Breath of God

He soon decided that part was being stupid. Wasn’t it the part that had clung to Gudrid, the part that had refused to see anything wrong? Wasn’t it the blind part, the brainless part? He thought it was. The Red Dire Wolves were only being sensible.

But even as he nodded to himself, he worried. If you planned for the worst thing that could happen, weren’t you more likely to bring it about? Wouldn’t your warriors be more cautious, thinking, Well, even if we lose here, it isn’t the end of the world? If you went into battle, shouldn’t you go into it thinking you had to win no matter what?

Wasn’t that, in fact, what made Bizogots fiercer than Raumsdalians most of the time? Raumsdalians, with all the resources of the Empire behind them, could more easily afford to lose than the mammoth-herders could. The Empire’s soldiers could come back and win another day. The Bizogots lived, and fought, in the moment.

And the Rulers? What of them? As far as Hamnet could see, they couldn’t afford to lose here. They had to go forward. Back, back towards the Gap and even beyond it, would be nothing but disaster for them.

Someone pointed. Shouts rang out. “There they are!” the Bizogots yelled. “Now we’ll get them!” Totila’s men were brave enough, no doubt of that.

“Revenge!” Trasamund bellowed. All his clansmen took up that cry. Liv’s voice rang clear and high among the deeper ones. She was his woman, but she was a Three Tusk Bizogot, too, and always would be.

Mammoths in the center, riding deer on the outthrust wings. If Hamnet had commanded the Rulers, he would have deployed his forces the same way. Where were their wizards? That was another worry. Hamnet glanced to Liv, to Audun Gilli, to Odovacar farther away. They’d held off the spirit hawks, whatever those were. They’d barely done it, but they had. Could they withstand the invaders once more?

They’d better, Hamnet Thyssen thought. We all go down if they fail. He looked over at Liv again. If she failed, she wouldn’t just be in danger of losing a battle. She risked dying a dreadful death by sorcery. His mind shied from that thought like a horse shying from a snake.

While the mammoths were off in the distance, they seemed like … animals. As they neared, the Bizogots and Raumsdalians got a better notion of their size. They seemed to swell and swell. If they charged, when they charged . .. Hamnet didn’t know how the horsemen riding to either side of him could stand up to that.

“They look funny,” a Bizogot said.

“They look wrong,” another one agreed.

“Why, those sneaky sons of whores!” Ulric Skakki exclaimed in Raumsdalian. “They put leather armor on their God-cursed beasts.”

He was right. That armor wouldn’t stop everything, but it would turn some arrows and keep some of the woolly mammoths from running wild when they were wounded. It also proved that the Rulers paid attention to what their foes did. Trasamund’s Bizogots had harried the mammoths with arrows in their raid up into their own grazing lands. They wouldn’t have such an easy time of it now.

“Forward the Three Tusk clan!” Trasamund shouted. “There are the murderers, in front of us in a fair fight! Now we pay them back!”

Liv rode with the rest of Trasamund’s clansmen. That meant Hamnet Thyssen also rode with the Three Tusk Bizogots. Nothing would happen to her if he could possibly help it. And if he couldn’t help it, he wanted whatever happened to her to happen to him, too.

Shaking his head, Ulric Skakki stuck close to Count Hamnet. The adventurer would never have charged into battle on his own – Hamnet was sure of that. Striking from ambush was much more Ulric’s style. But he spoke not a word of complaint. He just strung his bow, nocked an arrow, and peered ahead for a likely target.

Audun Gilli stayed with Hamnet and Ulric. Count Hamnet was sure no strategy went into the wizards thoughts. He just didn’t want to be separated from the only other two Raumsdalians for many, many miles. But his choice also pulled the Red Dire Wolves forward faster than they might have gone otherwise. With Liv and Audun speeding into the fight, Totila didn’t want his clansmen warded by Odovacar alone. Hamnet Thyssen had a hard time blaming him for that. If the Red Dire Wolves stayed near the other two who knew magic, they might stay under their protection.

If they have any protection to give, Hamnet thought. Well, we’ll find out.

Totila’s Bizogots shouted their jarl’s name. Trasamund’s followers kept roaring, “Revenge!” And now Hamnet Thyssen could hear the Rulers’ battle cries, too. They were deep and harsh, and in his ears might as well have been the calls of some fierce animals. No one on this side of the Glacier understood a word of the Rulers’ language. One more thing we should have started pulling from our prisoners, Hamnet thought. We’ve got to take care of that after the fight – if we have the chance.

A warrior of the Rulers on mammothback bent his horn-strengthened bow and let fly. His arrow fell short and kicked up a little puff of snow. Ulric Skakki grinned. “See?” he said. “They get buck fever, too.”

“So they do,” Count Hamnet said. In every battle in which he’d fought, archers opened up before they had any chance of hitting their foes. It was only human – if you could see the enemy, you thought you could kill him.

Some of the Bizogots also started shooting too soon. Their hate burned hot and clean and pure. And then, well before Hamnet Thyssen would have loosed a shot, a deer with one of the Rulers aboard crumpled and crashed to the ground, pinning the fighting man under its thrashing body. That was a prodigious shot, one Hamnet would have had trouble believing if he hadn’t seen it himself.

Trasamund thumped his chest. “Mine!” he bellowed, and held his bow over his head in triumph. “First blood to the Bizogots! First blood to the Three Tusk clan! Revenge!”

“Revenge!” his clansmen cried. Count Hamnet yelled, too, to make the war cry sound louder and fiercer. Whether that would do any good he had no idea. He was pretty sure it couldn’t hurt.

Then the Rulers’ arrows also started to bite. Bizogots and horses tumbled. Wounded horses screamed, high and shrill. So did wounded men. The horses sounded as if they suffered worse, and they probably did. The Bizogots at least knew why they were wounded. To the horses, it was all a dreadful, incomprehensible surprise.

Suddenly the mammoths loomed up right ahead, seeming as tall and vertical as the Glacier. Archers shot down from them with wicked effect. A lancer speared a Bizogot out of the saddle. The man shrieked as if demons had seized his soul.

The mammoth raised its trunk to trumpet. Could war mammoths feel triumph? Maybe they could. If this one did, its celebration proved premature. Ulric Skakki shot it in the tender and seldom exposed underside of the trunk. The spit-filled bugle call of victory turned to a squeal of pain.

One of the warriors of the Rulers on the mammoth’s back whacked it with an iron-tipped goad when it started to rear. However well the Rulers trained their beasts, they didn’t train them well enough to stay reliable when wounded. Hamnet Thyssen had seen that in an earlier skirmish. It didn’t surprise him. Horses were liable to run wild if they got hurt. So were the camels the Manches and other southwestern raiders rode. He would have been surprised if the same didn’t hold true for mammoths.

Of course, a mammoth wild with pain could do more than a horse or even a camel. This one decided it didn’t feel like being walloped. It reached up with its bleeding trunk, plucked the driver off its back, and threw him to the ground. He screamed, just as any man born on this side of the Glacier might have done. Then the mammoth stepped on him. Count Hamnet heard his ribs crunch as his chest caved in. The scream abruptly cut off.

Still trumpeting in pain, the mammoth lumbered off, careless of the other men on its back. “There’s one of the big cows out of the fight,” Ulric said cheerfully.

“So there is,” Hamnet answered. But how many mammoths were still in it? Too many, too cursed many.

An arrow hissed past his head like an angry serpent. Did the Rulers know about snakes, or were they as ignorant of them as the Bizogots? Liv hadn’t wanted to believe there were such creatures. No snake could survive winters like these. The Rulers might get some horrible surprises as they moved farther south – if they moved farther south. Hamnet hoped they didn’t get the chance.

He shot at a heavily bearded man on a deer. His arrow missed the enemy warrior but struck the deer in the haunch. It bounded away with the warrior still trying to fight it under control. He didn’t have much luck.

At its rider’s command, another deer lowered its head and charged Hamnet’s horse. The rider brandished a heavy curved sword. Even though the tines of those antlers weren’t pointed, Hamnet knew they could hurt or