Beyong the Gap

Besides, do you want Trasamund for your overlord? I mean . . .' He rolled his eyes.

But Count Hamnet refused to back down. 'Better Trasamund than Sigvat,' he said. 'Trasamund doesn't pull his head into his shell and sleep through the winter at the bottom of a pond the way the Emperor does.'

Ulric Skakki looked alarmed, not because he hadn't told the truth but because he'd told it too loud. 'Keep your voice down, or you won't have the chance to go north!'

'Why not?' Count Hamnet said. 'His Majesty should be as glad to get rid of me as I am to go, and that's saying a lot.'

He got only a shrug from Ulric, as if to say, On your head be it. The foxy-faced man asked, 'And how do you think Trasamund will like having you for a subject?'

'I haven't talked with him yet,' Hamnet answered with a shrug. 'He put up with me all the way through the Gap and past it. He ought to be able to stand me from here on out. It's not as if I'm likely to try to take the jarl's job away from him.'

'If you could get the Bizogots to listen to you, you'd do it better.' Ulric Skakki held up a hand. 'I know. I know. Nobody can get the Bizogots to listen to him. That's one more reason what you're doing is madness.'

Count Hamnet looked at him—looked through him, really. 'I have two questions for you. Are the Rulers the biggest trouble we have, or is something else?' He folded his arms across his chest and waited.

Ulric let out a snort of his own, but he answered, 'Well, the Rulers are. I don't think there's any way around that.'

'All right. Very good, in fact.' Hamnet Thyssen clapped his hands in mocking applause. Ulric looked more exasperated than ever. Ignoring his sour expression, Hamnet went on, 'If the Rulers are the worst trouble we have, would you rather do something about them or do nothing about them?'

Ulric Skakki opened his mouth, closed it, then opened it again, but still didn't speak for some little while. At last, he managed, 'That's not fair.'

'Fine. Have it your way. But why shouldn't I have it my way, too?' Hamnet said.

'Because you won't do what you think you will?' Ulric suggested.

'Fine,' Count Hamnet repeated. 'But I'll do something. I want to do something. I need to do something. If you want to do nothing, that's your business.'

'And you'll be laying your pretty little Bizogot—except she's not so little, is she?—in the meantime,' Ulric jeered. Hamnet Thyssen swung on him. The next thing Hamnet knew, he was flying through the air upside down. He hit the stone floor on his back, hard. Ulric Skakki wasn't even breathing hard. 'You all right?' he asked. 'You rushed me a little there.'

Count Hamnet needed several heartbeats to take stock of himself. His right wrist was sore. So was the back of his head, which had also thumped the floor. 'I... think so,' he said slowly as he climbed to his feet. 'What did you do there? Can you teach it to me?'

'And spoil my air of mystery?' Ulric said archly.

Before either of them could say anything more, a servant stuck his head into the room. 'What happened?' the man asked. 'It sounded like the castle was falling down.'

'Oh, I dropped my winecup.' Ulric's voice was bland as butter without salt. 'It was empty, so I didn't even make a mess.'

'Your winecup?' The servant thought he was lying or crazy or both. The man was right, too, but Ulric wouldn't let him prove it. The adventurer just nodded and smiled. The servant looked at Hamnet Thyssen, then quickly looked away. Hamnet's expression was probably terrifying. Thwarted, the man withdrew. Ulric Skakki winked. 'Where were we, O winecup of mine?'

'Oh, shut up,' Hamnet muttered. He gathered himself. Standing on his dignity wasn't easy, not when he'd just been flipped and thrown. 'Will you teach me that trick?'

'Come at me again and you'll learn more about it than you ever wanted to know,' Ulric Skakki answered.

'Keep my woman out of your mouth, then.' Hamnet set a hand on his swordhilt. 'And don't even start to make the joke that's in your filthy mind.'

'You can't prove it,' Ulric said. He didn't make the joke, so Hamnet didn't have to try.

Eyvind Torfinn was even more surprised and even more dismayed to learn Count Hamnet intended to go north with Trasamund and Liv than Ulric Skakki had been. What Gudrid thought, Hamnet didn't inquire.

No matter what she thought, Eyvind Torfinn arranged a gathering of his own to see Hamnet and Liv and Trasamund off to the Bizogot country. That he was able to arrange it left Hamnet impressed. Earl Eyvind was more his own man than Gudrid's former husband had imagined before setting off for the north with him.

'Are you sure we should come here?' Liv asked as she and Count Hamnet rode up to Eyvind's large, rambling home. 'Will that woman poison the food? Or will hired murderers greet us when we go in?'

'I doubt it,' Hamnet answered. 'She hasn't tried to murder me—that I know of—since she left me. And I expect she'll put up with you. She knows you're dangerous, and she knows me well enough to fear my revenge.'

'Ah.' Liv nodded. That, she understood.

Like all entrances in Nidaros, Earl Eyvind's faced south. The bulk of the large home shielded Hamnet Thyssen and Liv from the Breath of God. Even so, the knocker had frozen to the door. Hamnet had to tug on it to free it.

Eyvind Torfinn opened the door himself—no hired bravos. 'Your Grace,' he said to Hamnet, and then, to Liv, 'My lady.' He remained polite to her. Maybe Gudrid hadn't told him everything that happened at the reception. Just as well if she hasn't, Hamnet thought.

'Your Splendor,' he and Liv said together. They smiled at each other, the way people will when they do that.

'Come in, come in,' Eyvind Torfinn said. 'You are both welcome here ... in spite of your foolishness, your Grace.'

'I thank you,' Hamnet Thyssen answered. 'I don't look at it as foolishness, you know.'

'Yes, I do,' the older man told him. 'It makes you the only one in Nidaros who doesn't.'

Liv squeezed Count Hamnet's hand. 'No, your Splendor, it doesn't,' she said firmly in her new, slow, precise Raumsdalian.

'I stand corrected, my lady.' Earl Eyvind bowed to her. He bowed more readily than he would have before setting out for the Gap and the lands beyond the Glacier; he'd lost most of the comfortable paunch he'd carried then. Hamnet guessed he would get it back soon enough, but he hadn't yet. As he straightened, he went on, 'I should have said, the only Raumsdalian in Nidaros who doesn't.'

'Oh, there must be some sot in a gutter somewhere who hasn't heard the news,' Hamnet said with a wry smile.

'You make light of it, but you shouldn't.' Eyvind's smile was just as sour. 'Well, come along, come along. We will celebrate what you have done and hope you may yet do more in days to come if you return to your senses.'

'I'm not dead yet. I don't plan on dying any time soon, either,' Hamnet Thyssen said in some annoyance. 'By God, I'm doing what I think is right.'

Trasamund was already in Eyvind Torfinn's reception hall, drinking wine and gnawing on a leg cut from a roast goose. His belly was thicker than it had been before he got down to the Empire. He enjoyed the good things of life when he could get them. He sent Hamnet Thyssen something more than a wave and less than a salute. 'You are a brave man,' he boomed to Count Hamnet. 'To put yourself in my hands, you must be.'

'I'm going north anyway,' the Raumsdalian nobleman answered. Liv smiled. Trasamund laughed. Audun Gilli watched in wide-eyed fascination. Ulric Skakki's face was unreadable; he was better at keeping it that way than anyone else Hamnet had ever seen. Jesper Fletti plainly thought Hamnet had lost his mind—but, with a cup of wine in one hand and a mutton rib in the other, he didn't seem to care much. If he hadn't gone north, he never would have been able to get an invitation to Eyvind Torfinn's home.

As for Gudrid .. . She had on almost as little as she did at Sigvat Us ill-fated fete. Was she reminding Hamnet of what he would be missing?—not just her, but also a city such as Nidaros, where there were dressmakers who turned out gowns like the one she was almost wearing.