Beyong the Gap

The valiant Bizogot chieftain hadn't said much of anything. He'd listened to the backbiting with what seemed like immense enjoyment. Now he laughed once more. 'Let the wench come,' he said. 'Why not? It will make the journey more entertaining.'

'But—' Eyvind Torfinn said.

Trasamund cut him off with a slash of the hand. 'I have said she will come, and she will come.' He spoke with a jarl's hauteur—he didn't think Hamnet was the leader any more, then. 'Raumsdalia does not have to go beyond the Glacier. Raumsdalia does not have to look for the Golden Shrine. We Bizogots can do it alone. The way north for you goes through our land.'

Earl Eyvind made a horrible face, not because Trasamund was wrong but because he was right. When the Empire's needs clashed with his ... He scowled at the Bizogot and scowled at his wife, but in the end he nodded.

Hamnet Thyssen, by contrast, started out of the common room. 'Where are you going?' Eyvind Torfinn called after him. His tone suggested a drowning man watching a spar drift away.

'Home,' Hamnet answered. 'The Golden Shrine can rot, for all of me, and the Gap, too.'

Gudrid's laugh somehow struck him as ominous. 'I knew you'd get stuffy about this, Hamnet. I knew it. Read this.' She held out a rolled parchment.

He made sure he didn't touch her when he took the parchment. She noticed him making sure, and laughed again, this time at him. He ignored her. She thought that was funny, too. The parchment was sealed in wax of imperial gold, and had stamped on it a sabertooth's head—Sigvat's seal. Hamnet Thyssen ground his teeth as he broke it.

Most of the message was in a secretary's supremely legible script.

To Count Hamnet Thyssen from his Imperial Majesty, Sigvat ll, by God's grace Emperor of Raumsdalia. Your Grace—You are hereby requested and required to continue on your journey north to the lands beyond the Glacier and, if possible, to the Golden Shrine, notwithstanding the presence on the said journey of Gudrid, wife to Earl Eyvind Torfinn, whose intimate knowledge of conditions pertaining to the said Golden Shrine conduces to the success of the expedition of which you form a component.

A scrawled signature, unquestionably Sigvat's, lay under the body of the letter.

'You see?' Gudrid said, languid triumph in her voice.

'I see.' Hamnet folded the parchment and put it in his belt pouch—he offered no offense to the imperial letter, though his first impulse was to fling it in the fire. 'And I tell you this, Gudrid: no matter what this letter says, I am not a cursed component. I am a man—my own man, by God. I'm for my own keep, too, and the journey can go hang. And so, my former dear, can you.'

He trudged out of the serai and off toward the stable, not a man in a hurry but not a man about to change his mind, either. He'd almost got to the stable door when someone behind him called, 'Hamnet—wait.'

If that had been Gudrid, he wouldn't have waited—though he might have drawn sword on her if she tried to insist. But it wasn't. It was Ulric Skakki. 'Well?' Hamnet growled. 'Are you fool enough to think you can make me change my mind? If Sigvat can't do it, you aren't likely to.'

'I wouldn't dream of trying, your Grace,' Ulric said. Hamnet laughed harshly—he knew a lie when he heard one. Unperturbed, Ulric Skakki went on, 'I just wanted to tell you one thing before you go.'

'Well?' Hamnet said. 'What is it? Say your say, then, and be quick about it.'

'I will,' Ulric said. Whom he served—beyond himself—was a mystery to Hamnet. He hadn't been in the habit of talking about himself when he and Hamnet served together a few years earlier. Evidently he still wasn't.

With a small shrug, he went on, 'If you leave, if you walk away, that woman wins.'

Had Ulric called Gudrid by her name, Hamnet Thyssen would have turned his back and gone into the stable, and afterwards much would have been different. As things were, he looked Ulric up and down, a glower that would have annihilated a lesser man, or a less self-assured one. Ulric Skakki withstood it with no external signs of injury.

'As if I care what that woman does,' Hamnet said, and then, not at all at random, 'Have you swived her, too, the way everyone else has?'

'Good God, no,' Ulric Skakki answered. 'No scorpion ever hatched anywhere has a sting in its tail to match hers.'

That held the unmistakable ring of sincerity. But then, Ulric might well be able to sound sincere when he wasn't. It was a common gift. Even Gudrid had it. For the moment, Hamnet Thyssen chose to assume Ulric meant what he said, and growled, 'Well, then, you see what my trouble is. I don't want to be within miles of that woman, let alone riding beside her. And I used to love her, which makes it worse.'

'But we need you on the journey. You're the best Raumsdalian we have,' Ulric Skakki said. 'Eyvind Torfinn is nice enough, but he's an old fool. Audun Gilli is ... what he is. They won't do, Thyssen.'

'There's you,' Count Hamnet said. 'Why are you acting so modest? It doesn't seem your natural state.'

'It's not,' Ulric agreed. 'But I'm only a commoner, and I have a strange background—to say nothing of my foreground.' Was his chuckle self-conscious? Hamnet had trouble believing it. Ulric went on, 'Earl Eyvind won't take me seriously. Neither will Trasamund. You've got the blood they respect.'

'Gudrid might want to see it spilled. Otherwise it doesn't much impress her,' Hamnet said. 'And there are her bodyguards. One of them would likely serve your purpose.'

Ulric Skakki shook his head. 'Louts. Fools. Chowderheads. The Emperor won't send away men he can't afford to lose. He'll send the ones he doesn't care about—so that's what he's done. I know about these fellows. And I know something else.'

'What?' Hamnet asked uneasily; what Ulric said made altogether too much sense.

'I know Trasamund hasn't told everything he knows about what lies beyond the Glacier.'

'And how do you know that?' Hamnet inquired in sardonic tones. 'I suppose you've gone beyond the Glacier yourself ?'

Ulric grimaced. 'Yes, as a matter of fact, I have, though it's worth my life if you say so where a Bizogot might hear. It's likely worth your life, too, so you ought to bear that in mind.'

Hamnet Thyssen stared at the younger man. He did not think Ulric was lying; he wished he did. 'By God, how did you manage that?' he asked.

'Carefully,' Ulric Skakki answered, which had to be the understatement of the year. 'Trasamund says he doesn't know if there are men on the far side of the Glacier. Either he's lying or he's not as much of a far-ranger as he'd have us believe. There are.' Again, he spoke with great conviction.

'And?' Hamnet asked, as he was plainly meant to do.

'And they're dangerous. To the Bizogots, to us, maybe even to themselves. I am not making this up, Thyssen. I have seen them. We need you there.'

'Then send Gudrid back to Nidaros.'

Ulric Skakki shrugged sadly. 'I'm sorry. I can't do that. I wish I could, but I can't.'

'Mmrr.' Hamnet made a noise deep down in his chest. 'If you lure me on with this, Skakki, if you dangle a wiggling worm in front of me to make me swim after it, I'll kill you. Gudrid's first lover didn't believe me when I said something like that. I'd tell you to ask him if I lied, but he's too dead to give you a straight answer.'

'Well, you can try,' Ulric Skakki murmured. Count Hamnet sent him a sharp stare. Ulric looked back imperturbably. If Hamnet's words worried him, he showed it not at all. He didn't seem to believe Hamnet could harm him. Maybe that made him a fool. Maybe it meant he knew some things Hamnet didn't, things Hamnet might discover if he tried to make good on his threat. As if it were never made, Ulric went on, 'Does that mean you're coming, then?'

The last word Hamnet Thyssen thought he would use came out of his mouth. Hating himself, hating Gudrid, and saving a little hate for Ulric Skakki, too, he said, 'Yes.'

Weather along the Great North Road seemed to get worse with each passing mile. That had to be Hamnet's imagination. Spring was advancing, the sun staying in the sky longer with each passing day. Things should have got warmer and finer, not darker and gloomier. Odds were that the cloud over the expedition was fixed above his head and no one else's.