Beyong the Gap

column of woolly mammoths swung into a line and bore down upon the Raumsdalians and Bizogots as smoothly as one of the Emperor's cavalry squadrons.

'Will you look at that?' Trasamund murmured. 'Will you look at that?' He sounded as overwhelmed, and as full of yearning, as a boy on the edge of manhood staring at a beautiful woman and contemplating wonderful things he'd never imagined before. His eyes were as big and wide as the youth's might have been, too.

Hamnet Thyssen did not expect he would ever master the art of riding mammoths. He didn't feel he was suffering any great loss, either. His attention focused not on the shaggy beasts but on the men who rode them.

He did not like their looks. The closer they came, the less he liked it. They were not unhandsome—just the opposite, in a fierce half-eagle, half-lion sort of way. They had swarthy skins, big scimitar noses, proud cheekbones, and gleaming dark eyes. They wore their black beards in elaborate curled waves that rippled halfway down their chests, and their hair in neat buns at the napes of their necks.

Those gleaming eyes, though .. . Hamnet hoped his imagination was running away with him, but he did not like what he thought he saw in them. The Bizogots were hard. They had to be, living where they did, where so many things were so scarce. They mostly weren't cruel for the sake of cruelty. Hamnet Thyssen wasn't so sure about these strangers.

One of the men cupped his hands in front of his mouth and shouted something. To Hamnet's ear, it was just guttural nonsense. 'I am sorry, my friends, but I don't understand you,' Eyvind Torfinn answered in Raumsdalian.

'Do you speak my tongue?' Trasamund called in the Bizogot language.

More harsh-sounding gibberish came from the strangers. Eyvind and the Bizogot jarl both spread their hands to show they could make no sense of it. Ulric Skakki rode up alongside Count Hamnet and said, 'I wonder if they would understand if Audun or Liv hooted like an owl.'

'I wouldn't be surprised,' Hamnet answered.

One of the strangers got down from his mammoth and approached the travelers from beyond the Glacier. He used the beast's long hair for handholds. The mammoth let him, which impressed Hamnet of itself. The man wasn't very tall, but he had some of the widest shoulders Hamnet had ever seen. He was built like a brick, all muscle everywhere.

He wore furs and leather, as the Bizogots did, but there the resemblance ended. The Bizogots wore clothes that fit tightly, while his jacket and trousers were loose and baggy, perhaps to let him stuff in extra padding if he wanted to. He had on enormous felt boots, into which he tucked the bottoms of his trousers. With footgear so large, his gait was more waddle than walk, but it was an impressive waddle.

He stopped about twenty feet in front of Trasamund and said something. 'I don't understand you,' the Bizogot jarl said.

Hamnet Thyssen didn't understand him, either, but he had a pretty good notion of what the stranger was saying. If it wasn't something like Who are you and what the demon are you doing on my land? he would have been very surprised.

The stranger paused and scowled. He looked as if he hated everyone in the world, but especially Trasamund. He said the same thing over again, louder this time. He seemed to think everybody ought to understand his language, and ought to speak it, too.

'I still don't understand you,' Trasamund told him.

This time, the noises the stranger made were different. They seemed angrier—no mean feat, when his whole vocabulary sounded angry. Either he was calling the jarl several different kinds of idiot or he was swearing at him—maybe both at once.

Audun Gilli rode forward a few paces. The stranger snarled something that sounded vile at him, too, and jumped back and drew a long, straight sword. Its highly polished edge glittered in the sunlight. He stood ready to fight and kill, ready to attack, even though Audun was surely the most inoffensive-looking of the travelers.

'No, no.' Audun even sounded inoffensive, which Trasamund might not have. 'You misunderstand, my friend. I come in peace.' He held up his right hand, palm open—a gesture anyone on the far side of the Glacier, from the Bizogots to the folk who dwelt in the hot countries well south of the Raumsdalian Empire, would have understood.

If this stranger understood it, he didn't want to let on. He growled something that sounded unflattering. He brandished the sword again, but didn't rush the wizard. He looked even more scornful than he had when he was snarling at Trasamund. Maybe that was because Audun seemed so inoffensive; the Bizogot, at least, pretty plainly knew how to take care of himself.

Then Audun said, 'I am a sorcerer.' If Hamnet Thyssen had known he was going to do that, he would have tried to stop him—he didn't want to show these people too much (or anything at all) before he had to. He was briefly relieved to remember that the stranger seemed to know no Raumsdalian. 'Maybe I can find a spell to let us understand each other,' Audun went on, as if doing his best to give Count Hamnet heart failure.

Hamnet wasn't the only one who wished Audun would keep his mouth shut. 'He's a trusting soul, isn't he?' Ulric Skakki whispered.

'He's a trusting fool, is what he is.' Hamnet didn't bother keeping his voice down.

If Audun Gilli heard him, he paid no attention. That the mammoth-riding strangers could be dangerous didn't seem to cross the wizard's mind.

He just saw them as people with whom he couldn't speak—and maybe as a way to let him seem important to his comrades.

'I'm a sorcerer,' he repeated. This time, he showed the bad-tempered barbarian—so Hamnet reckoned the man, anyhow—just what he meant. 'Behold, I shall become invisible,' he said, as if the stranger could understand him (and Hamnet had no sure proof the man could not).

Audun reached into his belt pouch and drew forth an opal. The stone sparkled in the sun, showing glints of red and blue and silver. The wizard began to chant. The opal seemed to draw more and more sunlight to itself as the spell went on. It sparkled brighter and brighter. Before long, it grew too dazzling for Hamnet Thyssen to look at. He had to turn away. And, since he could not look at the stone, he could not look at the man who held it, either. Audun was effectively, if not actually, invisible.

Looking away from Audun Gilli, Count Hamnet looked toward Liv. She watched the Raumsdalian wizard with avid interest. Her lips moved silently, perhaps in a charm of her own that let her go on looking at Audun and the opal after Hamnet Thyssen and the others close by had to avert their gaze.

Then Hamnet glanced in the strangers direction. He screwed up his face and squinted at Audun—better that, he seemed to say, than to admit he was dazzled. But at last narrowed eyes availed him no more. He had to turn away.

When he did, he shouted back toward his comrades, who still sat on their mammoths. One of them stirred. They were more than a bowshot away, so Hamnet Thyssen could not tell exactly what their wizard or shaman or whatever he was did. Whatever it was, it served his purpose. The opal in Audun Gilli s hand shattered into fragments. The dazzling, coruscating light that flowed from it died.

'You see?' the stranger said in the Bizogot tongue. 'You think you are so high and mighty, but in truth you are only a maggot like all your foul kind.'

Audun Gilli stared at his hand, and at the tiny bits of opal still left in it. The mammoth-rider's speech meant nothing to him, because he did not speak the Bizogots' language.

But it meant something to Trasamund. 'Who do you call maggot, dog?' the jarl demanded. 'I asked if you knew my speech, and you would not give me a yes or a no.'

'I give you nothing,' the stranger said. 'It is what you deserve. Soon enough, it is what the Rulers will give all who are not men.'

Trasamund turned red. 'You say I am no man?' he growled. The stranger nodded. 'What am I, then?' Trasamund asked, his voice suggesting bloodshed would follow if he didn't like the answer.

The stranger only yawned. If he was trying to be offensive—and no doubt he was—he was succeeding. 'Vermin,' he said.

'Why, you flyblown son of a mammoth turd!' Trasamund shouted. He started to climb down from his horse. 'By God, I'll kill you for that!'