Beyond the Gap

by Harry Turtledove

  Count Hamnet bowed. "At your service. And if you keep wasting my time and fraying my temper, I will be more at your service than you ever wanted. I promise you that." He shifted his feet as if getting ready to draw his sword.

  Although the prosperous man also wore a blade, he seemed to have forgot about it. That was wise, or at least lucky; whatever else he was, he was no trained warrior, and wouldn't have lasted long against someone who was. "Madman!" he blurted, and took himself elsewhere.

  "You still know how to win friends, don't you?" There was Ulric Skakki again.

  "Winning him as a friend is a dead loss, by God," Hamnet answered. "And you want to spend your time with people like him? Why?"

  "Oh, he's no prize. There are plenty here in Nidaros who aren't. Don't get me wrong, Hamnet—I don't say anything different." Ulric paused to snag a cup of wine from a pretty maidservant passing by with a tray. After sipping, he went on, "But you can't tell me the Bizogots are any better, not at that level. People are people no matter where you find 'em, and a lot of them anywhere will be boastful, blustering saps."

  Did his eyes travel to Trasamund? Or, instead of following Ulric's, did Hamnet Thyssen's go to the jarl on their own? "Trasamund s no sap," Ham-net said. Whether the Bizogot was boastful and blustering was a different question, one he didn't try to answer.

  "Mm, not all the time, I suppose," Ulric Skakki said generously. "But often enough to make him a pain in the posterior."

  "He knows the Rulers are dangerous. You know the Rulers are dangerous. Does his Majesty know the Rulers are dangerous?" Hamnet said.

  "He will by the time he has to do something about them. I hope he will, anyhow," Ulric said.

  Hamnet turned away from him. "Enjoy yourself, then."

  "That's what I'm here for." Nothing fazed Ulric Skakki—or if anything did, he didn't let on.

  * * * *

  After the unfortunate feast, Hamnet took leaving for the frozen plains much more seriously. He bought everything he could think of that might be useful—a second sword, knives, iron arrow points, wooden arrow shafts (lighter and straighter than the bone arrows the Bizogots commonly used), a spare helmet, poppy juice, horse trappings, a pillow, soap, insect powder (which probably wouldn't work, but you never could tell), and several sets of flint and steel for making sparks and starting fires. A man could find flint up in the Bizogot country, but not much steel went up there.

  "You get no clothes. You get no feathers for fletching or bowstrings," Liv said, accompanying him as he spent his silver.

  "I don't see any need for those. You Bizogots make better cold-weather gear than anything I could buy here," Count Hamnet answered. "Sinew will do for bowstrings, and I can get feathers and fletching tools up on the plain. What I want here are things I can't get there."

  "Ah." Liv nodded. "This is wise."

  "Well, I hope so." Hamnet sometimes fancied his own cleverness. Usually it turned and bit him when he did.

  "On some of these things, you could also turn a fine profit," the Bizogot woman said.

  "I'm not going up there to be a trader," Hamnet told her. "If the Rulers don't come, maybe I'll trade what I don't need, but that's not why I'm bringing it." If the Rulers don't come, I'll look like an idiot. If they don't come, I'll feel like an idiot, too.

  "You should have things to trade. It will help you live among us," Liv said seriously. "You ride well and you fight well, but you have no practice herding musk oxen or mammoths. Sooner or later, you need to learn."

  "Yes, I suppose so," Hamnet said with no great enthusiasm. She was right; he couldn't lie around waiting for a war that might not come and eating what the rest of the clan gave him. He wouldn't be a guest now—he would be one of them. And the Bizogots didn't have enough to spare for idle hands. Children worked at whatever they were big enough to try. Men and women who got too old to work—not that many lived so long up there— went out on the plains to die a cold but mostly merciful death. It wasn't cruelty; it was a harshness the land imposed.

  "Not many Raumsdalians would be able to do it," Liv said. "You, though—once you learn, I think you'll do as well as if your hair weren't dark."

  "Thank you so much," he said. Many Raumsdalians sneered at the Bizogots because they were so fair—though not many Raumsdalian men, from all Hamnet Thyssen had seen, sneered at Bizogot women. Amusing to find the mammoth-herders looking down their noses at their southern neighbors.

  Most of the time, Liv recognized his irony for what it was. She took him seriously here. "I mean it," she assured him. "You can do the work. Ulric Skakki, I think, could do the work—but he would rather find ways to get out of it instead. The rest of the Raumsdalians who traveled with us? The ones I've seen here?" She shook her head.

  "Each cat his own rat," Hamnet said. "Up in the north, everyone has to be able to do everything, near enough. You said that yourself. Here, we pick one thing and get good at it. That leaves a lot of us not so good at other things. It's the price we pay."

  "If the Rulers come this far. . ." Liv said.

  "If the Rulers come this far, they'll see that some of us make good soldiers, too," Count Hamnet said.

  "I hope so." Liv didn't sound convinced. "From what I saw of Jesper Fletti and the other Raumsdalian soldiers who came north, though . . ." Her voice trailed away again.

  "No, no, no, no." Hamnet Thyssen shook his head. "Don't judge our soldiers by them. They're imperial guards. Part of their job is to look pretty while they take care of Sigvat. They can fight some, or they'd be useless. But they have to be impressive while they're doing it. Most soldiers don't bother with that nonsense."

  "I hope so," Liv repeated, still seeming dubious.

  "Look at it like this," Hamnet said. "Never mind the Rulers. If all our soldiers were like the ones you saw, who'd stop the Bizogots from overrunning the Empire?"

  Liv grunted thoughtfully, the way a man would. She squeezed his hand. "Fair enough. You have a point. I always thought it was because the southern Bizogots were too weak and puny to be worth much themselves, but your soldiers have to be able to fight, too. Do you think they'll be able to fight warriors who ride mammoths?"

  It was Hamnet's turn to grunt. "I don't know," he admitted. "The Bizogots will have to worry about that, too."

  "At least we know mammoths," Liv said.

  Hamnet Thyssen started going on, in Raumsdalian, about two Bizogots and two mammoths gossiping about the clan that lived next door to theirs. For a little while, Liv didn't understand what he was doing. When she did get it, she was affronted at first. Then, in spite of herself, she started to giggle. "I didn't mean we know them like that," she said.

  In the voice of one of the mammoths—a snooty one—Hamnet said, "Well, we don't say we know Bizogots like that, either." He made an indignant gesture with his arm, as if it were a trunk. Giggling still, Liv hit him. It was a most successful shopping trip.

  * * * *

  It was snowing when Count Hamnet and Liv and Trasamund set out from the imperial palace. That seemed fitting to Hamnet. It also seemed fitting to Trasamund, who said, "Now we go back to a land with proper weather, by God."

  "If you say so, your Ferocity." Hamnet didn't feel like arguing with him.

  One of the stablemen said, "Good fortune go with you, your Grace."

  "Why, thank you, Tyrkir." Hamnet Thyssen was surprised and touched. "I thought everybody here was glad to get rid of me."

  "Oh, no." Tyrkir shook his head. "You know how to take care of a horse, and you always treat us like people when you come to the stables. We aren't just—things that can talk, not to you. Not like some I could name."

  Another attendant hissed at him. He left it there. Hamnet found himself wondering as he rode off. Was Tyrkir talking about the Emperor like that? He couldn't very well ask, but it made for an interesting question all the same.

  "Nidaros is a fine place to visit. Nidaros is a wonderful place to visit, in fact," Trasamund said as they rode out, with a smile like a cat's that has
fallen into a pitcher of cream. "I wouldn't want to have to stay here, though."

  "Neither would I," Hamnet Thyssen said.

  "Plainly not, or you wouldn't come with me," the jarl said.

  Count Hamnet shook his head. "I've always thought so. Too many people crowded together. Too many ambitious people crowded together. Whenever I could stay away from the place, I would. Sometimes you can't help it, though."

  "It's not just the people crowded together. It's all the things crowded together, too," Liv said. "The houses and the shops and everything in the shops . . ." Her shiver had nothing to do with the weather. "It's marvelous, I suppose, but I'd go mad if I stayed here much longer."

  As if to prove her point, they got stuck behind a wagon that had overturned on the icy road, spilling sacks of beans or barley or something of the sort. The driver tried to keep people from darting in and stealing the sacks, but some would distract him while others did the taking.

  "We Bizogots don't steal inside the clan," Trasamund said loftily.

  "Why do these people do it?" Liv asked.

  "Maybe to sell what they grab. More likely because they're hungry and they need something to eat," Hamnet answered.

  "Here, some have too much and many have not enough. That is not good," Liv said. "Among the Bizogots, if someone goes hungry, it's because everyone in the clan goes hungry. That way is better, I think."

  "Maybe so," Hamnet said. "Things are more equal among you—you're right. But you've seen we can do things you can't."

  "Oh, yes." The shaman nodded. "We talked about the price you pay for being able to do them. This is another part of that price, wouldn't you say?"

  Although Hamnet Thyssen hadn't thought of it like that, he found himself nodding, too. "Yes, I'd have to say it is."

  "Let's turn around and take another road," Trasamund said. "Otherwise, we'll be here till they steal the wheels off that poor fool's wagon and the tail off his horse."

  "I can get us to the north gate on side streets, I think," Hamnet said. "We'll have to do some zigzagging, but we would anyway." A boulevard that ran straight north would have given the Breath of God a running start. Raumsdalian winters were milder—or at least less regularly frigid—than the ones the Three Tusk clan knew, but people still had to do all they could to fight the cold.

  Hamnet would have embarrassed himself if he’d got lost in the maze of lanes and alleys that sprouted from the main road. He knew more than a little relief when he got back onto it. With luck, neither of the Bizogots with him noticed.

  If it was snowing here, what was it like up by the Glacier'! Do I really want to know? he wondered. He shrugged. Ulric Skakki had gone that way, and gone by himself, without the Bizogots' knowing. What he can do, I can do, by God. Hamnet Thyssen muttered under his breath. He still wished Ulric were coming along. The adventurer was a good man to have beside you when you ran into trouble—or when it ran into you.

  He pointed. "There's the gate."

  "So it is." Trasamund nodded in satisfaction. "On the way home at last. Even getting out of Nidaros, getting into the countryside here, will feel like an escape. It's not the plains, but I won't feel closed in all the time, either, the way I do now."

  "Closed in. Yes, by God!" Liv said. "When you leave the tents, there's a whole big world around you, and you can see it. When you leave a house, what do you see? More walls!" She shuddered. "It's like being tied up, like being caged."

  "All what you're used to," Hamnet Thyssen said. "I told you before—out on your plains, sometimes I feel as if there's too much nothing around me." He mimed curling up into a little ball.

  The gate guards asked their names. When the sergeant heard them, he said, "Oh, you're that lot. Yes, you can go through. By all we've heard, it's good riddance to the lot of you."

  "We love you, too," Hamnet said mildly. He had offended Sigvat, then. Well, too bad. And as a matter of fact, it was too bad. Trasamund said something even more unflattering in the Bizogot language. Luckily, none of the guards understood him.

  Liv really did sigh with relief when they put the gray stone walls of Nidaros behind them. "Free!" she said, and threw her arms wide. Her horse twitched its ears, doubtless wondering why its rider was acting so strange.

  Hamnet Thyssen wondered why two horsemen—tough-looking rogues, he thought, peering at them through the swirling snow—sat waiting by the side of the Great North Road. Was Sigvat angry enough to set bravos on him to make sure he didn't get to the Bizogot country? He wouldn't have thought so, but. . . When he got a little closer, his jaw dropped. "Ulric!" he said. "Audun! What the demon are you doing here?"

  XX

  Ulric Skakki tilted back his head so he could look down his long, straight nose at Hamnet. "You're more persuasive than you have any business being, Thyssen," he said severely. "If you set your mind to it, you could probably sell snow to the Bizogots."

  "I don't need to sell it." Hamnet held out a mittened hand till a few flakes fell on it. "It's right here. And I'm glad to see you, even if I didn't think I'd put any horse traders out of business." He sketched a salute to the wizard. "I'm glad to see you, too, Audun—you'd best believe I am. What made you decide to come?"

  Audun Gilli's nondescript features lit up when anyone paid attention to him. "I thank you, your Grace. What made me decide to come? Ulric here kidnapped me."

  For a moment, Count Hamnet believed him. Then Ulric Skakki laughed. "Well, it's nice to know I'm innocent of something, anyway. We got to talking after Eyvind Torfinn’s gruesome bash, and we decided we'd do better going north than staying here after all. Yes, curse you, you were right. There—I've said it. Now how much more snow are you going to sell me?"

  "You will remember that I am the jarl of the Three Tusk clan?" Trasamund thumped his chest with his right fist and glowered in turn at Ulric and Audun.

  "Yes, your Ferocity," Audun said. He wasn't likely to raise that kind of trouble any which way.

  Ulric pointed toward Hamnet Thyssen. "Why aren't you thundering at him?"

  "He already understands," Trasamund answered. "Do you?"

  "I don't want to be jarl. I have trouble enough telling myself what to do," Ulric Skakki answered. "You're welcome to the job, as far as I'm concerned."

  "I did not think you wanted to lead my clan. You are no witling. You know they would not follow you." Trasamund gave Ulric his fiercest stare. "But when you are among my clansfolk, will you follow me? That is what I must know."

  Ulric thought hard before saying, "Unless I think you're wrong enough about something to make a real mess of it."

  "That's not good enough," the Bizogot said.

  "You'd better take it," Ulric Skakki advised. "It's as much as you'll get, and a lot more than I'd give most people."

  Trasamund went right on looking fierce. Hamnet Thyssen could have told him that was the wrong way to go about intimidating Ulric. Luckily, Hamnet didn't need to tell him; he figured it out for himself. "I would kill any Bizogot who was so insolent to me," he snarled.

  "Well, you're welcome to try," Ulric Skakki said politely.

  Trasamund muttered into his thick, curly beard. Then he booted his horse up the Great North Road. So did Liv. So did Count Hamnet and Audun Gilli. And so did Ulric Skakki. And if he had a smile on his face, he often had a smile on his face. He wasn't openly mocking Trasamund—not so the jarl could prove it, anyhow.

  For the first hour or so, Trasamund rode as if trying to shake off pursuers. Then he seemed to decided Ulric really was on his side, or would be if he let him. He slowed down. That had to relieve his horse; the Bizogot was a big, beefy man, and couldn't have been easy to carry.

  Liv pointed to little sparrow-like birds hopping around on the snow-covered ground off to the side of the road. "Larkspurs!" she said. "So this is where they go during the winter."

  "I suppose so." Hamnet thought for a few heartbeats. "We did see them up in the Bizogot country in summertime, didn't we?" He hadn't paid much attention to the birds. They were too
wary to be easily caught, and too small to be worth eating unless a large batch of them were baked in a pie or something of the sort.

  "We saw them beyond the Glacier, too," Liv said. "Do those birds fly through the Gap to come here? Do they fly over the Glacier? Or do they winter in the lands we don't know, the lands to the far southwest?"

  There was an interesting question. "I don't know," Hamnet admitted. "How would you go about finding out?"

  "You might be able to enchant a bird in the summer and then use the spell to see where it went in wintertime," Liv answered. "Of course, something might eat it between the time you cast the spell and the time you tried to check it. And you might not be able to tell anything if the larkspurs beyond the Glacier do go to that other land. God only knows how far away it is."

  That was liable to be literally true. No man on this side of the Glacier knew; that was certain. Maybe the Rulers did. And, come to that, maybe the larkspurs did. "You might be able to enchant a bird in the summer," Hamnet said."I never could." He paused, then added, "You enchanted me."

  Liv blushed and shook her head. "That was no magic, not the way you mean. It was ... the two of us."

  "Well, good." Hamnet had always believed that was so. But he'd believed things about Gudrid that didn't turn out to be true. Could he stand it if he and Liv went sour?

  Slowly, he nodded. He could stand their going sour. That was the chance you took, the risk you had to accept. Life wasn't perfect; neither were people. If Liv lied to him, though ... He would be a long time getting over that, if he ever did.

  He didn't think she would. He hoped she wouldn't. And, right now, what else could he do? On he rode, after Trasamund, toward the Bizogot country, toward war with the Rulers, away from Nidaros, away from the Empire, away from everything he held dear. Sometimes you had to break the patterns that had run your life—and run it into the ground. Was he doing that here? Again, he thought so. He hoped so. Whether he was right or not . . . sooner or later, he'd find out.