Breath of God

“Just another Raumsdalian who’s lost to the Rulers,” Hamnet broke in.

Ulric Skakki shook his head. “You’re a foreigner. You’re interesting. You’re exotic. You carry hope.”

“And other diseases,” Hamnet Thyssen said.

“Ow!” Ulric wasn’t easy to wound with words, but he flinched then. Gathering himself, he said, “Well, the Rulers would agree with you.”

“Bugger the Rulers. Bugger em with a pine cone,” Count Hamnet said.

“That’s what we’re here for,” the adventurer reminded him.

“I know,” Hamnet said. “We’re going to have to hit them. If we don’t, the Bizogots will decide we’re good for nothing. They’ll ride off and leave us, and then -”

“We will be good for nothing,” Ulric Skakki finished for him. “Well, the world has been telling me I’m good for nothing for a long time. Maybe it’s been right all along. You never can tell.”

Hamnet Thyssen glowered at him. “We haven’t got much of an army here. If we strike at the Rulers and lose. ..” He shook his head. “If that happens, we’re ruined.”

“We wouldn’t be way the demon up here if plenty of people didn’t already think we were ruined,” Ulric said. “So far, we’ve hurt the Rulers here on the steppe. We’ve killed their men and slaughtered their animals. And have they hurt us? Have they even touched us? They haven’t, and you know it.”

Reluctantly, Hamnet nodded. He did know it, but knowing it brought no reassurance. “Pinpricks,” he said. “We’ve given them pinpricks, and they haven’t bothered noticing. But they will if we hit them hard.”

Ulric Skakki set his mittened hands on Hamnet s shoulders. “You can stay invisible, or you can make a proper enemy. The way it looks to me, those are your only choices. And you can’t do both at once. So which would you rather?”

“What do you think?” Hamnet asked.

“Well, I hoped I knew,” Ulric Skakki answered.

“You do,” Hamnet said grimly. Ulric nodded and stopped bothering him, one of the more sensible things the adventurer ever did.

For all their bold talk, Hamnet and Ulric didn’t lead their growing band across the frozen top of Sudertorp Lake, the way they’d gone north the year before. They’d almost died the year before, too, when magic from the Rulers cracked the ice and nearly spilled them into the freezing water.

Maybe Marcovefa could have shielded them from a repeat of that fright. She seemed sure her sorcery was close to full strength. All the same, Count Hamnet didn’t want to test her before he had to. And, despite the confidence she showed, she didn’t seem eager to test herself, either. Ready, yes, but not eager.

“When the time comes, I will do what wants doing,” she said. “Till then … Well, each day I am stronger. Each day my head is clearer.”

“That’s what I want to hear,” Hamnet said.

“I do not say it because you want to hear it. I say it because it is true,” Marcovefa told him.

“All right. Good.” He didn’t want to quarrel with her. He looked across the rolling, snow-covered landscape. With no trees, the Bizogot steppe grew boring in winter. “I wonder if the Golden Shrine is anywhere near here. If it is, you’d probably heal right away if you went inside.”

“We knew of the Golden Shrine up on top of the Glacier, too,” Marcovefa said. “We thought it was up there – somewhere up there. Sometimes we went looking for it, but no one ever found it.”

“When your ancestors first went up atop the Glacier, they already knew about the Golden Shrine,” Hamnet answered. “Most folk say it’s the oldest thing in the world. Some say it was there before the Glacier first came down from the north. Eyvind Torfi

“He is a strange man. He has no magic in him, but he is wise. I did not think that could be, but it is.” Marcovefa paused. “He is wise, except for the woman he chose. She is pretty, but….”

“You know she was mine once,” Hamnet said.

“I know she was wed to you once, yes. But she was never yours. Gudrid is only Gudrid’s.”

“Well, yes,” Hamnet agreed. “But I didn’t know that then, and I paid for the lesson.” Gudrid was even prettier in those days, too, which made the price dearer – or at least seem dearer to a man who was younger himself.

“The Golden Shrine . . .” Marcovefa seemed willing not to talk about Gudrid, which suited Count Hamnet fine. “We say you find it if you don’t expect it. If you look for it, it is never there.” Her grin was impish. “We must have looked for it. It was never there for us.”

“We say the same kinds of things about it,” Hamnet agreed. “I didn’t believe it was there at all till I learned of the lands beyond the Glacier. Now I think maybe there is such a thing. But it is where it wants to be, not where we want it to be. Does that make any sense at all?”

“More than you know, maybe,” Marcovefa said.

Before Hamnet could ask her what she meant, a scout came galloping back. “We found them!” he shouted. “We found the stinking mammoth turds! Now let’s go kill every cursed one of them!”

The Bizogots who formed the bulk – formed almost all – of Hamnet’s army roared like the predators they were. Everyone thundered forward. Hamnet didn’t much want a battle just then. He had one anyhow. Now he had to try to lead it. If he didn’t, one thing seemed plain: the army wouldn’t be his anymore.

There were things the scout hadn’t said. How many enemies waited ahead? Were they ready to fight? For that matter, Count Hamnet wondered whether his own army was ready to fight. They’d run from the Rulers often enough before. Only one way to find out…

“I see em!” Trasamund bellowed. So did Hamnet Thyssen: a line of men on riding deer, with the bigger lumps of mammoths anchoring the center of their line. They were ready, then.

“Try to stay out of slingstone range!” Hamnet shouted to Marcovefa.

She gave back what was anything but a military salute. Then she blew him a kiss. He wondered what it meant. He wondered if it meant anything. He’d find out – probably sooner than he wanted.

Sooner than he wanted, he found the Rulers had at least one wizard with them. Snow leapt up from the ground. It took the shapes of wolves and of the fierce great cats from beyond the Glacier – tigers, the Rulers called them. Count Hamnet thought they were illusion till one of the snow tigers tore the throat out of a scout’s horse and then killed the Bizogot, too.

If Marcovefa couldn’t do anything about that. . . Would the magic beasts break up the Bizogot charge by themselves, or would they terrify the Bizogots into turning around and fleeing? They weren’t far from scaring Count Hamnet into turning around.

But then they all burst into puffs of steam. Marcovefa laughed in delight. Hamnet thought that was joy at having her power back. He was delighted that she had it back, too.

“Give them something to remember you by!” he yelled.

Marcovefa laughed again. “Oh, they will remember me!” she said. Maybe it was her joy that made her do what she did next. All the Rulers’ riding beasts – deer and mammoths alike – seemed to go into heat at the same time, and into a more fiery heat than any they knew in their proper mating season.

A mammoth interested in rutting with another mammoth was a mammoth rather spectacularly not interested in carrying warriors of the Rulers into battle. The same held true for riding deer. Bucks butted at one another and locked antlers. Does pushed their way towards the males, ignoring the riders trying to push them towards the Bizogots.

Some of the enemy fighting men could still use their bows. Most seemed at least as distracted as their beasts. The Rulers had no hope fighting with swords and spears. Those required cooperation between warriors and mounts, but they had none.

Only a few slingers made life difficult for the Bizogots. The band Hamnet’s men had come across didn’t seem to be an army on campaign, as the one down in Raumsdalia had been. It was probably a clan’s worth of men – if the Rulers used clans. The Bizogots broke their line with ease. Why not, when their own animals had broken it?