Beyong the Gap

'It takes a good deal of calculating,' Earl Eyvind allowed. 'And why? Well, people like to find out whatever they can. Haven't you seen that?'

'Didn't you come down to Nidaros, your Ferocity, because you knew Raumsdalians know more different kinds of strange things than you Bizogots do?' Hamnet Thyssen added.

Trasamund made a discontented noise down deep in his broad chest. He had said something like that, so he couldn't very well deny it. 'I meant you people know useful things, though,' he said. If he couldn't deny, he could deflect.

Count Hamnet looked over to Earl Eyvind. He thought the notion of a drunkards walk sounded silly, too, so he didn't know how to defend it. 'Knowledge is strange,' Eyvind Torfinn said. 'You never can be sure ahead of time what you may need. Someone who is going to a strange place will carry different tools on his belt. Should he not carry different tools in his head as well?'

Instead of answering him straight out, the jarl of the Three Tusk clan strode over to a sideboard and poured himself a goblet of mead. He drank it down in one heroic draught. Hamnet Thyssen suspected that was an answer of sorts.

When Ulric Skakki brought a wizard back to the palace, Count Hamnet's first thought was of the drunkard's walk Eyvind Torfinn had mentioned. The sorcerer's name was Audun Gilli. He didn't look or act drunk. He looked like a man drying out after a long binge instead—and not like a man happy to be drying out, either.

Count Hamnet recognized that look. He knew it better than he would have liked. He'd gone on a bender or two of his own as his troubles with Gudrid got worse. He'd been sober when he killed. That was something— not much, but something.

Of course, if he were drunk when he faced Gudrid's first lover (or the first one he caught, anyhow), the other man probably would have killed him. At the time, he would hardly have minded. Now he saw living on without her as revenge of sorts.

He also saw that Audun Gilli was in a bad way. He shouted for a palace servant. 'Bring this man a mug of sassafras tea,' he said, pointing to the wizard. 'No, bring him about three. By the time he gets to the bottom of the last one, he may be a bit better off.'

'Bring me the hair of the hound—sassafras tea be damned.' Audun Gilli's voice was a sorrowful whine.

The servant looked toward Hamnet Thyssen. 'Tea!' Hamnet snapped. The man bowed and hurried off. Audun Gilli's sigh said it was just one more defeat in a lifetime full of them. Count Hamnet paid no more attention to him—but then, how many people ever did? Hamnet rounded on Ulric Skakki. 'By God, Ulric! Which gutter did you drag him out of, and why?'

'Why? Because he'll do what we need, that's why,' Ulric Skakki answered. 'More to him than meets the eye.' He sounded very sure of himself. From what Hamnet remembered, Ulric always sounded sure of himself. That didn't mean he was always right, though he had trouble recognizing the difference.

'There could hardly be less to him than meets the eye,' Count Hamnet said with something between a sneer and a cry of despair. 'Look at him!'

He glared at Audun Gilli himself. The wizard flinched under that fierce stare. Audun was a small, weedy man, the sort who didn't stand out in a crowd. He had a long, weathered-looking face, a scraggly beard—brown go­ing gray—and a nose that was his largest but not best feature. The whites of his gray-blue eyes were yellowish and tracked with red. His hands trembled.

They were a wizard's hands but for the tremor; Hamnet Thyssen could not deny that. They had narrow palms and long, delicate fingers—perfect hands for the complex passes some spells required. A wizard with the shakes, though, was like a blind archer; he was more likely to be dangerous to his friends than to his foes.

The servant came in with three steaming mugs on a tray. He'd taken Hamnet literally, then. Good, Hamnet thought. He thrust a mug at Audun Gilli. 'Here. Drink!'

With a martyred sigh, the wizard obeyed. He did need more than one mug before Hamnet saw any improvement. He was on the third one before he seemed to see any improvement himself. 'I never thought I'd be warm inside again,' he murmured.

'Well, that proves he wasn't drinking mulled wine,' Hamnet said to Ul­ric Skakki. 'What was he drinking? Anything he could get his hands on, that's plain. And why was he drinking it by the bloody wagonload? And, since he was drinking wagonloads of anything he could get his hands on, what in God's name makes you think he's worth even a counterfeit copper as a wizard?'

'I don't do this all the time,' Audun Gilli protested feebly.

'Of course you don't. If you did, you would have been dead in the gutter where Ulric Skakki tripped over you, not just lying in it.' Count Hamnet rounded on Ulric. 'Now answer me—or else I'll throw him out on his worthless ear and take the cost of three cups of sassafras tea out of his worthless hide.'

'How can you take cost out of something worthless?' Audun asked, the first sign Hamnet Thyssen had that whatever he'd drunk hadn't curdled his wits for good.

'He's had a hard time,' Ulric Skakki said. 'If you'd had that hard a time, you would drink, too.'

Since Hamnet had drunk when times got hard for him, and since Ulric Skakki probably knew as much, denying that didn't seem a good idea. In­stead, Hamnet turned back to Audun Gilli. 'Well?' He made that more a challenge than a question.

'My wife burned down, and my house died in the fire,' the wizard said, a pretty good sign not all his wits were working the way they should have.

It was also a pretty good sign he did deserve some sympathy. 'When did this happen?' Count Hamnet asked, less roughly than before.

'Three years ago,' Audun Gilli answered.

Count Hamnet could feel his neck swelling. 'Easy, there,' Ulric Skakki said. 'When he dries out, he'll be fine. He's a student of sorceries from an­cient days, so he should be exactly the kind of wizard we want along if we find the Golden Shrine.'

'I'll bet he's a student of ancient sorceries,' Hamnet said. 'He's been pickled from then till now.'

'His Majesty sent me out to find a proper wizard. Me,' Ulric Skakki replied with a touch—or more than a touch—of hauteur. 'I say I've found him.'

'I say you couldn't find your arse with both hands if you think so,' Count Hamnet growled. They glared at each other.

Forgotten by both of them like a bone abandoned when two dogs go at each other, Audun Gilli stared at the mugs in which his sassafras tea had come. He chanted softly to himself. The language he used hadn't been spo­ ken since long before the Raumsdalian Empire rose, but Hamnet Thyssen didn't notice that. In his quarrel with Ulric Skakki, Hamnet Thyssen didn't notice the wizard at all.

Then two of the mugs started shouting at each other in high, squeaky voices that sounded like parodies of Ulric's and Hamnet s. It wasn't ventriloquism; the mugs suddenly sported faces too much like theirs. The less than flattered models both gaped. So did the third mug, which looked like a sorrowful ceramic version of Audun Gilli.

The wizard chanted again, and the mugs . . . were only mugs again. 'You see?' Ulric Skakki said triumphantly.

'I saw . . . something.' However little Count Hamnet wanted to, he had to admit it.

'He's a wizard. He's a good wizard. And,' Ulric went on pragmatically, 'he'll be better the longer he stays sober.'

'Who says he'll stay sober? We'll be drinking ale or beer or mead or fermented mammoth's milk as much as we can,' Hamnet said. 'Even runoff straight from the Glacier can give you a bloody flux. Have you ever been up in the Bizogot country, Ulric? Don't you know about that?'

'I've been there, all right. I know,' Ulric said. Count Hamnet wasn't sure he believed him till the other man added, 'We'll have to pick our way past the lands where a couple of clans range. They may remember me a little too well.'

That held the ring of truth. 'Why am I not surprised?' Hamnet Thyssen said. Ulric Skakki gave back a bow, as if at a compliment. Audun Gilli managed a wan smile when he saw it. Count Hamnet threw his hands in the air. When you knew you were going to lose a fight, sometimes the best thing you could do was give it up before it cost you more than you could afford to spend.