The Breath of God (27 page)

“We spent a good bit of time talking with them when we went through the Gap last summer,” Hamnet said. “As far as they're concerned, anyone who isn't of their folk is less than human. They call other people herds. It's hard to make friends with somebody who thinks he can drive you or shear you or slaughter you whenever he wants.”

The Snowshoe Hares' jarl grunted again. “Well, you may be right,” he said—hardly a ringing endorsement. “But then, you don't seem to have had much luck fighting them, either.”

“They're not easy, by God!” Trasamund burst out. “They ride mammoths, and—”

“I'd heard that,” Euric broke in. “I didn't know whether to believe it.”

“It's true.” All the Bizogots and Raumsdalians who'd met the Rulers spoke together in a mournful chorus.

Euric didn't seem to know whether to be appalled or amused. He finally just nodded. “All right. I believe it now.”

“And their magic is stronger than anything we use,” Liv added. “They can do things we can't, and they hurt us when they do. They've won battles because of it.”

Marcovefa said something. Euric stared at her in surprise. Her speech sounded as if it might belong to the Bizogot language, but when you tried to understand it you couldn't. “What's that?” the jarl asked.

As usual, Ulric Skakki translated: “She says the Rulers' wizards aren't so strong as Liv makes them out to be. I should point out that she's never seen them, let alone tried to match her power against theirs.”

“Fat lot she knows about it, then,” Euric said scornfully.

Scorning Marcovefa was not a good idea. Had Euric asked him, Hamnet Thyssen would have said as much. The shaman from the mountain refuge atop the Glacier murmured more incomprehensibilities to herself.

Euric started to say something else. Instead, looking much more surprised than he had a moment earlier, he developed a sudden and apparently uncontrollable impulse to stand on his head. Then he whistled like a longspur. Then he yipped like a fox. Then he croaked like a raven. Marcovefa
didn't know much about horses or musk oxen or mammoths, or the jarl probably would have impersonated them, too.

“Tell her that's enough,” Hamnet whispered to Ulric. “We want him to respect us, not hate us.”

“Right. I hope she listens to me.” Ulric spoke to Marcovefa. She shook her head. He spoke again, this time with a definite pleading note in his voice. She sniffed, but at last she nodded and murmured to herself once more.

Euric collapsed in a heap. He needed a moment to sit up straight, and another moment to regain his aplomb. When he did, he proceeded to prove himself no fool, for he inclined his head to Marcovefa and said, “I cry pardon, wise woman.”

She acknowledged him with another sniff, this one quite regal. Hamnet understood what she said next. Since Euric probably wouldn't, Ulric Skakki translated: “And well you might.”

“What do you people want from the Snowshoe Hares?” Euric asked, this time with the air of someone who might think about giving it. Getting turned upside down—literally—might do that to a man.

Trasamund took advantage of the edge they'd gained: “Food to keep us going, and horses to let us move as fast as the Rulers.”

“I can give you meat and suet and berries. We've had a good year with such things,” Euric said. “But horses for so many?” He shook his head, even though he sent Marcovefa an apprehensive look while he did it. “I cry your pardon, too, Your Ferocity, but we haven't got so many beasts to spare.” He might have—would have—said no before, but he said it much more politely now.

“How many can you give us?” Hamnet Thyssen asked. “If we can get some from you, maybe the next clan farther south will give us more.”

“The Rock Ptarmigans?” Euric didn't quite laugh in his face, but he came close. “Well, maybe they will, since your shamans are so strong. But most of the time you can't pry a dried musk-ox turd out of them, let alone anything worth having.”

In Raumsdalian, Ulric said, “I wonder what the Rock Ptarmigans have to say about the Snowshoe Hares.”

“Nothing good, I'm sure,” Euric said in the same language, “but they're only the Rock Ptarmigans, so what do they know?”

Hamnet Thyssen had rarely seen Ulric abashed, but he did now. “You caught me by surprise there, Your Ferocity,” the adventurer admitted.

“That will teach you to talk behind somebody's back in front of his face,” Euric said. Then he swung back towards Count Hamnet. “How many horses can we spare? A dozen, at the most.” He looked horrified as soon as the words were out of his mouth. Plainly, he'd wanted to name some smaller number. Just as plainly, he hadn't been able to.

Marcovefa looked pleased and innocent at the same time. Did some small spell of hers make the Snowshoe Hares' jarl tell the truth regardless of what he wanted? Hamnet wouldn't have been surprised.

By Euric's sour expression, neither would he. On his own, he probably would have said four and haggled up to eight or so. “Well, I will not make myself out to be a liar,” he said now. “You may take them. But when times come right again, you will pay the clan for the use you got of them.”

“Agreed,” Count Hamnet and Trasamund said in the same breath. And Marcovefa nodded. She might not speak the usual Bizogot language, but sometimes she understood it even so.

When Euric clasped hands with the Raumsdalian noble and his fellow jarl to seal the bargain, he also held out his big, square hand to the shaman from atop the Glacier. That struck Hamnet as only fair; without her, they wouldn't have had a bargain. They certainly wouldn't have had the one they had. More than a little relief in his voice, Euric said, “And now—we feast.”

 

Bizogots could usually outeat Raumsdalians, not least because the mammoth-herders went hungry more often. When Marcovefa got a chance to show what she could do, her appetite amazed even the Bizogots. “I've seen a man twice her size who couldn't put away that much,” Euric said admiringly.

“You may have hard times here, Your Ferocity, but I promise you that it's worse up on top of the Glacier,” Count Hamnet said. “No horses or musk oxen or mammoths, just hares and voles and little animals halfway between called pikas. When Marcovefa's folk get hungry, they get
hungry.
”

“I suppose so,” the Snowshoe Hares' jarl said. He no longer seemed to doubt that the shaman did come from the top of the Glacier. Thoughtfully, he added, “I'm surprised they don't start eating each other when times get tough.”

Hamnet Thyssen decided it might be just as well to pretend he didn't hear that. He counted himself lucky that Euric left it there.

Someone passed him a skin of smetyn. Next to wine or even beer, fermented milk was no great delight, but he was glad to drink something
besides water. And, even if the Bizogots' brew was thin and sour, pouring down enough of it would let him forget his troubles for a while.

Trasamund started drinking as if he intended to forget about his troubles for a month. When Marcovefa tasted the smetyn, she looked puzzled. She asked a question of Ulric Skakki. “What does she say? Does she like it?” Euric asked.

“She asks, what is it you drink besides water?” Ulric said.

That set Trasamund laughing. He'd already downed enough to let almost anything set him laughing. “What do we drink besides water?” he echoed. “Anything we can, by God! Anything we can.”

“Why?” Marcovefa asked. Hamnet Thyssen understood her on his own; the question was almost identical to the Bizogot phrase,
Because of what?

“Tell her she'll find out after she drinks for a while.” Trasamund laughed some more, this time in anticipation.

Ulric Skakki put that into Marcovefa's tongue. She nodded as if accepting a challenge and began to drink as seriously as she'd eaten. Before long, her eyes grew bright, her smile went slack, and she swayed even though she was sitting down.

“They don't have smetyn on top of the Glacier?” Euric asked, his voice dry.

“We didn't see any or hear of any,” Hamnet answered. “Would you want to try to milk a rabbit or a vole?”

“Well, no,” the jarl said with a wry smile.

Marcovefa said something else. “She wants to know why her head is spinning,” Ulric said. “She says she hasn't eaten any shaman's mushrooms, but she's all dizzy anyway.”

Liv looked interested when she heard that. “They have magic mushrooms up on that rock, do they?” she said. “I can't say I'm very surprised. Mushrooms grow almost everywhere.”

“She's talked abut them before,” Count Hamnet said.

“I didn't notice.” Liv's voice was chilly.

“Tell her people down here use smetyn and things like it instead of mushrooms most of the time,” Audun Gilli said.

Ulric Skakki did. Marcovefa spoke in return. “She says this isn't as good. She doesn't see all the colors she would with mushrooms, and she doesn't feel as if the sky were about to break.” Hamnet didn't know what that meant; by Liv's nod, she evidently did. Marcovefa added something else. “She says this isn't
bad,
mind you—just not as good.”

“In the morning, she'll feel like her head's about to break,” Audun Gilli said. “And so will Trasamund.”

“Yes, but Trasamund will know why,” Hamnet Thyssen said. “For Marcovefa, it'll be a big surprise, and not one she likes very much.”

“Everything that happens to Marcovefa down here is a surprise,” Ulric Skakki said. “Some of the surprises, she'll like. Others? Her first hangover? Well, maybe not.”

Some of the Snowshoe Hares began pairing off. That was another thing that happened at Bizogot feasts. Euric found women for Trasamund and the Bizogots who accompanied him, and one for Audun Gilli as well. They weren't all beauties, but Hamnet didn't think any of the Bizogots would have to close his eyes to lie down with one of them.

Then Euric surprised him. The jarl inclined his head to Marcovefa and said, “If you feel like it . . .”

Yes, the shaman from atop the Glacier sometimes understood what people meant without understanding what they said. She also surprised Count Hamnet—she smiled and nodded and, none too steadily, got to her feet and went back into Euric's tent with him.

“Well, well,” Ulric said, a slightly bemused grin crossing his foxy face. “That ought to be interesting.”

Arnora set a hand on his shoulder and shook him. “What about us?” she said with drunken intensity. “Don't you want to be intereshting—
interesting
—too?”

“My reputation would never be the same if I said no,” the adventurer replied. “I aim to please, and God forbid I should fail in my aim.” He rose, too, more smoothly than Marcovefa had done, and went off into the deepening twilight with his scar-faced lady friend.

That didn't quite leave Hamnet and Liv all alone, but not many people were close by, and none of them paid any attention to the Raumsdalian noble and the Bizogot shaman. “Well?” Liv said, an odd note of challenge in her voice. “Shall we?”

“I'm with Ulric,” Hamnet replied. “I aim to please, too.”

They went into one of the tents and slid under a mammoth-hide blanket. Bizogots lived in one another's pockets, especially during the long, hard northern winters, and needed less in the way of privacy than Raumsdalians did. They were better at looking the other way and pretending not to hear, too. By now, Hamnet had spent enough time among them to worry less
about who might be watching and listening than he would have down in Nidaros.

All the same, he wasn't sure how well he would respond after everything he'd eaten and drunk. Making love with a full belly took more effort nowadays than it had when he was younger. And his quarrels with Liv didn't help, either.

But he succeeded. By the way she responded, he was better than good enough tonight. “You do still care,” she murmured as they lay in each other's arms afterwards, their hearts slowing towards calm.

“I've always cared,” he answered.

“Too much, maybe.” Liv had said that before.

Hamnet Thyssen frowned. “How can a man care too much about a woman?”

“Easy enough,” Liv said. “If you care so much, if you worry so much, that you drive her away instead of pulling her towards you, isn't that too much?”

“Are you saying I do that?” he asked.

“Sometimes,” she replied, which was just polite enough to hold off a row. “But sometimes not, too.” She caressed him. “
Not
is better.”

“Better for you, maybe,” he muttered.

He was lucky: she didn't hear him. She sprawled across him, warm and soft and, for the moment, happy. He found himself yawning. He didn't usually fall asleep right after making love, but he didn't usually eat and drink as much as he had beforehand, either. His eyes slid shut. He and Liv both started to snore about the same time.

 

Liv woke Hamnet the next morning by poking him in the ribs. His automatic response was to grab for his sword. Then he discovered he wasn't wearing it—or anything else. “What's going on?” he asked.

“I don't know,” she answered. “But it's noisy out there, and it doesn't sound like good noise. We'd better find out.”

Hamnet listened and found himself nodding. No, the racket out there didn't sound happy. If that wordless keening wasn't a woman in mourning, then it was a woman desperately ill. The groaning man also sounded none too healthy.

Despite the noise, some of the Bizogots in the tent stayed asleep. Others, like him and Liv, were waking up. Down in the Empire, Hamnet wouldn't have wanted to get out from under the blanket and dress with so little privacy. He especially wouldn't have wanted Liv to put herself on display like
that. Bizogot customs were different, though. He didn't worry about it . . . much.