Beyond the Gap by Harry Turtledove Page A

understand your words very well, your Ferocity,” Earl Eyvind said. Leovigild scowled and turned away. Hamnet Thyssen knew why. Eyvind Torfinn understood what the Bizogot’s words meant, yes, but they didn’t sink in for him, not at the gut level where they should have. And how much trouble would that cause him in his travels through the north?
    How much trouble would it cause Gudrid? A woman could be independent down where trees grew and the ground wasn’t frozen all the time. Up here, where even a man was more a part of his clan than an individual? She might find out the hard way just how different things were.
    Leovigild shrugged, as if to say it wasn’t his worry. “You Raumsdalians are our guests,” he said. “Even Trasamund is our guest. Eat, then, and drink, and know that the Musk Ox clan does not stint.”
    When the mammoth-herders ate, they ate well. By Raumsdalian standards, they ate monumentally well. Musk-ox ribs and liver and chitterlings and brains did not taste much different from the beef Raumsdalians ate at
home. The Bizogots made cheese from musk-ox milk. They also made butter, and ate it as a food on its own instead of spreading it on bread—they had no bread. They used it in their lamps, too.
    Mammoth had a stronger flavor than musk ox. Not all of that sprang from the fuel over which the meat cooked; the musk ox was roasted over burning dung, too. Count Hamnet had never quite got used to mammoth meat, and would not have eaten it by choice. Coming up onto the frozen plains, he had no choice. Mammoth-milk cheese also had a tang all its own.
    For treats, the Bizogots ate strawberries and raspberries and blueberries and gooseberries candied in honey. The berries that grew in this clime were small but very sweet. Bees had to scurry like madmen in the short spring and summer to lay in enough supplies to last through the rest of the year. Only a little farther north, and they could not live.
    Smetyn, whether made from mammoth or musk-ox milk … Even ale was better, as far as Hamnet was concerned. But the sour brews warmed him inside and told him how sleepy he was. He rolled himself in a mammoth-hide blanket and went to bed in a tent that reeked of burning butter.

V
    W HEN COUNT HAMNET woke, he needed a moment to remember where he was. He’d been on the road for a while now, and he’d got used to Ulric Skakki’s resonant snores. He supposed Ulric was used to his, too, for the other man didn’t complain about them any more.
    The lingering smell of the butter lamp told him what he needed to know. That’s right—the Bizogot encampment , he thought. In case he needed a further reminder, the shaggy hair on the mammoth hide draped over him would have done the job.
    He yawned and stretched. A few early-morning sunbeams managed to sneak into the tent and turn what would have been darkness into gloom. One of those sunbeams hit Ulric Skakki in the eye. Ulric tried to twist away, but the damage was done. His eyes opened. He sat up and looked toward Hamnet Thyssen.
    â€œYou awake?” he asked.
    â€œOf course not. I always talk in my sleep,” Hamnet answered.
    â€œIt’s too early in the morning to be funny,” Ulric complained. Then he started to scratch and started to swear. “By God, it’s a Bizogot camp, all right. Fleas, bedbugs—a copper gets you gold we’re lousy, too.” He scratched some more, harder now.
    Hamnet Thyssen also started scratching. All at once, he itched everywhere. “It’s not a surprise,” he said, trying to sound resigned instead of furious. “They don’t bathe. They wander with animals all the time. There are all these hides around, and scraps of meat … No wonder they’ve got bugs.”

    â€œNo, no wonder at all. I’ve been through this before. I just forgot how much I love it, that’s all.” By now, Ulric Skakki was probably scratching hard enough to