The Breath of God (30 page)

Audun Gilli shaved bits from the musk ox's horns after it fell. “Why are you doing that?” Liv asked him.

“I don't know, not exactly.” The wizard sounded a little sheepish. “But here we are, and here I am, and here's the musk ox, and the horns are strong, and they may be good for some kind of magic one of these days.”

That sounded like a stretch to Hamnet Thyssen, but Liv only nodded. “I do the same sort of thing sometimes,” she said. “My tent used to be full of this and that and the other thing—back when the clan was strong, I mean. And maybe I would have used some of what I gathered and maybe I wouldn't, but I had it just in case.”

“When I had a house down in Nidaros, it was the same way,” Audun said.

Wonderful,
Count Hamnet thought.
They've found something else they have in common
—
they're both packrats.
Liv kept telling him he was worrying over nothing. Every time he looked, though, the nothing seemed bigger.

“What about you?” Liv asked Marcovefa. “Do you save things even when you don't know if you can use them?”

“Yes,” Marcovefa answered in the regular Bizogot tongue. She was learning what she needed to know—or maybe her capacity for understanding helped whether she knew the words or not.

“You're going to be out of a job when she can speak for herself all the time,” Count Hamnet remarked to Ulric Skakki.

“Well, it won't break my heart,” Ulric answered. “Arnora already says I spend too bloody much time talking with her and talking for her.” He rolled his eyes. “Women won't leave you alone when they think you might be fooling around.”

“Right.” Hamnet showed less enthusiastic agreement than he might have. Would Liv have said something like,
Men won't leave you alone when they think you're fooling around
? Would she have pointed at him when she said it? Would she have had reason for pointing at him that way?

Then Marcovefa pointed off into the middle distance and said something in her own dialect.
What are those?
—that was what it had to mean.

Those
were lions: a couple of males, three or four females, and several cubs. Maybe the smell of blood from the butchered musk ox drew them. They were wise in the ways of men, though, for they stayed well out of bowshot. Whatever was left of the carcass, they would take after the Bizogots moved on.

A wry, self-mocking smile on his face, Ulric explained about lions. Marcovefa seemed intrigued—maybe even impressed. She said something more. Ulric translated: “She asks if we'll spare one if she calls it close enough to get a good look at it.”

“Can her shamanry make sure it spares us?” Trasamund asked.

Instead of answering in words, Marcovefa walked over and patted him on the cheek, as if she were reassuring a nervous little boy. The jarl of the Three Tusk clan muttered something that probably wasn't a compliment. Marcovefa ignored him. She began a crooning chant, one that made Liv prick up her ears. “
We
use that tune for summoning spells,” she said.

“The men of the Glacier spring from Bizogots,” Hamnet Thyssen said. “Should you be surprised they still share some things with you?”

“When you put it that way, I guess not. I—” Liv broke off. The larger male lion trotted towards Marcovefa.

Hamnet Thyssen started to string his bow, then cut off the move before it was well begun. An arrow seemed more likely to enrage the big cat than to kill it outright. And Marcovefa had a way of knowing what she was doing. Of course, if she turned out not to this time, it would be the wrong moment for a mistake. . . .

Down in the Empire, lions had manes not much more than stubble. This one boasted a full, luxuriant growth. Its coat was thinning with summer, but still far heavier than any the beasts in the south grew. It needed all the help it could get against the ferocious winter weather in these parts.

When the lion drew near to the shaman from atop the Glacier, it flopped down on the ground and rolled with its paws in the air, for all the world like a pampered house cat. But these paws could rip the guts out of a man—or, for that matter, a horse. Marcovefa scratched the lion under its chin. A deep,
rasping purr rewarded her. The beast yawned, exposing fangs that wouldn't match a sabertooth's but that were more than savage enough for all ordinary use. She rubbed its belly, and the purr got louder.

“By God, I wouldn't want to do that,” Ulric Skakki muttered.

“I'd want to,” Trasamund said, “but I wouldn't dare.” From the fierce Bizogot, that was no small admission.

When Marcovefa had seen as much of the lion as she cared to, she chanted a new song. The great murderous beast stopped acting like a happy kitten. It got to its feet and trotted away from her. Only when it got back to the rest of the pride did the spell suddenly seem to wear off. The lion began washing and washing, going over its hide with its large, rough tongue.

“Cleaning the stink of us off it,” Ulric said, amusement in his voice. “It doesn't think we're fit to associate with.”

“It must have met people before, then,” Count Hamnet said, and the bitterness in his voice made everyone who heard him either stare or else look away from him in embarrassment.

What kind of embarrassment?
he wondered.
That I made a fool of myself? Or that I told a truth that hurts but that they can't deny?
He shrugged. What difference did it make? Anyone who still took a sunny view of human nature after what the Rulers visited upon the Rock Ptarmigans was too big a fool to deserve to wander the Bizogot plains alone, anyhow.

Marcovefa pointed out towards the lion and spoke. “She says we're lucky to live in a land that has such beasts,” Ulric said. “She says they give us something to measure ourselves against.”

“Measuring myself against a lion is easy,” Audun Gilli said. “I am less than a lion, and I hope I have sense enough to know it.”

When Ulric Skakki translated, Marcovefa shook her head. “Could the lion have called you away from other men and made you come to it?” she asked through the adventurer.

“I hope not, by God!” Audun blurted, which struck Count Hamnet as the truth wrapped in a joke. The wizard went on, “I wouldn't have called it here, either. Maybe I could have—maybe—but I wouldn't.”

“Why not?” Marcovefa asked.

“For fear something would go wrong with my magic, that's why,” Audun said.

“Never fear,” the shaman from atop the Glacier said seriously. “Never. When you fear, it makes your magic small.”

“Well, yours isn't. We've noticed that,” Audun Gilli said.

“You see?” Even with Ulric Skakki translating for her, Marcovefa sounded sure of herself.

“I think she is of our blood,” Trasamund said. “Bizogots know better than to fear.”

“Not fearing isn't always good, either,” Hamnet Thyssen pointed out. “Sometimes you can run straight into something you would have stayed away from if only you'd had the sense to fear it.”

“I don't believe that,” Trasamund said.

What about your clan?
Hamnet thought. If they'd kept proper watch at the Gap, they might have kept the Rulers from getting through for a long time. But they hadn't known enough to fear the mammoth-riders. They'd found out soon enough: too soon, in fact.

He knew Trasamund would quarrel with him if he pointed that out. Life was too short. They bickered often enough as things were, sometimes over things that might actually get fixed. They were stuck with the past, though, however little either one of them liked it.

Instead of chaffing the jarl, Hamnet asked, “What will we do if we run into the enemy on our road south?”

“What will we do
when
we run into the enemy? That's what you mean.” Ulric Skakki was rarely shy about throwing oil on the fire.

But Count Hamnet shook his head. “I said
if.
I meant
if.
We're trying to stay out of the paths the Rulers are likely to take.”

“The answer is the same any which way,” Trasamund said. “If we find them—if they find us—we fight them.” He reached back over his shoulder to touch the hilt of his great two-handed sword. “They can die. We can kill them. We have killed a good many of them—not enough, but a good many.” He scowled. “Unless we kill them all, it is not enough. I don't know how to do that. I wish I did.”

“We can kill them, yes. But they can kill us, too, and they're rather better at that than we are at the other.” Ulric enjoyed irritating Trasamund, where Hamnet Thyssen didn't. “Wouldn't we do better staying away from them than fighting where we can't win?”

“If you are afraid—” Trasamund began: a Bizogot's automatic retort. But then he shook his big head. “I know you too well. You are not afraid. You are only annoying me, like any other gnat. Well, I don't feel like letting you bite today. If we run into the Rulers, do whatever you please. You will anyhow.”

Hamnet looked down at the ground so Ulric wouldn't see him smile. When he had his features under control, he raised his head once more. Ulric Skakki
was using the edge of a blade of grass to rout out something stuck between his teeth. If Trasamund's thrust bothered him, he didn't show it. But, to those who knew him, his very nonchalance said he knew he'd lost the exchange.

“How does it feel to be a gnat?” Hamnet asked.

“Natural enough,” Ulric replied easily. Hamnet started to nod. Then he grimaced and found something else to do. If Ulric had lost the exchange to the Bizogot jarl, he'd just lost it to Ulric, and the adventurer needed only two words to make him do it.

He wasn't sorry to take sentry duty when the sun finally went down. A few stars came out, but only a few. Twilight lingered long in the north, and the moon filled the southern sky with pale light. Everything was grayish, colors muted and distances confused. Even motion seemed indistinct. It was like watching half in dreamland.

Sounds, though, were somehow magnified. A dire wolf that howled far off to the south might almost have been sniffing at Hamnet's boots. An owl's hoot made his hand drop to his swordhilt. The Rulers' wizards flew through the night—and sometimes through the day—as owls. He needed another hoot or two to realize how distant this bird was. Real or sorcerous, it would not come across the travelers' encampment.

And a footfall that sounded as if it came from right behind him was much farther away than that. For a moment, there in the uncertain light, he wasn't sure who was coming out to him. But Liv was impossible not to recognize. The way she moved spoke to him in his blood, at a level below words.

“Is it all right?” she asked as she came up.

“It seems to be,” Hamnet answered. “Why aren't you sleeping?”

She shrugged. “With the sun in the sky so long, I don't seem to need as much.” Hamnet found himself nodding. He'd noticed the same thing. When he had to, he could go longer without sleep here than he could have down in the Empire. The long, deep winter darkness in the north made him want to curl up and hibernate like a bear, though.

“I heard an owl not long ago,” he said.

“Yes, I heard it, too,” Liv said. “I think it was only an owl. I hope it was only an owl.” She looked around. The twilight
was
deepening, but almost imperceptibly. “This stretch of days makes up for the rest of the year. It tries to, anyway.”

“Half light and half dark anywhere you go,” Hamnet Thyssen said. “Only the way they're blended is different.”

“Yes.” Liv stared up at the moon. It washed the shadows and lines from her face; she might have been a marble bust, not a woman of flesh and blood. Seeing her lips move as she spoke again, seeing that her lips
could
move, seemed startling. “I suppose people are the same way. Only the—what did you call it?—the blend is different.”

“It could be,” Hamnet said. “I don't know that it is, but it could be. Even the wickedest man won't tell you he's wicked. He won't think he is. Whatever he was doing, he was doing for the best of reasons—or he thinks he was, anyway.”

“Even the Rulers are heroes in their own eyes.” Liv's mouth twisted. “But not in mine. Oh, no—not in mine.”

Her clan was shattered. She hadn't been there when the Rulers struck, hadn't pitted her wizardry against theirs. That the Rulers would have rolled over the Three Tusk clan anyhow seemed as certain to Hamnet Thyssen as tomorrow's sunrise. Telling Liv as much was pointless. He knew, because he'd tried.

What could he have done to keep Gudrid from betraying him all those years ago? Nothing, very likely; faithlessness was in her blood. That didn't keep him from lacerating himself even now, or from wishing things might have been different.

It also didn't keep him from lacerating himself about Liv whether he needed to or not: indeed, it drove him to do just that. But it blinded him to why he did it, too, and blinded him to his being blind. That, of course, he could not see.

“What are we going to do?” Liv cried. Hamnet thought she meant the two of them, but she went on, “What are the poor sorrowful Bizogots going to do?”

“Fight the enemy,” Hamnet answered. “What else can you do?”

“But every time we try, we lose!”

He shook his head. “You've beaten them—we've beaten them—in raids.”

She brushed that aside, as being of no account: “We can nip them when we catch them without a shaman. But when they have one, we lose.”

“The Empire's wizards aren't to be despised,” Hamnet said.

“Don't you think the Rulers will smash them?” she returned. “Their magic is of much the same kind as ours. Maybe they know a bit more, or maybe they can do a bit more, but it is of the same kind. And how much good has that kind of magic done against the Rulers?”

“Not enough,” Count Hamnet admitted.