Beyond the Gap (23 page)

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Authors: Harry Turtledove

BOOK: Beyond the Gap
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“I see,” Eyvind Torfinn said gravely. “And how far in that direction do the Rulers rule?”
“Long way. Very long way,” Roypar replied. Was he clever enough to dodge Eyvind's probe or too naive to notice it was a probe at all? Hamnet Thyssen couldn't tell. That made him guess Roypar might be clever, even if he had no proof.
Eyvind went on, “And do you have it in mind to stretch your rule to the south and east now that there is a way through the Glacier?”
Now Roypar looked at him as if he were a witling. “Well, of course,” said the chieftain or officer or whatever he was. “Of course. We are the Rulers. Where we can reach, we rule.”
“Anyone who tries to rule the Bizogots will be sorry,” Trasamund said. His voice was still a thick mumble through split and swollen lips. “Maybe you can kill us. Maybe we kill you instead.” The roasted venison was tough. He chewed slowly and carefully, and on the side where he hadn't just lost a tooth.
“Maybe.” That wasn't Roypar; it was Samoth the sorcerer. “You are strong. You are fierce. But your magic”—he sneered—“your magic is nothing much.”
Audun Gilli had no idea what he was saying; the Raumsdalian wizard knew nothing of the Bizogot language. Liv, of course, understood Samoth well enough. She'd said next to nothing herself up till then. Now, swallowing a bite of meat, she looked across the smoky fire at Samoth and hooted three times like an owl.
He jerked as if bitten by a mosquito the size of a falcon. “So you had somewhat to do with that, did you?” he growled. His comrades who could follow the Bizogot tongue sent him curious looks. Maybe he hadn't told them hed had to fly from the travelers' magic down in the Gap.
Liv gave him a sweet smile. “Why, yes,” she said, all innocence. “We did.”
Samoth muttered into his curled mat of beard. Hamnet Thyssen sent Liv a small nod. He thought she'd found a fine way to prick the Rulers' pomposity. They were so very, very sure of themselves—anything that made them doubt was bound to be on the right track.
Ulric Skakki was sitting next to Audun. When the wizard whispered to him, he provided a translation. He hadn't spoken long before Audun Gilli
twitched as violently as Samoth had. “Nothing much!” Audun said in Raumsdalian. “By God, I'll—”
“You'll shut up, is what you'll bloody well do,” Ulric said, much more sharply than he was in the habit of speaking. Audun blinked at him, and then did shut up, though his eyes said he didn't understand why Ulric required it of him.
Hamnet Thyssen did. Ulric Skakki's little finger understood more of intrigue than all of Audun Gilli put together. If Audun showed Samoth how good a wizard he could be, that would alert the Rulers to a problem they didn't know they had right now.
And Hamnet Thyssen also saw something he wasn't sure whether either Ulric or Audun did. If Audun tried to impress Samoth and failed again, as he'd failed with the opal … That would give the travelers a serious problem.
“So you aim to bring our folk under your rule, do you?” Eyvind Torfinn asked Roypar. Now the Count frowned, wondering if the other Raumsdalian noble wasn't pushing too hard.
“Is right,” Roypar said complacently. The Rulers ruled other folk. To him, that was a law of nature.
Voice elaborately casual, Eyvind Torfinn went on, “Perhaps you would do well to let us return to the south, then, so the Bizogot jarls and my Emperor, apprised of your imminent arrival, can prepare for you the most appropriate and honorable reception.”
Count Hamnet suddenly stopped thinking of Eyvind as an old man wise only in the things that had to do with books. He was an intriguer in his own right. Ulric Skakki's abrupt alertness argued that he was thinking the same thing. By the smug look on Roypar's face, he thought Eyvind Torfinn meant the Bizogots and the Raumsdalian Empire would get ready to surrender as soon as they found out the Rulers were on the way. Hamnet Thyssen would have been mightily surprised if that was what Earl Eyvind really had in mind.
Would Parsh have seen otherwise? He was much more fluent in the Bizogots' language, which argued that he had understood foreigners better than his superior. It didn't matter now, though, not when he was dead—he hadn't understood Trasamund, or at least the strength of Trasamund's jaws and of his fists, well enough.
Samoth stirred. The wizard said something in the language of the Rulers.
I have to learn that tongue if I can,
Hamnet Thyssen thought. Roypar
snorted and shook his head. Samoth spoke again, more urgently this time. He saw that Eyvind Torfinn wasn't as submissive as he seemed.
He saw it, yes, but he couldn't make Roypar see it. The chieftain sounded angry when he answered this time. Samoth bit his lip. He muttered into his beard, then subsided—for the moment. A couple of men of the Rulers stirred and eyed Roypar in exactly the same way Hamnet Thyssen would have eyed him if he'd belonged to their folk. A leader who got a wizard angry at him was either a man of extraordinary personal qualities and confidence … or a blustering blowhard.
Which was Roypar? Hamnet admitted he couldn't know. Judging a man he'd just met, a man from a folk with whom he was not in the least familiar, a man who barely had a language in common with him, was a fool's game.
Well? Aren't I a fool?
Hamnet asked himself with wry amusement—the only kind he knew these days.
His gaze flickered to Gudrid. She was watching Roypar with the sort of fascination that raised Count Hamnet's hackles. He quickly looked away. His eyes went to the chieftain, too. He thought a clever man would have seen through Eyvind Torfinn's ploy, so maybe he'd been wrong before. Samoth had seen through it—and much good it did him.
“You go south, yes,” Roypar said. “You go. You tell your folk, the Rulers come. You tell, bring out gold, bring out women, bring out fine mammoths, fine deer for Rulers to take.”
“Deer?” Eyvind Torfinn's frown said he wasn't sure he'd understood the stranger.
“Deer.” Roypar nodded. “For riding. Deer.”
“Oh. Of course. Deer.” Butter wouldn't have melted in Earl Eyvind's mouth. No, the Rulers knew nothing of horses. Hamnet Thyssen didn't know much of the deer they rode, either, but the animals weren't as large as horses and didn't seem as strong. On the other hand, the Rulers could do things with mammoths that even the Bizogots only dreamt of.
Strangers
, Hamnet thought. It was a truth he always had to bear in mind. The Bizogots were cousins to the Raumsdalians. All the folk south of the Glacier were in effect their neighbors if not their kin. But had his folk's ancestors ever had anything to do with the forebears of the Rulers? Surely not since the Glacier last ground down out of the north.
How long ago was that? How many thousands of years had gone by since? Count Hamnet had no idea. Eyvind Torfinn might be able to make a pretty good guess. So might Audun Gilli, come to that; sorcerers needed a
better notion of the distant past than most people. It was a long, long,
long
time—Hamnet was sure of that.
Roypar pointed toward the travelers' horses, which were tied alongside the riding deer the Rulers used. “Why you cut horns off your big deer?” he asked. “You no use horns to fight with?” No, he didn't understand about horses at all.
Neither did Samoth, who said, “And how did you remove the antlers so neatly? There is no trace of a scar. After we rule you, that is a trick your leeches must show us.” He had as much confidence as any other man of the Rulers.
“There is no trick, I fear,” Hamnet Thyssen said. “The animals are born without antlers.” He didn't see how the truth could hurt here.
Samoth smiled—unpleasantly. “I might have guessed. Not likely that the lesser breeds could know anything important that we do not.”
None of the travelers said anything. Even if they had, Samoth and the rest of the Rulers there wouldn't have heeded them. The Rulers knew what they knew, and didn't want to know anything else—even if it happened to be true.
Later in the evening, Hamnet Thyssen noticed Roypar trying to talk to someone who spoke even less of the Bizogots' tongue than he did. Hamnet took a couple of steps toward the chieftain, thinking to be helpful. Then he heard Gudrid's throaty chuckle, and drew back without drawing Roypar's notice or hers. He slept not a wink all night.
“W
E WILL RIDE south and east,” Eyvind Torfinn said, no irony audible in his voice. “We will let the other Bizogot jarls and the Raumsdalian Emperor know that the Rulers follow behind us. We will make sure our lands are ready to meet you as you deserve.”
“Is good,” Roypar said. “Is very good.” By Samoth's expression, he didn't think it was very good, but he held his peace. Roypar led here. Anyone else challenged him at his own peril.
Parsh's body lay where it had fallen. “Will you burn him?” Hamnet Thyssen asked. “What is your custom with your dead?”
“He will lie there till the foxes and bears and tigers have feasted on him,” Samoth answered. “He failed as a man—he deserves nothing better than to feed beasts. No doubt his spirit, when it is born again, will be born into the body of such a one.”
“You believe in reincarnation, then?” Eyvind Torfinn asked eagerly.
“Have you evidence to support your belief?”
Trasamund and Hamnet Thyssen had to drag Eyvind away from the wizard of the Rulers. If they hadn't, he would not have ridden south and east. He would have stayed there and plied Samoth with questions for as long as the sorcerer could stand it.
Hamnet glanced over to Roypar. The chieftain looked unmistakably pleased with himself. The Rulers thought of themselves as conquerors beyond compare. Had he lain with a woman of a lesser breed the night before? Hamnet guessed he had. Gudrid showed nothing one way or the other. She
was good at making her indiscretions discreet—unless she dropped the mask and showed them off.
Hamnet looked away. She laughed softly. So she knew what he was thinking, did she? She'd always been good at that. Hamnet Thyssen turned his back, which only made her laugh again, louder this time.
Too bad,
he thought.
Roypar really did let them ride away. That surprised Count Hamnet. It seemed to surprise and dismay Samoth, who muttered into his thicket of beard. The way he muttered sparked suspicion in Hamnet even before the Rulers' encampment dropped below the horizon behind the travelers. He rode over first to Audun Gilli and then to Liv, asking each of them, “Is the wizard back there tracking us by magic? Are we taking along some little spell that lets him spy on us?” He had to repeat himself, using Raumsdalian and then the Bizogots' language. He wished the two people among the travelers who knew sorcery could understand each other. As happened too often in life, what he wished for had nothing to do with what he got.
Ulric Skakki understood him both times he asked the question. “You have a nasty, distrustful turn of mind, your Grace,” Ulric said—in the Bizogot language, a choice Hamnet found interesting. “I only wish I'd thought of that myself.”
“Don't worry,” Hamnet said. “You would have before long.”
“That kind of spell is possible, I suppose.” Audun Gilli didn't seem to think Samoth had actually done such a thing.
Liv did. “Yes, of course. A sorcerous flea, you might say, coming along with us. Maybe it will bite, too, when the time is right.”
“Can you find it?” Count Hamnet asked. “Can you kill it?” Again, he had to use the mammoth-herders' language and then his own.
So did Ulric Skakki when he added, “Can you find it and kill it without letting Samoth know it's gone?” Hamnet Thyssen thumped his forehead with the heel of his hand. Now he was angry that Ulric had an idea before he did.
“Who knows what all shamanry the strangers have?” Liv said. “They think it is stronger than ours. They may be right—remember how Samoth shattered Audun's opal. But we can try.”
“What does she say?” Audun Gilli asked. “I heard my name in that, whatever it was.” When Count Hamnet translated for him, he sniffed. “I am sure I could have stopped Samoth if I'd been looking for him to do that. Liv worries over nothing.”
Now the Bizogot shaman wondered why Audun was using her name. Hamnet Thyssen turned Audun's words into her tongue. She sniffed on a note almost identical to the one the Raumsdalian sorcerer had used. “He says I worry over nothing, does he? Well, he thinks there is nothing to worry about, and that worries me.”
It worried Hamnet Thyssen, too. Having the two sorcerers squabble again also worried him, the more so since they had to do their squabbling through him or through Ulric. Hoping to distract them, he said, “The flea,” first in the Bizogot language, then in Raumsdalian.
“Trust a Bizogot to think of fleas,” Audun said. Since he was scratching as he spoke—he didn't seem to notice he was doing it—he proved Raumsdalians weren't immune to the pests. Count Hamnet's itches already told him that.
“Never mind the snide cracks,” Ulric said. “Can you find the magic?” Now he used Raumsdalian, and didn't translate for Liv. She sent Hamnet a look of appeal. He didn't translate, either. She glared at him.
“If it is here, it should be simple enough to find,” Audun Gilli said.
“Please go ahead and do it, then,” Hamnet Thyssen said, and then, to Liv, “I would also like you to check.” By now, he was resigned to going back and forth between languages.
“I will do it if Audun fails.” The Bizogot shaman glanced over at the Raumsdalian wizard. “I wish we could understand each other. It might mean much if we have to work together. Would you teach me Raumsdalian, Hamnet Thyssen?”
“If you like,” Count Hamnet answered. “You will have to learn the fancy magical terms from Audun, though. I might make mistakes, and mistakes in that kind of thing can be dangerous. I am no wizard, but at least I know it.”
“You're right,” Liv said. “I should have started learning your language a long time ago, but you and I didn't always get on well.”
“Ulric Skakki could have taught you, or Eyvind Torfinn—or Trasamund, come to that,” Hamnet said.
“I think you are more patient than they are,” Liv said. Hamnet doubted whether anyone in the world was more patient than Eyvind Torfinn. He didn't want to say so, not when Liv paid him such a compliment.
Audun Gilli, meanwhile, was rummaging through the pouches he wore on his belt. He muttered and mumbled as he rummaged—all in all, he might have posed for a picture of a distracted wizard. At last, though, he came up with what he needed and seemed to come back to the real world.
“Here is the dried head of a plover,” he said, and held it up. Hamnet Thyssen looked away from the sunken eye sockets. Audun Gilli went on, “It has the virtue that, if used with the proper spell, it prevents deception.”
“What does he say?” Liv asked. Hamnet translated for her. She nodded, though a little doubtfully. “We use a different bird for what sounds like the same charm,” she said, “and a certain stone as well.” She shrugged. “Well, let us see what his shamanry shows.”
Audun Gilli held up the plover's head in his left hand. He made passes with his right while chanting in Raumsdalian almost too old-fashioned for Count Hamnet to understand. A moment later, Hamnet blinked. Were the bird's eyes suddenly bright and shiny and full of life? So it seemed.
And the dead, dried plover's head cried out, too—a shrill piping, such as the live bird might have used when frightened. “Well, well.” Audun Gilli's voice rose in surprise. “We
do
have ourselves a flea, you might say.”
“Where?” Hamnet Thyssen asked.
“That will take another charm,” the wizard replied. He might have asked the plover's head a question. And it seemed to answer him, and to twist in his hand to point the way. It pointed straight toward the horse Gudrid was riding. “Well, well,” Audun Gilli said again. “This could be, ah, awkward.”
“Yes.” Hamnet Thyssen was even less eager to break the news to his former wife than Audun seemed to be. Liv couldn't do it; she and Gudrid had no language in common. Hamnet looked at Ulric Skakki. “Would you be so kind as to … ?”
“I'll remember you in my nightmares,” Ulric said with a grimace. But he rode over to Gudrid. She accepted his arrival as no less than her due. The way she looked at the world, everything revolved around her and paid her tribute.
Ulric spoke. Hamnet Thyssen couldn't make out exactly what he said; despite morbid curiosity, the Raumsdalian noble didn't go close enough to eavesdrop. Count Hamnet did note the exact instant when Ulric shifted from pleasantries and small talk to the reason he'd gone over to Gudrid. She stiffened in the saddle, then started to laugh. “But that's ridiculous!” she said—Hamnet had no trouble hearing her.
Shaking his head, Ulric Skakki went on talking quietly, doing his best to explain why it wasn't ridiculous. His best wasn't going to be good enough. Hamnet knew his former wife well enough to be sure of that.
And he was right. Gudrid shook her head, too. “I don't know where you
get your ideas,” she said, “but you can go and put them back there again, because you don't have the faintest notion what you're talking about.” She made as if to ride away from Ulric Skakki.
He was not so easily detached. Unlike Gudrid, he still didn't make a lot of noise. But he did point in Eyvind Torfinn's direction. Earl Eyvind was chatting with Jesper Fletti, and not paying any particular attention to Gudrid at the moment. Hamnet Thyssen had a pretty good notion of what Ulric was saying.
Don't be difficult, or I'll tell your husband what you were doing last night
. If that wasn't it, Count Hamnet would have been astonished.
Gudrid was astonished, but not in any pleasant way. “You wouldn't dare,” she said shrilly. That was the wrong answer to give Ulric Skakki. He twitched the reins and guided his horse away from hers, toward Eyvind Torfinn's. “Wait!” Gudrid screeched.
Courteously, Ulric did wait. The look Gudrid sent him was anything but courteous. Ulric was either made of stern stuff or a fine actor—maybe both—because he seemed undamaged.
“Do what you want to do,” Gudrid snapped, and she might have added,
And demons take you afterwards.
Again, Ulric affected not to notice. He bowed in the saddle and said something else too low for Hamnet to catch. Then he turned and called, “Liv, sweetheart, would you do the honors here?” He used Raumsdalian, even though Liv didn't speak it. But she had no trouble with his comehither gesture. And Gudrid, of course, understood both the gesture and the words. She had plenty of reasons for disliking Liv, chief among them that the Bizogot shaman was the only other woman in the party. And now Liv was going to do something sorcerous around her, and she couldn't stop it? She had to hate that.
Hamnet Thyssen almost sent Ulric a formal salute. The adventurer had found a very smooth way to avenge himself.
Liv smiled at Gudrid, and kept the smile although Gudrid didn't return it. Even without a language in common, Liv was bound to know some of what Gudrid felt. What did she feel herself? Hamnet had never had the nerve to ask her.
For the moment, the Bizogot woman seemed all business. She murmured to herself and made several swift passes at Gudrid and the horse. “Ah!” she said brightly. “There it is.” Hamnet and Ulric understood her. Gudrid didn't. Liv pointed at Gudrid's tunic. She gestured. “Take it off.”
“What?” Gudrid didn't speak the Bizogot language, but that wasn't all
that kept her from understanding. Ulric Skakki translated for her. “What?” she said again. “Take off my clothes for this chit of a girl? No!”
If you didn't take off your clothes for the Ruler, we wouldn't have this worry now
, Hamnet thought. He almost said it out loud. To his surprise, he didn't. He liked Eyvind Torfinn better than he'd ever imagined he could, and didn't care to shame the older man.
Liv had no trouble figuring out what
No
! meant, even if she knew hardly any Raumsdalian. She didn't argue with Gudrid. She just dragged her off her horse. Gudrid let out a startled squawk. Both women thumped down on the dirt. Gudrid tried to fight back, but she'd never really learned how. Liv knew exactly what she was doing. Gudrid screamed and swore, which helped her not a bit. The Bizogot shaman quickly and efficiently stripped the tunic off her—and if she gave her a black eye and a split lip while she did it, wasn't she entitled to a little fun?
Gudrid was bare beneath the thick wool tunic. Hamnet Thyssen set his jaw and looked away. He knew what Gudrid's breasts were like—knew them by sight, knew them by touch, knew them by taste. He also knew he would never touch or taste them again. And he had no interest in seeing them again under such circumstances—or maybe he couldn't stand to look.
Liv seemed to care about as much for Gudrid's charms as she would have for those of a musk ox. She murmured a spell over the tunic. Suddenly, she stiffened. “Here it is!” she said. “Just a little fetish, but it will do.”
“What on earth is going on?” Eyvind Torfinn said.
Ulric Skakki and Audun Gilli did the explaining. Despite his regard for Earl Eyvind, Hamnet didn't have the heart—or the stomach—for the job. He also wanted to involve himself with Gudrid as little as he could. She screeched at her husband, but warily. She didn't want him to know what she'd been doing the night before. No one else seemed eager to tell him, but that didn't mean no one would.

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