“Give up!” Count Hamnet shouted—one of the fragments of the Rulers’ language he’d acquired. He added another one: “We no kill captives!” To the Rulers, any kind of yielding looked like shameful weakness. Many of them preferred death to surrender. Many—but not all. The fights across the frozen plain and inside the Empire had taught Hamnet as much. He might despise and distrust the invaders, but he’d found that some of them were ordinary enough to go on breathing if they saw the chance.

All Hamnet got this time was more wiggling among the leaves. He and Ulric Skakki looked at each other. They didn’t bother nodding, but both shot at about the same time again. Another involuntary grunt of pain told of a wound—or of someone desperate who was cunningly bluffing.

But Hamnet didn’t think so. He slid down from his horse and drew his sword. “Let’s find out what the”—he added an obscenity—“knows.”

Ulric also dismounted. “Let’s make sure one of those things isn’t that you’re a real idiot.”

Count Hamnet gave the adventurer a mocking bow. “I never need to worry about the different nasty things that might happen to me, not when you’re around. You come up with more of them than I ever could.”

“Always at your service, Your Grace.” Ulric sounded more like a trusted retainer than a comrade-in-arms.

They plunged into the low thicket together. They both made plenty of noise, hoping to panic their quarry into moving and showing them where to go. And it worked. The leaves not far from where they’d shot the Ruler started thrashing. The Raumsdalians hurried that way.

“Embarrassing if four or five of the buggers are hiding under there,” Ulric remarked.

“Embarrassing is hardly the word,” Hamnet Thyssen said. Ulric laughed, for all the world as if they were trading quips at an elegant salon—say, Earl Eyvind Torfinn’s—down in Nidaros, goblets of wine in their hands instead of sword hilts.

But only one Ruler hid in the birch bushes. When Hamnet and and Ulric split up to attack from two directions at once, the invader from beyond the Gap called out, “Don’t kill me! I yield!” in the Bizogot language.

“Good God!” Count Hamnet burst out. Ulric Skakki didn’t say anything, but he looked as astonished as Hamnet felt. That harsh, guttural accent was familiar, but not in a woman’s contralto.

“I bleed,” she said. “You said you would spare me. Will you help me, and not—?” She broke off. Not rape me and then cut my throat or knock me over the head was what she had to mean.

Bleed she did. She had an arrow through her right hand and another in her left calf. Raping a wounded woman wasn’t Hamnet Thyssen’s idea of sport. He wondered whether it was Ulric’s. If it was, the adventurer gave no sign of it. “I will draw the arrow in your leg,” he said, and drew out a spoonlike device. He’d left one of those with a Bizogot shaman, but must have got another down in the Empire. As he got to work, he added, “By the way, what’s your name?”

“Tahpenes,” she said through clenched teeth.

IV

WELL, WELL. ISN’T this intriguing?” Ulric Skakki said as he extracted the arrow from Tahpenes’ leg. She kept her teeth clenched and didn’t let out a peep all through the unpleasant process. Hamnet had seen that the Rulers’ warriors were made of stern stuff. The same appeared to hold for their women.

“Intriguing? Not the word I’d use,” he said, using Raumsdalian like Ulric. They wanted Tahpenes worried, or he supposed they did; not being able to understand them would push her down that road.

He eyed her with more than a little curiosity of his own. She was the first woman of the Rulers he’d seen close up. Liv had spoken slightingly of their looks. They weren’t tall and blond. They weren’t even tall or blond. Tahpenes had hair so black it was almost blue, dark brown eyes, and a formidable blade of a nose. She also had broad shoulders and formidable arms. If she weren’t multiply wounded, she might have been dangerous.

She might be dangerous anyhow.

Ulric bandaged her with matter-of-fact competence. “What will you do to me? Uh, with me?” she asked in the Bizogots’ tongue.

“Whatever we want,” Ulric said before Count Hamnet could answer. Had the adventurer done some raping and knocking over the head in his time? Hamnet Thyssen wouldn’t have been surprised. He didn’t want to ask, even in Raumsdalian.

“Right now,” he said, “we’ll take you back for questioning.”

Tahpenes winced. Count Hamnet had no trouble figuring out why. When the Rulers questioned people, they put them to the question. By all accounts, they were good at that kind of thing, and they seemed to enjoy it, too.

“We don’t intend to torture you right now,” Hamnet said, trying to reassure the new captive.

“Not unless you show us we need to, anyhow,” Ulric Skakki added, trying to do anything but. Hamnet sent him an aggrieved look. If that bothered Ulric, he concealed it very well. In Raumsdalian, he said, “We may have to do some nasty things to her. You never can tell. And even if we don’t, she’d better think we’re ready to. Otherwise, she’ll just decide we’re soft.”

“Mmh,” Hamnet Thyssen said unhappily. He didn’t like the idea of torturing women. He didn’t like the idea of torturing men, either, which didn’t mean he’d never done it. And Ulric had a point. The Rulers were much too likely to judge the Bizogots and Raumsdalians as soft. Keeping Tahpenes healthily on edge wasn’t the worst idea in the world.

“Can you stand?” Ulric asked her, returning to the Bizogots’ tongue.

“I think so,” she said, and showed she could.

“Wait,” Hamnet said as Ulric started to lead her back toward the horses. The adventurer raised a gingery eyebrow. “Search her,” Count Hamnet told him. “Otherwise, you’re liable to sprout steel in some uncomfortable spot.”

“My, my. And here I took you for a dewy-souled innocent,” Ulric Skakki said. Hamnet answered that with the rude noise it deserved. Ulric laughed, then shook his head. “The worst of it is, you’re right. I may not find everything even with a good frisking, but I sure won’t if I don’t check her at all.” Ulric gave Tahpenes a bow of sorts. “This isn’t personal, you understand. Just something I’d better do to keep you from sticking me while I’m not looking.”

She didn’t say anything. If Ulric hadn’t told her the search wasn’t personal, it wouldn’t have been hard for her to think it was. He patted her through her clothes and then reached under them. Chances were she would have slapped his face if she didn’t figure that was a fast way to get herself killed.

He came up with several small, slim holdout blades, too. “Think I missed anything, Thyssen?” he asked when he thought he was done.

“Her hair,” Hamnet said at once. After a moment, he added, “And women have a hiding place men don’t.”

“So they do,” Ulric said, and then, “You have anything shoved up your twat, Tahpenes?”

“No,” she said.

“If you do, I’ll kill you,” Ulric told her. “But the Bizogot women can find out about that when we get back to our camp. As for your hair . . .” He didn’t ask her about that. He patted and prodded at it, and was rewarded with a couple of long, stout pins. “Wouldn’t want one of these poking out of me.”

“Neither would I.” Hamnet nodded to Tahpenes. “Have any more? Give them up now and no blame to you. If you say no and we find them . . . well, you won’t like that, I promise.”

“One more, is all.” The woman pulled it out and gave it to Ulric Skakki. He accepted it with a sour smile; he liked missing things he should have found no more than anyone else would have.