Грег Бир - The Unfinished Land

“When will the glassy skins return for their horses? ” Kule asked. “I want to be gone when they do.”

“The boy’s parents have been told, have they not?”

“The father’s on grave detail, and his mother is out cleaning the King of Troy’s hut. I am sure they will miss him soon. They know he works here.”

“Then help me carry him to their house,” she said. “Where is thy daughter?”

Kule shrugged.

“Canst thou fetch her from the still in the forest, and ask her to watch till they return?”

Kule nodded reluctantly.

“Thou canst leave soon as his parents take him home,” she said. “Th’other horses seem quiet.”

“Frightened,” Kule said with a tweak of his nose. “They wol not make a sound until these be gone.”

“The Eaters will return in a few hours, I suspect. But if they come again, and they will, I advise thee to tend their mounts personally, and not assign them to an ignorant lad whilst thou dost hide and mewl.”

Kule gave her a resentful glare, but he knew Maggie too well to sass. “Keep the jug,” he said, as if offering up a valuable gift.

And she did. She knew a scout who might enjoy it.

Maggie helped Kule return the boy to his family’s cabin, where the father waited, weary and stained with dirt. Then she made her way down a lane between the temple and the parliament, the last hundred yards covered by a long slate-shingle roof. Beneath the slates, the overhead beams, every twenty feet or so, were painted on both sides with scenes from history and story. Nobody she knew had painted the beams, and nobody confessed that they knew anyone who had painted the beams, but they were painted, and the paintings were changed every few moons, while nobody was watching. She had learned to ignore their enigmatic and sometimes disturbing depictions, but now, heading at a brisk walk for a meeting with her chief scout, she glanced up and saw a fiery red eruption spread destruction across the beam right overhead. She closed her eyes to avoid its details, then looked down at the bricks and stones of the walkway and hunched her shoulders. The unknown, perhaps incorporeal, artist was unhappy, and so was she. Too many things were happening at once, and what worried her at this point was not that things could go wrong for the town, but that people would panic, like horses in a paddock beset by the scent of tigers. If the town lost its cohesion and discipline, she had always thought that was just as like to hasten their end as any twist or twitch of the Crafters in their far kraters.

Besides, she had never seen a Crafter, much less met one. And she had met with Eaters. Maggie remembered when her mother and father had taken her, as a child, to meet a clan of Eaters, to receive their protection… A story and a ritual experienced by most along the western shore. But she had little memory of that time. She had been three years old.

Hel had given birth to so many offspring, most of them more monsters than people. Maggie had been told by her mother that Eaters had once been highest among these, almost Vanir—strong among the island’s elusive dark elves and dwarves and trolls, now serving mostly in the chafing waste, some said… But Hel and her Crafters had taken it upon themselves, for some slight or other, to temper Eater immortality with dark need, followed by a warning—a severe and unwanted pact tying them forever to humans. Maggie had often wondered if the malleability and proliferation of humans had brought Hel’s curse upon Eaters. Who could know? Crafters did not always observe Hel’s ways, even less after Hel had hidden herself away in long sleep. They may have in their own contrary plan decided it was more dramatic, more satisfying, that humans on any of these seven isles should not remember a time before they devoted a portion of their lives to the Eaters, or the truth of how that relationship was forged.

Upon her mother’s death, Maggie had been put in charge of the town’s blunters. She had kept that position for twenty years. Just two days before, three of them had headed southwest through the lively woods, and had not yet returned nor sent message to explain their delay. What now worried Maggie was that what had led the Eaters to the shore had prevented the blunters from finishing their work, and wild drakes might even now be loose over the beaches and headlands, where the lively woods approached the sea. There had not been a drake attack near Zodiako for years, because her blunters were so skilled, so well trained—

And knew better than to stay out after dark, for nobody liked to tempt Eaters, even with the pacts, so it was said, still strong.

So much upheaval, and so many signs.

Maggie opened her leather satchel wide and shoved in Kule’s jug of whiskey. What could her chief scout tell her about all this? More, perhaps, with incentive.

THE THREE leather-clad figures in the far cage had not said a word, but as dusk settled and clouds covered the sky, bringing on a strange, smoky gloom, the woman put fingers to the corners of her mouth and whistled high and shrill, piercing Reynard’s ears. He looked at Manuel, but the old man simply maintained his patient stoop—keeping his attention on el capitán and the assembled troops. Cardoza had formed the soldiers into two columns, men with short swords, halberds, and half-pikes foremost, preparing to carve their way through the forest, toward the volcanic ridge that lowered over the north end of this beach and might lead them inland.

“He leaveth just before dark. The man’s an idiot,” Manuel said.

No thought to bringing along any of the three prisoners and their satchels. el capitán had never made it ashore on England, and that might mean he had never fought a real battle, never dealt with the necessity of planning… Or guides.

So Reynard guessed, but he was young and foolish, his uncle had informed him often enough—so how could he know? He did know that he would rather stay in this cage than accompany the soldiers. Soon both the sailors and the soldiers might quite literally run out of time, one group at sea, the other…

At the questing fingers of the glassy skins.

Reynard thought of the female face that had leaned over him in the dark, cheeks and forehead aglow like some beautiful, frightful dream. Somehow, they had seemed to share a sympathy. He caught Manuel looking at him, scowled, and shook his head. What was the old man to him? Were they also somehow connected, protected together? Not now, certainly. Except that they did share a cage.

Reynard’s legs were cramping. Manuel’s legs no doubt were cramping as well, and worse, but he did not show the pain or complain.

Twilight here lasted far longer than it did even in England. His uncle had told him that the line between night and day in the tropics was like the cut of a knife, but the farther north one traveled, the longer twilight lingered. His uncle had been south of the equator with John Hawkins, taking slaves to the Caribbean, and had vowed he would never do that again. But he had seen the tropical sun and knew how fast daylight faded. Here, the dusk seemed to last forever. Reynard had spent many evenings trying to understand the why of that, but never having been in the tropics himself, and never having asked his uncle pointed questions about the ways of the natural world seen during those slave voyages, which had so affected his uncle and of which any mention made him morose, he had never reached any conclusions.

He shifted to make room for Manuel to stretch out his legs. Manuel’s age seemed to be creeping back. His skin was like old leather, his eyes were turning yellow again, and Reynard caught him pulling out another tooth and throwing it with a curse through the bars.