Beyong the Gap

man gaped, discovering some things gold couldn't dissolve. 'You are a barbarian!' he burst out.

Count Hamnet bowed. 'At your service. And if you keep wasting my time and fraying my temper, I will be more at your service than you ever wanted. I promise you that.' He shifted his feet as if getting ready to draw his sword.

Although the prosperous man also wore a blade, he seemed to have forgot about it. That was wise, or at least lucky; whatever else he was, he was no trained warrior, and wouldn't have lasted long against someone who was. 'Madman!' he blurted, and took himself elsewhere.

'You still know how to win friends, don't you?' There was Ulric Skakki again.

'Winning him as a friend is a dead loss, by God,' Hamnet answered. 'And you want to spend your time with people like him? Why?'

'Oh, he's no prize. There are plenty here in Nidaros who aren't. Don't get me wrong, Hamnet—I don't say anything different.' Ulric paused to snag a cup of wine from a pretty maidservant passing by with a tray. After sipping, he went on, 'But you can't tell me the Bizogots are any better, not at that level. People are people no matter where you find 'em, and a lot of them anywhere will be boastful, blustering saps.'

Did his eyes travel to Trasamund? Or, instead of following Ulric's, did Hamnet Thyssen's go to the jarl on their own? 'Trasamund s no sap,' Ham-net said. Whether the Bizogot was boastful and blustering was a different question, one he didn't try to answer.

'Mm, not all the time, I suppose,' Ulric Skakki said generously. 'But often enough to make him a pain in the posterior.'

'He knows the Rulers are dangerous. You know the Rulers are dangerous. Does his Majesty know the Rulers are dangerous?' Hamnet said.

'He will by the time he has to do something about them. I hope he will, anyhow,' Ulric said.

Hamnet turned away from him. 'Enjoy yourself, then.'

'That's what I'm here for.' Nothing fazed Ulric Skakki—or if anything did, he didn't let on.

After the unfortunate feast, Hamnet took leaving for the frozen plains much more seriously. He bought everything he could think of that might be useful—a second sword, knives, iron arrow points, wooden arrow shafts (lighter and straighter than the bone arrows the Bizogots commonly used), a spare helmet, poppy juice, horse trappings, a pillow, soap, insect powder (which probably wouldn't work, but you never could tell), and several sets of flint and steel for making sparks and starting fires. A man could find flint up in the Bizogot country, but not much steel went up there.

'You get no clothes. You get no feathers for fletching or bowstrings,' Liv said, accompanying him as he spent his silver.

'I don't see any need for those. You Bizogots make better cold-weather gear than anything I could buy here,' Count Hamnet answered. 'Sinew will do for bowstrings, and I can get feathers and fletching tools up on the plain. What I want here are things I can't get there.'

'Ah.' Liv nodded. 'This is wise.'

'Well, I hope so.' Hamnet sometimes fancied his own cleverness. Usually it turned and bit him when he did.

'On some of these things, you could also turn a fine profit,' the Bizogot woman said.

'I'm not going up there to be a trader,' Hamnet told her. 'If the Rulers don't come, maybe I'll trade what I don't need, but that's not why I'm bringing it.' If the Rulers don't come, I'll look like an idiot. If they don't come, I'll feel like an idiot, too.

'You should have things to trade. It will help you live among us,' Liv said seriously. 'You ride well and you fight well, but you have no practice herding musk oxen or mammoths. Sooner or later, you need to learn.'

'Yes, I suppose so,' Hamnet said with no great enthusiasm. She was right; he couldn't lie around waiting for a war that might not come and eating what the rest of the clan gave him. He wouldn't be a guest now—he would be one of them. And the Bizogots didn't have enough to spare for idle hands. Children worked at whatever they were big enough to try. Men and women who got too old to work—not that many lived so long up there— went out on the plains to die a cold but mostly merciful death. It wasn't cruelty; it was a harshness the land imposed.

'Not many Raumsdalians would be able to do it,' Liv said. 'You, though—once you learn, I think you'll do as well as if your hair weren't dark.'

'Thank you so much,' he said. Many Raumsdalians sneered at the Bizogots because they were so fair—though not many Raumsdalian men, from all Hamnet Thyssen had seen, sneered at Bizogot women. Amusing to find the mammoth-herders looking down their noses at their southern neighbors.

Most of the time, Liv recognized his irony for what it was. She took him seriously here. 'I mean it,' she assured him. 'You can do the work. Ulric Skakki, I think, could do the work—but he would rather find ways to get out of it instead. The rest of the Raumsdalians who traveled with us? The ones I've seen here?' She shook her head.

'Each cat his own rat,' Hamnet said. 'Up in the north, everyone has to be able to do everything, near enough. You said that yourself. Here, we pick one thing and get good at it. That leaves a lot of us not so good at other things. It's the price we pay.'

'If the Rulers come this far. . .' Liv said.

'If the Rulers come this far, they'll see that some of us make good soldiers, too,' Count Hamnet said.

'I hope so.' Liv didn't sound convinced. 'From what I saw of Jesper Fletti and the other Raumsdalian soldiers who came north, though . . .' Her voice trailed away again.

'No, no, no, no.' Hamnet Thyssen shook his head. 'Don't judge our soldiers by them. They're imperial guards. Part of their job is to look pretty while they take care of Sigvat. They can fight some, or they'd be useless. But they have to be impressive while they're doing it. Most soldiers don't bother with that nonsense.'

'I hope so,' Liv repeated, still seeming dubious.

'Look at it like this,' Hamnet said. 'Never mind the Rulers. If all our soldiers were like the ones you saw, who'd stop the Bizogots from overrunning the Empire?'

Liv grunted thoughtfully, the way a man would. She squeezed his hand. 'Fair enough. You have a point. I always thought it was because the southern Bizogots were too weak and puny to be worth much themselves, but your soldiers have to be able to fight, too. Do you think they'll be able to fight warriors who ride mammoths?'

It was Hamnet's turn to grunt. 'I don't know,' he admitted. 'The Bizogots will have to worry about that, too.'

'At least we know mammoths,' Liv said.

Hamnet Thyssen started going on, in Raumsdalian, about two Bizogots and two mammoths gossiping about the clan that lived next door to theirs. For a little while, Liv didn't understand what he was doing. When she did get it, she was affronted at first. Then, in spite of herself, she started to giggle. 'I didn't mean we know them like that,' she said.

In the voice of one of the mammoths—a snooty one—Hamnet said, 'Well, we don't say we know Bizogots like that, either.' He made an indignant gesture with his arm, as if it were a trunk. Giggling still, Liv hit him. It was a most successful shopping trip.

It was snowing when Count Hamnet and Liv and Trasamund set out from the imperial palace. That seemed fitting to Hamnet. It also seemed fitting to Trasamund, who said, 'Now we go back to a land with proper weather, by God.'

'If you say so, your Ferocity.' Hamnet didn't feel like arguing with him.

One of the stablemen said, 'Good fortune go with you, your Grace.'

'Why, thank you, Tyrkir.' Hamnet Thyssen was surprised and touched. 'I thought everybody here was glad to get rid of me.'

'Oh, no.' Tyrkir shook his head. 'You know how to take care of a horse, and you always treat us like people when you come to the stables. We aren't just—things that can talk, not to you. Not like some I could name.'

Another attendant hissed at him. He left it there. Hamnet found himself wondering as he rode off. Was Tyrkir talking about the Emperor like that? He couldn't very well ask, but it made for an interesting question all the same.

'Nidaros is a fine place to visit. Nidaros is a wonderful place to visit, in fact,' Trasamund said as they rode out,