The Unfinished Land

by Greg Bear

  Maggie reluctantly opened her bag and handed her Kule’s jug. Anutha popped the cork, and took a long swig, followed by a shrug and a grimace. She let her chin drop, belched, and raised a hand. “Sorry.”

  Maggie pulled up another bench and sat across from her. “Visitors?”

  Anutha nodded. “Dangerously many, and well armed, but they have already attracted Hel’s defenses.”

  “Eaters?”

  “Both from the Ravine and the wastes south of Agni Most Foul. Not the most prosperous nor honest clan, but not servants to the Ostmen, either.”

  The Ostmen was an old name for those who now followed the Sister Queens on the far eastern shore.

  “The Ravine dwellers passed through town late last night,” Maggie said. “They stabled their horses here. Some had recently been to the wastes. A young boy was injured.”

  “I noticed folks were nervous,” Anutha said, and belched again. “Or guilty. Why were Eaters visiting the wastes? Perhaps they were actually going to the Crafter cities. I wonder what business would call them there?”

  Maggie shook her head. “What drew them to the beach?” she asked.

  “Spaniards in a ship of war, a big one, badly mauled. Some sort of great sea battle, and recent, too.”

  “Sailors?”

  “And soldiers. They seemed to have been long at sea before being caught in the gyre. Smelled shitty, tired, many wounded but still full of fight. Two leaders with cruel bearing—ambitious. One a highborn son of privilege, th’other a fat seagoer used to running ships.”

  “A general of war and an admiral,” Maggie said.

  Anutha took another pull from the jug and looked at her with heavy-lidded eyes. “Also an old man and a half-grown English boy. They are with your blunters. No sign they have finished their work on the drakes, I am afraid.”

  “Then wild drakes might make an appearance soon.”

  Anutha raised the bottle and took another swallow.

  “How many paired defenders have we on watch?” Maggie asked.

  “Seven for the town. Among the blunters, only two have met their drakes.”

  Maggie clapped her hand on her knee. “The Crafters’ plan spins on. I have heard that in the southern waters, a virgin island queen fights a southern king—her brother-in-law, if rumors lead to truth.” This Maggie had heard from an English sailor five years ago. That sailor had not followed town’s ritual, had refused the town’s hospitality, had tried to build a boat—and had been adopted by an unpacted Eater. The sailor had faded over a few days, losing all his time; nothing she could do against such foolish will. But he had wanted to get home. And now he was in that windowless house where all that are human will dwell soon enough.

  “You have sources beyond the island,” Anutha said, after another ripe belch. “Why do you need me?”

  “Sailors arrive with tales. Some survive, for a time,” Maggie said. “But you are more dependable. Usually.”

  The scout looked woozily around the small room. “They should all just get married and make babies. Stories end happier that way.”

  “It would seem Elizabeth, a virgin queen, is unsuited to making babies,” Maggie said. “Besides, her half sister married the southern king. No babies, and it did not end well.”

  “As we have heard,” Anutha said. “Until I saw an opening, I kept to the lively woods, away from the Spanish.”

  “And the Eaters?”

  “The ones from the Ravine arrived the first night, right after a wild drake snatched up a dog.”

  Maggie closed her eyes.

  “Those from the Ravine gathered quite a few years, I think. But some on the beach were protected. An Eater wench of only a few centuries approached the young boy. Upon Calybo’s orders, she seemed to study and claim him.” Anutha looked hard at Maggie. “Calybo was there. He favored the old man.”

  “You recognized the old man?”

  Anutha nodded. “I say, that first night, he could have been a faded, wizened copy of Widsith.”

  Maggie’s interest rose. Calybo was rarely seen along these shores, but had always attended to Widsith when the Pilgrim returned . . .

  “That interests you,” Anutha said.

  Maggie did not answer, but her face betrayed her.

  Anutha leaned back and lifted Kule’s jug. “If it is Widsith . . . Hath he betrayed the island? Was it he guided the Spanish to the gyre?”

  “Did he seem favored by the general or the master?”

  “No. He was kept in a cage, along with the boy. Dana and the blunters were clapped in another cage. Shall we tell Maeve?”

  Soon they would have to bring the old man and the boy to Maeve for confirmation. And if the Pilgrim had returned, he would very likely find favor from Calybo and Guldreth, and the Travelers would carry his reports to the Crafters. What was the boy to him? To anybody on the island? Maggie tried to puzzle out all the implications. “Not until we are certain.”

  “Am I to go out there again?”

  “Of course,” Maggie said.

  “To fetch the blunters.”

  “To help them break free. Wild drakes will be a danger until they are all back at their labors.”

  Anutha lifted her short sword, a Roman sword, she proudly claimed. The scout’s eyes glittered. “May I kill Spaniards, with town’s blessing?” Anutha’s mother and father had been Jews, persecuted by a Spanish queen, how long ago, Maggie was not sure—time not running the same outside the island. But many decades. “Long have they hated such as I. I would do it with pleasure.”

  Maggie crossed herself. It was said the Crafters could not see you for minutes after you paid homage to the Lord. Whether she believed that or not, she did not want to be seen allowing or commanding murder. “Kill only in defense,” she instructed. “And raise no alarms. We are still vulnerable.”

  “War’s coming soon whatever we do,” Anutha said. “I am sure the Sister Queens will find use for men of cruel bearing, if the Spanish survive the Eaters—and if they are allowed to move east.”

  “Who can predict the unwinding of Crafter tales?” In all her years, Maggie had never clearly anticipated when Crafters might feel the need to unleash strife and violence, but it was said that several of the most powerful paid particular attention to murder and war. It brought out their coldness and fury in a way all in Zodiako might soon feel. The Sister Queens’ long war in the east against King Annwyn, and his defeat, now putting their conquests at a pause, was rich with story and incident, it being the amusement of both Queens and Crafters to complicate island lives with violence and change.

  “Well, it is certain that the Travelers have been uneasy,” Anutha said. “Many trods wither and fade. And year after year, less word from the Crafter cities.”

  The Sister Queens held sway over regions that lay a thousand miles from Zodiako, if one followed the coast—the only way a sane human would go, unless they were guided by Travelers. Travelers on any of the islands that made up the polar ring of Tir Na Nog could draw their own roads, straight or devious, using the talents and permissions bestowed on them by the Crafters in payment for their words and songlines.

  Anutha was right. They both could feel it. A simple life was a sweet life. Life in Zodiako had been sweet, she surmised, for far too long. Or something else was happening. That tingling in her scalp, while she was passing under the painted beams . . .

  Maggie, with failing legs, a dead husband, and three foolish children, dreaded such prospects—but looked forward to tales of the outer world, perhaps to new books. She longed to fill her life with books! Only four had come her way in the last ten seasons.

  So perhaps she wished for the same things.

  Anutha handed back the jug and rose awkwardly from the chair. “No time for rest,” she said.

  “Never again,” Maggie said under her breath as the scout departed, with a slight weave in her step. Maggie knew she would be sober by the edge of the village. She closed the door, then, at the sounds of shouting, swung it wide. Maki
ng her way outside the great stone building, she watched men and women running, and stopped a young man with a scythe to ask why.

  “Men with swords!” he cried. “Swords and guns!”

  The Siege

  * * *

  WISPS OF ORANGE-LIT gray smoke drifted through the woods as the returning blunters and their two charges climbed a bluff above the beach. Smelling smoke, hearing distant shouting and the echoes of musket fire and explosions, they ran quickly along the winding path to Zodiako. All around them, the trees whipped in their own breeze, branches rubbing and leaves whispering distress.

  “God grant we are not too late!” Dana cried as they leaped over a low stone fence and ran past an outlying barn.

  Reynard’s first view of the town was against an arras of smoke, backlit and confused by silhouettes of people running, screaming, shadows flash-projected by the sparking orange of guns.

  The blunters stepped over the newly dead. Some wore armor—most did not.

  Reynard had never seen a village attacked and set ablaze. He joined Manuel as the blunters paused in the town’s arched gate, and then entered a narrow lane between low, stone-walled houses. Flaming thatch already filled the night with a sickening stench. Within these outer dwellings, they came upon wavering lines and broken squares of Spaniards, confused, pale, and stricken, like ghosts out of Hell, so gaunt and weary they were, but cursing steadily and flailing swords, half-pikes, and knives. Muskets and harquebuses had already been fired and were not yet reloaded.

  Twenty or more Spaniards fought at another, higher palisade with townsfolk young and old, men and women, who harried them with pitchforks and scythes, taking heavy casualties but driving the invaders into a fenced meadow streaked white and gray with running, bleating sheep, butting and upending some of the warriors in their panic. Other Spaniards had battered down a gate through the palisade and fought their way into the town’s main square. The blunters followed groups of villagers and managed to get through as well.

  Inside, five of the town’s paired defenders, three men and two women, backed up against the side of the temple and stood their ground, raising wooden shields and even heavy gates and doors against slashing half-pikes, then flung aside their protections and simultaneously put fingers to lips and whistled, sounds rising and swirling like banshee wails. Dana, MacClain, Gareth, and Sondheim joined them and whistled as well.

  Shaking his head and wearing a sick grin of fear and envy, Nem stayed close to Widsith and Reynard.

  Below the hall’s low hill, more Spaniards carried torches from house to house, setting fire to everything that would burn. What little Reynard could see revealed that the warriors were nearly all old men, weakened by the Eaters, out of their element and terrified. They were still clad in heavy armor, which glinted and gleamed in the firelight but seemed to drag them down as they tried to find military order. Some were prickly with arrows or lay on the dirt and grass, dazed and moaning.

  A dozen villagers straddled high rock walls or ran up the roofs of low barns and used these vantages to loose more arrows into the invaders, with devastating effect. Others were flinging spears or throwing knives, which mostly rang off the helms and cuirasses. Wisely, many of the villagers were trying to avoid close engagement, but some, more than he could count—literally, since they were moving so fast between firelight and shadow—had rushed in with long knives and a few ancient swords, getting too close for Spanish half-pikes to be effective and bowling over the soldiers, kicking away their torches. Reynard knew little about war or tactics, but he could see that these bolder men and women were sacrificing themselves to deplete Cardoza’s troops before they burned and ransacked the entire town. How many Spanish were so engaged? He estimated sixty or seventy, about half the soldiers from the galleon. And how many defenders? No more than thirty across this side of the town. But they were bringing down more and more of the Spanish, and that made the soldiers weep and scream with frustration and fury—finally giving them enough resolve and energy to remember some sort of discipline, re-form their lines, and make feints against two ragged groups of defenders.

  The Spanish pushed six youths back and around other buildings, chasing them between the small, dense-packed houses, catch-as-catch-can—stupidly, it turned out, for the youths were leading them into tight corners and ambuscades, as more townsfolk gathered their rude weapons and ganged up, four against one or two, then breaking and fleeing as the soldiers formed tighter squares, only to come around from behind as well as in front, thrusting into these wandering knots of Spaniards with pitchforks and sticks and whatever else they had at hand.

  Reynard lost track of Manuel, then saw him hefting a pitchfork and moving on two soldiers, thrusting the sharp wood tines into one, then swinging him around with real strength into the other, tumbling them both into a wall of flaming straw on a rack, which set their own inner clothing on fire and drove them into burning, shrieking flight.

  Two more Spaniards focused on the old sailor. One raised a scimitar and swiped at Manuel’s fork. The second maneuvered behind with a long knife in each hand.

  “Here!” Gareth handed Reynard a scythe. He took it, still unsure whether he could kill, but swung it at the closest of Manuel’s attackers, distracting him as a gray-haired woman in leather ran in with a wooden shield and bowled the man over. Manuel then made quick work with his fork, and together, the gray-haired woman, Manuel, and Reynard focused on four soldiers trying to make a space for two of their comrades to reload harquebuses. One succeeded, and waved his companions aside to aim. A thunderous roar and flame spouted from the mouth of the gun, taking down a stout young woman and whirling an older man, leaving his head a ruin. Without thought or plan, Reynard’s choler peaked, as his uncle had once said happened in battle, and he jumped in, raised his scythe, and swung like a reaper with all the strength of a fisherboy casting nets and arranging tackle, or a smith swinging hammers and bending steel. The long curved blade dug deep into the Spaniard’s arm and knocked the gun from his hands. But then Reynard had difficulty pulling the blade free, and a tall old Spaniard in armor lurched in, an arrow in one leg, but still wielding a great sword—only to have Manuel spring from shadow and push his pitchfork up under the man’s helm, then whirl him around and into that same wall of burning straw. Manuel released the pitchfork, not to get burned himself. Immediately, two more soldiers set upon them, wildly swinging muskets.

  Shadows overhead! The air filled with a buzzing roar. A great black drake, the largest Reynard had yet seen, dropped from the sky and thrummed over one of the invaders, bit off his head, and tossed it across the lane, where it bowled through the door of another house. That done, the drake hopped onto an attacker madly swinging a long knife, having flung aside his musket. This Spaniard swung himself off balance and staggered, too worn to make any sound but a rough, husking grunt. The drake shook out its wings and appraised him, as if looking over a puzzle, then rotated its wide, glittering head, pinched the man’s waist in its mandibles, and bit through. The drake’s rear arms pivoted forward to seize the pieces and, still clutching them on both sides of its thick body, the wings beat briskly, and it rose and carried the halves out of the village.

  Reynard found himself flat on his back, coughing at the enveloping smoke, his vision narrowed to foggy circles. Manuel was obscured or missing. Dana and Sondheim lifted him, and they all stood in another narrow alley between broken rows of houses. He slumped and leaned against a wall, unable to lift his scythe, shook his head, and rubbed his eyes.

  Dana whistled, and another drake swooped over the town’s tree line, fanning the flames of a thatched roof, then, lifting and landing, hopped and grabbed a lone Spaniard trying to flee. The beast flew this poor old Spaniard high into the air, then dropped him onto another burning roof, where he crashed through to the floor beneath.

  Reynard closed his eyes and covered his face with an arm, wondering if the drakes would mistake him for an enemy. This new concern, mixed with the horror of the battle, was both paralyz
ing and intoxicating, somehow very different from the terror of the galleons at Gravelines, yet necessary and even sensible—between the harrying drakes and more village defenders with and without weapons, men and women and several youngsters, Nem among them, his face pinked with heat and anger, plunging a pitchfork over and over again, making sure the fallen Spanish were dead, if on the ground, and if alive, poking and herding them into the meadow for more drakes to take their pick—at least six drakes now busy on that hunt. At long last, the Spaniards, already depleted by Eaters, were meeting their match, their betters, and facing unexpected weapons—monsters beyond their understanding.

  And then . . .

  It was over. The cries of the combatants subsided and were covered by the crackle of flames, billows of choking smoke, and then—wailing grief. Manuel tied a kerchief around a red-dripping slash on his arm, his eyes distant and sad.

  Villagers by the hundreds came from other parts of the town and formed lines, passing water in buckets from several wells and a stream, working with scant success to douse the fires.

  “Where is Cardoza?” Manuel asked. “We must save a few. We must learn their plans!”

  * * *

  The moonless night was dark and deep and long.

  The fires dying down or extinguished, grim-faced villagers led teams of horses and wagons and began to load and carry Spanish dead to a meadow just outside the town, where they left them unburied for now. The village dead were covered with blankets and sheets and, when those ran out, with cloaks and capes and coats, before they were taken to the temple, which looked to Reynard like an English church, with a steeple.

  Manuel had returned from looking at as many of the Spanish corpses as he could, as many as he could find. “He is not here,” the old sailor said.

  “There are fifty or more gone and as many hurt bad,” Dana told Sondheim and Gareth.

  “We saw Maggie and Anutha. They are still alive.”