"Do you need me to help put something over on the Bretons?" Henry answered his own question: "No, of course you don't. You can diddle them slick as grease all by yourself."
"I thank you for your trust in me," Edward Radcliffe said dryly.
He didn't faze Henry a bit. "Any time," the younger man replied. "We won't have trouble at sea from Kersauzon's people, either. Right now, after what you just said, they'd pick you for Pope if they had the chance. But if the Dovermen decide to raid Cosquer today…I'd better stay here."
"All right." The fishermen Edward chose to row him to Kersauzon's new village all spoke some Breton, or at least some French. They'd be able to make themselves understood once they made it to dry land-and maybe they would hear something the settlers didn't want them to.
Kersauzon waved when he saw the English boat heading toward his. A little to Edward's surprise, the Breton's rowers didn't make a race of it. They went back to shore sedately instead. A couple of the English fishermen sent Edward questioning looks, but he shook his head. Why push things? They'd get there soon enough any which way. And besides…
"Warmer here than it is in New Hastings," he called to Kersauzon. It was warm enough, in fact, to make the sweat stand out on his face, and unpleasantly sticky, too.
Unpleasantly for him, at least. Francois Kersauzon made a joke of it: "You are from the north, so you settle in the north, and you think chilblains are every man's God-given right-is it not so?"
"We like the weather we're used to," Edward said, and left it at that. The boat's keel grated on hard sand. He hopped out and helped haul it farther up the beach. Kersauzon and his men were doing the same with theirs. Edward pointed to the land they'd cleared in back of Cosquer. "Are those vines you've planted there?" he asked.
"What else would they be?" the Breton replied. "Beer is all very well-I have nothing against beer. Who could? But I want wine, too. And I'll have it…soon. Not yet, mind you, but soon. Maybe we can trade this for that, eh?"
"Maybe we can," Edward agreed. "My other son-not Henry, who's with me, but Richard-is starting a new settlement deep in the woods. Before long, we may have more lumber than we can use ourselves. And who knows what else we'll find once we look around a bit?"
"Who indeed? You're ahead of us. I think even Freetown"-Kersauzon pronounced the name as if it tasted bad in his mouth-"is a year ahead of us. But do you say the Dovermen want a war with us?"
"They're sure thinking about it. They're thinking hard, I'd say," Edward answered. "I told them to their faces I'd sooner stand with you if they start a fight. They didn't care to hear that, but I told them anyway."
"You are a gentleman." Francois Kersauzon bowed, as if to a nobleman in his own country. "It could be that Cosquer and New Hastings should band together and take this Freetown pesthole off the map before more trouble comes from it."
Radcliffe had wondered whether the Breton would say that. Not without some regret, he shook his head. "No, I don't want to. There's enough fighting across the sea-why bring more here? That's the other thing you need to know: if you strike first at Freetown, New Hastings will stand with her, too."
Kersauzon scowled at him. Some of the other Bretons swore. One or two of them ostentatiously turned their backs. Their leader asked, "Who appointed you the man to say who may war and who may not?"
"I say nothing of the kind," Edward answered. "I only say what will happen if a war does start."
"And if Cosquer and Freetown move against New Hastings together?"
"Good luck," Radcliffe said. "Watch your back-you'll need to."
Kersauzon stared at him, then started to laugh. "Well, when you're right, Saoz gast, you're right. But how long do you think you'll be able to keep the peace all by yourself?"
"I don't know. As long as I can." Edward sighed. "Sooner or later, something will go wrong. We aren't in Eden, so it has to. We're closer to Eden here than we were back home, though. I feel that in my bones. So maybe-I hope-it will be later, not sooner."
V
A n axe on his shoulder like a soldier's spear, Richard Radcliffe strode through the woods of Atlantis. No man had ever seen what he was seeing now; the only tracks in the soft, damp earth were the big, deep three-toed ones that belonged to honkers and other, smaller, bird prints.
The air smelled spicy. It smelled green, Richard thought. It made you wish you could fill a bottle with the scent and take it back with you. Wherever people lived for a while, things started to stink. Smoke and manure and slops and unwashed bodies…Getting away was a relief to the nose.
Moss and ferns grew between the curious barrel trees and the pines that rose above them and the enormous trees-redwoods, the Bretons'd named them-that towered over the pines. Some of those redwoods seemed a bowshot tall. No way to be sure just how immense they were till you felled one and measured it. Since the monsters were as thick through the base as three or four men were tall, that wouldn't happen right away.
Something stared out at Richard from behind a barrel tree. He stood still and waited. His father was right: the creatures here had no natural fear of man. After a moment, this one came out and walked along with a rolling motion that brought a smile to his face.
"Oil thrush," he murmured. Not since Adam and Eve had people needed names for so many new creatures. The birds and lizards and snakes of the new land were for the most part unlike any the settlers had seen back in England. Oh, ravens croaked from tree branches and sometimes harried hawks and eagles. Barn owls glided ghostly through the night. Fork-tailed swallows dipped and darted after flying insects. They were all familiar enough. And the red-breasted thrush that acted and sounded like a blackbird was easy to get used to. But the oil thrush…
It had the shape of one of those red-breasted thrushes. (Some people were calling them robins, though they were bigger and less vivid than the redbreasts back home.) It had the shape, yes, but it was the size of a chicken, or even larger. Its legs were long and strong, its wings too stunted to lift it into the air. And its beak…
Richard smiled. It was as if someone had made a thrush out of clay and pulled and stretched the beak till it could go no farther. It was more than half as long as the oil thrush's body. A beak like that might have made a formidable weapon, except that the bird didn't seem to realize it could use its beak so. The oil thrush stared at Richard with a beady black eye, its head cocked to one side.
When he just quietly stood there, the bird peered down at the ground instead. Suddenly, that long, strong beak stabbed into the dirt. When the oil thrush pulled its beak out, a plump earthworm wriggled between the mandibles. A twist of the bird's head, and the worm disappeared.
On waddled the oil thrush. Six or eight feet farther along the trail, it paused again. Was it listening? Sniffing? Richard had no idea. But its beak thrust down again, and came forth with another worm. This one tried to wrap itself around the bird's beak to keep from getting swallowed, but to no avail.
Richard followed the flightless thrush. It looked back at him, as if to say that was an unusual thing for anyone to do, but then kept walking. It didn't seem to take alarm when he bent down and picked up a fist-sized stone. The gray rock was cool against his palm; little bits of mud and moss clung to his fingers.
He was only a few feet from the oil thrush when he let fly. The stone knocked the bird over. A startled squawk burst from its throat as a puff of feathers floated up into the air. Richard finished it off with the axe.
As always when he hunted here, he felt a little guilty. It was like playing draughts against an idiot child-of course you were going to win. But he was hungry, and one thing the settlers had found was that the oil thrush made tasty eating.