Beyong the Gap

'I see,' Eyvind Torfinn said gravely. 'And how far in that direction do the Rulers rule?'

'Long way. Very long way,' Roypar replied. Was he clever enough to dodge Eyvind's probe or too naive to notice it was a probe at all? Hamnet Thyssen couldn't tell. That made him guess Roypar might be clever, even if he had no proof.

Eyvind went on, 'And do you have it in mind to stretch your rule to the south and east now that there is a way through the Glacier?'

Now Roypar looked at him as if he were a witling. 'Well, of course,' said the chieftain or officer or whatever he was. 'Of course. We are the Rulers. Where we can reach, we rule.'

'Anyone who tries to rule the Bizogots will be sorry,' Trasamund said. His voice was still a thick mumble through split and swollen lips. 'Maybe you can kill us. Maybe we kill you instead.' The roasted venison was tough. He chewed slowly and carefully, and on the side where he hadn't just lost a tooth.

'Maybe.' That wasn't Roypar; it was Samoth the sorcerer. 'You are strong. You are fierce. But your magic'—he sneered—'your magic is nothing much.'

Audun C2iilli had no idea what he was saying; the Raumsdalian wizard knew nothing of the Bizogot language. Liv, of course, understood Samoth well enough. She'd said next to nothing herself up till then. Now, swallowing a bite of meat, she looked across the smoky fire at Samoth and hooted three times like an owl.

He jerked as if bitten by a mosquito the size of a falcon. 'So you had somewhat to do with that, did you?' he growled. His comrades who could follow the Bizogot tongue sent him curious looks. Maybe he hadn't told them he'd had to fly from the travelers' magic down in the Gap.

Liv gave him a sweet smile. 'Why, yes,' she said, all innocence. 'We did.'

Samoth muttered into his curled mat of beard. Hamnet Thyssen sent Liv a small nod. He thought she'd found a fine way to prick the Rulers' pomposity. They were so very, very sure of themselves—anything that made them doubt was bound to be on the right track.

Ulric Skakki was sitting next to Audun. When the wizard whispered to him, he provided a translation. He hadn't spoken long before Audun Gilli twitched as violently as Samoth had. 'Nothing much!' Audun said in Raumsdalian. 'By God, I'll—'

'You'll shut up, is what you'll bloody well do,' Ulric said, much more sharply than he was in the habit of speaking. Audun blinked at him, and then did shut up, though his eyes said he didn't understand why Ulric required it of him.

Hamnet Thyssen did. Ulric Skakki's little finger understood more of intrigue than all of Audun Gilli put together. If Audun showed Samoth how good a wizard he could be, that would alert the Rulers to a problem they didn't know they had right now.

And Hamnet Thyssen also saw something he wasn't sure whether either Ulric or Audun did. If Audun tried to impress Samoth and failed again, as he'd failed with the opal . . . That would give the travelers a serious problem.

'So you aim to bring our folk under your rule, do you?' Eyvind Torfinn asked Roypar. Now the Count frowned, wondering if the other Raumsdalian noble wasn't pushing too hard.

'Is right,' Roypar said complacently. The Rulers ruled other folk. To him, that was a law of nature.

Voice elaborately casual, Eyvind Torfinn went on, 'Perhaps you would do well to let us return to the south, then, so the Bizogot jarls and my Emperor, apprised of your imminent arrival, can prepare for you the most appropriate and honorable reception.'

Count Hamnet suddenly stopped thinking of Eyvind as an old man wise only in the things that had to do with books. He was an intriguer in his own right. Ulric Skakki's abrupt alertness argued that he was thinking the same thing. By the smug look on Roypar's face, he thought Eyvind Torfinn meant the Bizogots and the Raumsdalian Empire would get ready to surrender as soon as they found out the Rulers were on the way. Hamnet Thyssen would have been mightily surprised if that was what Earl Eyvind really had in mind.

Would Parsh have seen otherwise? He was much more fluent in the Bizogots' language, which argued that he had understood foreigners better than his superior. It didn't matter now, though, not when he was dead—he hadn't understood Trasamund, or at least the strength of Trasamund's jaws and of his fists, well enough.

Samoth stirred. The wizard said something in the language of the Rulers. / have to learn that tongue if I can, Hamnet Thyssen thought. Roypar snorted and shook his head. Samoth spoke again, more urgently this time. He saw that Eyvind Torfinn wasn't as submissive as he seemed.

He saw it, yes, but he couldn't make Roypar see it. The chieftain sounded angry when he answered this time. Samoth bit his lip. He muttered into his beard, then subsided—for the moment. A couple of men of the Rulers stirred and eyed Roypar in exactly the same way Hamnet Thyssen would have eyed him if he'd belonged to their folk. A leader who got a wizard angry at him was either a man of extraordinary personal qualities and confidence ... or a blustering blowhard.

Which was Roypar? Hamnet admitted he couldn't know, judging a man he'd just met, a man from a folk with whom he was not in the least familiar, a man who barely had a language in common with him, was a fool's game. Well? Aren't I a fool? Hamnet asked himself with wry amusement—the only kind he knew these days.

His gaze flickered to Gudrid. She was watching Roypar with the sort of fascination that raised Count Hamnet's hackles. He quickly looked away. His eyes went to the chieftain, too. He thought a clever man would have seen through Eyvind Torfinn's ploy, so maybe he'd been wrong before. Samoth had seen through it—and much good it did him.

'You go south, yes,' Roypar said. 'You go. You tell your folk, the Rulers come. You tell, bring out gold, bring out women, bring out fine mammoths, fine deer for Rulers to take.'

'Deer?' Eyvind Torfinn's frown said he wasn't sure he'd understood the stranger.

'Deer.' Roypar nodded. 'For riding. Deer.'

'Oh. Of course. Deer.' Butter wouldn't have melted in Earl Eyvind's mouth. No, the Rulers knew nothing of horses. Hamnet Thyssen didn't know much of the deer they rode, either, but the animals weren't as large as horses and didn't seem as strong. On the other hand, the Rulers could do things with mammoths that even the Bizogots only dreamt of.

Strangers, Hamnet thought. It was a truth he always had to bear in mind. The Bizogots were cousins to the Raumsdalians. All the folk south of the Glacier were in effect their neighbors if not their kin. But had his folk's ancestors ever had anything to do with the forebears of the Rulers? Surely not since the Glacier last ground down out of the north.

How long ago was that? How many thousands of years had gone by since? Count Hamnet had no idea. Eyvind Torfinn might be able to make a pretty good guess. So might Audun Gilli, come to that; sorcerers needed a better notion of the distant past than most people. It was a long, long, long time—Hamnet was sure of that.

Roypar pointed toward the travelers' horses, which were tied alongside the riding deer the Rulers used. 'Why you cut horns off your big deer?' he asked. 'You no use horns to fight with?' No, he didn't understand about horses at all.

Neither did Samoth, who said, 'And how did you remove the antlers so neatly? There is no trace of a scar. After we rule you, that is a trick your leeches must show us.' He had as much confidence as any other man of the Rulers.

'There is no trick, I fear,' Hamnet Thyssen said. 'The animals are born without antlers.' He didn't see how the truth could hurt here.

Samoth smiled—unpleasantly. 'I might have guessed. Not likely that the lesser breeds could know anything important that we do not.'

None of the travelers said anything. Even if they had, Samoth and the rest of the Rulers there wouldn't have heeded them. The Rulers knew what they knew, and didn't want to know anything else—even if it happened to be true.

Later in the evening, Hamnet Thyssen noticed Roypar trying to talk to someone who spoke even less of the Bizogots' tongue than he did. Hamnet took a couple of steps toward the chieftain, thinking to be helpful. Then he heard Gudrid's throaty chuckle, and drew back without drawing Roypar s notice or hers. He slept not a wink all night.