Beyong the Gap

attention to her husband as she could. Seeing him talking with Liv, though, drew her notice—and her ire.

'Deciduous and evergreen trees,' Eyvind replied in Raumsdalian.

'What about them?' Gudrid still sounded suspicious.

'Why there are such things, why they're different, and how one might go about finding out through sorcery.'

His wife stared at him. 'You're joking.'

'No. Why would I be?' Eyvind Torfinn sounded confused.

'Because if a man talks to a woman, only a sap talks about trees.' Gudrid rode down the path ahead of Eyvind and Liv and Hamnet Thyssen.

'What was that all about?' Liv asked. 'She talked too fast for me to follow much.'

'You're lucky,' Hamnet said.

'My wife has a short temper sometimes,' Eyvind Torfinn said. 'Once in a while, she lets it get away from her.'

Hamnet Thyssen coughed a couple of times, in lieu of snorting or breaking into wild—into mad—laughter. What Earl Eyvind said was true. And the Glacier was chilly, and the sun warm, and this forest rather wide. Sometimes understatement was the most effective way to lie—even to yourself.

Did Eyvind know—did he even suspect—she was no more faithful to him than she had been to Hamnet? I can't very well ask, Hamnet thought. This wasn't the first time he'd wondered, though—far from it.

Usually, the man was the one who wandered, and also the one who bristled if the woman so much as looked at anybody else. Count Hamnet did laugh then, even if not in the gales he'd almost loosed a moment before. Trust Gudrid to do things backwards.

And then she screamed, and he forgot about his musings.

He didn't need to hear the short-faced bear's growling roar to guess what was wrong. The great bears haunted these northern woods, and often didn't sleep through the winter. A horse—and a woman—would be just what a hungry bear was looking for.

Gudrid screamed again. No, this time it was more of a shriek. She'd bragged about what an archer she was, but that seemed forgot now—or maybe she never had a chance to string and draw her bow.

Hamnet Thyssen yelled, too, as he rode toward her. He drew his sword— no time for him to string his bow, either. Maybe he could distract the bear, keep it from attacking. ... He shouted once more, and laughed while he did. The world turned upside down again. More often than not, he would have been happy to see Gudrid dead. And here he was, riding to her rescue. If that wasn't insane, what was?

The short-faced bear had Gudrid's horse down. If the horse had tried to run, it didn't have much luck. Short- faced bears had longer legs than grizzlies and ordinary black bruins. A horse with a running start might escape them. But if the bear was already charging and the horse just ambling along, the bear could—and this bear had— outrun its intended prey before the horse got up to speed.

When the horse went over, Gudrid had jumped or been thrown clear. But she wasn't running. Was she paralyzed with fear, or had she hurt herself? Hamnet couldn't begin to guess. It hardly mattered. She was easier to kill than a kicking, thrashing horse. Before long, the bear would figure that out.

Hamnet Thyssen shouted at the top of his lungs. The short-faced bear ignored him. It started eating the horse before the other animal was even dead. If dinner kicked and squirmed and screamed, so what? The bear's muzzle was crimson almost to the eyes. How close to starving was it?

And if it did pay attention to Hamnet and his onrushing horse, what would it do? Run off? He hoped so. Suppose it didn't. Suppose it went for his horse—and him—instead. What would he do then? Think of something fast, he told himself. He'd be on the bear in another few heartbeats.

An arrow hissed past his head—someone had managed to string his bow, or perhaps was traveling with it strung. The shaft thudded into the short-faced bear's hindquarters. That got the beast's attention, where Ham-net's shout hadn't. The bear jumped and reared and roared again, this time in pain and surprise rather than in fury.

As it reared, he swung his sword. The stroke wasn't perfect. He'd intended to strike its muzzle and badly wound it, and all he managed to do was shear off the tip of one ear. Then his horse thundered past. He tugged hard on the reins and guided the horse around with pressure from his knees and thighs. If he had to make another pass at the bear, he would.

He didn't. Two wounds at opposite ends were more than enough for the animal. With a final snarl, it limped off into the forest again. It left a trail of blood behind. Had Hamnet wanted to hunt it down, he would have had an easy time tracking it. He was content to let it go.

'Bravely done!' Ulric Skakki called. He had an arrow nocked and ready to shoot, so Hamnet supposed he'd let fly with the first one. He didn't shoot again as the bear withdrew; like Hamnet, he thought driving it off counted for more than killing it. With a wry grin, he added, 'Foolhardy, maybe, but bravely done.'

Looking back on things, Hamnet thought he was foolhardy, too. But he'd got away with it. 'Are you all right?' he called to Gudrid.

'That horrible monster didn't eat me, so I'm a lot better than I might be. I hurt my ankle when I went off the horse, though.' She looked up at him from the snow. 'You're the last person I expected to come riding up and save me.'

The same thing had gone through his mind while he was booting his horse forward. Shrugging, he said, 'I would have done it for anyone. I would have done it for the horse, come to that.'

'Nice to know where I stand—er, sprawl,' Gudrid said. 'What's worse is, I believe you.'

'Do you think the ankle's broken or sprained or just twisted?' Hamnet asked.

'I don't know. I think it would hurt more if it were broken, but I never broke one before, so how can I be sure?' Gudrid eyed him again. 'Do you want to feel it and find out? God knows you've wanted to get your hands on me again for long enough now.'

'Around your neck, maybe,' Hamnet Thyssen said grimly. 'Around your ankle? No, thanks. Somebody else can check.' The poor horse still writhed feebly. He dismounted, bent beside it, and cut its throat—the last favor he could give it. The horse let out a sigh that sounded amazingly human and died.

Trasamund rode up. He glanced at the horse. 'Well, the bear didn't get a whole lot,' he said. 'It can feed us now.' Bizogots didn't waste much— didn't waste anything if they could help it. The jarl pointed to Gudrid. 'How bad is she hurt?'

'I don't know,' Hamnet answered. 'Enough so she couldn't run, anyhow. Do you want to see if that ankle's broken?'

'Well, why not?' Trasamund leered. The way he prodded and tugged at Gudrid's ankle was all business, though. She gasped a couple of times, but she didn't scream or burst into tears or even swear. Trasamund looked up from his work. 'I think it's sound, but she should lie on her back for a while when she—Mmpf!' Gudrid threw a snowball in his face.

'Serves you right, you nasty man,' she said. Trasamund scrabbled at himself. Even after he got rid of some of the snow, he still looked like a frozen ghost.

Hamnet Thyssen turned away so neither Gudrid nor Trasamund would see him laugh. He still had little use for his former wife. He didn't think he ever would. But she had a point—that snowball did serve Trasamund right.

When they came out of the northern forests, the sun was shining brightly. The weather wasn't warm, not by Hamnet s standards, but it was above freezing. Some of the snow on the ground had turned to slush. Some had even melted, exposing patches of bare black earth. They weren't on the Great North Road, but somewhere to the west of it.

Liv laughed out loud. She threw back her hood to let the sun shine on her head. 'A thaw in wintertime!' she said. 'Who would believe that up in Three Tusk country? Why, the Breath of God hardly blows at all here.'

'When it blows, it can blow hard,' Hamnet said. Liv laughed again, right in his face. He held up a hand. 'Oh, it can. Believe me—it can. Not the way it will in your country at the worst, but bad enough. The difference is, it doesn't blow all the time here. This is about as far north as south winds can reach during the winter.'

'South winds in the winter?' A smile bright as the sun, and much warmer, still lit Liv's face. It might have been