Breath of God

Marcovefa stopped without warning in the middle of an icefield which looked no different from the rest of the Glacier that stretched as far as the eye could see. She spoke. As usual, Ulric translated: “This will do, she says.”

“Do what?” Hamnet asked.

She looked at him even before Ulric turned the dour question into words she could understand. He thought she would be angry at him for presuming to talk back, but amusement glinted in her eyes. She said a few words. Ulric asked her something. She nodded. “Do to keep the Glacier under our feet,” he reported. “That’s what she says.”

“Well, where else would it be?” Trasamund rumbled. “Up our – ?” He didn’t finish that, but went far enough to leave no doubt of his meaning.

Hamnet Thyssen waited for Marcovefa to get angry at him. Instead, the shaman started to laugh. When she spoke, so did Ulric. “She says you’re welcome to put it there if that makes you happy.” She added something else: “She’d like to watch if you try.”

Trasamund turned red. “Never mind,” he muttered. “I’ll keep my mouth shut from now on.” Hamnet didn’t believe he would – or could. That he said he would was surprising enough.

They set stones on the Glacier and dried dung on the stones so they could make fires and cook their meat. Marcovefa carried cuts that did not come from a hare or vole. Now that Hamnet had got used to the smell of that flesh roasting, he decided it didn’t quite smell like pork after all. It smelled better than pork, as if it were perfectly right for the nose, for the mouth, for the belly. He supposed it was – in a way. In every other way, though . .. He’d done a lot of things for which people could blacken his name. Better to walk off the edge of the Glacier than to earn the name of cannibal.

It didn’t bother Marcovefa. Man’s flesh was only food to her. Count Hamnet couldn’t match her detachment, and didn’t want to try.

Twilight lingered long even after the sun went down. Trasamund posted sentries. “Never can tell who saw the fires,” he said. He looked to Marcovefa to see if she had anything to say about that. She didn’t. She was getting ready to sleep. Lying on the Glacier was like lying on frozen rock. Hamnet Thyssen didn’t care. When you were tired enough, frozen rock felt like a mattress stuffed with eiderdown.

Morning twilight was already turning the eastern sky gray when a Bizogot shook him awake for sentry duty. “Anything look funny?” he asked around a yawn.

“Everything up here looks funny,” answered the Bizogot, whose name was Magnulf. “Nothing looks any worse than it did before, though.”

“All right.” Hamnet climbed to his feet. His back and shoulder and one knee creaked. Maybe frozen rock wasn’t so wonderful to sleep on after all. The Bizogot pointed northeast to show Hamnet where he should go. Knee still aching, he trudged in that direction.

After taking his place out there, he looked back towards the camp. In happier times, in easier times, Liv would often come out to keep him company while he stood watch. Not now. She lay there sleeping. She might have done that anyway. Hamnet Thyssen knew as much. But he chose to resent it this morning.

In due course, fire struck the edge of the world in the northeast: the sun climbing over the horizon. For the moment, Hamnet could look at it without hurting his eyes. That wouldn’t last long; the higher it climbed, the hotter it would seem. And the day would be warm, too. How long could the Glacier last if weather like this came every year?

It’ll last longer than I do, by God, Hamnet Thyssen thought, and he turned away from the sun. His shadow stretched out before him across the glacier-top, many times taller than he was. It would shrink as the day advanced and then advance as the day shrank, and finally darkness would swallow it. As the shadow goes, so the man.

Come morning, his shadow would be reborn. Himself? He had much less hope about that.

Looking away from the sun meant looking in the direction from which he’d come. People there were starting to stir. Someone waved in his direction: Ulric. Even at a couple of bowshots’ distance, the adventurer’s sinuous grace made him stand out. Ulric gestured to him to come back in. With the sun in the sky, anyone could see trouble coming.

Ha! Count Hamnet thought. If people could see trouble coming as easily as that, we’d all have less of it.

Small plumes of smoke rose from dried dung on flat stones. The air above the fires shimmered with heat. The Bizogots and Raumsdalians cooked small animals. Marcovefa roasted the abominable meat she liked better.

“Now what?” Hamnet asked, carefully licking all the grease from his fingers.

Ulric’s head swiveled as he surveyed the Glacier all around. “As far as I can tell, the plan is for us to sit here till we starve.” He didn’t sound like a man who was joking, but he did sound absurdly cheerful at the prospect.

“No.” That wasn’t Hamnet Thyssen; it was Audun Gilli. The wizard shook his head. “Oh, no.”

“You know something.” Count Hamnet sounded accusing, even to himself. “What is it?”

“Something is about what I know,” Audun agreed. “Something is going to happen, and happen soon. What?” He spread his hands and shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine, maybe better.”

“Will it happen before we starve?” Hamnet asked. “That would be nice, because Ulric’s right – we’re going to.”

“By God, we won’t starve to death up here,” the wizard said. “I don’t know what will happen to us, but not that.”

“You so relieve our minds,” Ulric said.

“You notice Marcovefa isn’t coming over here and slapping him silly – well, sillier,” Hamnet said, which won him a wounded look from Audun Gilli. That worried him not at all. He went on, “Must mean she thinks he knows what he’s talking about.”

“Happy day,” Ulric said. “Which of them is crazier, do you suppose?”

“Both of them,” Count Hamnet answered. That confused the wizard, but Ulric nodded in perfect understanding. Marcovefa eyed Hamnet as if wondering whether to say anything. When she didn’t, he was more relieved than he hoped he showed.

“What are we going to do today?” Trasamund demanded. “Sit around here freezing our arses off?”

“If you do much sitting around here, you will freeze your arse off,” Count Hamnet said. “On the other hand, where do you propose to go?”

“Back to the edge of the Glacier?” But Trasamund didn’t sound sure of himself – almost a first for the big, rambunctious Bizogot.

“Why?” Ulric asked. “What can you do there besides jump off? How long do you suppose you’d have to regret that before you went splut!”

He picked a particularly expressive noise to describe how Trasamund would sound when he hit. The jarl glared and muttered into his beard. Then he walked away shaking his head.

“Sometimes the worst thing you can do to somebody is tell him the truth,” Count Hamnet remarked.

“No doubt,” Ulric said. “And do you have any idea how many people get old and gray without ever once figuring that out?”

“Too many, or I miss my guess,” Hamnet said.

Marcovefa seemed happy enough sitting around doing nothing. Once, halfway through the day, a raven flew up and landed on her shoulder. It sat there as if it belonged, preening and making soft croaking noises and peering around with disconcertingly clever beady black eyes. Marcovefa took its presence for granted. She scratched its head. Instead of pecking her with its formidable bill, it bent forward like a cat so her hand could better find its itches.

“A familiar?” Ulric wondered out loud.

“Not exactly, or I don’t think so,” Audun Gilli said. “Seems more like a friend.”

The longer Count Hamnet watched, the more he thought Audun was right. Marcovefa croaked, too, as if she and the raven shared a language where she didn’t share one with the Bizogots and Raumsdalians all around her. The big black bird seemed to understand what she was saying, and she also seemed to follow it. Hamnet told