Breath of God

Instead of looking at her, he grimly stared straight ahead. After he rode to the top of a low rise, he could see what the carrion birds were waiting for. A sabertooth had pulled down a cow in a meadow, and was tearing great chunks of flesh from the carcass. The big cat’s short, stumpy tail quivered in delight as it ate.

The rest of the cattle in the herd had run off. They were starting to graze again, a couple of bowshots away. Every so often, their heads would rise – they knew where the sabertooth was, all right. But they also knew the killer wasn’t likely to go after them now that it had other meat.

And what it didn’t eat, the birds would. They waited in an expectant ring around the cat and the carcass. A raven hopped up and grabbed a gobbet of meat. Two more ravens tried to steal the dainty. The first one flew off, croaking angrily. One of the others chased it; the second seemed to decide its chances were better by the dead cow.

The sabertooth had ignored the thieving raven. Maybe it wasn’t big enough to seem a competitor. Teratorns were another story. A bird with a body bigger than a turkey’s and a wingspan as wide as three or four tall men – more to the point, a bird that size with a hooked beak in proportion – was enough to draw even a sabertooth’s notice. This one lashed out with a mitten-sized front paw, warning the teratorn back. The oversized vulture squawked irately and retreated. Teratorns had a name for being stupid, but this one wasn’t dumb enough to take on a sabertooth.

And the sabertooth wasn’t dumb enough to take on three dozen people on horseback. Its short tail quivered again, this time in fury, as they approached. It roared, baring its formidable teeth. When it saw it couldn’t scare them off, it slunk away. Its short hind legs gave it a peculiar gait, different from any other big cat’s.

As soon as the sabertooth scuttled off towards the woods, the teratorns and lesser vultures and ravens – and a couple of opportunistic foxes – swarmed over the dead cow. There was plenty of meat for all of them, but they snapped and screeched at one another just the same.

Eyeing them with wry distaste, Ulric Skakki asked, “Remind you of anything you’ve seen before?”

“What? You mean Nidaros?” Count Hamnet replied, and Ulric nodded. Hamnet went on, “I think they have better ma

Kormak Bersi looked from one of them to the other. Hamnet had the feeling he was remembering everything they said, and he would use it against them when they got to the capital. How can I land in worse trouble, though? he wondered, and smiled a little. Being in bad odor at the court had advantages he hadn’t suspected.

As the travelers made their long, crablike progress towards Nidaros, Hamnet Thyssen wondered what news was coming straight to the imperial city from the Bizogot plains. Were couriers pounding down from some border post farther east with news that the Rulers had shattered the Leaping Lynxes? Did they have word that the Rulers were closer to the tree line than that? Were the Rulers already over the border themselves?

If Sigvat II got news like that, what would he think? Would he decide he’d been hasty when he looked down his nose at Hamnet and his warnings? Would he set Raumsdalia in motion to fight the danger pressing down from the north?

Would he care at all? Or would he be so busy with his pleasures in the capital that it wouldn’t matter a bit to him? One way or the other, Hamnet thought, I’ll find out pretty soon.

One thing didn’t happen: they didn’t pass couriers galloping out from Nidaros with orders for the imperial armies to assemble. Maybe that was a good sign – maybe it meant the Rulers weren’t close to the border. Or maybe it meant that Sigvat wasn’t going to worry about them even if they were. Again, Count Hamnet had the feeling he’d know the answer before long.

The scarred badlands that stretched out west from what had been Hevring Lake slowed the journey to the capital. Shrubs and clumps of grass sprouted here and there; birds and rabbits and other small game prowled the pocked landscape. The road had to make its way around and through all the scabby ravines and canyons, often doubling back on itself like a snake with a twisted spine. No farmers worked that land; it was far too rough to be broken to the plow. Some of the handful of people who did live there were hunters. Others were men and women who hoped everyone outside the badlands had forgotten they were alive.

Ulric Skakki raised a sardonic eyebrow in Hamnet Thyssen’s direction. “Always good to get a look at your future home, isn’t it?”

“I won’t end up here, by God,” Hamnet said.

“On the gibbet, maybe, but not here,” Ulric said.

Hamnet only shrugged. “The gibbet would be better.”

“What makes land like this?” Marcovefa asked. “We didn’t see any other land – how do you say it? – torn up like this before.”

As best he could, Hamnet Thyssen explained about how the flood that burst from Hevring Lake when its dam of dirt and ice finally failed scarred the land over which it poured. “Sudertorp Lake, farther north, has the same kind of cork in the jug – you saw that,” he added. “One day it will open up, too, and pour across the Bizogot country. When everything is done up there, more badlands will stretch out to the west.”

She thought about that, then nodded. “Could happen,” she agreed. “Yes, could happen. Did magic make this, uh, dam go down?”

“No.” Hamnet pointed north. “Once, a couple of thousand years ago, this was the edge of the Glacier. Yes, all the way down here. But it moved back, the weather got warmer, and the ice in the dam melted through. Sometimes big things happen all by themselves.”

“Maybe.” Marcovefa sounded more as if she were humoring him than as if she believed it.

They saw Nidaros’ smoke rising into the sky days before they came to the capital. “People. Lots of people,” Marcovefa said, pointing towards the dark smudge, and she was right. Any town let travelers know it was there well before they came to its walls because of the smoke that poured from hearths and cookfires and torches and lamps and all the other useful flames men and women kindled. An experienced traveler could gauge the size of a town from the smoke plume it sent up. The shaman from atop the Glacier was anything but an experienced traveler, but she saw that this smoke rose up from anything but an ordinary town.

“Are you glad to be coming home?” Kormak Bersi asked Count Hamnet.

The Raumsdalian noble didn’t laugh in the agent’s face, which to his mind only proved his restraint. “This is not my home. I wouldn’t be glad to come here even if I weren’t in hot water with the Emperor,” he answered. “My home, such as it is, is a castle in the southeast, not far from where the woods begin. I wouldn’t mind going there and forgetting about everything else, but I don’t think everything else will forget about me. Sooner or later – likely sooner – the Rulers would end up besieging the place, and I doubt I could fight off the whoresons with my own retainers.”

Kormak stared at him. “You think those barbarous savages can beat our glorious soldiers? For shame!”

“For one thing, our glorious soldiers have never fought lancers on mammothback,” Hamnet Thyssen said. “For another, I’m not really worried about our glorious soldiers. I’m worried about the Rulers’ wizards. Ask . .” He ran down with a growl deep in his throat. He’d started to say, Ask Audun Gilli. Ask Liv. Now he didn’t even want to think about talking to them, though he knew he would have to. Growling still, he went on, “Bizogot shamans couldn’t beat them – couldn’t come close. And neither could our wizard.” He pointed towards Audun. He wasn’t aiming an arrow at the man who’d stolen Liv from him. It only felt that way.

“I don’t think much of the kind of magic Bizogots can muster.” Kormak sounded smug and patronizing. Raumsdalians often looked down their noses at their northern neighbors. They often had good reason to look down their noses at them, too. Here. .