"Tubs," Count Hamnet said helpfully.
"Tubs," Liv repeated. "Soft things to sleep on . . ."
"Beds."
"Beds," she said. "And the food made from ground grain .. . Bread." She found the word before he gave it to her. "And the tents with wooden walls . . . Houses. So much wood everywhere. Even wood around the town to keep out enemies." She shook her head in wonder.
To keep out the Bizogots, Hamnet Thyssen thought. Here in the north, there were no other enemies. He shook his head. There hadn't been any other enemies, not till the Gap melted through. Now the Rulers would come through, come down onto the Bizogots' frozen plains-which would seem familiar enough to them-and then, if they got this far, into the Empire.
"So many things," Liv went on. "This is because you don't have to wander, to follow the herds, isn't it?"
"Partly. Maybe even mostly," Hamnet answered. "It would be hard to carry bathtubs around in a mammoth-hide tent. But also partly because the country is different. It would be hard to herd mammoths and musk oxen through the forest."
"I think so!" Liv exclaimed. "I look at these .. . trees . . . and I think they all lean toward me. I think they all want to fall on me. We go through them, and I feel they are all squeezing in on me." She gestured with her hands.
"Some Raumsdalians, when they come up into the Bizogot country, they feel the land is too big. They feel like flies walking across a plate." Hamnet Thyssen gestured, too. "They feel the land is so wide and they are so small that God has forgot them."
She laughed. "Really?" After Hamnet nodded, she asked, "Did you ever feel this way?"
He thought she expected him to say no, but he nodded again. Sure enough, she looked surprised. "On the Bizogot plains, I feel small," Count Hamnet said. "If a mammoth could think, it would feel small out on the Bizogot plains. But some of my countrymen have it worse than I do. Some of them feel as if they're about to disappear."
"How funny. How strange," Liv said. "But the forest doesn't bother them?"
"I've heard Raumsdalians say they feel crowded here," Hamnet replied. "Farther south, we have forests and 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.