Грег Бир - The Unfinished Land

“Night cannot fall soon enough,” the old man said.

The two lines of Cardoza’s soldiers vanished into the forest like snakes crawling under a bush. For a few minutes more, those left on the beach heard chopping, swearing—calls and commands—but soon all that faded.

Meanwhile, the tide nearly full, sailors pushed and pried with logs and branches to dislodge the galleon and shove it off the beach. It remained stuck fast. Digging quickly and inserting the trunks of several trees, ten men hung from the trees first on one side, then the other, and began to rock the great ship while the tide was swifting in. Others at the bow shoved, calling in unison, as the ship’s boats rowed out through the surf, hauling thick ropes from the stern. It took over an hour, well into the long, smoky twilight, but a last grumble of the hull was followed by sailors shouting with joy, waving their lanterns to get the boats to pick up those left in the shallows.

The black outline of the galleon was soon dozens of yards from the beach. The sailors and el maestro were strongly motivated by what they had suffered the night before… But could there be any kind of escape?

Manuel grumbled, “The most junior glassy skins do not enjoy tides or rivers. el maestro and the sailors are safe out there from low Eaters… but that meaneth not they are safe.”

“How long did you live here?” Reynard asked.

Manuel gave him a thin smile, not to show his teeth. “I appeared thirty when last I left, maybe forty years ago. The expedition before that, I left when I was your age, and returned older than I am now. I have lived on this isle, off and on, in total, for maybe twenty years. And off the island—maybe five hundred.”

Reynard instinctively pulled back from the old man. “Are you human?”

“Yes, boy. Very human. Perhaps more human than thou!”

Not that he believed any of this, or that it mattered in the least. Reynard was pretty sure death would be upon them all before any long, slow sunrise. The woods might reject the soldiers, forcing them to take out their frustration on the prisoners in the cages. The ship might anchor offshore, send back boats, and finish the work of dispatching them.

But then a brisk, whirling breeze came up, raising clouds of sand and gravel. Something flew over the cages with great, gritty swooshes—something that could see in the gathering dark.

“Drake,” Manuel said. “Not the one that took the dog. Bigger. I pray it is paired!”

Reynard wanted desperately to know what that meant. “How paired? In a team?”

“They drink the tap after a blunting. That maketh the young drake theirs to rule.”

And Reynard was no better informed than before! “Can you speak it plain?”

Manuel shrugged. “Thou wilt see soon enough.”

Darkness was complete, but a sliver of moon emerged and a woman’s face came gray and quick outside the bars of their cage. She was of middle years, weathered but lithe and strong, and wore leather like those in the far cage. She moved soundlessly, and in her quick survey, paid particular, frowning attention to Manuel.

“Thou hast returned!”

Manuel met her study with downcast silence.

With a knowing wink at Reynard, she moved to the other cage. A brief conversation followed, and the visitor returned to the darkness.

“That would be Anutha, I think,” Manuel said. “Last time we met, she was but a girl. She acteth now like a scout.”

“You know all these people?” Reynard asked.

Manuel shook his head sadly. “Some have been born since I left.”

The three in the far cage arranged themselves as if preparing for a tumble, and the woman whistled loudly, summoning a second gritty wind. Something big landed on their cage and lifted it from the sand, then dropped and split it open.

Reynard raised his head to see.

“Keep down!” Manuel shouted. The clouded moon brightened to show wide, transparent wings descend over their own cage, and in similar fashion, it was careened and plucked open by darting, shining black arms—thorny, jointed arms with strong, scissoring claws. Manuel rolled free of the bars and across the shingle. A broken bar gouged Reynard’s calf and then he, too, was free, but under another broad shadow, another pass of the sparking claws, he flattened again and his face fell into a lick of wave.

Something very big and black folded broad cathedral-window wings along a long, slender body as it settled on the shore a dozen yards off. The head was extraordinary—a cubit or more across, with two long, wide eyes like doubled melons covered with jewels, and a pinching, cleaving mouth that opened and closed in three parts. Reynard was sure the creature was watching them. It leaned over to suck at the water, then spread and flapped its wings, hopping then rising and blowing sand until Reynard covered his face with his hands.

Only then was he grabbed and lifted by his underarms—with hands, not claws. “No fuss, boy,” said the one Manuel called Anutha. Scraps of wood lay all over the beach. The three from the other cage surrounded them, and with Anutha’s help, Reynard got to his feet, limping, half blind, and saw four more people approaching from down the beach, not Spanish—dressed in leather like the others, and also carrying satchels. The window-winged beasts had flown off and could not even be heard.

“Dana, have you all you need?” Anutha asked the woman in command of the first three, who had summoned these beasts with her whistle. Manuel looked upon the woman called Dana with profound respect, then held up two fingers. “Two!” he whispered. “She is paired with two drakes!”

“They took our tools and put them in a chest,” Dana said. Her male companions quickly found the chest some distance up the beach, broke the lock with a twisted horseshoe from around the cold forge bricks, opened the lid, and in brighter moonlight, held up three satchels.

“All here!”

Anutha nodded approval. “Now we go.”

Helping Reynard and Manuel, the group quickly pushed into the woods on the southwestern verge, opposite where the soldiers and el capitán had gone. The branches rubbed and rustled around them, and a breeze, following the tide, moaned through their leaves. The trees seemed to have their own opinions about these intruders, limbs reaching out to touch and welcome the ones that wore leather and carried satchels, other limbs whipping at Reynard and Manuel with disdain, raising welts.

“Halt!” Anutha called. Between the grit in his eyes, the whipping of the trees, and the final darkness, Reynard could barely see her. He felt something cold and wet and looked down at his feet. Ocean poured into the woods, rising to his ankles, then to his knees. Far behind, through the forest and into the hollows and crevices of the mountains beyond, came a kind of deep sigh, as if the land itself was breathing, and on the exhale, dropping the shore deeper into water. That breathing tide was already high enough that the galleon might actually make it past the breakers! Somehow, as much as he hated Spaniards and feared the warriors who had threatened his Queen, that possible escape seemed a grand thing, a triumph of their kind against the strange land they had found…

And it meant his own escape might be possible, as well.

Then, from where the ship had been tugged out to sea, they all heard distant, frantic voices. They looked out through the branches with mixed awe and fearful sympathy. The calls began as shouts of warning, then rose in terror, followed by screams of agony. Some of the voices seemed to come from high over the water, as if men were being lifted hundreds of feet into the night—and dismembered, their cries ending abruptly.

“Sailors on the galleon,” Dana said, clinging to Anutha. She pulled from her satchel a softly glowing knob on a stick, which brightened as she spun it in her palms. “They kept us from our duty, and now they suffer.” She tapped Reynard’s shoulder, then Manuel’s, and they all moved up a wooded rise and away from the lapping waters.