'Certainly. The raft will serve to keep you and me and our goods dry as we paddle across. But the ponies, now, well that's an altogether different thing: as I started to say, they can swim, so all we need do is tether them behind as we float from this side to that.'
'Um,' said Bekki, nodding. 'Still, I would rather ride a pony across the ford than ride a raft over. Too many things can go wrong otherwise: a pony could panic; some might resist swimming and tug the opposite way; one of us could fall in… Nay, if it comes to rafting, let us build one and haul the ponies across.'
Tip shrugged and turned up his hands. 'As you wish, Bekki. As you wish. But say, if it takes several trips, that will be a lot of paddling.'
'Nay, Tipperton, instead we will tie ropes to trees on each side and swing across on the current. Paddle across once; haul and swing thereafter.'
'It's a wide river,' said Tip. 'Have we enough rope?'
'We will find a narrower place, should it come to rafting,' replied Bekki.
Tip frowned. 'Even so…'
The drizzle ended by midday, yet a grey pall hung over all; whether it was from a rain-gloomed sky or from grey dust aloft, neither Tip nor Bekki could say. Under this dismal cast, Bekki and Tip rode upstream along the banks of the Argon looking for a narrow enough site to cross on a rope-swung raft. Yet the river was wide, and nowhere did they find a place where all the rope they had with them would reach even once from bank to bank, much less there and back.
'I'm afraid it's paddling we must do,' said Tip, sighing.
'On the morrow we will ride the opposite direction, downstream then,' said Bekki. 'Mayhap there we will find a narrow enough place to span. If not, let us hope the waters wane, for I would rather ride the ford than ride a raft.'
But when they returned to the camp and then walked to the ford, they discovered the river had risen even more, and the crossing was wider than ever.
'It has not crested as yet,' growled Bekki.
'Maybe it never will,' replied Tip, looking at the glum sky above.
Although it did not rain the following day, still the waters rose even farther, encroaching up the bank and toward the campsite. And in their ride downstream they found no narrow place.
'If this keeps up,' said Tip, 'we'll never get to the gwynthyme.'
'Tomorrow it is a raft we begin crafting,' said Bekki.
'Have you ever made one?' asked Tip.
Bekki shook his head and said, 'Nay, I have not. Even so, how hard can it be?'
Using nought but Bekki's small handaxe, it took all day to fell three trees nigh the riverbank and trim away the branches.
'At this rate, Bekki, we'll be a week or so just building a float.'
Glumly, Bekki nodded.
Tip sighed. 'Mayhap instead of waiting a week we ought to set out for the Kaagor Ferry on the morrow. Oh my, that will add nigh another month of travel just to get to the gwynthyme. It's a good thing we included time for unexpected delay, for delay this certainly is. Even so, with another wait, we could miss the golden days of the mint altogether.' He got to his feet and took up his bow and quiver and said, 'I think I'll go check on the ford again.'
Bekki caught up his war hammer and shield. 'I will go with you.'
As they approached the flooded crossing, Tip frowned. 'I say, Bekki, has the water receded? I seem to recall it was past that boulder, but now it doesn't quite reach it.'
Bekki stepped down to the water's edge and peered at the distant far side. Then, casting about, he took up a rock the size of his fist and set it down at the brink of the water. 'There. In the morning we shall know.'
'Unless someone moved the rock in the night, the river is receding,' said Tip, smiling.
In the wan morning light the river flowed past, the water a good two yards down the shallow bank from the stone.
Bekki nodded. 'Aye. The Argon has waxed and now wanes.'
'How soon do you gauge we can cross?' asked Tipperton.
Bekki shrugged. 'Let us lay another stone down and see where it stands tomorrow, and then we can judge.'
As Bekki carried another rock to the river's edge, Tip looked up the shoreline toward where the logs lay. 'Are we going to continue on the raft?'
Bekki's hand strayed to the small axe at his belt. 'Let us wait and see.'
Tip grinned but remained silent.
On the eighth morning after arriving at the unnamed ford, Tip and Bekki crossed over, the slow-moving water belly high on the ponies. Yet no steed was swept from its feet, much to Bekki's relief.
As they rode away from the northern bank, Tip looked back across the river. 'Making a raft, how hard can it be? Mighty hard, if you want my opinion.'
'Especially with nought but a handaxe,' growled Bekki.
Up and out from the river valley they rode, up through the river border forest and toward the Grimwalls glimpsed now and then through the woodland, the mighty range towering in the distance, their peaks snowcapped.
And still the days were glum and chill, the sun weak, as if autumn had come, even though it was but early August.
'Do you think there's dust yet in the sky, Bekki, shielding us from Adon's warmth?'
'The air is always sharp nigh the Grimwall, Tipperton, though it seems more so these days.'
Onward they rode, and toward evening it began to rain down in the foothills where they were, though high in the mountains snow fell instead.
A sevenday after crossing the ford they came to a large lake embraced in the arms of the mountains. Its waters were cloudy blue and wide; its distant shore fetched up against a steep rise in the land some thirty miles afar.
'Nordlake,' grunted Bekki, his breath blowing white in the chill air.
'Home of the Vattenvidunder, eh?' said Tip, peering at the broad expanse.
Bekki merely snorted.
'All right,' said Tip, 'where is this set of cliffs holding the gwynthyme?'
Bekki pointed. Past the far side of the lake and up the slope of land, a stone massif on a mountain flank rose sheer. Vertical it was, and tall, and topped by a broad ledge, or so Bekki had said. Beyond the ledge the mountain rose again 'Two or three days yon, if indeed it is gwyn-thyme growing in the crevices.'
'Lor', Bekki, we're not going to have to climb up that, are we?'
Bekki laughed. 'Nay, Tipperton. The face of that great bluff is more than a mile high, a mile or so up to the shelf above, where we will set camp among the wide stretch of aspens. A trail leads upward the ponies can manage, and that is how we will get there. Nay, we will not climb up that sheer face, but dangle downward instead, hanging on ropes and rock-nails.'
A mile? A mile high? Even from this distance Tip could tell that the face they would be on was straight up and down. His stomach squinched and his heart thudded deep in his chest, and he wondered if he could force himself to dangle on nought but a spindly rope down that vertical stone.
Onward they rode, and that night they camped beside the waters of Nordlake.
Under a glum sky the next morning, when filling the waterskins Bekki said, 'Huah, the lake was clearer some years back when last I saw it, but cloudy now.'
'Perhaps the dust fell here, too,' said Tip.
'Aye, that must be it.'
On they rode and on, following the shoreline of the great lake, the mountains ahead seeming to draw no closer. Once again they spent a night along the shore.
The next day they rode in among the foothills north of the lake, the vertical massif in the distance ahead seeming to grow taller, its stone grey and brown, the grey matching the grey of the sky above.
As they topped a hill, Tip halted his pony and peered long and finally called to Bekki, 'I say, isn't that something pale yellow way high? Or is it tan stone instead?'
