Beyong the Gap

XII

WE will ride south and east,' Eyvind Torfinn said, no irony audible in his voice. 'We will let the other Bizogot jarls and the Raumsdalian Emperor know that the Rulers follow behind us. We will make sure our lands are ready to meet you as you deserve.'

'Is good,' Roypar said. 'Is very good.' By Samoth's expression, he didn't think it was very good, but he held his peace. Roypar led here. Anyone else challenged him at his own peril.

Parsh's body lay where it had fallen. 'Will you burn him?' Hamnet Thyssen asked. 'What is your custom with your dead?'

'He will lie there till the foxes and bears and tigers have feasted on him,' Samoth answered. 'He failed as a man—he deserves nothing better than to feed beasts. No doubt his spirit, when it is born again, will be born into the body of such a one.'

'You believe in reincarnation, then?' Eyvind Torfinn asked eagerly. 'Have you evidence to support your belief?'

Trasamund and Hamnet Thyssen had to drag Eyvind away from the wizard of the Rulers. If they hadn't, he would not have ridden south and east. He would have stayed there and plied Samoth with questions for as long as the sorcerer could stand it.

Hamnet glanced over to Roypar. The chieftain looked unmistakably pleased with himself. The Rulers thought of themselves as conquerors beyond compare. Had he lain with a woman of a lesser breed the night before? Hamnet guessed he had. Gudrid showed nothing one way or the other. She was good at making her indiscretions discreet—unless she dropped the mask and showed them off.

Hamnet looked away. She laughed softly. So she knew what he was thinking, did she? She'd always been good at that. Hamnet Thyssen turned his back, which only made her laugh again, louder this time. Too bad, he thought.

Roypar really did let them ride away. That surprised Count Hamnet. It seemed to surprise and dismay Samoth, who muttered into his thicket of beard. The way he muttered sparked suspicion in Hamnet even before the Rulers' encampment dropped below the horizon behind the travelers. He rode over first to Audun Gilli and then to Liv, asking each of them, 'Is the wizard back there tracking us by magic? Are we taking along some little spell that lets him spy on us?' He had to repeat himself, using Raumsdalian and then the Bizogots' language. Lie wished the two people among the travelers who knew sorcery could understand each other. As happened too often in life, what he wished for had nothing to do with what he got.

Ulric Skakki understood him both times he asked the question. 'You have a nasty, distrustful turn of mind, your Grace,' Ulric said—in the Bizogot language, a choice Hamnet found interesting. 'I only wish I'd thought of that myself.'

'Don't worry,' Hamnet said. 'You would have before long.'

'That kind of spell is possible, I suppose.' Audun Gilli didn't seem to think Samoth had actually done such a thing.

Liv did. 'Yes, of course. A sorcerous flea, you might say, coming along with us. Maybe it will bite, too, when the time is right.'

'Can you find it?' Count Hamnet asked. 'Can you kill it?' Again, he had to use the mammoth-herders' language and then his own.

So did Ulric Skakki when he added, 'Can you find it and kill it without letting Samoth know it's gone?' Hamnet Thyssen thumped his forehead with the heel of his hand. Now he was angry that Ulric had an idea before he did.

'Who knows what all shamanry the strangers have?' Liv said. 'They think it is stronger than ours. They may be right—remember how Samoth shattered Audun's opal. But we can try.'

'What does she say?' Audun Gilli asked. 'I heard my name in that, whatever it was.' When Count Hamnet translated for him, he sniffed. 'I am sure I could have stopped Samoth if I'd been looking for him to do that. Liv worries over nothing.'

Now the Bizogot shaman wondered why Audun was using her name. Hamnet Thyssen turned Audun's words into her tongue. She sniffed on a note almost identical to the one the Raumsdalian sorcerer had used. 'He says I worry over nothing, does he? Well, he thinks there is nothing to worry about, and that worries me.'

It worried Hamnet Thyssen, too. Having the two sorcerers squabble again also worried him, the more so since they had to do their squabbling through him or through Ulric. Hoping to distract them, he said, 'The flea,' first in the Bizogot language, then in Raumsdalian.

'Trust a Bizogot to think of fleas,' Audun said. Since he was scratching as he spoke—he didn't seem to notice he was doing it—he proved Raumsdalians weren't immune to the pests. Count Hamnet s itches already told him that.

'Never mind the snide cracks,' Ulric said. 'Can you find the magic?' Now he used Raumsdalian, and didn't translate for Liv. She sent Hamnet a look of appeal. He didn't translate, either. She glared at him.

'If it is here, it should be simple enough to find,' Audun Gilli said.

'Please go ahead and do it, then,' Hamnet Thyssen said, and then, to Liv, 'I would also like you to check.' By now, he was resigned to going back and forth between languages.

'I will do it if Audun fails.' The Bizogot shaman glanced over at the Raumsdalian wizard. 'I wish we could understand each other. It might mean much if we have to work together. Would you teach me Raumsdalian, Hamnet Thyssen?'

'If you like,' Count Hamnet answered. 'You will have to learn the fancy magical terms from Audun, though. I might make mistakes, and mistakes in that kind of thing can be dangerous. I am no wizard, but at least I know it.'

'You're right,' Liv said. 'I should have started learning your language a long time ago, but you and I didn't always get on well.'

'Ulric Skakki could have taught you, or Eyvind Torfinn—or Trasamund, come to that,' Hamnet said.

'I think you are more patient than they are,' Liv said. Hamnet doubted whether anyone in the world was more patient than Eyvind Torfinn. He didn't want to say so, not when Liv paid him such a compliment.

Audun Gilli, meanwhile, was rummaging through the pouches he wore on his belt. He muttered and mumbled as he rummaged—all in all, he might have posed for a picture of a distracted wizard. At last, though, he came up with what he needed and seemed to come back to the real world.

'Here is the dried head of a plover,' he said, and held it up. Hamnet Thyssen looked away from the sunken eye sockets. Audun Gilli went on, 'It has the virtue that, if used with the proper spell, it prevents deception.'

'What does he say?' Liv asked. Hamnet translated for her. She nodded, though a little doubtfully. 'We use a different bird for what sounds like the same charm,' she said, 'and a certain stone as well.' She shrugged. 'Well, let us see what his shamanry shows.'

Audun Gilli held up the plover's head in his left hand. He made passes with his right while chanting in Raumsdalian almost too old-fashioned for Count Hamnet to understand. A moment later, Hamnet blinked. Were the bird's eyes suddenly bright and shiny and full of life? So it seemed.

And the dead, dried plover's head cried out, too—a shrill piping, such as the live bird might have used when frightened. 'Well, well.' Audun Gilli's voice rose in surprise. 'We do have ourselves a flea, you might say.'

'Where?' Hamnet Thyssen asked.

'That will take another charm,' the wizard replied. He might have asked the plover's head a question. And it seemed to answer him, and to twist in his hand to point the way. It pointed straight toward the horse Gudrid was riding. 'Well, well,' Audun Gilli said again. 'This could be, ah, awkward.'

'Yes.' Hamnet Thyssen was even less eager to break the news to his former wife than Audun seemed to be. Liv couldn't do it; she and Gudrid had no language in common. Hamnet looked at Ulric Skakki. 'Would you be so kind as to . . . ?'

'I'll remember you in my nightmares,' Ulric said with a grimace. But he rode over to Gudrid. She accepted his arrival as no less than her due. The way she looked at the world, everything revolved around her and paid her tribute.

Ulric spoke. Hamnet Thyssen couldn't make out exactly what he said; despite morbid curiosity, the