Beyong the Gap

XX

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.

Stopping at the first serai north of Nidaros made him nervous. He breathed a silent-or maybe a not so silent-sigh of relief when there was no sign of Gudrid in the common room. The only women in the place were barmaids and slatterns.

The men in there fell into two groups: merchants on their way down to Nidaros, and merchants on their way up from Nidaros. They ate and drank together, gossiping and doing their best to find out what lay ahead. They all eyed the party with two Bizogots in it with curiosity they hardly bothered to hide. Hamnet Thyssen supposed he accounted for some of that curiosity, too. He might have been a great many things, but few men would ever have accused him of buying and selling things for a living. Everything about him, from his face to the very way he walked, said he had no compromise in him.

He and his comrades squeezed their way onto the benches at a long table near the hearth. Merchants sat closer together to make room for them. Half a dozen men asked one of two questions-"Where are you from?" and "Where are you bound?"-at more or less the same time.

Before answering, Trasamund shouted an order for a fat roast goose. A passing barmaid waved to show she heard. "And mead!" Trasamund added. "Plenty of mead, by God!" The woman waved again.

"We're out of Nidaros, heading for the lands of the Three Tusk clan and the Gap," Ulric Skakki said.

That couldn't have been better calculated to make everyone else blink and gape. "At this season of the year?" asked a grizzled merchant who found his tongue sooner than the rest. "What will you do there? Besides freeze, I mean?"

Ulric looked not at Trasamund but at Hamnet Thyssen. Why not? Ham-net thought. The more who know, the better. If Sigvat doesn't like it, too bad for him. "Some of you will have heard the Gap has melted through," he said. "It's true. There's land beyond the Glacier. There are folk beyond the Glacier, too-the Rulers, they call themselves. They're warlike and dangerous. Chances are they'll try to come down into the country we know. We aim to try to stop them."

"You by yourselves?" The gray-bearded trader laughed raucously.

Audun Gilli murmured to himself. Count Hamnet thought his chant sounded familiar. He was right, too. A moment later, the merchant's plate grew a face that looked like a twisted version of his own. "You wouldn't have the ballocks to come along, that's certain sure," it jeered.

He stared at it. So did several of the men around him. Their laughs were even coarser than his had been. He picked up his pewter mug and slammed it down on the plate, which shattered like the cheap earthenware it was-or had been.

"You'll pay for that, by God!" a barmaid said. "You can't go breaking crockery for the fun of it."

"It called me a coward!" the trader exclaimed.

The barmaid rolled her eyes. "I didn't figure you for one who saw snakes and demons when he put down too much ale," she said. "Only shows I'm not as smart as I thought I was, doesn't it?" She strutted away, swiveling her hips in magnificent scorn.

Another merchant turned to Hamnet and said, "Next thing you'll tell me is that you went and found the Golden Shrine off beyond the Glacier."

"No." He shook his head. "We looked, but we didn't see any sign of it. It may be there, or it may not. I can't tell you one way or the other."

"I'd like to go back and look again," Ulric Skakki added. "I didn't believe there was any such thing till I went beyond the Glacier. I didn't believe you could go beyond the Glacier till I went and did it."

"Neither did I," Hamnet Thyssen said.

"Nor I," Trasamund rumbled. "I didn't know what would happen when I rode up into the narrowest part of the Gap the first time. But I kept going, and I found there was another side after all."

"What about the-what did you call them?-the Rulers, that was it?" yet another trader asked.

"Yes, the Rulers," Count Hamnet said. "What about them? They're dangerous, that's what. For one thing, they ride mammoths to war. They carry lancers and archers aboard the beasts. For another, they're stronger wizards than any we have on this side of the Glacier."

"That's so," Audun Gilli said quietly.

"It is," Liv agreed in her deliberate, newly acquired Raumsdalian.

"The other reason the Rulers are dangerous is that they're sure God or whatever they worship wants them to go out and rule all the other folk around them," Ulric Skakki said. "They don't want to talk to other folk. They just want to tell them what to do. And they may be tough enough to get away with it, too."

"Huh!" the trader said. "They haven't bumped into Raumsdalians before."

"Or Bizogots." Trasamund's tone and the warning gleam in his eye challenged the merchant to argue with him.

The man didn't rise to the challenge. "Or Bizogots," he said quickly. Trasamund subsided.

"Why isn't the Emperor doing anything about these Rulers?" somebody said.

"You would have to ask his Majesty about that." But Hamnet couldn't leave it there. "I wish he would have seemed more interested," he added.

"You .. . talked to him?" the merchant said slowly.

"I talked to him." Hamnet's voice was hard as stone, cold as the snowdrifts outside. He waited to see if the merchant called him a liar, and how. Whether the man went on breathing after that depended on such things.

Before the trader could speak, Ulric Skakki said, "This is the famous Count Hamnet Thyssen. If he says a thing is so, you may rely on it. You'd better rely on it."

Some of the men at the long table had plainly never heard of Hamnet Thyssen, famous or not. To others, he was famous for the wrong thing. "He's the one whose wife . . ." one of them whispered to his neighbor, not quite quietly enough. The trader who'd asked if Hamnet had spoken to the Emperor didn't challenge him. Part of him was relieved, part disappointed. Sometimes fighting was simpler than talking.

"What can we do about the, uh, Rulers?" a merchant asked.

That meant more talking. Count Hamnet sighed. Maybe it would help, maybe it wouldn't. "Spread the word," he said. "The more people who know trouble's coming, the more who know what kind of trouble it is, the better off we'll be." He could hope that was true, anyhow.

He paid the serai-keeper extra for a private room with Liv. "Do you think they believed you?" she asked as they got ready for bed. "Or was it all another travelers tale to them?"

"Some of them believe some of it, anyhow." Hamnet smiled at his convoluted answer. "Maybe spreading the news will do some good. Maybe some more people will ask Sigvat questions he doesn't want to hear. That may help, too. Who knows? Who knows if anything we do means anything at all?"

Liv lay down on the bed. The frame creaked under her weight. "I've got used to sleeping soft," she said. "It won't be so easy to lie on a mat or wrapped in a hide on the ground when we get back to the Bizogot country."

Hamnet lay down beside her. "Well, then," he said, "you can always lie on me instead."

Her eyes glinted. "I can do that now." She blew out the lamp. And she did.

Twice up the Great North Road in the same year. Twice up into the Bizogot country. Count Hamnet had stayed in his castle most of the time after Gudrid left him. He traveled because he had to, not because he enjoyed it for its own sake. He would get where he was going, and he would try to do what needed doing.

Ulric Skakki, now, savored each new day, each new sight. He couldn't stand doing the same thing all the time. Everything interested him-the fading of the fields, the approach of the forest that stretched north to the tree line. Trasamund and Liv were the same way. They were nomads from a nomad folk. Where Ulric came by his wanderlust was harder to fathom.

Audun Gilli? The wizard was always hard to fathom, at least for Hamnet. He rode along, never saying much. Sometimes he got drunk when the travelers stopped at a serai. If he did it all the time, Hamnet would have tried to make him stop or sent him back to Nidaros. But he didn't. Some nights he stayed sober. If he drank for amusement and not because he had to, Count Hamnet didn't see that he had any business complaining.

Serais grew fewer, too. They'd done the same thing the last time Hamnet came north, but he didn't notice it so much then. In spring, mosquitoes were the only things wrong with camping outdoors. They could come inside, too, as he had reason to know. If you didn't have a good notion of what you were doing during the winter, though, you could easily freeze to death-and the more easily the farther north you went.

Hamnet Thyssen wasn't bad at tending to himself in winter weather. He freely admitted the Bizogots and Ulric Skakki were better. When they ran up tents, no cold air got inside. They built snow barriers north of the tents to blunt the force of the Breath of God. They made the most of fur blankets and small braziers.

Audun Gilli seemed much more lackadaisical. Count Hamnet wondered if he should scold the wizard or worry about him. Liv shook her head when he raised the question. "He uses spells to keep himself snug," she said. "I wouldn't do that. It would make me tired, and I have enough things making me tired already. Easier just to do things right the first time. But if you have the spells, you can use them if you choose."

"All right," Hamnet said. "I won't bother him about it, then. I didn't want to wake up one morning and find we had an icicle instead of a wizard, that's all."

"He won't freeze," Liv assured him. "Not unless someone overpowers all his wards, and who would want to do anything like that?"

"The Rulers?" Hamnet said.

Liv's breath caught. She hadn't looked for an answer to her question. "How could they reach him here, inside the Empire?" she asked. "How could they even know he's coming north again?"

"I'm no wizard-I can't tell you that," Hamnet Thyssen said. "But we saw they know more of magic than we do. Just because we can't imagine how they would do something doesn't mean they can't do it. Or am I wrong?"

Plainly, Liv wanted to tell him he was. As plainly, she couldn't. Her voice troubled, she said, "Maybe you should speak of this with him tomorrow. I don't know if you're right or wrong. Either way, though, Audun should think about it."

"I'll do that." Hamnet blew out the candle that lit their tent. As darkness descended, he added, "Tomorrow."

He almost forgot about it the next day. Audun Gilli didn't draw attention to himself. He seemed to do everything he could not to draw attention to himself. Eventually, Hamnet did remember. The wizard heard him out; Audun was seldom rude. "Well, there's a cheery notion," he said when Hamnet finished.

"What can you do about it? Can you do anything?" the Raumsdalian noble asked.

"I don't know. I don't know how much I have to worry about it, either," Audun said. "Maybe I'll tighten up my wards, just in case. Maybe your lady friend ought to do the same thing, too."

Hamnet grunted. He hadn't thought about that. But if the Rulers could know Audun was on the move, they could know the same thing about Liv. "I'll tell her," Hamnet promised.

"Me?" Liv said when he did.

"Why not? Who here besides Audun knows as much about their magic as you do?" Count Hamnet said. "If they can reach this far, doesn't that give them a reason to go after you? Do you want to take the chance that they can't?"

He admired the way she thought it over and then shook her head. She really did think things through; she didn't start with her mind closed, the way so many people did. "No, I don't want to take that chance," she said. "If they marked Audun, they might have noticed me, too."

"If they didn't notice you, they were blind," Hamnet Thyssen said.

That flustered Liv much more than the idea of sorcerous attack from the Rulers did. "You!" She wagged her hand at him; it would have been an angry finger if she weren't wearing mittens. "Why do you say such things?"

"Because they're true?"

She ignored him. He smiled, which only seemed to annoy her more. He wasn't a great one for fancy speeches and praise of women's beauty. But any praise at all seemed more than Liv was used to.

They came to a serai not long before the sun went down. There would be a few more in the towns in the north woods. After that, the travelers would have to arrange their own shelter or pay the price for failure. A roaring fire and greasy roast mutton suited Hamnet fine after a long day on the road.

He ate more mutton for breakfast, and washed it down with beer mulled with a hot poker. "Not fancy, but it sticks to the ribs," Ulric Skakki said, and Hamnet nodded.

The travelers were about to go out to the horses when a newcomer walked into the serai. Hamnet and Ulric looked at each other. Had the stranger traveled through the frigid night to get here? By the way he yawned and rubbed at his red-tracked eyes, he probably had. "Do I see Count Hamnet Thyssen here?" he asked.

Hamnet got to his feet. His hand rested on the hilt of his sword. "You see me," he said. "Why do you care?"

"I am an imperial courier." The newcomer handed him a rolled parchment held closed by a ribbon and by the imperial seal stamped into golden wax. "This is an order recalling you to Nidaros at once."

"Give it to me." Hamnet broke the seal and read the order. It was exactly what the courier said it was. He recognized Sigvat's signature; the document was genuine. Nodding to the man, he said, "All right-I have it. Thank you."

"You will accompany me back down to the capital, then?"

"No."

The courier's jaw dropped. "But.. . But. .." He tried again. "You are ordered to return. Ordered. By the Emperor. Sigvat II." He added the name as if Count Hamnet might have forgot who ruled Raumsdalia.

"No," Hamnet said again. "He's welcome to exile me. Why not? I'm leaving the Empire anyhow. And I am leaving. I'm not going back to Nidaros. If he wants to confiscate my castle down in the southeast, he can do that, too. I'm in no position to stop him, God knows. I hope he'll treat my retainers well. I haven't seen them since last spring, and they have nothing to do with this."

"But. .. you're disobeying a direct imperial command." The courier didn't seem to think such a thing was possible, or even imaginable.

"I am, all right." Count Hamnet nodded, as if to encourage him. "You catch on fast."

"You can't do that." The young Raumsdalian sounded absolutely certain.

"Watch me," Hamnet Thyssen said calmly. Being clear in his own mind about what he aimed to do brought a wonderful sense of freedom. He was his own man, not Sigvat s man or even the Empire's man. He would do what he chose, and hard luck to anyone who didn't like it.

"What am I supposed to do?" the courier bleated.

"Tell the Emperor you delivered his order. Tell him I told you no. Here, wait." He borrowed a quill and ink from the serai-keeper, who watched the drama with wide eyes. I have read this order. I decline to obey it. Do not blame the messenger-it is not his fault, Hamnet wrote, and signed his name in a fine round hand. He gave the parchment back to the courier. "There you go. It shouldn't have anything to do with you. This is between his Majesty and me."

"This won't help," the courier predicted, voice full of gloom.

"Would you like the wizard here and me to witness whatever Count Hamnet wrote?" Ulric Skakki asked.

Even more gloomily, the courier shook his head. "I could have God witness it, and it wouldn't do me any good."

If Sigvat was in one of those moods, the man might be right. "Tell me something," Hamnet said. "Did Earl Eyvind Torfinn’s wife have anything to do with getting this order sent?" The courier looked blank. Hamnet added, "Her name is Gudrid."

"Oh. Her. I know who you mean. The one who's like that with the Emperor." The courier twisted two fingers together. But then he shrugged. "I don't know anything about it. A clerk gave me the order and told me what was in it in case it got wet or something, that's all."

The one who's like that with the Emperor. Hamnet Thyssen wasn't much surprised; he'd already had a good idea that that was so.

"All right, then. You'd better head south, then, and let Sigvat know," Hamnet had a second thought. "Unless you'd sooner come north with me?"

"No, thanks. I'm not a crazy man. I'm not a rebel." Shaking his head, the courier walked out of the common room.

Ulric Skakki patted Count Hamnet on the back. "You crazy man, you," he said affectionately. "You rebel."

"Do not mock this man," Trasamund growled. "He has done what a free man should. He has done what a Bizogot would. He's shown he is worthy to come north, worthy to take his place in the Three Tusk clan."

"However you please, your Ferocity." Now Ulric seemed as indifferent as a dead man. He could assume any tone, or none, in the blink of an eye. "See how much you like it when Hamnet tells you where to head in instead of the Emperor."

"He would not do that." But Trasamund sounded doubtful.

"Don't be an idiot. Of course he would." Ulric turned back to Hamnet Thyssen. "Wouldn't you, your Grace?"

"Probably." Hamnet knew he would be lying if he said anything else. "I would if the jarl made the same sort of mistake Sigvat's made, anyhow."

Trasamund beamed. "Then we have nothing to worry about." He thumped his chest. "Me, I do not make mistakes like this. I am too clever."

"And too modest, too," Ulric Skakki remarked.

"Yes. And that," Trasamund agreed. Liv raised an eyebrow. Audun Gilli looked up at the ceiling. Count Hamnet looked down at his hands. Ulric whistled a snatch of something or other. Trasamund wouldn't have recognized irony if he were a lodestone.

"I think we'd better leave," Hamnet Thyssen said.

As he went out the door, he wished he were wearing chainmail instead of furs and leather. If that courier decided to exact punishment for disobeying an imperial order, he could be waiting out there with a bow, looking for a good shot. He could be, but he wasn't.

The travelers hadn't gone far from the serai before the Great North Road plunged into the forest belt. Liv sighed. "All these trees," she said. "We could do so much with them-and they even smell good." Her nostrils twitched. Then they twitched again. The wistful smile left her face. "That's not just trees I smell."

Hamnet Thyssen sniffed, too. "I know what that is-it's the musk of a short-faced bear."

"It is," Ulric Skakki agreed. "No doubt about it. "Maybe a sow that had a litter, and now she's out of food." He strung his bow. "Much as I hate to mention it, we qualify. If a short-faced bear would try to eat Gudrid, it only goes to show they'll eat anything."

That jerked a laugh out of Count Hamnet. Trasamund visibly started to say something. Then, just as visibly, he changed his mind. Hamnet strung his bow, too. Short-faced bears were hard to kill with arrows. Sometimes, though, they would run away if they got hurt. And sometimes getting hurt would only infuriate them and make them attack all the more ferociously. You never could tell.

"Audun, Liv-if you know any charms for fighting off animals, this would be a good time to dust them off," Hamnet said.

"These don't always work," Liv said. "Animals are more deeply connected to nature than shamanry can ever hope to be."

"Well, see if you can make this beast unbearable all the same," Ulric said. Audun Gilli and Hamnet Thyssen winced. Liv was too new to Raumsdalian to get the pun or realize how bad it was.

The horses snorted and sidestepped. They smelled the bear, too, and didn't like it. "The wind is blowing from it to us," Hamnet said. "Maybe it won't realize we're here."

"I hate to tell you this, your Grace, but bears have eyes as well as noses. They have ears, too," Ulric said.

"Really? Tell me more about these things, and I'll taste what you have to say." Unlike Trasamund, Hamnet Thyssen didn't miss sarcasm aimed his way. He didn't put up with it, either.

"There!" The Bizogot jarl pointed. "I saw something move behind that tree."

Hamnet peered in that direction. He wasn't sure which tree Trasamund meant, but he didn't see anything moving. Was a short-faced bear clever enough to hide behind a tree trunk and peek out at its intended prey? He wouldn't have thought so, but maybe he was wrong.

Then the bear came out. It wasn't very big, not as far as short-faced bears went, but they went a long way in that direction. When it rose on its hind legs to growl at the travelers, Hamnet saw it wasn't a sow, as Ulric Skakki had guessed-and as Hamnet had thought himself-but a boar.

Ulric let fly. His bowstring thrummed. The bear dropped down in that same instant, so the arrow hissed over its head and thumped into a tree trunk, where it stood thrilling. Ulric swore. He reached over his shoulder to grab another shaft from his quiver.

At the same time as the short-faced bear ducked under the arrow, Liv gasped and Audun Gilli let out a wordless exclamation. Then he said, "Magic!" and her hands twisted in a sign Bizogots used against evil.

All that Hamnet noted only out of the corner of his ear, so to speak. His attention centered on the bear. If he gave it an arrow in the face, that might hurt it enough to make it run away. He drew his bow-and the bowstring snapped. His curses made Ulric Skakki's seem a beginner's beside them.

The bear let out a deep growl and sprang forward, straight toward him. Ulric shot again in that same moment, but only grazed the bear's right hind leg. Count Hamnet just had time to draw his sword before the bear was on him. It reared again, perhaps to smash him off his horse.

He swung first. His blade bit into its right paw, severing three claws.

Blood spurted and splashed the snow with red. The bear roared, opening its fang-filled mouth enormously wide. As it did, Ulric shot an arrow straight into that inviting target. This time, the short-faced bear's roar was more like a scream. It came down on all fours, raking Hamnet's horse with the claws on its left paw as its forelegs lowered.

The horse screamed, too, more shrilly than the bear had. It sprang away. Hamnet Thyssen tried with all his strength to keep it under some kind of control, and also tried to stay on its back. The bear lumbered after him. The wound on its front paw must have slowed it; short-faced bears could usually outsprint horses.

Ulric Skakki had a perfect shot this time-right at the bear's heart. But his bowstring also broke. This time, he outcursed Count Hamnet.

Trasamund rode up and slammed his sword down just behind the bear's ears. The animal had hardly seemed to notice his approach-all its attention was on Hamnet Thyssen. It let out a startled grunt and slumped to the snow, dead. No wonder-Hamnet heard its skull break.

And then all the travelers swore at once. The dead bear writhed in the snow. Its shape changed. After a couple of minutes, it was a dead bear no more, but rather a dead man. "That fellow comes from the Rulers," Audun Gilli said. No one tried to contradict him; that strong-featured, heavily bearded face plainly belonged to one of the men from beyond the Glacier.

"What in blazes is he doing here?" Ulric said, fitting a new string to the bow that had let him down.

Hamnet Thyssen was doing the same thing. "The way it looks," he said, "I think he was trying to kill me."

"You don't think well of yourself, do you?" Ulric Skakki mocked as automatically as he breathed.

"I think Thyssen is right," Trasamund said. "When it was a bear, it let you shoot it. It let me strike it. It wanted only the count. No one else, nothing else, mattered to it."

"Why would that be?" Ulric asked.

"I see only one answer-they think he is dangerous to them." That wasn't Trasamund, who'd raised the point. It wasn't Liv, who might have been expected to take Hamnet's side. It was Audun Gilli. His objectivity helped make him convincing.

"Aren't we all dangerous to them? By God, we'd better be," Ulric Skakki said. "Should I write them an angry letter complaining that they don't think enough of me to try murdering me? I'm tempted, if only I could find somebody to deliver it." He sounded affronted that the Rulers might not find him worth killing.

"Believe me, I could do without the honor," Hamnet Thyssen said as he dismounted to look at the wounds the bear had scored in his horses flank. They were long but not deep-plenty to pain and frighten the animal, but not crippling. He thought they would heal well. The horse trembled when he put his hands anywhere near the gashes. He bent down, scooped up some snow, and pressed it against the animal's wounds. The horse snorted and started to shy. Then it seemed to decide the cold felt good, and let out what sounded like a sigh of relief.

"Bear grease might help," Ulric said.

"How about shaman grease?" Trasamund said. "You can slit that bastard's belly and use what he's got." He wasn't joking, not in the least. Bizogots wasted nothing. They couldn't afford to.

"This would be the same sort of spell that wizard used when he turned into an owl, wouldn't it?" Hamnet asked Liv.

"I would say so, yes," she answered, her voice troubled. "It is a more thorough spell than we use. It is a more thorough spell than we know, though some of ours do the same thing."

"How did he get down here?" Trasamund said. "A long way from the far side of the Gap to this forest."

"Maybe he was an owl till not long ago. Maybe he flew," Audun Gilli said.

"I doubt it," Liv said. "With us, at least, a shaman has a spirit animal. If the animal is a dire wolf, say, the shaman may howl when the moon is full. But he will not hop like a snowshoe hare, and he will not take wing like a ptarmigan."

"Is it the same for the Rulers? Would it have to be?" Audun asked.

"if it is not the same, they are even stranger and darker than I thought." Liv sounded more troubled than ever.

"This one was a bear, and now he's dead," Trasamund said. "We still live, no matter how strange and dark he was, the son of a scut. And we'd better get up to the north and put a stop to the trouble the Rulers are causing."

Hamnet Thyssen wondered what Sigvat II would have done if he knew the Rulers were already inside the Empire. He laughed bitterly as he remounted. Seeing that the wizard or shaman or whatever he was had tried to kill him, Sigvat might have congratulated the fellow, or even ennobled him.

"Will the horse be all right?" Ulric asked. "We still might be able to buy you another one."

"I think he will," Hamnet said. "I think Trasamund s right, too. We need to get up to the Gap as fast as we can."

"Why?" Ulric Skakki said. "The Rulers are already here." On that cheery note, the travelers rode north again.