The Breath of God (14 page)

Spring days had stretched in a hurry. That let the Rulers push the pursuit longer and harder than they could have at a different season or, say, down in the Empire. After what seemed a very long time, night finally fell.

“We must be back up in the lands of the Three Tusk clan,” Liv said when the Bizogots—and Hamnet, and Ulric, and Audun Gilli—finally stopped to rest. She sounded ready to fall over from exhaustion, or possibly from despair.

“What are they going to do—chase us till they smash us against the Glacier?” Maybe Ulric meant it for a sour joke. But it sounded much too likely to Hamnet Thyssen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

T
HE SUN CAME
up too early. Count Hamnet munched smoked mammoth meat. He scooped up water with his hands from one of the countless ponds, and hoped it wouldn't give him a flux of the bowels.

And then one of the rearguard shouted that the Rulers were coming. Swearing wearily, Hamnet climbed up onto his horse. The animal's sigh sounded all too human, all too martyred. It was weary, too. Hamnet didn't care. If he didn't ride, the Rulers would kill him. If he did, he might get away to fight again later on.

“What did we do to deserve this?” Trasamund groaned as they headed north and west again. “Why does God hate us?”

“It hasn't got anything to do with God,” Ulric Skakki said. “The weather's warmer, so the Gap melted through. That's all there is to it.”

“All, eh?” Trasamund said. “And who made the weather warmer? Was it you? I don't think so. Did God have a little something to do with it? Well, maybe.”

Ulric grunted. The jarl's sarcasm pierced like an arrow. And the weather
was
warmer, without a doubt. This would have been a warm day down in Nidaros, let alone here on the frozen steppe. Count Hamnet wondered whether the steppe would stay frozen if weather like this persisted. What kind of country would this be if it ever thawed out all the way?

Up ahead, growing taller every hour, loomed the Glacier. Imagining it gone from the world seemed lunatic. Only a few years earlier, though, imagining it split in two would have seemed just as mad. Whether God had anything to do with it or not, the Glacier was in retreat.

“Does this land belong to the Three Tusk clan?” Hamnet asked. “Or have we come so far west, we're in the country of—what's the next clan over?”

“They are the White Foxes,” Trasamund answered. “They are a pack of thieves and robbers, not to be trusted even for a minute.”

To Raumsdalians, all Bizogots were thieves. The harsh land in which they lived made them eager to grab whatever they could, and not worry about silly foreign notions like ownership. If Trasamund thought the White Foxes were thieves even by Bizogot standards, that made them larcenous indeed . . . unless it just said the Three Tusk clan looked down its collective nose at its neighbors.

Ulric Skakki must have had that same thought, for he asked, “And what do the White Foxes say about the Three Tusk clan?”

“Who cares?” Trasamund missed the sly mockery in Ulric's voice. “With a pack of ne'er-do-wells like that, what difference does it make?”

“You still didn't say whose land this is,” Hamnet pointed out.

“These are not Three Tusk grazing grounds. That much I know,” Trasamund said. “Maybe they belong to the Red Dire Wolves, maybe to the White Foxes. But I have roamed every foot of our land, and this is none of it. Can you not see how much poorer it is than the lands we use?”

Hamnet Thyssen could see nothing of the sort. He doubted Trasamund could, either. The Three Tusk jarl reflexively boasted about the glories of his clan and its grazing grounds—or rather, the grazing grounds the clan had once held, the grazing grounds now under the Rulers' sway.

His horse thudded and squelched its way to the northwest. It was tired and blowing. He didn't know what he'd do if it foundered. He shook his head. That wasn't so. He knew all too well: he would die.

He was worn himself, worn and nodding. But he jerked upright when a deep rumble, as of distant thunder, came from the direction in which he was riding. He thought at first it
was
thunder, but thunder from a clear blue sky with the warm sun shining down would have meant God was taking a more direct interest in worldly affairs than he seemed to be in the habit of doing.

“What the—?” he asked Liv.

“I think it was an avalanche,” she answered. She looked even wearier than he felt, which he would have thought impossible if he weren't seeing it with his own eyes. But she hadn't merely fought in yesterday's battle; she'd worked magic all through it, which would drain anyone. After a yawn, she continued, “Sometimes chunks of the Glacier will crash down when the
weather is like this. It will melt near the top and sometimes set everything farther down in motion.”

“Lucky it didn't do that at the Gap,” Hamnet exclaimed.

“Farther north there—it's usually cooler.” Liv pointed ahead. “Look at all the dust rising from the plain. It was an avalanche, and a big one, too.”

Sure enough, a cloud of dust like the ones that sometimes rolled across the plains of the Empire was climbing into the sky, obscuring what lay behind it. Hamnet looked back over his shoulder. Riding deer and a few war mammoths still pursued, though the Rulers didn't seem to want to close.

And then, as if to grind the fugitives between two stones, Bizogots rode at them from straight ahead. They were men from the White Fox clan, which answered the question of whose grazing grounds these were. “What are you doing here, you saucy robbers?” one of them shouted angrily. “Get off our land, or we'll fill you full of holes!”

“Why don't you ride on by us?” Trasamund yelled back. “Then you can tell the Rulers the same thing. Do you think they'll listen to you?”

“What are you talking about?” the White Fox Bizogot said. Then he recognized Trasamund. “By God! You're the Three Tusk clan's jarl!”

“And much good that's done me,” Trasamund answered bleakly. “I've lost my clan. The Rulers have taken our grazing lands, and the Red Dire Wolves', too. They'll come after you next. They're on the way.” He pointed back over his shoulder.

The White Foxes reined in. They put their heads together. The warrior who'd been shouting was plainly a man of some importance in their clan. Hamnet Thyssen watched him bringing the rest of the White Fox Bizogots around to whatever it was that he thought.

He rode out ahead of them. “Pass on!” he said. “If you come to our herds, you may kill enough to feed yourselves, but no more. If anyone challenges you, tell him I, Sunniulf, have given you leave.” He struck a pose, there on horseback, so they might see what a powerful fellow he was. Still holding himself straight and proud, he added, “As for the Rulers, we'll deal with them.”

He waved the rest of the White Foxes forward. They trotted past the men fleeing the latest battle lost. “Shall we go with them and do what we can to help?” Count Hamnet asked.

“I wouldn't help that arrogant son of a rotten mammoth chitterling up on his feet if all the Glacier fell on him,” Trasamund growled. “Did the
White Foxes do anything to help us? Let them find out for themselves and see how they like it. The ones who live may have more sense after that.”

Hamnet didn't like it, but he wasn't in charge. Trasamund was if anyone was. After the disaster of the day before, Hamnet wasn't sure anybody could give orders with confidence these Bizogots would follow them. But then, Bizogots generally obeyed orders only when they felt like it.

“We ride!” Trasamund shouted. They rode.

Ulric Skakki looked back a couple of times. “Trying to watch the White Foxes get what they probably will?” Hamnet asked.

“Well, yes.” Ulric sounded faintly embarrassed. “People always stare when a really nasty accident happens. You can't help yourself.”

“Oh, spare me. You aren't even trying,” Hamnet Thyssen said.

“Well, what if I'm not?” Ulric retorted. “I didn't like that Sunniulf item any better than Trasamund did. What about you?”

“He could have done worse. He could have pitched into us instead of the Rulers.”

“As far as his clan is concerned, pitching into the Rulers will be worse. We likely won't be able to take his name in vain much longer—he'll be too dead to come back and defend his honor, such as it is.”

Count Hamnet wished he could tell the adventurer he was wrong. But he thought Ulric was right. “Sunniulf's doing us a favor, though,” he said. “He's keeping the pursuit off our backs.”

“Huzzah,” Ulric said sourly. “For one thing, he doesn't know he's doing us any favors. For another, he won't keep doing them for very long. He's not going to run into the Rulers. They're going to run over him.”

Again, that marched too well with what Hamnet was thinking. He sighed. His breath didn't burst forth in a puff of steam: proof indeed that spring had come to the frozen steppe. He wondered if he would hear the sounds of battle behind the ragged band of fleeing Bizogots, but the White Foxes and the Rulers clashed too far off to let him.

With another sigh, he said, “Well, we'd better get as far away as we can while the Rulers are busy, and we ought to cover our tracks, too.”

“Now you're talking,” Ulric Skakki told him.

 

C
ONCEALING A TRAIL
in the north country was at the same time simple and next to impossible. Splashing through shallow rills and puddles and pools—and there were no deep ones, thanks to the permanently frozen
ground—gave long stretches where travelers showed no hoofprints. On the other hand, the mud all around that standing water showed tracks only too well.

If there were more high ground on the northern plains, concealment would have been hopeless. Anyone on a hill, even a modest hill, could have seen for many miles. But the swells and dips in the landscape were smaller than that. They were just enough to keep the ground from being perfectly flat, enough so that, when riders were in dips, swells helped hide them from those who came after them.

But when riders came up onto swells . . . Looking south and east a few hours after Sunniulf's White Foxes rode past to battle the Rulers, Hamnet Thyssen spotted war mammoths and riding deer silhouetted against the sky. Even though he swore, his heart wasn't in it.

Trasamund's was. “How the glory of the Bizogots is fallen!” he groaned. “These bandits thrash us as if we were naughty boys. How will we ever get away from them?”

Even he could no longer imagine beating the Rulers. Escaping suddenly seemed too much to hope for. Liv, by contrast, stuck to what was still possible. She pointed ahead. “There's a herd of musk oxen. Let's kill one and butcher it. We need the meat.”

Three or four White Fox Bizogots and their dogs accompanied the herd. They shouted angrily when they saw strangers on their grazing grounds, and even more angrily when they discovered one of the strangers was the jarl of the Three Tusk clan. But Trasamund, still downcast, used Sunniulf's name without his own usual display of chest-thumping pride. And it worked . . . well enough, anyhow.

“Where is Sunniulf now?” one of the White Foxes asked. “Why isn't he with you?”

“He led his men off to fight the Rulers,” Hamnet Thyssen answered when Trasamund hesitated.

“Ah.” The White Fox Bizogot nodded. “That will have taken care of those rogues, then.”

“Well . . . no,” Hamnet said. “Not long ago, we noticed the Rulers were still coming after us.”

That made all the White Foxes exclaim. “They couldn't have beaten Sunniulf,” one of them said. “Nobody beats Sunniulf!” The others nodded.

Ulric Skakki jerked a thumb towards the southeast. “Maybe you should go tell that to the Rulers,” he said. “I don't think they've got the news.”

“What do you mean?” The White Fox Bizogot lifted his fur cap and scratched his head. “What are you talking about?”

“If you wait around here much longer, you'll find out,” Ulric said. “Can we have our musk ox?”

“You can have it. Sunniulf said so.” The Bizogot eyed him. “You're a foreigner. Don't see many foreigners around here.”

“You will.” Hamnet Thyssen, Ulric Skakki, and Trasamund all said the same thing at the same time. The White Fox scratched his head again.

They killed the musk ox downwind from the herd, then butchered it as fast as they could. The speed of the job meant they left some meat behind that they might have taken otherwise. Clucking, the herders started stripping that flesh from the dead beast's bones. The Three Tusk Bizogots and Red Dire Wolves and Raumsdalians left them to it. The refugees rode off. The Rulers wouldn't be far behind.

Liv pointed ahead, towards the Glacier, which loomed higher on the horizon than it had a couple of days before. “You can really see what the avalanche did,” she said.

“You can, by God,” Hamnet Thyssen agreed. It looked as if the collapse had started near the top of the ice sheet and extended all the way down. The jumble of freshly exposed ice boulders was whiter and brighter than the older ice to either side. The Glacier didn't rise straight up from the edge of the Bizogot steppe there, either; the slope was gentler, more gradual. “We might really be able to climb that if we had to.”

“We might, yes. But why would anyone want to?” Liv said.

Instead of looking ahead, Ulric Skakki looked behind them. Count Hamnet imitated him. Yes, the Rulers' riding deer and war mammoths had come up over the horizon again. “If our lovely friends keep herding us in this direction, they may give us some reasons to think about it,” Ulric said.

Liv bared her teeth, not at him but at the idea. “Is escape to the top of the Glacier—if we could get there—escape at all?”

“We've talked about that before,” Hamnet said. “It depends on whether anything—and anyone—lives up there.”