Beyond the Gap (10 page)

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Authors: Harry Turtledove

BOOK: Beyond the Gap
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One of the females lifted her trunk and blew a warning blast. It sounded something like a trumpet, something like a gargle. Another female also trumpeted. The young mammoths ran behind their mothers. They were browner than the adults.
“How do you herd them?” Audun Gilli asked Trasamund.
“Carefully,” the jarl answered, laughing.
The wizard looked disappointed. “I hoped for something more than that.”
Trasamund almost told him where to head in. Then the Bizogot visibly thought better of showing his annoyance. A man who offended a sorcerer could have all sorts of unpleasant things happen to him. “Well,” Trasamund said, “a man on horseback is big enough even for a mammoth to notice. And a troop of men shouting and waving torches can usually get the beasts to do what they want. Usually.”
“What do you do when they stampede?” Hamnet Thyssen asked.
“Try to stay out of their way, by God. Try not to get trampled and squashed,” the Bizogot answered. He was joking, but then again he wasn't. After a moment, he went on, “You wave those torches around for all they're worth, too. Mammoths are like most beasts—they don't like fire.”
“I have a question, too,” Jesper Fletti said. He waited for Trasamund to nod his way, then asked, “How do you get the females tame enough for milking?”
“You bribe them.” The Bizogot jarl spoke Raumsdalian with some relish. “There is a kind of grass that grows on some parts of the plain—
blueflower
, we call it in my language. The mammoths are wild for it. One of the things we do while we travel is pull up blueflower wherever we find it. When we set a pile of the dried grass in front of a mammoth, she will stand and eat it, and the milkers can do what they need to do. Yes, we bribe the mammoths. They might as well be people.”
“Are they as clever as people say?” Audun asked.
“I don't know. How clever do people down in the Empire say they are?” Trasamund asked. “They know how to do more things than musk oxen can, I'll say that. And they remember better than musk oxen do, too.”
“They have trunks,” Hamnet Thyssen said. “Those are almost like hands. They let mammoths do things other animals can't.”
“Yes, that's so. That makes them almost like people, too,” Trasamund said. “One of these days, maybe, they'll try bribing us instead of the other way around.” He chortled at his own wit. Like most Bizogots Count Hamnet
had known, he wasn't shy about finding himself wonderful in all kinds of ways.
“Do any beasts besides men trouble them?” Ulric Skakki asked.
“Every once in a while, lions or a short-faced bear will take a calf that wanders too far from its mother,” Trasamund replied. “Doesn't happen often, but it happens. But what really troubles them in the warmer times are bugs. In spite of all that hair, the flies and mosquitoes drive them wild.”
“I've been up here. I believe that,” Hamnet said. When the frozen plain thawed out in springtime—or thawed out as much as it ever did, anyhow—endless little ponds dotted the landscape. Mosquitoes laid eggs in those ponds and then rose in buzzing, biting swarms. Sometimes the clouds of them were thick enough to dim the sun. It was as if the soul of a vampire were reincarnated in a million beings instead of just one.
A baby mammoth came out from behind its mother and took a few curious steps toward the travelers. She trumpeted at it. When it didn't heed her, she walked up and thumped its side with her trunk. The blow couldn't have hurt, but it sent a message. The baby stopped.
“You see?” Trasamund said. “When the little one gets out of line, it gets whacked. So too it is among the Bizogots. We have no spoiled, whining folk among us, not like some places a man could name.”
That was nonsense, as Hamnet Thyssen knew. Bizogots pulled together better than Raumsdalians. That didn't mean there were no spoiled mammoth-herders, and it didn't mean they never whined. More often than not, Hamnet would have argued the point with Trasamund. Today, he held his peace, not because he felt uncommonly generous but because Trasamund was looking right at Gudrid when he grumbled about spoiled Raumsdalians. That would have made Hamnet forgive and overlook a lot.
The expression on Gudrid's face would have made him forgive and overlook even more. Yes, Trasamund went unchallenged.
 
HEVRING LAKE WAS dead and gone. The scars the draining of its basin left behind would lie heavy on the land west of Nidaros for centuries to come. Farther north, new meltwater lakes formed as the Glacier retreated. Sudertorp Lake wasn't very deep, but spread across a great stretch of the frozen plain. Waterfowl by the hundreds of thousands bred at the lake's marshy edges. Foxes and dire wolves and lynxes preyed on that abundance. Even lions and short-faced bears didn't disdain geese and great white swans.
Neither did the Bizogots. The Leaping Lynx clan was camped near the eastern edge of Sudertorp Lake. At this season of the year, they won enough food with their bows and with their snares that they didn't need to wander. They had stone huts that they came back to every spring. Their clothes differed from those of the Musk Ox and Three Tusk clans. To keep themselves warm, they wore jackets stuffed with down. In really cold weather, they wore trousers stuffed with down, too, with ingenious arrangements at the knee to make walking easier and others farther up to do the same for relieving themselves.
In spring, they were glad enough to guest travelers coming up by Sudertorp Lake. They had more than they could eat themselves. So did the other clans that dwelt along the lakeshore. It made them unique among the Bizogots.
The jarl of the Leaping Lynx clan was a fat man named Riccimir. Hamnet Thyssen didn't think he'd ever seen a fat nomad before. “Eat! Eat!” Riccimir said. “You are welcome. Oh, yes—you are welcome. Your goose is cooked!”
Eyvind Torfinn, Ulric Skakki, and Count Hamnet all looked up in alarm when they heard that. “Your Ferocity?” Eyvind said.
Riccimir laughed till the tears ran down his greasy face. “Ho, ho, ho! Yes, I know what that means in Raumsdalian. A trader taught me. It is a good joke, yes?”
“As long as it is a joke, your Ferocity, it is a good one,” Ulric Skakki said.
“It is. By God, it is. But it is the best kind of a joke—it is a true joke. We have today a great plenty of cooked goose,” Riccimir said.
Hamnet Thyssen ate roasted goose till his belly groaned. Bizogots used only knives for eating tools. By the time he finished, his face was as greasy as Riccimir's. So were those of the other Raumsdalians. However much Hamnet ate, the Bizogots around him outdid him without effort. They were better at going without than civilized men, too. Moderation was not in their nature. The way they lived didn't let them be moderate.
They didn't drink to enjoy themselves, either. They drank to get drunk. Downing smetyn, that took a lot of drinking. They met the challenge with ease.
Hamnet Thyssen's head was spinning when Riccimir pointed to Gudrid and said, “I will sleep with that one tonight. I like the way she smells. Trasamund, Eyvind Torfinn, pick women for yourselves. You are the leaders. It is your right. If your friends find willing women, that is all right, too.”
He spoke in the Bizogot language. “What does he say?” Gudrid asked
suspiciously—that finger aimed at her and the fat jarl's leer no doubt gave her reasons for suspicion.
When Eyvind Torfinn translated for her, she let out an irate squawk. “No!” she said. “And I don't like the way
he
smells, not even a little bit.”
Eyvind turned to Riccimir. “Gudrid is my wife,” he said, “and trading women back and forth is not our custom.”
“And so?” Riccimir said. “You are in the halls of the Bizogots now.” Any other jarl would have said
the tents
. “Here you follow our customs.”
“Why bed an unwilling woman?” Ulric Skakki said smoothly. “Isn't it a waste of time, with so many willing? They aren't much fun after you pin them down, either.”
“Says who?” the jarl returned. “Sometimes the way they squawk and thrash fans the fire. And this one looks like fun. Pick any woman for yourself in payment, Eyvind Torfinn. We have some lively ones. You are old, but they will know how to make you think you are young.”
Once that was translated, Gudrid squawked louder than ever. Count Hamnet wondered why. She spread her favors over the landscape with fine impartiality. What was one more unbathed Bizogot? She was unbathed herself, even if she did have that bottle of attar of roses.
In Raumsdalian, Jesper Fletti said, “Tell the … jarl we have a strong custom against forcing a woman to give herself.” He probably almost said something like
Tell the barbarian
. Hamnet Thyssen found it ironically amusing that Gudrid's bodyguard was indeed guarding her body, although no doubt not in the way he'd had in mind when he set out from Nidaros.
Jesper proved wise to speak politely. Riccimir answered in fairly fluent Raumsdalian, saying, “If you talk about your customs in your land, I will listen. You have the right to do that. But you are not in your land.”
“Imagine the custom of our land made you do something against your own customs,” Ulric said. “Would you do it, just for the sake of fitting in?”
What kind of man was Riccimir? Ulric asked a good, sensible question. But did the Bizogot care about good, sensible questions, or did he simply want to open Gudrid's legs? If he didn't feel like listening, what could the travelers do? Not much—if it came to a fight, they were bound to lose.
The jarl scowled at Ulric Skakki. When he did, Hamnet Thyssen's hopes rose. Riccimir understood what Ulric was saying, anyway. “You are not good guests,” he grumbled. “Guests should follow the ways of the hosts. Our women would not raise such a fuss over a small thing.”
“A small thing?” Trasamund said. “Don't you have a big thing, Riccimir?”
“I do. By God, I do!” Riccimir answered, laughing. “We are the Leaping Lynxes, but I am a mammoth. Maybe I am too much for a woman of the south.”
“Maybe you are,” Ulric Skakki said, and the tension eased.
“Much help
you
were,” Gudrid hissed at Hamnet Thyssen a little later.
“By God, why should I help you?” he asked in honest perplexity. “I don't want you here. I wish you'd go back to Nidaros. I don't feel anything for you any more.”
He wished that were true. The hopeless mix of curdled love and fury that coursed through him whenever he thought of Gudrid chewed his stomach to sour rags and made him want either to hit something—preferably her—or stab himself. Gudrid knew it. She enjoyed it—she reveled in it. He did his best not to admit it.
Usually, his best was nowhere near good enough. Tonight, it served. “You would have let that—that savage do what he wanted to me!” Gudrid said shrilly.
“This was one of the chances you took when you left the Empire,” Hamnet pointed out. “Anyone with an ounce of sense would know it. No doubt that lets you out.”
She swung on him. She was very quick, but again he caught her wrist before she connected. He was much stronger than she was. It hardly ever did him any good. She said something that would have horrified a drill sergeant. It didn't faze Hamnet Thyssen.
When she tried to bite him, he shoved her away, hard. She sat down even harder, and called him a name that made the first one seem like love poetry by comparison. Again, he scarcely noticed. He rubbed his hand against his trouser leg, trying to wipe away even the memory of touching her.
“Never a dull moment, is there?” Ulric Skakki said, his voice dry.
“Why, what ever could you mean?” Hamnet Thyssen trying to sound arch and coy was as unnatural as a musk ox trying to play the trumpet. Ulric did his best not to laugh, but it was a losing battle.
Sulking, Riccimir went off with a Bizogot woman. She was younger and better built than Gudrid, and at least as pretty, even if she didn't wear perfume. The jarl stayed grumpy all the same. No doubt he would have been glad enough to lie down with her if he hadn't set eyes on Gudrid. Since he had, the woman from his own clan wasn't what he wanted any more. That made her seem like secondhand goods to him.
“Foolishness,” Ulric Skakki said. “Everything that goes on between men and women is full of foolishness.”
“True enough,” Hamnet said. “But so what? For better or worse, we're stuck with each other.” He knew too much about worse and not enough of better.
“Well, not necessarily.” Ulric sent him a sly, sidelong glance. “Although I must say you're not my type.” He made himself mince far better than Count Hamnet made himself sound naive.
“Those things happen down in the Empire. Not up here, not very often,” Hamnet said. “When the Bizogots catch men bedding men, they make them into eunuchs and then they burn them. Not a lot of give to the mammoth-herders. Their ways are their ways. You step outside them at your peril.”

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