The Breath of God (31 page)

“Hardly anything!” Liv cried in a passion of fury most unlike her. “Whatever we try, even against their mammoths, they do something better—or rather, something worse—to us. Do you really think the Empire's wizards can stop them, or even slow them down very much?”

“If they can't,” Hamnet said slowly, “then this whole land is in even more trouble than we thought it was.”

“It is!” Liv said. “It is!”

“The only other choice is rolling on our bellies, the way the jarl of the Green Geese was thinking of doing,” Hamnet said. “I can't do that. Can you?”

“No. I can't do anything at all, and I hate it,” Liv said. “One of the best things about being a shaman is that you're able to change things, able to make them better. Against the Rulers, I can't, and it drives me wild. We're running away from them, and that seems to be the most we can do.”

He put an arm around her. She clung for a moment, then broke away. He bit down on the inside of his lower lip. He couldn't even manage to comfort her.

“Why did you come to me?” he asked, his voice wooden.

“Because—” She broke off. “Oh, never mind.”

“Because why?” he asked. He could come up with answers on his own. The likeliest one was,
Because Audun Gilli's asleep.
Even imagining that one did wonders for the way he felt about himself.

Liv didn't say that, though. “Because if I kept quiet any longer, I thought my head would explode,” she told him. “There. Is that enough? Or do you want to stick any more thorns in me?”

Somehow, she'd twisted things so he was in the wrong. “I never wanted to do that,” he said.

“No, eh? Or did you just want to stick something else in me instead?”

“You know I do,” he answered, as steadily as he could. “I thought it went both ways. Maybe I was wrong.”

“No, but . . . Do you have any idea how impossible you are?”

“I do my best,” he said with a certain somber pride.

In spite of everything, that made her laugh. This time, she put her arms around him. He squeezed her, which made him do exactly what she'd said. For a moment, she squeezed him back. Then she twisted away again.

“Not now,” she said. “It wouldn't be right.”

“Why not?” With the blood pounding in his veins, he couldn't see any reason.

“Because that's something you should do when you're happy,” Liv answered. “I'm not happy now, not when I miss the clan so much.”

“I walked away from the Empire,” Hamnet Thyssen said.
I walked away, and I want to make love with you anyhow.

“Yes, but you walked away from somewhere you didn't fit any more,” Liv said. “I belonged in the Three Tusk clan. I'll never find any other place where I belong half so well.”

She was right about him. He'd stayed on the fringes of imperial life as much as he could for years before deciding to give it up and come north. She'd had a place where she belonged till the Rulers robbed her of it. He'd thought he fit with Gudrid. After he found out how wrong he was there, he'd been on his own, an uncomfortably independent island in an ocean full of people sure of their places and comfortable in them.

“Let it go, then,” he said gloomily—not that he wanted to let it, or her, go, but that he had not the energy to quarrel over it. He wondered what he would have had the energy to quarrel about just then. A sudden irruption of the Rulers, perhaps. Getting excited about anything smaller seemed more trouble than it was worth.

Maybe Liv caught some of that in his voice. “I don't mean never,” she said. “I only mean not right now.”

“I know.” Hamnet Thyssen couldn't make himself get very excited even about being turned down. And if that wasn't a sign of something badly wrong deep inside his spirit, then it wasn't, that was all.

“Well,” Liv said. The word seemed to hang in the air. Hamnet knew he ought to say something, anything, but nothing came to him. He couldn't even care about not caring. Liv sighed. “I'll go back to the rest of them, then, and leave you here to stand your watch.” She walked away, looking back over her shoulder once. Was she hoping he would call out to her? He nearly did, but again kept silence.

After what seemed a very long time—but, by the slow wheeling of the moon and stars, was no longer than it should have been—a Bizogot came out to relieve him. “Anything funny going on?” the man asked. “Anything strange?”

“No,” Hamnet Thyssen said. “It's been pretty quiet.”

He walked back to the encampment, lay down, and got a little sleep before the early-rising sun stuck slivers of light under his eyelids and forced them apart. Someone had built up the fire. Hamnet carved off a gobbet of musk-ox meat and began toasting his breakfast. “You look cheerful,” Ulric Skakki said.

“I doubt it,” Hamnet answered.

Mechanical as if moved by clockwork, he climbed aboard his horse and rode off with the rest of the travelers. If he nodded in the saddle, he wasn't the only one. And then Trasamund pointed south and let out a bellow of mingled fear and fury.

Riders ahead . . . Riders not on horses but on deer . . . The Rulers! Apathy fell from Count Hamnet like a discarded cloak. He strung his bow and made sure his sword was loose in its sheath. If they wanted to go on, they would have to fight. Yes, he was ready for that.

 

 

 

 

 

 

F
IGHTING HELD A
welcome simplicity. No time to brood. No time to think. Only to do, and to do fast. Your body knew far ahead of your mind. Hamnet's mind had spun in too many circles. Better to snuff it out and let his body show what it knew.

He would rather have done that lying with Liv. Since he couldn't pleasure her, killing someone else would do almost as well.

The Rulers, though, took a deal of killing. Even if their deer didn't measure up to horses, their bows made them formidable enemies. And they had no fear. The Bizogots and Raumsdalians might outnumber them, but they rode to the attack without the slightest hesitation.

By the way they came on, they thought the men who followed Trasamund would scatter like chaff before them. They were used to victory, and expected nothing else. Hamnet Thyssen nocked an arrow. No matter what they expected, he vowed that they would get a beating instead.

They started shooting before he would have. With those powerful compound bows, they could afford to. But their deer were a little slower than horses, so they couldn't stay out of range of the Raumsdalians and Bizogots they faced. They didn't seem interested in staying out of range, anyhow.

An arrow hissed past Hamnet's head. At such a range, that was fearsomely good shooting, or perhaps fearsomely lucky. Had the arrow hit him, which wouldn't have mattered.

He let fly himself. The enemy he aimed at didn't fall. Shooting from a bucketing horse at a foeman on a galloping deer wasn't easy. He swore anyhow, and reached over his shoulder to pull another arrow from the quiver. He drew the
bow, aimed, and released all in one smooth motion, guiding the horse with his knees while he did. The bowstring thrummed against his wrist.

A moment later, the riding deer that carried the man he'd shot at crashed to the ground. That wasn't quite what he'd had in mind, but it would do.

Out in front of him, Trasamund bellowed, “A hit! A hit for the Three Tusk clan!” The jarl let out an alarming—and alarmingly authentic—mammoth squeal. He shook his fist at the Rulers and bawled obscenities their way. He hadn't seen who shot the deer, and wasn't likely to give a Raumsdalian credit in place of one of his own. To be fair, many more Bizogots followed him, so the odds were on his side even if he happened to be wrong.

One of his Bizogots tumbled from the saddle with an arrow through the chest. The remnant of the Three Tusk clan had just got smaller. Hamnet shot a couple of more arrows at the Rulers. He didn't see any of them or their mounts go down after either one of those shots, but all he could do was keep trying.

Then he set his bow aside and drew his sword. It was going to come down to handstrokes, the way fights always did. That gave him and his companions the edge, for their mounts were bigger than the ones the Rulers used. They could strike down at their foes from horseback. And the enemy didn't seem to have a wizard along. If they had, odds were the Raumsdalians and Bizogots would already have come to grief.

That thought had hardly crossed Count Hamnet's mind before the Rulers' riding deer seemed to go mad. They started leaping and bounding like oversized rabbits, and refused to answer their riders' commands. The Rulers' shouts mingled fury and dismay.

Hamnet glanced over towards Liv. She looked as surprised as he was. He looked at Audun Gilli. The Raumsdalian wizard was having trouble staying on his own horse—not the kind of trouble the Rulers were having, but the kind of trouble any bad rider might have in battle. Whoever was driving the Rulers' mounts crazy, it wasn't either of them.

Which left . . . As soon as Hamnet Thyssen saw Marcovefa, he knew he'd wasted his time with his first two glances. The shaman from atop the Glacier was almost hugging herself with glee. Hamnet had no idea how she'd done it, but he had no doubt that she'd done it.

He also had no doubt that his side needed to take advantage of it. “Come on!” he yelled. “Let's hit them while they're having trouble!”

The Bizogots from the Three Tusk clan and the others who'd joined them needed little encouragement. Slaying their foes while the warriors of the Rulers were fighting to control their riding deer wasn't sporting, but it was
very effective. The enemy would have done the same to them—had done the same whenever their sorcerers let them. Revenge was sweet.

They took no captives. The Rulers tried to flee when they saw things going so far against them, but had no luck—their riding deer couldn't outrun horses. Three Bizogots died in the fight. Several more were hurt. Ulric Skakki looked at Count Hamnet. “You're bleeding,” he remarked.

“Am I?” Hamnet said in surprise. Then he looked down and saw the cut on the back of his hand. As soon as he noticed it, it started to hurt. “So are you.”

“I know. I know.” Ulric had a scratch on his left ear. He shrugged. “My tunic is stained. So what? It'll make me look fierce and warlike, won't it?”

He looked anything but. That didn't mean he wasn't, but he didn't look as if he were. Like the northern beasts that changed color with the seasons, he concealed his talents as best he could.

“Tell Marcovefa she did a good job spooking their deer,” Hamnet Thyssen said.

“She did, didn't she?” Ulric looked around for her, then called out in the strange, old-fashioned dialect she used.

She replied at some length. “What does she say?” Hamnet asked.

Ulric looked bemused. “She says we've been going on and on about how strong their magic is, but it wasn't anything much.”

“How does she know?” Hamnet said. “They had no wizard with them.”

“Good point.” Ulric Skakki put the question into Marcovefa's tongue. Knowing what he was going to say helped Count Hamnet follow some of it.

Marcovefa answered volubly. When she spoke, Hamnet could find a word here and there, but not enough to piece together into meaning. “She says you can always tell,” Ulric Skakki reported. “She says you can taste it on the wind, smell it in their sweat.”

The adventurer shrugged. “I don't know whether to take that literally or not. Considering her eating habits up on top of the Glacier, I hope I'm not supposed to.”

Marcovefa scowled at him. She had to understand what he meant. She could follow the regular Bizogot language, but not Raumsdalian, which he'd used—not usually, anyhow. But when she decided to, she understood whatever she wanted. Now she chose to be affronted, or at least to act affronted. It wasn't the same thing. Were she really angry, she would have made Ulric as sorry as Grippo.

Trasamund bowed in the saddle to Marcovefa. “For your aid I give thanks, wise woman,” he said. “Any blow against the Rulers is a good one.”

“They are not so much,” Marcovefa said clearly in the Bizogot tongue. Then she added something Hamnet couldn't follow.

Neither could Trasamund. “What was that?” he asked.

She repeated it. This time, Ulric translated: “They deserve drowning, like little beasts a mother cannot raise. They will get what they deserve.”

“By God, may it be so,” the jarl boomed. He pointed to the corpses dotting the steppe. “If you're hungry, you're welcome to them.”

Again, Marcovefa spouted gibberish. Again, Ulric translated: “She says she would not touch ill-omened flesh.”

“That suits me. Let the crows have them, then,” Trasamund said. “We ride on.” And they did.

 

T
HEY
'
D SWUNG EVEN
farther west than Hamnet Thyssen thought. He expected they would have to travel along the northern edge of Sudertorp Lake, and looked forward to showing Marcovefa the wide expanse of water. (She'd lived her life above a much wider expanse of water, but that didn't occur to him till later. The Glacier yielded meltwater, yes, but it didn't really cross his mind when he thought of the lake. It was, or felt like, something altogether different.) But they were west of its westernmost tip, and had to find a way to cross the little Sudertorp River, which flowed out of it. He was stuck with talking about the lake instead of having it there in front of him.

Through Ulric Skakki, Marcovefa asked, “Why does the water stay in the lake? Why doesn't it all run out through the river?”

Count Hamnet frowned at him. “You know the answer to that as well as I do.”

“Well, yes, but so what?” Ulric said. “You were playing tour guide, and I wasn't. You do the explaining.”

“Fine.” Hamnet pointed east, back towards the outlet to the lake. “Tell her about all the dirt and rocks and ice that dam up the end and hold the water in the lakebed. Tell her they're leftovers from the days when the Glacier came this far south.”