Harry Turtledove: Beyong the Gap

When the edge stood not far north of Nidaros, in the days before the Raumsdalian Empire rose to greatness, the Glacier had still been a single sheet. But, as it drew back over the centuries that followed, it drew back not straight north, but to the northeast and the northwest. Thus what Raumsdalians called the Gap-a narrow stretch of bare ground between the two lobes of the Glacier. The Bizogots used a word with the same literal meaning but much earthier associations.

"By God," Hamnet Thyssen said softly. "By God! Will you tell me, Jarl Trasamund of the Three Tusk clan, will you tell me the Gap has cloven the Glacier in two?"

Ulric Skakki whistled softly, a low, mournful note. Count Hamnet felt like doing the same. There were metaphysicians, and more than a few of them, who argued that the Gap could not possibly divide the Glacier, for the Glacier had to go on forever. Though no metaphysician himself-far from it-he’d always inclined toward that view himself. So did most men who'd actually set eyes on the Glacier. It was too vast to imagine its having an end.

But Trasamund nodded. He also scowled. Plainly, he did not care to be anticipated. Anticipated he was, though, and he would have to make the best of it. "I will tell you this, southern man, for it is so. Do you call me a liar?"

If Hamnet Thyssen did call him a liar, one of them would die in the next few minutes. Hamnet was large and formidable, but Trasamund was larger still, and stronger, and younger. All the same, Count Hamnet thought he could take the Bizogot if he had to.

Here, though, the issue did not arise, for Hamnet shook his head. "Not at all, your Ferocity." He invested the jarl's title with not even a grain of irony. "No, not at all. Tell us, then-what lies beyond the Glacier?"

Hamnet leaned toward Trasamund, waiting for the answer. So did Sigvat II. Ulric Skakki also listened intently, but seemed rather less interested. Hamnet Thyssen wondered why. Beyond the Glacier. . . He might as well have said, beyond the moon. Anything might lie there, anything at all. Some folk said God led men into this promised land and then laid down the Glacier to keep evildoers from following them. Some said the men here were evildoers, and God had laid down the Glacier to keep them from finding the earthly paradise that lay beyond it. Some said the men here had always been here, and the Glacier had always been here, and nothing lay beyond it. Count Hamnet had always inclined toward that view, too, but maybe he was wrong.

"Haven't been far yet, you understand," Trasamund said. Hamnet, Ulric Skakki, and Sigvat II nodded as one man. The Bizogot went on, "What I've seen of the land beyond the Glacier looks a lot like what I'd see on this side just below it. It's tundra country, a cold steppe. The animals are strange, though. Buffalo near the size of woolly rhinos. Big wandering herds of squat, shaggy deer. Wolves bigger than coyotes, smaller than dire wolves. White bears-smaller than short-faced bears, but I think slier and sneakier, too."

"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.