Breath of God

you fight when danger to both of you and to all your folk builds just to the north?”

Ulric translated in a low voice for Audun Gilli. The Raumsdalian wizard said, “I feel no enemy magic.” Ulric kicked him in the ankle. For a wonder, Audun caught on. Hastily, he continued, “That only proves how subtle the spell is. Will you let it seduce you?”

Trasamund and Totila looked at each other. Then they both looked shamefaced, and a shamefaced Bizogot was as rare as a white woolly mammoth. “No!” they said loudly. Trasamund drew his sword, but only to brandish it in the direction of the Rulers. Totila shook his big, hard fist towards the north.

“We fight together!” he cried.

“Side by side, till we slay them all!” Trasamund roared. They embraced each other like brothers. All the watching Bizogots cheered. They too aimed weapons and clenched fists at the invaders from beyond the Glacier.

In a low voice, Ulric Skakki said, “You’re sneakier than I gave you credit for, Thyssen.”

“Nothing sneaky about it,” Hamnet answered. “For all I know, I was telling the truth. Even for Bizogots, that fight between Trasamund and Totila was stupid.”

“Even for Bizogots.” An ironic smile played across Ulric’s lips. “Well, you said it – I didn’t. But don’t expect me to tell you you’re wrong.”

“I’m just glad Liv and Audun went along with me,” Count Hamnet said. “And thanks for giving Audun a hand – er, a foot. I saw, even if neither jarl did.”

“Sometimes he’s too innocent for his own good. I helped him along a little,” Ulric said. “And now all we have to do is beat the Rulers. Should be easy, right?” He laughed. So did Hamnet Thyssen. A moment later, he wondered why.

III

The sun shonewarm in a bright blue sky – not merely above freezing, but warm. Just as the Breath of God could reach past Nidaros in the wintertime, southerly breezes came up onto the Bizogot steppe, even up to the edge of the Glacier itself, when days lengthened. After only a few hours of such weather, the snow started looking threadbare. Drips and puddles were everywhere.

“Mosquitoes any day now,” Ulric Skakki said mournfully. “We go straight from the scratching season to the slapping season. Isn’t it grand?”

“Maybe, but maybe not,” Hamnet Thyssen said. “There’ll be another blizzard or two before winter says good- bye for the year. And the birds are coming north to eat the bugs.”

He was right about that. Even so early in the season, the air was murmurous with the sound of fluttering wings. Birds of every size, from larkspurs and flycatchers up to swans, came to the Bizogot plains to breed and to feast upon the brief bounty they offered when they thawed out.

Ulric Skakki only shrugged. “They don’t eat all the bugs. They don’t even eat enough of them. Plenty of bloodsuckers left alive. Anybody who comes up here when the sun shines has reason to know about that.” He mimed smacking at himself.

Count Hamnet nodded. “Not just bloodsuckers on the plains these days,” he said. “We’ve got bloodspillers, too.” As usual, his gaze turned to the north.

“We’ve done everything we could,” Ulric said. “We’ve got scouts out. They’ll warn us when the Rulers move. The Red Dire Wolves are as ready to fight as they ever will be. And we’ve sent messengers to the clans close by. Maybe we’ll get reinforcements.”

“Yes, maybe we will.” Hamnet didn’t sound as if he believed it. And he didn’t. “We can’t make the other Bizogots join us. Since we can’t, chances are they won’t.”

“Well, why should they?” As it often did, acid rode Ulric Skakki’s voice. “They’re free. If you don’t believe me, just ask them. They can do whatever they choose, whatever they please – no matter how idiotic it is.”

They spoke Raumsdalian, which kept most of the mammoth-herders around them from following what they said. Trasamund, though, was an exception. “You don’t understand my folk,” he told Ulric.

“By God, Your Ferocity, I hope I don’t,” the adventurer answered.

“You Raumsdalians are a servile people. You need people to tell you what to do,” said the jarl of the Three Tusk clan.

Both Ulric and Hamnet Thyssen burst out laughing. Trasamund scowled first at one, then at the other, then at both of them together. “Oh, yes, Your Ferocity, I obey orders like any other slave,” Hamnet said. “When Sigvat commanded me to come back to Nidaros, I turned around and went. That’s why I’m sleeping in silk sheets on a feather bed in the capital now, instead of up here getting ready to fight the Rulers.”

“And everyone down in Raumsdalia told me how smart I was to come north again,” Ulric Skakki added. “Everyone there knows how important this fight is. Everyone cheered me on.”

Trasamund’s scowl darkened. “You make fun of me.”

“Wouldn’t you say that’s the chance you take when you come out with something funny?” Ulric said.

“But you are not like most of your folk,” the Bizogot said.

“Then why talk about us as if we were?” Hamnet Thyssen asked.

They might have gone on bickering, but someone at the northern edge of the encampment raised a shout: “Scout coming in!”

Hamnet Thyssen tensed. He could think of only one reason a scout would come back to the Red Dire Wolves’ camp – to warn that the Rulers were on the move at last. He hurried forward, wondering what the man would say. Several Bizogots waved to the scout. “Is it war?” they cried.

“It’s war!” the scout yelled back, and hope and fear went to war inside Count Hamnet. The rider went on, “Where are the others? Haven’t you heard before me? I’m the third one who set out with the news.”

“You’re the first who got here,” Totila said, and Hamnet’s fear jeered at his hope. What had the Rulers done to the other scouts? Reached out with their dark magic? He couldn’t think of anything else likely. Totila, meanwhile, continued, “You have seen the Rulers face-to-face. What do you make of them?”

“What we heard before from the strangers and foreigners seems to be true, Your Ferocity,” the scout replied. “They have lancers and archers on mammoths. The rest of their warriors ride deer. They keep in straight lines where we would ride in groups.”

Discipline, Hamnet Thyssen thought, not for the first time. The Rulers had it – had, perhaps, even more of it than the Empires soldiers. The Bizogots? The Bizogots didn’t even have a word for it, and had to talk around it when they saw it.

But the Bizogots were fierce. Totila shook his fist. “Straight lines, is it? Well, we’ll put some kinks in them, by God! See if we don’t!” His clansmen bawled their approval. “To horse!” he roared, and they ran for their mounts.

Liv asked the scout, “Did you see anything of their magics? Did you feel as if something passed close to you but didn’t strike?”

“No, lady shaman.” The man touched his right fist to his forehead in token of respect. “But may the teratorns take me if I know what happened to the other two men who rode south with the news.”

“How lucky are we that even one got through?” Ulric Skakki murmured to Count Hamnet. “And what will we be riding into when we go against those devils?”

“We beat them once, up in Three Tusk country,” Hamnet said.

“Yes? And so? A raid. And we caught them by surprise,” Ulric said. “This time, they’ll know we’re coming. And they’ll be ready.”

“If you don’t think we have a chance, maybe you’d better not come along,” Hamnet said.

“Oh, no. I might be wrong. I don’t think so, but I might.” Ulric grinned a crooked grin. “And if admitting that doesn’t prove I’m no Bizogot, demons take me if I know what would.”

“Well, we’ll know pretty soon,” Hamnet said. “Sometimes finding out is better than waiting.”

“So it is. And sometimes it’s worse, too,” Ulric said, which, unfortunately, was also true. Instead of answering, Hamnet went to mount. So did Ulric Skakki. The smile on the adventurer’s face might have meant anything.

Most of the Red Dire Wolves and all the surviving men from the Three Tusk clan rode with Totila and Trasamund. The rest of the Red Dire Wolves were driving their musk oxen and mammoths off to the south and west to give them something to fall back on if they had to. Part of Hamnet Thyssen said that that was wrong, that the Bizogots should act as if they were sure of winning.