Beyond the Gap by Harry Turtledove Read Free Book Online Page B

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 Torfinn? Did Trasamund? Did having them give her what she craved? Was having them what she craved?
    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 of 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 Torfinn might have been once upon a time but wasn’t any more. Some of the Raumsdalians in the party might not have been anxious to leave the Empire behind—not in their hearts, anyway, no matter what their heads might tell them.
    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.
    And then—the Glacier itself.

    Yes, it was wounded. Yes, if Trasamund spoke truly, the Gap had at last pierced it to the root. Not the Glacier any more, but Glaciers, divided east and west. Count Hamnet shook his head in slow wonder at that. But still, any man who ever saw the Glacier, even diminished as it was, knew in his belly what awe meant. It went forward and back—more back than forward of