The Breath of God (16 page)

Archers shooting from atop a war mammoth pincushioned the Bizogot with the bloodied face. An arrow hissed past Hamnet Thyssen's head, so close that he felt the fletching brush his beard. He shot at one of the men up there. The warrior of the Rulers jeered as the arrow went wide. Then one from Ulric Skakki caught him in the forehead. He crumpled, a look of absurd surprise the last expression he would ever wear.

Hamnet cut at another warrior on a riding deer. The fighter turned his first stroke, but the second one got home. When the Rulers were wounded, they cried out like any lesser breed. The warrior tried to fight on, but Count Hamnet cut him down.

He looked around again. Some of the Bizogots were still fighting fiercely. Others, though, streamed away from the Rulers as fast as they could. Riding
deer trotted after horses. Seeing riding deer get past him sent a chill through Hamnet, a chill more frigid than any winter on the frozen steppe could bring. Surrounded, cut off . . .

“We've got to get out of this!” he called to Ulric.

“Well, yes,” the adventurer said. His sword had blood on it. “But how? Do you want to cut and run?”

Yes!
Count Hamnet thought. Then he saw Trasamund pull his horse's head around and ride off towards the northwest. “We can't stay any more,” Hamnet said, and pointed after the jarl.

“By God!” Ulric Skakki exclaimed. “What is this world coming to?”

“An end, I think,” Hamnet answered grimly. “When the Gap melted through, when the Rulers invaded . . . Everything we knew before is gone. It's all different now. Even if we win, even if we find the Golden Shrine, it will never be the same.”

“I didn't expect a philosophy lesson—which doesn't mean you're wrong,” Ulric said. “I'd better go look for Arnora, and you'll want to find Liv. We'll make for where the avalanche came down. I'll meet you there—or I hope I will.”

“Luck,” Count Hamnet said. Ulric Skakki nodded.

Do I need to look for Liv? Won't Audun take care of that?
Hamnet swore at himself. Yes, he was letting defeat poison everything in his life. Before he could even think of finding the Three Tusk clan's shaman, he needed to fight off another warrior of the Rulers. He wanted to kill the curly-bearded fighting man, but had to content himself with driving him off with a bleeding forearm.

There was Audun Gilli. And, sure enough, not far away was Liv. She wasn't working wizardry against the Rulers now. She had a bow in her hands, and used it with as much skill if perhaps without quite the same strength as a man might have.

Neither she nor Audun saw the warrior riding up from behind them. Hamnet Thyssen shouted to distract him, then plucked out a dagger and threw it at the enemy. It wasn't a proper throwing knife; it didn't pierce him. But the thump against his side made him slow up and look around, which gave Hamnet time to engage him. Metal belled on metal as their swords clashed together.

“You are that one!” the warrior of the Rulers said in the Bizogot language. “They want you bad!”

“Well, they can't have me,” Hamnet answered. His foe made as if to
shout, but Hamnet's sword went home then. The warrior looked amazed. He slowly crumpled from his riding deer.

Hamnet forgot about him as soon as he stopped being a threat. He grabbed Liv by the arm. “We have to get away!” he yelled.

“We can't!” she said.

“The demon we can't. Trasamund's already gone,” Hamnet answered.

Her eyes widened. Her head swung, as if on a swivel. When she didn't see the jarl, her features sagged in weariness and dismay. “Truly everything is lost,” she said, her voice quiet and amazed and all but hopeless.

“Not while we're still breathing. Come on, before the Rulers close the sack around us,” Hamnet said. A heartbeat slower than he might have, he added, “You, too, Audun.”

“Yes,” the wizard said. “Maybe we'll win another chance later. We can hope, anyhow.” He didn't hesitate in talking to Hamnet Thyssen. Perhaps that meant he was a good dissembler. In another man, Hamnet would have thought it did. But he'd spent too much time at close quarters with the wizard to find it easy to believe. If Audun thought something, he usually said it. Ulric Skakki could smile and charm and say one thing and mean another. Not Audun.

Thinking of Ulric reminded Hamnet what the adventurer had said. “Let's ride for the avalanche,” Hamnet said. “We can use the ice boulders for cover.”

“For a while,” Liv said. “We'll get hungry there. If the Rulers want to sit around and starve us out, they can. And where do we have to go?”

“Up to the top of the Glacier, by God,” Count Hamnet answered. “They won't look for that, and we may get away. And it's something maybe no one's ever done in all the history of the world.” The idea had intrigued him ever since it first crossed his mind.

It didn't seem to intrigue Liv. “No one's ever come back from doing it—that's sure enough.” But she didn't say no, not straight out. And she did guide her horse towards the northwest. So did Audun. So did Hamnet Thyssen.

Some Bizogots were riding in that direction. Others tried to break out to the southwest. Hamnet supposed they wanted to join up with the White Foxes. If they could, they might stay safe . . . for a while. He feared climbing the Glacier gave a better long-term hope—and climbing the Glacier was pure desperation.

A few warriors on riding deer had already got between the Bizogots and
the Glacier. Liv shot one of them out of the saddle. She had more arrows left than Hamnet. He relied on the sword, and slew a warrior himself. When one of the Rulers started to attack Audun Gilli, his deer seemed to go mad, bounding off across the steppe at random despite his curses and, soon, his fist.

“Nicely done,” Count Hamnet said, his tone as neutral as he could make it. “Would it work for more than one riding deer at a time?”

“I don't think so.” Audun watched the animal's antics with solemn fascination. “I was surprised it worked once.”

“So was he,” Hamnet said. Then they were past the Rulers. Hamnet spied Trasamund a couple of bowshots ahead and to the left. He waved and shouted. After a moment, the jarl waved back and steered his horse over towards them.
Misery loves company,
Hamnet thought.

“What now? Up the Glacier?” Plainly, Trasamund didn't mean it.

He blinked when Hamnet Thyssen nodded. “Have you got a better idea?” Hamnet asked.

Trasamund spat. “I have no ideas left, and nothing else, either. If you say you want to take it out and piss your way through the Glacier, I'll try to follow. Everything I've tried, everything I've done, has turned to dung in my hands.”

Count Hamnet shivered. It wasn't altogether in response to Trasamund's despair; here close by the Glacier, it was colder than it had been even a couple of miles farther south. This was where winter lived. The growing warmth might have weakened it, but it was a long way from dead.

They'd ridden past a house-sized chunk when Hamnet heard a shout from Ulric Skakki: “Over here!” Beside him, Arnora pressed a chunk of moss to a cut that split her cheek. She wouldn't be pretty any more, but that was a worry for later, if there was a later. Now, Ulric said, “Well, here we are, in this jolly place. Where do we go next?”

Hamnet told him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

“
T
HIS IS MADNESS
,” Trasamund said, scrambling up over a tilted block of ice. “Madness, I tell you.”

“Of course, Your Ferocity,” Ulric Skakki said politely. He pointed down towards the edge of the frozen steppe, which now lay some distance below them. “Would you like to explain to the Rulers how mad it is?”

Hamnet Thyssen paused for a moment at the top of another jagged chunk of ice. He looked down towards the ground, too. The Rulers weren't coming after the dozen or so Bizogots and Raumsdalians who were trying to use the avalanche to climb to the top of the Glacier. In their boots, Count Hamnet wouldn't have, either. They were doing about what he would have done were their positions reversed: they were standing there pointing at the fugitives and laughing themselves silly.

“We got a chance to kill a couple of horses and hack off some of the meat,” Liv said. “With the musk ox, that will keep us going . . . for a while, anyhow.”

“Horseflesh tastes like glue,” Ulric Skakki complained.

“How much glue have you eaten?” Hamnet asked.

“Well, I've eaten more crow, I must say,” Ulric answered. “And it's plain enough I haven't eaten enough glue to know when to keep my mouth shut.” He still sounded like a man on a lark, not someone fleeing for his life without much hope that even fleeing would stretch it very far.

“One thing,” Audun Gilli said. “We can keep our meat fresh as long as we need to. We won't have any trouble putting it on ice.” The wizard's laugh sounded slightly hysterical, or perhaps just slightly cracked.

That didn't mean he was wrong. Most of the ice in the world was either under their feet or ahead of them. Hamnet Thyssen was glad he had his winter mittens. Without them, his hands not only would have frozen but also would have been cut to ribbons: much of the ice over which he struggled was almost swordblade-sharp.

A couple of Bizogot men were without mittens. They'd wrapped cloth around their palms, which was better than nothing but probably not good enough. One of them, a big, blocky fellow named Vulfolaic, said, “Some of that horsemeat still has the hide on, yes? I can cut strips from that when we stop.”

“It will spoil,” Audun said, proving he really was learning the Bizogots' speech.

“Not if I piss on it a few times,” Vulfolaic answered. “Not proper tanning, but it will have to do.”

“Er—yes.” The wizard's expression said he would rather do without gauntlets than wear that kind. Vulfolaic wasn't so fussy. Squeamish Bizogots wouldn't last long.

How long will we last anyhow?
Hamnet wondered. Climbing to the top of the Glacier—if they could—might give them their best chance to escape the Rulers, but he knew that best was none too good. If they died here, and if scavengers didn't find them, they might stay perfectly preserved for a long time. What held true for horsemeat also held for human flesh.

“Come on,” he said. “We ought to get as high as we can while the daylight lasts.”

“What if we touch off another avalanche?” With the wound to her cheek, Arnora's voice was mushy and indistinct.

Hamnet Thyssen only shrugged. “If we do, we won't need to worry any more.”

That made Vulfolaic laugh. “Spoken like a Bizogot, by God! I wouldn't have thought you southerners had the manhood to say such things—and to mean them.”

“If I had a copper for every time a Bizogot wondered how long my prong was, I'd be too rich to want to leave Nidaros,” Ulric Skakki said.

“He wasn't questioning yours—he was questioning mine,” Hamnet answered. “And as long as Arnora doesn't worry about yours, I don't see that it's anybody else's business.”

“You're no fun,” Ulric told him. “Life would be so much duller if people didn't get all hot and bothered over stupid little things.”

“You mean like being invaded? Like being beaten?” Count Hamnet said. “I'm bothered. I can't very well say I'm not. But I defy anyone to stay hot climbing the Glacier.”

“Well, you've got something there.” Ulric reached up to him. “Give me a hand, will you? You made it to the top of that block, but I don't think I can, not by myself. You're taller than I am.”

“I wish I had hobnails in the bottom of my boots,” Hamnet said, grabbing Ulric's wrist and yanking him upwards. With a grunt, the adventurer scrambled onto the top of the ice boulder beside him. “They'd make climbing a lot easier.”

“Hobnails? No!” Trasamund shook his head. “You wear hobnails on ice or in snow, they bleed heat right out of your feet. Maybe they're all right in Raumsdalia, where it's warm, but not up here.”

“Hadn't thought of that,” Count Hamnet admitted. “You may be right. If we had boots with a couple of layers of hide between our soles and the nails, though . . .”

“If we had wings, we could fly up to the top of the Glacier,” Trasamund said. “And we could piss on the miserable Rulers down below, too.”

Hamnet shut up.

When he looked down to the Bizogot steppe now, he could hardly make out the invaders down there. They might have been ants or fleas or other small annoyances. They might have been, but they weren't. He looked behind, and then he looked ahead. How far had they come? Maybe a third of the way, he guessed. The going got no easier as they moved on. If anything, the slope grew steeper. Without the titanic avalanche, they wouldn't have had a prayer of reaching the top of the Glacier. Even with it, the climb wouldn't be easy. Anything but.

And something else was wrong, or at least different. He seemed to need an extra breath or two whenever he struggled up onto a new chunk of ice. Hauling Ulric after him had made his heart pound.

Then a light dawned. “We're climbing a mountain!” he exclaimed. “The air's getting thinner!”

“It would do that, wouldn't it?” Liv said. “No wonder I'm breathing so hard.”

“Do you have a magic that would let us breathe the way we do down on the plain?” Hamnet asked her.

“
I
don't,” she answered. “We never needed anything like that. What about you, Audun?”

Audun Gilli shook his head. “Maybe someone in the Empire does—someone in the west, most likely, who has to worry about mountains more than people around Nidaros do. But I've never needed a spell like that, either. Too bad.”

“I hope there will be enough air to keep us going when we get to the top,” Count Hamnet said.