The Breath of God (11 page)

“Yes? And so?” Ulric said. “Probably the best thing we could do now would be to kill this Rankarag whoreson. Or do you suppose he's already passed on the news to the rest of the prisoners?”

“I hope not,” Hamnet said. “But I wouldn't be surprised.”

“No. Neither would I,” Ulric said. “You and your big mouth—and you talk about me. If the Rulers were freezing, would you have told them to start a fire?”

“I didn't think they would think to use writing for sorcery,” Hamnet said unhappily.

“Why the demon not?” Ulric Skakki rolled his eyes. “That's probably what we used it for first, too. After a while, some people figured out you could do other things with it, too. But they had to pry it out of the wizards' hands before they could—you can bet on that.”

“How do you know? Were you there?” Hamnet asked.

“Of course,” Ulric said easily. “This was in the days when mammoths weren't woolly and musk oxen were green, you understand.”

“I wonder what Audun would say about that,” Hamnet Thyssen remarked.

“Well, you can ask him if you want to.” Ulric's voice was dismissive. “I
didn't see him around then, though—I'll tell you that.” He often took his whimsy more seriously than things any sensible person would have known were worth taking seriously.

As much to annoy the adventurer as for any other reason, Count Hamnet did hunt up Audun Gilli. “What do you know about how writing started?” he asked out of a clear blue sky—something the frozen steppe didn't see all that often, but something it enjoyed now.

The wizard blinked. “What on earth brought that on?” he asked.

Hamnet Thyssen explained his unfortunate introduction of the idea to Rankarag, and also his fruitless—at least from his point of view—discussion with Ulric Skakki. “So if you know anything about the days when the musk oxen were green, let's hear it,” he finished.

“Green musk oxen,” Audun Gilli murmured. “I wasn't there for that, I will say. But Ulric's right, I think—wizards likely did come up with writing first. We needed it more than other people would have.”

“How much trouble can the Rulers cause if they start using it?” Hamnet asked.

“How should I know?” Audun answered—which was, Hamnet had to admit, a sensible response. The wizard went on, “My best guess is, they'll cause more trouble than we expect them to. They seem to be like that.”

“They do, don't they?” Hamnet Thyssen said unhappily. “We've got to make sure none of our captives flees north, then. I've talked to the Bizogots about it, but sometimes talking to them is like talking to the Glacier. You can do it, but you wonder why you bother.”

“They follow their own bent, don't they?” Audun said.

Hamnet laughed, not that he found it very funny. “That's the kindest way I ever heard to say they do whatever they cursed well please.”

“They sure do,” Audun said. “They ought to be able to see that this is important . . . except they don't write themselves, and so they don't understand why it would matter whether or not the Rulers do.”

“If the Rulers start using name magic against them, they'll understand soon enough,” Count Hamnet said. “Of course, that'll be too late.” He spat into the mud between his feet. “Amazing how many things we understand too stinking late.” He wasn't thinking of sorcery, at least not of the usual sort. He was thinking of Gudrid. As usual when he thought of his faithless former wife, he wished he didn't.

Luckily, Audun Gilli couldn't read his mind. “Even if we do have escapes,” the wizard said, “it stays light so much longer now. They can't get a
long start in the night. We have a much better chance of hunting them down.”

“So we do,” Hamnet said sourly. “It would still be better if they didn't get away at all. Can you do anything magical to make sure they stay here?”

“I doubt it. You need a willing subject for sorcery like that,” Audun said.

“Oh, wonderful,” Count Hamnet said, his tone more sour still. “If you've got willing subjects, you don't need to magic 'em to get 'em to stay where they're supposed to.”

“Well, yes, there is that,” the wizard admitted. As if he badly wanted to change the subject, he pointed up into the sky. “Look. The teratorns have come back from the south.”

“So they have,” Hamnet said. The great birds—scavengers big enough to dwarf vultures and even condors—stayed longer around Nidaros than up here in the Bizogot country. But when winter clamped down there, most of them flew south—corpses got too thin on the ground to let them stay.

As if thinking along with Count Hamnet, Audun Gilli said, “They're liable to have plenty to eat up here this summer.”

“Yes, aren't they?” Hamnet said. “I hope they don't sick up the bodies of the Rulers they feed on. And I hope there are plenty of those.”

“May it be so. May God hear your prayer,” the wizard said. Hamnet hadn't been praying, or not exactly, but he wouldn't be sorry if God listened to him. God hadn't done much of that lately. But when he said as much, Audun Gilli cocked his head to one side and studied him like a bright-eyed bird. “No, eh? So you don't thank God for Liv, then?”

“I do,” Hamnet said at once. “I do, and you're right. I was thinking of the world's affairs, not my own.”

“Your own count for more most of the time,” Audun observed.

“Most of the time, but not here,” Hamnet Thyssen said. “If the world's affairs go to ruin, mine will, too. Down in the Empire, I could live in my castle and tell the world to go hang. I can't do that here—the world is more likely to hang me. Can we stop the Rulers? Can we even slow them down?”

“Would we be up here if we didn't think we could?” Audun Gilli answered.

“We thought we could when we came north,” Hamnet said. “That was before we knew they'd crushed the Three Tusk clan. It was before they beat the Red Dire Wolves, too.” He looked uneasily towards the north. How much of a fight could the Bizogots put up when the Rulers decided to strike again? Enough? Any at all?

The wizard's eyes went in the same direction. “They are strong,” Audun
murmured, as much to himself as to Hamnet Thyssen. “They are strong, yes, but we can stop them.”

“How?” Hamnet asked bluntly.

“I don't know yet,” Audun Gilli replied. “But I think we'll find out. The very strong have weaknesses in proportion to their strength.”

“Is that so?” Hamnet Thyssen said. “Tell me of a lion's weaknesses, then.” “If a lion doesn't have lots of big animals to kill, it will starve,” Audun said at once. “Foxes or weasels can live well and get fat on land that won't support a lion.”

He was right. Hamnet couldn't deny it. Even so . . . “I don't see what that has to do with the Rulers.”

“Neither do I,” the sorcerer said. “You were the one who mentioned the lion, though.”

“Well, so I was,” Count Hamnet said gruffly. “What weaknesses do the Rulers have? We haven't seen many yet.”

“No, we haven't,” Audun Gilli agreed. “The way they discard captives may be one. If they didn't, we wouldn't have learned so much from our prisoners.”

At the moment, Hamnet Thyssen worried more about what Rankarag and the other prisoners had learned from him. No one had tried to escape yet. Maybe the captives thought the Rulers wouldn't take them back no matter what. Maybe they were right if they did. That did seem to be a weakness to Hamnet.

But was it a weakness the Bizogots could use to beat the Rulers? If it was, he couldn't see how. Had the Bizogots found any weaknesses like that? If they had, he knew he had no idea what they were.

 

 

 

 

 

 

F
EAR MADE THE
scout's voice wobble when he rode into the camp. “They're moving!” he called. “The God-cursed Rulers are moving!”

And, like a spark setting kindling alight, the fear in the Bizogot rider's voice sent fear racing through the encampment where the Red Dire Wolves and the remnants of the Three Tusk clan dwelt. “They're moving!” became “They're coming!” became “They'll attack us!” became “They'll kill us all!” became “We have to flee before they
can
kill us all!”

Trasamund kept his wits about him, at least enough to hear what the scout truly said. “What do you mean, they're moving?” he shouted through the rising chaos. Hamnet Thyssen couldn't have found a better question if he tried for a week. Finding out what was really going on came ahead of everything else.

“Well, Your Ferocity, they're moving south,” the Bizogot rider answered. He pointed east. “They're heading down into our country—into Red Dire Wolf country—over that way.”

“They're not coming straight at the camp, then?” Trasamund demanded.

“No, Your Ferocity, or not when I saw 'em,” the scout said. “But their war mammoths and riding deer are on the move, and the herds of mammoths and musk oxen they've stolen here.” He had more diplomacy than most Bizogots; he didn't remind Trasamund that those stolen mammoths and musk oxen came from the Three Tusk clan.

Totila said, “This is bad enough. They move into the heart of our grazing grounds, may God afflict them with boils. We can't take
our
herds that way now, not without fighting.”

“We're not ready for another fight yet,” Ulric Skakki said in a low voice.

“Now tell me something I didn't know,” Hamnet Thyssen answered. “Do you think the Bizogots ever will be?”

“Well, if the answer turns out to be no, we both rode a demon of a long way for nothing,” Ulric said, which seemed like another obvious truth.

“What are we going to do?” Liv found one more important question. “Will we go over to the attack? Will we run from the Rulers? Or will we stay here and wait till they strike us?”

“Let's hit them!” Trasamund boomed.

He might have been a male grouse booming where no females could hear him. The Bizogots didn't take up the cry. They weren't eager to strike at the Rulers. One fight with the foe from beyond the Glacier had taught them how misplaced eagerness was. They might fight bravely against the invaders, but few of them would swarm forward to do it.

Trasamund didn't seem to see that. “Let's hit them!” he cried again.

Fear had kindled among the Red Dire Wolves. Ferocity wouldn't. Again, Trasamund's bellow fell into a deep, dark pool of silence. It raised no echoes. The jarl of the Three Tusk clan turned red with rage when he saw it wouldn't.

“Are
you
afraid?” Trasamund shouted, now in disbelief.

No one told him no. He clapped a hand to his forehead. Count Hamnet wondered if he would have a stroke, but he didn't.

“We know which direction the Rulers will come from now,” Totila said. “We can work out how best to beat them back when they do.”

“But—” Trasamund looked around. He sent Totila a withering glance, but realized standing fast was as much as he could hope to get from the other Bizogots. He had not a chance in the world of making them go forward. Shaking his head, he said, “We should be able to do more than this.”

“Sometimes doing anything at all is as much as you can ask for,” Hamnet Thyssen told him.

“Maybe.” Trasamund didn't sound as if he believed it. “But if we're standing still and they're still coming forward . . . The chin stands still. The fist comes forward.”

“And sometimes the fist breaks knuckles when it hits the chin,” Hamnet said.

“Sometimes,” the Bizogot jarl echoed gloomily. He'd broken knuckles on both hands. But he went on, “Most of the time, the fist strikes home and the fellow with the chin goes down.” He looked at the clansmen all around. “By
God, Raumsdalian, what do we do if they smash us again? Where do we run? Where
can
we run?”

“The thing to do, Your Ferocity, is make sure they don't smash us.” Count Hamnet hoped the Bizogots could do that. Trasamund wasn't wrong—another defeat would ruin the Red Dire Wolves. Another defeat might also persuade a lot of other clans to roll on their backs for the Rulers. Easier and safer to yield than to go up against an overwhelmingly strong foe in hopeless battle. So the nomads might believe, anyhow.

Or they might not. Hamnet Thyssen knew he was thinking like a civilized man, like a Raumsdalian, himself. The Bizogots were a proud and touchy folk. They might decide they would rather die than admit the invaders from beyond the Glacier were their superiors. He had no way to know ahead of time. He would have to see for himself.

When he said as much to Ulric Skakki, the adventurer said, “Here's hoping we
don't
have to find out, Your Grace.” He turned Count Hamnet's title of nobility into one of faint reproach.

“How do you mean?” Hamnet asked.

“If we can beat the Rulers, we don't have to worry that they'll panic the rest of the clans into going belly-up.”

“Oh. Yes. There is that.” Hamnet sounded as dubious as Trasamund had a little while before.

“If you don't think we can, what are you doing here?” Ulric spoke in a low voice. He took Count Hamnet by the elbow and steered him away from Trasamund and the other Bizogots. The steppe squelched under their boots. The Bizogot country, which had been white for so long, was green now, the green of grass and rocks and tiny shrubs, all splashed with red and yellow and blue flowers. The brief beauty effectively disguised what a harsh land it was.

“What am I doing here?” Hamnet echoed. “The best I can.” “Don't make yourself out to be that big a hero,” Ulric said. “You would have stayed down in the Empire if Liv stayed with you.”

“Yes, I like her company,” Hamnet said. “So what? I'm entitled to a little happiness if I can find it.”