The Breath of God (48 page)

Endil himself wore a black leather patch over his left eye. “Thyssen, by
God!” he said. “What are you doing here?” Even in mittens, his handclasp felt odd; along with his eye, he was also missing his right middle finger.

“Show him what I'm doing here,” Hamnet told the officer in the wolf-hame, who still carried his orders. Reluctantly, the man passed the parchment to Endil Gris.

Count Endil held it out at arm's length to read it. Count Hamnet had to do more and more of that himself. When Endil finished, one of his bushy eyebrows leaped. “How the demon did you get the Emperor to appoint you god of the north? That's what this amounts to.”

“Hamnet always did have a charming smile,” Ulric Skakki said.

Endil glanced at him. “Skakki, isn't it?” As Ulric nodded, the veteran soldier went on, “I've heard of you, for good and for . . . well, for not so good.”

Ulric Skakki nodded again, unembarrassed. “That's what life is all about, don't you think? I could say the same thing about you.”

“I wouldn't doubt it.” But Endil Gris gave his attention back to Hamnet. “You've got all the authority you need, don't you?” Before Hamnet could answer, Endil continued, “You've got it if I say you've got it, anyway. Otherwise, you're just a beggar with a bowl, looking for a handout anywhere you can.”

How to answer that? If Hamnet tried to bluff here, he reckoned he would lose his man. Endil was not a man who gave way to bluffs; if anything, they enraged him. And so Count Hamnet shrugged and said, “Yes, that's about the size of it. His Majesty's right about one thing—I know more about the Rulers and how they fight than you do.”

“You couldn't very well know less. I've never seen one of the buggers, not yet,” Count Endil replied. “All I've heard about 'em is from people who ran away from them. So I was going to do the best I could, but. . . .” He shrugged and spread his mittened hands.

“I've seen them. I've talked with them. I've fought them. I've run from them, too. It's what you do when you lose,” Hamnet Thyssen said. “But some of the forces I was with almost won, and I think we've got a wizard now who can stand up to anything they throw at us.” He gestured towards Marcovefa.

“The Rulers, they are not so much of a much,” she said in her curiously accented Raumsdalian.

Endil Gris' long, somber, mutilated face crinkled into an unexpected grin. “Nice to know somebody thinks so, anyway,” he rumbled. “Everybody down in Nidaros was shrieking about how they ate us up without salt.” He
swung his good eye back towards Count Hamnet. “I'll serve under you, Thyssen. I think you've got a better chance of making this come out right than I do, and what else matters?”

Plenty of other officers would have made that question anything but rhetorical. To them, their chance for fame and glory came ahead of anything else. Hamnet thought Endil Gris was a man of a different, sterner, school. He hoped Endil was. If the one-eyed noble claimed he was, Hamnet couldn't afford to do anything but take him at his word. “Thanks,” he said. “As long as we've got that settled, let's go after the barbarians and give them what they deserve.”

“Sounds good to me,” Endil said.

One of his aides had been listening with more and more agitation. “But, Your Grace!” the junior officer burst out. “This is
your
army! Are you going to let some . . . some stranger take it away from you?”

“Thyssen's no stranger,” Endil Gris replied. “Why did we come up here, Dalk? To whip these Rulers right out of their boots, yes? If Count Hamnet can do that, I'll stand behind him, because I'm not sure I can.”

“But—” Dalk didn't want to let it drop.

“Would you like to take it up with His Majesty?” Endil asked. “Would you like to go back to Nidaros and take it up with His Majesty?”

His aide recognized danger when it blew his way. “Uh, no, Your Grace.”

“Very good.
Very
good.” Count Endil was ponderously sarcastic. “In that case, would you like to salute Count Hamnet Thyssen and do everything you can to help him against these barbarians? That's what
I
aim to do, by God.” He did it.

After a moment, so did Dalk. But rebellion still glittered in his eyes as he said, “May you lead us to victory, Your Grace.”

Count Hamnet knew what that meant. He gave the unhappy Dalk a thin smile. “Don't worry about telling tales to the Emperor if I lose. He'll hear them from better men than you, I promise. And he pulled me out of the dungeon to do this. If he throws me in again, what have I lost? What has he lost?”

Dalk's eyes went big and round. “He . . . pulled you out of the dungeon?”

“I'd heard that,” Endil Gris said. “I hoped it wasn't true. You're not the kind of man who ends up in one, except maybe for telling the truth.”

“Well, you got the crime right the first time,” Ulric Skakki said. “Such men are dangerous—and if you don't believe me, ask Sigvat.”

“Enough.” Hamnet held up a hand. “Only the Rulers get anything if we start slanging each other.”

“You're right, by God,” Trasamund said. “We Bizogots did that, and we paid for it.” Dalk and Endil Gris both eyed him as if to say,
So what?
They didn't want to listen to a Bizogot.
Do they really want to listen to me?
Hamnet Thyssen wondered.
I'll find out
.

Then he realized Marcovefa had told him he would get a real army before he got it. How the demon had she known? How
could
she have known?
She's a shaman, that's how
, Hamnet thought.
A strong one, too, by God. Maybe we've got a chance in spite of everything
.

 

 

 

 

 

 

H
AMNET
'
S ARMY REACHED
the southern edge of the forest before the Rulers broke out of it. The Raumsdalians rounded up more soldiers fleeing from the mammoth-riders. Count Hamnet wasn't sure he was glad to have them. He feared they hurt morale more than they swelled numbers. Some of them were eager enough to try conclusions against the Rulers again. More, though, babbled about barbarians spearing them from mammothback, and about magic shaking ground and twisting weather.

In summer, the forest—mostly pine and fir and spruce—was a dark green wave across the north of the Raumsdalian Empire. In the winter, snow cast a white veil of beauty over the same inhospitable countryside. The trees thrived where even oats and rye wouldn't grow, and went on thriving up till the ground stayed frozen the year around and the Bizogot plains began.

Within five minutes of Count Hamnet's ordering the army to halt before going into the woods, Ulric Skakki, Runolf Skallagrim, and Endil Gris all asked him the same question: “Are you going to go in there after them or wait till they come out and hit them on better ground?”

“That's what I'm thinking about,” he answered . . . and answered . . . and answered. Suddenly, he tried to snap his fingers inside his mittens. It didn't work, but he still smiled. “Marcovefa!” he called.

“What do you want?” she asked.

“Can you find out where in the forest the Rulers are lurking?”

She nodded. “Yes, I think I can. They not belong here. They leave trail, show where they go, where they are.”

“Do that, then, please,” Hamnet said, in case she thought he was only asking a hypothetical question.

Marcovefa muttered to herself in the strange dialect the folk who lived atop the Glacier used. She rubbed her horse's ears—why, Count Hamnet couldn't have said, unless it was to touch something that did belong to this part of the world. After a moment, she pointed north and a little west. “They are there,” she said in clear Raumsdalian.

Hearing her, Hamnet Thyssen had no doubt she was right. He looked to Endil Gris and Runolf Skallagrim. He would have been ready to argue with either one or both had they chosen to disbelieve, but they didn't. Each of them nodded in turn: her certainty brought conviction with it.

“How far?” Hamnet asked.

Marcovefa frowned and muttered to herself again. “A day's journey, no more,” she answered. “But they are not standing still. They are heading this way.”

She spoke in Raumsdalian once more. “How do you know that?” Runolf Skallagrim asked her.

Marcovefa's frown got deeper. She tried to explain, and she did go on using the imperial language, but what she said made little sense to Hamnet—or, he could see, to Baron Runolf or Count Endil. What did blue fringes have to do with anything? And why would there have been red fringes had the Rulers been moving away instead of forward?

“Fringes on what?” Runolf asked. “Their clothes?”

“No, no, no.” Marcovefa sounded frustrated. “Their . . .” She couldn't find the Raumsdalian word she wanted, or even one in the regular Bizogot tongue. Finally, biting her lip in annoyance, she came out with one in her own dialect. That did neither Hamnet nor Runolf nor Endil any good.

“Their auras?” Ulric Skakki suggested, and went back and forth with her in her tongue for a few sentences.

She beamed. “Yes. Their auras. I thank you. The way their spirits rub against the fur of the world.”

“The fur of the world?” Endil Gris still sounded confused, and Count Hamnet couldn't blame him, not when he was confused himself.

“I think someone who spoke Raumsdalian from birth would say,
the fabric of the world
.” Again, Ulric did the interpreting. “Where Marcovefa comes from, there are no fabrics except felt.”

Runolf Skallagrim asked a genuinely important question: “Do they know we're so close, with an army that's ready for them?”

“No.” Regardless of how strange Marcovefa's sorcery was, she could be completely convincing when she wanted to. By Runolf's grin, she convinced him now. Count Endil also seemed satisfied. Even Dalk—whose family name, Hamnet had learned, was Njorun—nodded thoughtfully.

“We know where they are. They don't know where we are,” Hamnet said. “What could be better? Let's go get them.”

Nobody told him no or tried to talk him out of it. He always remembered that. The army was in good spirits as they rode into the woods. He always remembered that, too.

 

C
OUNT
H
AMNET ALWAYS
liked going into the northern forests. He liked it all the better now that he had an army around him. The clean, spicy smells that came from the conifers fought the stink of soldiers and horses. The fighting men and their mounts didn't smell so bad as they would have in the summertime, but they smelled bad enough. Firs and spruces were better.

“Set scouts out ahead and to all sides,” Ulric Skakki advised. “We want to surprise them. We don't want them surprising us.”

“Yes, Mother, dear,” Hamnet answered. Ulric laughed and stuck out his tongue. He didn't care if he annoyed Count Hamnet. He only cared about not getting ambushed—which, Hamnet had to admit, was reasonable enough.

Sending scouts up the road ahead of the army was easy enough. Sending them out on the flanks was anything but. The road, after all, was there to make travel easier. The horsemen trying to pick their way through the trees had a harder time of it.

Audun Gilli rode up alongside of Count Hamnet. The wizard still acted nervous and embarrassed around him—and still had good reason to. Nervous or not, he spoke up now: “I can't feel the Rulers anywhere ahead of us.” Licking his lips, he added, “Neither can Liv.”

“What are they doing?” Hamnet Thyssen asked Marcovefa. “Are they hiding themselves with magic?”

“If it's a masking spell, it's a good one,” Audun said. “Better than any we use on this side of the Glacier.”

Marcovefa's nostrils flared as she breathed in deeply. She might have been tasting the air, trying to find the flavor of the Rulers. She pointed ahead and a little to the left: the direction in which the road was taking the Raumsdalian army. “They are there,” she said. “It
is
a masking spell, but not so much of a masking spell, not such a good masking spell.” Turning to
Audun, she asked, “You not feel the . . . the
empty
moving along the road towards us? In the
empty
, that is where the Rulers are.”

Audun started to chant a spell. Marcovefa gave him a different tune with words from her dialect. He imitated them as best he could. By the third try, his pronunciation was good enough to suit her. Instead of practicing the charm any more, he aimed it at the road ahead. His jaw dropped in astonishment.

“They really are there!” he exclaimed. “Or the emptiness around them is, anyhow.” He gave Marcovefa an awkward bow in the saddle. “Thank you. I'll take this back to Liv, by your leave.”

“However it pleases you,” Marcovefa said indifferently.

That indifference pleased Hamnet Thyssen. How had Audun wormed his way into Liv's good graces, and then into her bed? By sharing magic with her, by learning spells he didn't know and teaching ones she didn't. Hamnet didn't believe Audun Gilli could teach Marcovefa anything.
What a shame
, he thought.

But he did ask, “If the Rulers use magic to look for us, they'll find us, won't they?”

“I have a small masking on us. Maybe it serve, maybe not. Better than their junk, though,” Marcovefa answered. “Only a small one. Don't think we need any more. The Rulers too stupid even to think to look.”

They weren't stupid, not to Hamnet's way of thinking. But they were arrogant. They always seemed to underestimate their foes. That could amount to the same thing. It could . . . if Hamnet could bring home a victory.

“Push the scouts forward,” he ordered. “Does anyone know if there's a large clearing anywhere between the Rulers and us? If there is, I want to form my battle line there.”