Beyong the Gap

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.

'Well, 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.