Beyong the Gap

"And you despise him for it," Count Hamnet said. Gudrid did not deny it; she only laughed again. Stubbornly, Hamnet went on, "Wouldn't you call wedding a man you despise a mistake?"

"Of course not. I call it an amusement." She reached out and stroked his cheek with a soft hand. "But don't worry, my sweet. If it makes you feel any better, I despise you, too."

"And Trasamund?" Hamnet asked, trying to ignore the way her touch seared his flesh.

"Ah, Trasamund." She laughed throatily and batted her eyelashes at him. "No one could despise Trasamund. He's much too . . . virile."

"He thinks you're quite something, too," Hamnet said. Gudrid laughed again, this time in complacent amusement. Hamnet added, "For someone who's not as young as she used to be." Even a man with no other tool toward revenge had time on his side.

Now her eyes stopped sparkling. They flashed instead. "You'll pay for that," she said.

Hamnet Thyssen shrugged. "I've been paying for knowing you for years. What's a little more?"

"If I tell Eyvind to stay home—"

He laughed in her face. "You hurt the Empire if that happens—not that you care, I'm sure. But it doesn't worry me at all. Your husband probably knows more about the Golden Shrine than any man alive. I know he knows more than I thought anybody could. He'd be useful to have along, yes. But he's still your husband, Gudrid. If you think I want his company, youd better think twice."

She made what sounded like a lion's growl, down deep in her throat. She didn't like being thwarted, didn't like it and wouldn't put up with it. She'd taken up with Eyvind Torfi

"I suppose you know I've had your wizard as well as the Bizogot," she said. Her red-painted lip curled. "He wasn't what you'd call magical."

She told him to hurt him. She couldn't have any other reason. "You're not my worry any more," he said. It wasn't true; she would go on worrying him till his dying day. He added, "You've given us all something to talk about on the way north, anyhow."

Gudrid smiled—she liked that. "Something warm, instead of the Glacier."

Count Hamnet shook his head. "Something so cold, it makes the Glacier seem warm beside it."

Fast as a striking serpent, her hand lashed out. However fast she was, she wasn't fast enough. Count Hamnet caught her wrist before she could slap him or claw him. "Let go of me," she said in a low, furious voice.

I've been trying to, ever since I found out what you are, Hamnet thought. He opened his hand. The memory of her flesh remained printed on his palm. She didn't feel cold. Oh, no. You had to know her to understand what he meant.

Then again, he wondered if he'd ever known her at all.

"You're harder than you were," she remarked.

"If I am, whose fault is that?" he asked harshly.

"May the Bizogots eat you," Gudrid said. The mammoth-herders didn't eat men, even if a lot of Raumsdalians thought they did. A lewd question rose in Hamnet s mind. He stifled it. She went on, "May you fall off the edge of the world when you go beyond the Glacier. May one of the white bears Trasamund goes on about gnaw your bones."

His bow was stiff as a wooden puppet's. "I love you, too, my sweet," he said, and tried to match her venom so she wouldn't realize he was telling the truth—the painful and useless truth.

He must have done what he set out to do, for her laughter this time was jagged as shattered ice, sharp as sabertooth fangs. She stalked away, if stalking was the right word to use for something with so much hip action. Even without words, she reminded him what he was missing. He looked down at the rug. As if l didn't know, he thought, and kicked at the embroidered wool.

III

Riding out of Nidaros came as nothing but a relief for Hamnet Thyssen. He could deal with Ulric Skakki and Audun Gilli. He could deal with Trasamund the jarl. He could even deal with Eyvind Torfi

The Great North Road ran from the Raumsdalian capital toward the imperial border—and toward the Bizogot country beyond it. Armies had moved up that road more often than Hamnet could easily count, ready to repel invaders from the north. And the barbarians had spilled into the Empire more often than he could easily count, too. Its riches and the better weather it enjoyed drew them like a lodestone.

One of these days, Hamnet supposed, the Bizogots would win, and either put one of their own on the Raumsdalian throne or topple the Empire altogether. Nothing lasted forever. It seemed not even the Glacier lasted forever, although a couple of lifetimes earlier everyone would have thought the Glacier the one surely eternal thing God made.

Was God himself eternal? Hamnet Thyssen uneasily looked up into the steel-blue sky. If God himself might pass away, who rose to power after he was gone? Men intent on their affairs? Women intent on their affairs? (Gudrid was certainly intent on hers.) Or older, darker Powers God had long held in check?

What was the Golden Shrine, anyway?

Ulric Skakki chose that moment to remark, "A copper for your thoughts, your Grace." Hamnet was a man who made a habit of saying what was in his mind, even—perhaps especially—when no one had asked him. He told Ulric Skakki exactly what he was thinking about. The younger man blinked; whatever he was expecting, that wasn't it. He reached into his belt pouch and pulled out a copper coin. Offering it to Count Hamnet, he said, "Well, your Grace, I got my money's worth."

Hamnet solemnly stowed the coin. "We endeavor to give satisfaction. It doesn't always work, mind you, but we do endeavor." He thought of Gudrid again. But it wasn't that he hadn't satisfied her. He had, as far as he could tell. She'd wanted something else, something more, from him. Whatever it was, it seemed defined not least by his inability to give it to her.

Did her first lover, the one who laughed? Did Eyvind Torn Torfi

If Ulric Skakki had chosen that moment to ask him for his thoughts, he would have lied without the least hesitation. He didn't mind talking about the death of the Empire, or about the death of the Glacier, or even about the death of God. The death of the one real love of his life? That was different.

Farmers weeded their young, hopeful crops of rye and oats off to either side or the road. Barley rarely succeeded north of Nidaros, even now. Wheat? Maize? Those were crops for softer, more luxurious climes. The farmers always seemed to have one eye on the north. If the Breath of God blew against them for long, their crops would wither and freeze and fail, even here. Then they would live on what they'd stored in better years, and on what they could hunt.

Or they would die. It happened, in hard years. Oh, yes—it happened.

No one hurried. Neither Trasamund nor Audun Gilli was any sort of a horseman, while Eyvind Torfi

Hamnet Thyssen knew perfectly well what lay beyond the border. Nomad huts on the tundra—land crushed flat by the Glacier that had lain on it for so many centuries. Herds of half-tame musk oxen and mammoths guided—when they could be guided—by half-tame men. Meltwater lakes. Cold beyond what even Nidaros ever knew. Wind almost always from the north, almost always with frigid daggers in it. Snow and ice at any season of the year.