Beyong the Gap

Summer up in the Bizogot country was a brief and fragile flower, one that bloomed late and withered early. Even in and around Nidaros, the Breath of God could blight crops in almost any month of the year. Knowing all that, Hamnet was still shocked by how fast the weather turned—and turned on the travelers—here beyond the Glacier.

Birds streaming south were the first warning. Only a few days after they fled, the earliest snow flurries dappled the plain. The sun came out again and melted the snow, but more fell a couple of days after that. The sun came out once more. This time, though, the snow stuck longer. Hamnet Thyssen could see his breath even at noon. Something in the sky had changed. Leaden was too strong a word, but he could tell at a glance it would not be warm again for a long time.

Trasamund took snow in stride. But even he kept looking north. 'We want to get as far as we can before the first blizzard catches us,' he said.

'Blizzards!' Gudrid made it into a curse—blizzards did curse this northern country. 'Why did I ever decide to come here?'

To drive me mad, Hamnet Thyssen thought. That was not mere sarcasm; he was all too sure he had the right of it. But she'd finally had more discomfort and danger than even tormenting him was worth. She should have thought of that sooner. They were still on the far side of the Gap. She might need to go through quite a bit more before they got back to the Bizogot country, let alone anything resembling civilization.

The travelers had to stop to let a herd of buffalo pass in front of them. As Trasamund had said back in Sigvat's chambers, these were bigger beasts than the ones that roamed the prairies of the Raumsdalian Empire. They were a lighter brown than their—cousins?—on the other side of the Glacier. And their horns, at least three times as long as those of the animals Hamnet Thyssen knew, swept out and forward instead of curling up.

'We don't want to spook them,' Ulric Skakki said. His foxy features twisted in distaste. 'That could be ... unpleasant.'

'They'd squash us flatter than a herd of mammoths could,' Trasamund said. 'There are a lot more of them.'

Packs of wolves trotted along with the buffalo, prowling after stragglers. Again as Trasamund had said, the wolves on this side of the Glacier were smaller than dire wolves. But they seemed quicker and more agile, like woods wolves back home. Hamnet Thyssen also saw a ... a tiger, the Rulers had called it. It might be able to pull down a buffalo all by itself. But it moved aside when the wolves came too close. It could kill several of them, without a doubt. Just as certainly, it was no match for a pack.

An hour and a half went by before the last stragglers from the buffalo herd ambled past. 'Well,' Eyvind Torfinn remarked, 'we have all the dung we need—or we would il it were dry.'

Trasamund didn't see the joke. 'Plenty more that's been on the ground for a while.' When it came to survival, he was altogether singleminded.

And he was right. The travelers had no trouble finding fuel for the evening's fire. As usual, they set out sentries all around. Maybe Roypar's wasn't the only band of Rulers in this part of the plain. Maybe other kinds of men lived around here, too. Strangers couldn't be sure. Better to take no chances.

One of the guardsmen who'd come north with Jesper Fletti and Gudrid shook Hamnet Thyssen awake in the middle of the night. 'Sorry, your Grace,' the man murmured, 'but I'm glad to get some sleep myself.'

'It's all right,' Hamnet said around a yawn. 'Well, it's not all right, but it's necessary.' He yawned again, and climbed to his feet to make sure he didn't go back to sleep. He went out and took a position a bowshot away from the fire. It was cool out there, but not really cold; they seemed to be between storms.

But another one was coming. The gibbous moon wore a halo. That meant rain or snow down on the other side of the Glacier; he had no reason to think things worked differently here. And the air smelled and tasted damp. Tomorrow afternoon, maybe tomorrow night. . . That was his guess.

Off in the distance, a wolf howled, and then another and another and another, till it sounded as if a chorus of demons were howling at the haloed moon. These wolves had voices higher and shriller than those of the dire wolves he was used to, which to his ear only made them all the more unearthly. I suppose they're wolves, he thought uneasily. With only his ears to guide him, he couldn't prove they weren't demons. But he'd seen wolves trailing the long-horned buffalo, and he hadn't seen any demons—or he couldn't prove he had, anyhow.

The chorus of yowls and yips and howls quieted, then picked up again, even louder and wilder than before. It went on and on. Hamnet Thyssen looked back toward his comrades. How anyone could sleep through that hellish racket was beyond him, but they seemed to have no trouble.

Once he thought he heard an owl through the wolves' din. That really alarmed him, where the wolves only annoyed him. The wolves might possibly be demons, but even if they were he had no reason to think they were more interested in the travelers from the far side of the Glacier than in, say, the Rulers. A seeming owl, though, might be Samoth the wizard in owl's plumage flying out after the travelers on discovering his fetish had failed.

Hamnet Thyssen peered into the night, looking now this way, now that. Try as he would, he couldn't spot the owl, if owl it was. He muttered to himself, wondering what that meant. Was it just an owl that called once and then fell silent? Or was it Samoth mocking him, mocking all the travelers, and trying to spook him?

If it was the wizard, he was doing a good job. Hamnet chuckled mirthlessly. Even if it wasn't the wizard, he was still doing a good job.

Because Count Hamnet was searching for the owl that might or might not have been there, he didn't notice soft footsteps behind him till they drew very close. Then he whirled, hand flashing to the hilt of his sword. 'Who the—?' he blurted, and then went on, 'Oh, it's you.' He felt foolish.

'Yes, it's me,' Liv said quietly. 'I'm sorry. I didn't mean to startle you.'

'It's all right,' Hamnet said. 'You shouldn't have startled me. I should have heard you coming sooner.' Now he was angry at himself, not at the Bizogot shaman.

'The wolves woke me.' She pointed back toward the fire, which had died back to embers. 'The others are snoring away. I don't know how they do it.'

'I was thinking the same thing not long ago,' Count Hamnet said. 'Did you hear the owl, too?'

Liv nodded. 'I hope it was only an owl.' Hamnet almost told her that thought matched his, too, but judged her too likely to know it already. She went on, 'I think it was. But even if it wasn't, we've made Samoth work harder than he expected to. Showing him we're not to be despised can't hurt.'

'I hadn't looked at it that way,' Hamnet said. 'Of course, he'll despise us anyway. We aren't of the Rulers, so how can he help it?'

'They make much of themselves, sure enough.' Liv's voice was troubled. 'I hope they don't have good reason for their bragging and boasting and preening.'

'From what I've seen, people who brag a lot are usually trying to convince themselves even more than other people,' Hamnet said.

'Yes, that's so. It's one of the things shamans find out about people.' Liv cocked her head to one side. 'How did you come to see it?'

'By getting to be as old as I am and keeping my eyes open,' Hamnet answered with a shrug. 'I don't know what else to tell you.'

'Plenty of people older than you who never notice such things,' the Bizogot shaman said.

Hamnet Thyssen shrugged. 'Plenty of people are fools.' He laughed harshly. 'I'm a fool, too, but not that particular way. You can be a fool all kinds of different ways.'

'How are you a fool?' Liv's voice was serious; she really meant the question.

But Hamnet Thyssen only laughed some more, on an even more bitter note than before. 'How do you think? She's asleep over there by the fire.'

Liv glanced back toward the rest of the travelers. 'How long since the two of you parted?'

'Sometimes it seems like a thousand years. Sometimes it seems as if it happened this afternoon,' he said. 'Sometimes it seems like both at once. It's worst then.'

'She is . ..' Liv paused, looking for words. ''If she were a Bizogot, she wouldn't last long. You Raumsdalians have more room for useless people than we do.'

'Gudrid's not useless.' Hamnet Thyssen's mouth twisted. 'Ask Eyvind Torfinn if you think I'm wrong. Ask