Beyond the Gap Read Free Page B

either.
    Ulric Skakki’s expression also said he knew something of the Three Tusk clan. Before he could parade his knowledge, Count Hamnet beat him to the punch. “I do,” he said, stressing that I ever so slightly. “You dwell in the farthest north, up against the Glacier as close as any folk may go.”
    Trasamund grunted and nodded. Had the Raumsdalians not heard of the Three Tusk clan, that would have been a deadly insult—though few men this far south in the Raumsdalian Empire troubled to tell one barbarous band from another. Since Hamnet Thyssen and Ulric Skakki did know of his clan and its place in the fierce, frigid Bizogot scheme of things, the jarl accepted their knowledge as no less than his due.
    â€œKnowing who we are and our position, then, you will know also that we travel up the Gap as far as we may,” Trasamund rumbled.
    â€œIt only stands to reason,” Hamnet Thyssen said, and Ulric Skakki nodded.
    For long and long and long, the Glacier that capped the north of the world had been a single vast sheet. Scholars claimed it was three miles thick in spots. Count Hamnet had no idea how they knew, or how they thought
they knew, but he wasn’t prepared to call them liars. He’d seen the edge of the Glacier himself, on journeys among the Bizogots. Those shining cliffs seemed to climb forever.
    When the edge stood not far north of Nidaros, in the days before the Raumsdalian Empire rose to greatness, the Glacier had still been a single sheet. But, as it drew back over the centuries that followed, it drew back not straight north, but to the northeast and the northwest. Thus what Raumsdalians called the Gap—a narrow stretch of bare ground between the two lobes of the Glacier. The Bizogots used a word with the same literal meaning but much earthier associations.
    â€œBy God,” Hamnet Thyssen said softly. “By God! Will you tell me, Jarl Trasamund of the Three Tusk clan, will you tell me the Gap has cloven the Glacier in two?”
    Ulric Skakki whistled softly, a low, mournful note. Count Hamnet felt like doing the same. There were metaphysicians, and more than a few of them, who argued that the Gap could not possibly divide the Glacier, for the Glacier had to go on forever. Though no metaphysician himself—far from it—he’d always inclined toward that view himself. So did most men who’d actually set eyes on the Glacier. It was too vast to imagine its having an end.
    But Trasamund nodded. He also scowled. Plainly, he did not care to be anticipated. Anticipated he was, though, and he would have to make the best of it. “I will tell you this, southern man, for it is so. Do you call me a liar?”
    If Hamnet Thyssen did call him a liar, one of them would die in the next few minutes. Hamnet was large and formidable, but Trasamund was larger still, and stronger, and younger. All the same, Count Hamnet thought he could take the Bizogot if he had to.
    Here, though, the issue did not arise, for Hamnet shook his head. “Not at all, your Ferocity.” He invested the jarl’s title with not even a grain of irony. “No, not at all. Tell us, then—what lies beyond the Glacier?”
    Hamnet leaned toward Trasamund, waiting for the answer. So did Sigvat II. Ulric Skakki also listened intently, but seemed rather less interested. Hamnet Thyssen wondered why. Beyond the Glacier … He might as well have said, beyond the moon. Anything might lie there, anything at all. Some folk said God led men into this promised land and then laid down the Glacier to keep evildoers from following them. Some said the men here were evildoers, and God had laid down the Glacier to keep them from finding the earthly paradise that lay beyond it. Some said the men here had always been
here, and the Glacier had always been here, and nothing lay beyond it. Count Hamnet had always inclined toward that view, too, but maybe he was wrong.
    â€œHaven’t been far