Beyong the Gap

'God, don't listen to this man!' Hamnet Thyssen exclaimed.

Ulric laughed. 'Can't say as I blame you. Not the finest supper I've ever got down. But swallowing anything is better than not.'

'Some people will certainly swallow anything,' Count Hamnet said.

That drew another laugh from Ulric Skakki. 'You're in a cheerful mood, aren't you, your Grace?' These days, he used Hamnet s title only for sardonic effect. They'd all traveled too far with one another for the formalities to matter any more.

'No.' Hamnet wasn't laughing. 'We've come an awfully long way. I'd hate to see us fall just short of getting back to ... to Trasamund's clan.' He almost said, Back to civilization. No matter how far he'd come, no matter what he'd seen, he wasn't about to confuse the way the Bizogots lived with civilization.

By Ulric Skakki's mischievous grin, he had a pretty good notion of what Count Hamnet didn't say. With his pointed nose and narrow, foxy eyes, he was good at sniffing his way past all kinds of deceptions and evasions. 'Better to have the Bizogots with us than against us,' he said, and Count Hamnet could hardly quarrel with that. Then, looking even more sly than usual, Ulric added, 'You've got one Bizogot on your side, all right.'

Hamnet refused to rise to the bait. 'You already teased me about that. If you do it over and over again, people will say you're boring.'

'People? What do people know?' Ulric said. 'Or did you mean the Rulers? They know everything—and if you don't believe me, you can bloody well ask them.'

'I don't want to ask them anything. I hope I never see them again.' Ham-net Thyssen feared that was a forlorn hope.

'Now that you mention it, so do I.' But Ulric sounded no more hopeful than Hamnet. He looked to the east and to the west. The Glacier still loomed tall on both horizons, but a broad expanse of land lay between the two walls of ice—the Gap was widening out. Then Ulric Skakki stared south. 'I never want to see the Rulers again, no, but I wouldn't mind meeting a Bizogot besides our ferocious jarl and the admittedly charming Liv.'

'Neither would I,' Hamnet allowed. 'We're far enough south that we could any day now.'

'There is some small difference between could and will,' Ulric said. 'You may perhaps have noticed.'

'Why, no.' Hamnet tried to play the game of irony himself. 'Explain it to me, if you'd be so kind.'

One of Ulric's gingery eyebrows rose. 'I could say you're being difficult. I will say you're doing it on purpose.'

'Very neat,' Hamnet said with a mounted bow. 'You should be a scholar.'

'Thank you, but no,' Ulric Skakki said. 'No silver in it.'

'Oh, I don't know. Look at Earl Eyvind.' Hamnet Thyssen did look at him. Eyvind Torfinn was talking earnestly with Gudrid. For the moment, playing a subdued, demure wife seemed to suit her.

Ulric Skakki shook his head. 'Earl Eyvind had silver before he decided he wanted to be a scholar. He's a scholar in spite of his money, not because of it.'

'Well, not altogether,' Hamnet said. 'The silver he's got lets him do what he pleases. He wouldn't be able to buy his books and learn his lore without it.'

'I suppose so,' Ulric said. 'But he isn't the kind of scholar I had in mind, anyway. I meant the hole-and-corner kind, the ones who have to stuff a rag into the toe of their felt boots in wintertime because they can't afford to patch them. That sort is good enough to teach boys how to read and write and count, but not for much more.'

'Plenty of them around,' Count Hamnet agreed. 'They call themselves scholars, but I'm not sure how many other people do.'

Ulric Skakki surely said something in reply. Whatever it was, Count Hamnet didn't hear it. His eyes went to an owl flying past the travelers from out of the north, white and swift and strong. Samoth? Hamnet's heart pounded. No wizard himself, he couldn't tell. His gaze went to Liv. She noticed him no more than he'd heard Ulric. All her attention pursued the bird till it streaked out of sight to the south.

Only then did she turn in the saddle and look for him. Even before she spoke, he saw the relief lighting her fine features. 'Sometimes a white owl is only a white owl,' she called.

'A good thing, too,' Hamnet answered. They smiled at each other.

'Sometimes I think I don't know everything that's going on,' Ulric Skakki said in tones full of mock self- pity.

Count Hamnet reached out and set a consoling hand on his arm. 'Don't worry about it. Sometimes I don't think you know what's going on, either.'

'Thank you. Thank you so much,' Ulric said. Hamnet waved modestly.

On they went, farther and farther south. Another horse died, and another. They cut up the animals and ate them. The meat was strong-flavored and there wasn't a great deal of it; the horses had got very scrawny before finally failing.

'Do you think we'll make it?' Jesper Fletti asked Hamnet. The guards officer had never been up in the north before this journey. All things considered, he'd acquitted himself well enough. Hamnet Thyssen could ... almost forget that he'd come along to protect Gudrid.

'I think so,' Hamnet answered. 'We can't be far from outriders from the Three Tusk clan. I would have guessed we'd run into them already, truth to tell.' That they hadn't worried him, though he didn't say so. Had some disaster befallen Trasamund's clan while the jarl journeyed beyond the Glacier? That was the worst kind of bad news he could imagine.

The words were hardly out of his mouth, the thought hardly through his head, before Trasamund let out a bellow that might have come from the throat of a bull musk ox. That dot on the southern horizon was a mounted man, and he was riding toward them.

XV

Seeing a new face, hearing a new voice, felt strange to Count Hamnet. The Rulers hardly counted. Most of them hadn't spoken the Bizogot language, and the ones who did showed themselves to be outright enemies. Hilderic wasn't. He and Trasamund kissed each other on both cheeks in the usual greeting of Bizogots who hadn't seen each other for a longtime.

'By God, your Ferocity!' Hilderic said. 'By God! It's good to see you! You've been gone a long time. Some people were starting to wonder if you'd ever come back.'

'Oh, they were, were they?' the jarl said. 'I'm not so easy to get rid of as all that, and they'd best believe I'm not. Who are these fools who have no faith in Trasamund?'

Hilderic suffered a sudden coughing fit. 'Uh, that is ... Well. . . You see . . .'

Trasamund laughed. 'All right. Never mind. You don't need to tell me. I can understand that you don't want a name as a snitch. But I'll find out sooner or later—have no fear of that. And when I do, I'll make those doubters pay.' He thumped his chest with a mittened fist. 'Yes, / will take care of them. You don't need to worry about it.'

'May it be as you say, your Ferocity,' Hilderic replied. Hamnet Thyssen and Ulric Skakki exchanged covert smiles. Trasamund always saw himself as larger than life. Because he did, he could make other people see him the same way most of the time. Hilderic, though plainly a seasoned man, certainly did.

Liv worried less about how important other people thought she was and more about things that really mattered. 'Where is the camp you rode out of, Hilderic?' she asked. 'We've traveled long and hard. We aren't at the end of our tether, but we aren't far from it, either.'

'It's not far, lady,' Hilderic said. Then he stopped and blinked. The face of every traveler who understood the Bizogot language must have lit up. Hamnet Thyssen knew how happy he was. Hilderic went on, 'The guesting will be good, too. The herds have done well through the summer and into fall.'

'Lead on!' Trasamund boomed.

Hamnet soon found that something he already knew remained true— what a Bizogot meant by not far was different from what a Raumsdalian would have meant. But they did reach the encampment just before darkness fell. Hamnet wondered whether he'd ever seen anything more beautiful than