Harry Turtledove - Opening Atlantis

"There, there," his father soothed, as if he were still a little boy. "You're a fine archer-for a fisherman."

"Ha!" Henry made a noise that sounded like a laugh but wasn't.

"Keep at it," Edward said. "It's a good idea. If we don't kill these cursed eagles, they'll go on killing us."

"And the honkers, too," Henry said. "They're as bad as deer or unfenced cattle in the crops. How much did we lose today?"

"I don't know. Some. Not more than we can afford, though, I don't think," Edward answered. "And the eagles are more dangerous than honkers ever could be."

"Tell it to poor Rob Drinkwater. Tell it to his widow and his orphaned brats."

"A horse or a mule can kick a man to death, too," Edward said. "That's all honkers are-grazers that go on two legs, not four. But when God made those eagles, He made them to kill."

Henry thought it over, then nodded. "He made them to kill honkers, I'd say. And we look enough like honkers, they think we make proper prey, too."

Edward Radcliffe started to say something, then stopped and sent his son a surprised glance. "I hadn't looked at it so. Damned if I don't think you're right."

Henry walked over, retrieved his wasted arrow, and put it back into the quiver with the rest. "We'll have enough to get through the winter with or without crops, seems like," he said. "Between the cod and the honkers, we'll do fine."

"Aye, belike," Edward said. "But I want my bread, too. And Lord knows I want my beer. If we have to fence off the fields to keep the honkers out, well, we can do that."

"It will be extra work," Henry said. "We're all working harder now than we would have on the other side of the ocean."

"Now we are, yes," Edward agreed. "But that's only because we have to make the things we take for granted back there. Once we have them, things will be easier here than they were in England. Why else would we have come?"

Henry laughed. "You don't need to talk me into it, Father. I'm already here." He made as if to break the bow again, but this time not in earnest. "I'd be gladder I'm here if only I were a better archer."

"Each cat his own rat," Edward said. "Plenty of fine bowmen who'd puke their guts out on a fishing cog."

"One of the girls was screeching about a rat the other day," Henry said. "It must have got ashore in a boat-I don't think this country has any rats of its own."

"I don't, either, but I was waiting for that to happen," Edward said. "No rabbits here, either, or none I've seen, which is a pity, for I like rabbit pie and jugged hare. You can't keep rats and mice out of things. We brought cats, too, so there won't be too many vermin."

"I saw a cat with a lizard's tail in its mouth yesterday," Henry said.

"Yes, and they hunt the blackbirds that look like robins, too," Edward said. "Never worry about cats. They don't starve."

"I wasn't worrying," Henry said. "Next time we go back to England, though, maybe we could bring some rabbits over. They're good eating and good hunting."

"Well, maybe we could," Edward said.

R abbits. More chickens and ducks. Two more sows, with their piglets. And Tom Cawthorne, a bowyer and fletcher, and his family. They all came back to Atlantis on the St. George. With the good hunting in the woods back of New Hastings, Edward was glad to get a man like Cawthorne. The bow-and arrow-maker probably wouldn't have come if his oldest son hadn't just got a girl with child. Dan Cawthorne didn't want to marry her, and so…

"If you didn't want to marry her, why did you sleep with her?" Edward asked the youth-he was seventeen or so-once they got out to sea.

Dan looked at him as if he were not only crazy but ancient. "Why? Because she wanted me to," he answered. By the way he said it, only a fool could imagine any other reason. "We didn't think anything would happen. Don't you remember what it's like to-?" He broke off, not quite soon enough.

To have a stiff yard all the time. That was what he'd been about to say, that or something a lot like it. And Edward did remember. His yard still worked well enough, but it wasn't stiff all the time, the way it had been when he was seventeen. He sighed. One of these days, Dan would get older, too. Edward tried again: "Well, if you like lying with her so much, why wouldn't you wed her?"

The bowyer and fletcher's son sent him another you idiot look. "Don't you know Judy Martin at all, Master Radcliffe?" he said. "As soon as she puts her clothes back on, she starts talking, and you'd have to hit her to make her shut up. I'm not even sure that would work."

Edward paid little attention to how much sixteen-year-old girls talked-these days, anyhow. There had been a time when he could have gone into great detail on the subject, but that was thirty years gone for him. He laughed and shook his head, wondering why he was worrying about this anyhow. If anything, Dan Cawthorne had done him a favor. If Dan hadn't got Judy Martin in trouble, Tom Cawthorne wouldn't have wanted to leave Hastings for an unknown shore.

Right now, the shore was unknown to Edward, too. Anything could have happened while he made the long round trip to England. Plague might have broken out. There might have been natives in the new country after all, despite the signs to the contrary. Or Bretons or Galicians or Basques might have happened upon New Hastings. Maybe, if they had, they would have stayed friendly and traded. Then again, maybe not.

His eye went to one of the two swivel guns the St. George now mounted. She wasn't a warship. She was nothing like a warship, which would have had high castles fore and aft packed with archers. But she could fight a little now if she had to. Against what she was likely to meet in Atlantean waters, that would do.

The ocean was rougher this time out than it had been on the first journey to settle the new land. The wind was more contrary, too, so the fishing boat stayed at sea more than a week longer before it came to Atlantis. The Cawthornes went greener and greener. Dan's bravado evaporated. At one point, clutching the rail, he moaned, "I wish I would've stayed and listened to Judy the rest of my days!"

"You'll change your mind once we get ashore," Edward told him.

Dan Cawthorne managed a feeble glare. "Why aren't you puking your guts out, too?" he asked. Then, as if talking about it reminded him of it-which it could do for some people-he gulped and bent over and started to retch.

"This isn't a bad blow," Edward said. "You should see a real storm, if you think this is something."

Dan took his right hand off the rail just long enough to cross himself. His left kept its death grip. "God spare me that!" he choked out, and spat something disgusting into the green, boiling water.

When the fishing cog finally reached the banks off the coast of Atlantis, Edward and the rest of the crew started pulling big cod out of the sea. Dan and Tom watched in fascination. The Cawthorne women-and even Dan's little brother, who couldn't have been more than eight-seemed more horrified. "How can you do that to the poor fish?" Tom's wife cried as Radcliffe gutted a fat four-foot cod.

"Well, Mistress Louisa, we'd go hungry if I didn't." Edward kicked the offal towards one of the sows, which fed greedily. "Don't you ever kill any of your own meat?"

Louisa Cawthorne gave a reluctant nod. "I do, and I cry every time I wring a pullet's neck."

She was a tender-hearted creature, then. She was tender in other ways, too. Sailing with a woman aboard when your wife wasn't proved an unexpected strain. Edward kept his hands to himself, but his dreams were warmer than the ones he usually had at sea.

He breathed a sigh of relief when they sighted land at last. He didn't see New Hastings, or the smoke rising from its fires. That didn't surprise him; he hadn't seen any English fishing boats-or any others-bobbing in the ocean. Navigation was anything but exact; Edward wasn't even sure whether he was north or south of the new settlement.