Beyong the Gap

VII

Trasamund did not know where in the large territory they roamed the rest of the Three Tusk clan would be. "It depends on the beasts," he said. "It depends on the hunting. It depends on the weather. Later in the year, they may go some way up the Gap-but not, I think, so soon."

Hamnet Thyssen looked ahead, toward the Glacier. He imagined it not just in front of him, but to either side. The thought was not comfortable-was anything but comfortable, in fact. Wouldn't he feel like a bug between two hands waiting for them to slap shut and smash it between them? The rational part of his mind insisted that couldn't happen. In spite of the rational part, he sent apprehensive glances northward.

Then he had a new thought. What would it be like with the Glacier not just to either side of him but behind him? Trasamund had seen that. So had Ulric Skakki. The mere idea made Hamnet dizzy. Wouldn't he think the whole world had turned upside down?

While he was looking at the Glacier, Eyvind Torfinn was peering east. Eyvind pointed. "Isn't that a horseman?" he asked.

Everyone's head swung that way. Count Hamnet was angry at himself for letting the scholar spot something before he did himself. Earl Eyvind would be worth his weight in gold when and if they found the Golden Shrine. Till then, the learned noble was so much excess baggage. So Hamnet had thought, anyway.

By the chagrin on Trasamund's face, he was having similar thoughts. Or would they be so similar? Hamnet hadn't slept with Gudrid since she married Eyvind Torfinn. Trasamund had, and hardly bothered hiding it. If Eyvind noticed, he didn't let on. But maybe it was more a case of not letting on than of not noticing. If it was, did he contemplate vengeance on Trasamund?

What kind of vengeance could an overeducated Raumsdalian earl take against a Bizogot jarl here on the frozen plain? Hamnet Thyssen couldn't think of any. That didn't have to mean Eyvind Torfinn couldn't, though. Whatever Earl Eyvind might be, he was no fool.

Before the rider-for a rider he certainly was-came much closer, Trasamund said, "I know him. That's Gelimer. He is of my clan."

"How can you tell?" Audun Gilli asked. "By some sorcery?"

"No, no. By his size. By the way he sits his horse," Trasamund answered, shaking his head. "Do you not know your brother at some distance? Gelimer is my brother. Every man of the Three Tusk clan is my brother."

Did that make every woman in the clan his sister? Hamnet shook his head. Not in that sense-Bizogots could marry within their own clan, even if they often didn't. And, as he'd seen, they weren't shy about sporting with women from their own clan, either.

"Who comes to the land of the Three Tusk clan?" Gelimer shouted when he came within hailing distance. He was alone, and facing many strangers, but seemed fearless. After a moment, Count Hamnet shook his head. Gelimer wasn't so much fearless as righteous; he seemed certain he had every moral right to demand answers from anyone he found on the land his clan roamed.

"Hail, Gelimer. Your jarl has returned from the lands of the south," Trasamund shouted back. He urged his horse out a few paces. "Do you not know me?" You had better know me, his tone warned.

"By God, I do, your Ferocity," the other Bizogot warned. "These folk with you are friends and guests, then?"

"They are," Trasamund said. "They will go north into the Gap with me. They will go north beyond the Gap, beyond the Glacier, with me. They will see where God draws in his Breath to blow it out."

For a moment, Hamnet took that as no more than a figure of speech. Then he thought of the Golden Shrine, somewhere out there beyond the Glacier. If God dwelt anywhere on earth, wouldn't he dwell in or somewhere near the Golden Shrine? No, Hamnet was never a particularly pious man. But every day's travel to the north took him farther from the mundane world of the Raumsdalian Empire and deeper into the land of legend and myth. How could he afford to disbelieve, considering where he was bound?

Other thoughts ruled Gelimer s mind. Looking over the southerners, he said, "Only one woman for so many men?"

Trasamund laughed. Ulric Skakki smiled a small, tight, ironic smile. Eyvind Torfinn stiffened slightly. And Gudrid stiffened more than slightly. Seeing that, Hamnet Thyssen thoughtfully pursed his lips. He hadn't thought Gudrid understood the Bizogot language. Maybe-pretty plainly, in fact-he was wrong.

"She's not a common woman," Trasamund said. "She belongs to the old shaman here." He pointed toward Earl Eyvind. He was polite enough not to throw Gudrid's infidelities with him into Eyvind's face. His language had no real word for scholar. Shaman came closer than any other.

Gelimer shrugged. "Be it so, then," he said-it wasn't his worry. "But what is she doing here?"

The jarl laughed again. "What? Why, whatever she wants to, of course." He might not have known Gudrid for long, but he grasped her essence. He went on, "Where is the encampment? Is all well with the clan?"

"We are that way, about two days' ride." Gelimer pointed back over his shoulder, toward the east. "And yes, all is… well enough. We skirmished with the White Foxes two months past, when we found them hunting west of the third frost-heave. . . ." He told that story in some detail. Hamnet listened with half an ear. A border squabble between two bands of mammoth-herders interested him about as much as a quarrel between two coachmakers down in Nidaros would have interested Trasamund.

To the jarl, though, this was meat and drink-literally. He plied Gelimer with questions, and finally grunted in satisfaction. "You did well. You all did well," he rumbled. "The White Foxes will respect that which is right, that which is true, from here on out."

"They have a new jarl-his name is Childebert," Gelimer said. "I dare say he wanted to see what he could get away with, especially with you not here to lead our clan."

"You showed him, by God," Trasamund said. "We are Bizogots. Better, we are Bizogots of the Three Tusk clan. Do we need a jarl to tell us we let no one infringe on our rights?"

"We do not. We did not," Gelimer said. "They won't trouble us that way again any time soon."

"Which is as it should be." Trasamund sketched a salute-not really to Gelimer, Hamnet Thyssen judged, but to the Three Tusk clan as a whole.

The jarl went on, "Guide us back to the tents of the clan. We have things to do before faring north again."

"Just as you say, so shall it be," Gelimer replied.

"Of course," Trasamund said complacently. Sigvat II, Emperor of Raumsdalia, could have sounded no more certain.

The encampment of the Three Tusk clan was … a Bizogot encampment. Hamnet Thyssen was long familiar with them. Even if he weren't, the journey up across the frozen steppe would have taught him as much as he needed to know.

Mammoth-hide tents sprouted here and there, scattered higgledy-piggledy across the ground. Horses were tied nearby. By Raumsdalian standards, Bizogot horses were short-legged and stocky and shaggy. They needed to be, to get through the long, hard winters in these parts. Some of them would wander with the clan's musk oxen during the winter, to forage on whatever they could dig up. Others would winter in and near the tents, feeding on hay the Bizogots harvested while the weather was good, and on the frozen grasses the nomads found beneath the snow. So it went in good winters, anyway. When times were not so good, the Bizogots ate horse and rebuilt their herds as they could.

For the moment, the camp boiled with excitement. The nomads would not eat horse any time soon. They'd killed a cow mammoth not long before Trasamund and the Raumsdalians rode up, and were butchering the mountain of meat. They would roast and boil what they could, and eat it on the spot. The rest would be cut into thin strips and salted and dried in the sun and the wind.

Hamnet Thyssen eyed Ulric Skakki. "Here's to gluttony," he said. "Are you up for it?"

"I'll try my best," Ulric answered. "But any civilized man will explode if he tries to keep up with the Bizogots. They're better at stuffing themselves than we are."

"They're better at doing without than we are, too," Hamnet said. "On average, I suppose it's about the same, but they swing further in both directions than we do."

Even the arrival of their jarl, even the arrival of strangers from the south, distracted the nomads only a little. They greeted Trasamund with bloody handclasps. He took it in good part; he knew meat mattered more than he did.

Women scraped fat from the back of the mammoth hide. Some of them used iron knives that had come north in trade, others flint tools that might have been as old as time or might have been made that morning. The Bizogots never had as much iron as they wanted, and eked it out with stone tools.

Dogs danced and begged by the edge of the hide. Every so often, a woman would throw some scraps their way. The dogs yelped and snapped at the food and at one another. The women laughed at the sport.

They carefully saved the rest of the fat. Some of it would get cooked in the feast. The rest would be pounded with lean mammoth meat and berries to make cakes that would keep for a long time and would feed a traveling man.

Once the hide had not a scrap of fat or flesh clinging to it, the women rubbed it with a strong-smelling mix. Audun Gilli s nose wrinkled. "What's that stuff?" he asked.

"Piss and salt, to cure the hide," Count Hamnet answered.

"Oh." The wizard looked unhappy. "Why don't they use tanbark, the way we do?"

Both Hamnet and Ulric laughed at him. "Think about it," Ulric said.

Audun did. "Oh," he said again, this time in a small voice. Tanbark required oaks, and all the oaks grew well south of the tree line.

"What is the news?" Trasamund asked. "Who has died? Who still lives? Who is born? Who is well? Who is sick or hurt?" He had a lot of catching up to do, and was trying to do it all at once. In the Empire, that would have been impossible. The Three Tusk clan was small enough to give him a fighting chance.

"Who are these mouths up from the south?" a Bizogot asked him. That was how the Raumsdalians seemed to the locals-people who had to be fed as long as they were here. Hamnet Thyssen wondered how he liked being called a mouth. Not very well, he decided.

Trasamund named names, which would mean little to a clansman. He called most of the Raumsdalians warriors, styling Audun Gilli and Eyvind Torfinn as shamans. The Three Tusk shaman, easily identifiable by the same kind of fringed and embroidered costume as Witigis had worn, eyed them with interested speculation.

"What about the woman?" another Bizogot called. Actually, he said, What about the gap? That made Hamnet look north toward the gap between the two great sheets of ice that had once been one. This time, Gudrid didn't show any signs of understanding.

"Is she just yours, or can we all have her?" still another mammoth-herder asked. A woman gave him an elbow in the ribs. Was she his wife, or just jealous of competition?

"She is the old shaman's woman," Trasamund answered. Count Hamnet glanced over to see how Eyvind Torfinn liked hearing that again and again. By the fixed smile on his face, he didn't like it much. Trasamund went on, "They are all our guests. They are not to be stolen from."

"Ha!" Ulric Skakki said. Hamnet Thyssen nodded. Guest-friendship would keep the Raumsdalians' persons safe while they stayed with the Three Tusk clan. Their personal property? No. Having so little themselves, Bizogots were born thieves.

"My guests, will you feast with my folk?" Trasamund said.

"We will," answered Hamnet, Ulric, and Eyvind, the only three Raumsdalians who spoke any useful amount of the Bizogot language. "We thank you."

After the Raumsdalians dismounted, Bizogot youths led their horses off to the line where those belonging to the mammoth-herders were tied. The shaman made a beeline for Audun Gilli and spoke to him in the Bizogot tongue. His eyebrows leaped. "A woman!" he exclaimed in Raumsdalian.

"I thought you could tell the difference before they talked," Hamnet Thyssen said dryly. "She's got no beard, and that's a pretty good hint."

The shaman turned to him. "You speak your language, and you speak ours. Will you interpret for me?"

"If I can," Hamnet answered. "If you speak of secret things, I will not know your words for them, and I may not know ours, either. I am no spellcaster."

She looked at him. "You think not, do you?" While he was wondering what to make of that, she went on, "Ask his name for me, please, and tell him I am Liv."

"He is Audun Gilli," Hamnet said. He translated for the wizard.

"Tell her I am glad to meet her," Audun said. "Tell her I hope we can learn things from each other."

"I hope the same." Liv eyed Hamnet again. "And who are you!" He gave her his name. She shook her head with poorly hidden impatience. "I did not ask you for that. I ask who you were. It is not the same thing."

Hamnet Thyssen scratched his head. He wondered if the shaman for Trasamund's clan was slightly daft, or more than slightly. "I am a soldier, a hunter, a loyal follower of my Emperor." Did she know what an emperor was? "Think of him as a jarl ruling many clans."

"Yes, yes." Liv brushed the explanation aside. She looked at him again. She didn't just look at him-she looked into him, with the same disconcerting directness a Raumsdalian wizard might have shown. Lie tried to look away; he had the feeling she was seeing more than he wanted her to. But those cornflower-blue eyes would not release his … until, all at once, they did. He took a deep breath, and then another one. Facing up to her felt like running a long way with a heavy pack on his back. But all she said was, "You are not a happy man."

"No," Hamnet agreed. "I am not." She didn't need to be sorcerer or shaman to know that. Anyone who spoke with him for a little while realized as much.

He waited for her to ask him why not. But she found a different question instead, inquiring, "Why did you come to the Bizogot country?"

"You will know of the Golden Shrine." He didn't quite make it a question. He didn't quite not make it a question, either. Almost everyone on both sides of the border agreed that Raumsdalians and Bizogots worshiped the same God. Everyone on both sides of the border agreed they did not always worship him the same way.

But Liv nodded. "Oh, yes. What of it?"

"I came to seek it, along with your jarl."

"Oh." If he thought that would impress her, he was disappointed. Later, he found that very little impressed her, and that she admitted to even less. For now, she looked into him again. He scowled. He didn't like it, even if it was somehow not the violation it could have been. After a bit, she asked, "What do you look to find there?"

"I don't know." Hamnet Thyssen frowned. He hadn't worried about that. Finding the ages-lost Golden Shrine seemed worry enough. "Truth. Knowledge. Happiness. God."

"Yes," Audun Gilli said softly when Hamnet remembered to translate that for him.

"Maybe," Liv said. "Yes, maybe. But why do you think these things are there?"

"Where else would they be?" Hamnet burst out.

Liv didn't answer, not in words. Instead, she smiled. Hamnet Thyssen gave back a pace, and he was not a man in the habit of retreating from anything or anyone. Sober, Liv was another Bizogot-stranger than most, but apart from that nothing out of the ordinary. When she smiled . .. her whole face changed. It was as if the sun came out from behind the clouds, and hardly less dazzling. For a heartbeat, altogether in spite of himself, he fell in love.

Angrily, he turned away from her. Wizards and shamans had their tricks, yes. Try as he would, he couldn't imagine one more monstrously unfair than that.

He saw he was not the only one turning away. Audun Gilli couldn't face her, either. "She has more strength than she knows," the wizard whispered. "She has more strength than she even dreams of. What such a one would be in Raumsdalia . . ."

"What would she be but Gudrid?" Hamnet Thyssen snarled. Audun flinched as if Hamnet had hit him. Hamnet didn't care. He would rather have hit Liv. No, nothing could be crueler than reminding him of love.

Little by little, Hamnet Thyssen's temper eased. Filling his belly helped, even if he wouldn't have filled it on mammoth meat, mushrooms fried in musk-ox butter, and berries back in the Empire. Getting somewhere close to drunk helped, too, although he would have used beer or ale or mead or even wine to do the job farther south. If smetyn was what the Bizogots had, Count Hamnet would drink it.

He kept a wary eye on Liv despite his full belly and muzzy head. She didn't do anything especially noteworthy. She ate. She drank. She talked with her fellow clansmen and women, and with some of the Raumsdalians who could use her language. She left Hamnet alone. That suited him fine, or better than fine.

He wanted to ask Trasamund how long it would be before they fared north. He wanted to, yes, but the newly returned jarl was otherwise occupied. Trasamund ate enough for three hungry Raumsdalians, and drank enough for five. When he went off to the tent the Bizogots had run up for him, he went with three big blond women from the clan. Mammoth hide might be thick enough to keep out cold, but it couldn't keep in the moans and sighs that came from that tent.

"He's been away from his own people a long time," Ulric Skakki remarked.

"Well, so he has," Hamnet said. "By the sound of things, he's making some more people in there right now-or trying his hardest, anyhow."

"His hardest, indeed," Ulric murmured, and Hamnet swallowed wrong with a swig of fermented mammoth milk. Ulric had to pound him on the back to get him to stop choking.

"You're a demon, you are," Hamnet wheezed.

Ulric Skakki batted his not very long, not very alluring eyelashes. "You say the sweetest things, my dear." Count Hamnet almost-almost-sent another swallow down the wrong pipe.

Gudrid was left all alone. Worse-she was left with Eyvind Torfinn. Trasamund, at least for the time being, had forgot all about her. Now that he was back in the Three Tusk clan, he preferred his own women. That had to be a bitter pill for Gudrid to swallow. You're not indispensable after all, my not so dear, Hamnet thought. Yes, the only one who cares right now is your husband. Such a comedown. Catching his eye on her, Gudrid snapped out something he was too far away and too drunk to make out. He smiled at her, which didn't make her look any happier.

Eyvind said something to her, probably doing his best to calm her down. She snapped at him, too. He drew back, a wounded look on his usually placid features. If God had given her a sabertooth's fangs, chances were she would have bitten his head off in truth, not just as a figure of speech.

"What is the trouble?" Liv asked Eyvind. Somehow, Hamnet heard her clearly even though Gudrid s words were just noise to him. Maybe that had to do with her being a shaman. Maybe it had to do with how much he'd poured down. Drunks had selective hearing, and drunk he was.

The Raumsdalian noble only shrugged. "My wife is out of sorts," he answered. Well, so she was, but did he know why? Did he know how regularly Gudrid cuckolded him?

What would he do when he found out? Anything? That was an interesting question. Count Hamnet was glad it wasn't his worry … or wouldn't have been, if he didn't worry about Gudrid all the time.

"All things considered, I'd rather share a tent with you," he told Ulric Skakki when the two of them snuggled under skins for the night.

"What? Me instead of three pretty girls who aim to please? I didn't know your tastes ran in that direction, my dear." Ulric batted his eyelashes again. It made him look ridiculous, which was bound to be what he had in mind.

"No!" Count Hamnet's ears heated. His tastes didn't run in that direction, and Ulric did know it. "I was thinking of. . ." He didn't even want to say her name.

"Of Liv?" Ulric Skakki seemed bound and determined to be as difficult as he could. "I'd like her better if she bathed, but the Bizogots mostly don't. Up here, I mostly don't, either. I'd like me better if I did, too." He held his nose.

Hamnet Thyssen wouldn't have minded a bath himself, but he missed bathing less than he thought he would when he set out from Nidaros. He didn't smell any worse than the people around him, which was all that really mattered. As for Liv . . . "She's strange."

"Of course she's strange. She's a shaman, and she wouldn't be if she weren't." Ulric paused to work out whether that really said what he wanted it to. Deciding it did, he went on, "Doesn't mean she's not pretty. She has a nice smile, don't you think?"

"I didn't notice." Hamnet didn't like to lie, but telling Ulric Skakki how much he noticed Liv's smile would only leave him open for more ribbing. Instead, he said, "I wasn't really thinking of her, anyway." That was true enough.

"Who, then?" Ulric didn't need long to answer his own question. "Gudrid? By God, you don't want to think about her, do you? I wouldn't, if I were you."

"No, I don't want to," Hamnet answered. "But what you want to do and what you end up doing aren't always the same beast."

"I always do what I want," Ulric Skakki said, which had to be a bigger lie than the one Hamnet told him. He added, "What I want to do now is go to sleep. Good night." He blew out the lamp. The smell of hot butter filled the tent. In moments, Ulric was snoring. He did what he wanted then, anyhow. Hamnet Thyssen lay awake brooding-but not very long.

People outside the tent were shouting at each other. The racket pried Hamnet's eyes open. One of the people shouting was Jesper Fletti, the other Gelimer. Hamnet understood both sides of the quarrel. Yawning, he needed a moment to realize neither of them was likely to.

"Keep your hands off me, you barbarous hound!" Jesper yelled.

"What do you think you're doing, fool of an outlander?" Gelimer shouted back.

Hamnet's breath smoked when he sat up. He pulled on his boots. Not far away, Ulric was doing the same thing. Quirking up an eyebrow, Ulric said, "Maybe we ought to let them kill each other. Jesper's no great loss."

"If he hurts Gelimer, the Bizogots will want to murder all of us," Hamnet answered.

"I suppose you're right. What a pity." Ulric Skakki stood up.

So did Hamnet. The shouting outside did nothing to improve the headache he discovered on waking. "Neither one of them understands the other's language," he pointed out.

"Just as well," Ulric said. "If they knew what they were calling each other, they would have gone for their knives long since."

Count Hamnet hadn't thought of that. "We really ought to calm them down if we can," he said.

"You're no fun," Ulric told him, but they left the mammoth-hide tent together.

"What's going on here?" Hamnet said, first in Raumsdalian, then in the Bizogot tongue.

Jesper Fletti and Gelimer gave up shouting at each other. Instead, they both shouted at him. That didn't do his head any good. "This lemming-brained idiot keeps wanting to bother the jarl," Gelimer said. "Doesn't he know Trasamund's in his tent screwing like there's no tomorrow?"

At the same time, Jesper Fletti said, "This fleabitten savage won't let the lady Gudrid talk to Trasamund."

"Oh." Hamnet Thyssen's head pounded anew, for an altogether different reason.

"Oh, for God's sake," Ulric Skakki said in about the same tone of voice.

Hamnet stepped between Gelimer and Jesper. He set both hands on Jes-per's shoulders. The imperial guardsman bristled at the liberty, but grudgingly allowed it from a Raumsdalian noble. "Go back to Gudrid," Hamnet said. "Tell her she can't see Trasamund now. Tell her she can't see him now even if she's seen every single inch of him before. Tell her it doesn't matter if she's a noblewoman. Tell her she's a guest among the Bizogots, and what they say goes. Tell her that if she causes any more trouble she's liable to get you killed and she's liable to get herself killed."

"Tell her that if she causes any more trouble that involves waking people up, the Bizogots may not be the ones who kill her-or you," Ulric Skakki added.

"And who will try to do this?" Jesper asked softly, setting a hand on the hilt of his sword. "You and who else?"

"I'm the who else," Hamnet said. Jesper Fletti looked horrified. Hamnet went on, "Tell Gudrid she can't get away with playing the spoiled brat up here. She won't hear that from me, no matter how true it is. Maybe she'll listen to you." Or maybe she won't listen to anybody. Half the time, she doesn't.

Jesper Fletti looked from him to Ulric to Gelimer. Abruptly, the guardsman spun on his heel and stalked away. He ducked into a tent. Count Hamnet heard his voice from inside, but couldn't make out what he said. Then Gudrid let out a screech like a lion impaled on a woolly rhino's horn.

She stormed out of the tent. She didn't stop when she saw Hamnet, but she did slow down. He looked around to make sure he still had Ulric Skakki at his back. Ulric might have borrowed some magic from Audun Gilli, for he'd just vanished. Count Hamnet sighed. Up to him, was it? Well, if it was, it was.

"Why can't I see Trasamund?" Gudrid demanded.

"Because he's still with the women from his clan," Hamnet answered. "Can't you figure that out for yourself, or are you just being difficult for the sake of being difficult?"

"Do you think I care about that?"

"Yes, I think you care about it very much. But I don't think you understand Bizogots as well as you think you do. This isn't your land. You're a guest here. Good guests have all the privileges of clan members-and more besides, because they're forgiven if they're ignorant, and clansmen and -women aren't. If they go past ignorant, though, if they get to annoying . . . God help them in that case, because no one else will."

He wished Ulric Skakki hadn't ducked out on him. If Ulric intoned something solemn like, He's right, it might help make Gudrid believe him. Or maybe nothing would do that. "Trasamund will listen to me," Gudrid said with her usual assurance.

"Why? Because you're special? Do you think you're any more special than any of the women he's with now?" Hamnet asked. Before Gudrid could answer or even nod, he went on, "Do you think he thinks you're more special than any of them? If you do, you're fooling yourself even worse than usual."

"By God, you are a hateful man!" Gudrid said.

"Anyone who tells you anything you don't want to hear is a hateful man," Hamnet answered. "And anybody who tells you anything true you don't want to hear is even more hateful. So I suppose I qualify, yes." He bowed.

Gudrid snarled something foul. He bowed again, as if at a compliment. Gudrid whirled and stormed off. Count Hamnet had no idea if he'd convinced her. If he hadn't, he wouldn't be sorry. She would.

But she didn't bother Trasamund. For that her former husband was duly grateful, because, whether Gudrid did or not, he knew he hadn't been joking or even exaggerating the danger. Sometimes you measured progress not by what people did but by what they didn't do. As far as Hamnet Thyssen was concerned, this was one of those times.

In due course, Trasamund emerged from his tent. He looked indecently pleased with himself-that struck Hamnet as the right word, sure enough. Gudrid went right on staying away from him. She probably thought she was punishing him. Hamnet was convinced he either didn't notice she was avoiding him or thought it was funny if he did. As long as neither of them actually did anything, though, that was all right.

Hamnet had no qualms about approaching Trasamund. "When do you plan on traveling north again, your Ferocity?" he asked.

"I've been going into gaps all night long." The jarl threw back his head and laughed. "Now you want me to worry about another one?"

After a dutiful grin, Hamnet said, "You were the one who came down to Nidaros. You will know best how important you think this journey is. The farther north we go, the shorter the time the weather will stay good-or even tolerable."

"I am not a child. You are not my mother. You do not need to tell me things a mother would tell a foolish little boy,'' Trasamund said. "This is my clan, and I have been away for a long time. I have a lot of things I need to set straight before we fare forth again."

"Is that what you were doing last night?" Count Hamnet murmured.

Trasamund laughed again. "By God, Raumsdalian, you've never seen anything straighter! And hard! It was hard as that Jesper's head." Had Gelimer already talked with him? Or had he come to his own conclusions about Jesper Fletti while traveling north with him? Hamnet wouldn't have been surprised. He thought the guards officer on the rockheaded side, too.

But no matter what Hamnet thought about Jesper, that wasn't the point. "If we know when we're leaving, we can be ready on the day," he persisted. "If we don't have a day, we'll just waste time."

Sending a sour stare his way, the jarl said, "You're as stubborn as that woman you used to sleep with, aren't you?"

"Almost," Hamnet answered. "It's one of the few things we have in common."

"Ha! That's what you think," Trasamund said.

"Oh, really?" Of itself, Hamnet Thyssen's hand slid toward his sword-hilt. If the Bizogot thought he would stand there and let himself be insulted, that was the last mistake Trasamund would ever make. Hamnet had stopped caring whether he lived or died after Gudrid left him. Honor was a different story. He would uphold his own even knowing the Three Tusk clansmen would slay him after he killed their jarl.

But Trasamund answered, "Yes, by God! You're both annoying, and you're both here!"

Count Hamnet relaxed. He even smiled a crooked smile. The truth, by the very nature of things, couldn't be an insult. He couldn't very well deny he and Gudrid were both annoying. He couldn't deny they were both here, either, however much he wished Gudrid weren't.

Then one corner of his mouth turned down. Did Trasamund think Gudrid was a nuisance when they were both in Nidaros? He chuckled under his breath. What was that phrase the barristers used? An attractive nuisance, that was it. Chances were that summed up just what the Bizogot thought of her.

"I am here, yes," Hamnet Thyssen agreed. "But I didn't come north to be here, your Ferocity. I came north to pass through the Gap and go beyond the Glacier. I thought you came north for the same reason."

Trasamund turned red. He took a deep breath. But before he could start roaring at Count Hamnet, someone behind the Raumsdalian noble said, "He is right, you know, your Ferocity."

That wasn't Ulric Skakki. Ulric was still nowhere to be seen. It was Liv, the Three Tusk shaman. Trasamund glared at her, but he didn't roar. That spoke volumes about how well respected she was. "This is none of your business," the jarl growled.

"Oh, but it is." Liv shook her head. Her golden hair flipped back and forth. So did the amber pendants that dangled from her earlobes. Hamnet eyed those with a certain queasy fascination. Raumsdalian women wore earrings that clipped to their ears. The Bizogots bored holes in their earlobes through which to hang their ornaments. They are barbarians, he thought.

"How is it your affair? How?" Trasamund demanded. "We will go north. When / decide, we will go north. And when we do, you will stay with the clan. You will stay among the tents. Is that plain enough?"

"More than plain enough, your Ferocity." Liv was the picture of politeness. But she shook her head again all the same. Even some of the fringes on her shoulders and above her breasts moved when she did. "It is more than plain enough, but it is wrong."

"Whaaat?" Trasamund stretched the word out so he could pack the most possible scorn into it. "What do you mean?"

"I mean what I say, your Ferocity. I commonly do. I will not stay with the clan. I will not stay among the tents. I will go beyond the Glacier with you. By God, I will." Liv's face shone in the morning sun like a lamp, like a torch, like a bonfire. "By God I said, and by God I also meant. Do you not travel to the Golden Shrine? If I cannot learn of God there, where in all the world will I?"

"You can't do that," Trasamund said. Hamnet Thyssen had rarely seen him taken aback. He did now. The jarl looked as if someone had landed a solid punch on the point of his chin.

"I can," Liv said. "I will. I must. I hardly slept in the night, your Ferocity. I took divinations instead." Trasamund had hardly slept, either, but he wasn't taking divinations. Liv went on, "The answer was always the same. This is meant to be. God wills it."

Trasamund looked as if he wanted to say something unkind about God. Whatever he wanted to do, he didn't do it. Not even a Bizogot jarl dared blaspheme right out loud. You never could tell if God was listening, or what He would do if He was.

"Chances are you read the signs wrong," he said instead. That put the blame on Liv, not God.

She shook her head. "I did not, your Ferocity. Shall I do it over for you? Then you will see for yourself, and can have no possible doubt. Let me get the knucklebones, and I will ask the question aloud before I cast them."

"Never mind," Trasamund said quickly. For a moment, that surprised Hamnet Thyssen. But then he understood. If the jarl did see for himself, he couldn't possibly argue. And he plainly didn't believe Liv was making up what she claimed. He tried a different tack. "Having another woman along will cause nothing but trouble."

"How can I possibly cause more trouble than the woman who is already traveling with you?" Liv asked. Count Hamnet snorted. He didn't intend to; it was startled out of him. Trasamund sent him a baleful stare ail the same. Liv eyed the jarl. "Well?"

"You are being impossible," Trasamund grumbled.

"I am following the will of God," the shaman said. "Can you tell me the same?"

"I can tell you-" Trasamund broke off. What could he tell her? That the land beyond the Glacier was no place for a woman? Then what of Gudrid? Scowling, Trasamund said, "I can tell you that you don't fight fair."

"When I fight, I don't fight to be fair. I fight to win," Liv said. Trasamund turned away. She’d won this time.