Breath of God

could hardly blame him. Now his clan, along with what was left of Trasamund’s, stood on the front line against the Rulers. Any blow that fell would probably fall on him.

He relaxed – a little – when Hamnet Thyssen shook his head and said, “No.” Hamnet let his hood drop down off his head and undid the top toggle on his fur jacket. It was warmer inside the tent, though more from the body heat of the people it sheltered than from the brazier’s feeble little fire.

“I sense nothing amiss – nothing close, anyhow.” Liv was the shaman from the Three Tusk clan. She was close to thirty, with golden hair (short and greasy and dirty, as the Bizogots’ hair commonly was), cheekbones as proud and sharp and angular as the Glacier, and eyes of the deepest blue Count Hamnet had ever seen.

He’d studied those eyes from very close range indeed. He and Liv were lovers. She was the only woman he’d met since Gudrid left him who made him . . . oh, not forget his former wife, but remember she wasn’t the only fish in the sea. And if that wasn’t a miracle, Hamnet Thyssen had never met one.

Totila went right on worrying. “Would you?” he asked. “Or could their magic mask their moves so you wouldn’t know till they got right on top of us?”

“It could,” Liv said seriously, at which the jarl gnawed on his lower lip. Hamnet understood how he felt. He himself had fretted over the way things went in his county down in the southeastern part of the Empire. And his domain never faced danger close to that which hovered above the Red Dire Wolves like a teratorn soaring through the air in search of a fresh corpse to gnaw.

“What good are your precious senses, then?” Totila snapped.

Liv didn’t rise to his anger and fear. “Maybe no good,” she answered, “but I don’t think so. Masking movement on that scale isn’t easy for us or for the Rulers. And we have sentries out.” She nodded towards Hamnet. “Even if my spells do fail, sharp eyes shouldn’t.”

“They’d better not,” the jarl said. He too nodded towards Hamnet, though his expression was gruff, not fond. “Feed yourself. We have meat, and you need to stoke your fire.”

“I know.” The Raumsdalian took off his mittens.

The meat came from a mammoth liver. Hamnet Thyssen impaled a chunk on a long bone skewer and started toasting it over the dung-fueled brazier. Through most of the year, the Bizogots didn’t have to worry about salting meat or smoking it to keep it edible. They had the biggest ice chest in the world right outside their tents.

They also had peculiar tastes – or so it seemed to a man from farther south. Listen to a Bizogot and he’d tell you meat cooked with wood lacked flavor. They were used to what dung fires did, and they liked it. Count Hamnet was getting used to it, too. He had to, or eat his meat raw, or starve. Whether he would ever like it was a different question.

Mammoth liver would have been strong-flavored stuff no matter what it was cooked over. Hamnet stolidly ate. He had to get used to being as carnivorous as a sabertooth, too. No grain up here – no bread, no porridge. No potatoes or turnips or even onions. In summer, the Bizogots varied their diet with the small, sweet berries that quickly ripened and then were gone. Those in the southern part of the frozen steppe gathered honey from the few hardy bees that buzzed about when the weather warmed and flowers blossomed frantically. They were fond of mushrooms. But for that, they ate meat, and occasionally fish.

“Nothing wrong to the north? You’re sure?” Liv said.

He shook his head. “There’s plenty wrong to the north, and we both know it. But I didn’t see any sign that the Rulers were about to swoop down on the Red Dire Wolves.”

“That’s what I meant,” Liv said. “But I don’t think they’ll wait much longer.”

Hamnet Thyssen liked the flavor of that even less than he liked the flavor of dung-cooked mammoth liver. “Is that your feeling?” he asked. “Or is it what your magic tells you?”

“Not mine. Audun Gilli’s,” the shaman answered. “His seems better at piercing the wards the Rulers use than mine does.” She didn’t sound jealous, merely matter-of-fact.

“Where is Audun, anyway?” Hamnet asked. The Raumsdalian wizard usually stayed in the jarl’s tent, too. He’d never learned much of the Bizogot tongue, and needed another Raumsdalian or Liv or Trasamund to translate for him.

“He’s with Theudechild, in the tent where she stays,” Liv said.

“Oh.” Hamnet left it there. He wondered what the Bizogot woman saw in Audun Gilli, who was short and slight and unprepossessing and could hardly talk to her. Whatever it was, she doted on him. And Audun seemed to like her well enough. He’d lost his family some years earlier, and lived in a drunken stupor till Ulric Skakki plucked him from the gutter – literally – and made him dry out.

Getting drunk among the Bizogots took dedication. Except for beer and wine brought up from the south, their only tipple was smetyn – fermented musk-ox or mammoth milk. It was sour and not very strong. The mammoth- herders poured it down, though.

Something else occurred to Hamnet. “He’s with Theudechild? The lamps are still lit.”

“So what?” Liv said. “People look the other way. They pretend not to hear. When you live in crowded tents most of the year, you have to do things like that. I’ve seen your houses with all their rooms.” She dropped in a couple of Raumsdalian words for things the Bizogots didn’t have and didn’t need to name. “You can get away from one another whenever you please. All we have are blankets – and the sense not to look when it’s none of our business.”

Not many Raumsdalians had that kind of sense. Maybe they didn’t need it so much. On the other hand, maybe they would have got along better if they had more of it. Hamnet said, “Well, it’s good to see Audun happy, too.”

Was it good to see himself happy? He had to think about that. He wasn’t used to thinking of himself as happy. After what Gudrid did to him – and after the way he spent years brooding and agonizing about what she did to him – he was much more used to thinking of himself as miserable. But he wasn’t, not any more.

“So it is,” Liv said. Did she know how happy she made him? If she didn’t, it wasn’t because he didn’t try to show her. And was that a twinkle in her eye, or only a flicker from one of those odorous lamps? Whatever it was, she asked, “Are you Bizogot enough to think blankets and the sense not to look are enough?”

“I’m not a Bizogot at all, and I never will be.” Count Hamnet paused, but not for long. “I don’t suppose that means I can’t act like one, though. I am here, after all. . ..” Not much later, he did his very best to pretend he and Liv had all the privacy in the world. By the small sounds she made even when trying to keep discreetly silent, his best seemed good enough.

Musk oxen were made for the frozen plains the Bizogots roamed. Their shaggy outer coats and the thick, soft hair that grew closer to the hide warded them against the worst the Breath of God could do. They knew how to scrape snow away with their hooves to uncover plants frozen under the snow. When danger threatened, they formed protective circles, with the formidably horned bulls and larger cows on the outside and the smaller females and calves within. Dire wolves and lions took stragglers now and again, but they had to be desperately hungry to attack one of those circular formations.

The Bizogots hadn’t fully domesticated the musk oxen they herded, but the beasts were used to having men around. The herders helped protect them from predators .. . and preyed on the musk oxen themselves.

Despite the threat from the Rulers, the Red Dire Wolf Bizogots had to follow the herds. If they lost them, they would starve. And the survivors from the Three Tusk clan and the Raumsdalians up from the south took their turn tending the musk oxen, too. The Three Tusk Bizogots knew just what to do; all across the northern steppe, the Bizogots tended their animals in much the same way. Hamnet Thyssen and Ulric Skakki did their best, and seemed to pick up what they needed to know fast enough to suit the Red Dire Wolves. Audun Gilli also did his best. Not even the Bizogots said anything else. How good that best was . ..

“Careful, Audun!” Count Hamnet pitched his voice to carry through the howling wind. “If you get too close, you’ll spook them.”

“If I stay this far away, though, I have trouble seeing the front part of the herd,” the wizard answered.

Patiently, Hamnet said, “Other riders are up there. We’re not doing this by ourselves, you know. We worry about the beasts close to us, they worry about the ones close to them, and when we put everything together the job gets done.”

“I suppose so.” Audun Gilli sounded distinctly dubious. “Better one person should be able to take care of everything.”

That was a wizard’s way of looking at the world. Wizards had as much trouble cooperating as cats did, and used weapons sharper and deadlier than fangs and talons. Working together meant sharing power and secrets,