The Breath of God
Page 9
“Don’t make yourself out to be that big a hero,” Ulric said. “You would have stayed down in the Empire if Liv stayed with you.”
“Yes, I like her company,” Hamnet said. “So what? I’m entitled to a little happiness if I can find it.”
“Nobody is entitled to happiness. You’ll lose it if you think you are.” Ulric spoke with unusual conviction. “You may stumble over it now and again, but that’s not because you’re entitled to it.”
He was likely to be right. No - as far as Hamnet could see, he was bound to be right. Recognizing as much, the noble changed the subject: “Even if I’d gone down to my castle instead of coming up here, I would have met the Rulers sooner or later. Or will you tell me I’m wrong about that?”
“I wish I could.” Ulric Skakki sighed. “Well, you don’t always get what you want. Sometimes you’re stuck with things. We’re stuck with the Bizogots now, and with the slim chances they have.”
“See? You think so, too,” Hamnet said.
“They’re doing something, anyhow.” Ulric sighed again, even more mournfully than before. “I wish they were doing more. I wish they knew how to do more. I wish they had some tiny notion of how to work together. And I wish Sigvat would have taken his head out of his . ..” He sighed one more time. “I said it myself a minute ago - you don’t always get what you want.”
“How about what you don’t want?” Count Hamnet asked. Ulric Skakki made a questioning noise. Hamnet explained: “I don’t want to get beaten again.”
“Oh. That,” Ulric said airily. “We’ll find out.”
Fighting among hisown countrymen, Hamnet Thyssen wouldn’t have ridden out as a scout to keep an eye on what the enemy was up to. The Raumsdalians had soldiers who specialized in such things, as they had specialists who had dealt with catapults, sharpshooting archers, and others who could do one thing very well and the others not so well.
Up in the Bizogot country, shamans were the only specialists. Everyone else had to be able to do all the things people needed to do to live on the frozen steppe; there wasn’t enough surplus to let the nomads be able to specialize. In bad years, there was no surplus at all - there wasn’t enough. Starvation was an uncommon misfortune down in the Empire, but a fact of life here.
Motion drew Hamnet s eye. It wasn’t a riding deer or a war mammoth in the distance, but a vole or lemming scurrying from one tussock to another almost under his horse’s hooves. A moment later, a weasel streaked after the other little animal. Most of the weasel’s coat had gone brown, with only a few small white patches left. The beasts needed no calendar to know spring was here.
Birds of all sizes from larkspurs to teratorns crowded the Bizogot country. Most of them fed on the bounty of bugs the springtime ponds brought. Others ate the birds that ate the bugs - hawks and owls lived here, too.
More waterfowl bred on the edges of Sudertorp Lake, south of the Red Dire Wolves’ grazing grounds, than anywhere else. But others found smaller ponds and puddles good enough. A goose rose from a pond and flew away as Hamnet came near. The bird couldn’t know he wasn’t hunting it. If he were hungry, he might have been.
He kept staring east. He was getting close to where the Bizogot had spotted the Rulers. The invaders’ scouts would probably be prowling out this way. They would want to know how alert the Bizogots were.
Ulric Skakki rode somewhere not too far away, though Hamnet couldn’t see him right now. The frozen steppe looked perfectly flat - and well it might, since the Glacier had lain on it so long and left so recently. But it wasn’t, or not quite; it had its gentle swells and dips. Some of those hid the adventurer from sight.
What do I do if four or five enemies come at me? But Hamnet Thyssen knew the answer to that. If he was outnumbered, he would run away. He wasn’t out to be a hero, or even a fierce warrior. All he wanted to do was make sure the Rulers weren’t heading for the Red Dire Wolves’ encampment along this line.
Something out there on the horizon .. . Hamnet’s eyes narrowed. He shaded them with his left hand, trying to see better. “Animals,” he muttered aloud. He urged his horse forward. Were those some of the Rulers’ herds, or perhaps beasts they’d stolen from the Bizogots? Or was that their army on the move? He had to find out.
As he rode forward, he wondered how the Rulers treated enemies they captured. Not very well, was his best guess. He hadn’t been a captured enemy the last time he stayed at one of their encampments. He’d been - what? A curiosity, perhaps, along with the other Raumsdalians and Bizogots who traveled beyond the Glacier.
But what he’d seen and heard made it clear the Rulers didn’t think men and women of other folk were really human beings. They were hard enough on their own kind, casting them out if taken prisoner and expecting them to kill themselves if defeated. On others? Hamnet Thyssen didn’t want to find out the hard way.
He hadn’t gone very far before a couple of small shapes separated themselves from the larger mass there on the horizon and came his way. He nodded to himself. The Rulers were alert. He might despise them - he did despise them - but they made monstrously good warriors.
He kept going a while longer, long enough to satisfy himself that he was just seeing a herd, not the vanguard of the Rulers’ army. That didn’t let those riding deer - he could plainly make out that they were riding deer now - get within bowshot of his horse, but it did let them come closer than he’d intended. No, he didn’t want to find out how the Rulers treated prisoners. He wheeled his horse and rode back more or less in the direction from which he’d come.
Hoarse shouts rang out behind him, faint in the distance. Had the enemy warriors thought he would oblige them by riding straight into their hands? Too bad for them if they had.
When he looked over his shoulder, they were coming after him as fast as their riding deer would go. He booted his horse up from a trot to a gallop. He kept zigzagging a bit, not wanting to show the Rulers exactly in which direction the Red Dire Wolves’ camp lay.
They kept after him. If they ran their antlered mounts into the ground in the pursuit, they didn’t seem to care. He had more trouble pulling away from them than he’d thought he would.
He began looking around for Ulric Skakki. He didn’t want to be rescued, or not exactly, but he wouldn’t have minded knowing where the adventurer was.
Then he found out. He chanced to be looking back again when one of the Rulers threw up his hands and slid off over his riding deer’s tail. A moment later, an arrow struck the other one’s mount. The deer crashed to the ground, pinning the warrior beneath it. Ulric Skakki galloped up, sprang down from his horse, and finished the man with a swordthrust.
By the time Hamnet rode back to him, he was already mounted again. “That was . .. nicely done,” Hamnet said, reflecting that Ulric made a monstrously good warrior, too, even if he wasn’t showy about it the way the Rulers were.
“Thanks,” Ulric answered now. “You made it easy. They didn’t pay any attention to me till much too late.”
“The foxes chased the hare and didn’t notice the dire wolf?” Hamnet wasn’t sure he liked the idea of being nothing more than someone who distracted the foe from a real danger. He wanted the Rulers to think he was dangerous himself.
Ulric winked at him, disconcertingly sharp. “You’ve got the cutest whiskers.”
“I’m so glad you think so.” Hamnet Thyssen batting his eyes made Ulric laugh out loud. Count Hamnet couldn’t keep his mood light for long. He asked, “Did you get a good look at the herd up ahead?” He pointed east. “How many of the Rulers were there with it?”
“At least these two.” The adventurer pointed to one of the corpses. “I didn’t see that many more. Did you?”
“I didn’t think so,” Hamnet answered. “I’d say we’ve proved the main thrust against the Red Dire Wolves won’t come along this path.”
“I’d say you’re right.” Ulric nodded. “And I’d also say we’d better get back to them anyhow. That thrust is coming, whether it’s coming this way
or not. I don’t want to ride into camp and find out there’s no camp left, if you know what I mean.”
Hamnet Thyssen understood him much too well. He didn’t want to think of getting back there and finding the Rulers had broken the Bizogots. If anything happened to Liv . .. He especially didn’t want anything to happen to her if he wasn’t there to do all he could to keep it from happening. That probably didn’t make much sense, but he didn’t care. “Let’s ride,” he said harshly.
Again he had the feeling Ulric Skakki knew exactly what he was thinking. He didn’t care. As long as the adventurer kept his mouth shut about Liv, they would get along fine. If Ulric didn’t. ..
If Ulric didn’t, Hamnet would try to hurt him. He wasn’t sure he could. The last time he tried, he flew through the air with the greatest of ease and ended up, suddenly and painfully, on his back on a hard stone floor. He was bigger than Ulric Skakki, and thought he was stronger. Ulric was faster and trickier. More often than not, that gave him the edge.
“We shouldn’t quarrel among ourselves,” Ulric said, not quite out of nowhere. “We should save it for the Rulers.”
“Well, you’re right.” Hamnet Thyssen wasn’t about to let Ulric know he’d been thinking about fighting him.
A short-eared fox trotted across their path. Like the weasel’s, its pelt was going from white to brown. The hares up here were also short-eared and stocky next to the ones that bounded across the Raumsdalian prairie, while northern lynxes were more compact than bobcats. “What about the Bizogots?” Ulric Skakki asked when Count Hamnet remarked on that. “Why aren’t they built like balls?”
“They wear clothes. They build fires,” Hamnet answered. “And take a look at the Rulers. They are broader and thicker than most folk from this side of the Glacier.”
Ulric grunted. “If I never had to look at the Rulers again, it wouldn’t break my heart. You’d best believe that.”
“Nor mine,” Count Hamnet agreed.
“I wonder what their women are like, though,” Ulric said, all at once thoughtful. “We haven’t seen them.”
“They’re here now. Liv saw them in her spirit flight. She called them ugly bitches,” Hamnet Thyssen said. “So the Rulers aren’t just coming to raid. They’re coming to settle.”
“I want to see their women myself, in the flesh, not just in spirit,” Ulric Skakki said. “They would mean we’ve beaten them so badly, we’re coming up to their camps.”
“Or it could mean they’ve captured us and put us to work there,” Count Hamnet said. Ulric made a horrible face. “Besides,” Hamnet went on, “you don’t mean you want to see them. You mean you want to swive them.”
“Well, yes,” Ulric admitted, “but if you say that to a Bizogot girl named Arnora I won’t be very happy with you.”
Count Hamnet had noticed that Ulric had taken up with one Bizogot in particular instead of spreading himself through the mammoth-herders’ women as opportunity, among other things, arose. Hamnet had a horror of infidelity. All the same, he said, “I won’t blab. Sooner or later, though, you’ll give yourself away.”
“Let me worry about that.” Ulric could have said a good many other things. He left them unspoken. Hamnet appreciated his tact, such as it was.
They spotted smoke an hour or so later. Hamnet feared at first it was the smoke of a sack, but soon realized there wasn’t enough for that. It was only the normal smoke that rose above any Bizogot encampment. He breathed a loud, long sigh of relief.
Ulric Skakki sent him a crooked smile. “Now that you mention it, yes.”
When they rode into the camp, the Bizogots cheered to learn they’d slain a couple of warriors from the Rulers. “Two more we won’t have to worry about at the next big battle,” Totila said, sounding a lot like Trasamund.
Arnora embraced Ulric after he got down from his horse. Her blue eyes shone. She was as tall as he was, and almost as wide through the shoulders. “Kill more of them,” she said with Bizogot directness. “Kill many more. I’ll make you glad you do.” She led him off to a tent to attend to that on the spot.
“We only gave them a fleabite,” Hamnet said, scratching as if reminded. “Before long, they’ll try to do worse to us.”
“Let them come!” Trasamund shouted. “Let them do their worst! Do they think we fear them? By God, we’ll teach them a thing or two. Let them
come!
Hamnet Thyssen looked at Liv. She said what was in his mind, too: “Be careful what you ask for, Your Ferocity, or God may decide to give it to you.”
The Rulers cametwo days later, driving in the scouts patrolling to the east and sending them headlong back into the Red Dire Wolves’ encampment in fear for their lives. “Arm yourselves!” the scouts shouted as they rode in. “We have to fight!”
“To me, Three Tusk clan!” Trasamund bellowed. “To me! Another chance for vengeance is here!”
Totila shouted for his warriors, too. Hamnet Thyssen wished other clans had ridden in. That would have given the Bizogots a better chance against their foes. Or maybe, he thought glumly, it would have given the Rulers the chance to get rid of more Bizogots at once. He knew too well that the Bizogots had had little luck against the invaders in battle.
“Can we stop them?” he asked Liv.
“Do you mean, can our fighters stop theirs? Man for man, we can match them,” she said. “When it comes to shamanry, though .. . Well, Audun and Odovacar and I will do our best. I have to hope it will be good enough.”
He gave her a quick kiss. He had to hope whatever magic the shamans and Audun Gilli could muster would be good enough, too. “If you can spook their war mammoths ...”
“That would be good, wouldn’t it?” Liv said. “We’ll try. We’ll try everything we can think of.”
“This is our land!” Totila was shouting. “These are our herds! Are we going to let these flyblown mammoth turds steal them from us?”
“No!” the Bizogots yelled back. Their spirits still seemed high. Hamnet Thyssen admired them for that, at the same time wondering where they’d left their memories. The Rulers already held the heart of the Red Dire Wolves’ grazing lands. The invaders had already beaten the clan once. Why did Totila think his countrymen could beat the Rulers now?
Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he just thought they had to make the fight. If they didn’t, if they fled, they would be invaders themselves, trying to take land from other Bizogots. And they would have a brand new war on their hands if they did. Sometimes you needed to fight even when the odds were bad.
“Well, well.” Ulric Skakki looked up from the methodical examination he was giving the arrows in his quiver. “Doesn’t this sound like fun?” His bright, cheery voice matched the wide smile on his foxy features.
Count Hamnet just shook his head. “No.”
“What do you suppose the Bizogots will do if things go wrong again?” Ulric spoke Raumsdalian, so most of the mammoth-herders wouldn’t understand. “What do you suppose we’ll do if things go wrong?”
“Try to stay alive,” Hamnet said, also in Raumsdalian. “What else can we do? What can anybody do when things go wrong?”
“A point. Yes, a distinct point.” The adventurer tapped one of the points sticking up from the quiver. “Not too sharp a point, I hope.”
The Bizogots and the Raumsdalians who’d come north rode out behind the scouts a little later. Women and old men stayed behind to tend the herds, though some women carried bows to battle. Arnora rode beside Ulric Skakki, and seemed as ready to fight as any of the men howling out battle songs.
If the Rulers broke the Red Dire Wolves again, would the herd guards be able to keep the Bizogots’ animals out of the invaders’ hands? Nobody could know something like that ahead of time, but Hamnet had his doubts.
“There!” The shout rose from up ahead. “There they are, the God-cursed rogues!”
“Are you ready?” Hamnet asked Liv.
“I’d better be, but how much difference would it make if I weren’t?” she said.
She smiled at him the way a mother might smile at a fussy child. “We can do things,” she replied. “I don’t know whether they’ll work the way we hope, but we can do them.”
He had to be content, or not so content, with that. He worried as he rode forward with the Bizogots. If Liv and Audun and Odovacar couldn’t stop or slow down the mammoths, this battle was lost before it began. They had to see that, didn’t they?
Liv did. Audun probably did. Odovacar? Hamnet Thyssen wasn’t sure how much Odovacar saw, or how much it mattered.
Closer now. The mammoths loomed up ahead like perambulating mountains. The riding deer out to the flanks weren’t nearly so formidable. Where were the Rulers’ wizards? What new deviltry were they planning?
The Bizogots shouted Totila’s name, and Trasamund’s. They shouted for vengeance. They roared out their hatred of the Rulers. They shook their fists. They yelled curses that probably wouldn’t bite. And the Rulers yelled back. Hamnet Thyssen still knew next to nothing of their harsh, guttural speech. All the same, he doubted that the invaders were praising the Bizogots or passing the time of day.
Arrows started to fly. “Do you see?” Ulric Skakki said. “They’ve put more armor on their mammoths.”
Hamnet hadn’t noticed, but Ulric was right. The thick leather sheets did cover more of the enormous beasts. “I don’t care how much they put on,” Hamnet said. “Leather won’t turn a square hit.” As if to try to prove the point, he nocked an arrow and let fly.
Ulric Skakki also began shooting. “I don’t think they can armor their deer, or not very much,” he said. “Those have all they can do to carry men. They don’t have any weight left over for armor, too.”
Down in the Empire, heavy cavalry horses would carry a trooper, his coat of mail, and iron armor of their own. Charges of such knights were irresistible . . . except, perhaps, by mammoths. But the Bizogots had neither such big horses nor such armor. Their warriors wore cuirasses of leather boiled in oil - when they wore armor at all. Their horses had no more protection than the Rulers’ riding deer.