Beyong the Gap

even tolerable.'

'I am not a child. You are not my mother. You do not need to tell me things a mother would tell a foolish little boy,'' Trasamund said. 'This is my clan, and I have been away for a long time. I have a lot of things I need to set straight before we fare forth again.'

'Is that what you were doing last night?' Count Hamnet murmured.

Trasamund laughed again. 'By God, Raumsdalian, you've never seen anything straighter! And hard! It was hard as that Jesper's head.' Had Gelimer already talked with him? Or had he come to his own conclusions about Jesper Fletti while traveling north with him? Hamnet wouldn't have been surprised. He thought the guards officer on the rockheaded side, too.

But no matter what Hamnet thought about Jesper, that wasn't the point. 'If we know when we're leaving, we can be ready on the day,' he persisted. 'If we don't have a day, we'll just waste time.'

Sending a sour stare his way, the jarl said, 'You're as stubborn as that woman you used to sleep with, aren't you?'

'Almost,' Hamnet answered. 'It's one of the few things we have in common.'

'Ha! That's what you think,' Trasamund said.

'Oh, really?' Of itself, Hamnet Thyssen's hand slid toward his sword-hilt. If the Bizogot thought he would stand there and let himself be insulted, that was the last mistake Trasamund would ever make. Hamnet had stopped caring whether he lived or died after Gudrid left him. Honor was a different story. He would uphold his own even knowing the Three Tusk clansmen would slay him after he killed their jarl.

But Trasamund answered, 'Yes, by God! You're both annoying, and you're both here!'

Count Hamnet relaxed. He even smiled a crooked smile. The truth, by the very nature of things, couldn't be an insult. He couldn't very well deny he and Gudrid were both annoying. He couldn't deny they were both here, either, however much he wished Gudrid weren't.

Then one corner of his mouth turned down. Did Trasamund think Gudrid was a nuisance when they were both in Nidaros? He chuckled under his breath. What was that phrase the barristers used? An attractive nuisance, that was it. Chances were that summed up just what the Bizogot thought of her.

'I am here, yes,' Hamnet Thyssen agreed. 'But I didn't come north to be here, your Ferocity. I came north to pass through the Gap and go beyond the Glacier. I thought you came north for the same reason.'

Trasamund turned red. He took a deep breath. But before he could start roaring at Count Hamnet, someone behind the Raumsdalian noble said, 'He is right, you know, your Ferocity.'

That wasn't Ulric Skakki. Ulric was still nowhere to be seen. It was Liv, the Three Tusk shaman. Trasamund glared at her, but he didn't roar. That spoke volumes about how well respected she was. 'This is none of your business,' the jarl growled.

'Oh, but it is.' Liv shook her head. Her golden hair flipped back and forth. So did the amber pendants that dangled from her earlobes. Hamnet eyed those with a certain queasy fascination. Raumsdalian women wore earrings that clipped to their ears. The Bizogots bored holes in their earlobes through which to hang their ornaments. They are barbarians, he thought.

'How is it your affair? How?' Trasamund demanded. 'We will go north. When / decide, we will go north. And when we do, you will stay with the clan. You will stay among the tents. Is that plain enough?'

'More than plain enough, your Ferocity.' Liv was the picture of politeness. But she shook her head again all the same. Even some of the fringes on her shoulders and above her breasts moved when she did. 'It is more than plain enough, but it is wrong.'

'Whaaat?' Trasamund stretched the word out so he could pack the most possible scorn into it. 'What do you mean?'

'I mean what I say, your Ferocity. I commonly do. I will not stay with the clan. I will not stay among the tents. I will go beyond the Glacier with you. By God, I will.' Liv's face shone in the morning sun like a lamp, like a torch, like a bonfire. 'By God I said, and by God I also meant. Do you not travel to the Golden Shrine? If I cannot learn of God there, where in all the world will I?'

'You can't do that,' Trasamund said. Hamnet Thyssen had rarely seen him taken aback. He did now. The jarl looked as if someone had landed a solid punch on the point of his chin.

'I can,' Liv said. 'I will. I must. I hardly slept in the night, your Ferocity. I took divinations instead.' Trasamund had hardly slept, either, but he wasn't taking divinations. Liv went on, 'The answer was always the same. This is meant to be. God wills it.'

Trasamund looked as if he wanted to say something unkind about God. Whatever he wanted to do, he didn't do it. Not even a Bizogot jarl dared blaspheme right out loud. You never could tell if God was listening, or what He would do if He was.

'Chances are you read the signs wrong,' he said instead. That put the blame on Liv, not God.

She shook her head. 'I did not, your Ferocity. Shall I do it over for you? Then you will see for yourself, and can have no possible doubt. Let me get the knucklebones, and I will ask the question aloud before I cast them.'

'Never mind,' Trasamund said quickly. For a moment, that surprised Hamnet Thyssen. But then he understood. If the jarl did see for himself, he couldn't possibly argue. And he plainly didn't believe Liv was making up what she claimed. He tried a different tack. 'Having another woman along will cause nothing but trouble.'

'How can I possibly cause more trouble than the woman who is already traveling with you?' Liv asked. Count Hamnet snorted. He didn't intend to; it was startled out of him. Trasamund sent him a baleful stare ail the same. Liv eyed the jarl. 'Well?'

'You are being impossible,' Trasamund grumbled.

'I am following the will of God,' the shaman said. 'Can you tell me the same?'

'I can tell you—' Trasamund broke off. What could he tell her? That the land beyond the Glacier was no place for a woman? Then what of Gudrid? Scowling, Trasamund said, 'I can tell you that you don't fight fair.'

'When I fight, I don't fight to be fair. I fight to win,' Liv said. Trasamund turned away. She’d won this time.

VIII

Trasamund was still muttering into his beard when the travelers rode north four days later. Liv, perched on a dun gelding, paid no attention to him. She rode with Audun Gilli and Hamnet Thyssen. A lot of the time, she wanted to talk shop with the Raumsdalian wizard. That left Hamnet as interpreter, and left him fuming quietly. He'd warned them he didn't know how to translate magical terms very well either way, but they both blamed him when they couldn't make themselves clear.

He tried talking with Liv about other things besides sorcery or shamanry or whatever the right name for it was. To him, the scenery was magnificent—the two great cliffs of ice, one to the northwest, the other to the northeast. Once, they'd joined together and crushed all the north under their unimaginable bulk. They were still magnificent, still awesome, still terrifying ... to Count Hamnet.

To Liv, they were part of the landscape she'd seen every day of her life, barring fog or rain or blizzard. She took them as much for granted as anyone could. 'It's only the Glacier.'

'No.' Hamnet Thyssen shook his head. 'For me, there is no only.'

The Bizogot woman laughed. 'This is very foolish,' she said. 'It is always here. It will always be here. Why get excited about it?'

'If it will always be here, why is the Gap open now, when it was closed?' Whenever Hamnet said the name in the Bizogot language, he felt he was being obscene. But Liv took it in stride. Seeing as much, he went on, 'Why is there a gap between the eastern Glacier and the western at all? There didn't used to be.'

She frowned thoughtfully. 'These are good questions. I have no answers for them. Maybe we will find the answers at the Golden Shrine.'

'Maybe.' Hamnet Thyssen started to ask her something else. Before he could, she asked Audun Gilli a question. Hamnet had to translate as best he could.

'Having fun?' Ulric Skakki asked him a while later.

'How did you guess?' Count Hamnet answered, so sourly that Ulric laughed. 'Want to take over for me?'