Breath of God

XVIII

Sigvat II dithered two more days before sending Hamnet Thyssen the orders he wanted. Hamnet wondered whether Gudrid was trying to talk the Emperor out of it in spite of Eyvind Torfinn’s warnings, or whether Sigvat simply disliked and distrusted him that much. The nobleman swallowed a sigh: either one seemed possible.

At last, though, a palace servitor fetched the required parchment to Eyvind Torfinn’s home. Count Hamnet unrolled it to make sure it was what it was supposed to be. He didn’t need Ulric Skakki to warn him against going north with a document he hadn’t examined, a document that was liable to order any officer who read it to arrest him and kill him on sight.

The servitor only waited impassively while Hamnet read through the parchment. It was, in fact, everything he’d hoped for and more besides. A calligrapher had inscribed it in red and purple ink. It was bedizened with not one but three imperial seals, each stamped into wax of a different color. Sigvat II’s scribbled signature at the bottom seemed almost an afterthought.

And it said everything it should have. It gave Hamnet powers just short of imperial to fight the invading barbarians “said to be known as the Rulers.” All commanders in the north were ordered in no uncertain terms to subordinate themselves and their soldiers and wizards to him. Whether they would obey, and how well, might prove interesting questions. But Sigvat s orders seemed clear enough.

Ulric Skakki read over Hamnet s shoulder without the slightest trace of embarrassment. “What more do you want?” he said when he finished. “Egg in your beer?”

“I want to get moving,” Count Hamnet answered. “Do you think the Rulers are standing still?”

“Tomorrow is soon enough, unless you think they’re going to land on Nidaros with both feet tonight,” Ulric said. “Do you?”

Part of Hamnet did – a large part, too. But he recognized that the Rulers wouldn’t descend on the imperial capital before he could go out and face them. The Raumsdalian Empire was bigger than that. Odds were that the invaders remained in the northern forests. That would be strange country for them, and they probably wouldn’t be able to push their mammoths through very fast.

“Tomorrow is soon enough,” Hamnet agreed – grudgingly, but it was agreement all the same.

“There you go.” Ulric set a hand on his shoulder. “Besides, who knows? Somebody else may go up against them before you get there. Probably will, in fact. If he loses, what will Sigvat think? That he needs you more than ever, that’s what. And if he wins – well, so what? You’re still out of the dungeon, and that’s what really counts.”

A lot of Raumsdalians would have held a decidedly different view of things. For them, a victory in which they had no part would have seemed worse than a thrashing. It would have marked the death knell of their ambitions. Hamnet Thyssen didn’t feel that way, not least because he had few ambitions.

“Well, you’re right,” he said. Ulric Skakki knew him better than most, but looked surprised all the same. The adventurer had his own fair share of hope for himself, and naturally expected other people to have theirs, too.

A little later that day, Audun Gilli came up to Hamnet. “I will go north if you’ll have me,” the wizard said. “I want to do whatever I can against the Rulers.”

There were ambitions, and then there were ambitions. Count Hamnet had hoped to live out his days happily with Liv. That wouldn’t happen now. But did Audun deserve the blame because it wouldn’t? Wouldn’t Liv have taken up with someone else if Audun hadn’t been one of the travelers in the north? Hamnet feared she would have.

“You can come,” he said gruffly. “I don’t love you, by God. Nothing could make me love you. But I won’t sneak up to your bedroll and stick a dagger in you while you’re sleeping, either.”

Audun looked relieved. “Thank you, Your Grace!”

“For what?” Hamnet growled. “Now you’ve got a better chance of getting killed than you would have if I told you to go to the demons. So does Liv, for that matter.”

“Do you really want to see her dead?”

“No, curse it.” Count Hamnet s voice grew harsher yet; he hadn’t imagined it could. Audun, for the most part, wouldn’t have known a hint if it walked up and bit him in the leg. He took this one, though. Bobbing his head in an awkward gesture of thanks, he retreated in a hurry.

Part of Hamnet wanted to get blind drunk after that. He didn’t, though, which went a long way towards proving how serious he was about setting out the next morning. He went to bed, if not sober, then close enough so that he wouldn’t have more than a mild headache come the new day.

His bedchamber was as luxurious as any he’d ever known. A fireplace and two braziers held the cold at bay. His mattress was soft and thick, the furs that lay atop it even thicker. He had no excuse for not sleeping well.

But sleep didn’t want to come. Count Hamnet lay in the darkness, staring up at the ceiling he could barely see. He muttered to himself. When muttering didn’t do anything, he swore out loud. That didn’t help, either. He groped under the bed till he found the chamber pot. After using it, he lay down again. Sleep still stayed away.

When it finally came, it took him by surprise. He drifted into a dream without realizing he was dreaming. He didn’t remember much about it: only that it was one of those busy, complicated dreams that make waking life seem simple by comparison.

As he didn’t realize when the dream began, he also didn’t realize when it ended. He thought the weight pressing down on the bed next to him was something happening in his mind, not anything real.

Even when his hand touched warm, bare flesh, he turned that into part of the dream – a part that mingled sweet and bitter almost unbearably. But the soft, throaty laugh he heard then couldn’t possibly have sprung from inside his own mind.

His eyes flew open. “Who the – ?” he burst out. Liv, come to apologize the best way she knew how? Gudrid, come to torment him the best way she knew how? A serving girl, come to make sure he slept sound after all? No matter how kindly Eyvind Torfinn might mean that, Hamnet didn’t want a stranger. To say he didn’t want Gudrid proved what a weak reed words were. Liv… would hurt him more than she helped, though she might not understand that.

“Never mind who.” The answer came in the Bizogot tongue, so it wasn’t Gudrid or a servant. But it didn’t sound like Liv, either. Who, then?

Knowledge smote. “Marcovefa?” Hamnet said. “Why – ?”

“Because I want to. Do I need more reason?” A man would have said it like that. But Hamnet’s fingers told him she was no man. She slipped under the furs beside him. Her fingers began to roam, too.

“How did you get in?” Muzzy with sleep, he knew he was a couple of steps slower than he should have been. All the same, he was sure he’d barred the door when he came in. He hadn’t wanted company. He had it, though.

Marcovefa laughed again. “I am a shaman, remember? If I want to be someplace, I go there. If I want something to be mine, I take it.”

“But -” Hamnet spluttered.

“Hush.” Her mouth came down on his. That shut him up in the most effective way imaginable. He raised his arms to push her away, but they went around her instead. She twisted a little so that his hands found her breasts. She made a noise somewhere between a purr and a growl when he squeezed them.

The bed was wide. He rolled her over so that his weight pinned her to the mattress. His mouth trailed down from hers to her nipples. She sighed and pressed his head down on her. His hand found the joining of her legs. Her breath caught. As he stroked her, she opened them wider. She was wet and wanton, waiting for him.

“Here,” she whispered. “I do for you.” She twisted in the red gloom. Her mouth came down on him.

“Easy,” he said as her tongue fluttered and teased. “Oh, easy. Or I’ll -”

“So what?” She dove deep on him, so deep that she choked a little. That made her pull back a little, but she was laughing when she did.

More than a little of that and he would explode. He knew it, and Marcovefa had to know it, too. He didn’t think she’d come here just for that, so he touched her cheek. She paused and made a questioning, wordless noise. “Let’s do this,” he said, pressing his weight onto her again. He slid in with just the slightest of guidance. They began to move together, as if they’d been lovers for years.

Again, he thought he would finish too soon to satisfy her. When his mouth slid down to her breast again, though, she murmured something in her own dialect. There he was, nearly at the peak of pleasure, and there he stayed, and stayed, and stayed, till delight turned almost painful. Marcovefa gasped and quivered beneath him, again and again.

“Now?” she asked at last.

“Now!” Hamnet said. They were both sticky and slippery with sweat, sliding together. He reached the pinnacle, and seemed to fall from it forever. Marcovefa shivered one more time.

“Good?” she inquired brightly.

“My God,” he answered, and then, “Wait till I can see anything but fire in front of my eyes.” She must have liked that, for she laughed again. The motion made him slide out of her.

“Maybe you sleep now,” she said. Count Hamnet was inclined to think he’d sleep for the next month. This wasn’t love – he’d known love twice now, and known it to turn on him and bite – but he’d never dreamt of so much animal pleasure. And then, mischief in her voice, she went on, “Or maybe …” That wasn’t a complete sentence by itself, but what she did a moment later made it one.

After his sweaty exertions of a moment before, he hadn’t thought he could rise again so soon. He hadn’t thought he could rise again at all, not for days. But he surprised himself. Maybe – more likely – Marcovefa made him surprise himself. This time she rode him, less ferociously than he’d taken her. He didn’t think she used any magic past that which any man and woman who please each other have. If he was wrong, he didn’t much want to find out.

“There,” she said when they’d both spent themselves again. “Is that better?”

“Better than what?” Hamnet asked, which set her laughing all over again. It was better than almost anything he could think of.

Almost.If Gudrid truly loved me, and if she were truly faithful… The thought flickered through his mind like heat lightning on a summer night far to the south of Nidaros. Then sleep did smite him, and the darkness in the bedchamber was as nothing next to the black welling up from deep inside.

When he woke the next morning, he thought at first he’d dreamt it all. That couldn’t really have happened . . could it? But he needed only a heartbeat’s more consciousness to realize he wasn’t alone in the bed. The thin, gray light leaking in through tight-drawn shutters showed Marcovefa asleep beside him, a small smile on her face. Her features relaxed in slumber, she looked improbably young.

His eyes went towards the door. Yes, it was barred. She might have done that right after she came in. She might have got out of bed after he fell asleep. She might have, yes. But he wondered whether it had ever been unbarred at all.

Marcovefa woke up a few minutes later. She looked confused for a couple of heartbeats, as if wondering where she was, and with whom. Then she grinned at Count Hamnet. “Good morning,” she said.

“The night was better.” He leaned over to kiss her. He half – more than half – hoped they would pick up where they’d left off, though he was anything but sure he could rise to the occasion.

But Marcovefa said, “We take care of one thing at a time. Now you are all right for a while, yes? So now we go and see what we can do to these Rulers.” The invaders still didn’t seem to trouble her, even if they had everyone else below the Glacier from Trasamund to Sigvat in something close to a panic.

Hamnet wondered if he ought to resent being lumped with a water wheel that had got out of kilter. Pride and the memory of pleasure warred within him, but not for long. He couldn’t stay offended, not when he remembered how she’d put him back in good working order.

Marcovefa slid out of bed, found the chamber pot, and squatted over it. Like the Bizogots, her folk needed less in the way of privacy than Raumsdalians did. She straightened up, still naked. Hamnet watched her in unfeigned admiration.

He looked around the room. He didn’t see her clothes anywhere. Had she walked through the corridors of Eyvind Torfinn’s house like that? Or – ?

She fluttered her fingertips in a wicked parody of a gesture someone like Gudrid might have used. “See you at breakfast, sweetheart,” she said – and vanished. Hamnet didn’t think she’d made herself invisible. She’d really disappeared; a soft pop.’ of inrushing air said as much.

Could Liv or Audun Gilli apport themselves like that? Count Hamnet shrugged. He didn’t know. He only knew he’d never seen them do it.

He used the pot himself, then dressed in the clothes Sigvat’s servants had given him. They would do for winter wear, though they weren’t ideal. He would have stewed in his own juices wearing them in a summer heat wave here. A slow smile – not an expression he was used to wearing – stole across his face. His juices had done considerable stirring in the night.

He found his way to the dining room. Eyvind Torfinn was there, eating sausages and duck eggs and drinking a hot infusion of herbs. Gudrid was there, too. So was Marcovefa. The two of them ostentatiously ignored each other. Hamnet Thyssen nodded to Eyvind Torfinn, then walked up to the cook. “I’ll have what the earl’s having,” he said. “That looks good.”

“Help yourself to the sausages, Your Grace,” the man replied. “I’ll give you your eggs in just a bit. Would you like two or three?”

“Three, please,” Hamnet answered. The sausages were venison, their flavor enlivened with garlic and fennel. When he had his eggs – almost as fast as the cook promised – he sat down by Marcovefa. Catlike, she leaned against him.

Gudrid never missed a signal like that. One of her elegantly plucked eyebrows leaped. “This time, of course, it will be pure happiness,” she said in a voice filled with vitriol.

“I doubt it,” Hamnet answered. “It will be what it is, that’s all.”

Gudrid started to say something, then stopped with her mouth open. She must have expected him to come back with something like, Of course it will. His smile held a certain grim triumph. Sometimes getting the best of her even in tiny things felt more important than driving the Rulers beyond the Glacier.

Marcovefa pointed across at Gudrid. “She catches bugs, yes?” she said in the regular Bizogot tongue. Gudrid understood that well enough to close her mouth with a snap, and to redden in anger.

“Maybe we should all leave aside our quarrels, whatever they may be, until the happy day when the Rulers are defeated,” Eyvind Torfinn said, also in the Bizogot language.

His wife understood that, too, which was not to say she agreed with it. As Count Hamnet s own thoughts showed, he wasn’t sure he agreed with it, either. Beating the Rulers was his duty. Getting one up on Gudrid was a pleasure, and one he didn’t enjoy nearly often enough.

At the moment, though, Gudrid’s anger seemed more likely to be aimed at Marcovefa than at him. Gudrid had squabbled with Liv, too, and hadn’t liked what happened when she did. Would she remember that angering shamans and wizards wasn’t a good idea?

“With the Emperors order in my hand, I want to go north as soon as I finish here, Your Splendor,” Hamnet said. “And with me and the Bizogots out of your house, you should have peace again, God willing.”

“May it be so.” Eyvind Torfinn didn’t sound convinced, and Hamnet had a hard time blaming him for that. Gudrid wasn’t happy that he’d prevailed on Sigvat to open the dungeon. As far as she was concerned, Hamnet and Kormak Bersi could have stayed there till they rotted. She wasn’t shy about making her opinions known, either. No, Earl Eyvind probably wouldn’t have a happy time of it once his guests left.

Ulric Skakki walked into the dining room. He needed only a heartbeat to notice things there weren’t much warmer than they would have been up on the Glacier. “Hello!” he said. “Have you called a truce, or shall I go back and get my sword and shield?”

“We have a truce,” Eyvind Torfinn said, with perhaps more optimism than conviction. “Come on, my friend. Eat. Refresh yourself.”

“I thank you kindly, Your Splendor,” Ulric said. “Better grub here than I’ll get up on the road, that’s for sure. I may as well fill up while I’ve got the chance. Knowing Hamnet, he’ll want to get moving as quick as he can.”

“Your reputation precedes you,” Gudrid murmured to her former husband.

“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.”

“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.