Beyond the Gap (7 page)

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Authors: Harry Turtledove

BOOK: Beyond the Gap
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As usual, Gudrid contrived to make the world revolve around herself. The royal bodyguards, Eyvind Torfinn, and Trasamund all danced attendance on her. Ulric Skakki seemed more loosely attached to that group, but attached he was—or so it seemed to Count Hamnet's jaundiced eye, at any rate.
For most of the way north toward the frontier, things went smoothly enough. The travelers stopped at a serai each night. If they didn't have all the comforts Gudrid was used to down in Nidaros, they had most of them. Gudrid played the part of the cheerful voyager as if shed rehearsed for years. Whatever went on in the nighttime went on without Hamnet Thyssen. He and Ulric Skakki usually shared a chamber. As far as he could tell, Ulric didn't go out of nights, so maybe the other man had given his true opinion of Gudrid.
And if he hadn't, it was his lookout.
The country got flatter and flatter as they went north, till it looked as if it were pressed. And so it was. The Glacier had crushed it till very recently. Countless shallow ponds and lakes marked the slightly—the ever slightly—lower ground. The winds mostly blew warm out of the south, but snow lingered long in the shade of the spruce and fir woods.
This far north, farmers planted their rye and oats and hoped for the best. They didn't count on them, though, not the way they did in lands longer free of the Glacier and in those that had never known its touch. They raised hogs and sheep and horses and musk oxen for meat, and they hunted. Imperial garrisons couldn't hope to live on the countryside, not in this inhospitable clime. Supplies came up by riverboat when the streams were open, and by sledge when the rivers froze.
One day, the travelers found there was no serai when they needed to stop for the evening. The one that should have been there had burned down, and nobody had got around to rebuilding it.
They'd passed a village a few miles back—a small, sullen place where a lot of the people looked to have Bizogot blood. Hamnet Thyssen didn't like the idea of turning back to the south on general principles. He especially
didn't like the idea of turning around to pass the night in a miserable hole like that.
Up ahead lay … well, who could say what? He didn't see any village close enough to reach before the sun went down. No cloud of smoke on the horizon foretold chimneys clustered close together.
“We'll just have to spend the night in the open, under the sky,” he said. “This seems about as good a place as any.”
“So it does,” Trasamund agreed. “Enough trees to the north for firewood, and enough to shield us if the Breath of God blows hard tonight, too. We may shiver a bit, but we won't freeze.” The Bizogot jarl laughed. “Next to what we'll see farther north, we might as well still be in a serai.”
Gudrid seemed excited about spending the night in a tent. She put up with chewy smoked sausage over an open fire. She drank beer without making a face, though she preferred mead and wine.
Hamnet quietly fumed. He'd hoped the first taste of rough living would send her scuttling back to the capital. That was one of the reasons he'd chosen to camp out here beside the ruins of the serai. She foiled him again.
He volunteered for the first watch. Owls hooted. Off in the distance, dire wolves howled. The wind did come from the north, from the Glacier. Ragged patches of cloud scudded across the sky, now hiding stars, now revealing them.
Someone came up behind him. He whirled. The sword that had been on his belt was suddenly in his hand. Audun Gilli froze. “You don't want to try sneaking up on me,” Count Hamnet remarked. “It isn't healthy.”
“So I see,” the wizard said. “I am not your enemy, your Grace. I hope I am not. I do not wish to be.”
“No, you are not my enemy—not unless you make yourself so,” Hamnet Thyssen said. “But what are you doing here, anyway?”
“Something besides lying in a gutter clutching a jar of whatever happens to be cheap and strong,” Audun answered. “Whatever happens in the north, it has to be better, wouldn't you say?”
“For you, maybe,” Hamnet said. “For all of us? Who knows?”
Audun Gilli studied him for a while before saying anything. In the starlight and the dim red glow of the embers from the campfire, the wizard was only a shape in the darkness to the noble. Hamnet couldn't have been much more to Audun Gilli … at least, if the wizard was seeing only by the light of the world.
“You are not as hard a man as you make yourself out to be,” Audun ventured at last.
“No, eh? If you'd got a little closer before I heard you, I would have cut you in half,” Hamnet said. “That would have given you something to grumble about—for a little while, anyway.”
“Maybe,” Audun Gilli said. “But maybe not, too. I am not everything a wizard ought to be—God knows that's true, and so do I. But I am not nothing as a sorcerer, either.”
Ulric Skakki had also said Audun wasn't a negligible wizard. Count Hamnet was more inclined to believe it from Ulric than from the wizard himself, whether he was negligible or not. Yes, Hamnet remembered those two chattering, bickering mugs. But that was a bagatelle. How Audun Gilli would do if—no, when—they had to rely on his magic … was anybody's guess.
Hamnet Thyssen didn't like going into the unknown with a wizard whose true quality was also unknown. Some sort of proper test seemed reasonable—to him, anyway. He said, “Can you divine for me why Gudrid wanted to come north? Is it just to jab spikes into my liver, or does she have some other reason, too?”
Audun didn't answer right away. When he did, he said, “Down in Nidaros, she asked me for a divination about you, your Grace.”
“Did she?” Hamnet rumbled. “What did she want to know? What did you tell her?”
“I told her that, since the two of you were long separated, whatever she wanted to know was none of her business,” Audun Gilli said. “As for what it was, your Grace,
you
don't need to know that. And I would not feel right about divining her reasons for you unless you think she purposes danger to the Empire.”
A wizard with scruples? Hamnet Thyssen would have imagined the breed long extinct. He had a hard time imagining the breed ever existed, in fact. But here he had a specimen before his eyes.
Or did he? Was Audun Gilli a wizard with scruples or only a wizard without strength? “We'll find something else for you to do, then,” Hamnet said. Audun nodded. If he'd divined what Hamnet was thinking, would he have?
D
OWN IN THE distant south, where lands were rich, kingdoms and duchies and principalities marked their borders with fortresses and sometimes even walls. The northern frontier of the Raumsdalian Empire wasn't like that. There were occasional customs posts, but that was about all. The Empire didn't so much end in the north as peter out.
Past the point where even the hardiest, quickest-ripening rye and oats wouldn't let farmers put in a crop, past the broad, dark forests that lay beyond the cropland, administering the Empire grew more expensive than it was worth. There weren't enough people to build a wall in the north, and if there had been the Empire wouldn't have been able to feed the soldiers who manned it.
As for a ditch, the northern frontier lay about where the ground started staying frozen all the time. You couldn't dig a proper ditch in soil like that, no matter how much you might want to.
Every so often, then, the Bizogots broke into the Empire's northern provinces. Sometimes the Empire mustered an army farther south and drove the barbarians back up onto the frozen plains over which they usually roamed. And sometimes the invading Bizogots realized they hadn't overrun anything worth having and went back to the steppe of their own accord.
When the travelers got to, or at least near, the Raumsdalian frontier—exactly where it lay in those parts was more a matter of opinion than certain, settled knowledge—Eyvind Torfinn pointed north and east and west and said, “It's just as dreary in every direction.” He wasn't wrong, and it wasn't much less dreary to the south, either.
“It won't get any prettier, either,” Hamnet Thyssen said. Ulric Skakki nodded. So did a couple of the imperial guardsmen who accompanied Gudrid. They'd all been up into the Bizogot country before. None of them seemed enamored of it.
Audun Gilli looked this way and that with curiosity both avid and wary.
Probably wondering where his next snootful will come from
, Count Hamnet thought.
Before he could say anything—if he was going to—Trasamund burst into song. The Bizogot language was related to the Raumsdalian, but only distantly. To Hamnet Thyssen's ear, the tongue the mammoth-herders used was rolling and guttural and raucous. Any time a Bizogot spoke his own language, he sounded full of himself. He couldn't help it; the language itself made him sound that way.
“How much of the Bizogot tongue do you know?” Ulric Skakki asked Hamnet.
“Enough to get by,” the noble answered. “They'll never think I'm a native, but one look at me and they'll know I'm not, so that doesn't matter. How about you?”
“I'm in the same sleigh,” Ulric answered.
Trasamund was in full flow, going on about the Breath of God, about mammoth dung and musk-ox meat, about hunting lions in the snow, about God's curtains (which was what the Bizogots called the northern lights), about fighting enemy clans and leading away their sobbing women after a victory, and about everything else that went into a northern nomad—all in long rhymed stanzas with perfect scansion. Hamnet Thyssen didn't admire the way of life the jarl extolled, but he admired the way Trasamund extolled the life.
So, evidently, did Ulric Skakki. “How does he do that?” Ulric said. “He's no bard, but it just pours out of him.”
Count Hamnet couldn't answer, because he didn't know, either. But Eyvind Torfinn said, “He has little blocks of poetry that he uses to make his big poem.”
Ulric Skakki scratched his head. “Sorry, your Splendor, but I don't follow that.”
“Well, listen to him when he's talking about mammoths,” Eyvind said. “If he needs four syllables in front of them to pad out his line, they're always heavy-bodied mammoths. Always. That's the four-syllable epithet for mammoths. But if he only needs two syllables, then they're great-tusked
mammoths. They're towering mammoths if he needs three, and black mammoths if he needs one. Those are the only epithets you'll ever hear attached to mammoths. He has others for lions and for fire and for snow and for God and for the rest of the things that go into a Bizogot's life. You see? Building blocks.”
“By God,” Hamnet Thyssen said. “By God!” He sketched a salute to Earl Eyvind. “I thank you, your Splendor. That's been under my nose for years, and I never saw it.”
“Nor I,” Ulric Skakki said.
“Wizards in the Empire will do the same thing,” Audun Gilli said. “It makes spells easier to memorize.”
“Do you understand the Bizogot language?” Hamnet asked.
“No, not past a few curses,” Audun answered. “Maybe I will learn more.” He shrugged. “Or maybe not.”
Trasamund's enormous wave encompassed the whole great sweep of land ahead. “We ride!” he roared.
Ride they did. Shrubs dotted the plain. Hamnet needed a while to see that some were oaks and birches. Up here, with the cold and the wind above and the frozen ground below, they couldn't grow into proper trees. Farther north still, near the edge of the Glacier, they got no bigger than violets or daisies down in warmer climes.
A bird glided across the sky above them.
A hawk
, Hamnet Thyssen thought. But after a moment he realized he was wrong. It was an owl, a snowy owl. They often hunted by day. Everything up in the Bizogot country seemed confused.
“There are folk in the south who say seeing an owl by daylight is the worst of bad omens,” Audun Gilli remarked.
“Let them come to the north country, the free country, the great country, and they will see they are mistaken,” Trasamund boomed. Even speaking Raumsdalian, he sounded as if he were declaiming his song of praise.
In a low voice, Ulric Skakki said, “They might think coming to this Godfrozen place was the worst of bad omens, and if they saw an owl by daylight that would only prove it.”
“I shouldn't wonder,” Hamnet replied, also quietly. To his way of thinking, the closer to the Glacier a stretch of land was, the madder a man had to be to want to live on it. The way the Bizogots behaved did little harm to his theory. He asked, “What's the weather like beyond the Glacier?”
Ulric made sure Trasamund wasn't paying any attention to him before he answered, “It's not much different from this, as a matter of fact.”
“You surprise me,” Hamnet said. “I would have expected worse.”
“I expected worse myself,” Ulric said. “But it seems as if the weather that blows down off the Glacier is already about as bad as it can be. Whether that amounts to a disaster or a consolation depends on your point of view, I suppose.”
Hamnet Thyssen was temperamentally inclined to look on the gloomy side of things any which way. Hearing that things in these parts were as bad as they could be gave him a somber sort of satisfaction.
The snowy owl swooped. It rose again with something writhing in its claws. It wouldn't go hungry for a while—or maybe it had nestlings that would feast on the mouse or vole or rabbit it had caught. By the purposeful way it flew, Hamnet Thyssen guessed it was off to share its prey.
He glanced over at Gudrid. To his relief, she didn't notice him doing it. Her eyes were on the owl. They glowed. They sparkled. He supposed it was the pleasure of watching the kill. That was like her, sure enough. The chilly wind painted roses on her cheeks. She looked uncommonly vivacious, uncommonly beautiful. In spite of everything Hamnet knew, his manhood stirred.
Angrily, he looked away.
 
WHEN THE DOGS came bounding toward the travelers, Hamnet first took them for a pack of dire wolves. They were as fierce as dire wolves, baying and howling and showing their yellow fangs. They were almost as big as dire wolves; several of them looked big enough to bridle and saddle. And, by the way they loped forward, they were as hungry as their wild cousins, too.
Trasamund stood up in the stirrups and roared curses at them in his own language. Men would have cringed. The dogs took no notice. On they came.
Ulric Skakki proved himself the relentless pragmatist Count Hamnet thought him to be—he strung his bow and nocked an arrow. That seemed like such a good idea, Hamnet imitated it. He didn't think killing a couple of these brutes would scare off the rest. That could work with men, but wouldn't with beasts. But the living might feed on the dead, which would make them less enthusiastic about attacking the travelers.
Off to one side as usual, Audun Gilli muttered to himself. Hamnet Thyssen thought nothing of it; Audun spent too much time muttering to
himself, maybe as consolation for drinking less. This muttering, though, proved different.
From the air in front of Trasamund came a growl that might have burst from God's throat if God happened to be a dog. Hard on the heels of the growl followed a snarl like ripping canvas, then another growl, and then some furious barks that almost deafened Hamnet and spooked his horse.
He wouldn't have made a useful archer. How was he supposed to shoot when he had all he could do to keep from getting pitched off the horse and onto his head? Next to him, Ulric Skakki also fought to stay in the saddle.
It turned out not to matter. The onrushing dogs stopped so short, they dragged their bottoms on the ground as they dug in their hind legs. They seemed to decide they had urgent business elsewhere—with their lawyer, perhaps, or at the tailor's. They ran the other way as fast as they'd charged ahead—and much less noisily.
A few more growls and woofs right behind them spurred them on their way. Audun Gilli stopped muttering. The dog the size of God fell silent, too. Hamnet Thyssen was no scholar. He left that to Eyvind Torfinn, who was welcome to it. Scholar or not, Hamnet recognized cause and effect when he saw them.
Once he persuaded his horse that the God-sized dog wouldn't devour it in the next heartbeat, he bowed in the saddle to Audun. “That was fine wizardry,” he said. “You know I've had my doubts about you, but you just buried a lot of them.”
“My thanks.” Sweat beaded on Audun's face despite the chill. “The sounds weren't hard, though getting them loud enough took a little doing. But I think the scent worked even better.”
“Good God!” Ulric Skakki said. Count Hamnet nodded—he couldn't have put it better himself. What would a dog that sounded like that smell like? Not having a dog's nose, he couldn't fully understand the answer. But he had some idea of what it must be, anyhow. A dog that sounded as if it was the size of God smelled … intimidating.
Trasamund pointed north. “Here come the dogs those dogs belong to. Musk Ox clan.” His curled lip said what he thought of the approaching Bizogots.
The riders wore furs, as he did. But on their heads they had woolen caps in gaudy zigzag stripes. They hadn't made those themselves; the caps were products of Raumsdalian bad taste. But they'd traded for them, so they had bad taste of their own.
“Next question is, are they at war with Trasamund's clan, or does he just think they wear ugly headgear?” Ulric Skakki murmured.
“We'll find out,” Hamnet Thyssen said, a sentiment that had the advantage—or, too often, the disadvantage—of being true almost all the time.
“Who are you people?” one of the oncoming Bizogots shouted. “Why are you crossing our grazing lands?” Count Hamnet hadn't heard the Bizogot language for a few years. He was glad he could still understand it.
“What did you do to our dogs?” another mammoth-herder added.
“We drove them off,” Trasamund yelled back. “Better than they deserve, too. If dogs trouble us, we treat them … like dogs.” He didn't quite tell the Musk Ox men they were dogs themselves, but he didn't miss by much, either. Bizogots lacked a lot of things Raumsdalians took for granted, but not arrogance. Never arrogance. Trasamund struck his broad chest with a big fist. “I am Trasamund son of Halkel, jarl of the Three Tusk clan. These are my friends.” He threw his arms wide to include his companions from the Empire. Then he pointed straight at the man who'd challenged him. “Hinder us at your peril!”
“Subtle,” Ulric Skakki murmured.
“It's how Bizogots do things,” Hamnet Thyssen answered, and Ulric nodded. Hamnet went on, “In his own way, Trasamund has style.” Ulric Skakki nodded again. It wasn't the sort of style Hamnet would have wanted, but that had nothing to do with anything.
The Bizogots from the Musk Ox clan reined in. It didn't look like an immediate fight—a good thing, too, because Trasamund and the Raumsdalians were likely to lose. “I am Sarus son of Leovigild,” said the blond barbarian who spoke for the Musk Ox men. “I am the jarl's son.” He wore a cap with rings of red and deep blue and saffron. It couldn't have got much uglier if it tried for a year. “We have no quarrel with the Three Tusk men … now.” The concession was grudging, but it was a concession.
“We have no quarrel with the Musk Ox men … now.” Trasamund sounded as grudging as Sarus.
“And we have no quarrel with the Empire,” Sarus added after taking a look at the men—and woman—accompanying Trasamund. He didn't qualify that with a now. Hamnet Thyssen wasn't sure Trasamund noticed, but he did himself.

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