His son's grin was wide as the ocean between them and Hastings. "Why, we could turn wolf ourselves! I could stay at sea!"
"I didn't come here to go warring, asea or ashore. I came here to get away from all that," Edward said. "With the peasants up in arms, with the damned Frenchmen roaring across the Channel, with Lancaster and York glaring at each other and both ready to swoop, there's war and to spare back home if you're so hungry for it."
Henry looked down at his feet. "You shame me, Father."
By God, I hope so, Edward thought. But he didn't want to leave Henry with no pride, so he said, "I didn't mean to. But think on what you're talking about, that's all. War usually looks better to the fellow who brings it than it does to the poor buggers who have it brought to them."
"Mm, something to that, I shouldn't wonder," his son said, to his deep relief. But then Henry pointed a half-accusing forefinger at him. "Who was just talking about buying fine iron guns?"
"I was," Edward said. "But I didn't talk about raiding with them, only about standing off raiders. There's a difference."
"No doubt," Henry said, and Edward beamed. Too soon-Henry hadn't finished. "The difference is, after a while you want to try out the guns, no matter why you got them in the first place."
Edward Radcliffe winced; that held too much of the feel of truth. "It won't happen that way while I have anything to say about it," he insisted.
"All right, Father," Henry said. "I hope it doesn't happen for many, many years, then." Edward noticed he didn't say he hoped it never happened at all.
They did call the settlement New Hastings. The houses they made were of wood, not stone, because those went up faster. Cutting back saplings and clearing away the undergrowth were easier than they would have been back in England: no berry bushes or wild roses full of thorns and no stinging nettles. Plowing under the ferns that grew in the shade was even easier than dealing with grass on the meadows.
And, when the crops came in, they flourished even before the settlers manured them with fish. "I don't see any bugs on the plants!" Nell exclaimed. "Is it a miracle?"
"Ask Father John or one of the other priests," Edward answered. "Maybe the bugs here don't know how to eat our crops, or don't like the way they taste. Is that a miracle? Richard doesn't like the way squash tastes."
"Richard is not a bug," Nell said. Since Edward couldn't very well argue with that, he walked off shaking his head.
The weather got warm, and then warmer. It got muggier than it ever did in England, too. Edward had known the like down in the Basque country, but the people who'd spent their whole lives in Hastings wilted like lettuce three days after it was picked.
An eagle swooped down and killed a child. It tore gobbets of flesh from the small of the girl's back before flying off. She died the same way Hugh Fenner had, in other words. Even though she was already dead, Father John gave her unction while her mother screamed and screamed. They buried her next to the log hut that did duty for a church. No stonecarvers were on this new shore yet, but at Father John's direction the carpenter made a grave marker out of the red-timbered evergreens that seemed so common here. Rose Simmons, vibas in Deo, the inscription read: may you live in God.
How large would the churchyard grow? Edward dared hope his flesh would end up there, and not at sea for fish and crabs to feast on. Thy will be done, Lord, he thought, but not yet, please.
Another eagle killed a sheep. That would have been a sore loss in England-not that eagles there attacked beasts so large. It was worse here, because the newcomers could spare so little. A smaller hawk carried off a half-grown chicken. A big lizard-bigger than any Edward had imagined-ate a duckling. But there were no foxes. That alone helped the poultry thrive.
Edward chanced to be ashore one morning in early summer when a twelve-year-old told off to keep an eye on the livestock ran back into New Hastings screaming, "Things! There's things in the fields!"
Like everyone else, Radcliffe tumbled out of bed. He pulled on his shoes and went outside. "What do you mean, things?" he demanded.
"See for yourself!" The boy pointed to the bright green growing grain. "I don't know what they are! Demons from hell is what they look like."
"They aren't demons," Edward said. Those two-legged shapes might be strange to the boy, but he'd seen them before.
"They have the look of something otherworldly." Father John crossed himself, just in case.
But Edward Radcliffe shook his head. "No, no, Father. Those are the honkers I've been talking about. They think we've spread out a feast for them. They don't know they're a feast for us." He raised his voice: "We can't let them eat our grain and trample what they don't swallow. Get clubs. Get bows. We'll kill some-they're good eating, mighty good-and drive the rest away."
When he went out into the fields, he saw that these weren't quite the same kind of honkers as he'd seen the year before. They were bigger and grayer and shaggier of plumage. Their voices were deeper. But they showed no more fear of man than the other honkers had. You could walk right up to one of them and knock it over the head. Down it would fall, and another one ten feet away would go right on eating.
If you didn't kill clean, though…A man named Rob Drinkwater only hurt the honker he hit. It let out a loud, surprised blatt! of pain. Before he could strike again and finish it, one of its thick, scaly legs lashed forward. "Oof!" Drinkwater said. That was the last word-or sound-that ever passed his lips. He flew through the air, crashed down, and never moved again: he was all broken inside.
The honker lumbered off, still going blatt! The cry got the other enormous birds moving. Fast as a horse could trot, they headed off into the undergrowth. Every stride knocked down more young, hopeful wheat and barley.
Ann Drinkwater keened over her husband's body. The rest of the settlers stared from the dead honkers to the damaged crops and back again. "Will they come again tomorrow?" Richard Radcliffe asked. "Will they come again this afternoon? How many of them will we have to kill before the rest decide they shouldn't come?"
Those were all good questions. Edward had answers to none of them. "We'll butcher these dead ones," he said. "We can smoke some of the meat, or salt it, or dry it. We can't let it go to waste. After that-"
"They're afraid of the damned eagles, if they aren't afraid of us," Henry said. "If we screech like them, maybe we can scare off the honkers."
"We'd have a better chance if we could fly like them," his brother said, and Edward judged Richard likely right.
Numbly, the settlers got to work. Henry carried a pile of honker guts well away from the place where the creature had died. He made sure he included the kidneys, though they might have gone into a stew if he hadn't.
He waited in some nearby bushes, a hunting bow in his hand. Down from the sky to the offal spiraled…a vulture. Even the vultures here differed from the ones back in England. This one was almost all black, down to the skin on its head. Only the white patches near the base of the wings broke the monotony.
Henry came out and shooed it away before it landed and stole the leavings. It flew off with big, indignant wingbeats. Edward watched it go before he realized it had a healthy fear of men. He wondered what that meant, and whether it meant anything.
His son went back into cover. Henry had a hunter's patience-or, more likely, a fisherman's patience he was for once applying to life on land. And that patience got its reward when an eagle descended on the kidneys and fat much more swiftly and ferociously than the vulture had. Edward wasn't too far away when it did: he was close enough to notice the coppery crest of feathers on top of the great bird's head as it tore at the bait Henry had left for it.