Beyond the Gap Read online

  Not that he was in any great danger of falling in love with Ulric Skakki. The first thing you had to do around Ulric was keep your hands in your pockets, or else they'd get picked. And how could you love anyone you couldn't trust? Gudrid had taught him the folly of that, too. By comparison, Ulric's being of the wrong gender seemed a thing of little weight.

  A palace servitor fed more charcoal into a brazier. Braziers and fireplaces scattered through the enormous building heated it... somewhat. Hamnet hadn't walked five paces past this brazier before a frigid breeze slithered down the back of his neck. Maybe that was just as well. In places sealed too tightly against the cold, men sometimes lay down by braziers and never got up again. Not even wizards knew why that happened, but no one doubted that it did.

  "Wait here," the attendant told Hamnet Thyssen and Ulric Skakki. The man ducked through a doorway. Hamnet could hear him speaking to someone inside, but couldn't make out his words.

  "Yes, yes. Send them in. I've been waiting for them, haven't I?" Count Hamnet had no trouble hearing that, nor in recognizing Sigvat II’s voice. Emperors often had less cause to exercise discretion than ordinary mortals did.

  Out came the attendant. He gestured to Hamnet and Ulric Skakki. They followed him into the chamber. Rather than on his throne, Sigvat II sat on an ordinary three-legged pine stool. Hamnet Thyssen, being of noble blood, dropped to one knee before his sovereign. Ulric Skakki fell to both knees—he was only a commoner.

  A tall, blond Bizogot stood in the room, his back to the fireplace. His blue eyes blazed contempt; Bizogots bent the knee before God, but to no living man. This nomad from the northern steppe wore a cape made from the skin of a short-faced bear. That meant he'd killed the animal himself— Bizogot men would not use hides from beasts they had not slain. And anyone who'd killed a short-faced bear would not be likely to have much trouble with mere men.

  The Emperor broke into Count Hamnet s thoughts, saying, "Rise, gentlemen." Hamnet's knee clicked as he got to his feet—one more reminder he wasn't as young as he used to be. Ulric Skakki rose as smoothly as if dipped in bear grease. Hamnet wished he hadn't had that thought; it made his eyes travel to the formidable-looking Bizogot again. The man scowled at him.

  Instead of scowling back at the barbarian, Count Hamnet asked Sigvat, "How may we serve you, your Majesty?" However he and Ulric Skakki were to serve, it would involve the Bizogot in some way. The man wouldn't be here otherwise. Hamnet found the prospect less than delightful—quite a bit less, in fact—but knew he couldn't do anything about it.

  "There is news from the north," the Emperor said, which was anything but a surprise. Though Hamnet Thyssen would never have said such a thing, he'd long thought Sigvat II had a gift for the obvious. Sigvat was unlikely to go down in history as one of the great Raumsdalian Emperors. No one five hundred years from now would speak of him in the same breath as Domaldi the Conqueror or Faxi Blood-Hand or even Smiling Solveig, who hadn't been much of a general—or, indeed, much of an Emperor—but who'd passed away in circumstances that proved his personal popularity.

  "And what is the news from the north, your Majesty?" Ulric Skakki asked when the Emperor didn't go on right away.

  Sigvat II looked a trifle miffed at being pushed, but he seldom looked more than a trifle miffed; he was a good-natured man. His face, round and bland, suggested as much. But Hamnet Thyssen saw something in Sigvat s eyes he'd never even imagined there before. Was it fear or awe or a bit of both? He couldn't be sure; it was too unfamiliar.

  "I think," Sigvat said, "I had better let Trasamund here give it to you. He found it, and he is the man who brought it to Nidaros. Trasamund," he added, "is jarl of the Three Tusk clan of the Bizogots."

  "Jarl?" Hamnet Thyssen said in surprise. "The clan chief came here himself?" He spoke to the Emperor, not to the Bizogot.

  "I am the clan chief, and I came here myself," Trasamund said in excellent Raumsdalian. He looked from Count Hamnet to Ulric Skakki and back again. "Do the two of you know my clan?" He used the dual number, implying Hamnet and Ulric were a natural pair. That insulted Count Hamnet; by the pained look on Ulric Skakki's face, he liked it none too well, either.

  Ulric Skakki's expression also said he knew something of the Three Tusk clan. Before he could parade his knowledge, Count Hamnet beat him to the punch. "I do," he said, stressing that /ever so slightly. "You dwell in the farthest north, up against the Glacier as close as any folk may go."

  Trasamund grunted and nodded. Had the Raumsdalians not heard of the Three Tusk clan, that would have been a deadly insult—though few men this far south in the Raumsdalian Empire troubled to tell one barbarous band from another. Since Hamnet Thyssen and Ulric Skakki did know of his clan and its place in the fierce, frigid Bizogot scheme of things, the jarl accepted their knowledge as no less than his due.

  "Knowing who we are and our position, then, you will know also that we travel up the Gap as far as we may," Trasamund rumbled.

  "It only stands to reason," Hamnet Thyssen said, and Ulric Skakki nodded.

  For long and long and long, the Glacier that capped the north of the world had been a single vast sheet. Scholars claimed it was three miles thick in spots. Count Hamnet had no idea how they knew, or how they thought they knew, but he wasn't prepared to call them liars. He'd seen the edge of the Glacier himself, on journeys among the Bizogots. Those shining cliffs seemed to climb forever.

  When the edge stood not far north of Nidaros, in the days before the Raumsdalian Empire rose to greatness, the Glacier had still been a single sheet. But, as it drew back over the centuries that followed, it drew back not straight north, but to the northeast and the northwest. Thus what Raumsdalians called the Gap—a narrow stretch of bare ground between the two lobes of the Glacier. The Bizogots used a word with the same literal meaning but much earthier associations.

  "By God," Hamnet Thyssen said softly. "By God! Will you tell me, Jarl Trasamund of the Three Tusk clan, will you tell me the Gap has cloven the Glacier in two?"

  Ulric Skakki whistled softly, a low, mournful note. Count Hamnet felt like doing the same. There were metaphysicians, and more than a few of them, who argued that the Gap could not possibly divide the Glacier, for the Glacier had to go on forever. Though no metaphysician himself—far from it—he’d always inclined toward that view himself. So did most men who'd actually set eyes on the Glacier. It was too vast to imagine its having an end.

  But Trasamund nodded. He also scowled. Plainly, he did not care to be anticipated. Anticipated he was, though, and he would have to make the best of it. "I will tell you this, southern man, for it is so. Do you call me a liar?"

  If Hamnet Thyssen did call him a liar, one of them would die in the next few minutes. Hamnet was large and formidable, but Trasamund was larger still, and stronger, and younger. All the same, Count Hamnet thought he could take the Bizogot if he had to.

  Here, though, the issue did not arise, for Hamnet shook his head. "Not at all, your Ferocity." He invested the jarl's title with not even a grain of irony. "No, not at all. Tell us, then—what lies beyond the Glacier?"

  Hamnet leaned toward Trasamund, waiting for the answer. So did Sigvat II. Ulric Skakki also listened intently, but seemed rather less interested. Hamnet Thyssen wondered why. Beyond the Glacier. . . He might as well have said, beyond the moon. Anything might lie there, anything at all. Some folk said God led men into this promised land and then laid down the Glacier to keep evildoers from following them. Some said the men here were evildoers, and God had laid down the Glacier to keep them from finding the earthly paradise that lay beyond it. Some said the men here had always been here, and the Glacier had always been here, and nothing lay beyond it. Count Hamnet had always inclined toward that view, too, but maybe he was wrong.

  "Haven't been far yet, you understand," Trasamund said. Hamnet, Ulric Skakki, and Sigvat II nodded as one man. The Bizogot went on, "What I've seen of the land beyond the Glacier looks a lot like what I'd see on this side just below it. It's tundra
country, a cold steppe. The animals are strange, though. Buffalo near the size of woolly rhinos. Big wandering herds of squat, shaggy deer. Wolves bigger than coyotes, smaller than dire wolves. White bears—smaller than short-faced bears, but I think slier and sneakier, too."

  "Men?" All three Raumsdalians asked the question at the same time.

  "I didn't meet any. Maybe I was lucky not to," Trasamund answered. "I'd say there are some, for the animals were wary of me. They've been hunted. I have no doubt of that. But the way northwest is open. If the weather doesn't turn cold enough to make the ice sheets grow together again, it'll stay open."

  "Did you see any sign—any sign at all—of the Golden Shrine?" Sigvat II asked.

  Again, the Emperor and Hamnet Thyssen and Ulric Skakki leaned toward Trasamund as if a lodestone were drawing them. People who claimed this land south of the Glacier was promised to those who lived in it said the Golden Shrine was what had kept their enemies from following them all those ages ago. People who claimed this land was in the hands of evildoers or their descendants said the Golden Shrine was made to keep them in. People who claimed the Glacier went on forever mostly didn't think there was any such thing as the Golden Shrine. Count Hamnet hadn't. Now . . . How could anyone know what to believe now?

  "I saw nothing of that sort myself," Trasamund answered. "But it's on account of the Golden Shrine that I came down here to Nidaros with the word. You Raumsdalians know more about old things than we do. If it's there, and if we find it... I wouldn't want to touch off a curse, you understand, not even knowing I was doing it. Next time I go north, I ought to have Raumsdalians along, too. Just in case, you might say."

  To turn aside any curses, Hamnet wondered, or to make sure we get our fair share of them? Were Bizogots devious enough to think that way? Hamnet wasn't so sure about most of the barbarians. The jarl of the Three Tusk clan struck him as sly enough and then some.

  "Here you have two bold men who will go anywhere a Bizogot will," the Emperor said, nodding to Count Hamnet and Ulric Skakki in turn. "Both have traveled widely in the north of the world, and both are presently, ah, at liberty."

  Hamnet Thyssen knew what that small imperial exhalation meant as far as he was concerned. It meant he would be—not happier, but less unhappy—the farther from Nidaros he went. He'd never dreamt of going beyond the Glacier, but if that didn't put enough distance between him and Gudrid, nothing could.

  Odds were nothing could.

  And what of Ulric Skakki? Why was he so willing to leave the Empire for parts unknown? Was he running away from someone? From something? Was he running toward something? In Hamnet Thyssen's experience, that was far less common, but it wasn't impossible.

  Right now, Hamnet had no answers, only questions. On the journey, if they made the journey, maybe the answers would come out. Maybe they wouldn't do too much harm when they did. Hamnet could hope they wouldn't, as long as he remembered hopes were only shadows that too often vanished in the pitiless light of reality.

  As he was looking at Ulric Skakki, so Trasamund the jarl was eyeing him and Ulric both. "Yes, they may do," the jarl said at last. "The name of Hamnet Thyssen is not unknown in the north, and this other fellow is a likely rogue—I have heard of him, too. But will they be enough? We Bizogots, we have likely rogues aplenty. We have warriors aplenty, too—good fighting men. I mean no disrespect to you, Count Hamnet."

  Hamnet Thyssen bowed. "I take none. You do not insult me, or tell me anything I did not know, when you say I am not unique." One more thing Gudrid had taught him. If she'd found a more painful way to give him the lesson than any Bizogot jarl might, that only meant it would stick better.

  As Trasamund eyed Hamnet and Ulric, so Sigvat II eyed him. "What would you, then, your Ferocity?" the Emperor asked.

  "When we go through the Gap again, your Majesty, our band will have a shaman with it, the wisest Bizogot shaman I can talk into coming along," Trasamund said. "But there is wisdom, and then there is wisdom. The Empire has more of it than we do. You can afford it. You sit in towns, and what are towns but stores of things? Things like books, for instance. I said it before—your memories are longer than ours, firmer than ours. Give us a wizard, give us a—what word do you use?" His big head bobbed up and down as he found it. "Give us a scholar, by God!"

  Now Count Hamnet studied the jarl in surprise. Not all Bizogots even realized they were barbarians by the standards of the Raumsdalian Empire. Most of the ones who did realize it answered Raumsdalian scorn with contempt of their own. To them, Raumsdalians were weak and tricky and corrupt, of use to the Bizogots not for themselves but for their things, the things they could make and keep and the northerners couldn't.

  But Trasamund, plainly, was no ordinary mammoth-herder. He grasped something a lot of Raumsdalians couldn't—that the way writing bound knowledge across time gave the Empire a breadth and a depth of thought no Bizogot clan could even approach. Facing the unknown beyond the Glacier, Trasamund wanted people equipped to understand it—if any people were.

  Sigvat II seemed taken aback. When he did not answer at once, Count Hamnet said, "Your Majesty, if a wizard and a scholar will go with us, we would do well to have them. Who knows what we may find? Who knows what we may try to understand?"

  "The Golden Shrine," Ulric Skakki murmured.

  Hamnet Thyssen still had no idea if there was any such thing as the Golden Shrine. An hour earlier, he would have laughed at the very idea. He wasn't laughing now. If the Gap had opened, who could say what lay beyond the Glacier? No one now—no one except Trasamund and whoever traveled with him.

  And whoever lived beyond the Glacier, if anyone did. Trasamund thought so. Hamnet wouldn't have believed it, but so what? The opening of the Gap made his beliefs, and everyone else's in the Empire, irrelevant. Belief worked well enough when a man could not measure it against facts. But when he could . .. Facts crushed belief like a mammoth crushing a vole.

  After a few heartbeats of thought, the Emperor nodded. "Well, your Ferocity, your Grace, let it be as you desire," Sigvat said. "We shall indeed summon a scholar and a sorcerer to accompany you. God grant they prove useful."

  Trasamund and Count Hamnet both bowed. The jarl of the Three Tusk clan said, "I thank you for your kindness, your Majesty, and for your wisdom."

  "It was not my wisdom—it was yours," Sigvat said. "Count Hamnet helped me see it."

  "Count Hamnet has a name for good sense," the Bizogot chieftain said. "I was glad when you summoned him."

  "You have heard of me, too, you said. What do I have a name for?" Ulric Skakki inquired in what might have been amusement or might have been something altogether darker and more dangerous.

  Trasamund took him literally, answering, "For getting in and getting out again. Where we are going, what we are doing, that may be the best name of all to have."

  "Each of you will be my guest here at the palace till we find you suitable companions," Sigvat said. "I will lay on a reception and a feast in your honor tonight."

  So much for wisdom. So much for good sense, Count Hamnet thought unhappily. Now he was stuck in Nidaros for God only knew how long, stuck in the same town with Gudrid and Eyvind Torfinn. He wished he could have got in and got out again. And it was his own damned fault he hadn't.

  II

  Torches blazed bravely. They drove night back to the corners of the dining hall, even if they did fill the room with a strong odor of hot mammoth fat. Perfumed beeswax candles spilled out more golden light and fought the tallow reek to something close to a draw.

  A goblet of mead in his hand, Count Hamnet Thyssen surveyed the throng gathered at least partly in his honor. He tried to imagine some of these gilded popinjays up on the tundra, or in the endless forests to the east. That was enough to squeeze a grunt of laughter from even his somber spirit.

  So far, he hadn't spotted either his former wife or her new lord and master. He snorted again, more sourly than before. He didn't think even a wild Bizogot could master Gudrid, and he didn't think
many wild Bizogots would be fool enough to try.

  His gaze flicked to Trasamund. Tall and fair and handsome, the jarl had already acquired a circle of female admirers. The smile on his ruddy face said he enjoyed the attention. The ruddiness on his smiling face said he'd already had as much mead—or beer, or ale, or even sweet wine from the far southwest—as was good for him. Up on the tundra, Bizogots drank fermented mammoth's milk. Count Hamnet had made its acquaintance. It was as bad as it sounded. No matter how nasty it was, the Bizogots drank heroically. Anything worth doing is worth overdoing summed up the nomads' view of the world.

  And Bizogots wenched as heroically as they drank. That might—was all too like to—cause trouble. Hamnet drifted toward a steward. A word to the wise .. . probably wouldn't help. He held his tongue. This wasn't the first time Bizogots had been feted in the royal palace. The steward—and the Emperor—would know what they were like.

  A serving woman came by with a plate of treats—toasted deer marrow on crackers of barley and maize. Count Hamnet took one. The fatty richness of the marrow went well with his mead. Beer might have been even better, but he preferred the fermented honey.

  Someone—someone with long fingernails—rumpled the hair at the nape of his neck. He whirled around. If the goblet hadn't been nearer empty than full, mead would have sloshed out of it onto the rug.

  "Hello, Hamnet," Gudrid said. "I wondered if you weren't noticing me on purpose."

  He knew how old she was—not far from his own just-past-forty. She didn't look it, or within ten years of it. Her hair was still black, her skin still smooth, her chin still single. Her eyes were almost the color of a lion's, a strange and penetrating light brown. They sparked now in smug amusement.

  She was going to jab at him. She did whenever they met. She always wounded him, too. He did his best not to show it; that way, she missed some of the sport. So he shook his head now. "No, I really didn't see you," he said truthfully. "I'm—"