Breath of God

they made surely disturbed some of the other Red Dire Wolf Bizogots, but it bothered Odovacar very little because he heard very little of it.

“A wolf? Yes, of course I can shape myself into a wolf,” he said. Many old men’s teeth were worn down almost flat against their gums. Not his – they were still long and sharp and white, suggesting his ties to the Red Dire Wolves’ fetish animal.

Getting him to understand what to do after he went into dire wolf’s shape took the best – or maybe the worst – part of an afternoon. It wasn’t that Odovacar was stupid. Hamnet Thyssen didn’t think it was, anyhow. But he heard so little that getting anything across to him was an ordeal.

With Audun Gilli or another Raumsdalian wizard, Count Hamnet could have written down what he wanted. Nothing was wrong with Odovacar’s eyes, but writing didn’t help him, for the Bizogots had no written language. Hamnet and Liv had to keep shouting over and over again till, one word at a time, one thought at a time, they tunneled through the wall deafness built between Odovacar and the folk around him.

“Ah,” he said at last, his own voice too loud because he wanted to have some chance of hearing himself. “You want me to lead the dire wolves against the invaders from the north.”

“Yes.” Hamnet Thyssen hoped it was yes. Or did Odovacar think he and Liv meant they wanted him to take command of the Red Dire Wolves’ human warriors? By then, nothing would have surprised Hamnet overmuch.

But Odovacar had it right. “I can do it,” he said in that loud, cracked, quavering old man’s voice. He began to sway back and forth, chanting a song that sounded as if it was in the Bizogot language but that Hamnet couldn’t follow. Liv’s nod said she could.

He slowly rose and started to dance, there inside his tent. At first, the dance seemed little more than swaying back and forth while on his feet, more or less in rhythm to the song he chanted. But it got more vigorous as the song went on. The chant grew more vigorous, too. Hamnet still couldn’t understand it, but growls and snarls began replacing some of the sounds that seemed like Bizogot words. The tune, though, stayed the same.

Odovacar’s fringes shook. His long white beard whipped back and forth. In the lamplight, his eyes blazed yellow.

Yellow? Hamnet Thyssen rubbed at his own eyes. Like almost all Bizogots, Odovacar had ice-blue eyes. But was this still Odovacar the man? Hamnet shook his head. No, not wholly, not any more.

Liv was nodding in understanding and, Hamnet thought, in admiration as she watched the change sweep over the other shaman. She was used to seeing such things. She’d probably shifted shape herself, though Count Hamnet didn’t think she’d done it since he’d known her. She might take it for granted, but it raised the Raumsdalians hackles.

Odovacar dropped down onto all fours. His wolfskin jacket and trousers and his own beard all seemed to turn into pelt. His teeth, already long and white, grew whiter and much longer while his tongue lolled from his mouth. His nose lengthened into a snout. His ears grew pointed and stood away from his head. He wore a wolf’s tail attached to the seat of his trousers. As the spell took hold, it was still a wolf’s tail – it was his tail, attached to him as any beast s tail was attached to it. As if to prove as much, it lashed back and forth.

“Can you hear me?” Hamnet Thyssen asked in a small voice. Odovacar the dire wolf was doubtless still old, but seemed much less decrepit than Odovacar the man. And he swung his fierce head towards Hamnet and nodded somewhat as a dog might nod, but also somewhat as a man might. Shapeshifters kept some of their human intelligence in beast form. How much? Hamnet wasn’t sure even they could answer that question once they returned to human shape.

“You know what you are to do?” Liv sounded far more respectful of the shaman as a dire wolf than she had of him as a man.

Odovacar nodded again. A sound that wasn’t a word but was agreement burst from his throat. Hamnet Thyssen had heard an owl that was also a wizard use human speech, but that was under the influence of the magic Liv used to capture it, not through the spell the wizard used to transform himself.

“Good,” Liv said. “Go, then, and God go with you.”

One more nod from Odovacar, who bounded out through the south-facing tent flap. He made another sound once he was out in the open air, a canine cry of joy pure and unalloyed. To a dire wolf’s senses, the inside of the tent had to be cramped and smelly. Unlike people, wolves weren’t made to be confined in such places. Hamnet Thyssen stuck his head out into the cold. Odovacar trotted purposefully off to the west, wagging his tail as he went. Yes, he was glad to get away.

“He seems happier as a dire wolf,” Hamnet said.

“I suppose he is,” Liv answered. “But he will die sooner if he keeps that hide and not the one he was born with. He knows that. Even as a wolf, he knows it. He will do what needs doing – what he can recall of it in beast shape. And we will see how much good it does us.”

“Quite a bit, I hope.” Hamnet Thyssen stuck his head out into the cold again. Like Odovacar, he was sometimes glad to get free of the Bizogot tents himself. Living through the long northern winters in the enforced close company of the mammoth-herders wasn’t easy for a man of his basically solitary temperament. If he weren’t in love with Liv, he wondered if he could have done it.

“Don’t get frostbite,” she told him – in this climate, an even more serious warning than it would have been down in the Empire.

“I won’t.” He wanted to twist around so he could look north towards the Gap, north towards the grazing grounds of the Three Tusk clan, the grazing grounds the Rulers had stolen. In his mind’s eye, he saw swarms of dire wolves raiding those grounds, feasting on the Rulers’ riding deer, dragging down musk oxen that couldn’t keep up with the herds, maybe even killing mammoth calves if they wandered away from their mothers. And he saw something else, even if it wasn’t so clear as he wished it were.

When he ducked back into the big black tent again, some of what he imagined he’d seen must have shown on his face, for Liv said, “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know,” he answered. “But we’ve thought a lot about how we can hit back at the Rulers. What have they been thinking about all this time? I don’t know that, either, and I wish I did. Whatever it is, I don’t think we’re going to like it.”

The sun had turned in the sky. Days were still short, shorter than they ever got in Nidaros, but they were getting longer. Each day, the sun rose a little farther north and east of due south, swinging away from the tiny arc it made in the southern sky around the solstice. Each day, it set a little farther north and west of due south. And each day became more of a day, not just a brief splash of light punctuating the long hours of darkness.

Hamnet Thyssen would have hoped the longer daylight hours meant warmer weather. In that, he was disappointed but not much surprised. Down in the Empire, the worst blizzards usually came after the turning of the year, but before longer days finally led to the spring thaw. Those blizzards started here, when the Breath of God howled down off the Glacier. Spring would take longer to get here, and would have a looser grip when it finally did.

Odovacar returned to the Red Dire Wolves’ tents. Hamnet Thyssen saw him ambling in, still in dire-wolf shape. He was heavier than he had been when he set out, but he walked with a limp. A long, half-healed gash scored his left hind leg.

For a moment, the shaman didn’t seem to know Count Hamnet. Lips lifted away from those formidable fangs. A growl sounded deep in the Odovacar-wolf’s throat. The Bizogots told of shamans who turned beast so fully, they couldn’t come back to man’s shape again.

But Odovacar hadn’t gone that far. With a human-sounding sigh, he went into the tent that had been his. A moment later, Totila joined him. Word must have spread like lightning, for Liv and Audun Gilli ducked in together inside of another couple of minutes.

By then, Odovacar the dire wolf was already swaying back and forth in a beast’s version of the dance the shaman had used to change shape. The growls and barks and whines that came from the animal had something of the same rhythm as the song Odovacar had used when he was a man.

And he became a man again. His muzzle shortened. His beard grew out on his cheeks and chin – he had a chin again. His ears shrank; the light of reason came back to his eyes. The hair on his back and flanks was a pelt no more, but fringed and tufted wolfskin jacket and trousers. His dire wolf’s tail now