Beyong the Gap

fields, all mixed together. We have towns that make Naestved look like nothing beside them. We have rivers that stay unfrozen all year long—well, except in hard winters, anyhow— and we have boats that travel on them.'

'We have boats,' Liv said proudly. 'We make them from hides, and use mammoth bones to give them their shape. We use them for fishing, and to cross streams too deep for fording.'

So there, Hamnet Thyssen thought. I'm no savage—my people can do these things, too, Liv was saying. 'Ours are bigger,' he said gently. 'They're mostly made of wood, because it floats on water.' He felt odd saying that—how could anyone not know it? On the other hand, how could she know it, living so far north of the tree line? Up where the Three Tusk clan roamed, willows and birches were little shrubs, hardly taller than the middle of a man's calf The forever frozen ground wouldn't let anything larger grow.

Her eyes went wide, so wide that he saw white all around the blue of her irises. 'It floats, you say? Then you can make boats as big as you please, and they stay on top of the water?'

He'd already seen she was clever. She understood right away what things meant, even when they weren't things she'd had any reason to think about before. 'We do make big boats,' he said. 'They carry people and goods up and down the rivers. Most of the grain trade in the Empire goes by boat, because it's so much cheaper to ship by water than by land.'

'Up and down the rivers? How do you go against the current?'

'Our boats have sails.' Hamnet Thyssen answered. They were mostly using the Bizogot tongue, but the new word had to come out in Raumsdalian. As best he could, he explained what sails were and how they worked.

Liv's eyes widened again. 'How marvelous!' she breathed. 'This is one of the most wonderful sorceries I ever heard of—more marvelous than anything I ever imagined myself, believe me.'

'If you think this is magic, then I didn't make myself plain,' Count Hamnet said. 'It's a craft, a skill, like tanning leather or carving bone.'

'Is it? Are you sure?' Liv asked. 'Suppose the wind doesn't blow the way you wish it would, the way you need it to. Won't a shaman call up a wind to take the boat where it needs to go?'

'More likely the crew will use oars, or will have horses to tow the boat upstream.' Hamnet plucked at his beard. He was no wizard. He didn't know everything a spell might do. If any of the travelers did, Audun Gilli was the man. 'Hi! Audun!' Hamnet called, and waved to draw the sorcerer's notice.

'What is it, your Grace?' Audun didn't seem as enthusiastic about going back to Nidaros as the rest of the Raumsdalians. Up in the Bizogot country, he'd been able to set aside the cruel memories that haunted him. Now he was returning to them again. He couldn't be looking forward to that.

'If the breeze is against him, can a wizard raise enough of his own wind to send a boat upstream?' Hamnet asked.

'Well, it depends on the boat and the wizard,' Audun Gilli answered. 'If it's a little sailboat and it doesn't have to go too far upstream, a lot of wizards can manage. I could do that myself, I think. If you're talking about a great wallowing barge with a couple of hundred head of cattle aboard, that's another story. Maybe a team of strong sorcerers could bring it off, but chances are there's some easier way to do it. Try that and fail, and the wizards might not be worth much afterwards.'

'How much did you understand?' Hamnet asked Liv.

'Most, I think,' she said in her own language, then switched to Raumsdalian to ask Audun, 'Why not make better spells for such a useful thing?'

'Because most of the time, like I said, you can go upstream without using much magic,' he replied. 'Don't you know spells you could use, only most of the time you don't because they're more trouble than they're worth?'

That got too complicated for her to follow easily. Count Hamnet translated it into her language. She thought it over, then nodded. 'Yes, there are some,' she said, again in Raumsdalian. 'But for something this wonderful —'

'Ah, there we have it,' Hamnet Thyssen broke in. 'You think boats and sails are marvelous and wonderful because they're new to you. Down in the Empire and the lands farther south yet, we've been using boats for as long as anyone can remember, and probably for longer than that. We take them as much for granted as you take mammoth-hide tents.'

'How sad,' Liv said in Raumsdalian.

'Sad?' Hamnet and Audun both asked at the same time.

She nodded. 'Sad. Very sad. Wonders should be wonders. To take them for granted is to waste them. Do you take making love for granted?'

Audun Gilli shook his head. 'By God, I hope not!' Hamnet said.

Liv didn't claim he did, which was a relief. She just said, 'Well, then,' as if she’d proved her point.

'To people who are used to them, boats aren't as important—or as wonderful—as making love,' Hamnet said stubbornly. Audun Gilli coughed. Hamnet sent him an annoyed look, not least because he had a point of sorts. Men who skippered boats and men who made their living from them probably did think what happened aboard them was as important as what went on in bed. 'You know what I mean,' Hamnet said. Audun didn't deny it. If he had, Hamnet would have looked around for something to clout him with.

'Well, it's not worth the argument,' Liv said.

Hamnet Thyssen stared at her, as surprised as if a short-faced bear had spoken to him. He'd never heard those words from Gudrid. And what about you? he asked himself. He'd never been known to back away from any argument. He'd kept this one going. He wondered why. Who was right and who wrong counted for nothing, not when you thought for a little while. But he hadn't. He wanted to be right, whether he was right or not.

When you got down to it, that was .. . pretty stupid. And he'd only taken forty-odd years to realize it. The really scary thing was, he was doing better than most. A lot of people went to their graves without ever figuring that out.

'No, it's not,' he said, and neither Liv nor Audun Gilli had the slightest idea how much effort getting those three words past his lips took.

By Raumsdalian standards, the northern forests changed very slowly. But Liv noticed differences at once. 'What are those trees with the white . . . ?' she asked, and gestured because she couldn't remember the Raumsdalian word she needed.

'Trunks,' Count Hamnet supplied, and she nodded. 'Those are birches,' he said.

'They look like skeletons.' Liv took off her mittens and raised her hands with fingers widespread. 'How do they live? Where are their leaves?' The last word came out in the Bizogot language.

'They'll grow them in spring and keep them into fall,' Hamnet answered. 'They do that every year. The leaves fall off. They turn brown and die. Most of them are buried under the snow now.'

'Why do they do that?' she asked. 'It seems like a waste. The . . . the firs and the spruces keep their leaves in this time. Why not the birches, too?'

'I don't know. Maybe you'd have to ask the trees,' Hamnet Thyssen said. She made a face at him. He called out to Eyvind Torfinn. 'Why do birches and oaks and willows lose their leaves in the fall?'

Eyvind stared on him. 'What on earth makes you think I'd know something like that?'

'Well, I don't, your Splendor,' Count Hamnet said. 'Of all the people here, I thought you had the best chance to tell me. You know all sorts of strange things.'

'Not that one, I fear.'

'Too bad.' Hamnet Thyssen turned back to Liv. 'If Earl Eyvind doesn't know, you really do need to talk to the trees.'

'I wonder if I could magic out the answer.' The Bizogot shaman sounded completely serious. 'Use the law of similarity to compare leaf to leaf, branch to branch . . .'

Eyvind Torfinn was no wizard, but he knew a good deal about sorcery—he knew a good deal about anything that happened to catch his interest. 'I don't see why you couldn't,' he said, surprise and what sounded like wonder in his voice. 'I don't believe anyone has ever used wizardry like that. I don't believe anyone ever thought to use wizardry like that.'

'What are you going on about in that horrible language?' Gudrid asked. Most of the time, she paid as little