Beyong the Gap

with a smile like a cat's that has fallen into a pitcher of cream. 'I wouldn't want to have to stay here, though.'

'Neither would I,' Hamnet Thyssen said.

'Plainly not, or you wouldn't come with me,' the jarl said.

Count Hamnet shook his head. 'I've always thought so. Too many people crowded together. Too many ambitious people crowded together. Whenever I could stay away from the place, I would. Sometimes you can't help it, though.'

'It's not just the people crowded together. It's all the things crowded together, too,' Liv said. 'The houses and the shops and everything in the shops . . .' Her shiver had nothing to do with the weather. 'It's marvelous, I suppose, but I'd go mad if I stayed here much longer.'

As if to prove her point, they got stuck behind a wagon that had overturned on the icy road, spilling sacks of beans or barley or something of the sort. The driver tried to keep people from darting in and stealing the sacks, but some would distract him while others did the taking.

'We Bizogots don't steal inside the clan,' Trasamund said loftily.

'Why do these people do it?' Liv asked.

'Maybe to sell what they grab. More likely because they're hungry and they need something to eat,' Hamnet answered.

'Here, some have too much and many have not enough. That is not good,' Liv said. 'Among the Bizogots, if someone goes hungry, it's because everyone in the clan goes hungry. That way is better, I think.'

'Maybe so,' Hamnet said. 'Things are more equal among you—you're right. But you've seen we can do things you can't.'

'Oh, yes.' The shaman nodded. 'We talked about the price you pay for being able to do them. This is another part of that price, wouldn't you say?'

Although Hamnet Thyssen hadn't thought of it like that, he found himself nodding, too. 'Yes, I'd have to say it is.'

'Let's turn around and take another road,' Trasamund said. 'Otherwise, we'll be here till they steal the wheels off that poor fool's wagon and the tail off his horse.'

'I can get us to the north gate on side streets, I think,' Hamnet said. 'We'll have to do some zigzagging, but we would anyway.' A boulevard that ran straight north would have given the Breath of God a running start. Raumsdalian winters were milder—or at least less regularly frigid—than the ones the Three Tusk clan knew, but people still had to do all they could to fight the cold.

Hamnet would have embarrassed himself if he’d got lost in the maze of lanes and alleys that sprouted from the main road. He knew more than a little relief when he got back onto it. With luck, neither of the Bizogots with him noticed.

If it was snowing here, what was it like up by the Glacier'! Do I really want to know? he wondered. He shrugged. Ulric Skakki had gone that way, and gone by himself, without the Bizogots' knowing. What he can do, I can do, by God. Hamnet Thyssen muttered under his breath. He still wished Ulric were coming along. The adventurer was a good man to have beside you when you ran into trouble—or when it ran into you.

He pointed. 'There's the gate.'

'So it is.' Trasamund nodded in satisfaction. 'On the way home at last. Even getting out of Nidaros, getting into the countryside here, will feel like an escape. It's not the plains, but I won't feel closed in all the time, either, the way I do now.'

'Closed in. Yes, by God!' Liv said. 'When you leave the tents, there's a whole big world around you, and you can see it. When you leave a house, what do you see? More walls!' She shuddered. 'It's like being tied up, like being caged.'

'All what you're used to,' Hamnet Thyssen said. 'I told you before—out on your plains, sometimes I feel as if there's too much nothing around me.' He mimed curling up into a little ball.

The gate guards asked their names. When the sergeant heard them, he said, 'Oh, you're that lot. Yes, you can go through. By all we've heard, it's good riddance to the lot of you.'

'We love you, too,' Hamnet said mildly. He had offended Sigvat, then. Well, too bad. And as a matter of fact, it was too bad. Trasamund said something even more unflattering in the Bizogot language. Luckily, none of the guards understood him.

Liv really did sigh with relief when they put the gray stone walls of Nidaros behind them. 'Free!' she said, and threw her arms wide. Her horse twitched its ears, doubtless wondering why its rider was acting so strange.

Hamnet Thyssen wondered why two horsemen—tough-looking rogues, he thought, peering at them through the swirling snow—sat waiting by the side of the Great North Road. Was Sigvat angry enough to set bravos on him to make sure he didn't get to the Bizogot country? He wouldn't have thought so, but. . . When he got a little closer, his jaw dropped. 'Ulric!' he said. 'Audun! What the demon are you doing here?'

XX

Ulric Skakki tilted back his head so he could look down his long, straight nose at Hamnet. 'You're more persuasive than you have any business being, Thyssen,' he said severely. 'If you set your mind to it, you could probably sell snow to the Bizogots.'

'I don't need to sell it.' Hamnet held out a mittened hand till a few flakes fell on it. 'It's right here. And I'm glad to see you, even if I didn't think I'd put any horse traders out of business.' He sketched a salute to the wizard. 'I'm glad to see you, too, Audun—you'd best believe I am. What made you decide to come?'

Audun Gilli's nondescript features lit up when anyone paid attention to him. 'I thank you, your Grace. What made me decide to come? Ulric here kidnapped me.'

For a moment, Count Hamnet believed him. Then Ulric Skakki laughed. 'Well, it's nice to know I'm innocent of something, anyway. We got to talking after Eyvind Torfinn’s gruesome bash, and we decided we'd do better going north than staying here after all. Yes, curse you, you were right. There—I've said it. Now how much more snow are you going to sell me?'

'You will remember that I am the jarl of the Three Tusk clan?' Trasamund thumped his chest with his right fist and glowered in turn at Ulric and Audun.

'Yes, your Ferocity,' Audun said. He wasn't likely to raise that kind of trouble any which way.

Ulric pointed toward Hamnet Thyssen. 'Why aren't you thundering at him?'

'He already understands,' Trasamund answered. 'Do you?'

'I don't want to be jarl. I have trouble enough telling myself what to do,' Ulric Skakki answered. 'You're welcome to the job, as far as I'm concerned.'

'I did not think you wanted to lead my clan. You are no witling. You know they would not follow you.' Trasamund gave Ulric his fiercest stare. 'But when you are among my clansfolk, will you follow me? That is what I must know.'

Ulric thought hard before saying, 'Unless I think you're wrong enough about something to make a real mess of it.'

'That's not good enough,' the Bizogot said.

'You'd better take it,' Ulric Skakki advised. 'It's as much as you'll get, and a lot more than I'd give most people.'

Trasamund went right on looking fierce. Hamnet Thyssen could have told him that was the wrong way to go about intimidating Ulric. Luckily, Hamnet didn't need to tell him; he figured it out for himself. 'I would kill any Bizogot who was so insolent to me,' he snarled.

'Well, you're welcome to try,' Ulric Skakki said politely.

Trasamund muttered into his thick, curly beard. Then he booted his horse up the Great North Road. So did Liv. So did Count Hamnet and Audun Gilli. And so did Ulric Skakki. And if he had a smile on his face, he often had a smile on his face. He wasn't openly mocking Trasamund—not so the jarl could prove it, anyhow.

For the first hour or so, Trasamund rode as if trying to shake off pursuers. Then he seemed to decided Ulric really was on his side, or would be if he let him. He slowed down. That had to relieve his horse; the Bizogot was a big, beefy man, and couldn't have been easy to carry.