Beyond the Gap Page 9

  The expression on Gudrid's face would have made him forgive and overlook even more. Yes, Trasamund went unchallenged.

  * * * *

  Hevring Lake was dead and gone. The scars the draining of its basin left behind would lie heavy on the land west of Nidaros for centuries to come. Farther north, new meltwater lakes formed as the Glacier retreated. Sudertorp Lake wasn't very deep, but spread across a great stretch of the frozen plain. Waterfowl by the hundreds of thousands bred at the lake's marshy edges. Foxes and dire wolves and lynxes preyed on that abundance. Even lions and short-faced bears didn't disdain geese and great white swans.

  Neither did the Bizogots. The Leaping Lynx clan was camped near the eastern edge of Sudertorp Lake. At this season of the year, they won enough food with their bows and with their snares that they didn't need to wander. They had stone huts that they came back to every spring. Their clothes differed from those of the Musk Ox and Three Tusk clans. To keep themselves warm, they wore jackets stuffed with down. In really cold weather, they wore trousers stuffed with down, too, with ingenious arrangements at the knee to make walking easier and others farther up to do the same for relieving themselves.

  In spring, they were glad enough to guest travelers coming up by Sudertorp Lake. They had more than they could eat themselves. So did the other clans that dwelt along the lakeshore. It made them unique among the Bizogots.

  The jarl of the Leaping Lynx clan was a fat man named Riccimir. Hamnet Thyssen didn't think he'd ever seen a fat nomad before. "Ear! Eat!" Riccimir said. "You are welcome. Oh, yes—you are welcome. Your goose is cooked!"

  Eyvind Torfinn, Ulric Skakki, and Count Hamnet all looked up in alarm when they heard that. "Your Ferocity?" Eyvind said.

  Riccimir laughed till the tears ran down his greasy face. "Ho, ho, ho! Yes, I know what that means in Raumsdalian. A trader taught me. It is a good joke, yes?"

  "As long as it is a joke, your Ferocity, it is a good one," Ulric Skakki said.

  "It is. By God, it is. But it is the best kind of a joke—it is a true joke. We have today a great plenty of cooked goose," Riccimir said.

  Hamnet Thyssen ate roasted goose till his belly groaned. Bizogots used only knives for eating tools. By the time he finished, his face was as greasy as Riccimir's. So were those of the other Raumsdalians. However much Hamnet ate, the Bizogots around him outdid him without effort. They were better at going without than civilized men, too. Moderation was not in their nature. The way they lived didn't let them be moderate.

  They didn't drink to enjoy themselves, either. They drank to get drunk. Downing smetyn, that took a lot of drinking. They met the challenge with ease.

  Hamnet Thyssen's head was spinning when Riccimir pointed to Gudrid and said, "I will sleep with that one tonight. I like the way she smells. Trasamund, Eyvind Torfinn, pick women for yourselves. You are the leaders. It is your right. If your friends find willing women, that is all right, too."

  He spoke in the Bizogot language. "What does he say?" Gudrid asked suspiciously—that finger aimed at her and the fat jarl's leer no doubt gave her reasons for suspicion.

  When Eyvind Torfinn translated for her, she let out an irate squawk. "No!" she said. "And I don't like the way he smells, not even a little bit."

  Eyvind turned to Riccimir. "Gudrid is my wife," he said, "and trading women back and forth is not our custom."

  "And so?" Riccimir said. "You are in the halls of the Bizogots now." Any other jarl would have said the tents. "Here you follow our customs."

  "Why bed an unwilling woman?" Ulric Skakki said smoothly. "Isn't it a waste of time, with so many willing? They aren't much fun after you pin them down, either."

  "Says who?" the jarl returned. "Sometimes the way they squawk and thrash fans the fire. And this one looks like fun. Pick any woman for yourself in payment, Eyvind Torfinn. We have some lively ones. You are old, but they will know how to make you think you are young."

  Once that was translated, Gudrid squawked louder than ever. Count Hamnet wondered why. She spread her favors over the landscape with fine impartiality. What was one more unbathed Bizogot? She was unbathed herself, even if she did have that bottle of attar of roses.

  In Raumsdalian, Jesper Fletti said, "Tell the . . . jarl we have a strong custom against forcing a woman to give herself." He probably almost said something like Tell the barbarian. Hamnet Thyssen found it ironically amusing that Gudrids bodyguard was indeed guarding her body, although no doubt not in the way he’d had in mind when he set out from Nidaros.

  Jesper proved wise to speak politely. Riccimir answered in fairly fluent Raumsdalian, saying, "If you talk about your customs in your land, I will listen. You have the right to do that. But you are not in your land."

  "Imagine the custom of our land made you do something against your own customs," Ulric said. "Would you do it, just for the sake of fitting in?"

  What kind of man was Riccimir? Ulric asked a good, sensible question. But did the Bizogot care about good, sensible questions, or did he simply want to open Gudrid's legs? If he didn't feel like listening, what could the travelers do? Not much—if it came to a fight, they were bound to lose.

  The jarl scowled at Ulric Skakki. When he did, Hamnet Thyssen's hopes rose. Riccimir understood what Ulric was saying, anyway. "You are not good guests," he grumbled. "Guests should follow the ways of the hosts. Our women would not raise such a fuss over a small thing."

  "A small thing?" Trasamund said. "Don't you have a big thing, Riccimir?"

  "I do. By God, I do!" Riccimir answered, laughing. "We are the Leaping Lynxes, but I am a mammoth. Maybe I am too much for a woman of the south."

  "Maybe you are," Ulric Skakki said, and the tension eased.

  "Much help you were," Gudrid hissed at Hamnet Thyssen a little later.

  "By God, why should I help you?" he asked in honest perplexity. "I don't want you here. I wish you'd go back to Nidaros. I don't feel anything for you any more."

  He wished that were true. The hopeless mix of curdled love and fury that coursed through him whenever he thought of Gudrid chewed his stomach to sour rags and made him want either to hit something—preferably her— or stab himself. Gudrid knew it. She enjoyed it—she reveled in it. He did his best not to admit it.

  Usually, his best was nowhere near good enough. Tonight, it served. "You would have let that—that savage do what he wanted to me!" Gudrid said shrilly.

  "This was one of the chances you took when you left the Empire," Ham-net pointed out. "Anyone with an ounce of sense would know it. No doubt that lets you out."

  She swung on him. She was very quick, but again he caught her wrist before she connected. He was much stronger than she was. It hardly ever did him any good. She said something that would have horrified a drill sergeant. It didn't faze Hamnet Thyssen.

  When she tried to bite him, he shoved her away, hard. She sat down even harder, and called him a name that made the first one seem like love poetry by comparison. Again, he scarcely noticed. He rubbed his hand against his trouser leg, trying to wipe away even the memory of touching her.

  "Never a dull moment, is there?" Ulric Skakki said, his voice dry.

  "Why, what ever could you mean?" Hamnet Thyssen trying to sound arch and coy was as unnatural as a musk ox trying to play the trumpet. Ulric did his best not to laugh, but it was a losing battle.

  Sulking, Riccimir went off with a Bizogot woman. She was younger and better built than Gudrid, and at least as pretty, even if she didn't wear perfume. The jarl stayed grumpy all the same- No doubt he would have been glad enough to lie down with her if he hadn't set eyes on Gudrid. Since he had, the woman from his own clan wasn't what he wanted any more. That made her seem like secondhand goods to him.

  "Foolishness," Ulric Skakki said. "Everything that goes on between men and women is full of foolishness."

  "True enough," Hamnet said. "But so what? For better or worse, we're stuck with each other." He knew too much about worse and not enough of better.

  "We
ll, not necessarily." Ulric sent him a sly, sidelong glance. "Although I must say you're not my type." He made himself mince far better than Count Hamnet made himself sound naive.

  "Those things happen down in the Empire. Not up here, not very often," Hamnet said. "When the Bizogots catch men bedding men, they make them into eunuchs and then they burn them. Not a lot of give to the mammoth-herders. Their ways are their ways. You step outside them at your peril."

  "Charming people." Ulric was also a dab hand at irony.

  "Aren't they?" There, at least, Hamnet Thyssen could match him.

  * * * *

  The Leaping Lynx Bizogots stuffed the travelers with more roast fowl and with boiled duck and goose eggs the next morning. Riccimir seemed in a better mood than he had the night before. Maybe the buxom blonde from his own clan pleased him more than he'd thought she would. Whatever the reason, he didn't try to hinder the travelers when they mounted their horses to ride away from what was as close to a settled village as the northern nomads came.

  He couldn't resist going after the last word, though. He walked up to Gudrid and said, "My pretty, you will remember last night forever."

  "Why?" she said. "Nothing happened between us." By the look in her eye, she was glad nothing happened, too.

  Riccimir ignored that look. It wasn't easy; Hamnet Thyssen envied his singlemindedness. "That is why you will remember it," he said. "You will regret that you did not come to know the mighty love of Riccimir." He struck a pose.

  What Gudrid's horse did a moment later probably matched her opinion of Riccimir's mighty love. His clansmates could dry the results and use them for warmth and cooking. If she had spoken, her words probably would have given them plenty of warmth, too. As things were, her expression was eloquent enough. The jarl, convinced to the marrow that he was wonderful, never noticed.

  "Are we ready?" Eyvind Torfinn said. "Perhaps we should depart, then."

  "God keep you safe on your journey," Riccimir said. "May he bring you back to your homes with wealth or wisdom or whatever you seek. And may he bring you to my clan on your way south. Good will be the guesting on your return—and may the sweet one's heart be softened by then."

  Count Hamnet didn't see how Eyvind Torfinn could answer that without landing in trouble with Riccimir or with Gudrid or with both of them at once. Earl Eyvind showed uncommon wisdom—he didn't try. He flicked his horse's reins and used the pressure of his knees to urge the beast forward. The rest of the Raumsdalians and Trasamund followed.

  "An interesting time," Audun Gilli said, riding up alongside Hamnet and Ulric Skakki.

  "That's one way to put it," Hamnet said. "Some interesting times I could live without."

  "It wasn't so bad," Audun said.

  "Demons take me if it wasn't!" Hamnet exclaimed.

  Ulric laughed. "He didn't mind it, Thyssen. Didn't you see him go off with that Bizogot wench?" His hands shaped an hourglass in the air.

  "No, I didn't." Hamnet couldn't remember when he'd lost track of the wizard. Audun wasn't what anyone would call memorable, so he had trouble. "When was this?"

  "You were exchanging compliments with your lady love." Ulric Skakki stopped. Hamnet Thyssen had a hand on his swordhilt. He probably also had murder in his eye. He didn't mind being chaffed about many things. The list was short, yes, but Gudrid headed it. Ulric hastened to backtrack. "My apologies, your Grace. When you were quarreling with your former wife, I should have said."

  "Yes. You should have." Hamnet made his hand come off the sword. He made himself look away from Ulric Skakki and toward Audun Gilli. "So. You lay down with a Bizogot woman, did you? How was it? Did you have to hold your nose?"

  "I'm not so clean myself these days. After a bit, you stop noticing that." Audun grinned. It made him look surprisingly young. "As for the rest, well, the parts work the same way here as they do down in the Empire."

  "There's a surprise." Ulric Skakki grinned, too.

  Count Hamnet only grunted. Losing Gudrid had soured him on women. He still bedded them now and again—sometimes his body drove him to do what he wanted to despise. But he couldn't take them lightly, the way most men did.

  Trasamund led them away from Sudertorp Lake. The jarl of the Three Tusk clan was not in a good humor. Since Hamnet Thyssen wasn't, either, he soon found himself riding next to Trasamund. The big blond jarl scowled at him. When he scowled back, Trasamund seemed satisfied.

  After a while, Trasamund said, "That Leaping Lynx clan .. ." He didn't seem to know how to go on.

  "What about them?" Hamnet asked.

  "They hardly seem like Bizogots at all!" It burst from Trasamund.

  They seemed very much like Bizogots to Hamnet. But he was looking at them from the outside, not from the inside the way the jarl was. Slowly, he said, "The waterfowl give them so much to eat at this season, they don't have to wander. Things are different when you can stay in one place for a long time."

  "I suppose so." Trasamund went right on scowling. "It's wrong, though. It's unnatural. They . .. might as well be Raumsdalians." By the way he said it, he couldn't imagine a stronger condemnation.

  "I will tell you, your Ferocity, that to a Raumsdalian they don't seem much like Raumsdalians at all," Count Hamnet said.

  "They live in stone houses. They have fat people. They are like Raumsdalians." No, Trasamund had no more idea of what being a Raumsdalian meant—probably less—than Hamnet did about being a Bizogot. He also didn't know that he really didn't know what being a Raumsdalian meant.

  Arguing with him would only make him angry. Hamnet Thyssen didn't try. Instead, looking out across the frozen plain, he pointed and asked, "What's that?"

  All at once, Trasamund was back in his element. He forgot about the Bizogots of the Leaping Lynx clan. "That's a God-cursed dire wolf, is what that is." His voice rose to a shout. "Close up! Close up! We've got wolves! Archers, string your bows! We've got wolves!"

  To Hamnet Thyssen, it was only a moving squiggle at the edge of visibility. But he wasn't at home here, any more than Trasamund knew all the ins and outs of life in Nidaros, or even in the distant keep where Hamnet would rather have spent his time. Accepting that Trasamund knew and he didn't, Hamnet braced himself for an onslaught.

  He didn't have to wait long. Just as the Bizogot recognized a distant moving squiggle as danger, so the dire wolf saw distant moving squiggles as meat. It couldn't take their scent; the wind was with them. But before long, a formidable pack of dire wolves trotted purposefully toward the travelers.

  Dire wolves were half again as big as their cousins that skulked through the eastern forests. Their fur was thicker, and of a paler gray so as not to stand out against the snow. Some people said timber wolves were smarter than their larger cousins. Hamnet Thyssen didn't know about that one way or the other. People also said dire wolves ate more carrion than timber wolves did. Count Hamnet thought that was true. But it didn't mean dire wolves turned up their noses at fresh meat. If Count Hamnet hadn't known that, he would have found out now.

  The pack leader stood there right at the edge of bowshot, eyeing the travelers. The dire wolf grinned a doggy grin at them, long pink tongue lolling out of his mouth. Even at that distance, though, Hamnet could make out the animal's teeth, long and sharp and yellow. Dire wolves needed to be wary around men. Any animal bigger than a bedbug needed to be wary around men. But men needed to be wary around dire wolves, too.

  After a moment's appraisal, the dire wolf lifted its head and let out a howl. If it were speaking a human tongue, Hamnet would have thought that howl meant, All right. Let's try it and see what happens.

  And it seemed to mean just that. The dire wolves trotted forward again. They might have been trying to cut a weak musk ox or a baby mammoth out of the herd. Almost of their own accord, Hamnet's eyes went to Gudrid. That was a tempting thought, but he didn't suppose she would appreciate it.

  "Shout at them," Trasamund called. "Sometimes you can scare them off."

  Hamnet yelled at the top of hi
s lungs. So did the rest of the travelers. Some of the dire wolves skidded to a stop. A few even went back onto their haunches. But the rest kept coming. Seeing their comrades advance, the frightened wolves got up and went on, too. It was as if they didn't want their friends to think them cowards.

  In some ways, dire wolves were much too much like men.

  VI

  Trasamund's bowstring twanged. An arrow hissed through the air. It just missed the lead dire wolf and stood thrilling in the ground. The wolf kept coming without so much as a sideways glance. Dire wolves weren't just like men. The pack leader wasted no time dwelling on what might have been. It dwelt only in the real world. Hamnet Thyssen didn't know whether to pity it or envy it.

  He and Ulric Skakki let fly at the same instant, half a heartbeat behind Trasamund. Both their arrows struck the pack leader, one in the snout, the other not far from the base of the tail. "Well shot!" they cried together, at the same time as the dire wolf let out a startled yip of pain. The wolf didn't know how the men had hurt it, but it knew they had. It turned and ran from them.

  The rest came on. They weren't hurt. And then, in short order, several of them were. Their anguished howls persuaded their fellows this was not a good place to be. When Trasamund led the horsemen forward against them, everyone still shouting, the dire wolves took it as a challenge they didn't care to meet. Unlike people, they wasted no time on useless heroics. If the travelers weren't prey, the wolves wanted nothing to do with them.

  One dire wolf, struck in the eye, lay dead on the ground. "Here's meat for tonight," Trasamund boomed.

  Gudrid made a revolted noise. Some of the imperial guardsmen looked a trifle green. Hamnet Thyssen had eaten dire wolf before. Nothing on the frozen plains went to waste. "It's not so bad," he said. "Just think that it's food, not where it comes from." His countrymen didn't seem convinced.

  Jesper Fletti rounded on Audun Gilli. "You're supposed to be a wizard, aren't you?" the guard captain said. "Why didn't you magic away those dire wolves?"