Beyond the Gap (11 page)

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Authors: Harry Turtledove

BOOK: Beyond the Gap
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“Charming people.” Ulric was also a dab hand at irony.
“Aren't they?” There, at least, Hamnet Thyssen could match him.
 
THE LEAPING LYNX Bizogots stuffed the travelers with more roast fowl and with boiled duck and goose eggs the next morning. Riccimir seemed in a better mood than he had the night before. Maybe the buxom blonde from his own clan pleased him more than he'd thought she would. Whatever the reason, he didn't try to hinder the travelers when they mounted their horses to ride away from what was as close to a settled village as the northern nomads came.
He couldn't resist going after the last word, though. He walked up to Gudrid and said, “My pretty, you will remember last night forever.”
“Why?” she said. “Nothing happened between us.” By the look in her eye, she was glad nothing happened, too.
Riccimir ignored that look. It wasn't easy; Hamnet Thyssen envied his singlemindedness. “That is why you will remember it,” he said. “You will regret that you did not come to know the mighty love of Riccimir.” He struck a pose.
What Gudrid's horse did a moment later probably matched her opinion of Riccimir's mighty love. His clansmates could dry the results and use them for warmth and cooking. If she had spoken, her words probably would have given them plenty of warmth, too. As things were, her expression was eloquent enough. The jarl, convinced to the marrow that he was wonderful, never noticed.
“Are we ready?” Eyvind Torfinn said. “Perhaps we should depart, then.”
“God keep you safe on your journey,” Riccimir said. “May he bring you back to your homes with wealth or wisdom or whatever you seek. And may he bring you to my clan on your way south. Good will be the guesting on your return—and may the sweet one's heart be softened by then.”
Count Hamnet didn't see how Eyvind Torfinn could answer that without landing in trouble with Riccimir or with Gudrid or with both of them at once. Earl Eyvind showed uncommon wisdom—he didn't try. He flicked his horse's reins and used the pressure of his knees to urge the beast forward. The rest of the Raumsdalians and Trasamund followed.
“An interesting time,” Audun Gilli said, riding up alongside Hamnet and Ulric Skakki.
“That's one way to put it,” Hamnet said. “Some interesting times I could live without.”
“It wasn't so bad,” Audun said.
“Demons take me if it wasn't!” Hamnet exclaimed.
Ulric laughed.
“He
didn't mind it, Thyssen. Didn't you see him go off with that Bizogot wench?” His hands shaped an hourglass in the air.
“No, I didn't.” Hamnet couldn't remember when he'd lost track of the wizard. Audun wasn't what anyone would call memorable, so he had trouble. “When was this?”
“You were exchanging compliments with your lady love.” Ulric Skakki stopped. Hamnet Thyssen had a hand on his swordhilt. He probably also had murder in his eye. He didn't mind being chaffed about many things. The list was short, yes, but Gudrid headed it. Ulric hastened to backtrack. “My apologies, your Grace. When you were quarreling with your former wife, I should have said.”
“Yes. You should have.” Hamnet made his hand come off the sword. He made himself look away from Ulric Skakki and toward Audun Gilli. “So. You lay down with a Bizogot woman, did you? How was it? Did you have to hold your nose?”
“I'm not so clean myself these days. After a bit, you stop noticing that.” Audun grinned. It made him look surprisingly young. “As for the rest, well, the parts work the same way here as they do down in the Empire.”
“There's a surprise.” Ulric Skakki grinned, too.
Count Hamnet only grunted. Losing Gudrid had soured him on women. He still bedded them now and again—sometimes his body drove him to do what he wanted to despise. But he couldn't take them lightly, the way most men did.
Trasamund led them away from Sudertorp Lake. The jarl of the Three Tusk clan was not in a good humor. Since Hamnet Thyssen wasn't, either, he soon found himself riding next to Trasamund. The big blond jarl scowled at him. When he scowled back, Trasamund seemed satisfied.
After a while, Trasamund said, “That Leaping Lynx clan …” He didn't seem to know how to go on.
“What about them?” Hamnet asked.
“They hardly seem like Bizogots at all!” It burst from Trasamund.
They seemed very much like Bizogots to Hamnet. But he was looking at them from the outside, not from the inside the way the jarl was. Slowly, he said, “The waterfowl give them so much to eat at this season, they don't have to wander. Things are different when you can stay in one place for a long time.”
“I suppose so.” Trasamund went right on scowling. “It's wrong, though. It's unnatural. They … might as well be Raumsdalians.” By the way he said it, he couldn't imagine a stronger condemnation.
“I will tell you, your Ferocity, that to a Raumsdalian they don't seem much like Raumsdalians at all,” Count Hamnet said.
“They live in stone houses. They have fat people. They are like Raumsdalians.” No, Trasamund had no more idea of what being a Raumsdalian meant—probably less—than Hamnet did about being a Bizogot. He also didn't know that he really didn't know what being a Raumsdalian meant.
Arguing with him would only make him angry. Hamnet Thyssen didn't try. Instead, looking out across the frozen plain, he pointed and asked, “What's that?”
All at once, Trasamund was back in his element. He forgot about the Bizogots of the Leaping Lynx clan. “That's a God-cursed dire wolf, is what that is.” His voice rose to a shout. “Close up! Close up! We've got wolves! Archers, string your bows! We've got wolves!”
To Hamnet Thyssen, it was only a moving squiggle at the edge of visibility. But he wasn't at home here, any more than Trasamund knew all the ins and outs of life in Nidaros, or even in the distant keep where Hamnet would rather have spent his time. Accepting that Trasamund knew and he didn't, Hamnet braced himself for an onslaught.
He didn't have to wait long. Just as the Bizogot recognized a distant moving squiggle as danger, so the dire wolf saw distant moving squiggles as meat. It couldn't take their scent; the wind was with them. But before long, a formidable pack of dire wolves trotted purposefully toward the travelers.
Dire wolves were half again as big as their cousins that skulked through the eastern forests. Their fur was thicker, and of a paler gray so as not to stand out against the snow. Some people said timber wolves were smarter than their larger cousins. Hamnet Thyssen didn't know about that one way or the other. People also said dire wolves ate more carrion than timber wolves did. Count Hamnet thought that was true. But it didn't mean dire wolves turned up their noses at fresh meat. If Count Hamnet hadn't known that, he would have found out now.
The pack leader stood there right at the edge of bowshot, eyeing the travelers. The dire wolf grinned a doggy grin at them, long pink tongue lolling out of his mouth. Even at that distance, though, Hamnet could make out the animal's teeth, long and sharp and yellow. Dire wolves needed to be wary around men. Any animal bigger than a bedbug needed to be wary around men. But men needed to be wary around dire wolves, too.
After a moment's appraisal, the dire wolf lifted its head and let out a howl. If it were speaking a human tongue, Hamnet would have thought that howl meant,
All right. Let's try it and see what happens.
And it seemed to mean just that. The dire wolves trotted forward again. They might have been trying to cut a weak musk ox or a baby mammoth out of the herd. Almost of their own accord, Hamnet's eyes went to Gudrid. That was a tempting thought, but he didn't suppose she would appreciate it.
“Shout at them,” Trasamund called. “Sometimes you can scare them off.”
Hamnet yelled at the top of his lungs. So did the rest of the travelers. Some of the dire wolves skidded to a stop. A few even went back onto their haunches. But the rest kept coming. Seeing their comrades advance, the frightened wolves got up and went on, too. It was as if they didn't want their friends to think them cowards.
In some ways, dire wolves were much too much like men.
T
RASAMUND'S BOWSTRING TWANGED. An arrow hissed through the air. It just missed the lead dire wolf and stood thrilling in the ground. The wolf kept coming without so much as a sideways glance. Dire wolves weren't just like men. The pack leader wasted no time dwelling on what might have been. It dwelt only in the real world. Hamnet Thyssen didn't know whether to pity it or envy it.
He and Ulric Skakki let fly at the same instant, half a heartbeat behind Trasamund. Both their arrows struck the pack leader, one in the snout, the other not far from the base of the tail. “Well shot!” they cried together, at the same time as the dire wolf let out a startled yip of pain. The wolf didn't know how the men had hurt it, but it knew they had. It turned and ran from them.
The rest came on.
They
weren't hurt. And then, in short order, several of them were. Their anguished howls persuaded their fellows this was not a good place to be. When Trasamund led the horsemen forward against them, everyone still shouting, the dire wolves took it as a challenge they didn't care to meet. Unlike people, they wasted no time on useless heroics. If the travelers weren't prey, the wolves wanted nothing to do with them.
One dire wolf, struck in the eye, lay dead on the ground. “Here's meat for tonight,” Trasamund boomed.
Gudrid made a revolted noise. Some of the imperial guardsmen looked a trifle green. Hamnet Thyssen had eaten dire wolf before. Nothing on the frozen plains went to waste. “It's not so bad,” he said. “Just think that it's food, not where it comes from.” His countrymen didn't seem convinced.
Jesper Fletti rounded on Audun Gilli. “You're supposed to be a wizard,
aren't you?” the guard captain said. “Why didn't you magic away those dire wolves?”
“We were doing well enough without wizardry,” Audun answered. “It takes a toll, the same as any other hard work does. If we needed it, I would have tried something. Since we didn't—well, thank God, I say.”
“You're a lazy wizard, or a weak one,” Jesper told him.
“No doubt,” Audun Gilli said mildly. “But from now on, will you ever dare turn your back on me again? You take your chances, you know, insulting even a lazy wizard, or a weak one.”
Jesper Fletti turned red. “I'm not afraid of you!”
“Then you're a fool,” Hamnet Thyssen said. “And that will be enough of that.”
“Who do you think you are, to tell me what I am?” Jesper demanded, glowering at Hamnet. “And who do you think you are, to tell me what to do?”
“I'm a man who recognizes fools. I'd better—I've been one often enough.” Hamnet looked toward Gudrid as he answered. She deliberately looked away from him. He hadn't expected anything else. “As for telling you what to do,” he went on, “well, let's see. For one thing, I outrank you. You should say, ‘Who do you think you are, your Grace?' For another, I've been up here in the north before. Have you? And, for a third, I hope I know better than to get any wizard angry at me.”
Jesper Fletti glowered and spluttered. Whatever he was feeling, he didn't try to put it into words. Hamnet Thyssen had landed too heavy a load of truth on him. He looked away from Hamnet, too. Gudrid did it with more panache.
“I thank you, your Grace,” Audun Gilli said in a low voice.
“You're welcome. I've seen you aren't lazy or weak,” Count Hamnet answered. “If he asked if you were drunk or hungover, I would have had less to say to him.”
Audun's mouth tightened. “Don't you think saying something like that might make a wizard angry at you?”
“I hope not,” Hamnet replied. “A man who gets angry at the truth will have a hard time in life, don't you think?”
“It could be so,” Audun Gilli answered after considering the question longer and more seriously than Hamnet had looked for. “Yes, it could be so. Of course, you might say the same about a man who gets drunk whenever he finds the chance.”
“Yes, you might,” Hamnet agreed. “Far be it from me to deny that. But there's a simple answer, don't you think? An obvious answer, too.”
“For almost every problem, there is an answer that is simple, obvious—and wrong,” Audun said. Hamnet Thyssen pondered that, then inclined his head. The wizard left him with no good comeback.
Trasamund got down from his horse, tossing the reins to Ulric Skakki. He walked over to the dire wolf and butchered it. “Anyone but me want a chunk of raw liver?” he asked, holding up the dripping purplish organ. Plainly, he was ready to laugh at effete Raumsdalians when they told him no.
Gudrid gulped. When she looked away this time, she wasn't acting or posing; she was truly revolted. But Audun Gilli said, “Give me some. What better way to take in the spirit of this land?”
“I'll eat some, too,” Hamnet said. “The dire wolf would have gnawed my liver. The least I can do is pay him back.”
“Now that—that is spoken like a Bizogot, by God!” Trasamund said. Count Hamnet knew the jarl meant it for praise. If it felt like an insult, he could keep that to himself.
“I'll eat wolf liver. Why not? It's meat,” Ulric Skakki said. He might well have eaten it before, but he didn't want Trasamund to know this wasn't his first visit to the frozen plains.
Trasamund turned to Eyvind Torfinn. “What about you, your Splendor?”
“With respect, your Ferocity, I will decline,” Eyvind answered. “I have my own land, and do not wish to become mystically attuned to this one. Besides, unless starving and without choice I prefer my meat cooked.”
The jarl took it in good part, saying, “Well, you know your own mind, anyway.” He ate his gobbet with every sign of relish, then passed another one to Audun Gilli—the wizard was the first Raumsdalian volunteer.
Audun screwed up his face and stuffed the bloody meat into his mouth. He chewed. “Could be worse,” he said once he got it down.
“At least that wasn't, ‘Tastes like chicken,'” Ulric Skakki murmured.
Dire-wolf liver didn't taste like chicken. Hamnet Thyssen had no time to point that out to Ulric, for Trasamund handed him his own chunk of stillwarm meat. He ate it without thinking about what he was doing, and swallowed it without too much trouble. When he saw Gudrid's mocking expression, he smiled back at her with his mouth still full. That made her turn away in a hurry.
Ulric Skakki ate his ragged slice of liver without any fuss. Jesper Fletti and the rest of Gudrid's guardsmen declined to partake. They were less smooth about it than Earl Eyvind, but Trasamund didn't harry them on account
of that. He'd got three Raumsdalians to try his delicacy, which was probably three more than he expected.
Trasamund went back to his butchery. He wrapped the meat in the dire wolf's hide and tied it on a pack horse. The animal snorted and rolled its eyes at the scent of blood and the smell of dire wolf, but did not try to bolt. Trasamund left the wolf's entrails steaming on the ground.
“Let's go,” he said. “Maybe the others will come back to feed on their friend.”
“I think not.” Ulric Skakki pointed up into the sky. “Are those just ordinary vultures, or are they teratorns?”
“Teratorns.” Eyvind answered before Trasamund could. “You can tell by the pattern of white and black under the wings.”
“By the size, too, when they get lower,” Trasamund added. “But they won't, not while we're hanging around the offal.”
Sure enough, when the travelers rode north, the three or four teratorns spiraled down out of the sky to squabble over the bounty Trasamund left behind. They were enormous birds, with a wingspan as wide as two tall men. And down in the south, Hamnet Thyssen had heard, there were bigger teratorns still, their grotesque naked heads wattled and striped in shades of blue and yellow. All vultures were ugly. Those southern teratorns seemed to take ugliness to an almost surreal level, one where even grotesqueness took on a beauty all its own.
“Do Bizogots also eat teratorn meat?” Eyvind Torfinn asked.
“If we have to. If we are starving. Otherwise …” Trasamund shook his head. “It is a foul bird. It eats filth and carrion. Its flesh tastes of its food, the same as any vulture's.” He made a nasty face. Did that mean he was once—or more than once—hungry enough to have to eat flesh like that? Hamnet Thyssen wondered, but he didn't ask.
 
LIKE THE TOTEM animal for which it was named, the Vole clan was small. But the jarl of the clan, a burly fellow named Wacho, had more than his share of pride. “Oh, yes, voles are little beasts,” he said. “But the frozen plain would die if not for them. Who feeds the weasels? Who feeds the foxes? Who feeds the lynxes? Who feeds the snowy owls? The vole. Give the vole its due.”
Hamnet Thyssen tried to imagine someone down in Nidaros singing the praises of the house mouse. He couldn't do it. For one thing, folk in
Nidaros had plenty of other things to worry about. For another, the Bizogots were more closely attuned to nature than his own people. To Raumsdalians, house mice were nuisances, to be trapped or poisoned or hunted with cats. To Bizogots, voles were part of the vast web of life that spread across their land.
Who was right? Who was wrong? Hamnet shrugged. Life for the mammoth-herders was harder than it was in the Empire. By the nature of things, it had to be. He'd grown up in the Raumsdalian way himself, and he preferred it. But sometimes the question was one of difference rather than right and wrong. He thought that was so here.
As usual when a clan guested the travelers, they feasted till they neared the bursting point. “I think the idea is to give us a layer of blubber like a mammoth's,” Ulric Skakki said, gnawing the meat from yet another musk-ox rib.
“That's all very well,” Hamnet said, “but if we don't fit into our clothes, the blubber won't do us enough good to make up for it.”
Audun Gilli started to say something. He wasn't a big man, but he had a respectable pile of bones in front of him. Before he could speak, someone new came into Wacho's tent—a fantastically dressed Bizogot whose jacket and trousers were elaborately embroidered and fringed, so that he seemed almost to be wearing a pelt. The resemblance was only strengthened by the bear claws at his wrists and ankles, and by the bearskin mask now pushed back from his face.
“This is Witigis,” Wacho said. “He is the shaman of the Voles.”
Witigis's gaze was quick and darting, more the look of a wild animal than a man. Shamans said they had closer ties to God than Raumsdalian priests dreamed of winning. Hamnet Thyssen wondered if Witigis was a holy man or simply a madman. His vacant features didn't promise much in the way of brains.
But when his gaze fell on Audun Gilli, he stiffened. So did the Raumsdalian wizard. They stared at each other. Without looking as he took it, Witigis grabbed a rib and started chewing on the meat. Grease glistened around his mouth. His eyes never left Audun Gilli's.
“Like calls to like,” Ulric whispered.
“Maybe,” Count Hamnet answered. “But if that's so, which one of them did you just insult?” Ulric laughed, for all the world as if he were joking.
Witigis began to sing. It wasn't an ordinary song, even an ordinary Bizogot song. It had words, in the mammoth-herders' tongue, but they weren't
words that made sense, at least not to Count Hamnet. It also had hums and growls and barks and sounds that perhaps should have been words but weren't, not in any tongue Hamnet knew.
And as Witigis sang, he … changed. At first, Hamnet Thyssen rubbed his eyes, not sure what he was seeing. But there could be no doubt. Witigis's fringed regalia became real fur. The bear claws he wore were no longer ornaments. They grew from his fingers and toes as if they always had. After he pulled the mask down over his blue-eyed visage, his mouth opened wide to show fangs that never sprouted from any merely human jaw. Nor did his growl spring from any human throat. There he crouched on all fours—an undersized but otherwise perfect short-faced bear.
Wacho looked proud of his shaman. Trasamund nodded as if to say he had seen the like but admired the performance. The Raumsdalians all seemed a little uneasy, or more than a little.
All but Audun Gilli. He too began to sing, a calm song that might almost have been a lullaby. Count Hamnet had nearly as much trouble understanding him as he had with Witigis. Audun's words were Raumsdalian, but in a dialect so old that it came close to being another language. Hamnet needed so long to grasp one bit that several others would slip past him, uncomprehended, till he seized on another small clump of familiar sounds.
Eyvind Torfinn nodded. Whatever the wizard was singing, it was no mystery to the old earl. Hamnet Thyssen didn't suppose that should have surprised him. Any man who went searching for the secrets of the Golden Shrine would naturally come to know the old, the all but forgotten.
Audun sang on. And, little by little, the shaman lost his bearishness. His fur coat became embroidery and fringes once more. The claws he wore were only ornaments, not parts of himself. An ordinary hand—dirty, but ordinary—pushed back the bearskin mask that was only a mask. And under it lay his face. When he opened his mouth to speak, he showed a man's ordinary face.

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