by Eric Flint
"I suppose it would be nice to have our own milk for Shavuos," Basya said.
"What worries me is this road," Yossie said, carefully leading the horse and cart around a mud hole. "You can hardly call it a road. It's worse even than the road from Eisfeld yesterday."
At first, Yossie hadn't been happy with Moische and Yitzach about their decision to go east from Eisfeld instead of south. They had spent much of Monday discussing their options as they approached Eisfeld. Moische's notes included considerable material he and his father had gathered on the towns of the Saxon plains, but nothing that would help them on the southern route. Without good information, Moische thought that the path south of the Frankenwald would not get them to Poland by the fall. As far as they knew, that route would probably deliver them to Prague by fall. None of them knew much about Prague, but without a source of income, a winter spent in any of Europe's major Jewish ghettos could easily exhaust their resources. By noon Monday, they had all agreed to risk the route through the southern Thüringerwald and across the south edge of the Saxon plains.
The forest pressed in close on each side of the narrow road through the hills of the Thüringerwald, except where charcoal burners or woodcutters had recently been at work. The day before, as they started into the hills, they had passed a sawmill along the upper Werra, but after that, they had passed into real wilderness. There had been no sign of human activity for miles, until they came to the village of charcoal burners where they had spent the night.
"Tell us again, Reb Moische, why are we going north on a bad road, toward a place that only yesterday we were trying to avoid?" Basya asked.
"Because last night after we ate, I had a long talk with a charcoal burner. While we dickered about the price of charcoal and flour, he told me that the road east was rough. He said it was better for pack horses than wagons, worse even than this road. He also said that we'll be able to sell his charcoal at a forge we are supposed to pass fairly soon, and that the road gets better after that." Yossie had already heard this answer. He had asked much the same question in private, not wanting to alarm the others by openly challenging Moische's judgment.
"But what about this strange new town?" Basya asked. "We heard it called the pit of Hell just a few days ago, and now we're going there?"
"The charcoal burner told me that he'd heard that the road was open. Not only that, he said he'd heard that the road through Grantville is now the best road to the Saale valley."
"We should trust this man?" Basya asked.
"We will find out soon enough," Moische said, with a shrug. "The man said that the edge of the pit is less than a day's travel. If it turns out he was wrong about the road, we should be able come back to him tomorrow and tell him about it."
"Unless there are demons in the pit of Hell," Basya said, under her breath so that only Yossie could hear.
Silence fell on the group as they walked along with their horses. It was broken only by the muffled clop of hooves, the groaning of loaded wagon axles and the occasional bleat of a goat. The track wound northward through the forest for some miles, with only scattered stumps and clearings providing evidence of human presence.
Gitele finally broke the gloomy silence. "Basya, get out your Shmuelbuch. Let's have a song."
For the next mile, song rang out through the forest. As usual, Yakov objected under his breath, but Yossie noticed after they had been singing for a while that the old rabbi's lips were moving with the words.
They fell silent when they came in sight of a small cluster of woodsmen's cottages. Up to that point, the track they had been following ran north along a broad rounded ridge. At the little village, the road seemed to get even worse as it turned east and descended into a small valley.
They had to go carefully down the steep valley. At times, they had to walk beside the wheels of their carts, ready to grab hold of a spoke to ease the load on the horses. The brook they were following was of no account at first, but each muddy trickle they passed added to it. As the brook grew, the descent grew even steeper.
By noon, they could hear the sounds of a forge in the valley below them. The sound of the trip hammer reached them first, and then the rhythmic splash of a waterwheel grew to fill the silence between hammer blows. A shoulder of the hillside blocked their view of the forge until they were almost on it, and then they found themselves in a small village where their valley met a much larger one.
The master smith came out to deal with them while his apprentices continued at work. Yossie was drawn by the orange glow of the iron bar the apprentices were manipulating under the trip hammers. As in the smithies he had seen in the Spessart, the great shaft of the water wheel was made from a single tree trunk that extended the entire width of the building. There were cams on the shaft at many different points. Some were simple pegs set into the shaft to work small equipment while others were blocks of wood pegged and bound to the shaft. One cam worked the bellows for the forge while another cam worked the trip hammer. Two more cams were positioned under the arms of a great bellows that was directed into a large furnace. That bellows was idle, with its arms propped up so they didn't bear on their cams.
"Yossie!" Moische called. "It's time to dispose of the scrap iron."
Yossie went back to the carts to make sure they didn't sell the scraps he'd set aside.
"Explain to me again," Moische asked, "why we don't want to sell the broken knife blades?"
Yossie hesitated. "I want them. I don't think I can explain it properly, but there is something I learned to do from Master Hene that I want to try someday. To do it, I need good steel, and knife steel is good."
The smith weighed their scrap, minus Yossie's small hoard of broken blades. Once the weight was known, Moische and the smith began dickering. Yossie listened, fascinated both by the smith's accent and by the way Moische was adapting his own speech to match.
When it came time for the smith to pay for the charcoal and scrap, he turned to Moische. "There is one problem. Food is expensive, and until my son returns from Suhl, there will be no silver to spare."
Moische shrugged, "Silver attracts thieves. What can you offer in trade?"
"Wrought iron bars."
"Iron bars?" Moische asked. "Where am I going to sell iron bars? Don't you have something useful I could sell? Shovels, hoes, sewing needles?"
"I make tools for the mines up the valley to the west, nothing you could sell. But to make the tools, I have to make good iron bars first. Those, you can sell to any smith, anywhere." His expression broadened into a mild grin. "It must be easier to haul bars out of the hills than your shovels or sewing needles. Perhaps the people in this new town of Grantville will want iron bars. I hear there are great craftsmen there."
"What do you know of this Grantville?" Yitzach asked.
"Not much," the smith said, scratching his head. "They say it is a place of wonders. Two weeks ago, there was just the wild defile of the Schwarza. Then they say there was a flash, and there was a great pit with a town in the bottom. Now, just this Monday and in just one day, I hear that the people of Grantville built almost a mile of good road so that the way into the pit is open."
"Is the road open to the Saale?" Moische asked.
"So I hear," the smith answered.
"Have you heard anything about how the people of this town treat strangers passing through?"
"There are strange stories. They are said to be very polite, treating common men like princes. On the other hand, there is a story that ten of them fought a battle with a hundred of General Tilly's mercenaries and killed every one. And then there is the story that they have welcomed accursed Jews into their midst. What of this is true and what is just idle chatter I cannot say."
Yossie was still thinking about what the smith said as they forded the Schwarza. It was reassuring that there were no more rumors of Hell opening ahead of them, but even the story of the new road was alarming. Could a town possibly build a mile of mountain road in a day?
The ford across
the Schwarza was well traveled, but the bank was steep enough that they had to put their shoulders to the spokes to help their horses pull their loaded carts up out of the water.
"Do you think he knew we were Jews?" Basya asked, after they had worked the last cart up onto the road along the north bank.
"I don't think so." Yossie said. "I hate to say that I prefer ignorance, but I think I prefer it to having to explain being a Jew to people who speak so casually of our damnation."
The valley of the Schwarza was deep, winding and narrow, but the bottom was flat and the road was better than anything they had seen since Eisfeld. Near each little cluster of houses, there were kitchen gardens, with spring vegetables starting to show green against the carefully tilled black soil. Most of the open land in the valley was pasture, home to cattle, sheep and goats.
The valley reminded Yossie of the valley of the Lohrbach in the Spessart, although the hills here were higher. Like the Lohrbach, this was an industrial valley. Shortly after they crossed the Schwarza, they passed a copper smelter that poured a thin stream of acrid smoke into the air above.
"Reb Moische," Yossie asked, "how do you shift your accent so readily?"
"What do you mean?"
"When you speak to people here, you speak in their accent."
"I don't really notice myself doing it. I suppose it's part of being a merchant." Moische paused, looking at the people watching them from a cluster of houses they were approaching. "Yossie, tell me what you see?"
Yossie looked. "A little village?"
"There are too many people here," Moische said. "And there were too many people in that village by the forge."
"What do you mean?" Yossie asked.
"It is like the Judengasse in Frankfurt," Moische said. "There, we lived four or five families in a house because the Germans made us live that way. Why are they living that way here?"
As they walked onward next to their loaded wagons, Yossie looked more carefully at the village they were passing. Indeed, it was crowded. There were women working in the kitchen gardens and men working in the pastures beyond, but there were also healthy men and women who seemed to have nothing to do.
Just beyond the village, there was another copper smelter, and then the valley turned. The view opened up to the northwest as they rounded the bend. The flat valley floor went on for about a mile, and then it was blocked by a low hill that was crowned by the black stone battlements of a castle. It could only be Schwarzburg castle.
The road rose slowly along the northwest wall of the valley to the north end of the castle. As they walked up the gentle grade, they saw that the Schwarza looped south around the other end of the castle through a narrow defile. The hills rose sharply on both sides, far higher than the castle, but above the castle itself, there was only sky.
No castle is complete without at least a small village nearby. Schwarzburg was no exception, with several houses and a tavern clustered by the ramp up to the gate. A rough road came down the hillside to the gate, and the crossroads at the gate served as a small village square.
It was only when the travelers reached the crossroads that they saw the enormity of what had happened to the east. To the north and south of Schwarzburg, the high hills of the Thüringerwald ended in mirror smooth cliffs curving gently eastward. Beyond the cliffs, the entire country changed, with hills that were both lower and rougher. Even the trees were a lighter shade of green.
Yossie stood in silence, stunned by the sight. Yakov spoke a blessing under his breath. "Praised be the Lord, God of the universe, who makes the wonders of creation."
"Amen," Yossie answered, oblivious to the guard approaching behind him.
"It's quite a sight," the guard said, startling all of them.
"Yes," Yitzach answered. Yossie found the guard's accent difficult, stronger even than the accents of the people they had spoken to at the forge.
"Sir," Moische began. "I noticed as we came down the valley that the villages we passed seem crowded. Have people been fleeing this, this . . . " He broke off in mid sentence and waved at the strange land to the east, "from this Grantville?"
The guard looked at Moische closely. "So you have heard some of what has happened?"
"We have been hearing rumors for a week as we came east. First, they said that the pit of Hell had opened here, but I never imagined anything this big."
"I was here when it happened, "the guard said. "You would have thought it was Hell, too, with the great flash of light and the loud bang. Then, there was the roar and steam that came from the great mill down there." He paused. "You are right that there are too many people in the valley, but Grantville is not the reason. They fled up the Schwarza ahead of bands of stragglers and foragers who have come south to strip the land since the murderous business at Magdeburg. Once the pit opened, the return to the Saale valley was blocked until the road was opened. Now, some have been brave enough to return to their homes through the pit, and it seems that this town of Grantville has shown that it can offer some protection."
"So the road really is safe?" Moische asked.
"So it seems," the guard said, speaking as if he really did not believe it himself.
"By the way," Moische asked, "is it possible that the castle would need to buy flour or onions or fine wine? We have them to sell."
While Moische dealt with the guard and then with the castle steward, Yossie excused himself and walked down toward the edge of the pit.
The view was fascinating. After it looped south of the castle, the Schwarza came north and then plunged over the edge of the pit in a waterfall. Beyond the waterfall, there was a valley that was much lower, and in that valley was a strange building. It was like nothing Yossie had ever seen. It was gigantic. Made of red brick, the building had windows bigger than any cathedral window. It was surrounded by towers and secondary structures, some of brick, others made of materials that Yossie did not immediately recognize. Yossie guessed it was the great mill that the guard had mentioned, although neither noise nor steam came from it.
The raw scar of a new road wound up from the valley below to one of only two places where the hills within the wall of cliffs came up to the level of the Schwarza valley. From there, the new road continued a short distance to meet the old road down from the castle gate. The banks of the new road were a loose jumble, but the road surface itself was packed hard and scraped to perfection except where wheels and hooves had disturbed the new surface.
At the point where the new road crossed the line of the cliffs there was a little hut. Despite its strange construction, Yossie could see that it was a guard hut. He hesitated briefly and then decided to investigate. He had no reason to believe that the guard hut would be any different from the many guard posts he had passed at city gates.
A man stepped out to bar his way when he came within twenty paces of the hut. Yossie had never had a chance to look closely at different kinds of guns, but there was no doubt that the man was carrying a gun of some kind. He wasn't pointing the gun at anything as he stood there, blocking the road. In fact, his posture was not that different from the way a pikeman would have barred a city gate.
Yossie slowed, but he continued to approach the guard. It seemed plain enough that whoever had built the road had the right to collect tolls for its use. Yossie would not have been surprised if the guard were to demand payment of Jew taxes.
The man's clothing was as odd as the hut. It was cut close to the body and very well tailored. At the same time, he could see that it was worn. It seemed odd that a man who could afford such excellent tailoring would allow himself to wear clothing that was beginning to fray or, for that matter, to take a job as a guard.
"Can you read?" a second man called from inside the hut, in strongly accented German. Yossie hadn't even seen the man until he spoke.
"Yes," Yossie answered. He was puzzled both by the question and by the construction of the hut. Inside the very thin wooden planking, there was a second wall that seemed to be made of piled sacks o
f something.
The paper the man handed Yossie was even more remarkable. It was printed using a type font that looked like the fonts used in many books he had seen from Italy and Holland. The language was a literate German, but the spellings and wording were odd.
Welcome to Grantville, We do not pretend to understand how Grantville was transported to this time and place, but it was a shock to us. At one moment we were living in the state of West Virginia in the United States of America in the year 2000. The next moment, we found ourselves in the midst of the Thüringerwald in the year 1631. Most of us speak English, so we ask for your patience.
While we are eager to welcome visitors, we must warn you that we take the law seriously. We do not tolerate murder, theft, rape or fraud. Our ideal is swift, impartial justice, free from bribery or favoritism.
As you travel into Grantville, beware of traffic. Some of our vehicles are self propelled and very fast compared to what you are familiar with. We urge you to stay to the right side of the road so that oncoming vehicles can pass to your left.
Many of our customs may surprise you, just as many of your customs will surprise us. As we meet, expect occasional misunderstandings, and try to be tolerant. We hope that these warnings help you to enjoyyour visit to Grantville.
Yossie read the strange document through again. The mixture of topics was dismaying, jumping from law to traffic to the most improbable topic of all. "The year 2000?" Yossie asked, looking up at the man who'd handed him the paper. "On the Christian calendar?"
"The year 2000 on the Christian calendar," one of the men replied, speaking in slow English. The words were similar enough to the German that Yossie could follow.
"Can you write?" the man in the hut asked, awkwardly reading the line from a piece of paper. When Yossie said yes, the man handed him a small board with a sheet of paper clipped to it, along with the strangest pen Yossie had ever seen. "Write your answers in the blank spaces after each question," he read, stumbling over some of the words, "and write as you would for a child to read."
