Beyong the Gap

If only he'd figured that out with Gudrid. . . .

Earl Eyvind Torfinn was a friendly man. As Raumsdalian nobles were supposed to be, he was openhanded in his hospitality. He lived in a large, rambling two-story house on top of a hill in the western part of Nidaros. From windows on the upper floor, he could look out on what had been Hevring Lake when the great city was but a hunting camp.

Hamnet Thyssen knew that because Earl Eyvind insisted on inviting him to feast with the other members of the upcoming expedition. Refusing would have been churlish—Eyvind Torfinn seemed to think that his acquiring Hamnet s wife was just one of those things, certainly not important enough to get excited about. Visiting that house, though, dripped vitriol on Hamnet s soul.

Gudrid did her best to make sure that it should. She wore outfits that clung and revealed. She smiled. She sparkled. Much of that was aimed at captivating Trasamund. The Bizogot didn't prove hard to captivate. If she could wound Hamnet at the same time—well, so much the better.

He set his jaw and tried not to show he was wounded, as he would have if he'd taken an arrow in the leg. Gudrid knew better. She knew him altogether too well. When they were happy together, the way she knew him pleased him and made him proud. These days, it meant he was vulnerable.

Eyvind Torfinn seemed oblivious to the byplay. Count Hamnet wasn't sure he was, but he seemed that way. Ulric Skakki watched it with wry fascination. He didn't seem to interest Gudrid. Maybe that was because he was only a commoner, maybe because she recognized that he might be as devious and dangerous as she was herself, if less alluring. As for Audun Gilli, he took in everything with a childlike, wide-eyed fascination. But a child who drank the way he did would have been in no shape to take in anything.

Trasamund, for his part, took Gudrid's attentions as no less than his due. 'That is quite a woman,' he told Hamnet, plainly not knowing they'd once been man and wife. 'Not as young as she used to be, maybe, but still quite a woman. Still plenty tight.' The jarl leered and rocked his hips forward and back, in case Hamnet could have any doubt about what he meant.

'Is she?' Count Hamnet's voice held no expression whatever. That might have been just as well. If he had let it hold expression, what would have come out? Rage? Bitterness? Jealousy? Longing? Since he revealed even less to Trasamund than he did to Gudrid, the question didn't arise. So he told himself, anyhow.

He drank Eyvind Torfinn's wine and beer. He ate horseflesh and fat-rich camel's meat, and musk ox and strong-tasting mammoth flesh brought down from the north on ice. There was ice in the north, all right, ice and to spare. He nibbled on honey cakes and frozen, sweetened milk. And his stomach gnawed at him, and he wished he were anywhere else in all the world. Sinking into soft asphalt with dire wolves and sabertooths prowling all around? Next to this lavish hospitality, that looked pretty good.

'You hate me, don't you?' Gudrid asked one evening after everyone had drunk a little too much. By the way her eyes sparkled, she wanted him to tell her yes.

'I loved you,' Hamnet Thyssen said, which was not an answer—unless it was.

The gleam grew brighter. 'And now?'

Count Hamnet shrugged. 'We all make mistakes. Some of us make bigger mistakes than others.'

'Yes, that's true,' Gudrid agreed. 'I never should have wed you in the first place.'

'You didn't think so then,' Hamnet said, and let it go at that. If he told her she'd loved him, she would have laughed in his face. He thought she had. He was convinced she had, in fact. But he was just as convinced that Sigvat Us torturers couldn't tear the confession out of her now.

'We all make mistakes. You said it; I didn't.' Gudrid was like a cat, playing and swiping and tormenting before the kill.

'And what mistake did you make with Eyvind Torfinn?' Hamnet inquired.

She breathed sweet wine fumes into his face when she laughed. 'Dear Eyvind? I made no mistakes with him. He lets me do whatever I please.'

'And you despise him for it,' Count Hamnet said. Gudrid did not deny it; she only laughed again. Stubbornly, Hamnet went on, 'Wouldn't you call wedding a man you despise a mistake?'

'Of course not. I call it an amusement.' She reached out and stroked his cheek with a soft hand. 'But don't worry, my sweet. If it makes you feel any better, I despise you, too.'

'And Trasamund?' Hamnet asked, trying to ignore the way her touch seared his flesh.

'Ah, Trasamund.' She laughed throatily and batted her eyelashes at him. 'No one could despise Trasamund. He's much too . . . virile.'

'He thinks you're quite something, too,' Hamnet said. Gudrid laughed again, this time in complacent amusement. Hamnet added, 'For someone who's not as young as she used to be.' Even a man with no other tool toward revenge had time on his side.

Now her eyes stopped sparkling. They flashed instead. 'You'll pay for that,' she said.

Hamnet Thyssen shrugged. 'I've been paying for knowing you for years. What's a little more?'

'If I tell Eyvind to stay home—'

He laughed in her face. 'You hurt the Empire if that happens—not that you care, I'm sure. But it doesn't worry me at all. Your husband probably knows more about the Golden Shrine than any man alive. I know he knows more than I thought anybody could. He'd be useful to have along, yes. But he's still your husband, Gudrid. If you think I want his company, youd better think twice.'

She made what sounded like a lion's growl, down deep in her throat. She didn't like being thwarted, didn't like it and wouldn't put up with it. She'd taken up with Eyvind Torfinn not long after Hamnet killed her earlier lover. He judged it was at least as much to show him he couldn't get the better of her as for any attraction Earl Eyvind held.

'I suppose you know I've had your wizard as well as the Bizogot,' she said. Her red-painted lip curled. 'He wasn't what you'd call magical.'

She told him to hurt him. She couldn't have any other reason. 'You're not my worry any more,' he said. It wasn't true; she would go on worrying him till his dying day. He added, 'You've given us all something to talk about on the way north, anyhow.'

Gudrid smiled—she liked that. 'Something warm, instead of the Glacier.'

Count Hamnet shook his head. 'Something so cold, it makes the Glacier seem warm beside it.'

Fast as a striking serpent, her hand lashed out. However fast she was, she wasn't fast enough. Count Hamnet caught her wrist before she could slap him or claw him. 'Let go of me,' she said in a low, furious voice.

I've been trying to, ever since I found out what you are, Hamnet thought. He opened his hand. The memory of her flesh remained printed on his palm. She didn't feel cold. Oh, no. You had to know her to understand what he meant.

Then again, he wondered if he'd ever known her at all.

'You're harder than you were,' she remarked.

'If I am, whose fault is that?' he asked harshly.

'May the Bizogots eat you,' Gudrid said. The mammoth-herders didn't eat men, even if a lot of Raumsdalians thought they did. A lewd question rose in Hamnet s mind. He stifled it. She went on, 'May you fall off the edge of the world when you go beyond the Glacier. May one of the white bears Trasamund goes on about gnaw your bones.'

His bow was stiff as a wooden puppet's. 'I love you, too, my sweet,' he said, and tried to match her venom so she wouldn't realize he was telling the truth—the painful and useless truth.

He must have done what he set out to do, for her laughter this time was jagged as shattered ice, sharp as sabertooth fangs. She stalked away, if stalking was the right word to use for something with so much hip action. Even without words, she reminded him what he was missing. He looked down at the rug. As if l didn't know, he thought, and kicked at the embroidered wool.

III

Riding out of Nidaros came as nothing but a relief for Hamnet Thyssen. He could deal with Ulric Skakki and Audun Gilli. He could deal with Trasamund the jarl. He could even deal with Eyvind Torfinn, though he would rather