Breath of God

“That will be enough of that,” Eyvind Torfi

Servitors began bringing in the meal. Trays of mutton and spicy pork and goose filled the table. An edge sharper and more dangerous than the one on any carving knife filled Gudrid’s voice: “And if I don’t?”

If she intimidated Eyvind Torfi

“Yes, Your Splendor,” the servant said.

“But I don’t want to go to my bedchamber,” Gudrid said, which would surely do for an understatement till a bigger one came along.

“Will you mind your ma

“I will do and say whatever I need to do and say,” Gudrid answered, as if no other reply were possible. Plainly, she thought none was.

“Rorik . ..” Eyvind said. The servant touched Gudrid on the shoulder.

She screamed at him, and at her husband. Hamnet Thyssen looked down at the tabletop. He’d seen Gudrid’s temper kindle before. He’d been on the receiving end of it more often than he cared to remember. In a way, he still was. This fracas was about him, even if he didn’t happen to be at the center of it.

Ulric Skakki yawned. “A little politeness would fix everything. Too bloody much to ask for, I suppose.”

Gudrid didn’t intend to be polite. She grabbed a knife. Rorik knocked it away from her before she had the chance to try to stab him. That made Gudrid screech like a dire wolf with an arrow in its rump. For his part, Count Hamnet didn’t blame the servant one bit. His former wife didn’t take kindly to being thwarted by anybody.

“You may stay… if you’ll stay civil,” Eyvind Torfi

Her eyes blazed. She wasn’t about to forgive her husband any time soon, either. But she nodded and spat out three words: “Oh, all right.”

Earl Eyvind beamed, which struck Hamnet as misplaced optimism. He kept his mouth shut, though. “Thank you, my dear,” Gudrid’s current husband said.

She answered with something low-voiced, something Count Hamnet couldn’t quite make out. If Eyvind Torfi

Gluttony seemed safe here. Gluttony, after the musty water and the small loaves of bad bread in Sigvat’s dungeon, seemed all but obligatory. Hamnet might not have been able to match the Bizogots in his relentless pursuit of a full belly, but he did his level best.

Eyvind Torfi

“As soon as I can,” Hamnet answered. “As soon as His Majesty gives me orders I can show people, orders that let them know I really do hold command there.”

Though Eyvind nodded, the cynical Ulric Skakki asked, “Will he give you orders like that in writing?”

“I don’t know. I don’t much care, either,” Count Hamnet said. “If he does give me what I need, I’ll go off and do my best with it. And if he doesn’t, I’ll go down to my castle instead – and wait for the Rulers to come to me.”

“What does he say?” Marcovefa asked. Both Ulric Skakki and Eyvind Torfi

She spoke mostly in the usual Bizogot tongue. Hamnet Thyssen had no trouble following that. “You may think the Rulers are easy meat,” he told her, “but, if you do, you’re the only one who does.”

“Too many things down below the Glacier.” Marcovefa said that in her own dialect, but Hamnet had heard it often enough to have no trouble understanding it. Believing it was another story.

Hamnet Thyssen ate for a while. Eyvind Torfi

Her eyes widened in surprise not, he judged, altogether feigned. “What is it?”

“Don’t ask His Majesty not to give me the orders I need,” he said.

This time, the way she batted her eyelashes was much too familiar. “Why would I do that?” she cooed, as if she didn’t know.

“To stop me. To make me go back to my castle. To make me fail,” Hamnet said bluntly. “We both know that would make you happy. By all the signs, though, I’m more likely to fail if I do go up against the Rulers than if I don’t. But if by some chance I don’t fail, that will be good for the Empire. What happens to me doesn’t matter much, not on that scale of things. What happens to Raumsdalia does.”

Eyvind Torfi

Gudrid? Gudrid stared at Hamnet as if he’d started speaking in Marcovefa’s dialect. “Why on earth should I care what happens to Raumsdalia?” she demanded. “I care about what happens to me … and I care about what happens to you.” The way she bared her small white teeth said she didn’t want anything good happening to him.

Eyvind Torfi

But all Earl Eyvind said was, “If you wish disaster upon your former husband, my sweet, the surest thing to do is let him go north and find it. That the Rulers have crossed the Bizogot plain in one campaigning season, that they have invaded the Empire, clearly shows anyone who stands against them is unlikely to stand for long.”

His words held more truth than Hamnet Thyssen might have wished. Hamnet wanted to beat the Rulers, not to throw himself away as so many Bizogots – and, now, a Raumsdalian army – had done before him. Whether he could do what he wanted was a different question.

With Eyvind Torfi

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Hamnet said. “I’ll have to do my best not to make a fool of myself, then, won’t I?”

Gudrid’s laugh was loud and rich. “But darling, we all know your best is nowhere near good enough, don’t we?”

He shrugged. “All I can do is all I can do.”

“This is true of all of us,” Eyvind Torfi