Harry Turtledove - Breath of God

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.