A Wizard in Midgard

10

For one, we don’t allow people like young Skorag to wrestle when there’s so great a difference in size!” Garlon protested, hurrying forward.

“Difference in size? I’m only nine feet tall, Goodman GarIon, and your guest must be seven!” the young giant protested.

“Seven, and a few years older and more experienced than you,” Gar told him. He stepped close and dropped into a wrestler’s crouch. “Someone say ‘go.’ ”

“Go!” rumbled a dozen voices.

“Orla, stop them!” Alea cried. “Gar will be squashed!”

“What can we do, when the young bucks are so determined to impress us?” Orla sighed.

Alea turned to stare. Could that really be what was pushing Gar into this fight? But why would he want to impress her? Skorag shouted and slapped at Gar—and the smaller man swung in to tangle the giant’s legs somehow. Skorag lurched forward; Gar pulled on an arm, and the young giant fell.

The crowd shouted with delight and surprise. Other giants stopped what they were doing to look up, then came to see what was going on.

Skorag climbed to his feet with a savage grin. “Not bad, little fellow! First fall to you—but I’ll take the second.”

“Toss me if you can,” Gar taunted. Skorag did. Alea didn’t see exactly how—she only saw Gar cartwheeling up into the sky, and cried out in fright.

Orla’s arm clasped her shoulders. “Don’t fear, little sister. They…”

Laughing, Skorag caught Gar as though he were a baby, then tumbled him to the ground. “You were lucky the first time, stranger!”

Gar rolled to his feet—right under Skorag, as the giant bent into his wrestler’s crouch. Gar turned his back, seized Skorag’s forearm, and pulled the giant down on top of him—except that somehow he stayed on his feet, and Skorag went tumbling.

“Lucky twice,” Gar noted.

Skorag grunted with surprise and climbed back up. “There must be some skill in you, I’ll grant you that!”

“Your turn,” Gar said.

Skorag slapped at him, yanked his arm away from an attempted grab, caught a knee with the other arm and tossed Gar into the air. Alea cried out again, pressing tight against Orla’s side, but Gar seemed to bounce to his feet, grinning. “Neatly done! Have you thought of trying this?” He swung both hands down on the other’s shoulders, pushing hard, leaping into the air—but Skorag swept a hand up to push Gar’s heels high, laughing. Gar landed on his back, but somehow he still had hold of Skorag’s hand, and the giant’s laugh turned into a grunt of surprise as he went flying over Gar, balanced on the smaller man’s heels, to somersault ten feet past Gar’s head.

He rolled up to his feet, laughing. “I didn’t look for that one! But can you see this coming?” He swept Gar up into a bear hug, which the smaller man slipped out of as though he were greased—and tripped over the foot Skorag swung up as his right arm swept around to push Gar over.

Gar dove and somersaulted, coming up to his feet, still grinning—and Alea stared, dazed by the glow that seemed to emanate from him, compounded of sweat and energy and sheer delight in physical contest. She heard Orla’s breath hiss in, and knew the bigger woman was experiencing the same stab of feeling that resonated deep inside. Why, Gar’s handsome, she thought, amazed. Why had she never noticed it before?

Then Gar caught Skorag around the neck with one hand, the other on the giant’s arm, but Skorag had caught him in the same hold, and for several minutes, they strained against one another, each shifting his weight to counter the other’s twisting, each striving for an advantage, an opening. Muscles bulged under sweat-shiny skin, virtually frozen, giving time for contemplation, and the two women stared, spellbound,

Suddenly the sculpture erupted into movement, and Gar spun out like a dancer’s skirt, flying ten feet to land on his side. Alea shoved her fist into her mouth to stifle a scream, but Gar pushed himself to his feet, still grinning, and went back toward Skorag, feet wide apart, crouching as he walked.

Garlon stepped forward. “Enough, enough, young men! Gar, you have fought bravely, and we’re all amazed that you could throw a giant three times—but he has tumbled you five, and will widen that margin if you persist.”

“He will indeed,” said a ten-foot giant with a grizzled beard, stepping forward to lift Skorag’s hand. “Hail the winner!”

The crowd shouted their approval.

“And hail the Midgarder who managed to give him a real bout!” the giant cried, raising Gar’s arm.

The shout turned into a roar.

Skorag grinned and lowered his hand, holding it out to Gar. Gar took it, grinning in return, and bowed. Surprised, Skorag imitated the movement. Then both turned away, to catch up their tunics.

Alea broke from Orla and ran at Gar, crying. “You idiot! You fool! My heart nearly stopped every time you struck the ground!”

“Did it really?” Gar stopped with his tunic about to go over his head, his eyes meeting hers—and for a moment, those eyes were all there was in the world.

Then Alea turned away, feeling her face grow hot, and said, “Of course! What would happen to me if anything happened to you?”

“I think that’s the second best reason I’ve ever heard for two people to protect each other,” Gar told her, then stepped closer and spoke softly. “But the bout was good strategy, you see. They’ll welcome us more warmly now.”

Alea thought of her sudden bond with Orla, but only said, “You didn’t say what the best reason was.”

Gar was looking off to the side, though, and grinning. “I thought your friend didn’t find any of the boys here very interesting.”

Looking up, Alea saw Orla talking with Skorag, and saw the extra inch to her smile, the gleam in her eye, as the giant woman tossed her head, chin tilting up, even though she was six inches taller than Skorag. He moved a little closer, his own grin widening as he looked up at her, saying something they couldn’t hear.

“It would seem both of us have succeeded in our purposes,” Gar said, “Skorag and I.”

“Oh? And your purpose was only to gain greater acceptance by these overgrown boys, was it?”

Gar gave her a heavy-lidded glance, but quickly looked away and said, “Well, there might have been an ulterior motive.” Then he froze, staring. “Is that what I think it is?”

Frowning and vaguely disappointed, Alea followed his gaze and saw one of the stone houses with a straight line slanting upward toward a nearby tree, shining in the late afternoon light. “It’s a cord running up to a branch—but why?”

“Because it’s an antenna.” Gar yanked his tunic over his head and stepped away to catch up his cloak. “Let’s go see what’s in that house, shall we?”

Alea started after him, but just then, Orla tossed her head again and turned away from Skorag, who watched her walk away with a very intent gaze. The giantwoman reached out to Alea. “Come, little sister! You must meet the women of my clan! ”

Alea knew better than to protest—it might seem rude and, somehow, she sensed that she was being honored. But she cast a backward glance at Gar as he strode toward the house with the cord, hoping that he would understand when she didn’t follow.

Gar followed his host, remembering his excitement when he and Herkimer had discovered that this lost colony hadn’t quite regressed to completely medieval culture.

“What could have sent this colony into back to the Middle Ages?” Gar wondered.

“That happened to quite a few colonies,” Herkimer reminded him, “when Mother Terra withdrew her economic and technological support.”

“True, but there are usually some signs of a high technology origin,” Gar said. “Is there any reason to think this colony hasn’t completely regressed?”

“Only some rather constant radio signals, Magnus.” Magnus sat up straight, eyes wide. “Radio? With horned helmets? Solid state war axes? just what is going on here?”

“Battles, as we know,” Herkimer replied. “Most of the radio messages seem to be tactical orders in Terran Standard Language, with a thick local accent—three of them, in fact.”

“One for each nation.” Magnus nodded. “What about the messages that aren’t military?”

“I would have to call it gossip, though perhaps it is news,” Herkimer said. “I confess that it makes little or no sense—the voices are discussing events and concepts that are totally foreign to me. Without knowledge of the cultural context, I can make no sense of them.”

“Then we need to learn something about their history and the way they live,” Magnus agreed, “more than we can find out from orbit. Brace yourself for a wild guess, Herkimer.”

“I am braced.” The computer sounded resigned; it was basically allergic to ideas that could not be proved by evidence. “It’s possible that the rulers of this society—of one of the three societies, I should say—have managed to hold onto their power by having kept knowledge of high technology to themselves and letting the majority of their people drift back into the Dark Ages.”

“They do dress like Teutonic barbarians,” Herkimer admitted, “and your hypothesis does account for a medieval civilization having radio. But it does not account for the informal conversations in so many of the transmissions.”

“Well, it was a try,” Magnus sighed. “Can you tell anything else from the messages?”

“There is an anomaly here,” the computer replied. “The chatty messages are in two accents and use only AM, though they also transmit some military information. The third accent, though, is transmitting in FM, and is communicating only battle orders, with the occasional message that has to do with apprehending fugitives.”

“Strange.” Magnus frowned. “At a guess, I’d say that one of the three nations doesn’t want to talk to the others. Beyond that…”

This nation of giants, however, seemed quite ready to talk—in fact, to chatter. As Garlon led Gar into the huge cottage, he saw half a dozen giants sitting at two long tables, one at either side of the room, all of them leaning back in cozy conversation with disembodied voices that ratted from large paper-coned loudspeakers. The giants spoke into microphones as large as Gar’s head, but their transceivers were miniature boxes not much bigger than Gar’s hand.

He relaxed, feeling suddenly at home in the presence of electronic technology, remembering Fess, his father’s robot horse, who had been the inseparable companion of his childhood. Of course, Gar had tried to separate himself from the robot several times, wanting an adventure Fess wouldn’t have approved of, but the computer-brained steel horse had found him every time.

It almost seemed that Fess had found him again.

The women were gathered about the firepit at one end of the common. There were several men working with them, skinning out and cleaning the ox.

“That was a good match,” one of the men opined.

“It was indeed, Korlan,” Garlon agreed. “I was amazed that Gar lasted so long against a giant.”

Korlan nodded. “I was proud of my son. He wrestled his best, but was careful not to hurt the little fellow.”

“You should be proud indeed,” Garlon agreed.

Alea was surprised that he took no offense hearing a man bigger than he referred to as “little”; he seemed to understand that the term was relative.

“Skorag showed good hospitality to a guest, Isola,” Riara said to another woman. “You have reared him well.”

Isola smiled, pleased. “Thank you, Riara. He wrestles well and is considerate. Now if he would only settle his heart on one young woman, I would count myself a successful mother indeed.”

Orla suddenly became very concerned with the bit of hide she was scraping.

Alea watched her, smiling. “If you can find me a knife, I can help.”

“Surely, little sister.” Orla took a second knife from her belt, glad of the change of subject.

The blade was as long as Alea’s hand. She started scraping the hide loose, saying, “This knife must be so small for you! Why do you carry it?”

“For splitting the quills of feathers, to fletch arrows,” Orla told her, “and other fine work.”

Isola and Korlan lifted the ox high so the others could scrape the hide off the underside. Alea was glad the head, hooves, and tail had been removed before she came, and the spit placed. She’d seen such things done before, but preferred not to.

“This whole generation of young men seems to have grown up healthy and strong,” Riara said. “The gods have blessed us.”

“I like the chests on them,” Orla said; then, critically,

“Some of them have lumpy arms, though. Muscle enough, mind you, but lumpy.”

“I know what you mean,” said Riara. “I prefer a clean flowing line to the shape, myself.”

Garlon surveyed the woodpile and said, “I think we’d better see to splitting some more logs.”

“I’ll come with you,” said one of the other men, almost twice Garlon’s size.

They strolled off as Isola and Korlan, with a grunt of effort, hoisted the spit onto its brackets.

“Stand clear,” another man told them, then struck sparks into the tinder in the firepit. He blew on it gently; the fire caught and ran through the kindling.

“There should be dancing tonight, Tovaw,” Korlan told him. “Are your pipes tuned?”

“I had better check them,” Tovaw said.

“And my drum needs a new head.” Korlan strolled off with him, sharing a grin.

“I don’t like lumpy legs, either,” one of the other women said. “Muscles, yes, but not if they’re knobby.”

“I forged a dozen arrowheads today,” one of the remaining two men told the other. “Did you bring home an eagle from your hunt?”

“No, but a large hawk should do as well,” the other said. “We had better fletch some more arrows.”

They rambled away, but glanced back at the women, then exchanged knowing nods.

“Well, of all the nerve!” Alea cried indignantly. “Leaving us as though we had the plague! Your men are no better than ours!”

Then she realized that Isola was smirking as she watched the men wander off.

“They want us to be free to discuss their merits,” Riara told Alea, “without worrying about hurting their feelings.”

“Can women hurt men’s feelings?” Alea asked, amazed. The women laughed heartily at that, and Orla said, “Your Midgard upbringing has left you with a great deal to learn, little sister. Yes, we can hurt their feelings as easily as they can hurt ours.”

“More easily,” Riara said. “Their vanity is so easily wounded, poor souls.”

“Sometimes I think they value our good opinion too highly,” said another woman.

“True, Sria,” Riara said, “but never let them know it!” That brought another general laugh. As it ended, Alea said, “Their wandering off, then, was only good manners?”

“Well, a bit more, I would say,” Sria said judiciously, “but yes, it’s a mark of their regard for us.”

“And fear of what they might hear,” chuckled a fourth woman.

“A giant can face anything but a woman’s scorn, Narei,” Riara agreed.

“If he cares for the woman,” Narei amended.

Alea only listened, wide-eyed. She had never thought that men might fear women’s opinions of them—but that did explain why they were so quick to anger.

“You seem to know little of men’s better side,” Narei told her.

“You might say that,” Alea said bitterly. “Mind you, I’ve seen a few men who did treat their wives gently, but only when they thought no one else was watching.”

That brought a storm of incredulous questions and horrified denials.

“Surely they must flatter you when they’re courting you,” Orla objected.

“I wouldn’t know,” Alea said, bile on her tongue. “None ever courted me—I was too big.”

But Riara caught some sort of undertone to her denial. “None at all?”

“Well, there was one when I was very young, scarcely a woman.” Alea had to force the words out. “I didn’t realize that he only meant to use me, not to marry me. I learned quickly enough, though, when he went on to another lass.”

“He didn’t!” Narei cried indignantly.

“You mean he had the audacity to court you when he didn’t mean to marry you?” Orla asked, aghast.

“I mean exactly that, though of course I didn’t know it until he’d had what he wanted and left me.” Even now, fourteen years later, Alea had to fight back tears.

“If any of our young men did that, the fathers and brothers would beat him to a pulp,” Isola said darkly, “if we women did not do it to them first.”

Alea stared. “Do none of your young men come courting unless they are ready to propose?”

“Not ready, but wanting to,” Orla said slowly, “and we, for our part, let them know quite quickly if we don’t.”

“It’s unfair to keep them dancing on a string, like puppets,” Riana agreed.

“Of course,” Sria said, “they aren’t allowed to court until they have proved they can grow a crop, raise animals, and bring home a filled game bag.”

“And before a man can propose, he must build a house, though his friends may help him,” Riara said, “and keep it clean, inside and out.”

“Of course, we have to prove the same,” Orla said. “And that you can cook?”

“Cook?” the giant woman exclaimed, astonished. “Everyone can cook! How else do you think bachelors stay alive?”

“Why, living at home, where their mothers can feed them,” Alea said.

The women all laughed at that. When their mirth had ebbed, Riara said, “Fancy a mother letting a grown man stay around the house! No, our young men live in the bachelors’ house, and if they haven’t learned to clean up after themselves by then, they quickly do!”

“We’ve heard the Midgarders don’t treat their women very well, little sister,” Orla said, frowning. “From what you say, it would seem to be true.”

“I had no complaint of my father’s treatment,” Alea said slowly, “but outside the home, the boys were forever insulting me—and, for that matter, the girls were, too.”

She told a little of the constant insults and slights she had suffered at the hands of her peers, then told them of her treatment when her parents had died, ending in her few days of slavery—the constant insults, the beatings for minor mistakes and for talking back, and the sexual threat. By the time she was done, she was leaning inside the circle of Orla’s arm, fighting back tears, and the women were livid.

“We have heard of such things,” Riara said darkly. “Tell us his name, so that we may send word to all the giants to take him prisoner if he comes with a raiding party.”

Alea stared in surprise.

“Don’t worry, little sister, we’ll save you the leavings,” Orla said, smiling.

“But … but … would your own men let you beat him?”

“No grown giant tells another what to let or not, my dear,” Isola said gently. “But as to our men, we dare not tell them why we want the fellow, or they would grow so angry that they would simply squash him, and that’s far too quick a punishment for any man who abuses a woman’s love.”

“It is indeed,” Alea said, round-eyed, “and I thank you for saying it!” She had suspected that many women felt as she did, of course, but had never met any who dared speak it aloud.

When the ox was fully roasted, the giants gathered around, chatting and laughing, bringing wooden plates with slabs of bread on them as wide as Alea’s arm was long. They took turns cutting slices off the roast for one another.

Gar came up, eyes shining, but sat down beside Alea without saying a word. Frowning up at him, she could see his mind was still busy with the sight of wonders. She felt the same way, but also felt somewhat insulted that he didn’t seem to notice her. “Was it so wonderful as all that?”

Gar looked at her in surprise, then looked rueful. “My apologies—I hadn’t meant to be rude. But yes, it is wonderful, when you see it in the midst of a medieval village.”

“What is it?” she asked, visions of fairy treasures filling her mind.

“Radio,” he answered, “a transceiver—a magical box that lets you talk to people a hundred miles away and more, and lets you hear their answers. Only it’s not magical, really, just a very clever sort of machine.”

“It sounds magical to me,” Alea said, wide-eyed. “No one I’ve met has ever spoken of such a thing! Well, perhaps in the wonder-tales about the ancestors coming down from the stars…”

Gar glanced at her keenly. “So they remember that much, do they? I must admit that the giants were surprised that a Midgarder should know about radio.”

“Well, you’re not a Midgarder, really,” Alea reminded him. “I asked how they knew,” Gar went on. “They told me that in the early days, only a generation or two after their ancestors came from the stars, the first giants grew so big they scared the Midgarders, and the smaller people drove them out, village by village, all along the western border—but villages were tens of miles apart in those days, so they went about in small bands, not even knowing there were others like them.” Alea stared in surprise; she’d never heard the tale from the giants’ side.

“One band, though, stumbled across the remains of a cabin made of a shiny material the Ancestors used, a sort of way station for wanderers who might become lost in the wilderness. It had food and drink stored away, and fuel for heating—but most wonderfully of all, it had a radio. They were sick with loneliness, so they listened to the Midgarders talking to one another. They tried to talk, too, but once the Midgarders knew who they were, they refused to answer. The ancestors played pranks on them anyway, starting conversations, then revealing that they were giants—and learned how to use the device. Then, wonder of wonders, another band of giants answered! They found several radios they could carry with them, and by using those, they were able to find one another.”

“So Jotunheim started because of radios?” Alea asked. “As a nation instead of dozens of small, scattered bands, yes. Once the first two bands had joined together, they were able to search for others. They set about studying the books in the way stations and learned how to make radios of their own. Then bands of explorers went out with transceivers. Some died, but they called back to tell what was happening to them every day, so the ones who followed them were able to avoid the dangers, or be ready to fight them off.”

“Packs of wild beasts?” Alea asked.

“Some. There were whirlpools and quicksands, too, and mountain trails prone to rockslides. But most of the explorers found other bands of giants and gave them radios, then fell in love and brought home wives and husbands. With radios, they were able to set up periodic meetings, and the separate bands were able to join together to become a nation. They were also able to call up soldiers to fight when they saw a raiding party coming, and the radios helped them mightily in coordinating a battle—one reason why the giants have managed to survive when they’re so badly outnumbered. Then they answered a call seeking someone to talk to, and found it was a dwarf. Now they trade their labor, building stone walls in return for dwarf-made radios. They can build their own, but they say the dwarves make better.”

Such cooperation went against everything Alea had been taught about the other nations. In a desperate attempt to hold onto one of her childhood illusions, she demanded, “They trade, even though a few giants have always known how to make these radio things?”

“Everyone does!” Gar exulted. “They have schools, actual schools!”

Alea frowned. “What are schools?”

Gar sobered, staring at her. “Don’t your peo— Don’t the Midgarders have schools for at least some of their children?”

“If they did, would I ask what the word meant?” Alea asked impatiently.

“A school is a building where children, and sometimes adults, are taught how to read and write and … oh, all sorts of things. How do your leaders learn?”

“The barons have scholars come to teach their sons,” Alea told him, “and any boy who wants to be a priest goes to live in his village’s temple. But buildings just for learning? What a waste!”

“Scarcely that,” Gar said, “though I can see it’s one of the ways your barons keep their power. The hatred they teach you is another—if they can keep you angry about dwarves and giants, no one will think to be angry at the barons.”

“Angry at the barons?” Alea stared, scandalized. “But that would be wrong, that would be…” She ran out of words as she realized what he meant.

Gar read her eyes and nodded. “None of your people could even think of speaking against the barons, could they? That might make you weaker if you had to fight off a giants’ raid. But the giants’ government doesn’t worry about holding onto its power—there aren’t enough of them. They are the government, all of them, and they can’t afford to waste a single person’s talents. Their schools teach all the children, girls and boys, and new giants, outcasts from Midgard, at night. They learn how to read and write, how to use the numberlanguage called mathematics, and all sorts of other things about how to make and build, things I learned under the names of chemistry and physics. They learn literature and history, too—what they know of it.”

“Well, everyone knows how to tell stories.” Alea was clutching after familiar words.

“Yes, but I think the giants learn a number of stories Midgarders don’t know,” Gar told her. “The giants do know where the Midgarders found the names for the gods, though—the giants, and the dwarves.”

“I could have told you that,” Alea told him archly. “We all have to learn the Ring Cycle. In fact, we all grow up singing it, or at least the best of its songs.”

“Wagner’s Ring Cycle, yes,” Gar said, “but the giants tracked those stories back to their source: the sagas, the Nibelungenlied. It makes a difference.”

“What sort of difference?” Alea asked, but Orla came to hand them each a filled platter, and stayed to talk, so Alea didn’t have her answer until after dinner, when the giants began to tell stories and sing songs. She heard the original versions of some of the tales of her childhood, and her eyes grew bigger and bigger as every difference sank home. By the time Orla found beds for them in a guest house, her brain was whirling so much she could barely remember to say, “Thank you.”

That whirl in her head may have been the cause, or perhaps it was so much rich food after living on journey rations for two months. Perhaps it was both put together, and the harrowing experiences of her parents’ death and her own enslavement—but whatever the cause, Alea dreamed that night, a dream such as she had never had before.

First there was darkness, as there always was behind her eyes at night, though Alea was never aware of it—she simply fell asleep, dreamed, then woke. This time, though, she did become aware of the warm, velvety blackness, and knew when it turned cool and smooth. Then she saw the white dot appear, a dot that expanded most amazingly until she realized that it was a face rushing toward her, a face with no body, turning and turning, its long white hair and beard floating around it. She began to feel fear when the face filled her vision; it reminded her of the baron’s steward at her trial, and she was afraid she was looking at Odin himself, but she couldn’t have been, because Odin only had one eye, and this old man had two,

“Don’t be afraid,” the face said. “I am the Wizard, and I have come to tell you about the Way.”