The Breath of God

by Harry Turtledove

  “If you’re very lucky, people won’t say the same thing about you,” Hamnet Thyssen replied. Gudrid bared her teeth at him. Eyvind Torfinn looked as if he wished he were drinking something stronger than his herbal infusion.

  Ulric Skakki came back from the cook’s station with enough food for three ordinary men. He was no Bizogot, but he could eat like one. He sat down and methodically started putting it away. Then Liv and Audun Gilli walked in. That might have made things even chillier, but Hamnet didn’t think such a thing was possible.

  Liv got a plate of food that rivaled Ulric’s. Audun’s eating habits were more sedate, or more typically Raumsdalian. Do I want him along? Hamnet Thyssen wondered. But that wasn’t quite the right question. Can I really stand to have him along?

  He looked over at Liv. She wouldn’t come north if he told Audun to stay behind. Why should she, when the Rulers had already conquered the Bizogots? Next to that, why did she, why should she, care a copper for what happened to the Empire? But Hamnet knew he needed her wizardry, and Audun’s, too. They hadn’t beaten the Rulers, but had challenged them. And if they worked with Marcovefa . . .

  If they work with Marcovefa, I’m stuck with them, he thought. Maybe, if he was sleeping with Marcovefa, seeing Liv wouldn’t make him feel as if someone were sticking skewers into his marrow. He could hope it wouldn’t, anyhow.

  In strutted Trasamund. The Bizogot jarl had his arrogance back, however much it had suffered up on the frozen steppe. He waved to Count Hamnet, then went over to the cook and came back to the table with two large plates groaningly full of food. As he set them down, he growled, “Let’s go north and kill all those miserable mammoth turds!”

  “We will if we can,” Hamnet said. “This ought to be our best chance.”

  “Nothing else matters. Nothing,” the Bizogot said, and fell to eating as if there were no tomorrow.

  “Nothing?” Gudrid murmured. Did she mean the way he was stuffing himself, or was she thinking of herself first as she so often did? She’d taken him into her bed almost under Eyvind Torfinn’s nose. Was she reminding him of it, again right past her husband? She hadn’t been that shameless even with Hamnet - or, if she had, he hadn’t noticed at the time.

  Whatever she was looking for from Trasamund, she didn’t get it. “Nothing!” he said emphatically, his mouth full of sausage.

  Marcovefa laughed softly. Did she know what was going on there? Had she heard, or perhaps somehow divined it? Hamnet Thyssen didn’t know. Gudrid couldn’t have known, either, but her baleful stare said she didn’t like any of what she was thinking. Still, all she did was stare. She must not have felt like taking on another wizard just yet.

  All the same, Hamnet was anything but sorry to be leaving Eyvind Torfinn’s house.

  By the way things looked, Earl Eyvind’s stablehands were anything but sorry to see Hamnet and his companions go. The stables were enormous; Eyvind could afford not only the best but the most. Even so, feeding and grooming and caring for all those extra animals must have been a burden. The good-byes from the grooms and their assistants seemed most heartfelt.

  Out through the streets of Nidaros again, this time zigzagging towards the north gate. The Breath of God was blowing. Maybe cities far, far to the south had streets that ran north and south. Nidaros didn’t, and likely never would.

  Fog puffed from Count Hamnet’s mouth and nostrils every time he breathed out, but the wind took it and blew it away. He didn’t like getting the Breath of God full in his face. Even here, a long way from the Glacier, it blew bitterly cold. So he thought, anyway. Trasamund and some of the other Bizogots smiled at the familiar blast. Someone - Hamnet thought it was Mar-comer of the Leaping Lynxes - said, “This place is wonderful, but it was too stinking hot before.”

  “Some people don’t know when they’re well off,” Ulric Skakki said.

  “Like us, riding north?” Hamnet suggested. Ulric sketched a salute, yielding the point.

  A caravan from the north was coming into Nidaros when Hamnet and his companions got to the gate. “What’s the news?” Ulric asked. Hamnet supposed he would have thought of the question, too, but certainly not so fast.

  The caravanmaster was a burly man with a gray-streaked black beard tumbling halfway down his chest. His face wore a scowl well, and wore one now. “The news?” he echoed. “By God, stranger, it’s not good. There’s some kind of Bizogot invasion or something up in the woods by the tree line, and I hear tell one of our armies took a demon of a licking.”

  He didn’t have everything straight, but what he had was plenty to irritate the sergeant who was admitting him to the city. “Don’t you go talking about our armies that way,” the underofficer growled.

  “What? Should I lie to this poor bugger instead?” The merchant pointed at Ulric. “If he gets it in the neck, do I want it on my conscience?”

  “He won’t get it in the neck, and you haven’t got a conscience,” the sergeant said. The caravanmaster let out an angry bellow. Ignoring it and reveling in his own petty authority, the sergeant went on, “What you have got is a demon of a lot of horses and mules that need inspecting. Who knows what you might be smuggling if you think our soldiers are no good?”

  This time, the caravanmaster’s howls threatened to shake down the icicles hanging like the teeth of a new portcullis from the gate’s gray stonework. With the majesty of the imperial government on his side, the sergeant could afford to ignore those howls, too. And, since he was going to spend some time making the merchant miserable, he considerately waved Hamnet Thyssen’s party of out Nidaros without asking for, much less examining, the order Hamnet had got from Sigvat II.

  “Poor bastard.” Ulric Skakki looked back towards the extravagantly unhappy caravanmaster. “Sometimes the worst thing you can do is tell the truth, you know?”

  “Really?” Count Hamnet answered, deadpan. “I never heard that before.”

  The adventurer laughed out loud. “No, you wouldn’t have, would you? Nobody in the dungeons would say anything like that to you, right? Neither would the Emperor, would he?”

  “His Majesty has told me a lot of things,” Hamnet said . . . truthfully. “I don’t believe he ever mentioned that, though.”

  “No, eh? Somehow I’m not surprised.” Even a free spirit like Ulric Skakki glanced back over his shoulder to make sure no one not from their party could overhear before going on, “His Majesty doesn’t know enough about telling the truth to know it can be dangerous.”

  Hamnet Thyssen laughed then. He wondered why - it wasn’t as if Ulric were lying. Of course, if he didn’t laugh, he would have to weep or swear or ride back to Nidaros and try to assassinate Sigvat. Laughing was probably better.

  But he confused Marcovefa. “What is funny?” she asked. . “Nothing much,” Hamnet answered. “We’re taking turns insulting the Emperor, that’s all.”

  “Oh.” But she frowned. “He deserves insulting, yes?” She didn’t wait for an answer, but nodded to herself. “Yes, of course. So why is this funny?”

  “You never met him,” Count Hamnet said.

  “Some people have all the luck,” Ulric Skakki added.

  Marcovefa’s eyes twinkled. “Do you say I am lucky, or do you say he is lucky?”

  “You’re lucky you never met him - take it from one who has,” Hamnet answered. Then, after a moment’s thought, he went on, “Come to think of it, he’s lucky he never met you, too, or he probably wouldn’t be here anymore.” If Marcovefa could make herself disappear and go elsewhere, could she also do the same to someone else? Hamnet couldn’t see any reason why not.

  “If he is like that, why is he your chief - your, uh, jarl?” she asked.

  Imagining the color Sigvat would turn if he heard someone call him a jarl made Hamnet laugh all over again. But the question deserved a serious answer, and he tried to give one: “Because his father and grandfather and grandfather’s father ruled before him. Better a ruler from one family than endless wars to see who rules.”

&nb
sp; “Most of the time, anyway,” Ulric put in.

  “Most of the time, yes,” Hamnet Thyssen agreed.

  “Well, maybe,” Marcovefa said. “Our clan chiefs go by blood, too. But we don’t fight wars about who should be chief.” She paused. “Most of the time, anyway.” She did a wicked job of mimicking Ulric Skakki.

  Hamnet believed her. “More things to fight about here,” he said, which summed up the difference between a clan of hunters atop the Glacier and the Raumsdalian Empire in half a dozen words. Why would anyone fight to become a clan chief? Even if you won the job, what did you have that you couldn’t have anyway? No one needed to ask that question of Sigvat II or any other Emperor. The palace spoke for itself.

  Snow dappled the fields. Most of the trees had lost their leaves. The bare branches made them look like skeletons of their former selves. Crows and jays lingered, as they did in all but the worst of winters. Their cries were raucous in Hamnet’s ears. Cattle pulled up grass the first frosts of fall had turned yellow and crisp. They weren’t so shaggy as musk oxen, but they did have thick coats to ward off the Breath of God. Almost all of them grazed facing away from the wind.

  Marcovefa eyed the cattle. She looked down at the horse she rode. She glanced over to a flock of sheep almost out on the horizon. “Even your beasts are things,” she said. “So many. Too many, yes.”

  “We don’t go hungry as often as you do,” Hamnet said.

  “Not here.” Marcovefa touched her belly. Then she touched her heart and her head. “Here and here? Who knows?”

  That made him grunt thoughtfully. He wasn’t sure she was right, but he wasn’t sure she was wrong. Did being desperately poor because of where you lived give you spiritual advantages? Marcovefa’s magic argued that it did. Most of the rest of what he’d seen atop the Glacier suggested that the folk who lived up there were no more spiritual than they had to be.

  It was a puzzlement. He owned himself puzzled. Past that. . . Past that, he would probably do better to worry about things he could do something about.

  First among those was, what would Raumsdalian soldiers and their officers do when someone they’d never seen before started ordering them around? Count Hamnet knew he wouldn’t find out right away. Except for the imperial guards, no large garrisons were posted in towns close to Nidaros. For one thing, those towns, lying at the Empire’s heart, were unlikely to need large garrisons. For another, large garrisons not under the Emperor’s direct control might give their commanders ideas, especially close to the capital. Most of Raumsdalia’s soldiers, then, stayed near the frontier.

  But the northern frontier, in particular, was not a place where garrisons had an easy time feeding themselves. The line where crops wouldn’t reliably grow lay south of the tree line, which marked the border between the Empire and the Bizogot country. Without supply convoys up from the south, the soldiers would start to starve. (That was, incidentally, another way the Emperors could make sure their men stayed loyal and choke off rebellions.)

  Hamnet thought about joining one of those convoys. But he didn’t need long to change his mind. Yes, the wagons had large teams of big, stalwart horses drawing them. They wouldn’t have gone anywhere if they hadn’t. Even as things were, they were painfully slow. And that deliberate pace decided him against them.

  Instead, his led the travelers off onto the side of the road and past the heavy wagons. The soldiers who rode as flank guards waved to him. He returned the courtesy. The Raumsdalians eyed the Bizogots with him with suspicion all the same. If the guards weren’t alert, those barbarians might descend on the convoy. So it had to seem to the men with the creaking, groaning wagons, anyhow. He knew better, but doubted he could persuade them.

  Trasamund summed it up in a handful of words: “We’re wolves, by God. Of course the dogs don’t like us.” He sounded proud of his wildness, his ferocity.

  Ulric Skakki raised an eyebrow. “What does that make the Rulers, then?”

  Trasamund’s answer was interesting, amusing, and highly profane, but not very informative.

  Riding north seemed to speed up autumns passage into winter, which would have come fast enough anyhow. The storms blowing down from the Glacier seemed fiercer and colder; more and more snow covered the ground, and the thaws between snowfalls grew shorter and shorter and finally stopped. Hamnet Thyssen was resigned to bad weather; the Bizogots were resigned to worse. As for Marcovefa . . .

  “Yes, it’s cold. So what?” she said when they camped one evening. She shared his tent as a matter of course these days. “We all know what to do about cold. We do it, and we go on. Why get excited?”

  “Sometimes I think you’re too sensible for your own good.” Full of roast mutton, Hamnet didn’t feel like getting excited - not about the cold, anyhow.

  Marcovefa wrinkled her nose and laughed at him. “I can be as foolish as anyone else. But cold . . . just is. I lived on the Glacier, and on the mountain above it. I never got away from cold, not till I came down. I never knew about hot baths, for instance. Some things are good.”

  “Oh, yes.” Hamnet nodded. The regular Bizogots rarely bathed, either. Getting truly clean was a luxury he cherished whenever he came into the Empire. If a copper tub and steaming water weren’t some of the most important hallmarks of civilization, what was?

  On campaign, he’d be dirty again. But so would everybody around him. After a while, he’d get used to it. He wouldn’t be so rank as he would when he traveled up in the Bizogot country, and neither would the people he dealt with. For that matter, when the nose smelled the same stinks for long enough, it stopped noticing. He’d had plenty of experience with that in the dungeon, and before.

  He’d also had plenty of experience making love with women who ended up breaking his heart. Somehow, he never got tired of it. What would Marcovefa do to leave him sorry he’d ever touched her? Something: he was sure of that. In the meantime, though, what she had to give was better than anything he could find anywhere else. Sorrow later? Probably - that seemed to be what happened with him. Pleasure now? Without a doubt.

  “Thank you,” he said after gasping his way to completion.

  She laughed at him. “It takes two. Do you think you do not please me? Are you so much a fool?” She set his hand on her left breast. Her firm nipple and thudding heart said she had indeed kindled. “You see?” She laughed again.

  “Yes,” Hamnet said. Marcovefa might have told him something more after that. If she did, he didn’t hear it. He plunged deep into sleep. Staying on horseback all day took more out of him than he’d expected. Maybe he was getting old. Maybe his time in the dungeon had drained him worse than he thought.

  Marcovefa shook him awake in the morning. She seemed fresh and well rested, even if she’d fallen asleep after him. Was she using magic to lend herself strength and go without much rest? If she was, what price would she have to pay later? Count Hamnet wondered if she could do for him whatever she was doing for herself.

  Asking her about it slipped his mind. He had a command here, one for which he was responsible. Bizogots liked sleep no less than anyone else. Ulric Skakki would have gone into hibernation for the winter if Hamnet gave him the chance. Hamnet was resigned to getting sworn at every morning, even if not enamored of it.

  They started off later than he wished they would have. That happened every morning, too. He didn’t know what he could do about it - he didn’t think he could do anything.

  It particularly galled him this morning because they were nearing the north woods. Somewhere ahead were the Rulers. He wanted to hit the mammoth-riders while they were still in among the firs and spruces. They would have trouble deploying in the woods - they were used to wide open spaces where no trees grew.

  As usual, the gap between what he wanted and what he got yawned wide. He took no special notice of the first few men who rode past him, heading south as fast as their horses would take them. They might have been ordinary traders on business of their own. The odds were long, but they might have been.
>
  But the fellow who still slung an imperial shield on his back . . . Hamnet Thyssen couldn’t pretend he was anything but a fleeing soldier. “Where are you going?” he called. “What are you running from?”

  The cavalryman’s eyes showed white all around the irises, like those of a spooked horse. “Savages!” he said. “There’s savages in the woods, and they’re killing anything that moves!” He booted his horse into a weary trot and rode on.

  XIX

  Getting any of the soldiers fleeing from disaster in the woods to stop long enough to say exactly what had gone wrong up in the north was Hamnet’s biggest problem. The men who’d escaped wanted nothing more than to put distance between themselves and the Rulers. They didn’t want to talk: that slowed them down.

  Some of them warned of mammoths. Some babbled about magic. None of that told Hamnet Thyssen anything he didn’t already know. He finally had to capture a Raumsdalian soldier as if the man belonged to an enemy army, not the one Hamnet was going to command.

  “Who the demon are you? What do you think you’re doing?” the cavalry trooper demanded. He stared at the Bizogots who made up most of Hamnet’s strength. Seeing that they were northerners, he went on, “Are you in league with the devils in the woods?”

  “No, you idiot,” Hamnet said. “The Rulers attacked the Bizogots before they ever got down here.” Not that I could make anybody pay attention to what was going on north of the tree line. But the trooper wouldn’t care about that. Hamnet went on, “I am Count Hamnet Thyssen. The Emperor has given me command in the north against the invaders.” He flourished his orders without unrolling them. “Now who are you? Why are you running away?”

  “I won’t get in trouble?” the trooper asked warily.

  “Not if you give me straight answers and stop wasting my time,” Hamnet said.

  “Well, my name’s Ingolf Rokkvi,” the rider said. “I was part of Count Steinvor’s army. We heard the barbarians had done something nasty up near where the trees stop, but we didn’t know just what was going on. We figured it was Bizogots kicking up their heels like they do sometimes.”