Beyond the Gap (3 page)

Read Beyond the Gap Online

Authors: Harry Turtledove

BOOK: Beyond the Gap
3.23Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
“Men?” All three Raumsdalians asked the question at the same time.
“I didn't meet any. Maybe I was lucky not to,” Trasamund answered. “I'd say there are some, for the animals were wary of me. They've been hunted. I have no doubt of that. But the way northwest is open. If the weather doesn't turn cold enough to make the ice sheets grow together again, it'll stay open.”
“Did you see any sign—any sign at all—of the Golden Shrine?” Sigvat II asked.
Again, the Emperor and Hamnet Thyssen and Ulric Skakki leaned toward Trasamund as if a lodestone were drawing them. People who claimed this land south of the Glacier was promised to those who lived in it said the Golden Shrine was what had kept their enemies from following them all those ages ago. People who claimed this land was in the hands of evildoers or their descendants said the Golden Shrine was made to keep them in. People who claimed the Glacier went on forever mostly didn't think there was any such thing as the Golden Shrine. Count Hamnet hadn't. Now … How could anyone know what to believe now?
“I saw nothing of that sort myself,” Trasamund answered. “But it's on account of the Golden Shrine that I came down here to Nidaros with the word. You Raumsdalians know more about old things than we do. If it's there, and if we find it … I wouldn't want to touch off a curse, you understand, not even knowing I was doing it. Next time I go north, I ought to have Raumsdalians along, too. Just in case, you might say.”
To turn aside any curses
, Hamnet wondered,
or to make sure we get our fair share of them?
Were Bizogots devious enough to think that way? Hamnet wasn't so sure about most of the barbarians. The jarl of the Three Tusk clan struck him as sly enough and then some.
“Here you have two bold men who will go anywhere a Bizogot will,” the
Emperor said, nodding to Count Hamnet and Ulric Skakki in turn. “Both have traveled widely in the north of the world, and both are presently, ah, at liberty.”
Hamnet Thyssen knew what that small imperial exhalation meant as far as he was concerned. It meant he would be—not happier, but less unhappy—the farther from Nidaros he went. He'd never dreamt of going beyond the Glacier, but if that didn't put enough distance between him and Gudrid, nothing could.
Odds were nothing could.
And what of Ulric Skakki? Why was he so willing to leave the Empire for parts unknown? Was he running away from someone? From something? Was he running
toward
something? In Hamnet Thyssen's experience, that was far less common, but it wasn't impossible.
Right now, Hamnet had no answers, only questions. On the journey, if they made the journey, maybe the answers would come out. Maybe they wouldn't do too much harm when they did. Hamnet could hope they wouldn't, as long as he remembered hopes were only shadows that too often vanished in the pitiless light of reality.
As he was looking at Ulric Skakki, so Trasamund the jarl was eyeing him and Ulric both. “Yes, they may do,” the jarl said at last. “The name of Hamnet Thyssen is not unknown in the north, and this other fellow is a likely rogue—I have heard of him, too. But will they be enough? We Bizogots, we have likely rogues aplenty. We have warriors aplenty, too—good fighting men. I mean no disrespect to you, Count Hamnet.”
Hamnet Thyssen bowed. “I take none. You do not insult me, or tell me anything I did not know, when you say I am not unique.” One more thing Gudrid had taught him. If she'd found a more painful way to give him the lesson than any Bizogot jarl might, that only meant it would stick better.
As Trasamund eyed Hamnet and Ulric, so Sigvat II eyed him. “What would you, then, your Ferocity?” the Emperor asked.
“When we go through the Gap again, your Majesty, our band will have a shaman with it, the wisest Bizogot shaman I can talk into coming along,” Trasamund said. “But there is wisdom, and then there is wisdom. The Empire has more of it than we do. You can afford it. You sit in towns, and what are towns but stores of
things
? Things like books, for instance. I said it before—your memories are longer than ours, firmer than ours. Give us a wizard, give us a—what word do you use?” His big head bobbed up and down as he found it. “Give us a scholar, by God!”
Now Count Hamnet studied the jarl in surprise. Not all Bizogots even realized they were barbarians by the standards of the Raumsdalian Empire. Most of the ones who did realize it answered Raumsdalian scorn with contempt of their own. To them, Raumsdalians were weak and tricky and corrupt, of use to the Bizogots not for themselves but for their
things,
the things they could make and keep and the northerners couldn't.
But Trasamund, plainly, was no ordinary mammoth-herder. He grasped something a lot of Raumsdalians couldn't—that the way writing bound knowledge across time gave the Empire a breadth and a depth of thought no Bizogot clan could even approach. Facing the unknown beyond the Glacier, Trasamund wanted people equipped to understand it—if any people were.
Sigvat II seemed taken aback. When he did not answer at once, Count Hamnet said, “Your Majesty, if a wizard and a scholar will go with us, we would do well to have them. Who knows what we may find? Who knows what we may try to understand?”
“The Golden Shrine,” Ulric Skakki murmured.
Hamnet Thyssen still had no idea if there was any such thing as the Golden Shrine. An hour earlier, he would have laughed at the very idea. He wasn't laughing now. If the Gap had opened, who could say what lay beyond the Glacier? No one now—no one except Trasamund and whoever traveled with him.
And whoever lived beyond the Glacier, if anyone did. Trasamund thought so. Hamnet wouldn't have believed it, but so what? The opening of the Gap made his beliefs, and everyone else's in the Empire, irrelevant. Belief worked well enough when a man could not measure it against facts. But when he could … Facts crushed belief like a mammoth crushing a vole.
After a few heartbeats of thought, the Emperor nodded. “Well, your Ferocity, your Grace, let it be as you desire,” Sigvat said. “We shall indeed summon a scholar and a sorcerer to accompany you. God grant they prove useful.”
Trasamund and Count Hamnet both bowed. The jarl of the Three Tusk clan said, “I thank you for your kindness,your Majesty, and for your wisdom.”
“It was not my wisdom—it was yours,” Sigvat said. “Count Hamnet helped me see it.”
“Count Hamnet has a name for good sense,” the Bizogot chieftain said. “I was glad when you summoned him.”
“You have heard of me, too, you said. What do
I
have a name for?” Ulric
Skakki inquired in what might have been amusement or might have been something altogether darker and more dangerous.
Trasamund took him literally, answering, “For getting in and getting out again. Where we are going, what we are doing, that may be the best name of all to have.”
“Each of you will be my guest here at the palace till we find you suitable companions,” Sigvat said. “I will lay on a reception and a feast in your honor tonight.”
So much for wisdom. So much for good sense
, Count Hamnet thought unhappily. Now he was stuck in Nidaros for God only knew how long, stuck in the same town with Gudrid and Eyvind Torfinn. He wished he could have got in and got out again. And it was his own damned fault he hadn't.
T
ORCHES BLAZED BRAVELY. They drove night back to the corners of the dining hall, even if they did fill the room with a strong odor of hot mammoth fat. Perfumed beeswax candles spilled out more golden light and fought the tallow reek to something close to a draw.
A goblet of mead in his hand, Count Hamnet Thyssen surveyed the throng gathered at least partly in his honor. He tried to imagine some of these gilded popinjays up on the tundra, or in the endless forests to the east. That was enough to squeeze a grunt of laughter from even his somber spirit.
So far, he hadn't spotted either his former wife or her new lord and master. He snorted again, more sourly than before. He didn't think even a wild Bizogot could master Gudrid, and he didn't think many wild Bizogots would be fool enough to try.
His gaze flicked to Trasamund. Tall and fair and handsome, the jarl had already acquired a circle of female admirers. The smile on his ruddy face said he enjoyed the attention. The ruddiness on his smiling face said he'd already had as much mead—or beer, or ale, or even sweet wine from the far southwest—as was good for him. Up on the tundra, Bizogots drank fermented mammoth's milk. Count Hamnet had made its acquaintance. It was as bad as it sounded. No matter how nasty it was, the Bizogots drank heroically.
Anything worth doing is worth overdoing
summed up the nomads' view of the world.
And Bizogots wenched as heroically as they drank. That might—was all too like to—cause trouble. Hamnet drifted toward a steward. A word to the
wise … probably wouldn't help. He held his tongue. This wasn't the first time Bizogots had been fêted in the royal palace. The steward—and the Emperor—would know what they were like.
A serving woman came by with a plate of treats—toasted deer marrow on crackers of barley and maize. Count Hamnet took one. The fatty richness of the marrow went well with his mead. Beer might have been even better, but he preferred the fermented honey.
Someone—someone with long fingernails—rumpled the hair at the nape of his neck. He whirled around. If the goblet hadn't been nearer empty than full, mead would have sloshed out of it onto the rug.
“Hello, Hamnet,” Gudrid said. “I wondered if you weren't noticing me on purpose.”
He knew how old she was—not far from his own just-past-forty. She didn't look it, or within ten years of it. Her hair was still black, her skin still smooth, her chin still single. Her eyes were almost the color of a lion's, a strange and penetrating light brown. They sparked now in smug amusement.
She was going to jab at him. She did whenever they met. She always wounded him, too. He did his best not to show it; that way, she missed some of the sport. So he shook his head now. “No, I really didn't see you,” he said truthfully. “I'm—”
He broke off. He was damned if he'd say he was sorry. He could still feel her fingers on the skin at the back of his neck. His hand tightened on the goblet till he feared the stem would snap. Somehow, the stolen caress infuriated him worse than all her infidelities. She'd lost the right to touch him that way. No, she hadn't lost it. She'd given it up, thrown it away. She took it back for a moment only because she wanted to provoke him.
She knew how to get what she wanted. She commonly did.
Her smile said she knew she'd scored, even if she might not know just why. Her teeth were white and strong, too. That also made Hamnet want to scowl; poppy juice and henbane or not, he'd had a horrid time with a toothdrawer the year before.
“So you're going traveling with the splendid Trasamund, are you?” she said, eyeing the tall Bizogot with admiration unfeigned and unconcealed. If she decided she wanted him, she would go after him. Yes, she knew how to get what she wanted, all right.
And what would Eyvind Torfinn think of that? Hamnet almost threw the question in her face. Then he saw she was waiting for it, looking forward to
it. Whatever the answer was, it would have claws in it. He didn't feel like giving her the satisfaction. “So I am,” he said stolidly, and let it go at that.
Eyvind Torfinn came up then, a winecup in his hand. He was a comfortably plump man getting close to sixty if he hadn't already got there. Maybe he wouldn't mind so much if Gudrid satisfied herself somewhere else every now and again. Hamnet drained what was left of his mead. Gudrid hadn't played him false because he failed to satisfy her. Adultery was a game to her, and she excelled at it as she did at most things.
“Thyssen,” her new husband said politely.
“Torfinn,” Count Hamnet returned. He had … not too much against the older man, who'd always seemed faintly embarrassed at acquiring his wife.
“Dear Hamnet is going exploring with the wild Bizogot.” Gudrid made it sound faintly disreputable. She eyed Hamnet, ready to finish him off. “What is it you're going off to look for?” Whatever it was, by the way she asked the question it couldn't have been more important than a small coin that had fallen out of a hole in a belt pouch.
“The Golden Shrine,” Hamnet answered, his voice still flat. Let her make what she wanted of that.
Her lioness eyes widened, for a heartbeat looking only human, and amazed. “But that's a fable!” she exclaimed. “Nobody really believes it's up there, or wherever it's supposed to be.”
“Oh, no. That is not so. Many people do believe it.” Gudrid looked amazed all over again, and even less happy than she had a moment earlier. Count Hamnet didn't contradict her; Eyvind Torfinn did. “I happen to be one of them myself,” Eyvind went on. He turned to his wife's former husband. “Why would anyone think the chances of finding it now are any better than they would have been last year or a hundred years ago?”
“Because the Gap has finally melted through. Trasamund's traveled beyond the Glacier.” Hamnet Thyssen usually had as little to say to Gudrid's new husband as he could. Maybe the mead was what loosened his tongue enough to make him say, “So you believe in the Golden Shrine, do you, Earl Eyvind? Why is that?”
As Gudrid had a moment earlier, he got more than he bargained for. Eyvind Torfinn didn't just believe in the Golden Shrine. He knew more in the way of lore than Hamnet thought there was to know. His talk went spinning back through the centuries, back to the days before Nidaros was even a hunting camp, back to empires far older than the Raumsdalian, back
to other retreats of the Glacier—though he didn't know of any others where the Gap actually opened.
By the way Gudrid listened to him, he might have been talking about a mistress he'd kept secret from her. Maybe she thought he was, and maybe she was right; knowledge was like that for some men. Hamnet Thyssen hadn't known Eyvind was one of them. Plainly, his former wife hadn't, either. After a couple of exaggerated yawns didn't make Eyvind Torfinn dry up, she flounced off, hips working in the clinging maroon wool knit dress she wore.
Her husband never noticed. He was comparing and contrasting modern ideas about the Golden Shrine with those from bygone days. He knew more about ideas from bygone days than Hamnet Thyssen had thought any living man could. “And so you see,” Eyvind Torfinn said with an enthusiast's zeal, “there is more than a little consistency about these notions through time. Not perfect consistency, mind you, but more than a little. Enough to persuade me something real lies behind all the guesswork and the legends.”
What Hamnet saw was Gudrid doing everything but painting herself against Trasamund. She all but purred when the Bizogot stroked her. If her gap wouldn't open for him, Hamnet would have been very much surprised.
But that was not his worry now, for which—some of him—thanked God. He set a scarred and callused hand on Eyvind Torfinn's shoulder. “Your Splendor,” he said, “his Majesty was talking about recruiting a scholar to accompany us on the journey north. I think you are the man we need.”
“I?” Eyvind Torfinn said in mild astonishment.
“Certainly. You know so much about the Golden Shrine. Wouldn't you like to put what you know to use? Wouldn't you like to see the Temple with your own eyes?”
If it's there to see
, Hamnet Thyssen added, but only to himself.
Eyvind stared at him. “I would like that very much,” he said. “Whether I can make such a journey may be another question. Beyond the Glacier! I was not sure there was such a thing as beyond the Glacier. For all I knew, for all anyone knew, it went on forever.”
“I had the same thought when I learned the Gap has melted through,” Count Hamnet said. “But Trasamund speaks of white bears and strange buffalo and other marvels he's seen with his own eyes.”
“Does he?” Eyvind Torfinn looked toward the tall Bizogot. By then Gudrid, with a sure instinct for self-preservation, no longer clung to him, even
if she did hover close by. Seeing her set her present husband down a different thought-road. He swung back toward Hamnet. “Can you stand to make a journey with me, your Grace? I would not be grateful—I fear I would not even be long ungrateful—if you set on me the moment we passed the Empire's borders, or perhaps even before we passed them.”
“By God, your Splendor, by God and by my honor, I will do nothing of the sort,” Hamnet Thyssen said. “You have my oath, the strongest oath I can give. If it is not enough to satisfy you … If it is not enough to satisfy you, sir, then be damned to you. I don't know what else to say.”
“If we meet danger, I am more likely to prove a liability than an asset,” Earl Eyvind said. “I am not young. I am not strong. I am not swift or graceful. I have not even practiced with a sword for many years, let alone unsheathed one in anger.”
“You know things,” Hamnet said. “You know things I did not think anyone could know. Speak to Trasamund.”
Though not of your wife—she's not mine now
. “Speak to the Emperor. Knowledge is always an asset.”
“Is it?” Eyvind Torfinn raised a bushy gray eyebrow. “Are you glad knowing … what you know about the lady who was once your wife?”
“Am I glad? No,” Count Hamnet answered steadily. “Would I rather know the truth than live in a fool's paradise? Yes, and she played me for a fool.”
And she'll play you the same way, if she hasn't done it already, and you may prove yourself a fool if you don't know that.
“The Golden Shrine,” Eyvind murmured. “Well, maybe, if you don't think I would slow you up too much.”
“Persuade Trasamund. I have no trouble with riding a little slower than I might have ridden otherwise, but I'm no hot-blooded, impatient Bizogot.”
And you have put horns on me, and Trasamund—I doubt not—will put horns on you, and if I should meet Trasamund's wife, if he has a wife … What a jolly gathering we would be then.
“Well! The Golden Shrine!” Eyvind Torfinn said, and he waddled off toward the Bizogot jarl.
 
SIGVAT II WAS delighted that Earl Eyvind wanted to fare north, and delighted and amazed to discover him a scholar of the Golden Shrine. Trasamund was willing to bring him along, although amazed and less than delighted to discover him the husband of Gudrid. Hamnet Thyssen was … resigned. He would have had some strong opinions if he thought Gudrid
was coming along, but she seemed furious that Eyvind Torfinn could find the Golden Shrine more interesting, more attractive, than she.
“She will spend my money while I am gone,” Eyvind said to Count Hamnet when they met two days after the reception to plan what they could. On a journey into the unknown, they couldn't plan nearly as much as Hamnet would have liked.
“No doubt you are right, your Splendor,” Hamnet replied.
She will spend your reputation while you're gone, too
, he thought with mournful certainty.
“I hope I have some left by the time I get home,” Eyvind Torfinn said.
“Maybe your chief of affairs should oversee your funds,” Hamnet said. And who would oversee Gudrid's affairs? Hamnet Thyssen almost laughed at himself. No doubt Gudrid would take care of those on her own.
Hamnet glanced over toward Trasamund. Did the Bizogot jarl speak fluent enough Raumsdalian to make that joke, or one like it, for himself? By the smirk on his ruddy, weathered face, he did.
Earl Eyvind was either blind to what Gudrid was or resigned to it. Hamnet hadn't made up his mind which. He wouldn't have wanted to be either one, though he'd stayed blind for too long when she was his wife. Maybe he hadn't wanted to see. Considering all the strife that sprang up when he finally couldn't help it … He shook his head. He didn't want to consider that.
“We still need a sorcerer,” Eyvind Torfinn said. He was looking ahead again to the lands beyond the ice, not to what Gudrid would do while he wasn't here to watch her. “His Majesty was wise to suggest one.”
“
I
suggested one,” Trasamund said in a voice like distant thunder.
“Did you indeed, your Ferocity?” For the first time, Earl Eyvind eyed the Bizogot as something more than a dangerous and dubiously tame animal. Eyvind didn't seem to have imagined a brain might lurk under that handsome, well-muscled exterior. He blinked once or twice, revising his opinion.

Other books

The Marriage Contract by Lisa Mondello
Courting Katarina by Steward, Carol
Playing For Keeps by Deborah Fletcher Mello
Pauper's Gold by Margaret Dickinson
California Caress by Rebecca Sinclair