Harry Turtledove - Opening Atlantis

Another land across the sea, one you could reach from Atlantis…That was a surprise. But then, Atlantis itself was a surprise-one surprise after another, in fact. Richard wondered whether Francois Kersauzon rued the day when he sold the secret to his father. A third of a hold of salt cod? It didn't seem enough, not when the Englishmen had done so much more with the new land than Kersauzon's Bretons had.

Even the Basques had done more with Atlantis than the Bretons had, and the Basques had got off to a late start here. Richard paused, peering out into the bay. He thought the Basques had got a late start here. No matter what he thought, though, could he prove it? Like the Bretons, like the Englishmen, Basques and Galicians sailed deep into the Atlantic after cod. Just because his own father heard of Atlantis from the Bretons, that didn't mean the Basques and Galicians must have. Maybe they'd stumbled over the new land on their own.

Have to ask them, next time I see one-whenever that is, Richard thought. He had no idea when it would be. He'd never traveled south. Basques came up to New Hastings every now and again, but he couldn't remember the last time one went inland to Bredestown. Richard was curious about the copperskinned unpronounceables. How had they made out after they got to Gernika?

He looked out at the ocean again, or what he could see of it through the mouth of the bay. It wasn't impossible, he supposed, that he would see a sail out there on the Atlantic. Henry hadn't taken the Rose out around the northern cape this year, but maybe the Basques had gone around to the south and then sailed west toward their new land, their inhabited land.

Henry hadn't wanted them to find Avalon Bay. That had made sense even before Richard saw this marvelous harbor with his own eyes. Now that he had, he was as sure as his brother that nobody but Englishmen had any business exploring or making a home here.

A river ran into the northern part of the bay. Henry had said so. Henry and his crew hadn't taken a boat up the river, so nobody knew whether the stream ran west from the green ridge of mountains Richard had penetrated or came down from the north.

If it did rise in the mountains, it would make a wonderful highway across the western half of Atlantis. You could build a raft or a boat up in the mountain country and then ride the rest of the way. You could if there weren't too many rocks or mudflats, anyway.

That would be worth knowing. Richard went on blazing his trail as he headed north toward the river. If it didn't suit his purposes, he could always go back the way he'd come out. He didn't want to: he'd already been over that ground once. But he could, which was comforting in its way.

Shorebirds flew up in shrieking clouds when they caught sight of him. They wouldn't have done that on the eastern shore, or not to the same degree. A lot of the birds in the east were as naive about people as honkers were. What did that say? Was it close enough from here to the new land with the copperskinned people that more western shorebirds made the journey and grew familiar with hunters? Richard couldn't see what else it was likely to mean.

He swore under his breath. He'd seen snipe in those clouds of birds, and snipe made uncommonly fine eating. The ones back near New Hastings were tame enough to catch by hand. Not these. If he wanted them, he'd have to get them the hard way.

Even without snipe roasted in clay, he went on. Over along the eastern edge of the bay, what was water, what marsh, and what land seemed as much a matter of opinion as anything else. Although it was bright daylight, mosquitoes buzzed. Henry had made it plain the water was deeper out by the insweeping arms of land. One of those would be the place to build, then.

Birds swooped here and there after the swarms of insects. Some of the swallows were achingly like the ones he'd left behind in England. Others were larger, with a purple cast to their feathers. Instead of flitting all the time, some birds perched on branches and stumps and made forays against the mosquitoes. "Pee-bee!" they called gaily. "Pee-bee!"

Richard found the river a little before sunset. It meandered through low country, so he had trouble being sure, but he thought it came down from the east. "I'll find out tomorrow," he said.

With a bone hook, some worms he dug out of the boggy soil, and a length of line, he had no trouble pulling a couple of trout from the stream. They wouldn't make as good a supper as snipe would have, but they were a lot better than nothing.

He wondered how things were back in New Hastings. Cold and wet and boring, unless he missed his guess. Not much happened there, not these days. When he got back, he'd give people something to talk about for a while.

T hree of the Earl of Warwick's troopers tramped down the middle of New Hastings' widest street, pulling their boots out of the mud at every step. Rain pattered down, which would make the mud even thicker and gluier before long. The troopers' mailshirts jingled as they walked. To keep the rain off of their byrnies and helms, they wore hooded wool cloaks they'd taken from the settlers.

Edward Radcliffe wore a cloak himself, and a broad-brimmed hat in lieu of a hood. He made sure he steered well clear of Warwick's men. The less reason they had to get angry at him, the smaller the chance they would do something he'd regret. He watched them trudge by. They paid him no attention at all.

The soldiers seldom went about in groups smaller than three, not any more. Two of them had suffered unfortunate accidents while walking around by themselves. Nobody could prove anything. Even Warwick admitted as much. But the exiled noble had called Edward in to the house he'd appropriated and laid down the law like Moses coming down from Mount Sinai.

"This will stop," Warwick said bluntly. "It will, or I shall turn loose my wolves, and New Hastings will not be the happier for that."

"Your Lordship, I had nothing to do with it," Edward said.

"I believe you. If I didn't believe you, you would be dead, and I would be talking to someone else." Richard Neville didn't waste sweet words on his social inferiors-which meant he wasted them on no one in Atlantis. "Still, these people listen to you. And they had better, if they don't want to see what slaughter looks like. They will not play me for a fool. D'you understand me?"

"Oh, yes. You always make yourself very plain, sir," Edward Radcliffe answered. "But may I ask you one question?"

"Go ahead." By Warwick's tone, he was granting a favor to a man who didn't deserve it.

"Even if your soldiers hold New Hastings down, what good will it do you? What will you get from it?"

Richard Neville stared at him. They might both use English, but they didn't speak the same language. "If I cannot be a lord in England, Radcliffe, I shall be a lord-no, a king-here. This may be a miserable puddle of a realm, but it is my miserable puddle of a realm. Do you understand me now?"

"I certainly do, your Lordship," Edward said.

"Good. Then get out."

Get out Edward Radcliffe did, thanking heaven the noble let him leave. And he spread the word, as Warwick wanted him to do. But he spread it for his own reasons, not for the earl's.

"We don't want a king here, do we?" he said when he visited his son after getting away from Warwick, and answered his own question: "No, by God, of course we don't, not if he uses his soldiers to steal from us and to hold us down."

"Why shouldn't we knock 'em over the head as we find the chance, then?" Henry said-and he was only the first of many. "If we get rid of a few now, the rest will be easier to dispose of later."

Reluctantly, Edward shook his head. "If Warwick keeps them all together, think what they can do to us. Do you want England's worthless war coming to the shores of Atlantis?"