Beyong the Gap g-1 Read online

  "I'll bet he's a student of ancient sorceries," Hamnet said. "He's been pickled from then till now."

  "His Majesty sent me out to find a proper wizard. Me," Ulric Skakki replied with a touch-or more than a touch-of hauteur. "I say I've found him."

  "I say you couldn't find your arse with both hands if you think so," Count Hamnet growled. They glared at each other.

  Forgotten by both of them like a bone abandoned when two dogs go at each other, Audun Gilli stared at the mugs in which his sassafras tea had come. He chanted softly to himself. The language he used hadn't been spo shy;ken since long before the Raumsdalian Empire rose, but Hamnet Thyssen didn't notice that. In his quarrel with Ulric Skakki, Hamnet Thyssen didn't notice the wizard at all.

  Then two of the mugs started shouting at each other in high, squeaky voices that sounded like parodies of Ulric's and Hamnet s. It wasn't ventriloquism; the mugs suddenly sported faces too much like theirs. The less than flattered models both gaped. So did the third mug, which looked like a sorrowful ceramic version of Audun Gilli.

  The wizard chanted again, and the mugs . . . were only mugs again. "You see?" Ulric Skakki said triumphantly.

  "I saw . . . something." However little Count Hamnet wanted to, he had to admit it.

  "He's a wizard. He's a good wizard. And," Ulric went on pragmatically, "he'll be better the longer he stays sober."

  "Who says he'll stay sober? We'll be drinking ale or beer or mead or fermented mammoth's milk as much as we can," Hamnet said. "Even runoff straight from the Glacier can give you a bloody flux. Have you ever been up in the Bizogot country, Ulric? Don't you know about that?"

  "I've been there, all right. I know," Ulric said. Count Hamnet wasn't sure he believed him till the other man added, "We'll have to pick our way past the lands where a couple of clans range. They may remember me a little too well."

  That held the ring of truth. "Why am I not surprised?" Hamnet Thyssen said. Ulric Skakki gave back a bow, as if at a compliment. Audun Gilli managed a wan smile when he saw it. Count Hamnet threw his hands in the air. When you knew you were going to lose a fight, sometimes the best thing you could do was give it up before it cost you more than you could afford to spend.

  If only he'd figured that out with Gudrid. . . .

  Earl Eyvind Torfinn was a friendly man. As Raumsdalian nobles were supposed to be, he was openhanded in his hospitality. He lived in a large, rambling two-story house on top of a hill in the western part of Nidaros. From windows on the upper floor, he could look out on what had been Hevring Lake when the great city was but a hunting camp.

  Hamnet Thyssen knew that because Earl Eyvind insisted on inviting him to feast with the other members of the upcoming expedition. Refusing would have been churlish-Eyvind Torfinn seemed to think that his acquiring Hamnet s wife was just one of those things, certainly not important enough to get excited about. Visiting that house, though, dripped vitriol on Hamnet s soul.

  Gudrid did her best to make sure that it should. She wore outfits that clung and revealed. She smiled. She sparkled. Much of that was aimed at captivating Trasamund. The Bizogot didn't prove hard to captivate. If she could wound Hamnet at the same time-well, so much the better.

  He set his jaw and tried not to show he was wounded, as he would have if he'd taken an arrow in the leg. Gudrid knew better. She knew him altogether too well. When they were happy together, the way she knew him pleased him and made him proud. These days, it meant he was vulnerable.

  Eyvind Torfinn seemed oblivious to the byplay. Count Hamnet wasn't sure he was, but he seemed that way. Ulric Skakki watched it with wry fascination. He didn't seem to interest Gudrid. Maybe that was because he was only a commoner, maybe because she recognized that he might be as devious and dangerous as she was herself, if less alluring. As for Audun Gilli, he took in everything with a childlike, wide-eyed fascination. But a child who drank the way he did would have been in no shape to take in anything.

  Trasamund, for his part, took Gudrid's attentions as no less than his due. "That is quite a woman," he told Hamnet, plainly not knowing they'd once been man and wife. "Not as young as she used to be, maybe, but still quite a woman. Still plenty tight." The jarl leered and rocked his hips forward and back, in case Hamnet could have any doubt about what he meant.

  "Is she?" Count Hamnet's voice held no expression whatever. That might have been just as well. If he had let it hold expression, what would have come out? Rage? Bitterness? Jealousy? Longing? Since he revealed even less to Trasamund than he did to Gudrid, the question didn't arise. So he told himself, anyhow.

  He drank Eyvind Torfinn's wine and beer. He ate horseflesh and fat-rich camel's meat, and musk ox and strong-tasting mammoth flesh brought down from the north on ice. There was ice in the north, all right, ice and to spare. He nibbled on honey cakes and frozen, sweetened milk. And his stomach gnawed at him, and he wished he were anywhere else in all the world. Sinking into soft asphalt with dire wolves and sabertooths prowling all around? Next to this lavish hospitality, that looked pretty good.

  "You hate me, don't you?" Gudrid asked one evening after everyone had drunk a little too much. By the way her eyes sparkled, she wanted him to tell her yes.

  "I loved you," Hamnet Thyssen said, which was not an answer-unless it was.

  The gleam grew brighter. "And now?"

  Count Hamnet shrugged. "We all make mistakes. Some of us make bigger mistakes than others."

  "Yes, that's true," Gudrid agreed. "I never should have wed you in the first place."

  "You didn't think so then," Hamnet said, and let it go at that. If he told her she'd loved him, she would have laughed in his face. He thought she had. He was convinced she had, in fact. But he was just as convinced that Sigvat Us torturers couldn't tear the confession out of her now.

  "We all make mistakes. You said it; I didn't." Gudrid was like a cat, playing and swiping and tormenting before the kill.

  "And what mistake did you make with Eyvind Torfinn?" Hamnet inquired.

  She breathed sweet wine fumes into his face when she laughed. "Dear Eyvind? I made no mistakes with him. He lets me do whatever I please."

  "And you despise him for it," Count Hamnet said. Gudrid did not deny it; she only laughed again. Stubbornly, Hamnet went on, "Wouldn't you call wedding a man you despise a mistake?"

  "Of course not. I call it an amusement." She reached out and stroked his cheek with a soft hand. "But don't worry, my sweet. If it makes you feel any better, I despise you, too."

  "And Trasamund?" Hamnet asked, trying to ignore the way her touch seared his flesh.

  "Ah, Trasamund." She laughed throatily and batted her eyelashes at him. "No one could despise Trasamund. He's much too . . . virile."

  "He thinks you're quite something, too," Hamnet said. Gudrid laughed again, this time in complacent amusement. Hamnet added, "For someone who's not as young as she used to be." Even a man with no other tool toward revenge had time on his side.

  Now her eyes stopped sparkling. They flashed instead. "You'll pay for that," she said.

  Hamnet Thyssen shrugged. "I've been paying for knowing you for years. What's a little more?"

  "If I tell Eyvind to stay home-"

  He laughed in her face. "You hurt the Empire if that happens-not that you care, I'm sure. But it doesn't worry me at all. Your husband probably knows more about the Golden Shrine than any man alive. I know he knows more than I thought anybody could. He'd be useful to have along, yes. But he's still your husband, Gudrid. If you think I want his company, youd better think twice."

  She made what sounded like a lion's growl, down deep in her throat. She didn't like being thwarted, didn't like it and wouldn't put up with it. She'd taken up with Eyvind Torfinn not long after Hamnet killed her earlier lover. He judged it was at least as much to show him he couldn't get the better of her as for any attraction Earl Eyvind held.

  "I suppose you know I've had your wizard as well as the Bizogot," she said. Her red-painted lip curled. "He wasn't what y
ou'd call magical."

  She told him to hurt him. She couldn't have any other reason. "You're not my worry any more," he said. It wasn't true; she would go on worrying him till his dying day. He added, "You've given us all something to talk about on the way north, anyhow."

  Gudrid smiled-she liked that. "Something warm, instead of the Glacier."

  Count Hamnet shook his head. "Something so cold, it makes the Glacier seem warm beside it."

  Fast as a striking serpent, her hand lashed out. However fast she was, she wasn't fast enough. Count Hamnet caught her wrist before she could slap him or claw him. "Let go of me," she said in a low, furious voice.

  I've been trying to, ever since I found out what you are, Hamnet thought. He opened his hand. The memory of her flesh remained printed on his palm. She didn't feel cold. Oh, no. You had to know her to understand what he meant.

  Then again, he wondered if he'd ever known her at all.

  "You're harder than you were," she remarked.

  "If I am, whose fault is that?" he asked harshly.

  "May the Bizogots eat you," Gudrid said. The mammoth-herders didn't eat men, even if a lot of Raumsdalians thought they did. A lewd question rose in Hamnet s mind. He stifled it. She went on, "May you fall off the edge of the world when you go beyond the Glacier. May one of the white bears Trasamund goes on about gnaw your bones."

  His bow was stiff as a wooden puppet's. "I love you, too, my sweet," he said, and tried to match her venom so she wouldn't realize he was telling the truth-the painful and useless truth.

  He must have done what he set out to do, for her laughter this time was jagged as shattered ice, sharp as sabertooth fangs. She stalked away, if stalking was the right word to use for something with so much hip action. Even without words, she reminded him what he was missing. He looked down at the rug. As if l didn't know, he thought, and kicked at the embroidered wool.

  III

  Riding out of Nidaros came as nothing but a relief for Hamnet Thyssen. He could deal with Ulric Skakki and Audun Gilli. He could deal with Trasamund the jarl. He could even deal with Eyvind Torfinn, though he would rather not have to. As long as he didn't have to deal with Gudrid, he felt he could do anything.

  The Great North Road ran from the Raumsdalian capital toward the imperial border-and toward the Bizogot country beyond it. Armies had moved up that road more often than Hamnet could easily count, ready to repel invaders from the north. And the barbarians had spilled into the Empire more often than he could easily count, too. Its riches and the better weather it enjoyed drew them like a lodestone.

  One of these days, Hamnet supposed, the Bizogots would win, and either put one of their own on the Raumsdalian throne or topple the Empire altogether. Nothing lasted forever. It seemed not even the Glacier lasted forever, although a couple of lifetimes earlier everyone would have thought the Glacier the one surely eternal thing God made.

  Was God himself eternal? Hamnet Thyssen uneasily looked up into the steel-blue sky. If God himself might pass away, who rose to power after he was gone? Men intent on their affairs? Women intent on their affairs? (Gudrid was certainly intent on hers.) Or older, darker Powers God had long held in check?

  What was the Golden Shrine, anyway?

  Ulric Skakki chose that moment to remark, "A copper for your thoughts, your Grace." Hamnet was a man who made a habit of saying what was in his mind, even-perhaps especially-when no one had asked him. He told Ulric Skakki exactly what he was thinking about. The younger man blinked; whatever he was expecting, that wasn't it. He reached into his belt pouch and pulled out a copper coin. Offering it to Count Hamnet, he said, "Well, your Grace, I got my money's worth."

  Hamnet solemnly stowed the coin. "We endeavor to give satisfaction. It doesn't always work, mind you, but we do endeavor." He thought of Gudrid again. But it wasn't that he hadn't satisfied her. He had, as far as he could tell. She'd wanted something else, something more, from him. Whatever it was, it seemed defined not least by his inability to give it to her.

  Did her first lover, the one who laughed? Did Eyvind Torn Torfinn? Did Trasamund? Did having them give her what she craved? Was having them what she craved?

  If Ulric Skakki had chosen that moment to ask him for his thoughts, he would have lied without the least hesitation. He didn't mind talking about the death of the Empire, or about the death of the Glacier, or even about the death of God. The death of the one real love of his life? That was different.

  Farmers weeded their young, hopeful crops of rye and oats off to either side or the road. Barley rarely succeeded north of Nidaros, even now. Wheat? Maize? Those were crops for softer, more luxurious climes. The farmers always seemed to have one eye on the north. If the Breath of God blew against them for long, their crops would wither and freeze and fail, even here. Then they would live on what they'd stored in better years, and on what they could hunt.

  Or they would die. It happened, in hard years. Oh, yes-it happened.

  No one hurried. Neither Trasamund nor Audun Gilli was any sort of a horseman, while Eyvind Torfinn might have been once upon a time but wasn't any more. Some of the Raumsdalians in the party might not have been anxious to leave the Empire behind-not in their hearts, anyway, no matter what their heads might tell them.

  Hamnet Thyssen knew perfectly well what lay beyond the border. Nomad huts on the tundra-land crushed flat by the Glacier that had lain on it for so many centuries. Herds of half-tame musk oxen and mammoths guided-when they could be guided-by half-tame men. Meltwater lakes. Cold beyond what even Nidaros ever knew. Wind almost always from the north, almost always with frigid daggers in it. Snow and ice at any season of the year.

  And then-the Glacier itself.

  Yes, it was wounded. Yes, if Trasamund spoke truly, the Gap had at last pierced it to the root. Not the Glacier any more, but Glaciers, divided east and west. Count Hamnet shook his head in slow wonder at that. But still, any man who ever saw the Glacier, even diminished as it was, knew in his belly what awe meant. It went forward and back-more back than forward of late-like alive thing, but it swallowed the whole north of the world.

  Well, most of the north of the world, anyhow. If the Gap ran all the way through it… That was why they were here.

  The Golden Shrine. Hamnet glanced over at Earl Torfinn. No, he hadn't believed in the Golden Shrine. Even if he had believed in it, what difference would that have made? With the Glacier between Raumsdalia and the Golden Shrine, whether it was real might trouble scholars, but not ordinary men. Count Hamnet was not exactly an ordinary man, but he was no scholar, either, and just as glad not to be one.

  Ulric Skakki puffed on a long-stemmed pipe. Tobacco came up from the warmer climes of the south. "Why do you smoke that stinking thing?" Hamnet asked. "You'll just run out of your precious weed after we've been on the road awhile."

  "When I run out, I'll do without," Ulric answered cheerfully. "If you don't like the smell, I'm sorry. You can ride upwind of me easily enough."

  "You didn't tell me why you smoke it," Hamnet said.

  "Well, maybe I didn't." Ulric Skakki smiled and shrugged. "I've got to where I like the taste, though I didn't when I started." Count Hamnet made a face. Ulric laughed. "Tell me you liked beer the first time you drank it," he said. Hamnet couldn't, and he knew it. Ulric went on, "And the smoke relaxes me, and fiddling with the pipe gives me something to do with my hands. Does that suit you?"

  "Reasonable today, aren't you?" Hamnet Thyssen said with a crooked smile.

  Laughing, Ulric bowed in the saddle. "I'll try not to let it happen again, your Grace." He pointed north. "Is that a serai up ahead?"

  Hamnet eyed the large, low building by the side of the road. The lower half of the wall was of stone, the upper of timber. Smoke rose from three brick chimneys. "It's not likely to be anything else," Count Hamnet said.

  "Well, no." Ulric Skakki's smile was so charming, it made Hamnet distrust him on sight-as if he didn't already. Smiling still, Ulric went on, "Do you think we're likely to come
to another one before nightfall?"

  "Mm-I daresay not," Hamnet answered. "They aren't usually set close together-if they were, they'd hurt each other's trade."

  "Then shall we stop?" Ulric said.

  "Why ask me?" Hamnet Thyssen returned. He knew why the others were on the expedition. Trasamund had actually gone beyond the Glacier. Eyvind Torfinn knew whatever there was to know about the Golden Shrine. If Audun Gilli could remember his own name, he was a wizard. Ulric Skakki could get his hands on anything that wasn't nailed down-and steal the nails if that looked like a good idea.

  Which leaves me, Count Hamnet thought. He could ride and he could fight and he was glad for a chance to escape the Raumsdalian Empire. All of that was well enough. But did it make him the leader? Ulric Skakki seemed to think it did. Ulric wouldn't want to lead himself-it was too much like work. But Eyvind Torfinn was a belted earl, while Trasamund was a jarl and as arrogant as anyone Hamnet had ever met. He didn't much want to lead such a motley crew.

  But then Trasamund guided his horse close by Hamnet s. "Shall we stop at that serai for the night?" the Bizogot asked.

  Hamnet stared. Did Trasamund think he was in charge, too? He hadn't looked for that. But he said, "Yes, I think we'd better. We won't come to another one before the sun goes down." Trasamund nodded and rode away.

  Eyvind Torfinn didn't even question Hamnet's right to decide. Neither did Audun Gilli, though Count Hamnet would have been astonished if he had. It's on my shoulders, Hamnet thought. And when things go wrong-and they will-the blame will land on my shoulders, too.

  Despite the chimneys, the common room in the serai was smoky enough to make Hamnet Thyssen's eyes sting. Some of that smoke came from the hearthfires, some from the cookfires back in the kitchen, and some from the pipes and cigars on which more than a few of the travelers puffed.