Beyond the Gap (13 page)

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Authors: Harry Turtledove

BOOK: Beyond the Gap
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“I am not sorry to see them go, the miserable, skulking things,” Jesper Fletti said.
“Neither am I,” Ulric Skakki said. “If they had lawyers instead of teeth, they'd be as bad as people.”
Jesper gave him a puzzled look. “What's that supposed to mean?”
“What it says. I commonly say what I mean. Don't you?” Ulric was the picture of innocence. Jesper Fletti scratched his head but decided to let it drop.
“Do you enjoy baiting him?” Hamnet Thyssen asked.
“Some,” Ulric answered. “He's not as much fun as you are, because he hasn't got the brains to shoot back.”
“I'd think that would make him more fun, not less,” Count Hamnet said.
“No, no, no.” Ulric Skakki shook his head. “No sport to it.”
“I see.” Hamnet bowed in the saddle. “So glad to provide you with amusement. If you ever get bored with me, you can always pull the wings and legs off flies.” He slapped at himself. “Enough of them at this season of the year. Too many, in fact.”
Ulric slapped, too. “Way too bloody many, if anyone wants to know what I think. They don't just take pain, either, the way Jesper does—they give it out, too. That makes it a fair fight.”
“If you want to be on the receiving end, you can always quarrel with dear Gudrid,” Hamnet said.
“No, thanks,” Ulric answered. “I'd be the unarmed one there.” His shiver had nothing to do with the chilly weather. “Meaning no disrespect, your
Grace, but I don't know what you saw in her. Well, I know what you
saw
—she's a fine-looking woman, even now. But I don't know how you put up with her as long as you did.”
“Everything was fine—everything was wonderful—till all of a sudden it wasn't.” That was as much as Hamnet Thyssen had said about the downfall of his marriage since Gudrid left him. He scowled at Ulric Skakki, wondering how the other man tricked the words out of him. Ulric stared back blandly, as if to say he had nothing to do with it.
And, listening to himself, Hamnet Thyssen realized he'd been a fool to believe that then, and was a bigger fool if he still believed it now. Things couldn't have been all right between him and Gudrid, even if he failed to notice anything wrong. A happy spouse didn't start running around for no reason at all—which could only mean Gudrid hadn't been happy long before he realized she wasn't. How many lovers did she have that he never suspected?
Maybe things would have been different if she'd had a child or two in the first fewyears they were married. Well, things certainly would have been different if she had. Maybe they would have been better. He'd never know now.
Off in the distance, a bull mammoth wandered by itself. The bad bulls were probably the most dangerous animals on the frozen steppe. They were fierce and clever and swift and strong and very hard to kill.
Ulric Skakki kept looking from the woolly mammoth to Hamnet and back again. That almost made Hamnet laugh. He was strong and swift, and could be fierce. He dared hope he was hard to kill. Clever? Hadn't he just proved himself a fool in his own eyes? Didn't a teratorn, a bird that needed no more in the way of brains than what was required to sneak up on a corpse, have wits sharper than his? So it seemed to him, anyhow.
“May I ask you something else, your Grace?” Ulric said.
Harshly, Hamnet Thyssen nodded. “Go ahead.”
“Do you know why your, ah, formerly beloved took it into her head to come up here?”
“By God, I don't,” Hamnet exploded. “Because she does what she pleases when she pleases, and worries about it later if she ever worries about it at all. Any other questions?”
“Why didn't you kill her? You must have had your chances.”
The answer to that seemed much too clear. “Because I'm a fool.”
 
“SOON, NOW,” TRASAMUND said. “Soon we enter the grazing grounds of the Three Tusk Bizogots, the grandest land God ever made.” He sat up
straight on his horse and puffed out his chest. He felt grand himself, and he wanted the world to know he felt grand.
Hamnet Thyssen, on the other hand, had to work to hold his face straight. He didn't know exactly where the grandest land God ever made lay, but he thought it had to be somewhere south of the Raumsdalian Empire. The Empire was far enough south for farming to be possible through most of it, though its northern reaches lay beyond the limits of agriculture. Its strength lay less in its soil than in its people. They were tested by adversity—and by raids from the Bizogots, from farther north still.
Were the rest of the Raumsdalians here thinking the same thing? Count Hamnet didn't see how they could think anything else. Yet not a one of them, not even Jesper Fletti, not even Gudrid, said a word. For one thing, whether this was God's country or not, it wasn't theirs. They needed help from the Bizogots if they were to keep on pushing north, up through the Gap. For another …
For another, whether this was God's country or not, spring did eventually reach it. Warm—well, warmer—breezes blew up from the south, driving back the clouds and mist and spatters of snow and sleet that had dogged the travelers for so long. The sun shone from a blue sky. If the blue was watery, if the sun didn't climb as high above the southern horizon as it did even down in Nidaros, those were details. When the clouds receded, when the mist retreated, when the sun shone, the travelers got their first clear look at something they never would have seen if they stayed down in the Empire.
The Glacier.
That wall of ice to the north might have been a mountain range. It stood as tall as many mountains. Did it reach a mile up into the sky? Two miles? Three? Hamnet Thyssen couldn't say. Here and there, storms blew dust and dirt over it, so that from a distance it looked as if it might be made of rock and soil.
But then the sun glanced off a bare patch, and that coruscating flash proved the Glacier could only be … the Glacier. A chill and awful majesty clung to it. “What must it be like,” Ulric Skakki murmured, “to always look over your shoulder and see—that? How do you get used to it? Don't you think it's going to fall on you?”
“I would.” Count Hamnet's shiver had nothing to do with the weather, which was, well, better than it had been. One enormous difference between the Glacier and ordinary mountains was that the latter ascended gradually
through uplands and foothills to the peaks at the heart of the range. The Glacier, by contrast, rose sheer, which made those frozen cliffs seem even taller than they were.
A herd of woolly mammoths, no doubt belonging to the Three Tusk clan, ambled along over the snowy ground in the middle distance. By any ordinary standard, mammoths were enormous, gigantic, titanic—mammoth. Against the Glacier, ordinary standards failed. Against the Glacier, those mammoths seemed like nothing more than what Ulric Skakki had called them farther south—fleas on the hide of a white-coated world.
Hamnet Thyssen eyed Trasamund with sudden new respect. The Bizogot jarl hadn't said the land over which his clan wandered was the best or the most fertile God ever made. He said it was the grandest. Looking north from the abruptly dwarfed mammoths to the Glacier, Hamnet Thyssen decided he might be right after all.
T
RASAMUND DID NOT know where in the large territory they roamed the rest of the Three Tusk clan would be. “It depends on the beasts,” he said. “It depends on the hunting. It depends on the weather. Later in the year, they may go some way up the Gap—but not, I think, so soon.”
Hamnet Thyssen looked ahead, toward the Glacier. He imagined it not just in front of him, but to either side. The thought was not comfortable—was anything but comfortable, in fact. Wouldn't he feel like a bug between two hands waiting for them to slap shut and smash it between them? The rational part of his mind insisted that couldn't happen. In spite of the rational part, he sent apprehensive glances northward.
Then he had a new thought. What would it be like with the Glacier not just to either side of him but
behind
him? Trasamund had seen that. So had Ulric Skakki. The mere idea made Hamnet dizzy. Wouldn't he think the whole world had turned upside down?
While he was looking at the Glacier, Eyvind Torfinn was peering east. Eyvind pointed. “Isn't that a horseman?” he asked.
Everyone's head swung that way. Count Hamnet was angry at himself for letting the scholar spot something before he did himself. Earl Eyvind would be worth his weight in gold when and if they found the Golden Shrine. Till then, the learned noble was so much excess baggage. So Hamnet had thought, anyway.
By the chagrin on Trasamund's face, he was having similar thoughts. Or would they be so similar? Hamnet hadn't slept with Gudrid since she married Eyvind Torfinn. Trasamund had, and hardly bothered hiding it. If
Eyvind noticed, he didn't let on. But maybe it was more a case of not letting on than of not noticing. If it was, did he contemplate vengeance on Trasamund?
What kind of vengeance could an overeducated Raumsdalian earl take against a Bizogot jarl here on the frozen plain? Hamnet Thyssen couldn't think of any. That didn't have to mean Eyvind Torfinn couldn't, though. Whatever Earl Eyvind might be, he was no fool.
Before the rider—for a rider he certainly was—came much closer, Trasamund said, “I know him. That's Gelimer. He is of my clan.”
“How can you tell?” Audun Gilli asked. “By some sorcery?”
“No, no. By his size. By the way he sits his horse,” Trasamund answered, shaking his head. “Do you not know your brother at some distance? Gelimer is my brother. Every man of the Three Tusk clan is my brother.”
Did that make every woman in the clan his sister? Hamnet shook his head. Not in that sense—Bizogots could marry within their own clan, even if they often didn't. And, as he'd seen, they weren't shy about sporting with women from their own clan, either.
“Who comes to the land of the Three Tusk clan?” Gelimer shouted when he came within hailing distance. He was alone, and facing many strangers, but seemed fearless. After a moment, Count Hamnet shook his head. Gelimer wasn't so much fearless as righteous; he seemed certain he had every moral right to demand answers from anyone he found on the land his clan roamed.
“Hail, Gelimer. Your jarl has returned from the lands of the south,” Trasamund shouted back. He urged his horse out a few paces. “Do you not know me?”
You had better know me,
his tone warned.
“By God, I do, your Ferocity,” the other Bizogot warned. “These folk with you are friends and guests, then?”
“They are,” Trasamund said. “They will go north into the Gap with me. They will go north beyond the Gap, beyond the Glacier, with me. They will see where God draws in his Breath to blow it out.”
For a moment, Hamnet took that as no more than a figure of speech. Then he thought of the Golden Shrine, somewhere out there beyond the Glacier. If God dwelt anywhere on earth, wouldn't he dwell in or somewhere near the Golden Shrine? No, Hamnet was never a particularly pious man. But every day's travel to the north took him farther from the mundane world of the Raumsdalian Empire and deeper into the land of legend and myth. How could he afford to disbelieve, considering where he was bound?
Other thoughts ruled Gelimer's mind. Looking over the southerners, he said, “Only one woman for so many men?”
Trasamund laughed. Ulric Skakki smiled a small, tight, ironic smile. Eyvind Torfinn stiffened slightly. And Gudrid stiffened more than slightly. Seeing that, Hamnet Thyssen thoughtfully pursed his lips. He hadn't thought Gudrid understood the Bizogot language. Maybe—pretty plainly, in fact—he was wrong.
“She's not a common woman,” Trasamund said. “She belongs to the old shaman here.” He pointed toward Earl Eyvind. He was polite enough not to throw Gudrid's infidelities with him into Eyvind's face. His language had no real word for scholar.
Shaman
came closer than any other.
Gelimer shrugged. “Be it so, then,” he said—it wasn't his worry. “But what is she doing here?”
The jarl laughed again. “What? Why, whatever she wants to, of course.” He might not have known Gudrid for long, but he grasped her essence. He went on, “Where is the encampment? Is all well with the clan?”
“We are that way, about two days' ride.” Gelimer pointed back over his shoulder, toward the east. “And yes, all is … well enough. We skirmished with the White Foxes two months past, when we found them hunting west of the third frost-heave … .” He told that story in some detail. Hamnet listened with half an ear. A border squabble between two bands of mammoth-herders interested him about as much as a quarrel between two coachmakers down in Nidaros would have interested Trasamund.
To the jarl, though, this was meat and drink—literally. He plied Gelimer with questions, and finally grunted in satisfaction. “You did well. You all did well,” he rumbled. “The White Foxes will respect that which is right, that which is true, from here on out.”
“They have a new jarl—his name is Childebert,” Gelimer said. “I dare say he wanted to see what he could get away with, especially with you not here to lead our clan.”
“You showed him, by God,” Trasamund said. “We are Bizogots. Better, we are Bizogots of the Three Tusk clan. Do we need a jarl to tell us we let no one infringe on our rights?”
“We do not. We did not,” Gelimer said. “They won't trouble us that way again any time soon.”
“Which is as it should be.” Trasamund sketched a salute—not really to Gelimer, Hamnet Thyssen judged, but to the Three Tusk clan as a whole.
The jarl went on, “Guide us back to the tents of the clan. We have things to do before faring north again.”
“Just as you say, so shall it be,” Gelimer replied.
“Of course,” Trasamund said complacently. Sigvat II, Emperor of Raumsdalia, could have sounded no more certain.
 
THE ENCAMPMENT OF the Three Tusk clan was … a Bizogot encampment. Hamnet Thyssen was long familiar with them. Even if he weren't, the journey up across the frozen steppe would have taught him as much as he needed to know.
Mammoth-hide tents sprouted here and there, scattered higgledypiggledy across the ground. Horses were tied nearby. By Raumsdalian standards, Bizogot horses were short-legged and stocky and shaggy. They needed to be, to get through the long, hard winters in these parts. Some of them would wander with the clan's musk oxen during the winter, to forage on whatever they could dig up. Others would winter in and near the tents, feeding on hay the Bizogots harvested while the weather was good, and on the frozen grasses the nomads found beneath the snow. So it went in good winters, anyway. When times were not so good, the Bizogots ate horse and rebuilt their herds as they could.
For the moment, the camp boiled with excitement. The nomads would not eat horse any time soon. Theyd killed a cow mammoth not long before Trasamund and the Raumsdalians rode up, and were butchering the mountain of meat. They would roast and boil what they could, and eat it on the spot. The rest would be cut into thin strips and salted and dried in the sun and the wind.
Hamnet Thyssen eyed Ulric Skakki. “Here's to gluttony,” he said. “Are you up for it?”
“I'll try my best,” Ulric answered. “But any civilized man will explode if he tries to keep up with the Bizogots. They're better at stuffing themselves than we are.”
“They're better at doing without than we are, too,” Hamnet said. “On average, I suppose it's about the same, but they swing further in both directions than we do.”
Even the arrival of their jarl, even the arrival of strangers from the south, distracted the nomads only a little. They greeted Trasamund with bloody handclasps. He took it in good part; he knew meat mattered more than he did.
Women scraped fat from the back of the mammoth hide. Some of them used iron knives that had come north in trade, others flint tools that might have been as old as time or might have been made that morning. The Bizogots never had as much iron as they wanted, and eked it out with stone tools.
Dogs danced and begged by the edge of the hide. Every so often, a woman would throw some scraps their way. The dogs yelped and snapped at the food and at one another. The women laughed at the sport.
They carefully saved the rest of the fat. Some of it would get cooked in the feast. The rest would be pounded with lean mammoth meat and berries to make cakes that would keep for a long time and would feed a traveling man.
Once the hide had not a scrap of fat or flesh clinging to it, the women rubbed it with a strong-smelling mix. Audun Gilli's nose wrinkled. “What's that stuff?” he asked.
“Piss and salt, to cure the hide,” Count Hamnet answered.
“Oh.” The wizard looked unhappy. “Why don't they use tanbark, the way we do?”
Both Hamnet and Ulric laughed at him. “Think about it,” Ulric said.
Audun did. “Oh,” he said again, this time in a small voice. Tanbark required oaks, and all the oaks grew well south of the tree line.
“What is the news?” Trasamund asked. “Who has died? Who still lives? Who is born? Who is well? Who is sick or hurt?” He had a lot of catching up to do, and was trying to do it all at once. In the Empire, that would have been impossible. The Three Tusk clan was small enough to give him a fighting chance.
“Who are these mouths up from the south?” a Bizogot asked him. That was how the Raumsdalians seemed to the locals—people who had to be fed as long as they were here. Hamnet Thyssen wondered how he liked being called a mouth. Not very well, he decided.
Trasamund named names, which would mean little to a clansman. He called most of the Raumsdalians warriors, styling Audun Gilli and Eyvind Torfinn as shamans. The Three Tusk shaman, easily identifiable by the same kind of fringed and embroidered costume as Witigis had worn, eyed them with interested speculation.
“What about the woman?” another Bizogot called. Actually, he said,
What about the gap?
That made Hamnet look north toward the gap between the two great sheets of ice that had once been one. This time, Gudrid didn't show any signs of understanding.
“Is she just yours, or can we all have her?” still another mammoth-herder asked. A woman gave him an elbow in the ribs. Was she his wife, or just jealous of competition?
“She is the old shaman's woman,” Trasamund answered. Count Hamnet glanced over to see how Eyvind Torfinn liked hearing that again and again. By the fixed smile on his face, he didn't like it much. Trasamund went on, “They are all our guests. They are not to be stolen from.”
“Ha!” Ulric Skakki said. Hamnet Thyssen nodded. Guest-friendship would keep the Raumsdalians' persons safe while they stayed with the Three Tusk clan. Their personal property? No. Having so little themselves, Bizogots were born thieves.
“My guests, will you feast with my folk?” Trasamund said.
“We will,” answered Hamnet, Ulric, and Eyvind, the only three Raumsdalians who spoke any useful amount of the Bizogot language. “We thank you.”
After the Raumsdalians dismounted, Bizogot youths led their horses off to the line where those belonging to the mammoth-herders were tied. The shaman made a beeline for Audun Gilli and spoke to him in the Bizogot tongue. His eyebrows leaped. “A woman!” he exclaimed in Raumsdalian.
“I thought you could tell the difference before they talked,” Hamnet Thyssen said dryly. “She's got no beard, and that's a pretty good hint.”
The shaman turned to him. “You speak your language, and you speak ours. Will you interpret for me?”
“If I can,” Hamnet answered. “If you speak of secret things, I will not know your words for them, and I may not know ours, either. I am no spellcaster.”
She looked at him. “You think not, do you?” While he was wondering what to make of that, she went on, “Ask his name for me, please, and tell him I am Liv.”
“He is Audun Gilli,” Hamnet said. He translated for the wizard.
“Tell her I am glad to meet her,” Audun said. “Tell her I hope we can learn things from each other.”
“I hope the same.” Liv eyed Hamnet again. “And who are
you
?” He gave her his name. She shook her head with poorly hidden impatience. “I did not ask you for that. I ask who you were. It is not the same thing.”

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