Harry Turtledove: Breath of God

If you were a vole or a mole, a lot. Otherwise?

“I have my magic back,” Marcovefa said. “Nothing else matters.” Count Hamnet was inclined to agree with her.

Coming up to the steppe before, Hamnet had passed smoothly from one Bizogot clan’s territory to the next. As often as not, riders near the edge of one clan’s lands – or the fierce dogs they had with them – would let him know when he’d come within the bounds of a new jarl’s domain.

Now the Rulers had shattered the arrangements that prevailed for so long. In a broad swath down the center of the frozen plain, the invaders had beaten and broken up the clans that had roamed there for so long. The Rulers had commandeered as many of the herds as they could lay hold of, but others still wandered with no one to protect them from lions and short-faced bears and dire wolves . . and from hungry Bizogots as much on their own as the musk oxen and mammoths and horses were.

Chaos and banditry, of course, spread far beyond the clans the Rulers had actually broken. Refugees and fugitives went where they would, went where they could, and turned their swords and bows against the Bizogots already holding those grounds and herds. Some of the clans the Rulers hadn’t touched got smashed to pieces by their own folk . . and then they spread disorder farther yet.

In the midst of such madness and uncertainty, a knot of hard-bitten travelers who weren’t afraid to fight had no trouble gathering a following. Men who wanted to hit back at the invaders but saw no way to do it on their own were glad to join people who did have a plan.

“How does it feel, being most of the way towards a king?” Ulric Skakki asked Hamnet after they’d collected a pretty fair beginning to an army.

Hamnet rolled his eyes. “How does it feel, being out of your head?”

“I enjoy it most of the time,” Ulric said easily. “Now answer my question.”

“I’m not a king. I’m not a jarl, either. I’m barely even a general,” Hamnet Thyssen said. “If Trasamund wanted that slot, he could take it. I wouldn’t say a word. This is his country, not mine.”

“That’s why he’s standing back and letting you have it,” Ulric said. Before Hamnet could tell him he was crazy again, Ulric went on, “Up here, he’s just another Bizogot – and just another Bizogot who’s lost to the Rulers. But you, you’re -”

“Just another Raumsdalian who’s lost to the Rulers,” Hamnet broke in.

Ulric Skakki shook his head. “You’re a foreigner. You’re interesting. You’re exotic. You carry hope.”

“And other diseases,” Hamnet Thyssen said.

“Ow!” Ulric wasn’t easy to wound with words, but he flinched then. Gathering himself, he said, “Well, the Rulers would agree with you.”

“Bugger the Rulers. Bugger em with a pine cone,” Count Hamnet said.

“That’s what we’re here for,” the adventurer reminded him.

“I know,” Hamnet said. “We’re going to have to hit them. If we don’t, the Bizogots will decide we’re good for nothing. They’ll ride off and leave us, and then -”

“We will be good for nothing,” Ulric Skakki finished for him. “Well, the world has been telling me I’m good for nothing for a long time. Maybe it’s been right all along. You never can tell.”

Hamnet Thyssen glowered at him. “We haven’t got much of an army here. If we strike at the Rulers and lose. ..” He shook his head. “If that happens, we’re ruined.”

“We wouldn’t be way the demon up here if plenty of people didn’t already think we were ruined,” Ulric said. “So far, we’ve hurt the Rulers here on the steppe. We’ve killed their men and slaughtered their animals. And have they hurt us? Have they even touched us? They haven’t, and you know it.”

Reluctantly, Hamnet nodded. He did know it, but knowing it brought no reassurance. “Pinpricks,” he said. “We’ve given them pinpricks, and they haven’t bothered noticing. But they will if we hit them hard.”

Ulric Skakki set his mittened hands on Hamnet s shoulders. “You can stay invisible, or you can make a proper enemy. The way it looks to me, those are your only choices. And you can’t do both at once. So which would you rather?”

“What do you think?” Hamnet asked.

“Well, I hoped I knew,” Ulric Skakki answered.

“You do,” Hamnet said grimly. Ulric nodded and stopped bothering him, one of the more sensible things the adventurer ever did.

For all their bold talk, Hamnet and Ulric didn’t lead their growing band across the frozen top of Sudertorp Lake, the way they’d gone north the year before. They’d almost died the year before, too, when magic from the Rulers cracked the ice and nearly spilled them into the freezing water.

Maybe Marcovefa could have shielded them from a repeat of that fright. She seemed sure her sorcery was close to full strength. All the same, Count Hamnet didn’t want to test her before he had to. And, despite the confidence she showed, she didn’t seem eager to test herself, either. Ready, yes, but not eager.

“When the time comes, I will do what wants doing,” she said. “Till then … Well, each day I am stronger. Each day my head is clearer.”

“That’s what I want to hear,” Hamnet said.

“I do not say it because you want to hear it. I say it because it is true,” Marcovefa told him.

“All right. Good.” He didn’t want to quarrel with her. He looked across the rolling, snow-covered landscape. With no trees, the Bizogot steppe grew boring in winter. “I wonder if the Golden Shrine is anywhere near here. If it is, you’d probably heal right away if you went inside.”

“We knew of the Golden Shrine up on top of the Glacier, too,” Marcovefa said. “We thought it was up there – somewhere up there. Sometimes we went looking for it, but no one ever found it.”

“When your ancestors first went up atop the Glacier, they already knew about the Golden Shrine,” Hamnet answered. “Most folk say it’s the oldest thing in the world. Some say it was there before the Glacier first came down from the north. Eyvind Torfinn believes that, I think.”

“He is a strange man. He has no magic in him, but he is wise. I did not think that could be, but it is.” Marcovefa paused. “He is wise, except for the woman he chose. She is pretty, but….”

“You know she was mine once,” Hamnet said.

“I know she was wed to you once, yes. But she was never yours. Gudrid is only Gudrid’s.”

“Well, yes,” Hamnet agreed. “But I didn’t know that then, and I paid for the lesson.” Gudrid was even prettier in those days, too, which made the price dearer – or at least seem dearer to a man who was younger himself.

“The Golden Shrine . . .” Marcovefa seemed willing not to talk about Gudrid, which suited Count Hamnet fine. “We say you find it if you don’t expect it. If you look for it, it is never there.” Her grin was impish. “We must have looked for it. It was never there for us.”

“We say the same kinds of things about it,” Hamnet agreed. “I didn’t believe it was there at all till I learned of the lands beyond the Glacier. Now I think maybe there is such a thing. But it is where it wants to be, not where we want it to be. Does that make any sense at all?”

“More than you know, maybe,” Marcovefa said.

Before Hamnet could ask her what she meant, a scout came galloping back. “We found them!” he shouted. “We found the stinking mammoth turds! Now let’s go kill every cursed one of them!”

The Bizogots who formed the bulk – formed almost all – of Hamnet’s army roared like the predators they were. Everyone thundered forward. Hamnet didn’t much want a battle just then. He had one anyhow. Now he had to try to lead it. If he didn’t, one thing seemed plain: the army wouldn’t be his anymore.