The Breath of God

by Harry Turtledove

  Count Hamnet felt the same way, but he would sooner have jumped from the top of the Glacier than admit it. He got under a hide, too, and closed his eyes. He didn’t think he would sleep at all - too much anger seethed inside him - but exhaustion sneaked up from behind and clubbed him over the head.

  When he woke in the middle of the short northern summer night, Liv was leaning over him. He wondered if he ought to grab for one of the knives on his belt. But all she did was shake her head and say, “You fool.”

  “What? For loving you too much?”

  “Yes. For loving me too much. It makes you stupid, and you aren’t stupid often enough to know how to do it right.” Shaking her head, Liv slid under the hide with him. “Well?” she said: a one-word challenge, as if he didn’t deserve what she was giving him. She probably thought he didn’t.

  He did the best he could. It seemed to be good enough. But even if it was, he knew it didn’t really settle anything.

  XI

  We’ve stayed upin the north too long,” Hamnet Thyssen said as the Bizogots and Raumsdalians and Marcovefa approached the Snowshoe Hares’ encampment.

  “Well, God knows I’m not about to argue with you, but why do you say so?” Ulric Skakki asked.

  Count Hamnet pointed to the gaggle of tents made from mammoth and musk-ox hides. “Because that’s starting to look like civilization to me.”

  “Oh, my dear fellow! Are you well?” Ulric grabbed his arm and made as if to take his pulse. Swearing and laughing at the same time, Hamnet jerked free. Not a bit abashed, Ulric went on, “Much as I hate to admit it, I feel the same way. And if that’s not a judgment on both of us, what would you call it?”

  “It can’t really be civilization, though, and I’ll tell you why not,” Hamnet said. Ulric Skakki made an inquiring noise. Hamnet explained: “Euric may want to listen to us, and Sigvat sure didn’t.”

  “There is that,” the adventurer agreed. “Sigvat turned out to be one of the best arguments in favor of barbarian invasion anyone ever saw, didn’t he?”

  “I hadn’t thought of it like that, but. . yes,” Hamnet said.

  Fierce Bizogot dogs - some of them, by their looks, at least half dire wolf - ran out of the encampment towards the newcomers, barking and snarling. Buccelin and Gunthar shouted at them, which slowed them down but didn’t stop them. When Hamnet and Ulric and several of Trasamund’s Bizogots drew their swords, the dogs did stop - they knew that meant danger. Audun Gilli looked disappointed. He had a spell that made him seem like what God would have been if God were Dog instead, one that terrified even the fiercest beasts. Now he wouldn’t get to use it.

  Marcovefa eyed the big dogs and their big teeth. She said something in her language. “What’s that?” Hamnet asked Ulric.

  “She says they really are foxes the size of men,” Ulric answered. “One more thing we told her that she didn’t believe.”

  “Tell her these are tamed, like the horses. Tell her the real dire wolves are bigger and fiercer,” Hamnet said. Ulric Skakki did. Marcovefa raised an eyebrow. She said something else. “Well?” Count Hamnet asked.

  “She says these will do,” Ulric reported.

  “I think so, too,” Hamnet said. He frowned a moment later. He had the feeling you can sometimes get when someone is staring at you from behind - not quite sorcery, but the next thing to it. He also had the feeling he knew who it would be, and he was right. When he turned, not quite so casually as he would have liked, he caught Liv’s eye on him. It was nothing! He didn’t say it, for it was too obviously true to need saying. She eyed him even so.

  Had he eyed her and Audun the same way for as little reason? He didn’t shake his head, since Liv was still watching him, but that was how he felt. He hadn’t been thinking anything untoward about Marcovefa. He knew that, down deep inside. He didn’t know what Liv thought about Audun Gilli.

  He also didn’t know how unfair that comparison was. But he didn’t know that he didn’t know, and so it did him no good.

  The dogs reluctantly moved back and to the sides as the travelers advanced. Children stared at them, too: particularly at Hamnet and Ulric and Audun, who, in spite of their clothes, plainly weren’t Bizogots. Marcovefa stared at everything: the dogs, the children, the tents, the fires burning in front of them, the pots - trade goods up from the south - bubbling on top of those fires. The shaman sighed and spoke.

  When Count Hamnet raised a questioning eyebrow, Ulric translated: “She’s going on again about how lucky the Bizogots are. They have big animals to get big hides for their tents. They have big bones to use. They have these big fires because of all the dung. They have those - things - to cook in. She wonders why the men of the Glacier never thought of those.”

  Hamnet Thyssen tried to imagine the men of the Glacier making pottery. They almost certainly didn’t have the clay they would need. They would have trouble making fires big enough and hot enough to bake the clay even if they did have it. “I didn’t even see any baskets up there, let alone pots,” he said. “I was surprised they could make rope - and what they do make is the strangest stuff I ever saw.”

  “That it is,” Ulric said. “It does the job, though.” It had done the job on the descent from the top of the Glacier. No one could ask more from it than that.

  Buccelin held open a tent flap. “Here is the jarl. You will show him the respect he deserves.”

  “We will,” Trasamund agreed, “if he shows us the respect we deserve.”

  Buccelin looked dismayed at that, but did not contradict it. Along with Trasamund, Hamnet and Ulric and Audun went into Euric’s tent. So did Liv and Marcovefa. Liv stayed as far from Marcovefa as she could. Inside the tent, especially with so many people in it, that wasn’t very far.

  Butter-burning lamps and the open tent flap gave what light there was inside. The smell of the lamps warred with that of indifferently cured hides and with the smell of Euric himself. He was a big, burly man a few years younger than Hamnet. Nodding to Trasamund, he said, “Hello, Your Ferocity. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

  “I’ve heard a lot about you, too, Your Ferocity.” Seeing that Euric did treat him as an equal made Trasamund preen.

  “Tell me who your comrades are,” the jarl of the Snowshoe Hares said. Trasamund named them one by one. When he got to Marcovefa, Euric’s eyebrows leaped upwards. “Men from the south are one thing,” the other Bizogot observed. “A woman from the north - a woman from the north and from on high - is a different story.”

  “We were there,” Hamnet Thyssen said. “We had to go up there, or the Rulers would have killed us. They are another story, too, and one you need to worry about. You won’t find the men of the Glacier coming down to eat your musk oxen.”

  “Or your clansmen,” Ulric Skakki added, too quietly for Euric to hear.

  “We’ve heard there is trouble with the Three Tusk clan, and lately with the White Foxes, too,” Euric said.

  “Worse than trouble,” Trasamund said. “The only free folk left from the Three Tusk clan are with me here. The White Foxes have also been broken.”

  “So have the Red Dire Wolves, south of the Three Tusk clan’s grazing grounds,” Count Hamnet said. “The Rulers make bad enemies.”

  “Do they make good friends?” Euric asked, proving himself as practical and cynical a diplomat as any Raumsdalian ever born.

  Hamnet Thyssen, Ulric Skakki, and Trasamund all looked at one another.

  They’d come looking for an ally, not an opportunist. Ulric had the quickest tongue among them, and he gave an answer upon which Hamnet couldn’t have hoped to improve: “Good luck, Your Ferocity.”

  Euric grunted. He was neither foolish nor innocent enough to imagine that Ulric meant the words literally. “How do you know?” he asked. “Did you try?”

  “We spent a good bit of time talking with them when we went through the Gap last summer,” Hamnet said. “As far as they’re concerned, anyone who isn’t of their folk is less than human. They call other people herds. It’
s hard to make friends with somebody who thinks he can drive you or shear you or slaughter you whenever he wants.”

  The Snowshoe Hares’ jarl grunted again. “Well, you may be right,” he said - hardly a ringing endorsement. “But then, you don’t seem to have had much luck fighting them, either.”

  “They’re not easy, by God!” Trasamund burst out. “They ride mammoths, and - ”

  “I’d heard that,” Euric broke in. “I didn’t know whether to believe it.”

  “It’s true.” All the Bizogots and Raumsdalians who’d met the Rulers spoke together in a mournful chorus.

  Euric didn’t seem to know whether to be appalled or amused. He finally just nodded. “All right. I believe it now.”

  “And their magic is stronger than anything we use,” Liv added. “They can do things we can’t, and they hurt us when they do. They’ve won battles because of it.”

  Marcovefa said something. Euric stared at her in surprise. Her speech sounded as if it might belong to the Bizogot language, but when you tried to understand it you couldn’t. “What’s that?” the jarl asked.

  As usual, Ulric Skakki translated: “She says the Rulers’ wizards aren’t so strong as Liv makes them out to be. I should point out that she’s never seen them, let alone tried to match her power against theirs.”

  “Fat lot she knows about it, then,” Euric said scornfully.

  Scorning Marcovefa was not a good idea. Had Euric asked him, Hamnet Thyssen would have said as much. The shaman from the mountain refuge atop the Glacier murmured more incomprehensibilities to herself.

  Euric started to say something else. Instead, looking much more surprised than he had a moment earlier, he developed a sudden and apparently uncontrollable impulse to stand on his head. Then he whistled like a longspur. Then he yipped like a fox. Then he croaked like a raven. Marcovefa didn’t know much about horses or musk oxen or mammoths, or the jarl probably would have impersonated them, too.

  “Tell her that’s enough,” Hamnet whispered to Ulric. “We want him to respect us, not hate us.”

  “Right. I hope she listens to me.” Ulric spoke to Marcovefa. She shook her head. He spoke again, this time with a definite pleading note in his voice. She sniffed, but at last she nodded and murmured to herself once more.

  Euric collapsed in a heap. He needed a moment to sit up straight, and another moment to regain his aplomb. When he did, he proceeded to prove himself no fool, for he inclined his head to Marcovefa and said, “I cry pardon, wise woman.”

  She acknowledged him with another sniff, this one quite regal. Hamnet understood what she said next. Since Euric probably wouldn’t, Ulric Skakki translated: “And well you might.”

  “What do you people want from the Snowshoe Hares?” Euric asked, this time with the air of someone who might think about giving it. Getting turned upside down - literally - might do that to a man.

  Trasamund took advantage of the edge they’d gained: “Food to keep us going, and horses to let us move as fast as the Rulers.”

  “I can give you meat and suet and berries. We’ve had a good year with such things,” Euric said. “But horses for so many?” He shook his head, even though he sent Marcovefa an apprehensive look while he did it. “I cry your pardon, too, Your Ferocity, but we haven’t got so many beasts to spare.” He might have - would have - said no before, but he said it much more politely now.

  “How many can you give us?” Hamnet Thyssen asked. “If we can get some from you, maybe the next clan farther south will give us more.”

  “The Rock Ptarmigans?” Euric didn’t quite laugh in his face, but he came close. “Well, maybe they will, since your shamans are so strong. But most of the time you can’t pry a dried musk-ox turd out of them, let alone anything worth having.”

  In Raumsdalian, Ulric said, “I wonder what the Rock Ptarmigans have to say about the Snowshoe Hares.”

  “Nothing good, I’m sure,” Euric said in the same language, “but they’re only the Rock Ptarmigans, so what do they know?”

  Hamnet Thyssen had rarely seen Ulric abashed, but he did now. “You caught me by surprise there, Your Ferocity,” the adventurer admitted.

  “That will teach you to talk behind somebody’s back in front of his face,” Euric said. Then he swung back towards Count Hamnet. “How many horses can we spare? A dozen, at the most.” He looked horrified as soon as the words were out of his mouth. Plainly, he’d wanted to name some smaller number. Just as plainly, he hadn’t been able to.

  Marcovefa looked pleased and innocent at the same time. Did some small spell of hers make the Snowshoe Hares’ jarl tell the truth regardless of what he wanted? Hamnet wouldn’t have been surprised.

  By Euric’s sour expression, neither would he. On his own, he probably would have said four and haggled up to eight or so. “Well, I will not make myself out to be a liar,” he said now. “You may take them. But when times come right again, you will pay the clan for the use you got of them.”

  “Agreed,” Count Hamnet and Trasamund said in the same breath. And Marcovefa nodded. She might not speak the usual Bizogot language, but sometimes she understood it even so.

  When Euric clasped hands with the Raumsdalian noble and his fellow jarl to seal the bargain, he also held out his big, square hand to the shaman from atop the Glacier. That struck Hamnet as only fair; without her, they wouldn’t have had a bargain. They certainly wouldn’t have had the one they had. More than a little relief in his voice, Euric said, “And now - we feast.”

  Bizogots could usually out-eat Raumsdalians, not least because the mammoth-herders went hungry more often. When Marcovefa got a chance to show what she could do, her appetite amazed even the Bizogots. “I’ve seen a man twice her size who couldn’t put away that much,” Euric said admiringly.

  “You may have hard times here, Your Ferocity, but I promise you that it’s worse up on top of the Glacier,” Count Hamnet said. “No horses or musk oxen or mammoths, just hares and voles and little animals halfway between called pikas. When Marcovefa’s folk get hungry, they get hungry.”

  “I suppose so,” the Snowshoe Hares’ jarl said. He no longer seemed to doubt that the shaman did come from the top of the Glacier. Thoughtfully, he added, “I’m surprised they don’t start eating each other when times get tough.”

  Hamnet Thyssen decided it might be just as well to pretend he didn’t hear that. He counted himself lucky that Euric left it there.

  Someone passed him a skin of smetyn. Next to wine or even beer, fermented milk was no great delight, but he was glad to drink something besides water. And, even if the Bizogots’ brew was thin and sour, pouring down enough of it would let him forget his troubles for a while.

  Trasamund started drinking as if he intended to forget about his troubles for a month. When Marcovefa tasted the smetyn, she looked puzzled. She asked a question of Ulric Skakki. “What does she say? Does she like it?” Euric asked.

  “She asks, what is it you drink besides water?” Ulric said.

  That set Trasamund laughing. He’d already downed enough to let almost anything set him laughing. “What do we drink besides water?” he echoed. “Anything we can, by God! Anything we can.”

  “Why?” Marcovefa asked. Hamnet Thyssen understood her on his own; the question was almost identical to the Bizogot phrase, Because of what?

  “Tell her she’ll find out after she drinks for a while.” Trasamund laughed some more, this time in anticipation.

  Ulric Skakki put that into Marcovefa’s tongue. She nodded as if accepting a challenge and began to drink as seriously as she’d eaten. Before long, her eyes grew bright, her smile went slack, and she swayed even though she was sitting down.

  “They don’t have smetyn on top of the Glacier?” Euric asked, his voice dry.

  “We didn’t see any or hear of any,” Hamnet answered. “Would you want to try to milk a rabbit or a vole?”

  “Well, no,” the jarl said with a wry smile.

  Marcovefa said something else. “She w
ants to know why her head is spinning,” Ulric said. “She says she hasn’t eaten any shaman’s mushrooms, but she’s all dizzy anyway.”

  Liv looked interested when she heard that. “They have magic mushrooms up on that rock, do they?” she said. “I can’t say I’m very surprised. Mushrooms grow almost everywhere.”

  “She’s talked about them before,” Count Hamnet said.

  “I didn’t notice.” Liv’s voice was chilly.

  “Tell her people down here use smetyn and things like it instead of mushrooms most of the time,” Audun Gilli said.

  Ulric Skakki did. Marcovefa spoke in return. “She says this isn’t as good. She doesn’t see all the colors she would with mushrooms, and she doesn’t feel as if the sky were about to break.” Hamnet didn’t know what that meant; by Liv’s nod, she evidently did. Marcovefa added something else. “She says this isn’t bad, mind you - just not as good.”

  “In the morning, she’ll feel like her head’s about to break,” Audun Gilli said. “And so will Trasamund.”

  “Yes, but Trasamund will know why,” Hamnet Thyssen said. “For Marcovefa, it’ll be a big surprise, and not one she likes very much.”

  “Everything that happens to Marcovefa down here is a surprise,” Ulric Skakki said. “Some of the surprises, she’ll like. Others? Her first hangover? Well, maybe not.”

  Some of the Snowshoe Hares began pairing off. That was another thing that happened at Bizogot feasts. Euric found women for Trasamund and the Bizogots who accompanied him, and one for Audun Gilli as well. They weren’t all beauties, but Hamnet didn’t think any of the Bizogots would have to close his eyes to lie down with one of them.

  Then Euric surprised him. The jarl inclined his head to Marcovefa and said, “If you feel like it. ..”

  Yes, the shaman from atop the Glacier sometimes understood what people meant without understanding what they said. She also surprised Count Hamnet - she smiled and nodded and, none too steadily, got to her feet and went back into Euric’s tent with him.

  “Well, well,” Ulric said, a slightly bemused grin crossing his foxy face. “That ought to be interesting.”