Harry Turtledove - Beyong the Gap

Hamnet would have embarrassed himself if he’d got lost in the maze of lanes and alleys that sprouted from the main road. He knew more than a little relief when he got back onto it. With luck, neither of the Bizogots with him noticed.

If it was snowing here, what was it like up by the Glacier'! Do I really want to know? he wondered. He shrugged. Ulric Skakki had gone that way, and gone by himself, without the Bizogots' knowing. What he can do, I can do, by God. Hamnet Thyssen muttered under his breath. He still wished Ulric were coming along. The adventurer was a good man to have beside you when you ran into trouble-or when it ran into you.

He pointed. "There's the gate."

"So it is." Trasamund nodded in satisfaction. "On the way home at last. Even getting out of Nidaros, getting into the countryside here, will feel like an escape. It's not the plains, but I won't feel closed in all the time, either, the way I do now."

"Closed in. Yes, by God!" Liv said. "When you leave the tents, there's a whole big world around you, and you can see it. When you leave a house, what do you see? More walls!" She shuddered. "It's like being tied up, like being caged."

"All what you're used to," Hamnet Thyssen said. "I told you before-out on your plains, sometimes I feel as if there's too much nothing around me." He mimed curling up into a little ball.

The gate guards asked their names. When the sergeant heard them, he said, "Oh, you're that lot. Yes, you can go through. By all we've heard, it's good riddance to the lot of you."

"We love you, too," Hamnet said mildly. He had offended Sigvat, then. Well, too bad. And as a matter of fact, it was too bad. Trasamund said something even more unflattering in the Bizogot language. Luckily, none of the guards understood him.

Liv really did sigh with relief when they put the gray stone walls of Nidaros behind them. "Free!" she said, and threw her arms wide. Her horse twitched its ears, doubtless wondering why its rider was acting so strange.

Hamnet Thyssen wondered why two horsemen-tough-looking rogues, he thought, peering at them through the swirling snow-sat waiting by the side of the Great North Road. Was Sigvat angry enough to set bravos on him to make sure he didn't get to the Bizogot country? He wouldn't have thought so, but. . . When he got a little closer, his jaw dropped. "Ulric!" he said. "Audun! What the demon are you doing here?"

Ulric Skakki tilted back his head so he could look down his long, straight nose at Hamnet. "You're more persuasive than you have any business being, Thyssen," he said severely. "If you set your mind to it, you could probably sell snow to the Bizogots."

"I don't need to sell it." Hamnet held out a mittened hand till a few flakes fell on it. "It's right here. And I'm glad to see you, even if I didn't think I'd put any horse traders out of business." He sketched a salute to the wizard. "I'm glad to see you, too, Audun-you'd best believe I am. What made you decide to come?"

Audun Gilli's nondescript features lit up when anyone paid attention to him. "I thank you, your Grace. What made me decide to come? Ulric here kidnapped me."

For a moment, Count Hamnet believed him. Then Ulric Skakki laughed. "Well, it's nice to know I'm innocent of something, anyway. We got to talking after Eyvind Torfinn’s gruesome bash, and we decided we'd do better going north than staying here after all. Yes, curse you, you were right. There-I've said it. Now how much more snow are you going to sell me?"

"You will remember that I am the jarl of the Three Tusk clan?" Trasamund thumped his chest with his right fist and glowered in turn at Ulric and Audun.

"Yes, your Ferocity," Audun said. He wasn't likely to raise that kind of trouble any which way.

Ulric pointed toward Hamnet Thyssen. "Why aren't you thundering at him?"

"He already understands," Trasamund answered. "Do you?"

"I don't want to be jarl. I have trouble enough telling myself what to do," Ulric Skakki answered. "You're welcome to the job, as far as I'm concerned."

"I did not think you wanted to lead my clan. You are no witling. You know they would not follow you." Trasamund gave Ulric his fiercest stare. "But when you are among my clansfolk, will you follow me? That is what I must know."

Ulric thought hard before saying, "Unless I think you're wrong enough about something to make a real mess of it."

"That's not good enough," the Bizogot said.

"You'd better take it," Ulric Skakki advised. "It's as much as you'll get, and a lot more than I'd give most people."

Trasamund went right on looking fierce. Hamnet Thyssen could have told him that was the wrong way to go about intimidating Ulric. Luckily, Hamnet didn't need to tell him; he figured it out for himself. "I would kill any Bizogot who was so insolent to me," he snarled.

"Well, you're welcome to try," Ulric Skakki said politely.

Trasamund muttered into his thick, curly beard. Then he booted his horse up the Great North Road. So did Liv. So did Count Hamnet and Audun Gilli. And so did Ulric Skakki. And if he had a smile on his face, he often had a smile on his face. He wasn't openly mocking Trasamund-not so the jarl could prove it, anyhow.

For the first hour or so, Trasamund rode as if trying to shake off pursuers. Then he seemed to decided Ulric really was on his side, or would be if he let him. He slowed down. That had to relieve his horse; the Bizogot was a big, beefy man, and couldn't have been easy to carry.

Liv pointed to little sparrow-like birds hopping around on the snow-covered ground off to the side of the road. "Larkspurs!" she said. "So this is where they go during the winter."

"I suppose so." Hamnet thought for a few heartbeats. "We did see them up in the Bizogot country in summertime, didn't we?" He hadn't paid much attention to the birds. They were too wary to be easily caught, and too small to be worth eating unless a large batch of them were baked in a pie or something of the sort.

"We saw them beyond the Glacier, too," Liv said. "Do those birds fly through the Gap to come here? Do they fly over the Glacier? Or do they winter in the lands we don't know, the lands to the far southwest?"

There was an interesting question. "I don't know," Hamnet admitted. "How would you go about finding out?"

"You might be able to enchant a bird in the summer and then use the spell to see where it went in wintertime," Liv answered. "Of course, something might eat it between the time you cast the spell and the time you tried to check it. And you might not be able to tell anything if the larkspurs beyond the Glacier do go to that other land. God only knows how far away it is."

That was liable to be literally true. No man on this side of the Glacier knew; that was certain. Maybe the Rulers did. And, come to that, maybe the larkspurs did. "You might be able to enchant a bird in the summer," Hamnet said."I never could." He paused, then added, "You enchanted me."

Liv blushed and shook her head. "That was no magic, not the way you mean. It was … the two of us."

"Well, good." Hamnet had always believed that was so. But he'd believed things about Gudrid that didn't turn out to be true. Could he stand it if he and Liv went sour?

Slowly, he nodded. He could stand their going sour. That was the chance you took, the risk you had to accept. Life wasn't perfect; neither were people. If Liv lied to him, though … He would be a long time getting over that, if he ever did.

He didn't think she would. He hoped she wouldn't. And, right now, what else could he do? On he rode, after Trasamund, toward the Bizogot country, toward war with the Rulers, away from Nidaros, away from the Empire, away from everything he held dear. Sometimes you had to break the patterns that had run your life-and run it into the ground. Was he doing that here? Again, he thought so. He hoped so. Whether he was right or not.. . sooner or later, he'd find out.