Beyong the Gap g-1 Read online

  And the dead, dried plover's head cried out, too-a shrill piping, such as the live bird might have used when frightened. "Well, well." Audun Gilli's voice rose in surprise. "We do have ourselves a flea, you might say."

  "Where?" Hamnet Thyssen asked.

  "That will take another charm," the wizard replied. He might have asked the plover's head a question. And it seemed to answer him, and to twist in his hand to point the way. It pointed straight toward the horse Gudrid was riding. "Well, well," Audun Gilli said again. "This could be, ah, awkward."

  "Yes." Hamnet Thyssen was even less eager to break the news to his former wife than Audun seemed to be. Liv couldn't do it; she and Gudrid had no language in common. Hamnet looked at Ulric Skakki. "Would you be so kind as to . . . ?"

  "I'll remember you in my nightmares," Ulric said with a grimace. But he rode over to Gudrid. She accepted his arrival as no less than her due. The way she looked at the world, everything revolved around her and paid her tribute.

  Ulric spoke. Hamnet Thyssen couldn't make out exactly what he said; despite morbid curiosity, the Raumsdalian noble didn't go close enough to eavesdrop. Count Hamnet did note the exact instant when Ulric shifted from pleasantries and small talk to the reason he'd gone over to Gudrid. She stiffened in the saddle, then started to laugh. "But that's ridiculous!" she said-Hamnet had no trouble hearing her.

  Shaking his head, Ulric Skakki went on talking quietly, doing his best to explain why it wasn't ridiculous. His best wasn't going to be good enough. Hamnet knew his former wife well enough to be sure of that.

  And he was right. Gudrid shook her head, too. "I don't know where you get your ideas," she said, "but you can go and put them back there again, because you don't have the faintest notion what you're talking about." She made as if to ride away from Ulric Skakki.

  He was not so easily detached. Unlike Gudrid, he still didn't make a lot of noise. But he did point in Eyvind Torfinn's direction. Earl Eyvind was chatting with Jesper Fletti, and not paying any particular attention to Gudrid at the moment. Hamnet Thyssen had a pretty good notion of what Ulric was saying. Don't be difficult, or I'll tell your husband what you were doing last night. If that wasn't it, Count Hamnet would have been astonished.

  Gudrid was astonished, but not in any pleasant way. "You wouldn't dare," she said shrilly. That was the wrong answer to give Ulric Skakki. He twitched the reins and guided his horse away from hers, toward Eyvind Torfinn's. "Wait!" Gudrid screeched.

  Courteously, Ulric did wait. The look Gudrid sent him was anything but courteous. Ulric was either made of stern stuff or a fine actor-maybe both-because he seemed undamaged.

  "Do what you want to do," Gudrid snapped, and she might have added, And demons take you afterwards.

  Again, Ulric affected not to notice. He bowed in the saddle and said something else too low for Hamnet to catch. Then he turned and called, "Liv, sweetheart, would you do the honors here?" He used Raumsdalian, even though Liv didn't speak it. But she had no trouble with his come-hither gesture. And Gudrid, of course, understood both the gesture and the words. She had plenty of reasons for disliking Liv, chief among them that the Bizogot shaman was the only other woman in the party. And now Liv was going to do something sorcerous around her, and she couldn't stop it? She had to hate that.

  Hamnet Thyssen almost sent Ulric a formal salute. The adventurer had found a very smooth way to avenge himself.

  Liv smiled at Gudrid, and kept the smile although Gudrid didn't return it. Even without a language in common, Liv was bound to know some of what Gudrid felt. What did she feel herself? Hamnet had never had the nerve to ask her.

  For the moment, the Bizogot woman seemed all business. She murmured to herself and made several swift passes at Gudrid and the horse. "Ah!" she said brightly. "There it is." Hamnet and Ulric understood her. Gudrid didn't. Liv pointed at Gudrid s tunic. She gestured. "Take it off."

  "What?" Gudrid didn't speak the Bizogot language, but that wasn't all that kept her from understanding. Ulric Skakki translated for her. "What?" she said again. "Take off my clothes for this chit of a girl? No!"

  If you didn't take off your clothes for the Ruler, we wouldn't have this worry now, Hamnet thought. He almost said it out loud. To his surprise, he didn't. He liked Eyvind Torfinn better than he’d ever imagined he could, and didn't care to shame the older man.

  Liv had no trouble figuring out what No! meant, even if she knew hardly any Raumsdalian. She didn't argue with Gudrid. She just dragged her off her horse. Gudrid let out a startled squawk. Both women thumped down on the dirt. Gudrid tried to fight back, but she'd never really learned how. Liv knew exactly what she was doing. Gudrid screamed and swore, which helped her not a bit. The Bizogot shaman quickly and efficiently stripped the tunic off her-and if she gave her a black eye and a split lip while she did it, wasn't she entitled to a little fun?

  Gudrid was bare beneath the thick wool tunic. Hamnet Thyssen set his jaw and looked away. He knew what Gudrid's breasts were like-knew them by sight, knew them by touch, knew them by taste. He also knew he would never touch or taste them again. And he had no interest in seeing them again under such circumstances-or maybe he couldn't stand to look.

  Liv seemed to care about as much for Gudrid's charms as she would have for those of a musk ox. She murmured a spell over the tunic. Suddenly, she stiffened. "Here it is!" she said. "Just a little fetish, but it will do."

  "What on earth is going on?" Eyvind Torfinn said.

  Ulric Skakki and Audun Gilli did the explaining. Despite his regard for Earl Eyvind, Hamnet didn't have the heart-or the stomach-for the job. He also wanted to involve himself with Gudrid as little as he could. She screeched at her husband, but warily. She didn't want him to know what she'd been doing the night before. No one else seemed eager to tell him, but that didn't mean no one would.

  Eyvind Torfinn plucked at his beard. "This would have been easier if you'd given the shaman your tunic without kicking up such a fuss, my dear," he said at last.

  "But she was rude! She was horrid!" Gudrid said.

  Liv, meanwhile, had detached the fetish and was eyeing it with what looked like professional admiration. "An ermine's eye and a young hare's ear," she said. "The spell that animates them is not one I would use, but I am sure it will do the job. Samoth has no trouble spying on us as long as we carry this, no trouble at all. He will know just where we are."

  "Are there any more charms on the tunic?" Eyvind Torfinn said in the Bi-zogot tongue. "If there are none, will you please give it back to my wife and let her dress?"

  "Oh, very well." Liv, plainly, didn't think Gudrid deserved to wear the tunic. She all but threw it at the Raumsdalian woman. Gudrid pulled it on. The look she gave Liv would have melted lead.

  "You may want to be careful," Hamnet Thyssen said in the Bizogot tongue. "You have embarrassed her. She will look for revenge."

  "She is welcome to look," Liv said indifferently. "People look for all kinds of things. Whether they find them .. . That is another story."

  Audun Gilli came up and examined the fetish. Slowly, he nodded. "Oh, yes. Not one I recognize in detail, but the principle is plain." He scratched his head. As often happened, what started as a thoughtful gesture turned into a hunt. After crushing something between his nails, he went on, "We should not destroy this."

  "He is right," Liv said after Hamnet translated. "That Samoth would surely sense it if we did."

  Audun Gilli began to whistle. The tune was strange and discordant- hardly a tune at all, Hamnet Thyssen thought till a short-eared arctic fox walked up to Audun. The wizard patted the animal as if it were a dog. It let him touch it; it even wagged its tail. Then he took a rawhide lashing and tied the fetish around the fox's neck. That done, he whistled a different tune. The fox suddenly seemed to realize where it was and the company it was keeping. With a horrified yip, it dashed away.

  "Not bad," Liv said. "Not bad at all. The shaman of the Rulers will realize something is wrong when he tries to listen with the hare
's ear, but that may take a while. We spoke mostly Raumsdalian here, and he does not know that tongue."

  After translating again, Hamnet Thyssen said, "Their wizard does not admit to knowing our tongue, anyhow. Does Roypar speak Raumsdalian, Gudrid?"

  "No," she answered automatically. Then she backtracked. "I mean, how the demon do I know whether he does or not?"

  "You have a better chance of knowing than any of the rest of us," Count Hamnet said in a voice with no expression at all to it. The glare Gudrid sent him made the ones shed given Liv seem downright loving by comparison.

  Eyvind Torfinn looked as if he wanted to ask questions. If he had, Hamnet wouldn't have lied to him, though he knew the older man might not believe everything-or anything-he said. His home truths would have made Gudrid even happier than she was already. But Earl Eyvind seemed to think better of it. Maybe he would question Gudrid in private. Maybe, as he looked to have done before, he would decide he didn't really want to know. Whatever his reasons, he stayed quiet.

  The travelers resumed their journey toward the Gap. Samoth could not spy on them any more. Hamnet Thyssen hoped he couldn't, anyhow.

  Summer up in the Bizogot country was a brief and fragile flower, one that bloomed late and withered early. Even in and around Nidaros, the Breath of God could blight crops in almost any month of the year. Knowing all that, Hamnet was still shocked by how fast the weather turned-and turned on the travelers-here beyond the Glacier.

  Birds streaming south were the first warning. Only a few days after they fled, the earliest snow flurries dappled the plain. The sun came out again and melted the snow, but more fell a couple of days after that. The sun came out once more. This time, though, the snow stuck longer. Hamnet Thyssen could see his breath even at noon. Something in the sky had changed. Leaden was too strong a word, but he could tell at a glance it would not be warm again for a long time.

  Trasamund took snow in stride. But even he kept looking north. "We want to get as far as we can before the first blizzard catches us," he said.

  "Blizzards!" Gudrid made it into a curse-blizzards did curse this northern country. "Why did I ever decide to come here?"

  To drive me mad, Hamnet Thyssen thought. That was not mere sarcasm; he was all too sure he had the right of it. But she'd finally had more discomfort and danger than even tormenting him was worth. She should have thought of that sooner. They were still on the far side of the Gap. She might need to go through quite a bit more before they got back to the Bizogot country, let alone anything resembling civilization.

  The travelers had to stop to let a herd of buffalo pass in front of them. As Trasamund had said back in Sigvat's chambers, these were bigger beasts than the ones that roamed the prairies of the Raumsdalian Empire. They were a lighter brown than their-cousins?-on the other side of the Glacier. And their horns, at least three times as long as those of the animals Hamnet Thyssen knew, swept out and forward instead of curling up.

  "We don't want to spook them," Ulric Skakki said. His foxy features twisted in distaste. "That could be … unpleasant."

  "They'd squash us flatter than a herd of mammoths could," Trasamund said. "There are a lot more of them."

  Packs of wolves trotted along with the buffalo, prowling after stragglers. Again as Trasamund had said, the wolves on this side of the Glacier were smaller than dire wolves. But they seemed quicker and more agile, like woods wolves back home. Hamnet Thyssen also saw a … a tiger, the Rulers had called it. It might be able to pull down a buffalo all by itself. But it moved aside when the wolves came too close. It could kill several of them, without a doubt. Just as certainly, it was no match for a pack.

  An hour and a half went by before the last stragglers from the buffalo herd ambled past. "Well," Eyvind Torfinn remarked, "we have all the dung we need-or we would il it were dry."

  Trasamund didn't see the joke. "Plenty more that's been on the ground for a while." When it came to survival, he was altogether singleminded.

  And he was right. The travelers had no trouble finding fuel for the evening's fire. As usual, they set out sentries all around. Maybe Roypar's wasn't the only band of Rulers in this part of the plain. Maybe other kinds of men lived around here, too. Strangers couldn't be sure. Better to take no chances.

  One of the guardsmen who'd come north with Jesper Fletti and Gudrid shook Hamnet Thyssen awake in the middle of the night. "Sorry, your Grace," the man murmured, "but I'm glad to get some sleep myself."

  "It's all right," Hamnet said around a yawn. "Well, it's not all right, but it's necessary." He yawned again, and climbed to his feet to make sure he didn't go back to sleep. He went out and took a position a bowshot away from the fire. It was cool out there, but not really cold; they seemed to be between storms.

  But another one was coming. The gibbous moon wore a halo. That meant rain or snow down on the other side of the Glacier; he had no reason to think things worked differently here. And the air smelled and tasted damp. Tomorrow afternoon, maybe tomorrow night. . . That was his guess.

  Off in the distance, a wolf howled, and then another and another and another, till it sounded as if a chorus of demons were howling at the haloed moon. These wolves had voices higher and shriller than those of the dire wolves he was used to, which to his ear only made them all the more unearthly. I suppose they're wolves, he thought uneasily. With only his ears to guide him, he couldn't prove they weren't demons. But he'd seen wolves trailing the long-horned buffalo, and he hadn't seen any demons-or he couldn't prove he had, anyhow.

  The chorus of yowls and yips and howls quieted, then picked up again, even louder and wilder than before. It went on and on. Hamnet Thyssen looked back toward his comrades. How anyone could sleep through that hellish racket was beyond him, but they seemed to have no trouble.

  Once he thought he heard an owl through the wolves' din. That really alarmed him, where the wolves only annoyed him. The wolves might possibly be demons, but even if they were he had no reason to think they were more interested in the travelers from the far side of the Glacier than in, say, the Rulers. A seeming owl, though, might be Samoth the wizard in owl's plumage flying out after the travelers on discovering his fetish had failed.

  Hamnet Thyssen peered into the night, looking now this way, now that. Try as he would, he couldn't spot the owl, if owl it was. He muttered to himself, wondering what that meant. Was it just an owl that called once and then fell silent? Or was it Samoth mocking him, mocking all the travelers, and trying to spook him?

  If it was the wizard, he was doing a good job. Hamnet chuckled mirthlessly. Even if it wasn't the wizard, he was still doing a good job.

  Because Count Hamnet was searching for the owl that might or might not have been there, he didn't notice soft footsteps behind him till they drew very close. Then he whirled, hand flashing to the hilt of his sword. "Who the-?" he blurted, and then went on, "Oh, it's you." He felt foolish.

  "Yes, it's me," Liv said quietly. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to startle you."

  "It's all right," Hamnet said. "You shouldn't have startled me. I should have heard you coming sooner." Now he was angry at himself, not at the Bizogot shaman.

  "The wolves woke me." She pointed back toward the fire, which had died back to embers. "The others are snoring away. I don't know how they do it."

  "I was thinking the same thing not long ago," Count Hamnet said. "Did you hear the owl, too?"

  Liv nodded. "I hope it was only an owl." Hamnet almost told her that thought matched his, too, but judged her too likely to know it already. She went on, "I think it was. But even if it wasn't, we've made Samoth work harder than he expected to. Showing him we're not to be despised can't hurt."

  "I hadn't looked at it that way," Hamnet said. "Of course, he'll despise us anyway. We aren't of the Rulers, so how can he help it?"

  "They make much of themselves, sure enough." Liv's voice was troubled. "I hope they don't have good reason for their bragging and boasting and preening."

  "From what I've seen, people
who brag a lot are usually trying to convince themselves even more than other people," Hamnet said.

  "Yes, that's so. It's one of the things shamans find out about people." Liv cocked her head to one side. "How did you come to see it?"

  "By getting to be as old as I am and keeping my eyes open," Hamnet answered with a shrug. "I don't know what else to tell you."

  "Plenty of people older than you who never notice such things," the Bizogot shaman said.

  Hamnet Thyssen shrugged. "Plenty of people are fools." He laughed harshly. "I'm a fool, too, but not that particular way. You can be a fool all kinds of different ways."

  "How are you a fool?" Liv's voice was serious; she really meant the question.

  But Hamnet Thyssen only laughed some more, on an even more bitter note than before. "How do you think? She's asleep over there by the fire."

  Liv glanced back toward the rest of the travelers. "How long since the two of you parted?"

  "Sometimes it seems like a thousand years. Sometimes it seems as if it happened this afternoon," he said. "Sometimes it seems like both at once. It's worst then."

  "She is . .." Liv paused, looking for words. '"If she were a Bizogot, she wouldn't last long. You Raumsdalians have more room for useless people than we do."

  "Gudrid's not useless." Hamnet Thyssen's mouth twisted. "Ask Eyvind Torfinn if you think I'm wrong. Ask Trasamund. Ask Audun Gilli. Go back and ask Roypar. God! You can ask me, too." He remembered the last time he'd lain with her. He hadn't known it would be the last then. I should have, he thought. She yawned when we finished, and she wasn't sleepy. She'd slipped out of the castle the next day. He hadn't seen her since, only heard about her . . . till Sigvat II summoned him to Nidaros.

  In the pale moonlight, Liv's face was unreadable. "You never found another woman after that, plainly," she said.

  "I sleep with women now and again. You know I do," Hamnet said.