Beyong the Gap

summer evening of the land beyond the Glacier, he himself could not persuade the others danger might lie ahead.

X

Defeated and depressed, Hamnet Thyssen strode away from the campfire. The sun had set at last, but he was in no danger of getting lost. The northern horizon remained white and bright; the light was still good enough to read by. But he didn't feel like reading, even if he'd had a book. He wished he could keep walking, and leave behind the fools who didn't want to listen to him.

'Hamnet Thyssen!' As Liv often did, she spoke his given and family names as if they were part of the same long word. 'Please wait!' she added.

After a moment, he did. She hadn't ignored him; she hadn't understood a word he was saying. Well, save for Ulric Skakki, neither had the rest, even though they and he used the same language. 'Not your fault,' he admitted.

'What was the argument about?' she asked, adding, 'No one would slowdown and translate for me. I really have to learn Raumsdalian, don't I?'

'It might help,' Hamnet said. 'If I can learn your language, I don't think there's any reason you can't learn mine. As for the argument, I thought we should turn around and go home while the going is good. Ulric Skakki thought I was right. Everyone else thought I had a mammoth turd where my brains ought to be.'

The Bizogot shaman laughed. 'You have an accent when you speak our tongue, Hamnet Thyssen, but that is something a man of my clan might say.'

'What? That we should go home?' He misunderstood her on purpose.

'No, about the mammoth turd and—' Liv broke off. Her eyes flashed. 'You are teasing me. Do you know what happens when you tease a shaman?'

'Nothing good, or you wouldn't want to tell me about it,' Hamnet answered. 'Tell me something else instead —do you think we ought to head back?'

'Probably,' Liv answered. 'What else can we do here, unless we happen to stumble over the Golden Shrine?'

He stared at her. He thought she was the most wonderful woman in the world. Of course he did—she agreed with him. 'By God,' he exclaimed, 'I could kiss you!'

Liv waited. When nothing happened, she said, 'Well? Go ahead.'

He stared at her again, in a different way. She wasn't a bad-looking woman, not at all, but he hadn't thought she would take him literally. No—he hadn't thought she would want to take him literally. Since his troubles with Gudrid, he'd had trouble believing any woman would be interested in him.

Carefully, so as not to offend, he kissed her on the cheek. She raised an eyebrow. She was grimy and none too fresh, but he hardly noticed. All the travelers, himself included, were grimy and none too fresh. 'Well?' he said, when she stood there looking at him with that eyebrow halfway up her forehead.

'Not very well, as a matter of fact,' Liv told him. 'You can do better.'

You'd better do better, lurked behind the words. He managed a crooked smile of his own. 'Who knows what you'd do to me if I told you no? You were just talking about how it's dangerous to anger a shaman.'

In saying he didn't want to anger her, he managed to do just that. Her frown put him in mind of a building storm. 'I do not force you to this, Hamnet Thyssen,' she said. 'If you care to, you will. If you don't. . .' She didn't go on, but he had no trouble filling in something like, Be damned to you.

Angry at himself and her both, he did kiss her, not much caring if he was gentle or not. 'Well?' he said again, tasting a little blood in his mouth.

'That is better.' Liv paused. 'Different, anyway.'

Count Hamnet bowed. 'Thank you so much.'

'My pleasure—a little of it, anyhow.' The Bizogot woman could be formidably sarcastic.

The one person except Ulric who thought the same way he did—and here he was quarreling with her. How much sense did that make? Not much, and. he knew it too well. He fought his temper under something close to control. 'Will you tell Trasamund you think we ought to go south?' he asked.

'Is this what you ask after you kiss a woman?' Liv snapped. 'Would you ask Gudrid the same question after you kiss her?'

'I would never kiss Gudrid.' Hamnet s fury kindled for real. 'And if, God forbid, I did, I would ask her who shed just kissed before me and who she planned on kissing next.' He spat at Liv's feet.

He thought that would infuriate her in turn. Instead, it sobered her like a bucket of cold water in the face. 'Oh,' she said in a small voice. 'I did not mean to tease you, either. I am sorry.'

'Let it go,' Hamnet said roughly. 'Just—let it go. But do talk to the jarl, because that really is important.'

Liv bit her lip and nodded. 'It shall be as you say.' Then, without a backward glance, she went off toward the camp. Slowly, Hamnet Thyssen followed.

The bear the travelers saw scooping salmon from a stream was not white. It was brown. It was also the biggest bear Hamnet Thyssen had ever seen. Oh, some short-faced bears might have been as tall at the shoulder as this monster, but they were long-legged and quick. This beast was built like an ordinary woods bruin, but on an enormous scale.

It showed formidable teeth when the riders drew near. With a little coughing roar, it stood between them and the fish it had caught. 'It doesn't trust us,' Ulric Skakki said.

'Maybe it's met men before,' Audun Gilli said.

'Maybe it just knows what we're likely to be like,' Count Hamnet said.

Trasamund eyed him sourly. 'And now you'll go, 'It's a great big bear! We should all turn around and run home!''

Hamnet Thyssen looked back, his eyes as cold as the Glacier. 'Demons take you, your Ferocity,' he replied in a voice chillier yet.

'No one talks to me that way!' Trasamund had no more control over his temper than a six-year-old. 'I'll kill the man who talks to me so.'

After sliding down from his horse, Count Hamnet bowed with ironic precision. 'You are welcome to try, of course. And after you have tried, the demons will take you in truth.' He was not afraid of the Bizogot. Trasamund was big and strong and brave but not, from everything Hamnet had seen, particularly skillful. And even if he were . . . Hamnet Thyssen would not have been afraid, because whether he lived or died was a matter of complete indifference to him.

Trasamund also dismounted. He drew his sword, a two-handed blade that could have severed the great bear's head from its shoulders. A blade like that could cut a man in half—if it bit. Hamnet s own sword was smaller and lighter, but he was much quicker with it.

Ulric Skakki rode between them. 'Gentlemen, this is absurd,' he said. 'You are quarreling over the shadow of an ass.'

'By no means,' Hamnet Thyssen said. He intended to add that he saw the ass before him. The more furious Trasamund got, the more careless he would act. He was proud of being a Bizogot like any other. That a Raumsdalian might goad him into foolishness because he was so typical never once crossed his mind.

It crossed Ulric Skakki's, though. 'That will be enough from you,' he snapped before Hamnet could speak. Then he rounded on Trasamund. 'And as for you, your Ferocity, you owe his Grace an apology.'

'I will apologize with steel.' The jarl swung his sword in a whirring, whirling, glittering circle of death.

'You are a bloody fool,' Ulric said.

'Shall I kill you, too?' Trasamund asked. 'I do not mind. Take your place behind that other wretch, and I will dispose of you one at a time.'

'If I have to, I will,' Ulric Skakki said. 'Personally, I don't think you'll get past Count Hamnet. If by some accident you should, I know you won't get past me. Count Hamnet, I believe, fights fair. I promise you, your Ferocity, I don't waste time on such foolishness.'