Beyong the Gap

The expression on Gudrid's face would have made him forgive and overlook even more. Yes, Trasamund went unchallenged.

Hevring Lake was dead and gone. The scars the draining of its basin left behind would lie heavy on the land west of Nidaros for centuries to come. Farther north, new meltwater lakes formed as the Glacier retreated. Sudertorp Lake wasn't very deep, but spread across a great stretch of the frozen plain. Waterfowl by the hundreds of thousands bred at the lake's marshy edges. Foxes and dire wolves and lynxes preyed on that abundance. Even lions and short-faced bears didn't disdain geese and great white swans.

Neither did the Bizogots. The Leaping Lynx clan was camped near the eastern edge of Sudertorp Lake. At this season of the year, they won enough food with their bows and with their snares that they didn't need to wander. They had stone huts that they came back to every spring. Their clothes differed from those of the Musk Ox and Three Tusk clans. To keep themselves warm, they wore jackets stuffed with down. In really cold weather, they wore trousers stuffed with down, too, with ingenious arrangements at the knee to make walking easier and others farther up to do the same for relieving themselves.

In spring, they were glad enough to guest travelers coming up by Sudertorp Lake. They had more than they could eat themselves. So did the other clans that dwelt along the lakeshore. It made them unique among the Bizogots.

The jarl of the Leaping Lynx clan was a fat man named Riccimir. Hamnet Thyssen didn't think he'd ever seen a fat nomad before. "Ear! Eat!" Riccimir said. "You are welcome. Oh, yes—you are welcome. Your goose is cooked!"

Eyvind Torfi

Riccimir laughed till the tears ran down his greasy face. "Ho, ho, ho! Yes, I know what that means in Raumsdalian. A trader taught me. It is a good joke, yes?"

"As long as it is a joke, your Ferocity, it is a good one," Ulric Skakki said.

"It is. By God, it is. But it is the best kind of a joke—it is a true joke. We have today a great plenty of cooked goose," Riccimir said.

Hamnet Thyssen ate roasted goose till his belly groaned. Bizogots used only knives for eating tools. By the time he finished, his face was as greasy as Riccimir's. So were those of the other Raumsdalians. However much Hamnet ate, the Bizogots around him outdid him without effort. They were better at going without than civilized men, too. Moderation was not in their nature. The way they lived didn't let them be moderate.

They didn't drink to enjoy themselves, either. They drank to get drunk. Downing smetyn, that took a lot of drinking. They met the challenge with ease.

Hamnet Thyssen's head was spi

He spoke in the Bizogot language. "What does he say?" Gudrid asked suspiciously—that finger aimed at her and the fat jarl's leer no doubt gave her reasons for suspicion.

When Eyvind Torfi

Eyvind turned to Riccimir. "Gudrid is my wife," he said, "and trading women back and forth is not our custom."

"And so?" Riccimir said. "You are in the halls of the Bizogots now." Any other jarl would have said the tents. "Here you follow our customs."

"Why bed an unwilling woman?" Ulric Skakki said smoothly. "Isn't it a waste of time, with so many willing? They aren't much fun after you pin them down, either."

"Says who?" the jarl returned. "Sometimes the way they squawk and thrash fans the fire. And this one looks like fun. Pick any woman for yourself in payment, Eyvind Torfi

Once that was translated, Gudrid squawked louder than ever. Count Hamnet wondered why. She spread her favors over the landscape with fine impartiality. What was one more unbathed Bizogot? She was unbathed herself, even if she did have that bottle of attar of roses.

In Raumsdalian, Jesper Fletti said, "Tell the . . . jarl we have a strong custom against forcing a woman to give herself." He probably almost said something like Tell the barbarian. Hamnet Thyssen found it ironically amusing that Gudrids bodyguard was indeed guarding her body, although no doubt not in the way he’d had in mind when he set out from Nidaros.

Jesper proved wise to speak politely. Riccimir answered in fairly fluent Raumsdalian, saying, "If you talk about your customs in your land, I will listen. You have the right to do that. But you are not in your land."

"Imagine the custom of our land made you do something against your own customs," Ulric said. "Would you do it, just for the sake of fitting in?"

What kind of man was Riccimir? Ulric asked a good, sensible question. But did the Bizogot care about good, sensible questions, or did he simply want to open Gudrid's legs? If he didn't feel like listening, what could the travelers do? Not much—if it came to a fight, they were bound to lose.

The jarl scowled at Ulric Skakki. When he did, Hamnet Thyssen's hopes rose. Riccimir understood what Ulric was saying, anyway. "You are not good guests," he grumbled. "Guests should follow the ways of the hosts. Our women would not raise such a fuss over a small thing."

"A small thing?" Trasamund said. "Don't you have a big thing, Riccimir?"

"I do. By God, I do!" Riccimir answered, laughing. "We are the Leaping Lynxes, but I am a mammoth. Maybe I am too much for a woman of the south."

"Maybe you are," Ulric Skakki said, and the tension eased.

"Much help you were," Gudrid hissed at Hamnet Thyssen a little later.

"By God, why should I help you?" he asked in honest perplexity. "I don't want you here. I wish you'd go back to Nidaros. I don't feel anything for you any more."

He wished that were true. The hopeless mix of curdled love and fury that coursed through him whenever he thought of Gudrid chewed his stomach to sour rags and made him want either to hit something—preferably her— or stab himself. Gudrid knew it. She enjoyed it—she reveled in it. He did his best not to admit it.

Usually, his best was nowhere near good enough. Tonight, it served. "You would have let that—that savage do what he wanted to me!" Gudrid said shrilly.

"This was one of the chances you took when you left the Empire," Ham-net pointed out. "Anyone with an ounce of sense would know it. No doubt that lets you out."

She swung on him. She was very quick, but again he caught her wrist before she co

When she tried to bite him, he shoved her away, hard. She sat down even harder, and called him a name that made the first one seem like love poetry by comparison. Again, he scarcely noticed. He rubbed his hand against his trouser leg, trying to wipe away even the memory of touching her.

"Never a dull moment, is there?" Ulric Skakki said, his voice dry.

"Why, what ever could you mean?" Hamnet Thyssen trying to sound arch and coy was as u

Sulking, Riccimir went off with a Bizogot woman. She was younger and better built than Gudrid, and at least as pretty, even if she didn't wear perfume. The jarl stayed grumpy all the same- No doubt he would have been glad enough to lie down with her if he hadn't set eyes on Gudrid. Since he had, the woman from his own clan wasn't what he wanted any more. That made her seem like secondhand goods to him.