Opening Atlantis

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H enry Radcliffe couldn't believe Warwick would keep on gathering taxes after what happened with his father. Had the nobleman contented himself with going after the surviving Radcliffes, most of the settlers might have decided it was none of their affair and tried to get on with their lives. But Warwick acted as if there were no feud. And he soon brewed up a bigger one.

More and more people fled into the woods. Richard began to worry. "We can't feed them all," he said. "Not enough game here to keep 'em eating."

"Then we have to fight Warwick straight up," Henry said.

"If it were just Warwick and his bully boys, we could do it. But he has settlers on his side, too," his brother said. "I don't want a war of settler against settler. It will leave bad blood for years."

"Bad blood's already here," Henry said. "Warwick's started burning some of the farms and houses that belong to people on our side. And he's giving others to his friends. Chances are that will make him more friends, too."

"Not everyone got away with a bow," Richard complained.

"Fine," Henry said. "Do you want to give up?" Richard only glared at him.

The next day, Bartholomew Smith came up from New Hastings with only the clothes on his back. "There's a skeleton crew on the Rose," the mate said. "They're for us. They've gone out to sea, far enough to keep Warwick's wolves from surprising them."

"That would be better if we could work together with them," Henry said.

"Why can't we?" Richard said. "Easy enough to go up and down the coast, out farther than the soldiers are likely to. But what comes after that?"

"What comes after that?" Henry saw the answer as clearly as if God had whispered it in his ear. For all he knew, maybe God had. Words spilled out of him, a flood of them. His brother and the mate listened. The longer Henry talked, the wider their eyes got.

At last, the fit left Henry. He slumped forward, exhausted. Richard leaned forward and set a hand on his shoulder. "We can do this. We will do this." Then he said, "Father would be proud of you." That was when Henry was sure he hadn't been spouting nonsense.

Bartholomew Smith said, "You sounded like a great captain, skipper-like somebody who's won battles in the War of the Roses."

"I don't want to sound like a captain. I don't want to have to sound like one," Henry said. "And I don't care about roses, except I wish more of them grew here. If not for Warwick, I never would have worried about any of this."

"Well, then, he's got a lot to answer for, by Our Lady," Richard said. "Only thing is, he doesn't know it yet."

Like his father, Henry Radcliffe was a leader of men. Richard had never much wanted to tell anyone what to do. He'd never wanted anyone else telling him what to do, either. No wonder wandering alone through lands no other man had ever seen suited him so well.

Hurrying through the Atlantean woods with a dozen grim, angry, determined men at his back felt very different. Bartholomew Smith would have made a better leader, but everyone looked to Richard. He was Edward's son. The magic had to be in him. They thought it did, anyhow.

Maybe their thinking so would help make it true. He could hope so. He had to hope so. If it didn't, he was only leading them into disaster.

Farms above Bredestown were thin on the ground. Only men with some of the same hermit streak that ran so wide in Richard built on the edge of the wilderness. But Richard and his followers had no trouble coming out of the forest wherever they pleased. Warwick's soldiers weren't about to go in among the trees again. They defended a perimeter closer to the sea.

"Go away!" shouted the first man whose house the raiders approached. "I don't want anything to do with the quarrel. I just want to be left in peace."

"Will Warwick heed you if you say that?" Richard asked angrily.

"No. All the more reason you should."

Richard felt the force of the embittered argument. He might have made it himself. But he couldn't listen to it now, not unless he wanted to let his father down. "We have to fight him," he said. "Otherwise, he'll be king in truth over us. Do you want that?"

"No. Don't want you doing it, neither."

"Not me, by God!" Richard said, and said not a word about his brother. "If we want to live our own lives, we have to free the land of the Earl of Warwick. We have to, dammit! Then I can go back to the woods and make my wife wonder whether I'm ever coming home again. And that's all I want to do. Don't you understand? Warwick won't leave you alone."

"He hasn't done anything to me yet," the man said. "When he does, that's the time for me to worry about it."

"No." Richard shook his head. "That's when it's too late to worry about it." He turned to the men at his back. "Come on. We'll find men who aren't puling babes somewhere else." We'd better, or we're ruined, he thought.

And they did. Some men could see the writing on the wall, unlike the blockhead at the first farm where they stopped. Some had kin whom Warwick's hounds had already despoiled. And some, like Richard himself, didn't want anybody telling them what to do. "I don't much like you," one of those told Richard as he grabbed his bow and slung a full quiver over his shoulder, "but you're the ague, and that Warwick, he's the plague."

"Too bloody right he is," Richard said. "I don't care if you like me or not. Put up with me till we dig the God-cursed badger out of his sett. Then you can go back to thinking I'm a fool, and I'll go off into the woods and forget all about you. Is it a bargain?"

"It is," the farmer answered. "Not the best one, maybe, but the best I'm likely to get."

Richard wondered whether they would have to fight before they got to New Hastings. They did. Maybe one of the men who didn't want to fight on his side slipped away and carried word to Warwick's soldiers. Maybe they just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. However that was, a clump of them spotted Richard's ragtag force as it came out from behind some trees. The troopers wasted no time figuring out who was who. They strung their bows with frantic haste and started shooting.

"Back into the wood!" Richard cried. "The trunks will give us cover!" They would need it, too; a man screamed as he was hit. The soldiers had mailshirts and helmets and swords. Only a few of Richard's men had swords; most made do with belt knives or axes. None of them wore armor. If Warwick's troopers came to close quarters, they would slaughter their foes. They knew it, too. Some of them lumbered forward while others kept shooting to disrupt the Atlanteans' archery.

How fast could a man in a byrnie cover a couple of hundred yards? Not fast enough to keep the settlers from shooting before they got to the edge of the copse. Rings of iron kept glancing hits out, but an arrow that struck square would punch through any armor made.

Another Atlantean shrieked. He fell, clawing at the arrow in his throat. His blood rivered out, hideously red. Still another farmer took a clothyard shaft an inch above the nose and died before he knew it.

One of Richard's arrows caught a soldier in the left shoulder. Though it got through, it did less harm than the bowman would have liked. The soldier yelled, but he broke off the shaft and kept coming.

"Away!" Richard shouted. "This isn't the place for a big fight!" He didn't want the men to empty their quivers here. Archery was the one skill they had that let them confront Warwick's fighters. Without arrows, they could only run when armored men came after them. We'll, we've got arrows, and we're running anyhow, Richard thought glumly. He misliked the omen.

They had to leave their wounded behind. That was no good. Lord only knew what the angry troopers would do to them. But Richard didn't see what else he could do. Trying to drag them along would have slowed the whole band. If the soldiers caught up with them, the rising would die before it ever came to life.

"You should have planned this better," one of his men panted as they trotted north and east.

Richard looked at him. "What makes you think I planned it at all? Those bastards were there, so we fought them. We hurt them, too."

"And they hurt us," the settler answered. "Worse, I daresay."

"That's what fighting's all about, Peter," Richard agreed. "When we get the battle we want, we'll hurt them worse."

"How do you know?" Peter asked. Richard told him how he knew-or how he hoped, rather. The man trotted on for a couple of paces, then nodded. So did Richard, thoughtfully. If anything happens to him before the big fight, I have to knock him over the head. Can't give him the chance to spill his guts to Warwick's men.

One thing: men without mailshirts could run faster than men with mailshirts could chase them. After Richard's followers pulled away, he relaxed-a little. He still had a decent-sized force behind him, and he was still moving in the direction he wanted to go. It could have been worse. But it would have been better if they'd reached the seaside unbloodied.

Black midnight, blacker than the Earl of Warwick's heart. Henry Radcliffe and Bartholomew Smith crouched on the beach, a couple of miles south of New Hastings. "You're sure they know the signal?" Henry said.

"They'd better," the mate answered, which wasn't what he wanted to hear.

Henry set dry pine needles and other tinder on the sand. He clashed flint and steel above them again and again till they caught. No matter how many times you did it, starting a fire was rarely quick or easy. He breathed on the flames when he finally got them going, coaxing them to brighter life. Smith fed them more fuel. At last, the two men had a fire that gave some warmth against the chilly breeze.

They'd picked this spot not least because it was as close as they could come to New Hastings without being seen from the settlement. All the same, Bartholomew Smith sounded worried when he said, "What if they spy it?"

"Then we run," Henry answered. "In the darkness, we'll lose them." They would probably lose each other, too, but they could find each other after they'd shaken off Warwick's men: after daylight, if need be. He went on, "But Warwick's eyes should be on the north-that's where Richard is." He hoped that was where his brother was. That was where Richard was supposed to be.

Smith peered out to sea. "Where's the bloody boat? The longer we have to wait here-"

"Don't worry," Henry said. "They have to see the fire. They have to put men into the boat. They have to row ashore. They-"

Sand grated under a keel. "Come on," someone called. "What are you waiting for?" Bartholomew Smith and Henry both laughed, in relief as much as for any other reason. They hurried to the boat and scrambled in.

As soon as Henry had a shifting deck under his feet again instead of the dull, unmoving dirt, he felt like himself. Richard was welcome to the woods and the oil thrushes and the mountains. Henry came alive on the ocean. Clambering up from the boat and over the Rose's gunwale made him feel ten years younger.

"Where now, skipper?" a sailor asked.

"North," Henry answered at once. "North past the lights of New Hastings." He could see them from the Rose, where a swell of land had blocked his view from shore. "Then we anchor till we see just where we have to go."

"Better we sail a little too far now, while the wind will let us," Bartholomew Smith said. "If it swings around and blows out of the north-and it's likely to do that, this season of the year-we don't want it to leave us stuck where we can't do anything."

"You're right, and we'll do it," Henry said at once. He set his hand on a swivel gun. The iron was cold, almost cold enough to make his flesh stick to it. He raised his voice to a shout: "Are we ready, lads?"

"Ready!" the fishermen shouted-the ones, that is, who didn't shout, "Yes!"

"Then let's do what we can do," Henry said. "Let's do what free Englishmen can do."

Their cheers put heart into him, the way sweet French wine would have. His father had been the same way: more truly himself when magnified in the eyes of others. Richard didn't have that-didn't want it. Henry wondered why not. He also hoped his brother could find some of it in the days ahead. If he couldn't, whatever the Rose did might not matter at all.

Richard Radcliffe didn't know how many times he'd eaten honker half burnt, half raw. Here he was, doing it again. Grease from someone else's oil thrush made the fire sizzle and sputter.

"We can beat them," he said. "We can, and by God we will!"

Most of the men sitting by the fire nodded. They wouldn't have been there if they didn't think they could beat Warwick's soldiers. All the same, one of them said, "Wish I had me a byrnie."

"Sure need one on a fishing boat, don't you, Carl?" another one said. "You fall in, you go straight to the bottom."

"Wouldn't make much difference to me," Carl replied. "I can't swim anyway."

Surprisingly few sailors knew how. Richard was no great shakes in the water himself, though he could keep his head above water for a while-long enough to be rescued, if he was lucky. One more reason to be glad I don't put to sea any more, he thought.

"Throw more wood on the fire," he called to his men. "We want Warwick's buggers to know we're here."

If Warwick's men didn't know their foes were encamped north of New Hastings, they were blind as well as stupid. Richard's rebels had fed the fire on the beach all night long. They wanted the soldiers to come out against them. Richard thought they would get what they wanted, too. And when they did, they would find out whether they'd been wise to want it in the first place.

Richard looked out to sea. The Rose lay about where she ought to. How much difference she'd make…again, they would find out. When the plan spilled out of Henry, it sounded brilliant. But all sorts of things that seemed brilliant turned out not to be. You didn't know till you tried them, which was liable to be too late.

Carl, sensibly, was looking toward New Hastings. He crossed himself. "They're coming out," he said.

Warwick's forces advanced slowly and deliberately. Since the soldiers who'd come from England with him wore mailshirts, they couldn't advance any other way. The earl himself had a fine suit of plate. He rode a horse big enough to bear him and the heavy armor. The rising sun struck fire from his lancehead.

Accompanying his troopers were men as bare of mail as Richard's followers. Radcliffe ground his teeth. Those were settlers, men like the ones he led-except they'd chosen the other side.

"They have more men than we do," Carl said quietly.

"I know," Richard answered.

"They have armor, and we don't," the other man went on.

"I know," Richard repeated.

"If they beat us, they'll kill most of us-maybe all of us."

"I know," Richard said one more time.

"If it doesn't work, I won't forgive you."

"If it doesn't work, you'll be too dead to forgive me, or I'll be too dead to need forgiving, or else we'll both be dead and things will even out."

Carl gravely considered that. To Richard's surprise, he chuckled under his breath. Richard clasped his hand. They took their places and waited.

One of Warwick's men came up the beach toward them. He had no flag of truce, but held both hands out before him so Richard and his men could see they were empty. When he got within hailing distance, Richard shouted, "That's close enough. Say your say." The brisk northerly breeze flung his words toward the trooper. It would aid his side's arrows, too-not a great deal, but some.

The trooper cupped his hands to his mouth. "Give it up!" he bawled. "You can't hope to win."

"Be damned to you," Richard answered. His men raised a defiant cheer.

"My lord says, if you yield now, he will let you go into exile: go where you will, so long as it's far from here, with your families, with whatever you can carry, and with one beast and one fowl for each person. Think on what you do. After this fight is won, you won't find him so generous, those of you who don't burn in hell."

"Be damned to your lord, too." Richard spat on the sand. All things considered, the offer was generous-so generous that Richard didn't trust the Earl of Warwick to honor it once he'd got his way bloodlessly. He looked at his men. None of them seemed inclined to give in. That heartened him.

Warwick's trooper shrugged mailed shoulders. "On your heads be it-and on your heads it will be." He turned and walked down the strand. Richard was tempted to put an arrow through his kidneys. One more man he wouldn't have to kill later. But no. The advantage wasn't worth the risk. If he broke a truce, the enemy would show no mercy if they won. They might-not to him, surely, but to his comrades-if he stayed within the rules. The soldier reached his own line unpunctured.

Richard watched him shake his head and spread his hands. A moment later, Warwick's lance swung down so that it pointed straight at the men who dared defy him. He didn't charge, though, not yet. Richard's men would have pincushioned him and his horse if he had. Longbowmen could stand against knights. They'd proved that time and again on the fields of France. Against a lone knight, they could have proved it with ease here in Atlantis.

Slowly, Warwick's men advanced almost to the edge of archery range. His bowmen formed a line behind his troopers. What he had in mind was easy enough to see. The archers would keep Richard's men busy while the troopers-and, presumably, Warwick himself-advanced against them. If Richard's men fought the archers, the regular soldiers would close and slaughter them. If they aimed at the troopers, the bowmen would cut them down from long range.

"A plague!" Carl exclaimed. "My brother's over there, the cursed, mangy hound."

"And? Do you want us to try to spare him or try to shoot him down like the dog he is?" Richard asked.

Before Carl could answer, the troopers shouted, "Warwick!" and trudged forward, swords drawn, shields raised against the storm that would soon fall on them. Warwick's archers began to shoot.

At first, their arrows hardly seemed to move in the sky. But then, terrifyingly fast, they were on Richard and his comrades. You could dodge one, but if you did you were likely to step into the path of another. Richard had never had so many men trying to kill him all at once.

"Shoot!" he shouted. "Pick your own targets!" A better general, or a more certain one, might have concentrated on the troopers or the archers. He hoped splitting the difference would serve well enough. If he was wrong…then he was wrong, that was all.

He let fly at a trooper, and missed. Swearing, he looked over his left shoulder. Where was the Rose? If she didn't do what she was supposed to do pretty soon, he and his men would have to run. They couldn't face armored soldiers with swords at close quarters. And if they started running, where would they stop? Wouldn't they be doomed to outlawry and skulking through the woods the rest of their days?

She looked close enough to Richard, dammit. One of his men fell with a groan. He let fly again. His shaft pierced a shield, but evidently not the trooper behind it, because the soldier kept coming.

Richard's quiver would run dry soon. His men couldn't have many more arrows than he did. He'd also have to run when he couldn't shoot any more. Henry had wanted to cut this close. But what was the difference between close and too close?

Simple, Richard thought, nocking another shaft as an enemy arrow hummed venomously past his head. If it's too close, we lose.

The leadsman in the Rose's bow cast the line again and again, calling out how much water lay under her keel. He'd already called out less water than she drew more than once. Why she hadn't run aground Henry Radcliffe didn't know. Maybe God loved her and hated the Earl of Warwick. Maybe she was just lucky. Either way, she was at last just about where she needed to be-and just in time, too. Or he hoped she was just in time, anyway.

He stood at the bow starboard swivel gun. Bartholomew Smith stood by the stern gun at the same side. "Ready?" Henry called.

"At your order, skipper," the mate replied.

Henry sighted down the wrought-iron tube. It was loaded with stones and scrap metal and whatever else they could stuff into its maw. "Fire!" he shouted, and lowered a tallow-stinking torch to the touch-hole.

Boom! The thunderous noise terrified and exalted him at the same time. You could never be sure a gun would go off when you fired it. You could never be sure the barrel wouldn't blow up, either. He whooped when Smith's gun boom!ed a heartbeat after his. Then he peered through the choking, stinking smoke to see what the two shots had done.

He whooped again, pumping a fist in the air. They'd caught Warwick's men from the flank, and torn them to bits. More than half the armored soldiers were down and kicking or down and suddenly still forever. And almost all the rest were running for their lives. They were battle-hardened, battle-ready men, but disaster striking out of nowhere stole the courage from anybody.

"Reload the starboard guns!" Henry shouted. The sailors leapt to obey, swabbing out each barrel, pouring in fresh powder, and then loading more junk to fire. Henry pointed his piece a little to the south, toward the Earl of Warwick. What did he think at the unexpected overthrow of his hopes? "Port bow gun-fire!" Henry yelled.

Boom! That one was aimed at the earl, too. Warwick was farther from the Rose-probably a quarter of a mile. Maybe God really was on the settlers' side. Or maybe a horse made a bigger target than a man, for the noble's mount staggered, then fell, pinning him beneath its weight.

Another chunk of iron or stone knocked over an archer behind Warwick. Together, the two downfalls made the rest of the settlers who'd taken the nobleman's side realize they might not have decided wisely.

"Drop anchor!" Henry cried. It splashed into the sea. He didn't want the wind to sweep them past the enemy's archers. The Rose's timbers groaned as she slowed. Boom! That was Bartholomew Smith's gun, ready before Henry's. More of the archers who'd backed Warwick fell. The rest ran faster than the armored soldiers. None of them would ever have faced gunfire before. A lot of them would never even have heard it. It was frightening enough when the gun wasn't aimed at you. When it was…

Henry didn't aim his piece at the fleeing settlers. Once Warwick was dealt with, they'd be good neighbors again. They would want to pretend they'd never been here, and he was willing to let them, though he wasn't so sure Richard would be. The soldiers, on the other hand…If you wanted to keep your flock safe, you had to get rid of the wolves.

He lowered the torch to the touch-hole. Boom! The powder stank of brimstone, and Warwick's men had to think hell was visiting them there by the strand. More of them toppled, writhing on the sand and mud.

"Reload!" Henry yelled again. His ears rang. The rest of the sailors' must have, too. "We'll give it to them one more time!"

Richard Radcliffe stood over the Earl of Warwick. Even with his dead horse dragged off him, he wasn't going anywhere; he'd broken a leg in his fall. Pain twisted his face as he glared up at Richard. "Well?" he said through bloody lips. "You've won, villein. Make an end to it, if you'd be so kind. Damned saltpeter!"

"I ought to let you suffer first," Richard said. "You killed my father."

"Not in my own person. And you, in your own person, did murder my men and spur them to avenge in blood."

"They were robbing him of what wasn't theirs to take." Richard didn't need to argue any more-didn't need to and didn't intend to. He drew his bow and shot Warwick in the face. The nobleman kicked for a few minutes, then lay still. Richard let out a long sigh. The worst was over.

His men were finishing Warwick's wounded troopers: cutting their throats or shooting them or knocking them over the head. A few troopers still slogged back toward New Hastings. If they surrendered, he supposed he would let them live. If they wanted to go on fighting, they wouldn't last long, not with their liege lord dead.

One of the settlers who'd sided with Warwick lay on the sand, an arrow through his calf. He eyed Radcliffe apprehensively. "What are you going to do to me?" he asked as Richard approached.

"I was going to take out the arrow and bandage you up," Richard said. "You were a bloody fool, Tim, but you won't be that kind of bloody fool again."

The wounded man started to cry. "God bless you," he grizzled. "Oh, bless you."

"Shut up, or you'll make me sorry I don't do something worse," Richard said roughly. He'd never known what to do with praise. He knelt by Tim and cut away his breeches so he could see how the arrow had gone through. "I'm going to break off the head and then pull the shaft back through. It will hurt some, and you'll bleed some-not too much, with luck."

He cut through the shaft with his knife till he could snap off the head without moving the rest of the arrow very much. Tim groaned anyway. Richard didn't suppose he could blame the other man for that.

"Ready?" he said. Then, before Tim could answer, he pulled the shaft out the way it had gone in. The other man howled and twisted. Blood poured from both ends of the wound, but it didn't spurt, so Richard hoped the arrow hadn't cut any major blood vessels. He bandaged Tim with the length of breeches leg he'd cut off. "If I get you a stick, can you walk?" he asked.

"Not yet," the other man replied. "Better to wait till the bleeding's stopped for a while." Richard grunted; Tim made sense.

"We did it!" someone called from the sea. Richard looked up. His brother was coming ashore in the Rose's boat.

"We did, by Our Lady," Richard agreed. Henry jumped out of the boat and looked down at Warwick's corpse. He stirred it with his foot, then stepped away. Richard said, "This sort of thing mustn't happen again. Not ever." He looked at his hands, which were red with Tim's blood. Shaking his head, he washed them in the ocean. "We shouldn't fight ourselves. There's room here for all of us."

"Well, when word of this gets back to England, the king will know better than to foist worthless nobles off on us," Henry said. "He didn't even mean to give us Warwick-that bloody skipper couldn't find Freetown."

Richard shrugged. "Freetown, New Hastings-what difference does it make? He would have plagued them the same way he plagued us. Atlantis shouldn't be England's dumping ground, dammit."

"No, eh?" His brother's grin was crooked. "Then what are we doing here?"

"Making our own lives, with nobody to tell us what to do or how to do it," Richard said. "I like that fine, thank you kindly. Once we get all this nonsense settled, I'll go back into the woods-it'll be good to get away."

"You're welcome to them. A few nights under the trees were plenty to last me a lifetime." Henry looked down at dead Warwick again, and then over at Tim. "I'm surprised you didn't do for him, too."

"Part of me wanted to," Richard answered. "But with Warwick gone, he won't be any trouble. It's done. Better to let it go."

"I thought so," Henry said. "I wasn't sure you would."

"Well, I do," Richard said. "Enough is enough, or it had better be. If we don't let it go, Tim's great-grandson will be stealing my great-grandson's sheep and burning his barn. We'll have feuds here like a pack of damned Frenchmen. That's not what Father wanted."

"Father was no meek, mild man," Henry said. "He stood up to Warwick when he could have bowed down before him. He was ready to fight if he had to."

"If he had to." Richard bore down hard on the words. "But he wouldn't have troubled Warwick if Warwick didn't trouble him. He never told anybody here what to do, not unless someone asked him for advice. That's how I want things to go from here on out. Nobody should be able to order anyone else about."

"When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then a gentleman?" Henry quoted the peasants' cry in Wat Tyler's rebellion ninety years before.

"Sounds fair to me," Richard said. "Warwick didn't want to work. He wanted to take what other people worked for. Well, he could get by with that in England till he made the king angry at him, but why should we put up with it here? He didn't deserve what he stole. He deserved what he got."

"I'm not quarreling with you, Richard," his brother said.

"Good," Richard Radcliffe replied. "You'd better not, not about this."

The only building in New Hastings large enough to hold most of the crowd that gathered was the church. Bishop John had built big on purpose, as if planning a church for a town the size of the old Hastings from which they'd sailed.

But Bishop John (how had he got so gray and stooped?) wasn't in the pulpit on this bright Wednesday morning. Henry Radcliffe was. Richard hadn't wanted the job, and wouldn't have done it well had he wanted it. Speaking to lots of people made him shy. Henry tried to imagine a shy man skippering a fishing boat. The picture wouldn't form. He had his flaws, but that wasn't one of them.

"We are one folk again," he said, and his voice, which was big enough to reach from bow to stern through a gale, was big enough to fill the church, too. "One folk," he repeated. "We fell out for a while, but that's over. My father is dead. Warwick is dead, too. Men who backed both of them have died. Isn't that enough? Isn't the Battle of the Strand enough? Do we need to go on hating each other, go on killing each other, any more?"

He looked out to the people of New Hastings. He wasn't altogether sure what they would say to that. Some of the men on his side had wanted to see everyone who'd chosen the Earl of Warwick dead. They were shaking their heads with everybody else, though. Maybe it was harder to stay bloodthirsty in a house of God. He could hope so.

"Let's remember what we did here these past few weeks," he went on. That got everyone's notice. People must have thought he would say, Let's forget. "Let's not remember to keep old feuds alive. Let's remember to make sure new feuds don't start. The one we had cost us too much. We need no more like it."

Standing beside him, Bishop John smiled and nodded. "This is the voice of Christianity speaking," he said. "This is the voice of God speaking. Let it be so." He made the sign of the cross.

Henry crossed himself, too. He didn't know whether God was speaking through him. He only knew he never wanted to have to try to kill his neighbors again. He didn't want them trying to kill him, either.

He nodded to his brother. One by one, Richard carried up the mailshirts of Warwick's last soldiers, the ones who'd yielded themselves after the Battle of the Strand. They stood in the church, too. Henry could see a couple of them, and could see their apprehensive faces. The ironmongery next to the pulpit made quite a pile. A couple of other men brought up helmets and swords and laid them by the stack.

"We don't need these things," Henry said earnestly. "By God and all the saints, we don't, not among ourselves. Oh, we ought to have them so we can make a better fight if more robbers from across the sea try to take away what isn't theirs to take, but we should never use them to lord it over each other. Never!" He slammed his fist down on the pulpit.

He thought Richard first began to clap. That didn't surprise Henry Radcliffe; his brother had never wanted anyone lording it over him. What did surprise Henry was the way everyone else in the church joined Richard, till the applause came back in waves from the vaulted ceiling and till a bat, sleeping up there in the rafters, was frightened awake and fled squeaking out into the unaccustomed day.

Slowly, like a storm at sea, the clapping ebbed. Hearing it let Henry feel more confident continuing, "The men who gave up their armor and weapons have taken oath that they will not trouble us again. As long as they hold to their promise, let them be treated like any other men of New Hastings. They loyally served their master, the Earl of Warwick. Now that he is gone, they will loyally serve the settlement."

He got more applause-not so much as he had before, but enough to show that the settlers agreed with him…and enough to show the surviving soldiers that they wouldn't be killed out of hand. Relief wreathed their features when they realized that. Henry thought they were safe enough, as long as they didn't stir up trouble. That would have to do.

"Times will change," he said. "We saw that when Warwick came. We'll see it again-we will, and our children, and our children's children, and down through the generations to the end of days. As long as we try, though, and as long as God helps, we can ride out all the storms the way we rode out this one."

This time, Bishop John led the clapping. As applause filled the church once more, the bishop spoke to Henry in a low voice: "A good thing you're a secular man, or you'd steal my see from me."

"I don't want it, your Grace," Henry answered. "I just want to be able to get on with my life." I sound like Richard, he thought.

"For now, you have that. You could have Atlantis, I think, if you wanted it," John said.

"I don't," Henry said again. "Atlantis can go on however it pleases, and that will suit me fine. I wonder what sort of town New Hastings will be in a couple of hundred years." He looked to the west. "I wonder what sort of town Avalon will be by then…"