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 paralyzing 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.”
“I know. But we lost three blunters. And there is a drake out on the meadow, badly wounded. Likely will die.”
“Whose?” Nem asked.
“Asquith’s, I think.”
“Asquith’s among the dead,” Sondheim said.
Dana called forward Gareth and Nem and asked them to take Reynard to a place where he could get food and drink, and sleep for the rest of the night.
“The houses are in bad shape here, folks are being sent to other homes, and many of the barns have burned,” Gareth said, flexing his broad shoulders and sharing the exhausted Reynard’s weight with Nem.
“There is a sheepfold out on South Road, near the stables. The old shepherd’s place. Take him there. It is beyond this mayhem, and will serve until morning.”
Dana and the blunters, led by Anutha, were met by a candlelit procession of ten men and boys and four women, in deep twilight at the edge of the destruction. This procession was guided by the older, gray-haired woman who, Reynard now saw, bore a resemblance to Dana, perhaps mother to daughter. He wondered if this was Maggie.
In the middle of the grieving and preparations for funerals, news of their success with the nymphs on this part of the coast was met with the gray-haired woman’s sad approval, as if they had done all that could be expected—and perhaps all that was necessary.
The paired defenders were brought forward and treated with respect, but no congratulations, and the whereabouts of their drakes were inquired after, but few knew much. Drakes that had killed and likely fed on humans were not responsive for days, Nem told Reynard in hushed tones. “And they did eat, I saw them!” he added.
“How many more Spanish still out there?” Maggie asked Manuel.
“Maybe fifty,” Manuel said. “Dependeth on how many died in the forest.”
“We stabled Eater horses the last three nights,” Maggie said. “Let us hope the Spanish have had enough.”
Manuel and Reynard were now studied without being touched or questioned. Nem spoke to the other youngsters, some also injured and bandaged, in a language Reynard could not understand—not the Basque that Manuel had used, that he had heard from other fishermen, nor the Tinker’s Cant of his grandmother, but something else mellifluously round and complicated.
The assembly split in three, and Nem, Gareth, Manuel, Maggie, and Dana continued on, Manuel a few steps to one side. Reynard wobbled along between Gareth and Nem, barely able to keep his feet under him as they took him to the edge of a tree-ringed clearing, between several magnificent, spreading oaks, onto a trail covered with ancient cut stones and bordered by woven fences made, Reynard thought, of willow or perhaps hawthorn. The candles provided little light, and the group seemed to want to keep them at least partly ignorant.
Dana and Maggie were conversing in quiet tones.
Manuel murmured to Reynard, “They talk about me. And about thee.”
“Will they kill us?”
Manuel made a face. “Not likely,” he said “We have fought beside them, and we have both been touched and recognized.”
“By Eaters?”
“By Travelers. Those who connect,” Manuel said.
“I do not remember them,” Reynard said.
“They will be more obvious, in time,” Manuel said.
“Who are these from the town?”
“The older woman is Maggie,” he confirmed. “She is in charge of the blunters who work this coast. She reporteth to Maeve. Both rely on Anutha.”
“Quiet,” Gareth warned.
They passed these lanes and continued on in a tight group, lit by shaded lanterns. After a walk of a mile or more, they saw candlelit windows in the distance and came upon a wide, cleared common, with another sheep-dotted meadow behind split-rail fences, and more people emerging from rounded stone houses with smoking chimneys, men and women and a few children commenting in several tongues about the fight, as they had heard it from this side of town, and of the return of the lost blunters, and how many more could now be placed on the rolls of paired defenders. They seemed more interested in those facts than in the facts of the battle.
Reynard flinched as a black shadow passed over the woods. Three children leaped the enclosures and began to push and whistle the sheep into low stone mangers along the fence lines.
“They eat sheep? The drakes?” Reynard asked. Nem scowled as if this was a stupid question.
The first light of morning turned the bottoms of the clouds a fiery pink. Smoke still tainted the air. Reynard was led by Nem and Gareth to a stone barn with a wooden shed projecting from one side. They half carried him to a cot near a line of narrow stalls and laid him down on a rough blanket, where he rolled over and closed his eyes, but could not stop his tumbling thoughts.
Maggie took Manuel to the farthest stall. Reynard pretended to be asleep, but listened to their quiet converse. “I presume thou wilt stay nearby?” Maggie asked Manuel.
“Of course.”
“May we call you Widsith, the Pilgrim, once more?”
“It is been too long since I heard that name.”
“How long gone this time, and where to?” Maggie asked.
“Thou wert a beautiful young girl.”
“How long?”
“In the years I felt, maybe forty. Long enough to visit China and live by their ways. They are ruled by Mongols now, the same who oft rise out of the grass like hornets and plague the west.”
“Crafters too clever by half,” Maggie said doubtfully.
“Methinks the world groweth now by itself,” Manuel—Widsith—said. Which name would Reynard call him? Were any of those names privileged and private?
Maggie asked, “Didst thou marry?”
They had moved almost out of Reynard’s hearing. His body ached all over. He could barely turn his head.
“I married for a time,” Widsith said, “there, and later, once in the Philippines, islands named after a king of mixed abilities at best.”
“Thou didst vow to return to Maeve,” Maggie said.
“And I have.”
“She is very old.”
“I did not mean to be away so long.”
“Dost still love her?”
“Of course,” Widsith said.
“Even whilst thou wert here, I remember thou wast not faithful.”
“My time with Maeve was all I wanted. I did not volunteer—the town volunteered me! Can I see Maeve now?”
“She hath ruled from seclusion the last few years. She wanteth not, of all men, that thou shouldst see her so old.”
“Her age meaneth little to me.”
“And thou wouldst make her young again? How?”
“I will persuade.”
“Maeve doth treasure the time she was given, and is stubborn she needeth no more.”
“That is not her decision!” Widsith insisted.
“Did Calybo fill thine own cask of years?”
“He did. It is my due.”
“So thou couldst leave at any moment, spend yet another forty years beyond the island, and abandon Maeve, leave her alone yet again all that time!”
“I shall stay a while. A long while.”
Maggie huffed. “Thou dost believe that, in truth? Once thou hast done delivering thy tales, thou wilt not flee on another long voyage?”
“Who tendeth thine allotment, Maggie?”
“None beyond the pacted years. Sad, is it not? I will never leave, and so never see the finished lands.”
“Wouldst thou like that?”
“No,” Maggie said. “Despite all, I am a widow, but I am happy here.”
“Was he a good man?”
“The best.”
“Wilt thou marry again?”
“None I have met. Hath the boy you brought here, at such cost, greater value than our town?”
“Certes he is a mystery I would love to solve.” Widsith spoke now in a low, soft tone, barely audible from Reynard’s position. “Hast thou wondered what it would be like to meet the Crafters in person, have they persons—to submit this boy like a proper writ?”
Listening to the distant converse, Reynard shivered, but knew not what he could do, nor where he could flee. In the morning, he would explore and try to find out.
“No,” Maggie said. “I am dubious thou hast so much courage thyself.”
“I have seen many strange lands, the results of much Crafter plotting. I might summon courage, to answer questions I have long held.”
“Most likely thou’lt hand this boy to the Travelers, to carry bundled and helpless to the cities around the waste. And then thou shalt leave, renewed of years, to gather more evidence of Crafter plots. And for that, for a ready ship, maybe thou’lt again seek out the Spanish and offer thy services!”
“They are done with me. Anutha did inform thee I was caged with the boy?”
“She did.”
“Comb I favor from Cardoza like sparks from a cat’s fur?”
“No,” she admitted.
“And Maeve?”
“I am sure she is already asleep. We all need sleep. Go take thine own rest. I must play captain to the sentries.”
And that was the last Reynard heard before ache and sleep overwhelmed him.