Beyong the Gap

'Hail, Gelimer. Your jarl has returned from the lands of the south,' Trasamund shouted back. He urged his horse out a few paces. 'Do you not know me?' You had better know me, his tone warned.

'By God, I do, your Ferocity,' the other Bizogot warned. 'These folk with you are friends and guests, then?'

'They are,' Trasamund said. 'They will go north into the Gap with me. They will go north beyond the Gap, beyond the Glacier, with me. They will see where God draws in his Breath to blow it out.'

For a moment, Hamnet took that as no more than a figure of speech. Then he thought of the Golden Shrine, somewhere out there beyond the Glacier. If God dwelt anywhere on earth, wouldn't he dwell in or somewhere near the Golden Shrine? No, Hamnet was never a particularly pious man. But every day's travel to the north took him farther from the mundane world of the Raumsdalian Empire and deeper into the land of legend and myth. How could he afford to disbelieve, considering where he was bound?

Other thoughts ruled Gelimer s mind. Looking over the southerners, he said, 'Only one woman for so many men?'

Trasamund laughed. Ulric Skakki smiled a small, tight, ironic smile. Eyvind Torfinn stiffened slightly. And Gudrid stiffened more than slightly. Seeing that, Hamnet Thyssen thoughtfully pursed his lips. He hadn't thought Gudrid understood the Bizogot language. Maybe—pretty plainly, in fact—he was wrong.

'She's not a common woman,' Trasamund said. 'She belongs to the old shaman here.' He pointed toward Earl Eyvind. He was polite enough not to throw Gudrid's infidelities with him into Eyvind's face. His language had no real word for scholar. Shaman came closer than any other.

Gelimer shrugged. 'Be it so, then,' he said—it wasn't his worry. 'But what is she doing here?'

The jarl laughed again. 'What? Why, whatever she wants to, of course.' He might not have known Gudrid for long, but he grasped her essence. He went on, 'Where is the encampment? Is all well with the clan?'

'We are that way, about two days' ride.' Gelimer pointed back over his shoulder, toward the east. 'And yes, all is... well enough. We skirmished with the White Foxes two months past, when we found them hunting west of the third frost-heave. . . .' He told that story in some detail. Hamnet listened with half an ear. A border squabble between two bands of mammoth-herders interested him about as much as a quarrel between two coachmakers down in Nidaros would have interested Trasamund.

To the jarl, though, this was meat and drink—literally. He plied Gelimer with questions, and finally grunted in satisfaction. 'You did well. You all did well,' he rumbled. 'The White Foxes will respect that which is right, that which is true, from here on out.'

'They have a new jarl—his name is Childebert,' Gelimer said. 'I dare say he wanted to see what he could get away with, especially with you not here to lead our clan.'

'You showed him, by God,' Trasamund said. 'We are Bizogots. Better, we are Bizogots of the Three Tusk clan. Do we need a jarl to tell us we let no one infringe on our rights?'

'We do not. We did not,' Gelimer said. 'They won't trouble us that way again any time soon.'

'Which is as it should be.' Trasamund sketched a salute—not really to Gelimer, Hamnet Thyssen judged, but to the Three Tusk clan as a whole.

The jarl went on, 'Guide us back to the tents of the clan. We have things to do before faring north again.'

'Just as you say, so shall it be,' Gelimer replied.

'Of course,' Trasamund said complacently. Sigvat II, Emperor of Raumsdalia, could have sounded no more certain.

The encampment of the Three Tusk clan was ... a Bizogot encampment. Hamnet Thyssen was long familiar with them. Even if he weren't, the journey up across the frozen steppe would have taught him as much as he needed to know.

Mammoth-hide tents sprouted here and there, scattered higgledy-piggledy across the ground. Horses were tied nearby. By Raumsdalian standards, Bizogot horses were short-legged and stocky and shaggy. They needed to be, to get through the long, hard winters in these parts. Some of them would wander with the clan's musk oxen during the winter, to forage on whatever they could dig up. Others would winter in and near the tents, feeding on hay the Bizogots harvested while the weather was good, and on the frozen grasses the nomads found beneath the snow. So it went in good winters, anyway. When times were not so good, the Bizogots ate horse and rebuilt their herds as they could.

For the moment, the camp boiled with excitement. The nomads would not eat horse any time soon. They'd killed a cow mammoth not long before Trasamund and the Raumsdalians rode up, and were butchering the mountain of meat. They would roast and boil what they could, and eat it on the spot. The rest would be cut into thin strips and salted and dried in the sun and the wind.

Hamnet Thyssen eyed Ulric Skakki. 'Here's to gluttony,' he said. 'Are you up for it?'

'I'll try my best,' Ulric answered. 'But any civilized man will explode if he tries to keep up with the Bizogots. They're better at stuffing themselves than we are.'

'They're better at doing without than we are, too,' Hamnet said. 'On average, I suppose it's about the same, but they swing further in both directions than we do.'

Even the arrival of their jarl, even the arrival of strangers from the south, distracted the nomads only a little. They greeted Trasamund with bloody handclasps. He took it in good part; he knew meat mattered more than he did.

Women scraped fat from the back of the mammoth hide. Some of them used iron knives that had come north in trade, others flint tools that might have been as old as time or might have been made that morning. The Bizogots never had as much iron as they wanted, and eked it out with stone tools.

Dogs danced and begged by the edge of the hide. Every so often, a woman would throw some scraps their way. The dogs yelped and snapped at the food and at one another. The women laughed at the sport.

They carefully saved the rest of the fat. Some of it would get cooked in the feast. The rest would be pounded with lean mammoth meat and berries to make cakes that would keep for a long time and would feed a traveling man.

Once the hide had not a scrap of fat or flesh clinging to it, the women rubbed it with a strong-smelling mix. Audun Gilli s nose wrinkled. 'What's that stuff?' he asked.

'Piss and salt, to cure the hide,' Count Hamnet answered.

'Oh.' The wizard looked unhappy. 'Why don't they use tanbark, the way we do?'

Both Hamnet and Ulric laughed at him. 'Think about it,' Ulric said.

Audun did. 'Oh,' he said again, this time in a small voice. Tanbark required oaks, and all the oaks grew well south of the tree line.

'What is the news?' Trasamund asked. 'Who has died? Who still lives? Who is born? Who is well? Who is sick or hurt?' He had a lot of catching up to do, and was trying to do it all at once. In the Empire, that would have been impossible. The Three Tusk clan was small enough to give him a fighting chance.

'Who are these mouths up from the south?' a Bizogot asked him. That was how the Raumsdalians seemed to the locals—people who had to be fed as long as they were here. Hamnet Thyssen wondered how he liked being called a mouth. Not very well, he decided.

Trasamund named names, which would mean little to a clansman. He called most of the Raumsdalians warriors, styling Audun Gilli and Eyvind Torfinn as shamans. The Three Tusk shaman, easily identifiable by the same kind of fringed and embroidered costume as Witigis had worn, eyed them with interested speculation.

'What about the woman?' another Bizogot called. Actually, he said, What about the gap? That made Hamnet look north toward the gap between the two great sheets of ice that had once been one. This time, Gudrid didn't show any signs of understanding.

'Is she just yours, or can we all have her?' still another mammoth-herder asked. A woman gave him an elbow in the ribs. Was she his wife, or just jealous of competition?

'She is the old shaman's woman,' Trasamund answered. Count Hamnet glanced over to see how Eyvind Torfinn liked hearing that again and again. By the fixed smile on his face, he didn't like it much. Trasamund went on, 'They are all our guests. They are not to be stolen from.'

'Ha!' Ulric Skakki said. Hamnet Thyssen nodded. Guest-friendship would keep the Raumsdalians' persons safe while they stayed with the Three Tusk clan. Their personal property? No. Having so little themselves, Bizogots