Breath of God

“I hadn’t thought of it like that, but. . yes,” Hamnet said.

Fierce Bizogot dogs – some of them, by their looks, at least half dire wolf – ran out of the encampment towards the newcomers, barking and snarling. Buccelin and Gunthar shouted at them, which slowed them down but didn’t stop them. When Hamnet and Ulric and several of Trasamund’s Bizogots drew their swords, the dogs did stop – they knew that meant danger. Audun Gilli looked disappointed. He had a spell that made him seem like what God would have been if God were Dog instead, one that terrified even the fiercest beasts. Now he wouldn’t get to use it.

Marcovefa eyed the big dogs and their big teeth. She said something in her language. “What’s that?” Hamnet asked Ulric.

“She says they really are foxes the size of men,” Ulric answered. “One more thing we told her that she didn’t believe.”

“Tell her these are tamed, like the horses. Tell her the real dire wolves are bigger and fiercer,” Hamnet said. Ulric Skakki did. Marcovefa raised an eyebrow. She said something else. “Well?” Count Hamnet asked.

“She says these will do,” Ulric reported.

“I think so, too,” Hamnet said. He frowned a moment later. He had the feeling you can sometimes get when someone is staring at you from behind – not quite sorcery, but the next thing to it. He also had the feeling he knew who it would be, and he was right. When he turned, not quite so casually as he would have liked, he caught Liv’s eye on him. It was nothing! He didn’t say it, for it was too obviously true to need saying. She eyed him even so.

Had he eyed her and Audun the same way for as little reason? He didn’t shake his head, since Liv was still watching him, but that was how he felt. He hadn’t been thinking anything untoward about Marcovefa. He knew that, down deep inside. He didn’t know what Liv thought about Audun Gilli.

He also didn’t know how unfair that comparison was. But he didn’t know that he didn’t know, and so it did him no good.

The dogs reluctantly moved back and to the sides as the travelers advanced. Children stared at them, too: particularly at Hamnet and Ulric and Audun, who, in spite of their clothes, plainly weren’t Bizogots. Marcovefa stared at everything: the dogs, the children, the tents, the fires burning in front of them, the pots – trade goods up from the south – bubbling on top of those fires. The shaman sighed and spoke.

When Count Hamnet raised a questioning eyebrow, Ulric translated: “She’s going on again about how lucky the Bizogots are. They have big animals to get big hides for their tents. They have big bones to use. They have these big fires because of all the dung. They have those – things – to cook in. She wonders why the men of the Glacier never thought of those.”

Hamnet Thyssen tried to imagine the men of the Glacier making pottery. They almost certainly didn’t have the clay they would need. They would have trouble making fires big enough and hot enough to bake the clay even if they did have it. “I didn’t even see any baskets up there, let alone pots,” he said. “I was surprised they could make rope – and what they do make is the strangest stuff I ever saw.”

“That it is,” Ulric said. “It does the job, though.” It had done the job on the descent from the top of the Glacier. No one could ask more from it than that.

Buccelin held open a tent flap. “Here is the jarl. You will show him the respect he deserves.”

“We will,” Trasamund agreed, “if he shows us the respect we deserve.”

Buccelin looked dismayed at that, but did not contradict it. Along with Trasamund, Hamnet and Ulric and Audun went into Euric’s tent. So did Liv and Marcovefa. Liv stayed as far from Marcovefa as she could. Inside the tent, especially with so many people in it, that wasn’t very far.

Butter-burning lamps and the open tent flap gave what light there was inside. The smell of the lamps warred with that of indifferently cured hides and with the smell of Euric himself. He was a big, burly man a few years younger than Hamnet. Nodding to Trasamund, he said, “Hello, Your Ferocity. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“I’ve heard a lot about you, too, Your Ferocity.” Seeing that Euric did treat him as an equal made Trasamund preen.

“Tell me who your comrades are,” the jarl of the Snowshoe Hares said. Trasamund named them one by one. When he got to Marcovefa, Euric’s eyebrows leaped upwards. “Men from the south are one thing,” the other Bizogot observed. “A woman from the north – a woman from the north and from on high – is a different story.”

“We were there,” Hamnet Thyssen said. “We had to go up there, or the Rulers would have killed us. They are another story, too, and one you need to worry about. You won’t find the men of the Glacier coming down to eat your musk oxen.”

“Or your clansmen,” Ulric Skakki added, too quietly for Euric to hear.

“We’ve heard there is trouble with the Three Tusk clan, and lately with the White Foxes, too,” Euric said.

“Worse than trouble,” Trasamund said. “The only free folk left from the Three Tusk clan are with me here. The White Foxes have also been broken.”

“So have the Red Dire Wolves, south of the Three Tusk clan’s grazing grounds,” Count Hamnet said. “The Rulers make bad enemies.”

“Do they make good friends?” Euric asked, proving himself as practical and cynical a diplomat as any Raumsdalian ever born.

Hamnet Thyssen, Ulric Skakki, and Trasamund all looked at one another.

They’d come looking for an ally, not an opportunist. Ulric had the quickest tongue among them, and he gave an answer upon which Hamnet couldn’t have hoped to improve: “Good luck, Your Ferocity.”

Euric grunted. He was neither foolish nor innocent enough to imagine that Ulric meant the words literally. “How do you know?” he asked. “Did you try?”

“We spent a good bit of time talking with them when we went through the Gap last summer,” Hamnet said. “As far as they’re concerned, anyone who isn’t of their folk is less than human. They call other people herds. It’s hard to make friends with somebody who thinks he can drive you or shear you or slaughter you whenever he wants.”

The Snowshoe Hares’ jarl grunted again. “Well, you may be right,” he said – hardly a ringing endorsement. “But then, you don’t seem to have had much luck fighting them, either.”

“They’re not easy, by God!” Trasamund burst out. “They ride mammoths, and – ”

“I’d heard that,” Euric broke in. “I didn’t know whether to believe it.”

“It’s true.” All the Bizogots and Raumsdalians who’d met the Rulers spoke together in a mournful chorus.

Euric didn’t seem to know whether to be appalled or amused. He finally just nodded. “All right. I believe it now.”

“And their magic is stronger than anything we use,” Liv added. “They can do things we can’t, and they hurt us when they do. They’ve won battles because of it.”

Marcovefa said something. Euric stared at her in surprise. Her speech sounded as if it might belong to the Bizogot language, but when you tried to understand it you couldn’t. “What’s that?” the jarl asked.

As usual, Ulric Skakki translated: “She says the Rulers’ wizards aren’t so strong as Liv makes them out to be. I should point out that she’s never seen them, let alone tried to match her power against theirs.”

“Fat lot she knows about it, then,” Euric said scornfully.

Scorning Marcovefa was not a good idea. Had Euric asked him, Hamnet Thyssen would have said as much. The shaman from the mountain refuge atop the Glacier murmured more incomprehensibilities to herself.

Euric started to say something else. Instead, looking much more surprised than he had a moment earlier, he developed a sudden and apparently uncontrollable impulse to stand on his head. Then he whistled like a longspur. Then he yipped like a fox. Then he croaked like a raven. Marcovefa didn’t know much about horses or musk oxen or mammoths, or the jarl probably would have impersonated them, too.

“Tell her that’s enough,” Hamnet whispered to Ulric. “We want him to respect us, not hate us.”

“Right. I hope she listens to me.” Ulric spoke to Marcovefa. She shook her head. He spoke again, this time with a definite pleading note in his voice. She sniffed, but at last she nodded and murmured to herself once more.

Euric collapsed in a heap. He needed a moment to sit up straight, and another moment to regain his aplomb. When he did, he proceeded to prove himself no fool, for he inclined his head to Marcovefa and said, “I cry pardon, wise woman.”