The Breath of God (40 page)

“Thank you for trying,” he said, and meant it. He couldn't dislike Eyvind Torfinn, even if the man was—occasionally, no doubt—sleeping with Gudrid. Eyvind's fondness for her aside, he was a decent man.

“It was my pleasure, my privilege,” he said now. “And Skakki hinted at some remarkable adventures. Ascending to the top of the Glacier. Meeting people who dwelt up there . . . Extraordinary! I wish I could have been with you.”

You had your chance last winter, and you stayed here,
Hamnet Thyssen thought. Then he didn't just think it—he said it out loud. If Eyvind Torfinn didn't like it, so what? What could he do that Sigvat wasn't already doing?

The scholarly earl winced. “I am not a young man, Your Grace,” he said stiffly. “I thought myself unequal to another journey up into the wilds so soon after the first, and Gudrid would have been adamantly opposed to setting out again, you know. The travels were a considerable hardship to her.”

Poor thing. She only had Bizogots and warriors from the Rulers to seduce.
Hamnet didn't say that. No one had told him when Gudrid was sleeping with other Raumsdalians, either. He'd had to find out for himself. Earl Eyvind would, too. Or maybe he already knew, and chose to look the other way. Hamnet had wondered about that before. He knew himself to be incapable of it.

Eyvind Torfinn wasn't lying to him here. He was sure of that. The other
noble's white hair and paunch declared his years. And he seemed to listen to, and to obey, Gudrid as if her fidelity were perfect and unquestioned.

“If you talked to Ulric, you'll know the Rulers have come south of Sudertorp Lake,” Hamnet said. “You'll know they've smashed the Leaping Lynxes.”

“Yes, he did tell me that.” Eyvind's voice was troubled. Maybe he'd done his best not to believe it. “It isn't good news.”

“Too bloody right, it isn't,” Hamnet Thyssen agreed. “If those bastards aren't over the border, they will be soon. You saw some of what their sorcery can do. Will we be able to stop them? Will we even be able to slow them down?”

“I have to hope we will, Your Grace,” Eyvind said.

“I've had all kinds of hopes,” Hamnet said harshly. “Gudrid's married to you. Liv is sleeping with Audun Gilli. I'm spending my time in this stinking dungeon. So what the demon is hope worth?”

Eyvind Torfinn lurched back two steps, his face as shocked as if Count Hamnet had slapped him. “I'm—I'm sorry,” he got out after a couple of heartbeats. “Ulric . . . said nothing of your misfortunes with Liv.”

“No, eh? I wonder how often people have accused him of discretion,” Hamnet said. “But he didn't need to keep his mouth shut. It's true. Everybody who came down from the Bizogot country with me knows it. It'd be all over the city if people all over the city gave a curse about me.”

“My condolences. Losing one woman is hard. Losing another is much more than twice as hard.” Earl Eyvind's thoughts marched uncomfortably well with Hamnet's. The old man sounded as if he spoke from experience. He might well have. He was old enough to have loved and lost any number of times before wedding Gudrid. Did he love her, or was she only an ornament to him? If she was, she was an expensive ornament with a sharp pin.

“Not much I can do about it from here. Not much I can do about anything from here,” Hamnet Thyssen said. “If you have the pull to get me out, Your Splendor, I'm in your debt the rest of my days. And what I owe, I pay. If you know me, you know that's so.”

“I do know you, and I know that,” Eyvind said. “I don't want your service, Thyssen. I want you free, to do what you can for the Empire. I am already doing everything I know how to do to get you out. This does not sit well with my wife, but I am doing it nonetheless.” He set his chins and looked as heroic as a peaceable, mild-mannered scholar was ever likely to look.

He would try in spite of what Gudrid thought? How much luck was he likely to have, when Gudrid's thoughts and those of Sigvat II were so much alike? Hamnet had no idea of the answer, though he doubted the omens were good. He took a step back and bowed to Eyvind. “I thank you, Your Splendor.”

“It's the least I can do, or try to do,” Eyvind Torfinn answered. “I make no promises, however much I wish I could. God keep you.” He sketched a salute and stepped away from the grate.

The guard who'd told Hamnet he'd come led him away. Hamnet listened to his footfalls even after he was out of sight. Someone out there hadn't forgotten. God didn't dole out many miracles. For Hamnet Thyssen, Eyvind's remembering came closer than most of the things he'd seen.

 

S
O
H
AMNET THOUGHT
right after Eyvind Torfinn visited him, anyhow. But loaf followed nasty loaf. One jar of stale water replaced another. Guards came into the cell to empty the slop bucket, then left again. The air in the dungeon grew chillier. Hamnet didn't think it was his imagination; was the Breath of God starting to blow outside?

When the guards lifted the bar and opened the cell door when it wasn't feeding time, he quivered with fear, though he tried not to show it. Another break in routine. It couldn't be good news.

“Thyssen!” the lead guard barked.

“Yes, that's me,” Hamnet agreed.

“Come along,” the guard said.

“Or?” Hamnet asked.

“Or rot in there. No skin off my nose one way or the other.”

Hamnet came. The guards paused in front of Kormak Bersi's cell, opened it, and got him out, too. “What's this all about?” the imperial agent asked as he emerged.

“You'll find out,” the guard snapped. “Now shut your fool mouth and follow me.” His mouth twisted in disgust. “You stink. And so do you, Thyssen.”

“Do I?” Hamnet couldn't smell himself any more. He hardly noticed the stenches of the dungeon. When he first came here, they'd seemed horrible. You could get used to almost anything.

Hope came to life within him when they left the dungeon by the stairs that had brought him down into it. He hadn't gone very far before he realized the guards could be taking him and Kormak out to the chopping block. What price hope then?

“Winter's here,” Kormak remarked even before they came up to ground level. The chill in the air was more obvious now that they drew closer to doors and windows that gave on the outside world.

Instead of the block, the guards brought them to a bathroom that held two copper tubs full of steaming water. “Wash yourselves,” the lead guard growled. “Like I told you, you stink.”

Without a word of argument, Hamnet stripped off the clothes he'd been wearing ever since they threw him into the cell and got into the closer tub. Kormak Bersi was only a heartbeat or two behind him. The soap sitting on a tray on the edge of Hamnet's tub wasn't perfumed, but it got the filth off him and didn't sear his skin. Soap alone wouldn't kill nits, though. He wondered if the guards knew, or cared.

Another guard gave him some nasty-smelling lotion and said, “Rub this into your hair—all your hair.” Maybe the stuff was intended to deal with his lice. Standing up, he smeared it over his scalp and in his crotch and under his arms. In the other tub, Kormak was doing the same thing.

When Hamnet rinsed the lotion out of his hair, he got a little in his eyes. Then he quickly splashed more water into them. “Be careful,” he warned Kormak Bersi, spluttering. “Burns like fire.”

“Now you tell me,” Kormak said, which doubtless meant he'd found out the same thing for himself.

Hamnet's old clothes had disappeared while he was bathing. So had the imperial agent's. The tunic and trousers Hamnet put on when he got out of the tub fit him tolerably well, but no better than that. The boots they gave him were loose, but that was all right. He asked for a second pair of thick wool socks, and the guards brought them to him. If the season really had turned, as seemed likely, the extra layer would help keep his feet warm when he had to go outside.

Kormak Bersi put on a similarly bland outfit. As soon as they were both dressed, the guards hustled them out of the bathroom. “Will you tell me where you're taking me?” Count Hamnet asked.

“Shut up,” one of the guards explained.

“You'll find out,” another one added. Hamnet Thyssen asked no more questions. The men seemed jumpy—and they were armed, while he and Kormak weren't. If they wanted to dispose of a couple of prisoners, they could. Hamnet consoled himself by thinking they wouldn't have bothered cleaning him and Kormak off if they were just going to take their heads. He hoped not, anyhow.

“In here,” growled the guard who'd told him to shut up. Hamnet got shoved through a door into what looked like a small meeting room. So did Kormak Bersi. Hamnet wasn't astonished to discover Sigvat II sitting behind a small table there. Nor was he particularly surprised that the Emperor looked as if he hated him. Sigvat had looked at him that way often enough to get him used to it.

No matter how sour Sigvat looked, he remained lord of the Raumsdalian Empire. The forms had to be observed. Dropping to one knee, Count Hamnet murmured, “Your Majesty.” Beside him, Kormak went to both knees.

“Get up, you two,” Sigvat snapped. As Hamnet and the imperial agent rose, the Emperor went on, “I hope you're happy, now that you've gone and shown how smart you are.”

“Your Majesty?” This time, Hamnet Thyssen used the phrase as a question. He couldn't very well know what had happened while he was in the dungeon. The Emperor couldn't expect him to . . . could he? Sigvat couldn't reasonably expect him to, no, but how reasonable was His Majesty? One more question Hamnet wished he hadn't thought of.

Sigvat didn't look reasonable now—he looked angry enough to bite horseshoe nails in half. “You've gone and shown how cursed smart you are,” he repeated, vitriol in his voice. “These—these
Rulers
, that's what.” He spat out the name of the tribe from beyond the Glacier.

“What have they done, Your Majesty?” Kormak Bersi asked . . . reasonably.

“They wrecked an army of ours near Vesteralen,” the Emperor answered. “Wrecked it, I tell you. We had wizards attached to the army—whether you people think so or not, I did listen to you, by God. I don't think any of the wizards got out. For all I know, the Rulers ate them.”

He wasn't joking, or not very much. Hamnet Thyssen tried to remember just where Vesteralen lay. Somewhere up in the northern woods—he knew that much. He couldn't come closer than that; as far as he knew, he'd never gone through the town.

“What do you want us to do about the Rulers, Your Majesty?” he asked.

Sigvat looked at him as at any idiot. “Stop them!” he exclaimed.

“How?” Hamnet asked. “What do you think a couple of men fresh from the dungeons can do that an army and a squad of wizards can't?”

“You have friends. I have trouble imagining how or why, but you do.” The Emperor might have been accusing him of some nasty vice, like accosting little girls. Scowling and spiteful, Sigvat continued, “Some of those friends
have been whining that I should have let you out a long time ago, or even that I never should have jugged you in the first place.”

I really
do
have friends
, Count Hamnet thought with some surprise. Maybe Eyvind Torfinn had done what he'd said he would do. Maybe Ulric Skakki had greased a few palms. Maybe—no, almost certainly—Trasamund had made a nuisance of himself.
For me
. Hamnet had trouble believing it.

But, as if to confirm it, Sigvat said, “Your friends, taken all in all, are a sneaky slither of snakes. Put all of you together and you should be able to give the Rulers trouble if anyone can.”

“Yes. If,” Kormak Bersi said, which perfectly echoed what was going through Hamnet's mind.

“I will do what I can, Your Majesty, on one condition,” Hamnet said.

“You dare bargain with me?” Thumbscrews and racks and endless gallons of water roughened Sigvat's voice.

Hamnet Thyssen nodded anyway. “I do, sir. Whatever you do to me here, it won't be worse than letting Gudrid come north with me. She is no friend of mine. If you send me against the Rulers, don't send her. If you send her . . . well, I'd rather go back to the dungeon.”

“If I take you up on that, you won't come out again,” Sigvat warned. Count Hamnet only shrugged. The Emperor filled his lungs to call for guards to take Hamnet away.

“Wait, Your Majesty. Think,” Kormak Bersi urged. “You need Thyssen more than you need me. He knows more about this business than I do, and he's a better man of his hands than I am, too.”

Sigvat looked as astonished as if one of his chairs had spoken to him. He rounded on Count Hamnet. “Gudrid is no fonder of you than you are of her.”

“Then why would she want to come north again?” the Raumsdalian noble asked.

But that question almost answered itself. Hamnet wanted nothing more than to stay away from his former wife. She, on the other hand, wanted to keep sticking pins in him to make him writhe. He'd done all the writhing he intended to do, though, at least on her hook. What Liv could do to him . . . He hadn't said anything to Sigvat about Liv. Was that because she'd wounded him less or because he had the feeling the fight would need her? He wasn't sure himself.

“If I didn't think you were important—” the Emperor ground out. Hamnet said nothing. He just waited for whatever happened next. If it was the
dungeon, then it was, that was all. But if it wasn't . . . “Stop the Rulers, and there aren't many rewards big enough.”

“By God, Your Majesty, I don't care about most of that nonsense. You know I don't,” Count Hamnet said. “I just want people to leave me the demon alone. You, Gudrid, everybody. Is that too much to ask?”

“Frequently,” Kormak said before Sigvat could answer.

The Emperor said, “You'd have all the privacy you want in a cell.”