsdalians know more about curing wounds than we do?”

To Hamnet’s way of thinking, it was hard to know less about curing wounds than the Bizogots did. All the same, his nod and Ulric’s were both cautious. Battlefield surgery was a risky business for anybody. “What do you want us to try to do?” Hamnet asked.

“Come see the wound. Judge for yourself,” the Red Dire Wolves’ jarl answered.

A Bizogot warrior writhed and groaned. He had an arrow embedded in his calf. When Hamnet made as if to touch it, the big, burly man said, “Don’t. The point is barbed. You can’t pull it out.”

“Push it through?” Hamnet wondered aloud. The Bizogot groaned again. Count Hamnet understood why. That would add fresh torment and make the wound worse. But they couldn’t leave the arrow where it was, either.

“You see?” the jarl said.

“I see,” Hamnet said glumly. “I see, but I don’t know what I can do. How about you, Ulric?”

Ulric Skakki took from a belt pouch a bronze contraption with a long, flat handle and a curved tip with a small hole in the center. “What’s that?” Totila asked.

“Arrow-drawing spoon,” the adventurer answered. “I slide it down the shaft, get hold of the point with the hole, and pull up. It lets me bring out the point, but keeps the barbs from doing too much more tearing when they leave the wound.”

“Try it,” the injured Bizogot said. “That God-cursed thing has to come out.”

Hamnet Thyssen and Totila held his leg to make sure he couldn’t twist away. “Have you ever used this thing before?” Hamnet asked in Raumsdalian.

“I’ve seen it done,” Ulric answered in the imperial tongue. That wasn’t the same thing. He switched back to the Bizogot language to speak to the wounded man: “I’m going to start. Do your best to hold still.”

“I’ll try.” The mammoth-herder braced himself.

Despite that, he gasped and tried to jerk free when Ulric Skakki pushed the arrow-drawing spoon into the wound. The injured warrior groaned and cursed, none of which did him any good. He gasped again when Ulric tried to slide the very tip of the arrowhead into the hole in the spoon. “I’m sorry,” Ulric said. “Remember, I’m doing this by feel. I’m not hurting you on purpose.”

“I know,” the Bizogot got out. “But that doesn’t mean you’re not hurting me.”

“I’m close, curse it. It should be right about – ” Ulric moved the spoon a little. The Bizogot groaned on a different note. “There!” Ulric exclaimed. “I’ve got it. I can feel it.”

“So can I, by God!” the wounded man said.

“I’m going to bring it out now,” Ulric told him. “I’ll go slow, as slow as I can. Try to hold still. It will help. Are you ready?”

“No,” the Bizogot said honestly. “But go ahead. Waiting won’t make it any better.”

“Hold him tight,” Ulric warned Hamnet and Totila. “He won’t like this, but I’ve got to do it. Here we go.”

The wounded Bizogot bit down hard to keep from screaming. He spat red into the slushy snow, so he was chewing on his lips or tongue. His bunched fists pounded the snow again and again. Hamnet had taken battle wounds. He knew what the younger man was going through. The less he thought about that, the better.

“It’s out!” Ulric said. Not much flesh clung to the barbs on the point; the drawing spoon really had shielded the wound from most of the damage it would have taken otherwise.

“Thank you,” the wounded Bizogot said. “Easier to bear now that that cursed thing isn’t sticking into me anymore.”

“That’s what she said,” Ulric answered, which made the wounded man laugh.

“Let me see that spoon,” Totila said. “Could we make it from bone or horn?”

“I don’t see why not. Here, keep this one if you want to.” Ulric cleaned it in snow and slush before handing it to the Bizogot. Totila studied it and nodded thoughtfully.

Count Hamnet, meanwhile, bandaged the wounded man’s leg. Down in the Empire, bandages would have been made of linen. Here, the Bizogots used musk-ox wool and dried moss to close wounds and soak up blood. If anything, those worked better than their Raumsdalian equivalents.

“I thank you,” the wounded man said. “Do you think it will heal clean?”

“That’s in God’s hands, not mine,” Hamnet answered. “But I don’t see any reason why it shouldn’t.”

“Those strangers really do fight from mammothback,” the Bizogot said in wondering tones. “Who would have believed it?”

“We’ve been telling you about it all winter,” Hamnet Thyssen pointed out with more than a touch of asperity.

“And so?” The wounded nomad seemed glad to have something to talk about besides the darkening bandage on his leg. “I can tell you about a sky-blue mammoth with pink horns that honks like a goose, but will you expect to see one if I do?”

“It depends,” Count Hamnet said judiciously. “If I know you’re a reliable man, I might. Why would we lie to you? By God, why would what’s left of the Three Tusk clan lie to you? They fought the Rulers. They saw them using war mammoths.”

To his surprise, the man from the Red Dire Wolves had an answer for him: “We all thought you were making them out to be worse than they really are so we’d join you and do what you wanted. We thought it was nothing but a trick to scare us, to make us fall in line behind you. We’re Bizogots. We’re free men. We didn’t aim to do that.”

“And so you had to get crushed before you decided we might know what we were talking about after all?” That sounded like something a Bizogot would do. Hamnet Thyssen counted himself to be lucky in a country where the closest walls – those of the stone houses the Leaping Lynx clan’s summer homes by Sudertorp Lake – were many miles away. Otherwise, he would have been sorely tempted to pound his head against one.

The wounded man nodded. “Sure. Except we didn’t expect to get crushed. We thought we’d do the crushing.”

After rubbing snow on his hands to get the blood off them, Hamnet Thyssen walked away. He put on his mittens to warm himself up again. Ulric Skakki came after him. “This is what we came north for?” Ulric said.

“This is what we came north for,” Hamnet answered stolidly. “The Bizogots are fools, but at least they’re fighting fools. Down in Nidaros, Sigvat II is a blind fool. If you ask me, that’s worse.”

“Well, maybe,” Ulric Skakki said. “But where are we going to find some people who aren’t fools? That’s what we really need.”