The Unfinished Land Read online

  “We had twenty horses. Ten died. Thou wilt prepare the shoes from ship’s stores . . . And from a barrel of special shoes for my beauty.” el capitán said a forge would be set up and an anvil would be brought down later. The old man said he would return to the ship to retrieve clippers and files.

  el maestro was a bulky man, maybe fifteen stone, with thick arms and fashionable but worn clothing. In appearance, with his mottled, pale face, he resembled a stage clown, a marked contrast to el capitán, but a formidable presence nonetheless—in command of the galleon’s day-to-day operations, but going where el capitán ordered. From a seaman’s perspective, el maestro was the real captain.

  Reynard never did learn his name.

  “Where are we, boy?” el maestro inquired in English, taking advantage of the old sailor’s absence. Until now, Reynard had kept his head down and focused on the horse, but this question was direct. Reynard wondered what the Spanish would do if they discovered his ignorance. Would they punish both him and the old man?

  “¿Irlanda o Islandia?” Cardoza asked.

  The old man returned with surprising speed, carrying a small bag of tools, and stood near Reynard. He stooped and picked up the rope again, cap in hand, not to interrupt.

  “Come we to Irlanda, boy?” el maestro inquired, staring critically at el viejo.

  “No, señor,” Reynard said. “The trees and wind are wrong, and there be nought of Queen’s soldiers. And neither is it Iceland, ’cause I heard we ply too far north, and not so far west.” He knelt and bowed his head. “señor, the horse’s hooves are damp and could split on these rocks. You should not ride far till they be trimmed and shod.”

  Cardoza observed him critically, then turned to the old man. “I will see what is near and a threat—and then thou canst do thy work. Unless thou wish’st to discourage me?” el capitán chuckled. “el viejo, this boy is either a cunning fraud or a spy.”

  The old man inclined his head. “Spies know much, lord. And he knoweth horses.”

  “And of this land, thou say’st correctly, I know little. We will stay awhile, look about, give my beauty a brief run in the sweet air, curry and shoe her, and let her crop sweet grass.”

  “After so much time in the galleon, she should not eat her fill of fresh grass,” Reynard advised. “She will bloat.”

  “Conozco a los caballos, muchacho,” el capitán said shortly. But then he called for hay and the last of the oats to be sent down the ramps.

  el maestro’s bark of a laugh irritated Reynard, who wondered why there was amusement, but the bulky man’s attitude was neither aggressive nor angry—not yet, though el maestro then scowled, perhaps more worried than el capitán. El capitán seemed eager to learn the ground on which they found themselves, restless, Reynard thought, to conquer someone or someplace, having been unable to face an enemy for so many days.

  The old man again jerked his rope, but Reynard growled and yanked it from his grasp.

  “Rescataste un cachorro, Manuel,” Cardoza said with a curl of his lip.

  So that was the old man’s name!

  “Sí, señor.”

  “Gitano, as thou art?”

  Manuel made the most elegant and tiny of shrugs.

  el capitán smiled. “Keep him quiet till we have use of him, o córtale la garganta.”

  “Sí, señor.” Manuel, for Reynard’s sake, ran a finger across his own throat.

  “And watch that he tendeth well my horse.”

  “Sí, señor.”

  Manuel gripped Reynard’s rope and led him back up the narrow ramp to gather more tools. Two other horses were being calmed on the quarterdeck before also being winched to the beach. Reynard could not understand how such animals could be kept from sun and field, in tight wooden stalls no doubt, without exercise . . . for weeks or months. Horrible planning.

  Soldiers on the shore were ordered to gather wood, and others helped convey an anvil down to the beach as Manuel and Reynard, on the galleon, descended steps to plunge deep into the stink and noise of the hull. Other soldiers were clanking and shouting, still removing weapons and armor, as if preparing to besiege the land they had found; this then was the business el capitán alluded to. Having left the battle for England behind, outcome unknown, the Spanish would now explore, fight, if necessary, and bring this place under Philip’s rule, for that was what the Spanish did. Reynard found nothing unexpected about this effort, this prospect, though he was surprised he would be allowed anywhere near el capitán’s fine horse.

  “Are you Roma?” Reynard asked the old man as they opened a crate filled with iron shoes and boxes of nails. They were so near the bilges that Reynard clenched his teeth not to gag.

  “Esto es lo que soy. Gitano, from Madrid,” Manuel said, his yellow-outlined shadow moving about in the scant light of his one candle, backlit by whatever echoed from several decks above.

  “And think you I am Roma as well?”

  Manuel raised his candle and shrugged.

  “I am not,” Reynard said.

  “Do not deny in haste,” Manuel said. “Here, methinks there be advantage.” Manuel handed him the box, a long iron file, and black iron clippers. “¿Sabes cómo usarlos?—how to use these?”

  “Yes,” Reynard said. “Unless the Spanish follow other ways.”

  “Caballos son caballos,” Manuel said, and with a wrinkled expression of disgust pinched his nose. “Alejémonos de este olor y regresemos a la playa.”

  They climbed out of the lower deck and made haste to the ramp. Manuel stopped them halfway down to the beach, and pointed along the curve of the shingle, southwest, toward an advancing shadow—like a small cloud crossing the sun. Trying to keep his balance, Reynard looked up and shaded his eyes. All he could see was the flash of a rainbow-colored triangle, then another, with a long dark line between, vibrating, rising—and then gone.

  Manuel looked at Reynard, glanced over his shoulder, and continued down to the beach. On the sand and shingle, the men seemed frozen in attitudes of listening, of fear. They murmured to each other until Cardoza rode back from the northern curve, shouting orders, telling them to get the horses and dogs under cover.

  “Giant eagles!” he cried. “Guard thyselves!”

  Reynard did not believe what he had seen was any kind of eagle, nor any bird at all. The triangles, if they were wings, were like panes of glass from a cathedral window, and about as big—and the bodies had been slender and long, too long, four or five yards. As well, the shapes had vanished too quickly, flying too fast. He had once seen a peregrine dive that fast, but never ascend.

  He stood beside Manuel on the beach. Soon the sailors and soldiers had all been told to spread out and cut down the trees that lined the shingle, and to bring from the galleon what little lumber and rope remained after repairs at sea. The forward spritsail was cut loose and slung like a tent over the animals, held by six men in a tight, restless bunch—the dogs growling at the horses and the horses scraping the shingle and kicking at the men and the dogs.

  The weather along the beach grew sharp, and more maggoty clouds swooped in low, obscuring the promontories and the forest along the ridge that lowered over the cove, shadow upon shadow, until the men themselves and the constructs they tried to erect cast no shadows at all.

  Cardoza’s personal cook, a small, stout man with a leather apron and a bandolier of cleavers, knives, and spoons slung around shoulders and paunch, waddled at last down from the galleon, followed by three boys bowed under casks and bags. The cook ordered los grumetes to gather wood and set about making a cooking fire, personally gathering rocks on the beach to bank the heat. It seemed certain his efforts would not benefit the soldiers, but only el capitán and perhaps el maestro, who were now exploring the beach and the verge on foot.

  Another fire, banked, bellowsed, and hotter, was lit between the anvil and the shelter of the sail, and Manuel and Reynard prepared to forge the shoes and repair the hooves of the horses, which had spent too much time in their stalls aboard s
hip, mired in sour straw and their own dung and piss.

  “The wood is not happy,” Manuel observed, lifting a branch, leaves dead and dry, but still difficult to grip, as if its twists and flaking bark were part of a serpent. Manuel pushed it in with the other embers, where it hissed but at last caught and crackled.

  The fire hot enough, they took to their blacksmithing. Reynard inspected and rasped, Manuel tried a selection of horseshoes from el maestro’s cask, special-made for his horse, and saw that some would also fit the other two. The horses twitched their flanks and withers, but seemed happy at this familiar ritual, for the human contact, for feeling once again sure of foot and free of the creak and sway of the ship.

  The solid thud of their hooves, bare and then shod, and the gentle clang on the stones as the shod hooves swung right and left, drew in the other men, who stood around the fire, the tent of the sail, the familiar animals, rank upon rank of soldiers, still in their armor, watching, squatting, whispering, cleaning harquebuses and adjusting crossbows, sharpening daggers and swords—and nobody sleeping.

  Reynard thought of the food his mother might be preparing right now: haddock and pease, buttered bread, wheat gruel. His mouth watered. As he and Manuel combed the other horses, and then Cardoza’s splendid and nervous mount, a pair of grumetes brought them bowls with moldy rice and a few chunks of dried fish, and with this feast, they made do, wetting it down with sour and watered wine and an unexpected swig of island rum.

  That at least was familiar and welcome.

  “We arrive at lands none such as they have seen, on a ring of islands far north, very far north,” Manuel murmured to himself. He lay beside a sleeping mastiff, then closed his eyes. The dog sighed but did not growl. “And those were not eagles.”

  * * *

  A deepening dusk followed swiftly, without stars or moon. The soldiers tried to replenish their scattered fires, but wood from the forest spat and hissed as if wanting to speak, and burned with much smoke and little heat. In the gloom, soldiers and sailors held each other like young monkeys clinging to a stick in a river, group by staring group, as the great maestro carried his sputtering torch around the camp and muttered prayers to the Virgin, but also oaths, promising all he had, all the ships he had ever sailed, the riches of Philip himself were they allowed to again see the sun and survive these hours of black nothing.

  Reynard crept off a few paces from the tent that covered the horses. The freedom and trust showed him were illusory—nobody in their right mind would attempt to flee through this enveloping night. He curled up on the sand, away from the forest and the fires, where the sailors and soldiers would not bother him, and somehow managed to sleep, if only for a few minutes.

  Not quite dreaming, but with his thoughts fluid and unsure, he felt thin, cool fingers with sharp nails play about his face, his cheeks, brushing and then trying to comb his hair. A face seemed to flow into view, just a blur he saw through lids almost shut: thin and faintly aglow, like a candle behind a block of ice. Deep in the face’s black eyes appeared sharp glints, like flints struck in a cave. Reynard rolled his head and saw pale figures glide between the sailors and soldiers, murmuring like waves on the beach—using words he almost understood.

  After soft-raking his skin with sharp nails, like cat’s claws, another strong hand grasped his chin and swung his head around. A second face swam out of the darkness, this one female. She used the same strange-familiar language to tell him something, as if out of concern for his well-being, and then backed and flitted off like a moth. If only he could remember enough of his grandmother’s speech to understand!

  After that, sleep came heavy, as if to blot out all he had seen.

  Valdis

  * * *

  VALDIS HAD LEFT the Eaters’ Ravine and stabled her horse in Zodiako, the southwestern shore’s only human town. She had moved through the darkness with the pacted Eaters, down to the wide scimitar of beach, and there they had found sleeping Spaniards and done what was necessary to remain Eaters, not so different from what these men themselves did to stay alive—steal time from animals, a long chain of thievery back to when Hel was young and the Crafters first shaped their brutal tales.

  In appearance Valdis still kept a semblance of the adolescent girl she had once been, five centuries ago, but no longer flesh so much as sea foam or soft crystal, shot through with a greenish inner light.

  She walked between the sailors and soldiers, looking for her assignment. When possible, she kept to shadows and took on their darkness. Tonight she was not here to sup, but merely to identify and confirm, as instructed by Calybo, the Afrique, eldest and greatest of the Eaters’ island clan. Calybo in turn followed the orders of one of the island’s Vanir, those just beneath the sky: Guldreth. Valdis’s parents had long ago told stories about Aesir and Vanir and their wars, but none of that seemed to matter here, and she had never heard of Aesir on this isle. Whose orders Guldreth followed was never made clear by any who had met her, so Valdis suspected that at the top of the island’s command was Hel. Nobody she knew had ever seen Hel, no matter how old they were or claimed to be.

  While ten of the island’s clan wandered the beach, glittering figures of fairy glass and foam, supping of the gross, dark Spanish, young and old, the men in armor and boys in rags writhed and groaned as if suffering from bad dreams, as no doubt they were. Having one’s life stolen was never pleasant.

  Then Valdis found the one she was assigned to. The boy lay on a small patch of disturbed sand, filthy, his hands grasping as if trying to catch hold of ropes, but not caught entire in the spell laid on the camp. As she leaned over him, he looked up through heavy-lidded eyes and seemed almost to see her. Those eyes rolled in fear.

  So young!

  Gliding closer, then kneeling to peer into his face, she felt such a surge of confusion and hope that her entire body seemed caught in a flash of lightning. He was scrawny and not particularly handsome and smelled of sweat and horses and salt water. He must have come from far out at sea, far beyond the gyre. Normally, such would be prime fare for Eaters. But not this one. He had reddish hair. She had been told by Calybo to look for it.

  The sense of smell given to Valdis and her kind was extraordinary. They could smell backwards and forwards, and connect what they smelled to what others over centuries had smelled. This boy smelled alive, of course, growing out before him rich lengths of time like a plant making sap. He had a very long and busy life ahead of him, and she would not take that away, nor even borrow of it.

  As for the life behind him . . .

  Nothing! He had memories, but no time, and this caused her more wonder and confusion. She pulled back from the boy, not at all sure of her power to keep him still.

  A few yards away, Calybo ministered to an old man, making strange noises. Valdis recognized the old man despite his wizened face and shriveled form. He was Widsith, a lover to Guldreth; husband to villager Maeve; and friend to Maggie, healer and leader of the blunters who managed the drakes along the shore. He had been gone for over forty years and had aged accordingly, so Calybo was doing what centuries past he had agreed to do for this one man: replenish the returned Pilgrim with what he needed to remain useful to Travelers and Crafters—health, denser bones and teeth, younger flesh, and time enough to report and inform the island, and prepare to go out again.

  It was ever Widsith’s task to explore the outer world and make his own estimation of how the plots and plans of the Crafters had changed things. For it was important to all on the island, including the Eaters, to know just what the Crafters were doing, as much as anyone could.

  Without yet taking even a small taste of this boy’s history, it was obvious he was different from any other human on the island, and for that she was glad. Looking at his face, Valdis remembered some of what she had lost by being saved by the Eaters. She imagined herself and this boy sitting in a cabin on the side of a mountain and talking while snow swirled outside. He would tend a fire and smile at her. She would draw forth a blanket a
nd welcome him to her warmth.

  Except that she was no longer warm.

  And this vision would never come true.

  She leaned in, touched her lips to his forehead, then kissed him lightly on his own lips and neck. All she could manage with such brief contact was to grab a second or two, an impression from whence he came—but even that little was difficult. Calybo had said, recruiting Valdis in the Ravine, that if she found the right boy, his memories would be jagged and incomplete, his emotions electric—perhaps dangerous to an Eater.

  Calybo was the oldest Eater on the island, full of time and great-powered. He could usually recharge a servant at small cost. But Widsith . . .

  Long Calybo lingered over the old man, hand on his heart, and then, with a look of resolve, sank his head to the Pilgrim’s chest and sang an awful song of exchange. When Eaters consumed time, they were silent, stealthy, not to arouse or disturb. When Eaters gave, it was a sickening, noisy process, half scream, half chant, as if the memories that accompanied those years were being voiced against their will and shared with the listening air . . .

  It took many minutes for the old African to finish. He stood, straightened his night-dark garments, and looked her way with a frightful, hungry face—a face of utter exhaustion. He would be days rearranging his store of time to feel well again.

  Along with the boy, Widsith had also brought the Spanish to this isle. This aroused Valdis’s curiosity, dulled by long centuries in the Ravine and the mix of memories absorbed with her quotient of time. What purpose might the Spanish have here? What tales of the finished lands could the Pilgrim tell? And would he tell those tales only to Travelers, among the few authorized to convey them to Crafters—or just to Guldreth?

  The Eaters were done for this evening. They would keep to the woods or, sated, return through Zodiako to retrieve their horses.

  Valdis never questioned anything about Guldreth, though deep in her dozing memory, in the Ravine, later, she would wonder about Guldreth’s relationship to the Pilgrim . . . How important this old man was to a near-god.