Beyond the Gap (31 page)

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Authors: Harry Turtledove

BOOK: Beyond the Gap
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“Loyalty,” he said at once. “I must go down to Nidaros and let the Emperor know what I have seen, what I have done, and what I think we need to do in times to come.”
Liv gave him a nod that was almost a bow. “Your answer does you honor. But once you've shown your loyalty, why not come north again and lead the free life of the tents with me? What would you be losing?”
Hamnet had never thought of himself as a man who set much store by material things. But
things
were what sprang to mind when he asked himself why he didn't want to live the mammoth-herders' life for the rest of his days. Books. Beds. Linen. Bread. Ale. Beer. Wine. Mead. Even the language he'd known from his cradle was a
thing
of sorts. He could get along in the Bizogot tongue—he could, indeed, do better than get along—but it wasn't his, and never would be. He laughed a little when he thought of tobacco. It was Ulric's vice, not his; he'd smoked only enough to convince himself he didn't want more. But the herb came up to Raumsdalia from the south, and it hardly ever came any farther north. The only Bizogots who used it were men who'd learned the habit in the Empire. But never having the
chance
to smoke again … That seemed a bigger thing.
How much would he miss the society of his fellow Raumsdalians? Not much, not most of the time; he was honest enough to own up to that. But, most of the time, he stayed in his castle, and his countrymen had the courtesy to leave him the demon alone. Escaping the Bizogots if he came north to live would be much harder. It might well prove impossible. For all the vast plains they roamed, the barbarians lived in clumps and knots of people, especially in winter. If they were going to survive, they had to. Hamnet Thyssen imagined himself cooped up with a tentful of nomads for months on end. The picture didn't want to form. The more he thought about it, the less that surprised him.
He sighed. “You have your place; I have mine. Maybe you wouldn't fit in mine. I don't know if that's so, but I can see how it might be. But I'm sure I would never make a Bizogot. I need to be by myself too much.”
He wondered if that would make any sense to her. To his relief, and a little to his surprise, she nodded at once. “Yes, I saw as much when we traveled,” she said. “Few Bizogots have such a need. Is it common in your folk?”
“Not very,” Hamnet admitted. Liv nodded again; all the other Raumsdalians up here, even hapless Audun Gilli and scholarly Eyvind Torfinn,
were more outgoing than he. He continued, “But what others of my folk feel is not the problem. What
I
feel is.”
“You seem to want
my
company.” Liv didn't mean only that he wanted to sleep with her, though that was in her voice, too.
And now Hamnet Thyssen nodded. “I do,” he said. “Aside from
that”—
he wasn't going to deny it was there; he hardly could, things being as they were—“I like talking with you. And one of the reasons I like talking with you is that you don't feel as if you have to talk all the time. You …” He groped for words. “You keep quiet in a pleasant tone of voice.”
He waited. That would have said what he wanted to say in Raumsdalian. He wasn't so sure it did in the Bizogot language. When Liv smiled, so did he, in relief. “I thank you,” she said. “I'm not sure I ever got higher praise.”
Now Hamnet wasn't sure whether she was sincere or sarcastic. “I meant it for such.”
She smiled again. “I know you did. Bizogots do live in each other's pockets, don't we? We can't help it, you know. If we didn't help each other all the time, if we didn't stay close so we could help each other, we couldn't live up here at all.”
“No, I suppose not,” Hamnet said. “Now I've seen how you live. Don't you want to come down to the Empire and find out what life is like there? You wouldn't have to stay. I don't think I'll stay forever myself.” He drummed his fingers on the outside of his thigh. “I don't think the Rulers will let me peacefully stay there.”
Liv bit her lip. “Part of me would like to, but … I don't know. It's a far country, far away and very strange.”
“You went through the Gap. You went beyond the Glacier.” Hamnet gestured toward the towering ice mountains that shaped the northern horizon. “After that, what is the journey to the Empire? A stroll, a nothing. The way south gets easier, not harder.”
She shook her head. “The travel might not be hard. The travel probably isn't hard. But when I went beyond the Glacier, I was still myself. What would I be when I came to the Empire? Nothing but a barbarian.” She spoke the last word in the Raumsdalian she was slowly learning.
“If anyone calls you a barbarian, turn him into a lemming,” Hamnet Thyssen said. “That will teach the next fool to mind his manners. Or if it doesn't, he's a big enough fool to deserve being a lemming.”
“You don't understand.” Liv sounded almost desperate. “Chances are no one will call me a barbarian to my face. You people don't come out and say
the things you think the way we do. But you think them whether you say them or not—and what can I do about that?”
Count Hamnet grunted. She wasn't wrong. Raumsdalians did think Bizogots were barbarians. He thought so himself. He had good reasons for thinking so. He also had good reasons for making exceptions now and again—as with this shaman with tears standing in her eyes. Would his countrymen make those kinds of exceptions? He feared not.
And what he feared must have shown on his face, for Liv said, “You see? It would be the way I told you.” She started to turn away, then looked back at him in angry defiance. “Give me one good reason why I should go down to the Empire. A
good
reason, I tell you.”
She was afraid. He could see that, but for a moment he could find no reasons anyhow, not reasons of the kind she meant. Then he did—and in finding one he discovered Liv was not the only one who could be afraid on this cold autumn morning. If he told her what the reason was … But he would lose her if he didn't. He could see that.
Even so, his heard pounded like a kettledrum in his chest as he answered, “Because I love you.”
Her eyes widened. Maybe she had some small idea of how hard that was for him to say. She couldn't possibly know all of it, not unless she knew everything about him and Gudrid. Even not knowing everything, she said, “You look as if that was harder than going into battle.”
“Maybe it was,” Hamnet said.
“How could it be?”
“In a battle, all they can do is kill you. If you love someone and it goes wrong, you spend years wishing you were dead.” Hamnet knew how true that was.
“You mean it,” Liv said, wonder in her voice.
“I usually mean what I say,” he answered. “I meant what I said when I told you I loved you, too. And I meant what I said when I told you I wanted you to come down to the Empire with me. Will you?”
“I don't know,” she said, which made him want to shout in frustration. He made himself keep quiet; if he pushed too hard, he would push her away. He could feel that. Instead of pushing, he waited. Slowly, she went on, “But I don't see how I can say no, not with things the way they are, not when I love you, too.”
“Ah,” he said—a small sound, one that didn't come close to showing how his heart exploded in rainbow delight.
Liv's nod was altogether serious. “Yes,” she said. “I do. And because I do, it seems only right I should go south. You've seen how Bizogots live. I should at least see your way, too.” She made it sound only reasonable. Hamnet was much too glad to care how it sounded.
S
ETTING OUT ACROSS the broad plains of the Bizogot country with winter frozen fingers gripping tighter every day should have chilled Hamnet's heart. It should have, but it didn't.
Snow and sleet and likely hunger and Bizogots who couldn't stand Raumsdalians or the Three Tusk clan or both at once? Hamnet Thyssen didn't worry. Not worrying felt strange, unnatural, almost perverse. All the same, he didn't. He was with someone who mattered to him more than all the possible worries put together.
“I hardly know you with that smile on your face,” Ulric Skakki said.
“Ah, well,” said Hamnet, who hardly knew himself. “With this smile on my face, I hardly know you, either.”
“What's that supposed to mean?” Ulric asked.
“Just what it said, and not a bit more,” Count Hamnet answered. Ulric
Skakki rode off shaking his head, which suited Hamnet fine.
Gudrid left him alone at the start of the journey south from the Three Tusk clan's encampment, which suited him fine. He waited for her to try to find some way to make him less happy, as she'd done whenever she caught him smiling after she left him.
He'd always stolidly pretended not to care about her, never with much success. Now, though, he truly didn't, an armor he'd never enjoyed before. He was tempted to flaunt his happiness with Liv to get Gudrid's goat.
He wouldn't have minded revenge; Gudrid had put him through too much to leave him immune to its charms. But what he wanted even more was freedom from the hooks she'd set in his soul. She'd been harder to
break away from than poppy juice, mostly because he'd always wanted her back more than he'd wanted her to go away and leave him alone.
She couldn't go away now, not till they got back to Nidaros. She could keep on leaving him alone, though. He wanted no more from her—and no less.
But not long after he found what he wanted, Gudrid suddenly decided she couldn't stay away from him. It would have been funny … if he didn't have so much trouble keeping his hand off the hilt of his sword.
She guided her horse alongside his as they rode south. When he made as if to steer his mount away from her, she stayed with him. “So slumming makes you happy, does it?” she asked.
He looked at her—looked through her, really. “No, I didn't end up happy with you,” he replied.
Gudrid laughed. “If you were half as funny as you think you are, you'd be twice as funny as you really are.”
“If you don't care for my conversation, you're welcome to find someone else to annoy,” Hamnet Thyssen said.
“Here I try to give you good advice, and this is the thanks I get.” Gudrid sounded convincingly wounded—but not convincingly enough.
“The only good advice you'd give me is which poison to take and how to jump off a cliff,” Count Hamnet said.
“Oh, I expect you can figure out that sort of thing for yourself.” Gudrid pulled off a mitten for a moment so she could flutter her fingers at him. “You're clever about matters like that. It's people you have trouble with.”
“No doubt,” Hamnet Thyssen said. “Look how long I put up with you.”
“Just so,” Gudrid said placidly as she returned the mitten to her hand. “What makes you think you'll do any better this time around?”
“Well, I could scarcely do worse, could I?” Hamnet said.
“You never know, not till it happens.”
“I'll take my chances,” Hamnet said. “Why don't you go back to telling Eyvind Torfinn what to do? He's your sport these days, isn't he?”
“You're more amusing, though. It's harder to make him angry.”
“I'm sure you could manage if you set your mind—or something—to it.”
“Meow,” she said. “Jealousy doesn't become you.”
“I'm not jealous of Eyvind Torfinn.” Hamnet listened to himself. It was true. He
wasn't
jealous. It so surprised him, he said it again: “I'm not jealous of Eyvind Torfinn, by God. If he wants you so much, he's welcome to you.”
Gudrid stared. She must have heard the conviction in his voice, and it must have surprised her as much as it surprised him. She yanked hard at
her horse's reins. The luckless beast snorted as she jerked its head away and rode off.
Hamnet Thyssen went on alone for some little while after that. For the time being, he was free from the longing for what once had been. He wasn't sure she entirely believed that, even now, but she would surely begin to suspect it might be so. And when she decided it was … What would she do then?
 
WHENEVER THE TRAVELERS met other Bizogot clans, Trasamund would go on—and on, and on—about their wanderings beyond the Glacier. He'd come with them precisely so he could speak with each clan's jarl as an equal. He talked about the Rulers, and about the way they rode mammoths. That always made the Bizogots, chieftains and clansmen, sit up and take notice. Everyone who heard about it seemed wild to try it. “Why didn't we think of that?” was a refrain Count Hamnet heard over and over again.
Then Trasamund would talk about how the Bizogot clans needed to band together against the invasion that was bound to come before long. Every other jarl who heard that would smile and nod politely, and then would go on with whatever he'd been doing before Trasamund raised the point. Riding mammoths interested the Bizogots. Taking steps against what hadn't happened yet … didn't.
“What's wrong with them?” Trasamund growled when yet another jarl refused to get excited about the threat.
“I can tell you, your Ferocity,” Ulric Skakki said. “And I can tell you something else—you won't like it.”
“Try me.” Trasamund turned it into a challenge.
“Suppose a jarl from near the border with Raumsdalia came up to the Three Tusks country and told you the Empire was going to invade his grazing lands when spring came. What would you do about it?”
The jarl frowned. “Me? Probably not much, not by my lonesome. It's a long way off, and …” His voice trailed away. He sent Ulric Skakki a perfectly poisonous glare. “You have a nasty way of making your point.”
“Ah, God bless you, your Ferocity. You say the sweetest things,” Ulric crooned. Trasamund muttered into his beard. Not for the first time, Ulric's gratitude for things that weren't meant as compliments succeeded in confusing the person who'd aimed the unpleasantry his way.
“He's right, I'm afraid,” Hamnet Thyssen said gloomily. “When the
Rulers bump up against these clans, they'll worry about them. Till then, folk from the far side of the Glacier don't seem real to them.”
“But they ought to,” Trasamund said. “You Raumsdalians can see the problem even though it isn't right on top of you.”
“Well, we've gone beyond the Glacier, too,” Hamnet said. “We hope the Emperor will see it. But you need to remember—” He broke off, not wanting to offend the jarl.
“Remember what?” Trasamund asked. “What, by God?”
Hamnet Thyssen knew he needed to pick his words with care. What he meant was that the Bizogots were nothing but barbarians, and so of course they didn't worry much about what would happen in a few months. No matter what he meant, he didn't want to say that. For one thing, it
would
anger Trasamund. For another, he had no guarantee that the future meant anything more to Sigvat II than it did to a fleabitten mammoth-herder.
He scratched. Pfenty of fleas had bitten him, too. How he looked forward to a long soak and, best of all, to clean clothes!
He still had to answer Trasamund, who waited impatiently. “You need to remember, the Rulers will seem less real to the Emperor than even to your own folk. Nidaros is much farther away from the Gap than your camps are.”
“And so the Raumsdalians will try to use the Bizogots as a shield, the way they bribe the southern clans now to help hold out the fiercer men from the north.” Trasamund thumped his own chest with a big, hard fist, reminding Count Hamnet he was one of those fiercer men himself.
“How can you imagine we would do such a thing?” Hamnet said, as innocently as he could.
The Bizogot jarl laughed in his face. “By God, your Grace, I would if I lived in Sigvat's palace. We are mammoth-herders—you think you can get away with being Bizogot-herders. But there is a difference. The mammoths don't know what we're doing to them. Bizogots aren't blind men, or deaf men, either. Sooner or later, you Raumsdalians will be sorry.”
He was likely to be right. No, he was bound to be right. Once upon a time, back in the days when history and legend blurred together, the Raumsdalians had roamed the frozen steppe (in those days, it ran much farther south than it did now). Hamnet Thyssen's distant ancestors had torn the meat from the bones of the empire that preceded Raumsdalia. One of these days, maybe the Bizogots would storm Nidaros and set up their own kingdom on its ruins.
Or maybe the Rulers would swarm down through the Gap and beat the
Bizogots to the punch. Hamnet Thyssen didn't know that the barbarians from the far side of the Glacier could do any such thing. He didn't know they could, no. But he didn't know they couldn't, either, and that worried him.
“
I
can see that the Rulers are a danger,” Trasamund said. “If Sigvat II can't, maybe he doesn't deserve to be Emperor anymore. Maybe something will happen so he isn't. One thing God does—he makes sure fools pay for their folly.”
“Well, you're right about that.” Hamnet wasn't thinking about Sigvat and the Rulers.
“Liv … likes you.” Now Trasamund spoke hesitantly. Even a jarl took care talking about a shaman.
“Yes,” Hamnet said. “I like her, too.”
“Be careful with her. I don't want her hurt. She isn't just a good shaman. She's a good Bizogot, and a good woman, too.”
“If she weren't a good woman, I wouldn't like her the way I do.” Hamnet Thyssen hoped that was true.
“If you were a Bizogot …” Trasamund's voice trailed off. A moment later, he tried again, saying, “If you were a
Three Tusk
Bizogot …”
“I'm not,” Hamnet said. “I'm never going to be. You know that as well as I do, your Ferocity. I don't expect Liv to turn into a Raumsdalian. That won't happen either. I know it.”
“I should say not. But she would lose something if she turned into one of your folk. You would gain something if you turned into a Bizogot.”
“My folk would say it the other way around, you know,” Count Hamnet said. Trasamund laughed uproariously. He thought that was the funniest thing in the world. Hamnet Thyssen had known he would. If barbarians recognized that they were barbarians, they wouldn't be so barbarous any more.
He, of course, was right and full of reason when he declined to think about becoming a Bizogot. That was as plain as the nose on his face.At the moment, the nose on his face had a muffler over it, to keep the blizzards from freezing it off him. He rode on toward the south, but winter rode ahead of him.
 
IN SPRING, SUDERTORP Lake had been a marvelous place, full of ducks and geese and swans and waders and shore scuttlers—every manner of bird that lived in or near the water seemed to want to breed in the bushes and marshes and reeds that lined the immense meltwater lake. In winter, though … Hamnet Thyssen had never seen Sudertorp Lake in the wintertime before. He was sorry to see it now.
Under a gray sky, the water and ice of Sudertorp Lake in winter were the color of phlegm. The north wind—the Breath of God—whipped the water to waves and whitecaps that tossed sullenly … where they could. Toward the shore, the surface of the lake was frozen. Count Hamnet supposed the ice would advance across the water till the turning of the sun made it retreat once more.
Right now, that turning looked a long way off, a long, long way indeed.
The bushes and reeds and rushes were yellow and brown and dead. The turning of the sun would also bring them back to life, but that seemed likelier to be legend than truth. Hamnet would have been sure of it if he hadn't come through here in the springtime.
In spring, the Leaping Lynx clan camped by the eastern shore of Sudertorp Lake. The Bizogots of that clan lived off the fat of the land then. So many birds bred and foraged here, a clan's worth of hunting mattered no more to them than a mosquito bite to a man.
In winter, though, the Leaping Lynxes' lakeside houses stood empty. The Bizogots had to go forth and follow their herds and flocks like any other clan. Trasamund surveyed the empty stone buildings with a certain somber satisfaction. “Serves them right—you know what I mean?” he said.
“In the springtime, Riccimir gets above himself. He might as well be a Raumsdalian.”
“A Raumsdalian?” Ulric Skakki said.

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