Beyong the Gap

Raumsdalian noble didn't go close enough to eavesdrop. Count Hamnet did note the exact instant when Ulric shifted from pleasantries and small talk to the reason he'd gone over to Gudrid. She stiffened in the saddle, then started to laugh. 'But that's ridiculous!' she said—Hamnet had no trouble hearing her.

Shaking his head, Ulric Skakki went on talking quietly, doing his best to explain why it wasn't ridiculous. His best wasn't going to be good enough. Hamnet knew his former wife well enough to be sure of that.

And he was right. Gudrid shook her head, too. 'I don't know where you get your ideas,' she said, 'but you can go and put them back there again, because you don't have the faintest notion what you're talking about.' She made as if to ride away from Ulric Skakki.

He was not so easily detached. Unlike Gudrid, he still didn't make a lot of noise. But he did point in Eyvind Torfinn's direction. Earl Eyvind was chatting with Jesper Fletti, and not paying any particular attention to Gudrid at the moment. Hamnet Thyssen had a pretty good notion of what Ulric was saying. Don't be difficult, or I'll tell your husband what you were doing last night. If that wasn't it, Count Hamnet would have been astonished.

Gudrid was astonished, but not in any pleasant way. 'You wouldn't dare,' she said shrilly. That was the wrong answer to give Ulric Skakki. He twitched the reins and guided his horse away from hers, toward Eyvind Torfinn's. 'Wait!' Gudrid screeched.

Courteously, Ulric did wait. The look Gudrid sent him was anything but courteous. Ulric was either made of stern stuff or a fine actor—maybe both—because he seemed undamaged.

'Do what you want to do,' Gudrid snapped, and she might have added, And demons take you afterwards.

Again, Ulric affected not to notice. He bowed in the saddle and said something else too low for Hamnet to catch. Then he turned and called, 'Liv, sweetheart, would you do the honors here?' He used Raumsdalian, even though Liv didn't speak it. But she had no trouble with his come-hither gesture. And Gudrid, of course, understood both the gesture and the words. She had plenty of reasons for disliking Liv, chief among them that the Bizogot shaman was the only other woman in the party. And now Liv was going to do something sorcerous around her, and she couldn't stop it? She had to hate that.

Hamnet Thyssen almost sent Ulric a formal salute. The adventurer had found a very smooth way to avenge himself.

Liv smiled at Gudrid, and kept the smile although Gudrid didn't return it. Even without a language in common, Liv was bound to know some of what Gudrid felt. What did she feel herself? Hamnet had never had the nerve to ask her.

For the moment, the Bizogot woman seemed all business. She murmured to herself and made several swift passes at Gudrid and the horse. 'Ah!' she said brightly. 'There it is.' Hamnet and Ulric understood her. Gudrid didn't. Liv pointed at Gudrid s tunic. She gestured. 'Take it off.'

'What?' Gudrid didn't speak the Bizogot language, but that wasn't all that kept her from understanding. Ulric Skakki translated for her. 'What?' she said again. 'Take off my clothes for this chit of a girl? No!'

If you didn't take off your clothes for the Ruler, we wouldn't have this worry now, Hamnet thought. He almost said it out loud. To his surprise, he didn't. He liked Eyvind Torfinn better than he’d ever imagined he could, and didn't care to shame the older man.

Liv had no trouble figuring out what No! meant, even if she knew hardly any Raumsdalian. She didn't argue with Gudrid. She just dragged her off her horse. Gudrid let out a startled squawk. Both women thumped down on the dirt. Gudrid tried to fight back, but she'd never really learned how. Liv knew exactly what she was doing. Gudrid screamed and swore, which helped her not a bit. The Bizogot shaman quickly and efficiently stripped the tunic off her—and if she gave her a black eye and a split lip while she did it, wasn't she entitled to a little fun?

Gudrid was bare beneath the thick wool tunic. Hamnet Thyssen set his jaw and looked away. He knew what Gudrid's breasts were like—knew them by sight, knew them by touch, knew them by taste. He also knew he would never touch or taste them again. And he had no interest in seeing them again under such circumstances—or maybe he couldn't stand to look.

Liv seemed to care about as much for Gudrid's charms as she would have for those of a musk ox. She murmured a spell over the tunic. Suddenly, she stiffened. 'Here it is!' she said. 'Just a little fetish, but it will do.'

'What on earth is going on?' Eyvind Torfinn said.

Ulric Skakki and Audun Gilli did the explaining. Despite his regard for Earl Eyvind, Hamnet didn't have the heart—or the stomach—for the job. He also wanted to involve himself with Gudrid as little as he could. She screeched at her husband, but warily. She didn't want him to know what she'd been doing the night before. No one else seemed eager to tell him, but that didn't mean no one would.

Eyvind Torfinn plucked at his beard. 'This would have been easier if you'd given the shaman your tunic without kicking up such a fuss, my dear,' he said at last.

'But she was rude! She was horrid!' Gudrid said.

Liv, meanwhile, had detached the fetish and was eyeing it with what looked like professional admiration. 'An ermine's eye and a young hare's ear,' she said. 'The spell that animates them is not one I would use, but I am sure it will do the job. Samoth has no trouble spying on us as long as we carry this, no trouble at all. He will know just where we are.'

'Are there any more charms on the tunic?' Eyvind Torfinn said in the Bi-zogot tongue. 'If there are none, will you please give it back to my wife and let her dress?'

'Oh, very well.' Liv, plainly, didn't think Gudrid deserved to wear the tunic. She all but threw it at the Raumsdalian woman. Gudrid pulled it on. The look she gave Liv would have melted lead.

'You may want to be careful,' Hamnet Thyssen said in the Bizogot tongue. 'You have embarrassed her. She will look for revenge.'

'She is welcome to look,' Liv said indifferently. 'People look for all kinds of things. Whether they find them .. . That is another story.'

Audun Gilli came up and examined the fetish. Slowly, he nodded. 'Oh, yes. Not one I recognize in detail, but the principle is plain.' He scratched his head. As often happened, what started as a thoughtful gesture turned into a hunt. After crushing something between his nails, he went on, 'We should not destroy this.'

'He is right,' Liv said after Hamnet translated. 'That Samoth would surely sense it if we did.'

Audun Gilli began to whistle. The tune was strange and discordant— hardly a tune at all, Hamnet Thyssen thought till a short-eared arctic fox walked up to Audun. The wizard patted the animal as if it were a dog. It let him touch it; it even wagged its tail. Then he took a rawhide lashing and tied the fetish around the fox's neck. That done, he whistled a different tune. The fox suddenly seemed to realize where it was and the company it was keeping. With a horrified yip, it dashed away.

'Not bad,' Liv said. 'Not bad at all. The shaman of the Rulers will realize something is wrong when he tries to listen with the hare's ear, but that may take a while. We spoke mostly Raumsdalian here, and he does not know that tongue.'

After translating again, Hamnet Thyssen said, 'Their wizard does not admit to knowing our tongue, anyhow. Does Roypar speak Raumsdalian, Gudrid?'

'No,' she answered automatically. Then she backtracked. 'I mean, how the demon do I know whether he does or not?'

'You have a better chance of knowing than any of the rest of us,' Count Hamnet said in a voice with no expression at all to it. The glare Gudrid sent him made the ones shed given Liv seem downright loving by comparison.

Eyvind Torfinn looked as if he wanted to ask questions. If he had, Hamnet wouldn't have lied to him, though he knew the older man might not believe everything—or anything—he said. His home truths would have made Gudrid even happier than she was already. But Earl Eyvind seemed to think better of it. Maybe he would question Gudrid in private. Maybe, as he looked to have done before, he would decide he didn't really want to know. Whatever his reasons, he stayed quiet.

The travelers resumed their journey toward the Gap. Samoth could not spy on them any more. Hamnet Thyssen hoped he couldn't, anyhow.