The Breath of God (10 page)

“Quite a show, isn't it?” Ulric Skakki whispered to Hamnet. “I never thought a bad joke could go so far.”

“That should teach you to think before you let your tongue flap,” Hamnet whispered back. “It probably won't, but it should.” Ulric sent him an aggrieved look. He took no notice of it.

The two Raumsdalians might have quarreled then, even though the Bizogot shamans were still busy with their magic. But then Odovacar let out a sudden, startled yip. Liv gasped in surprise. Hamnet Thyssen and Ulric Skakki stared at them, their own disagreement forgotten. Audun Gilli's eyes got wider yet.

“They do!” Liv said. “By God, they do!” She sounded astonished. She also sounded outraged. “This must not be!”

“Banish the lies!” Odovacar bayed. “Banish the deception!”

“Begone!” Liv cried. “Begone! Let them be trampled!”

“Let them be eaten!” Odovacar bared his teeth. They were uncommonly long and sharp, as if he was beginning to take animal shape. The howl he let out argued that he was.

Hamnet felt something that had hovered over the Bizogot encampment—that had, for all he knew, hung over the whole of the frozen steppe—lift and pull back. He hadn't known it was there; it manifested itself more by its absence than it had by its presence. Was he smarter now that it started to withdraw? Maybe he was. Or maybe he was imagining that he was. How could he tell? He was no wizard, and never would be.

Audun Gilli gasped. “No!” he said in Raumsdalian, and began incanting frantically.

Two or three heartbeats later, Liv and Odovacar also gasped. The Red Dire Wolves' shaman staggered and pitched forward on his face. He lay unmoving, whether dead or smitten with something like an apoplexy Hamnet Thyssen could not have said.

Hamnet had more urgent things to worry about than the state of Odovacar's health. Liv, stronger—or perhaps just younger—than the other shaman, still stood, swaying as if in a breeze. But there was no breeze. The force of the Rulers' counterspell was what rocked her. Her lips skinned back from her teeth in a ghastly grimace as she gathered all her strength to resist the magic.

Audun Gilli clutched an amulet of sea-green beryl. Hamnet knew that was a stone sorcerers used to overcome their enemies and make them meek. Audun gabbled out a spell as fast as he could. Was he trying to save himself alone, or did he also include Liv and even Odovacar in his magic? Count Hamnet couldn't ask, not without distracting him and perhaps ruining everything he was trying to do.

Hamnet wondered what he could do by himself, but not for long. He drew his sword and began slashing the air around Liv, as he'd done a couple of times before. Once it had seemed to help, once not. He hoped it would do some good now.

Hoping, he called, “Do the same for Audun,” to Ulric Skakki. “It can't hurt—I'm sure of that.”

“Right.” Ulric wasted no words, but drew his own blade. The adventurer loved to quibble when he found the chance, but he knew there was a time and a place for everything. This was the time for action.

Trasamund freed his great two-handed sword from its scabbard and passed it through the air above the fallen Odovacar. The Red Dire Wolves' shaman groaned and stirred—he wasn't dead, then. But only Trasamund's powerful wrists let him jerk the blade higher in the nick of time so he didn't slay the man he was trying to save. Odovacar howled like a wolf. Hamnet Thyssen wondered whether he had anything more than a wolf's wits in him.

Liv cried, “No!” again. This time rage filled her voice, not fear. “We broke their cursed snare! They won't set it again!” She clutched the hare's foot and agate with her right hand. “I throw back your curses!” she shouted. “May they come down on the head of the shamans who sent them forth, and may they fill their witless heads with coals of fire!”

“So may it be!” Audun Gilli said. Hamnet wouldn't have bet he could follow Liv's words, but he did. Maybe the magic she was working helped him understand.

And Odovacar also called, “So may it be!” His voice seemed scarcely human—it held as much of the dire wolf's howl as of words. But Hamnet Thyssen understood him even so, and Liv and Audun also seemed to.

“Coals of fire!” Liv cried again, gesturing with her left hand. Was it coincidence that Audun Gilli and Odovacar also made the same pass at the same time? Hamnet Thyssen didn't think so.

And he didn't think it was coincidence that the two Bizogots and Audun cried out again a moment later, this time in triumph. Now Audun shouted, “Coals of fire!” Hamnet didn't think he was conjuring with the phrase, but was using it to describe what was happening to the enemy wizards.

“Let them see how they like that, by God!” Liv said. “Let them see they've found foes who can strike back!” Odovacar howled like a hungry dire wolf.

“Is it over?” Hamnet asked.

“For now,” Liv answered. “There will be other meetings. They are bound to come, and we will have to do our best in them. But this one has gone as we might have wished most.” She looked over to Ulric Skakki. “You see what happens when you joke?”

“I'm afraid I do,” he said. “I guess that ought to teach me to keep my mouth shut from here on out, the way Hamnet says I should—but it probably won't.”

“No, it won't,” Trasamund agreed. “Raumsdalians never know when to shut up.”

“Which makes us different from Bizogots how?” Ulric asked politely. The jarl glared at him. Ulric smiled back. But two Bizogot shamans and a Raumsdalian wizard had found and beaten back the spell the Rulers laid over the frozen plains. Instead of quarreling, both men started to laugh. They too were liable to have other run-ins, but no trouble would spring from this one.

 

T
OTILA AND
T
RASAMUND
sent out messengers again. Now that the cloud of foolishness that had hung over the Bizogots was gone, the two jarls hoped their comrades would have second thoughts about what they'd heard before. “Maybe,” Totila said hopefully, “we'll even have people riding into our camp to tell us they've decided to take us seriously after all.”

But they didn't.

Hamnet Thyssen kept looking north—not, for once, towards the Glacier but towards the Rulers. They hadn't tried to restore the spell Liv and Audun and Odovacar had shattered. Hamnet wondered what that meant. Maybe their wizards had taken a serious defeat and lacked the strength to fight back. Or maybe they'd simply decided the spell was worthless now that the Bizogots knew it was there. Who could guess how the Rulers thought?

Even the captives the Bizogots held weren't sure. “Who knows how a shaman thinks?” one of them said when Hamnet asked him. “They know what they know, and it is not for the likes of us to learn. Maybe they tell the chieftains, but I am—I was—only an ordinary warrior. I rode, I fought . . . and I failed, for you hold me now.”

“Do your folk have writing?” Hamnet Thyssen needed to use the Raumsdalian word, for the Bizogots didn't use letters. Naturally, the prisoner failed to follow him. He explained, as best he could, in the Bizogot language.

“This is another kind of magic you speak of,” the captive said. His name was Rankarag. “I told you, I know nothing of what shamans do.”

“No, not magic. Anyone can do it. I can do it, and I'll never be a shaman in a thousand years,” Count Hamnet said. “Look.” He took a sharp length of bone and wrote
Rankarag
in the mud. “There is your name.”

Rankarag promptly reached out with his booted foot and smudged the characters beyond legibility. “No one will make magic with a picture of my name,” he declared.

Hamnet Thyssen started to write his own name in the dirt to show the captive it was only a name, not magic at all. He started to, yes, but then he didn't. Who could say what a sorcerer might do with his name—and who could say whether Rankarag knew as little of wizardry as he claimed? Better, maybe, not to take chances.

Instead, Hamnet wrote
mammoth
. “These are the signs we use for the name of the great beast,” he said.

“One of them is the same as one in my name,” Rankarag said suspiciously. He had a quick eye.

“
Rankarag
and
mammoth
have the same sound in them,” Hamnet answered. He said the name and the word again, stressing the first syllable each time. “The same character shows that sound.”

Rankarag plucked at his thick, curly beard. “With enough—characters, you call them?—you could set down anything you can say, couldn't you?”

He was no fool. Nodding, Hamnet said, “We have a character for each sound in my language. We
can
set down anything we say.”

“This is a strong magic,” the warrior of the Rulers said. “This is a stronger magic than I looked for folk of the herd to have.” By that he meant any human beings not of the Rulers. His folk looked at all other people as animals to be herded like mammoths and riding deer.

“It is not magic at all,” Hamnet Thyssen insisted. “It is a craft, like making a bow or fletching an arrow. Anyone can learn it.”

“So you say,” Rankarag replied. “You are not part of the Bizogot herd. Do these Bizogots know this so-called craft?”

“No,” Hamnet said.

“So your herd keeps it for itself, then,” the warrior from the Rulers said. “One day, you will use it against the Bizogot herd. You will slaughter them all, except for the pretty women, and you will take their land.” He had a very basic notion of what went into diplomacy. So did the rest of his folk.

Count Hamnet wanted to laugh in his face. Instead, he just shook his head. “We don't want the Bizogots' land. We have better land of our own.”

“But you still keep these, these characters secret from the Bizogots,” Rankarag said.

“No,” Hamnet replied, as patiently as he could. “They can learn to write if they want to. A few of them have. Most see no use for it, though.”

“Then this Bizogot herd is full of fools,” Rankarag said—a view not too different from the one many Raumsdalians held. He pointed a finger at Hamnet Thyssen. “I can prove that you are lying. I can make you prove it, in
fact. If it is only a craft”—he laughed at the very idea—“you will not mind showing me all of these characters.”

After writing Rankarag's name again, Hamnet showed him the sound that each character in it made, finishing, “You see the
r
sound and the
a
sound are there together twice. These are the characters that make them, and they are also there twice. We have thirty-seven characters in all. Here they are.” He wrote them out in order, saying the sound for each one as he did.

Rankarag stared at him, at the Raumsdalian characters, at him again. “You are not making this up,” he said slowly.

“By God, no!” Hamnet said. “That would be more trouble than it's worth.” Like a lot of Bizogots, Rankarag proved to have an excellent memory for what he saw and heard. He took the bit of bone from Count Hamnet and wrote in the muddy ground, muttering to himself as he did. “So this would say
tent
in the tongue of the Bizogot herd, then?”

“Almost. Not quite. What you wrote is
tint
, which means a color. Here is the character for the
e
sound.” Hamnet pointed it out, then wrote
tent
himself. In spite of himself, he was impressed that Rankarag had come so close after hearing the sound of each character only once.

“Tent.”
Rankarag wrote it again, this time correctly.

“That's right,” Hamnet said.

Rankarag eyed him. “I could put your name in the mud, the same as you put mine. I could work magic on it if I were a shaman.”

Suddenly, Count Hamnet wondered whether showing him the way Raumsdalians wrote was such a good idea. Rankarag didn't see writing as a tool. He saw it as a weapon. The minds of the Rulers seemed to run in that direction. As casually as Hamnet could, he said, “You could try. Because we use characters all the time, of course we are warded against them.” That sounded good. He wished it were true.

And it impressed the captive less than he hoped it would. “You folk of the herds, what are your wards worth?” Rankarag said. “Our shamans should have no trouble beating them down.”

“Your magic is not always as strong as you think it is,” Hamnet Thyssen replied, trying to fight down his unease. “Besides, what do you care what the Rulers do? You don't belong to them any more. You are a prisoner, a prisoner of the Bizogots.”

Rankarag flinched as if Hamnet had threatened to hit him. The real threat probably wouldn't have scared him; he was a warrior to the core. “I wish you hadn't reminded me,” he said in a low, sullen voice.

“You need to remember it. You failed. You were captured. The Rulers don't want you back. If you have any future at all, it's with us, not with them.” Count Hamnet hoped he was right. If Rankarag escaped and brought writing and the idea of writing back to the Rulers' wizards, would that make him valuable enough to earn his way into the ranks of his folk once more? Hamnet couldn't be sure; he simply didn't know the enemy well enough to judge.

One thing he could do—and he did it. He warned the guards to keep an extra close watch on the prisoners. “We'll do it,” one of them said.

Hamnet asked Trasamund and Totila to tell the guards to be careful, too. They would take an order from a jarl more seriously than a warning from a foreigner. He hoped they would, anyhow. He had the feeling he'd put a sword into the Rulers' hands. He hadn't intended to, but what did that have to do with the price of meat?

 

“N
AME MAGIC, YOU
say?” Ulric Skakki looked at Count Hamnet as if he'd found half of him in his apple. “Name magic with letters? Well, there's one more thing to have nightmares about. Thank you so much.”

“I didn't mean to,” Hamnet said sheepishly.