Harry Turtledove - Opening Atlantis

The archers had the look of hired muscle. If the stranger told them to shoot, shoot they would. They would worry about it later, if they worried at all. Radcliffe stopped and came back. "Well, you talked me into it," he said.

"I thought I might." Yes, the bastard up there was used to giving orders, used to having them obeyed, and used to enjoying having them obeyed. His self-satisfied smirk said so even more clearly than his snotty tone of voice. "I ask you once again, old man-and better than you deserve, too-do you know whom you'll have the honor of meeting when he disembarks? Think carefully on your answer this time, if you want to meet him on your feet and not lying at his."

"No, I don't know. Please tell me," Edward said-carefully.

Anyone who knew him would know he was seething. Anyone who knew him would know, too, that only a fool angered him and thought to come off unscathed. This fellow didn't know him, or care to, and didn't worry about angering him: all of which only proved the man a fool. But he was a fool with important news, for he answered, "Why, none other than his grand and glorious Lordship, the Earl of Warwick."

"We have no Lordships here," Edward blurted.

"You do now, by Christ, and you'd bloody well better get used to it, for he's here to stay," said the man in the red silk tunic.

"Warwick? Here? To stay? What happened?" Like everyone else in Atlantis, Edward got news of the civil war in England in bits and fragments, as new shiploads of settlers came in to New Hastings. The Earl of Warwick was King Edward IV's cousin. His help had let Richard of York briefly claim the throne a few years earlier. Without him, Edward wouldn't have sat on it. There had been talk he'd fallen out with the King over Edward's French policy, but this… This is exile, Edward realized. He must have risen, risen and lost.

"He had…a disagreement with his Majesty." Now the man in silk chose his words with care. "This being so, he was…encouraged to travel across the sea, to seek his fortune in these new lands the fisherfolk stumbled upon."

Did he have the faintest idea he was talking to the leader of those fisherfolk, to the first Englishman who'd done the stumbling? Obviously not. Would he have cared had he known? That seemed just as unlikely.

"And so," the fellow up on the forecastle went on, "he has sailed here to Freetown, that he may-"

Edward Radcliffe threw back his head and laughed like a loon. Loons swam in the ponds and rivers here, as they did in England. Their wild cries were almost as characteristic of this wilderness as those of the honkers.

The man in the silk tunic went almost as red as it was. "Silence, wretch!" he roared. "Give me one good reason I should not order these my men to shoot you down on the instant like the dog you are."

"Why, you sorry blockhead, you don't even know where the devil you are," Edward said, laughing still. He pointed south. "Freetown lies down the coast. Go there and be welcome." If you and Warwick are welcome anywhere in Atlantis, which I doubt. "This is New Hastings."

"New…Hastings?" The stranger spat the words out as if they were bad fish. "You lie! Surely you lie! That cur of a captain swore…"

"By the Cross, by Our Lady, by God, sir, this is New Hastings and no other place in all the world." Edward knew a certain fleeting sympathy for the man who'd captained this cog. On a choppy sea, of the kind you were almost bound to have this time of year, gauging even your latitude was no easy feat. If he'd had clouds for several days, as he easily might have done, he wouldn't have been able to take a sun sight. He would be going by God and by guess, and they would have let him down.

"New…Hastings." The stranger turned away and started screaming at the top of his lungs. Phenomenal lungs they were, too; he could have made himself heard from stern to bow on a bigger ship than this in the middle of a savage blow.

One of the men who came running was plainly the skipper. The other, just as plainly, was Richard Neville, the Earl of Warwick. He couldn't have been far past forty, but his hair and beard had gone very gray. He had a strong prow of a nose and clever dark eyes set too close together. His man bellowed abuse at the captain. The poor man did his best to defend himself. His best was none too good. How could it be, when he found himself in the wrong?

Warwick listened for a while, then walked over to the rail and peered down at Edward. With his man still berating the skipper in the background, he said, "So this is New Hastings, is it?" The noble's voice was surprisingly soft and gentle. Unlike the fellow in the red silk, he didn't need to bluster to get what he wanted.

"I'm afraid it is…your Lordship." Edward hoped the nobleman didn't notice the pause he needed before he brought out the title of respect.

But Warwick did notice; Edward could tell. Warwick was one who would notice everything and forget nothing. The whole world and its mistakes would be grist for his mill. He'd gone wrong at last, though, or he wouldn't be here. For a great noble, for a man who aspired to the kingship, Atlantis would not be the earthly Paradise or anything like it. It would be the nearest thing to hell. How could you be a great man, a mighty man, when everyone was putting forth all his might merely to wrest a living from the vast wilderness the settlements bordered?

And where in the wilderness was Richard these days? Had he found Avalon Bay yet, or some other point on the western coast of Atlantis? When would he find his way home again? Edward had the sudden bad feeling he might need every pillar he could find.

"New Hastings," the Earl of Warwick repeated, as his retainer had not long before. But he spoke in musing tones, as if he were hefting a new tool and wondering whether it would serve him well enough to use.

"Yes, your Lordship." This time, Edward didn't hesitate.

Something glinted in the noble's eyes. Oh, yes, you say the words, but you don't mean them, and you can't fool me into thinking you do. Maybe Edward was reading too much into a single glance. Maybe, but he didn't think so.

"Well, I daresay I can do as well for myself here as I could at Freetown," Richard Neville said, perhaps as much to himself as to Edward. He went back to speak to his lackey and to the captain.

A moment later, the captain bawled an order. A gangplank thudded down from the waist of the ship. Soldiers strutted out onto the pier. "Move aside, old man," one of them told Edward. "This place is ours now."

Richard Radcliffe smiled in the November sunshine. In England, it would have been cold and cloudy and likely rainy. In New Hastings, it probably would have been colder yet. Maybe it would have rained. It might even have snowed; it had done that more than once this time of year since he settled in Atlantis.

Now he was on the other side of the mountains. Now, as far as he was concerned, he was on the right side of the mountains. Henry had said Avalon Bay had weather like an unending April. Richard saw that his brother was right. He was somewhere not far from the famous bay-if a bay could be famous when only one shipload of men had ever seen it-and here it was: April, or as near as made no difference.

November in truth, but birds still sang in the trees. Leaves stayed green-a dark green, as most greens were in Atlantis, but green nonetheless. The grass under his feet as he stood out in the meadow was as lush as if it were the height of spring. It hadn't died and gone all yellow, the way it would have in England or New Hastings.

He knew what that meant. This grass hadn't seen a freeze. Maybe it would when winter advanced further…if winter did advance further here. Richard wouldn't have bet on that. As far as he could tell, it really was springtime the whole year around.

Back behind him lay the mountains he'd crossed with such labor, a ridge of green now against the eastern horizon instead of the western, where he'd grown used to seeing it. He'd come into one new world when he first set foot on Atlantis. Now he was in another one-in his view, a better one.