Breath of God

II

By God, I will do this thing, or I will die trying,” Trasamund said. The mammoth from the Red Dire Wolves’ herd pawed at the ground with a broad, hairy forefoot, looking for whatever forage it could find under the snow. The hump on the mammoths back was far flatter than it would have been in warm weather; the beast had burned through most of the fat reserve it carried from the good times. It couldn’t understand what the Three Tusk Bizogots’ jarl was saying, which was just as well.

Hamnet Thyssen and Ulric Skakki looked at each other. Hamnet had trouble putting what he wanted to say into words. Ulric, as usual, didn’t. “Do you have to do this thing right now, Your Ferocity?” he asked.

“And why not?” Trasamund demanded.

“Because we’ll need you for the fight against the Rulers.” Now Count Hamnet found the words he needed. “Because if you kill yourself it will be the same as if they won a great battle.”

“They ride woolly mammoths to war,” Trasamund said. “I swore I would do the same. I will ride this beast. You shall not stop me.”

Maybe Hamnet and Ulric could have tackled him and sat on him. But, even if he didn’t try to draw his great two-handed sword and kill them both, what good would that do? He would only come out and try to ride a mammoth while they weren’t around. If he fell, if he was thrown clear, they might be able to save him before the beast crushed the life out of him. Hamnet didn’t believe it, but it was possible.

“Now,” Trasamund said, and advanced on the mammoth. Its hairy ears flapped – what was this man-thing up to? Trasamund was a big man, but seemed tiny beside the cow mammoth.

When he took hold of two big handfuls of mammoth hair and started scrambling up the beast’s side, Hamnet thought he would die, and about as unpleasantly as a man could. The mammoth’s trunk flew up into the air and blared out a startled note. The animal could have used the trunk to pluck off Trasamund and throw him down to the snow-covered ground. One of its great feet descending on his head or his chest, and that would be that.

“If I were mad enough to try to ride a mammoth, I wouldn’t be mad enough to try it that way,” Ulric Skakki said. “By God, I hope I wouldn’t, anyhow.”

“I don’t think there’s enough gold in the world to get me up on a mammoth’s back,” Count Hamnet agreed. “Not unless I’m up there with somebody who knows what he’s doing, I mean. And since the Rulers are the only ones who ride mammoths . .. Well, there you are.”

“No, there Trasamund is,” Ulric said. “I’m here where I belong – on the ground, and far enough away from that shaggy monster.”

But in spite of trumpeting in surprise and alarm, the mammoth didn’t dash Trasamund to the ground and trample him. The Red Dire Wolf Bizogots said they’d chosen the gentlest animal in their herd, and they seemed to mean it. Count Hamnet wouldn’t have let a cat climb him. That had to be what it was like for the mammoth.

With a shout of triumph, the jarl straddled the beast’s broad back. “I’m here!” he roared. “I really am up here! Look at me!” He let out a loud, wordless whoop almost as discordant as the mammoth’s trumpeting.

“By God, I don’t think I got that excited the first time I went into a woman,” Ulric said. “Of course, if you’d seen the woman I did it with the first time, you wouldn’t have got very excited, either.”

Hamnet Thyssen had a hard time not laughing. “What did she think of you?”

“She thought I’d paid her, and she was right.” Ulric raised his voice to a shout. “Now that you’re up there, Your Ferocity, how do you make the mammoth go?”

“You think I haven’t got an answer,” Trasamund yelled back. “Shows what you know.” He pulled a stick from his belt. “The Rulers use a goad to make the beasts obey, and I can do the same.” He thwacked the mammoth’s right side. “Get moving!”

“The Rulers probably start training their mammoths when they’re calves,” Hamnet said. “The animals know what the signals are supposed to mean. This mammoth’s never run into them before. What will it do?”

“You can see that, and I can see that, but do you really expect a Bizogot to see that?” Ulric Skakki answered. “Well, the beast’s hair is thick. Maybe it won’t think he’s hitting it hard enough to be really annoying. He’d better hope it doesn’t, because otherwise the last thing he’ll ever say is ‘Oops!’“

After Trasamund belabored the mammoth for a bit, it did start to walk. He whooped again – too soon. The mammoth was going where it wanted to go, not where he wanted it to go. And it was going there faster and faster, too, first at a trot, then at what had to be a bone-shaking gallop. Trasamund had no saddle and no reins. All he could do was hang on to handfuls of mammoth hair for dear life – and he did.

Ulric and Hamnet mounted their horses and rode after the mammoth. They made sure not to come too close. Spooking it might mean killing Trasamund. It might also mean getting killed themselves. Discretion seemed the better choice.

Even now, the woolly mammoth didn’t try to pull the obstreperous human off its back. It was a good-natured beast; the Red Dire Wolves had chosen well. And Trasamund, to Hamnet Thyssens surprise, had the sense not to be too obstreperous. After goading the mammoth into running, he let it go till it wore itself out, without trying to urge it on any more. When it finally stopped, breath smoking and great shaggy flanks heaving, Trasamund slid down and off over its tail, nimble as one of the monkeys that sometimes came up in trade from lands in the distant south.

Monkeys never lasted long in Nidaros; when the weather turned cold, chest fever carried them away. Hamnet hadn’t thought Trasamund would last long on the mammoths back, either. He was glad to find himself wrong. The Bizogot trotted away from his enormous mount before it could decide to turn on him for revenge.

“Bravely done – you idiot,” Ulric Skakki said.

“Call me whatever you please. I don’t care.” Trasamund’s grin was as wide and foolish and wondering as if he were just coming away from his first woman. “But you can’t call me an oathbreaker, by God. I swore I would do this, and I cursed well did. And I’ll do it again, too.”

“I have a question for you,” Count Hamnet said.

“What was it like?” Trasamund said. “I’ll tell you what it was like. It – ”

But Hamnet shook his head. “No, that wasn’t what I wanted to ask.”

Trasamund glowered at him; it was what the Bizogot jarl wanted to talk about. Pretending not to notice, Hamnet Thyssen went on, “You might have done better – smoother – if you’d asked one of our captives from the Rulers how they ride their mammoths. Why didn’t you? That’s what I want to know.”

Trasamund went from scowling to flabbergasted in the blink of an eye. “I never thought of it. I wanted to find out for myself.”

“Is that a Bizogot, or is that a Bizogot?” Ulric Skakki said, not loud enough for Trasamund to hear. Hamnet Thyssen nodded.

“Do you think the captives would give good advice or bad?” Trasamund asked. “They might want to see anyone from this side of the Glacier who gets on a mammoth die. If we have mammoth-riders, too, that gives us a better chance against their brethren.”

“If we were talking about Bizogots or Raumsdalians, I’d say you were right,” Hamnet answered. “But if the Rulers get captured, they’re disgraced. They’re cast out from their own folk. They can never go back – the sin, or whatever they think it is, clings to them.”

“That’s why a lot of them try to kill themselves,” Ulric added.

“It is,” Hamnet agreed. “But it’s also why I think you can rely on what they tell you. In their eyes, they aren’t of the Rulers anymore, because they know their own folk don’t want them back and won’t take them back. If they’re going to live any kind of life at all, they have to do it with us.”

“They’re queer birds, all right,” Trasamund said. “Well, maybe I will talk to them, then. If I like what they say, I’ll try it. And if I think they are lying to me, they’ll die, but not so fast as they’d want to.”

The cow mammoth lifted her trunk, bugled once more, and strode off with an air of affronted dignity. You got away with that, but if you think I’m happy about it you’d better think again – every line of her body told how she felt. She might have been a frumpy matron down in Nidaros offended because her soup was cold.

“I’m just glad the Rulers have held off from hitting us as long as they have,” Ulric Skakki said. “If they’d come after the Red Dire Wolves right after they hit the Three Tusk Bizogots, I don’t know how we could have stopped them.”

“My guess is, my brave clan hurt them badly even in defeat,” Trasamund said. “They haven’t pressed farther south because they can’t.”

“It could be.” Hamnet Thyssen doubted it was, but he was willing to let the Three Tusk jarl keep as much pride as he could. “But it could also be that they’re building strength up there, bringing men and mammoths and riding deer down through the Gap and getting ready for a big campaign.” If he were a chieftain of the Rulers, that was what he would have done.

“Makes sense to me,” Ulric said. “I wish we’d had more luck getting the Bizogots to fight as one army and not by clans. If they’re not careful, they’ll all go down separately, one clan at a time.”

“Getting Bizogots to do anything together with other Bizogots is like herding mosquitoes,” Trasamund said. “They fly where they want, they bite where they want, and if they feel like biting the herder, they do that, too.”

“And the swifts and the swallows swoop down and eat them as they please,” Hamnet said. Trasamund sent him a sour stare, but couldn’t very well claim he was wrong. “We need more spies up at the edge of the country the Rulers hold,” Hamnet went on. “I wish Odovacar’s wolves could tell us more, because it’s hard to get men up there without letting the Rulers know.”

“Maybe magic would serve where spies can’t,” Ulric said.

“It had better, by God,” Trasamund said. “Liv and Audun Gilli have been going on for a while now about how their toenails itch, and that means the Rulers have a hangover. Let’s see what they can do when they set their minds to it, and when old Odovacar tosses in whatever he can.”

“If the Rulers’ wizards catch them spying, it may do us more harm than good,” Hamnet Thyssen said. Did he fear what the Rulers’ wizards might do to Liv if they caught her working magic against them? He knew he did.

By the glint in Ulric Skakki’s eye, he knew the same thing. “A goldpiece is no good if it sits in your belt pouch. You’ve got to spend it,” he said. “A soldier is no good if he sits in a tavern pinching the barmaids. He’s got to go out into the field and fight. A wizard’s not worth much if he can’t work magic.”

“That’s all true, every word of it,” Trasamund said. “Let’s see what our shamans can do.”

Count Hamnet wanted to hate both of them. They aimed to send his beloved into danger. But he found he couldn’t, for he knew they were right. And he knew Liv would say the same thing when anyone got around to putting the question to her. And so he nodded heavily, and hated himself instead.

Audun Gilli looked worried, which would have alarmed Hamnet Thyssen more if Audun didn’t look worried so much of the time. Liv looked serious, which again was nothing out of the ordinary. Odovacar looked like a man who wanted a skin of smetyn. But, as far as Hamnet could tell, the Red Dire Wolves’ shaman was sober.

Deciding what the three of them wanted to do hadn’t been easy. Audun Gilli still knew much less of the Bizogot language than Hamnet wished he did. Liv’s temper frayed with translating for him and for Odovacar. And the Red Dire Wolves’ shaman’s deafness meant she had to shout the same thing over and over, which did nothing to make her any happier.

After a lot of shouting – not all of it having to do with Odovacar’s bad ears, by any means – the three sorcerers decided to send a spirit animal to what had been the Three Tusk Bizogots’ lands to see what the Rulers were doing there. Liv’s spirit would make the spearhead of the magic; Audun Gilli and Odovacar would lend her strength and help ward her against anything the invaders tried.

“What can go wrong?” Hamnet Thyssen asked Liv the night before they tried the spell.

She shrugged. “All kinds of things. Shamanry is not a certain business, especially when the enemy’s shamans fight against what you do.”

That much the Raumsdalian noble knew for himself. “What’s the worst that can happen?” he asked.

“Maybe they can kill me,” Liv answered. “Maybe they can kill my spirit and leave my body alive without it. Which is worse, do you think?” She sounded as if it were an interesting abstract question, one with nothing to do with the rest of her life – however long that turned out to be.

“Should you go on with this, then?” Yes, Hamnet feared for her.

“Warriors go into battle knowing they may not see the sun rise again,” Liv said. “You have done this yourself. You know it is so. We need to find out what the Rulers are doing. I’m best suited to look out over the lands that were my clan’s – that are my clan’s, by God – and see what the Rulers are doing there. It will be all right, Hamnet. Or if it isn’t, it will be the way it is.”

It will be the way it is. The hard life the Bizogots led made them into fatalists. Most of the time, Hamnet Thyssen admired that. Now it terrified him. “I don’t want to lose you!” he exclaimed.

“I don’t want to lose you, either,” Liv said. “You asked for the worst, and I told you. I do not think it will come to that. We are working on our home ground, with spells we know. I may not learn everything I want to, but I should be able to get away again afterward. Does that make you feel better?” She sounded like a mother comforting a little boy who’d had a nightmare.

The way they chose to comfort each other a little later had nothing to do with little boys, though there was some small chance it might have made Liv the mother of one. Afterward, if the old jokes were true, Count Hamnet should have rolled over and gone to sleep. He didn’t. He lay awake a long time, staring up at the darkness inside the mammoth-hide tent. Liv was the one who slipped quickly into slumber. He supposed that was all to the good; she would need to be fresh when morning came.

At last, he did sleep. He wished he hadn’t – his dreams were confused and troubled. He hoped that didn’t mean anything. He was no wizard, no foreteller. All the same, he wished they were better.

Liv broke her fast on meat and marrow. Through the winter, the Bizogots ate little else. She showed a good appetite. Hamnet Thyssen had to force his food down. “It will be all right,” she said again.

“Of course it will,” he answered, and hoped he wasn’t lying.

The weather should have cheered him. It was bright and sunny, and not far below freezing – after what they’d been through, it felt like spring. The equinox couldn’t be far away; the sun spent more time above the horizon every day. But even after winter formally died, the Breath of God would go on blowing for another month, maybe even six weeks. Only then would the snow melt, the land turn to puddles, mosquitoes and midges start breeding in mad and maddening profusion, and the landscape go from white to flower-splashed green.

Breathing didn’t feel as if Hamnet were inhaling knives. Getting out of the stuffy, smelly tent was a relief to the nose, too. If any air was fresher and cleaner than that which came down off the Glacier, the Raumsdalian couldn’t imagine what it might be.

He looked north. There stood the Glacier, tall as any other formidable mountains. He wished the Gap had never melted through. Then the Rulers would still be walled off from the Bizogot country – and from the Raumsdalian Empire to the south.

But if the Gap hadn’t melted through, Trasamund wouldn’t have come south to Nidaros looking for help exploring the land beyond the Glacier. Hamnet wouldn’t have come north with him, which meant he wouldn’t have met Liv.

He started to ask her if she thought the opening of the Gap was worth it to her, if their meeting made everything else worthwhile. He started to, yes, but he wasn’t fool enough to finish the question. Of course she would say no, and she would have good reason to. Because the Gap had melted through, the Rulers had crushed her clan. Her kinsfolk and friends, the folk she’d known all her life, were dead or exiled or living under the heel of the invaders.

No, she wouldn’t think that was worth it. She might have found love among her fellow Bizogots. Even if she hadn’t, they would still roam their grazing grounds as free men and women. Nothing right now meant more to Hamnet Thyssen than she did. As a Raumsdalian, he naturally thought nothing should mean more to her than he did. But Raumsdalians were, and could afford to be, more individualistic than Bizogots. To Liv, the clan mattered far more than the Empire did to Hamnet – and he was, by the standards of his folk, a duty-filled man.

Here came Audun Gilli, a somber look on his thin, scraggly-bearded face. And here came Odovacar, in his tufted and fringed shaman’s costume. He carried a drum – a frame made of mammoth bone, with a musk-ox-hide drumhead. Tufts of dire-wolf fur and sparkling crystals attached with red-dyed yarn dangled from it.

“Are we ready?” he asked.

“If we aren’t, what are we doing here?” Liv replied. Audun Gilli had picked up enough of the Bizogot tongue to understand the simple question, if not her reply. He nodded to Odovacar.

“Good. Good. Then let us begin.” The Red Dire Wolves’ shaman tapped the drum – once, twice, three times. The tone was deeper and richer than Hamnet Thyssen had expected. The rhythm, to his surprise, didn’t put him in mind of a dire wolf’s howl. It was shorter and sharper; it might have been bird tracks in the snow.

Odovacar started to dance. However old and stooped he was, he moved with surprising grace and ease. Liv began dancing, too. Her steps perfectly fit the beat of the drum. Count Hamnet was almost taken aback that she left ordinary footprints in the snow, not marks with three toes forward and one behind. Her arms flapped as if she were a bird.

Audun Gilli set semiprecious stones in a circle around the two Bizogot shamans. He murmured his chant so as not to interfere with the drum. “Ward spell,” he told Hamnet, who nodded.

Liv suddenly sat down in the snow. Her arms went on flapping. “I fly,” she said in the Bizogot language. “Like the snowy owl, I fly.” Her eyes seemed wider and more unwinking than they had any business being. They didn’t go yellow, as Odovacar’s had when he took wolf shape, nor did she sprout feathers and fly in the flesh. All the same, she gave an overwhelming impression of owlishness.

“Fly north, hunting owl,” Odovacar sang in a loud, unmelodious voice. He thumped the drum. “Fly north, fly north. Spy out our foes.” He went on dancing, as Liv went on flapping. If she was the arrow, he was the bow that loosed her.

Audun Gilli stood ready just inside the ward circle. He was still completely human, and completely alert, too. If Liv was arrow and Odovacar bow, he was the shield protecting them both.The shield that’s supposed to protect them, anyhow, Hamnet Thyssen thought uneasily. Audun had been the first to admit that the Rulers’ magic was stronger than any known on this side of the Glacier.

“I fly,” Liv said again. “Like the snowy owl, I fly.”

“Fly north, hunting owl. Spy out our foes,” Odovacar sang to her. “What do you see, hunting owl? Tell us what you see.”

“I see the lands of the Three Tusk clan, the grandest grazing and hunting lands in all the Bizogot country,” Liv answered. In calling them that, owl-Liv saw with her heart, not with her head. The lands hard by the Glacier were poor even by the sorry standards of the frozen steppe.

“Tell us more, tell us more,” Odovacar sang. “Spy out our foes. Fly north, fly north. Spy out our foes.”

“I see herds.” Liv sounded dreamlike, or perhaps owllike, as her spirit soared far from her body. “I see herds of musk oxen. I see herds of mammoths. The herds seem large. I see herds of… deer?” All at once, doubt came into her voice. Those riding deer had traveled down through the Gap with the Rulers. They weren’t native to the Bizogot country.

“You begin to find the foe,” Odovacar assured her. “Tell us what you see, before the foe finds you.”

“I see an encampment,” Liv said. “It is wide. It is broad. All the tents are laid out in square array.” That surely marked it for a camp of the Rulers. The Bizogots were not an orderly folk. They scattered their tents every which way across the ground. The Rulers, as Count Hamnet had seen beyond the Glacier, had far more discipline.

“Tell us more, tell us more, before the foe finds you.” Even if they understood Odovacar in a Raumsdalian tavern, they would have thrown things at him. But he wasn’t singing to entertain; he worked with the charm to remind Liv what to do.

“I see men of the Rulers tending to mammoths. Some of the mammoths must be theirs. Some are stolen from the Bizogots.” Though her spirit had flown far, anger still fired her voice. She went on, “I see women of the Rulers. They are ugly bitches.” That wasn’t anger – it was scorn.

“Does the foe ride to war? Does he mount mammoths and ride to war?” Odovacar sounded more urgent now. He probably couldn’t hear her answers, but he was bound to know others could.

“I see … I see … I think I see . ..” For the first time, Liv hesitated. Were the Rulers’ wizards working to thwart her? Her arms flapped faster, as if she was flying away from the encampment. Her eyes widened. “I do see them. By God, I do! They ready their host! Mammoths and deer without number. Soon they will sweep down on the Red Dire Wolves! How did they bring so much through the Gap?”

“Tell us more!” Odovacar sang. “More! We must hear more!” He thumped the drum harder, as if to pull words from Liv.

“They are in a place we always called the Four Breasts because of the big frost heaves there,” she said. “That is a fine place to move south from – the forage is always good there. Even horses have no trouble finding grass under the snow in winter. It is easy for mammoths and musk oxen – and I see it is easy for the riding deer the Rulers use, too.”

Then she gasped. Her body twisted. She might have been banking in flight. She let out an angry cry, a cry that might have burst from a true owl’s throat. Her hands stretched into what were plainly meant for talons, visible even through her mittens.

Audun Gilli gasped at the same time. “Spirit hawks!” he said in Raumsdalian, and then, “Drum her home, Odovacar! Quick!”

The Red Dire Wolves’ shaman spoke no Raumsdalian. Even if he had, he wouldn’t have been able to hear Audun. But he too could sense what needed doing. The rhythm of his drumming changed. So did his chant. “Back to safety!” he sang. “Back to the tents of your folk! Evade all evil! Back to the tents you know so well!”

How well did Liv know the Red Dire Wolves’ tents? Well enough to home on them? Hamnet Thyssen watched in an agony of suspense, that being the only thing he could do. Liv twisted again, as if sliding away from something. Spirit hawks, Audun called whatever the Rulers were mustering against her. What did that mean? No wizard himself, Hamnet didn’t know.

Then, without warning, Liv reached out and grabbed with the claws that were really fingers. “Ha!” she cried. “That one will trouble me no more!”

Audun Gilli’s face twisted in pain. Whatever shed done, he felt it. “They might as well slay that wizard’s carcass, for his soul is dead,” he said somberly. Hamnet remembered what he’d asked Liv before her spirit flew. One of the things she’d feared most for herself, she’d just visited upon the Rulers. Good, Hamnet thought. Do it again!

But, by the way she moved, she went back to trying to escape. How many enemy sorcerers were flying against her, riding the winds of the world and whatever equivalents the spirit world knew? Defeating one might be – was – bold and brave, but a shaman flying alone surely couldn’t hope to outfly and outfight a flock of foes.

“Here is the circle! Come back to the circle!” Audun, for once, had the sense to speak the Bizogot language, not his own. Odovacar’s drumming also – Count Hamnet hoped – helped guide Liv’s spirit back towards her body.

“Fly like the Breath of God,” Hamnet whispered harshly. “Fly straight, fly hard, fly fast. Oh, fly fast!”

And then Liv came back to her body once more. No more than a couple of heartbeats after she sprang to her feet, reason on her face once more and all owlishness banished from it, two of the wardstones in Audun’s circle flared to brilliant life. Liv winced, but stood steady. Odovacar lurched in his dance, though he also stayed on his feet. Audun Gilli grunted as if he’d taken a punch in the belly. But the circle held.

“I saw – enough,” Liv said, panting as if she’d run – or flown – a long way.

“Can they strike you even with your spirit back in your body?” Count Hamnet asked, still anxious for her.

“I don’t see how,” she answered. “I know we couldn’t. They were trying to hold my body and spirit apart. Now that I’ve returned to myself, they’ve failed.”

No sooner were the words out of her mouth than she staggered. Odovacar cried out and dropped to one knee. Audun Gilli shouted, too, in what seemed to Hamnet mixed pain and surprise. Liv’s left hand shaped a Bizogot gesture against evil. Audun pulled out an amulet he wore under his fur jacket and brandished it like a sword.

Hamnet Thyssen did draw his sword. He slashed the air all around Liv, hoping to cut any influence lingering close by. He had no idea whether that did any good. He didn’t see how it could hurt, though.

“Begone!” Liv said, and her hand twisted into that sign again. “Begone, by God!” She sounded fierce and frightened at the same time. Hamnet had heard a lot of soldiers going into battle sound the same way.

Odovacar barked and snarled and bared his teeth. They always seemed long and sharp for a mere man’s. Now they looked more than halfway wolfly. Hamnet Thyssen didn’t think he was imagining that.

He was sure he wasn’t imagining things when the tension broke, as quickly and cleanly as if he had severed it with his sword. Odovacar nodded and grinned, and his teeth went back to normal again, or as normal as they ever were. Audun Gilli breathed a noisy sigh of relief. He returned the amulet to its hiding place.

Liv sighed, too, and shook her head. “Every time I say what the Rulers can’t do, I turn out to be wrong. I won’t say anything like that anymore.”

“They did strike you, then – the, uh, spirit hawks?” Hamnet asked.

“Oh, yes.” Now she nodded, shakily. “They chased me here, and they struck me – they struck me hard. I don’t know how they did, but I do know I came off lucky to get away with nothing worse than scrapes and scratches on my spirit.” She paused, visibly reconsidering that. “No, not just lucky. I had good friends and comrades who came to my aid.” She bowed to Odovacar, to Audun, and to Hamnet. “I thank you all.”

“I don’t think I did anything to be thanked for.” Hamnet wished he knew more of magic. Loving a shaman made him feel foolish and ignorant.

But Liv squeezed him hard enough to make the air leave his lungs in a startled Oof! “You did! You did!” she said, and her eyes glowed. “Couldn’t you feel your blade cutting through the links between me and my pursuers? What wise shaman taught you to do that?”

“I couldn’t feel anything. Nobody taught me. I didn’t even know if I was helping,” he answered honestly. “I wanted to do something, that’s all.”

She kissed him. “You were wonderful!” Then she smiled at Audun Gilli and Odovacar. “And so were you, both of you.”

You were wonderful. Had Gudrid ever said anything like that to him, in all the time they spent together? If she had, he couldn’t remember it. That made him wonder why he’d loved her so fiercely, and why he’d felt so lost and damned when she played him false. Only one thing occurred to him: I was a fool, and I didn’t know any better.

“Now – what I saw,” Liv said in tones that brooked no argument. Hamnet Thyssen saluted her with clenched fist over his heart, as if she were a Raumsdalian general. He wasn’t sure she understood precisely the honor he was giving her, but she did understand it was an honor. With a smile aimed his way, she went on, “The Rulers muster for war. They have a host of mammoths and those riding deer they used gathered together at the place we call the Four Breasts.”

“Yes, you said so as you, uh, flew,” Hamnet reminded her. He wondered how she’d recognized it before the thaw set in and exposed the landscape beneath the blanket of snow. He supposed Bizogots marveled that Raumsdalians could find their way through Nidaros’ winding streets and alleys. All what you’re used to, he thought.

“The Four Breasts aren’t far north of the Red Dire Wolves’ grazing grounds,” Liv said. To Hamnet and Audun, she added, “We went almost that far before we found out the Rulers had set on the Three Tusk clan. So it seems likely they plan to come south, and the Red Dire Wolves stand in their way.”

“What’s that?” Odovacar asked. Liv repeated it louder, then louder still. At last, the shaman nodded, though Count Hamnet still wasn’t sure he understood.

“How many warriors do the Rulers have?” Hamnet asked. “A Bizogot clan’s worth? Three? Ten? Could you tell?”

Liv frowned. “I’m not sure, not when you put it like that. They had many mammoths and many deer – more, I think, than we could keep in one place for very long.”

“Did they have men there, too, to move straight to the attack?” Hamnet persisted.

“Some, at least,” Liv replied. “I’m not sure how many. Their magic tried to keep me from seeing anything at all, but it failed, it failed. That is my land, and it knew me.” Pride filled her voice, and with reason – she’d defied the enemy and got away with it.

“What do we do now?” Audun Gilli asked.

“Talk to Totila.” That wasn’t Liv – it was Odovacar. Somehow or other, he’d understood Audun just fine. And he seemed to have found the right answer, too.

The jarl ofthe Red Dire Wolves plucked at his graying beard. “They muster in great numbers, you say?” Totila asked Liv.

“They do, Your Ferocity,” she said.

“We have no great numbers here. How could we?” Totila said. “The Red Dire Wolves are what we are – one clan. We also have some of your Three Tusk Bizogots, but not many – and even those we have trouble feeding.

How can we hope to stand against a great host of foes, with strong magic? Would we not be wiser to move aside and let these enemies pass through?”

“This is a coward’s counsel!” Trasamund cried.

Totila eyed him. “You are in a poor position to tell me what is best for my clan when you think on what happened to yours.”

Trasamund turned red. “We were taken unawares. We would not have been if I were with the clansfolk and not down in the Empire.”

“And whose fault was that? Did someone steal you and drag you down to Nidaros?” Totila could be as sarcastic as a Raumsdalian.

To Hamnet Thyssen’s mind, though, the Red Dire Wolves’ jarl asked the wrong question. The right one was,Even if you were there, even if the Three Tusk Bizogots were alert, how much difference would it have made? Hamnet feared he knew the answer, which wouldn’t have gladdened Trasamund’s heart. Not much. Not much at all.

“I was trying to get help for us,” Trasamund said. “I did my best to bring the Bizogots together and warn them there was danger coming down out of the north. We stopped here on our way to the southlands, by God. Did you want to listen?” He laughed. “Not likely!”

“Well, who would have listened to a mad, wild tale like the one you were spinning?” Totila retorted. “I thought you were lying through your teeth. Anybody else in his right mind would have, too.”

“And he would have been wrong, and he would have paid for it,” Trasamund said. “And you were wrong, and you are wrong, and you cursed well will pay for it. So what the demon is being in your right mind worth?”

They scowled at each other. They both squared off into positions from which they could easily grab for their swords. With Bizogots, quarrels often ended in blood, not words. A fight here, though, would throw the Red Dire Wolves against what was left of the Three Tusk Bizogots and the Raums-dalians who’d ridden north to help them. Neither Trasamund nor Totila seemed to care.

“Have they both gone crazy?” Ulric Skakki whispered to Count Hamnet. “Crazier, I mean? They sure act like it.”

“They do,” Hamnet agreed. Then he raised his voice to a shout: “Hold, both of you! I can tell this is the Rulers’ deviltry, not your own will. This is one of the things they try to do. They pit our leaders against each other, and then swarm through after our quarrels leave no one who can stand up against them.”

“By God, he’s right,” Liv said. “Despite all we can do, their wizards must be working on you. Why else would you fight when danger to both of you and to all your folk builds just to the north?”

Ulric translated in a low voice for Audun Gilli. The Raumsdalian wizard said, “I feel no enemy magic.” Ulric kicked him in the ankle. For a wonder, Audun caught on. Hastily, he continued, “That only proves how subtle the spell is. Will you let it seduce you?”

Trasamund and Totila looked at each other. Then they both looked shamefaced, and a shamefaced Bizogot was as rare as a white woolly mammoth. “No!” they said loudly. Trasamund drew his sword, but only to brandish it in the direction of the Rulers. Totila shook his big, hard fist towards the north.

“We fight together!” he cried.

“Side by side, till we slay them all!” Trasamund roared. They embraced each other like brothers. All the watching Bizogots cheered. They too aimed weapons and clenched fists at the invaders from beyond the Glacier.

In a low voice, Ulric Skakki said, “You’re sneakier than I gave you credit for, Thyssen.”

“Nothing sneaky about it,” Hamnet answered. “For all I know, I was telling the truth. Even for Bizogots, that fight between Trasamund and Totila was stupid.”

“Even for Bizogots.” An ironic smile played across Ulric’s lips. “Well, you said it – I didn’t. But don’t expect me to tell you you’re wrong.”

“I’m just glad Liv and Audun went along with me,” Count Hamnet said. “And thanks for giving Audun a hand – er, a foot. I saw, even if neither jarl did.”

“Sometimes he’s too innocent for his own good. I helped him along a little,” Ulric said. “And now all we have to do is beat the Rulers. Should be easy, right?” He laughed. So did Hamnet Thyssen. A moment later, he wondered why.