“Huzzah,” Ulric said sourly. “For one thing, he doesn’t know he’s doing us any favors. For another, he won’t keep doing them for very long. He’s not going to run into the Rulers. They’re going to run over him.”
Again, that marched too well with what Hamnet was thinking. He sighed. His breath didn’t burst forth in a puff of steam: proof indeed that spring had come to the frozen steppe. He wondered if he would hear the sounds of battle behind the ragged band of fleeing Bizogots, but the White Foxes and the Rulers clashed too far off to let him.
With another sigh, he said, “Well, we’d better get as far away as we can while the Rulers are busy, and we ought to cover our tracks, too.”
“Now you’re talking,” Ulric Skakki told him.
Concealing a trailin the north country was at the same time simple and next to impossible. Splashing through shallow rills and puddles and pools - and there were no deep ones, thanks to the permanently frozen ground - gave long stretches where travelers showed no hoofprints. On the other hand, the mud all around that standing water showed tracks only too well.
If there were more high ground on the northern plains, concealment would have been hopeless. Anyone on a hill, even a modest hill, could have seen for many miles. But the swells and dips in the landscape were smaller than that. They were just enough to keep the ground from being perfectly flat, enough so that, when riders were in dips, swells helped hide them from those who came after them.
But when riders came up onto swells . . . Looking south and east a few hours after Sunniulf’s White Foxes rode past to battle the Rulers, Hamnet Thyssen spotted war mammoths and riding deer silhouetted against the sky. Even though he swore, his heart wasn’t in it.
Trasamund’s was. “How the glory of the Bizogots is fallen!” he groaned. “These bandits thrash us as if we were naughty boys. How will we ever get away from them?”
Even he could no longer imagine beating the Rulers. Escaping suddenly seemed too much to hope for. Liv, by contrast, stuck to what was still possible. She pointed ahead. “There’s a herd of musk oxen. Let’s kill one and butcher it. We need the meat.”
Three or four White Fox Bizogots and their dogs accompanied the herd. They shouted angrily when they saw strangers on their grazing grounds, and even more angrily when they discovered one of the strangers was the jarl of the Three Tusk clan. But Trasamund, still downcast, used Sunniulf’s name without his own usual display of chest-thumping pride. And it worked . . . well enough, anyhow.
“Where is Sunniulf now?” one of the White Foxes asked. “Why isn’t he with you?”
“He led his men off to fight the Rulers,” Hamnet Thyssen answered when Trasamund hesitated.
“Ah.” The White Fox Bizogot nodded. “That will have taken care of those rogues, then.”
“Well.. . no,” Hamnet said. “Not long ago, we noticed the Rulers were still coming after us.”
That made all the White Foxes exclaim. “They couldn’t have beaten Sunniulf,” one of them said. “Nobody beats Sunniulf!” The others nodded.
Ulric Skakki jerked a thumb towards the southeast. “Maybe you should go tell that to the Rulers,” he said. “I don’t think they’ve got the news.”
“What do you mean?” The White Fox Bizogot lifted his fur cap and scratched his head. “What are you talking about?”
“If you wait around here much longer, you’ll find out,” Ulric said. “Can we have our musk ox?”
“You can have it. Sunniulf said so.” The Bizogot eyed him. “You’re a foreigner. Don’t see many foreigners around here.”
“You will.” Hamnet Thyssen, Ulric Skakki, and Trasamund all said the same thing at the same time. The White Fox scratched his head again.
They killed the musk ox downwind from the herd, then butchered it as fast as they could. The speed of the job meant they left some meat behind that they might have taken otherwise. Clucking, the herders started stripping that flesh from the dead beast’s bones. The Three Tusk Bizogots and Red Dire Wolves and Raumsdalians left them to it. The refugees rode off. The Rulers wouldn’t be far behind.
Liv pointed ahead, towards the Glacier, which loomed higher on the horizon than it had a couple of days before. “You can really see what the avalanche did,” she said.
“You can, by God,” Hamnet Thyssen agreed. It looked as if the collapse had started near the top of the ice sheet and extended all the way down. The jumble of freshly exposed ice boulders was whiter and brighter than the older ice to either side. The Glacier didn’t rise straight up from the edge of the Bizogot steppe there, either; the slope was gentler, more gradual. “We might really be able to climb that if we had to.”
“We might, yes. But why would anyone want to?” Liv said.
Instead of looking ahead, Ulric Skakki looked behind them. Count Hamnet imitated him. Yes, the Rulers’ riding deer and war mammoths had come up over the horizon again. “If our lovely friends keep herding us in this direction, they may give us some reasons to think about it,” Ulric said.
Liv bared her teeth, not at him but at the idea. “Is escape to the top of the Glacier - if we could get there - escape at all?”
“We’ve talked about that before,” Hamnet said. “It depends on whether anything - and anyone - lives up there.”
“If anybody does, getting up to the top may not be escape,” Ulric Skakki said.
That made Hamnet bare his teeth, because it held too much truth and because he hadn’t thought of it. “God grant we don’t have to worry about that,” he said.
Liv nodded. Even cynical Ulric Skakki didn’t say no. Trasamund was the one who grunted and scowled. “God has turned his back on the Bizogots,” he said gloomily. “He pays us no mind, not anymore.”
“Well, if you feel that way, why not ride back to the Rulers and throw yourself at them?” Ulric asked. “You might get two or three before they kill you.”
“That is not revenge enough,” the jarl answered. “Two or three? Pah! I want to kill them all. And if God won’t help me, I’ll cursed well take care of it on my own.”
To Count Hamnet, that was on the edge of blasphemy. He didn’t say so; he understood what drove Trasamund to feel the way he did. And Ulric Skakki slapped Trasamund on the back, saying, “There’s the first sensible thing you’ve come out with since I don’t know when. Why don’t you do it more often?”
Trasamund said something about Ulric’s female ancestors concerning which he could have had no personal knowledge. At another time, it might have started a fight to the death. Now Ulric only laughed and slapped him on the back again. Trasamund said something even more incendiary. Ulric laughed harder.
“If the weather stays so warm, will we see more avalanches like this?” Hamnet asked.
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Liv answered. “We’ll probably start getting a meltwater lake up here, too, like Sudertorp Lake down in the Leaping Lynx country.”
“Yes, that makes sense,” Audun Gilli said. The wizard looked towards the sun, which was going down in the northwest - not far above the avalanche, in fact. “It stays light a long time in these parts, doesn’t it?”
Now Count Hamnet laughed at him. “You were up here last summer, too. You just noticed that?”
Audun smiled ruefully. “It does seem to matter more when the extra daylight means you’re likelier to get killed.”
Hamnet Thyssen grunted. A glance back over his shoulder said the Rulers were still there. A glance ahead said the sun wasn’t going down fast enough to suit him, either. “We’ll need to set plenty of sentries tonight, in case the Rulers try to hit us in the dark.”
“Sounds like something they’d do,” Trasamund growled.
“I would, too, if I thought it would work,” Ulric Skakki said. “Wouldn’t you?”
Trasamund didn’t answer, from which Count Hamnet concluded that he would but didn’t want to admit it to Ulric. The Bizogots and Raumsdalians rode on. Eventually, the sun did set and twilight did fade. On the other side of the Glaci
er, it was getting towards the season of the year where twilight lingered from sundown to sunup.
Setting fires seemed too great a risk. Raw musk-ox meat wasn’t Ham-net’s idea of a feast, but it was ever so much better than empty. He wolfed down a good-sized gobbet. So did Ulric. Audun Gilli looked revolted, but he ate, too. The Bizogots took raw meat in stride. They ate anything and everything.
The Three Tusk jarl sent Hamnet out to watch as soon as he was done eating. The gleam in Trasamund’s eye, even in the dark, had to mean he was waiting for the Raumsdalian noble to kick up a fuss. Hamnet went without a word. Did Trasamund sigh behind him? He didn’t turn around to look.
He did hope Liv would come out and keep him company while he stood sentry, but she didn’t. He didn’t get angry at that - she had to be wearier than he was - but it disappointed him.
Stars wheeled through the sky in circles set at a different angle from the one he knew down in the Empire. More of them stayed above the horizon all night long than was true in Nidaros. Somewhere off in the distance, a fox yipped at the half-goldpiece moon. Hamnet wondered if the yip was a signal, but it came from due west, a direction from which the Rulers were unlikely to attack. Sometimes a fox was only a fox.
When dire wolves off in the south started howling, Hamnet worried more. But nothing came of that, either. Jumpy tonight, aren’t you? he asked himself with a wry chuckle. Haven’t I earned the right? His answer formed as fast as the question.
He’d begun to wonder whether Trasamund intended him to watch till dawn when a Bizogot came out to take his place. “Anything?” the big, burly blond asked.
“Foxes. Dire wolves,” Hamnet Thyssen answered. “I didn’t see any Rulers or hear any signs of them. I didn’t see any owls, either.”
“Owls?” The Bizogot sounded puzzled.
“Their shamans spy on wings,” Hamnet said. His replacement grunted. Count Hamnet stumbled back towards the encampment, splashing through little pools and rills he didn’t see till too late. He might not have found the resting Bizogots if not for the whickering of their horses and then a small, sudden flare of witchlight.
That led him over to Liv and Audun Gilli, who were sitting close together on the ground and talking in low voices. Liv’s Raumsdalian, by now, was fairly fluent. Audun had learned some of the Bizogots’ tongue, and eked it out when he ran short, as he did now and again. They both looked up when Hamnet drew near.
“Oh, it’s you,” Audun said. “Anything out there?”
“Stars. Half a moon.” Hamnet pointed up to the sky, then waved. “A fox. Dire wolves howling. No Rulers, God be praised - the dire wolves were only wolves. No wizards in the shape of owls, or none that flew close enough for me to see.” Audun had asked the question in Raumsdalian, and Hamnet answered in the same language. His birthspeech felt strange in his mouth; even with Ulric, he’d been using the Bizogot tongue more often than not.
“I didn’t sense any spies,” Liv said, and Audun Gilli nodded. Liv went on, “I don’t know why they’d need them; we’re hardly worth worrying about anyway.”
That held more truth than Hamnet wished it did. “What was the little flash I saw when I was coming into camp?”
“I was showing Liv a spell for piercing illusions,” Audun Gilli answered. “The flash is sorcerous energy dissipating - think of it as steam rising when you boil soup.”
“Steam won’t betray us to the Rulers.” But Hamnet Thyssen relented before either Audun or Liv could complain. “I don’t suppose that little flash would, either, not unless they were already right on top of us.” He yawned. “With any luck at all, I’m going to sleep for a week between now and sunrise.”
With any luck at all, Liv would lie down beside him when he rolled himself in his blanket. With any luck at all, the two of them would lie under the same blanket. He was tired, yes, but not too tired for that. But all she said was, “Sleep well. I do want to learn this charm. It’s better than the one we use.”
Hamnet couldn’t very well say he wasn’t so sleepy as all that. With a martyred sigh - not that he hadn’t done it to himself - he did go off and lie down. Liv and Audun Gilli went on talking quietly. She laughed once, just before Hamnet would have dropped off. The sweet, familiar sound brought him back to wakefulness.
He wondered if he ought to be jealous. Of Audun? he thought, and laughed, too - at himself. Yes, the wizard and Liv had sorcery in common, but if he wasn’t a weed of a man, such a man had never sprouted. Liv, Hamnet Thyssen was comfortably certain, had better taste than that. He twisted and turned and did fall asleep.
Trasamund had to shake him awake. “Are you dead, or what?” the jarl rumbled. “Thought I’d need to kick you.”
“One of us would have been dead after that,” Hamnet Thyssen said. “I don’t think it would be me.”
“After we’ve beaten the Rulers, I’ll fight you if you want,” Trasamund said. “Till then, we’ve got other things to worry about.”
“Why, whatever could you mean?” Count Hamnet asked. The Bizogot’s answering laugh was sour as vinegar. Hamnet rolled up his blanket and ate another chunk of raw musk-ox meat. Then he climbed onto his horse. He hoped the poor animal wouldn’t give out.
Somewhere not nearly far enough away, the Rulers would be climbing onto their riding deer. Before long, they’d be trotting out after the Bizogots. They seemed as stubborn in the hunt as a pack of dire wolves. They kept pressing the quarry till it had nowhere to go. Hamnet Thyssen looked ahead towards the Glacier and the remains of the avalanche. Before long, that would hold true for him and his comrades, too.
With a sad snort, the horse began to walk. It tried to turn its head and look back at him when he urged it up into a trot. It might have been saying, You can’t really mean that, can you? But he could. He did. The horse might fall over dead if it had to work too hard. It would die, and so would he, if the Rulers caught up to them.
By the nature of things, the horse couldn’t understand that. Count Hamnet couldn’t explain it to the animal. All he could do was command. The poor horse, not understanding, had to obey.
Hamnet Thyssen waited for the shout from the rearguard, the shout that said the Rulers were in sight. The skin, even the muscles, between his shoulder blades tensed, as if anticipating an arrow. As if? he wondered. What else was he waiting for from those implacable pursuers?
He looked around, trying to gauge what kind of fight the Bizogots could make if - when - the Rulers attacked in earnest. He didn’t like what he saw. A few men, Trasamund chief among them in spirit as well as rank, still had fight in them. Most of the Bizogots, though, were all too plainly beaten. They’d lost too many battles. They’d fled too much and too long. If - when - the Rulers hit them, they would break ... or die.
“We’re a jolly crew, aren’t we?” As happened too often for comfort, Ulric Skakki divined what he was thinking.
“Oh, of course,” Count Hamnet said in a hollow voice. He pointed ahead, towards some of the ice boulders from the avalanche that had bounced and bounded farthest across the Bizogot steppe. “The dance is just past those big rocks, isn’t it?”
Ulric laughed as merrily as if they really were riding towards viols and a drum and plenty of beer and smiling, pretty girls. “It would be a better dance than the one we’ve been making, wouldn’t it?”
“Couldn’t be much worse.” Hamnet looked around again, this time for his pretty girl, even if she had nothing to smile about right now. Liv rode beside Audun Gilli, earnestly talking about something sorcerous. Audun’s hands shaped a pass. Liv tried to imitate it. He corrected her, with a little extra emphasis on the motion she’d missed. She tried again. He nodded.
Had Ulric Skakki not been riding beside him, Hamnet would have done some muttering. He misliked the tenor of his thoughts. Defeat ruined everything, even things that should have had nothing to do with it. But the last thing he wanted was for Ulric to know he had any worries like that. The adventurer might not say anything; he had to know Hamnet would ignite if he
did. He would think whatever he didn’t say, though, and that would be bad enough.
Worse than bad enough.
“The Rulers!” There it was, the cry Count Hamnet had waited for. He hunched down in the saddle to make himself a smaller target. He didn’t realize he’d done it till he saw Ulric doing the same thing.
“How many arrows have you got left?” he asked Ulric.
“Some,” the adventurer answered, reaching over his shoulder to feel what was in his quiver. “How about you?”
“Some,” Hamnet Thyssen agreed. “They don’t grow on trees, you know.”
Again, Ulric Skakki produced a cheery laugh from nowhere in particular. “Even if they did, much good it would do us. What could we harvest here? Toothpicks, by God!” That made Count Hamnet smile, too. The birches and willows and other would-be trees that grew on the frozen steppe never got bigger than calf-high bushes.
Setting a hand on his sword, Hamnet said, “This doesn’t shrink.”
“It had better not,” Ulric said. “But can we get close enough to cut up the Rulers, or will they shoot us before we do?”
“We’ll find out,” Count Hamnet said, and not even his argumentative countryman could disagree with that.
More and more riding deer and war mammoths came up over the horizon.
Closer and closer they drew. Till now, they’d seemed content to chase the Bizogots. By the way they came on, they had more than that in mind today.
“Can you summon the voles and lemmings?” Hamnet Thyssen called to Liv. “We’ll have a better chance if they’ve got to fight without their mammoths.”
“We can try,” Liv answered - and then she turned to speak to Audun Gilli. Count Hamnet knew they were only planning their magic together. All the same, he frowned and looked away. That wasn’t what he wanted to see right now.
It turned out not to matter. Liv and Audun had barely started their spell when whatever wizards the Rulers had with them struck first. It wasn’t the spell they’d used before; bugs didn’t choke the Bizogots and torment their animals. Instead, hawks and falcons and owls dove out of the sky, slashing at horses and riders alike. Wounded horses screamed in pain and surprise. A Bizogot not far from Hamnet Thyssen shrieked and clapped his hands to his face. Blood poured out between his fingers. Had cruel talons robbed him of an eye? Hamnet couldn’t be sure, but feared the worst.
The Breath of God Page 11
