The Breath of God (24 page)

The avalanche they'd heard proved even bigger than the one they'd climbed to get here. Marcovefa and her raven both looked smug. The way down lay open—if the travelers could take it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

H
AMNET
T
HYSSEN HAD
thought climbing up tumbled and shattered blocks of ice was bad. And it was. How many times had he almost killed himself in the desperate scramble to escape the Rulers? Probably more than he realized, which said everything that needed saying all by itself. But descending made going up child's play by comparison.

If you slipped while you were climbing, someone below you had a chance to catch you and save you. If you slipped on the way down, you went down yourself, maybe all the way down, and you had a good chance of starting another avalanche when you did it.

“By God, I wish we had more rope,” Trasamund said before they'd gone even a bowshot. “If we could tie all of ourselves together, a slip wouldn't be so bad.”

“It might be worse,” Count Hamnet said. “If one of us slipped, he might carry everybody he was roped to down with him.”

The jarl grunted. He looked as if he wanted to tell Hamnet he was wrong. He didn't, though, because too plainly the Raumsdalian was right. Disaster waited under their feet at every step they took. They might have done better staying up on the Glacier . . . except that they would soon have begun to starve.

“That other avalanche had a chance to settle down before we tackled it.” As usual, Ulric sounded most cheerful when the going was worst. “This one's still shifting and sorting itself out.”

“You noticed that, too, did you?” Hamnet pointed down the steep slope.
Crashes and thuds farther down told of more shifting below. “This one's a long way from finished—but it can finish us any time it wants to.”

“Don't give it ideas. It's bound to have enough of its own,” Ulric said.

“I wish I could call you a liar,” Hamnet said. The Bizogots and Raumsdalians had separated into little groups of three and four and five, each group staying as far from the others as it could. If one set of climbers did touch off another avalanche, with luck it wouldn't sweep them all to their doom. With luck.

Marcovefa descended without a care in the world. Sometimes the raven stayed on her shoulder. Sometimes it flew off and soared and spun and swooped through the air. Hamnet Thyssen had seldom had the chance to watch a bird flying from above it. He didn't have much of a chance now; he was too busy watching where he put his hands and feet. Killing himself for the sake of an unusual sight struck him as excessive devotion.

Maybe Marcovefa thought she could stop any trouble with a quick spell. Maybe she was right . . . and maybe she wasn't. Count Hamnet noticed that Liv and Audun Gilli both seemed much less carefree. Audun, probably the clumsiest person in the band, seemed scared out of his skin. Hamnet had a hard time blaming him—for that, anyway.

Not only were they above the raven—at least from time to time—they were also above a bank of clouds that bumped up against the side of the Glacier. And then they weren't above the clouds any more, but in them. Count Hamnet discovered what mountain dwellers already knew: clouds up close were nothing but fog. Not being able to see more than a few feet as he struggled down towards the ground only made the descent even more alarming than it would have been otherwise.

He was on the point of complaining about that when Trasamund beat him to it. Ulric loaded his voice with treacle as he answered, “You poor dear. Maybe we should go back up to the top and try again when the weather gets nicer.”

The Bizogot's reply should have melted the Glacier all by itself. Somehow, it didn't. It didn't scorch Ulric, either; the adventurer only laughed, which infuriated Trasamund all over again. Hamnet Thyssen went right on scrambling down the steep slope of the avalanche, glad he hadn't offered himself as a target for Ulric's merciless wit.

Little by little, what had been a layer of clouds below and then a layer of fog all around became a layer of clouds above. That seemed normal to Hamnet, as it doubtless did to the other Raumsdalians and the Bizogots.
Marcovefa said something that sounded intrigued as she looked up. Ulric started to laugh again, this time, Hamnet judged, without sarcasm.

“Well?” Hamnet asked.

“She says, ‘There's something you don't see every day,' ” Ulric said. “She's more used to the tops of clouds than to their bottoms.”

Marcovefa looked down then. That also seemed to interest her. There, at least, Hamnet Thyssen could understand why. She was closer to the ground than any men of the Glacier had come for who could say how many hundred years. She spoke again.

This time, Ulric translated without waiting for anyone to ask him: “She says even the air feels heavy and thick down here.”

“Tell her we think there isn't enough of it up where she lives,” Hamnet replied.

Ulric did. The comment only made the shaman laugh and shake her head. “Oh, no, she says,” Ulric reported. “It's just right up there. . . . All what you're used to, I suppose.”

“No doubt,” Count Hamnet said. “Of course, she's also used to eating neighbors she doesn't get along with.” He paused. “Considering a few of the people I know in Nidaros, that does have something to recommend it. But still . . .”

“I know some of the people in Nidaros you wouldn't mind seeing dead,” Ulric said. “Anybody who ate 'em would sick 'em up again afterwards.”

“It could be,” Hamnet said. “I—”

He broke off. Someone in the group of climbers farthest to his right let out a wild scream of terror. “Watch out!” Two Bizogots and Audun Gilli shouted the same thing at the same time. It was much too late and altogether useless. That whole group—except for Arnora, who was trailing—plunged down the still-steep side of the ice mountain in an avalanche they'd touched off themselves. Hamnet Thyssen never knew what went wrong. A misplaced hand? A foot that came down where it shouldn't have? Odds were whichever Bizogot made the mistake didn't have long to regret it, either. How long could you last in a tumble of snow and icy boulders? If you were lucky, you would die fast, before you got buried alive.

Ulric slid half a step towards Arnora, then checked himself. Any move he made, or any she made, might start things sliding again. One of the Bizogots in the next group over did have some rope. He threw it to her. White-faced and panting with terror, she tied it around her waist. Then, moving as
if walking on eggs, she sidled towards the man who'd thrown it. He hauled in the rope, and eventually hauled in Arnora with it.

She threw her arms around him and kissed him when she was safe—or as safe as she could be on the side of the Glacier. Count Hamnet glanced over to Ulric to see how he liked that. “I'd kiss him myself, but he's bound to like it better from Arnora,” Ulric said. Hamnet only nodded. Either Ulric really worried less about such things than he did or hid his worries better. Whichever it was, the adventurer had the advantage there.

“We knew this was dangerous before we started down,” Trasamund said. “Now we truly
know
it is. Let's remember till we—”

“Hit bottom?” Ulric suggested.

“Yes,” Trasamund said, and then, “No, curse it. Will you be serious for once in your life?”

“Oh, I'm serious enough,” the adventurer said. “Hard to stay jolly for long when you watch people die on a slope only maniacs would try.”

“Even sane, sensible people will try anything if they see their other choices are worse,” Count Hamnet said.

Ulric didn't try to argue, from which Hamnet concluded that he didn't think he could. They'd all decided taking the chance of dying was better than turning into men of the Glacier. Hamnet wondered whether the men the avalanche had buried would still agree. He wouldn't have the chance to ask them, not in this world he wouldn't.

The rest of the climbers gingerly went around the new avalanche as they kept descending. They couldn't go too far around, not unless they got away from the slope of the bigger avalanche they were using for their route down. The rest of the Glacier wasn't dangerously steep—it was impossibly steep.

Hamnet Thyssen looked up towards the top of the avalanche, back the way he'd come. The clouds that had been below him now hid most of the route. It might have been just as well; seeing what he'd done would only have convinced him he'd been out of his mind to try this.

Or had he? What other choice was there? If he and his comrades hadn't climbed the Glacier, the Rulers would have killed them. If they hadn't come down, they would have turned into cannibals. This was bad. Those, as he'd told Ulric, were worse.

“We've been beyond the Glacier and on top of it,” he said. “Not many can claim that.”

“You, me, Ulric, Audun, Liv,” Trasamund said. “Not many fools in the world.”

“You're welcome to speak for yourself, Your Ferocity, but I'll thank you to include me out,” Ulric said.

“Yes, tell me you're not a fool. Tell me and make me believe it,” the Bizogot jarl said. Ulric maintained a dignified silence. Trasamund made a noise somewhere between a grunt and a snort. “Didn't think you could.”

Marcovefa pointed down towards the ground—specifically, towards a herd of musk oxen in the middle distance. She said something that made Ulric snort, too—a snort that came close to a giggle. “Well?” Hamnet asked.

“She says we're either closer to the ground than she thought or those are the biggest voles she's ever seen,” the adventurer reported.

After a moment, Count Hamnet started to laugh, too. There he was, clinging like a fly to the side of the Glacier, unable to fly away if by some mischance he slipped, and he laughed hard enough to have trouble holding on. “What will she think when she sees mammoths?” he said when he could finally speak again.

“Probably that the pikas should have gone to the dentist before they grew up,” Ulric answered. That set them both laughing again, and got Trasamund and Audun Gilli started.

“I think we're losing our minds.” Audun didn't sound especially dismayed.

Trasamund shook his head. “We lost them a long time ago. We wouldn't have gone up there if we hadn't.”

Marcovefa asked a question. Ulric answered. By the way he kept going back and forth, he was having a hard time getting her to believe him. She kept screwing up her face and making derisive gestures. At last, he said something that turned her thoughtful. “She doesn't want to believe the musk oxen are as big as I say,” Ulric said. “I reminded her of the chunks of horseflesh we had when we got to her mountain. Beasts really do grow bigger down below the Glacier.”

The raven croaked in Marcovefa's ear. She answered it as seriously as she'd replied to Ulric. It croaked again. She shrugged and nodded.

“She'd sooner believe the bird than you,” Hamnet Thyssen said.

“Proves she knows them both,” Trasamund put in.

“I laugh. Ha. Ha, ha. Ha, ha, ha,” Ulric said.

Hamnet pointed to the ground in front of the musk oxen. “We really are getting close,” he said.

“Pay attention to where you are, not to where you want to be,” Trasamund
said. “We're still plenty high enough for the Glacier to kill us if it sees a chance.”

He spoke of it as if it were alive and malevolent. After two long climbs, one up, one down, and a little while atop its frozen immensity, Hamnet would have been hard pressed to tell him he was crazy. And he gave good advice. A careless mistake now could still be the last one somebody ever made.

They all talked one another down. Hamnet let out a sigh of commingled exhaustion and relief when his boots squelched in mud made soft and slimy by meltwater. Trasamund knelt down to kiss the dirt. That should have been laughable. Somehow, it wasn't.

“There is a world below the Glacier. Who would have believed it?” Marcovefa said, Ulric translating.

“In one way, it's no different from the world you just left,” Count Hamnet said. After Ulric did the honors, Marcovefa made a questioning noise. Hamnet explained: “Plenty of enemies will want to kill you here, too.”

 

A
S THE SUN SET
, the Glacier's shadows stretched farther and farther and darker and darker across the Bizogot plain. The travelers had moved a couple of miles south from the Glacier, not least because they didn't want to risk another avalanche thundering down on their heads. Marcovefa marveled at everything she saw: the swarms of birds, the variety of voles and mice and lemmings in the undergrowth, and the sheer scope and exuberance of the undergrowth itself.

“This land is so rich,” she said through Ulric. “So wide, so many plants, and even the air makes me think I've chewed magic mushrooms.”

“So much more air to breathe down here, it's probably making her drunk,” Hamnet Thyssen said, again remembering the thin stuff atop the Glacier. “I hope it doesn't make her sick.”

“Nothing we can do about it if it does—short of sending her off to the mountains, I suppose,” Ulric said.

Marcovefa almost stepped in a mammoth turd. When she realized what it was, she stared down at it in disbelief, then yammered in her own language. Whatever she said, it set Ulric laughing. “Well?” Trasamund said. “Tell all of us.”

“She wants to know if a mountain shit here, or maybe the Glacier,” Ulric told him. Marcovefa added something else. “She says no animal could be big enough to leave a turd like that.”

“She may say it, but that doesn't make it so,” the jarl said. “Now maybe she'll believe we weren't pulling her leg when we told her what the beasts down here were like. She'd better, or she'll have a thin time of it when she meets her first lion or dire wolf.”

Ulric translated that for the shaman from the men of the Glacier. Count Hamnet found he could make out more words now than he'd been able to when he first met that folk. It was a dialect of the Bizogot tongue, sure enough, but a strange one, and a very old-fashioned one as well.