Opening Atlantis

IX

E dward Radcliffe was coming to dread a knock on the door. He never had before, not in all the years since coming to Atlantis. In that stretch of time, a knock on the door meant a friend had come to call. Now a knock was much too likely to be trouble calling.

This particular knock on the door came just before supper.

Chicken and turnips and parsnips and cabbage bubbled in a pot, filling the house with savory fragrance and making Edward's stomach rumble. He said something unchristian when a fist thudded against the planks of the door.

"Tell whoever it is to go away," Nell said.

"Nothing I'd like better." But when Edward went to the door, he found that his visitors were not likely to take no for an answer.

They were five of Richard Neville's biggest, roughest bravos, all of them armored, all of them with drawn swords except for one who carried a crossbow instead. "Well, well!" Edward said. "What's all this about?"

The soldiers with the swords hefted them. The fellow with the crossbow aimed it at Radcliffe's chest. The biggest ruffian growled, "His Lordship wants to see you. And I mean right away."

"Does he?" Edward said mildly. All the soldiers nodded. Edward asked, "Suppose I don't care to see him right away?"

"That would be too bad-for you," the trooper answered. "And he would still see what was left of you."

There was a line between bravery and stupidity. Edward Radcliffe knew which side of the line defying five young, tough, armored men lay on. "Well, supper will just have to wait in that case, won't it?" he said.

"Smartest notion you've had in a long time, Granddad," the big soldier agreed. "Now get moving, before he gets sick of waiting."

"I'm coming." Edward raised his voice to call out to Nell: "His Lordship has something to talk about with me." She squawked in dismay. He was dismayed, too, but he didn't think squawking would do any good. He nodded to Warwick's men. "Lead on. I'm honored to have such a fine escort."

They snorted, almost in unison. "We aren't doing it for your honor, old man," the big soldier said. "We're doing it for his."

"Really?" Edward said, as if that hadn't occurred to him. He didn't think pushing them any further was a good idea. He stepped over the threshold and into the street.

He remembered when New Hastings literally hadn't been there. Now it could have been any other English seaside town-if you didn't notice the redwood timber, and if you didn't raise your eyes past the fields to the dark woods that didn't lie far away.

Guards stood in front of the house Neville had appropriated: the biggest one in town. They carried spears taller than they were. The sharp edges of the spearpoints glittered blood-red in the fading light. "So he came, did he?" one of the guards said. "How about that?"

"He came, all right," the crossbowman answered. "See? He's not so dumb as he looks."

"Couldn't prove it by me," the guard said. "Take him on in, then. His Lordship'll let him know what's what."

"Right." The crossbowman gave Edward a little shove. "You heard Peter. Go on in."

"Thank you so much," Edward said. The fellow with the crossbow smirked. Plainly, he didn't recognize irony when he heard it. Too late, Edward realized that might be good luck; had the archer recognized it, he might have made him sorry.

Inside, the Earl of Warwick sat in a chair with a back. That emphasized his noble blood; like most people, Radcliffe had only stools in his house. "Lucy!" Warwick called. "Fetch my guest something to drink!"

"Yes, your Lordship." Lucy Fenner hurried in from the kitchen. The silk gown she wore must have come from England with the exiled earl. It bared too much of her, and clung too tightly to what it didn't display. She lowered her eyes to the ground, and scurried away as soon as she'd set a mug in Edward's hand.

He raised an eyebrow even before he tasted it. The rich bouquet told him what it was. "Did the wine come from England, Lord?" he asked.

Warwick shook his head. "I took it in trade from the Bretons," he replied. "It's horsepiss alongside what a proper vintner could do, mind, but any wine is better than none."

Edward hadn't known the settlers Francois Kersauzon had brought to Atlantis were finally turning out enough wine to turn some loose. "I thank you for your kindness," he said, and surprised himself by more or less meaning it. "Been a good many years since I've drunk anything but beer and ale and barrel-tree sap."

"I deserve better," Warwick said simply. "The one trouble is, getting what I want isn't always cheap."

"Sorry to hear that, your Lordship." As long as the earl was giving him wine, Edward would sound sympathetic.

He thought so, anyhow, till Warwick continued, "Since it isn't, I am going to have to take…certain measures, I suppose you would say."

Maybe the exiled noble hoped the wine would fuzz Edward's wits so he'd blithely accept anything he heard. If that was what Warwick had in mind, he was doomed to disappointment. "What kind of measures, sir?" Radcliffe asked. He still sounded polite, but he was sure he also sounded wary. And with reason, for he was.

Warwick sent him a sour stare. Yes, the noble had wanted him fuddled, all right. Well, no matter what Warwick wanted, he had what he had. He needed only a handful of heartbeats to see as much. "I shall have to start levying a tax on the settlers here," he said regretfully, as if it were Edward's fault that he'd been reduced to such measures.

"A tax?" Edward blurted. He could have sounded no more appalled if Richard Neville had denied that the Son and Holy Ghost were proper Persons of the Trinity. "You can't do that!"

One of the bully boys who'd fetched him hither growled like a dog on a chain. The Earl of Warwick raised a languid-seeming hand, and the soldier fell silent. He still glared in Edward's direction, though, and his knuckles whitened as his hand clutched the hilt of his sword.

"You are a bold man, Radcliffe-a bold man or a fool," Warwick said. "How dare you tell me what I may and may not do? I suggest you think carefully before you answer. Think very carefully, in fact."

"Lord, I could think from now till doomsday and not think you had the right to tax me," Edward said. "I am sorry if my being so plain offends you, but that's the truth. Why, in England the king himself has to ask leave of Parliament before he taxes his people."

Richard Neville's mouth tightened. "I will thank you not to speak of the king in my presence. If you value your neck, Radcliffe, you will honor my-request."

"I don't know if I can, sir, not while we're talking about taxes," Edward said. "How do you claim a power here that he doesn't claim in England?"

"How? Simple." The Earl of Warwick drew from his belt a dagger whose hilt was ornamented with gold wire and began cleaning his nails with the point. "This miserable, godforsaken place isn't England. It's bloody Atlantis, and you people here never tire of telling me so."

"But we are Englishmen, Lord. We have the rights of Englishmen." Till that moment, Edward's main concern had been making sure that England paid no attention to Atlantis. Parliament might have decided to levy taxes here, too, and to whom could he have appealed if it did? To no one at all, as he knew too well.

Warwick eyed him like a cat watching a mouse it was playing with but hadn't yet decided to kill. "You claim those rights when you feel like it. Otherwise, you're glad England lies across the sundering sea."

That arrow quivered in the center of the target. Edward couldn't, and wouldn't, admit as much. He took a deep breath. "You are not our king, Lord. You have not got the right to do this."

Warwick went on cleaning his fingernails. The dagger was slim, pointed, and sharp-quite a bit like him. "I have the might to do it, sirrah, as you will learn to your sorrow if you prove lunatic enough to challenge me."

"We are Englishmen, Lord," Edward Radcliffe repeated stubbornly. "You have no right to steal from us this way-and that is what it is, stealing. If you try to take what is ours, we will appeal to his Majesty."

Even as he said the words, he wondered whether that was a good idea. The Earl of Warwick, with a small force of soldiers behind him, was an annoyance, and no small one. But the King of England could call on the whole strength of the island if he chose-and if he wasn't caught up in the coils of civil war. He might prove a more dangerous master than any local lord.

Or he might not, if the local lord made as much trouble as this one was doing.

The threat didn't seem to worry Warwick. He neither flinched nor paled. Nor did he raise his voice as he said, "I will kill every one of you if you try." He was just stating a fact; he might as well have said, Red-crested eagles will kill honkers if they can.

If I am a honker, by God, I can honk all the way across the ocean, Edward thought. "Meaning no disrespect, Lord, but that is a silly thing to say," he replied.

"Silly, is it?" That roused the noble's ire. "Explain yourself, and quickly-you are talking for your life."

"We're fishermen, for heaven's sake," Edward answered. "Cod are what brought us to Atlantis in the first place. We have lots of boats, and they can sail across the Atlantic. How do you propose to stop them all?"

Richard Neville's jaw dropped. Edward almost laughed in his face. The only thing that stopped him was the fear that he would never leave this room alive if he did. The Earl of Warwick plainly was a calculating man; you didn't get the name Kingmaker if you couldn't see past the end of your nose. But Warwick hadn't seen something here-his astonishment and dismay showed as much.

"You!" he said thickly. "I'll hold you to blame if boats go out and don't come back."

"Then bring Bishop John here now so he can shrive me," Edward said. "Boats go out all the damned time. They stay away a long time, too. They have to-otherwise, we'd go hungry. How will you know if one's gone to England and not just to the fishing banks? You won't, not till it's too late for you."

By the way Warwick's jaw worked, he might have been gnawing on a piece of meat that proved tougher than he'd expected. "Get out," he told Edward. "Just-get out. But if you think you can stop me from levying taxes when I have a mind to, you'd best think again."

"You will do what you think best, your Lordship," Radcliffe said. And so will we. He didn't say that out loud. Maybe Warwick would figure it out for himself. Or maybe it too would come as a surprise to him. If it did-too bad.

"Taxes?" Richard Radcliffe said when his brother came out to Bredestown to give him the news. To his embarrassment, surprise made his voice break like a youth's.

"That's right," Henry said grimly. "He thinks he's strong enough to squeeze them out of us."

"I almost hope he's right," Richard said.

Henry dug a finger into one ear. "Did I hear that?"

"Damned if you didn't. If Warwick thinks he can have soldiers prowling all over the settlement, and if he thinks he can take away what he didn't earn, well, plenty of people will want to go somewhere else, and I'll be glad to take 'em there."

"Wouldn't you rather fight him, so we make sure something like this can never happen again?" Henry asked.

"I'll do that if I have to," Richard answered. "But packing up and leaving is even easier. Atlantis is a big place. If we settle somewhere else, nobody'll come after us for years."

"No doubt," Henry said. "And if Warwick wins here in the meantime, the tax collector will be the one who does."

Richard winced. That, unfortunately, was all too likely to be so. "Well, what do you want me to do?" he asked.

"Stand with the rest of us. Stand, I say. Don't run," Henry told him. "I know you'd sooner go off into the wilderness all alone and look at the birds and the frogs and the snakes. We've got our own snake here, and we need to slay him."

"A bowman who knows his business could do that for us," Richard said. "I will if you want me to. Warwick can't hide in his house the whole day through."

But Henry shook his head. "He doesn't come out without bodyguards. Too likely they'd run down whoever shot him. And even if they didn't, no one knows what the soldiers would do if he got killed. They might try slaughtering everyone in sight to avenge him."

"They'd seal their own fate if they did," Richard pointed out.

"Which is true. And which might not have anything to do with anything-chances are it doesn't. Father says Warwick is a man who thinks past the moment. Not many folk bother. From what I know of soldiers, they mostly don't. Or will you tell me different?"

"Well, no," Richard said, much as he would have liked to say yes. "Are we going to fight Warwick, then?"

"Unless he pulls in his horns, we are," his brother said.

"Slim odds of that."

"Mighty slim."

A longbow hung on the wall next to the fireplace. Richard had brought the bow from England. Nothing the bowyers had found here measured up to yew. They made good enough bows. He'd brought a fine one. A longbow had almost the range of a crossbow, and could shoot many times faster. The only problem was, a longbow needed constant practice and a crossbow didn't.

"I wish we had hand cannon, not just the swivels on the Rose," Richard said. "Warwick's bully boys would think twice before they bothered us if we did."

"They'd better think twice anyway," Henry said.

"I'm sure we can beat them if we gather our strength together," Richard said. "But will we really do that?"

"If Warwick is fool enough to keep trying to tax us, we will," Henry answered.

"Do you know something? I think you may be right," Richard said.

Henry beamed at him. "We never agree about anything," he said. "If we both feel the same way about this-"

Richard cut him off. "It isn't a sign that we're bound to be right. It only means Warwick is bound to be wrong."

"That will do well enough," Henry said. "Better than well enough, in fact."

Edward Radcliffe didn't suppose he should have been surprised when the Earl of Warwick's men pounded on his door again early one chilly morning. Whether he should have been or not, he was. He said something that made Nell cluck reproachfully. Then he said something stronger than that.

The pounding didn't stop. "Open up, you old fool!" one of Warwick's bully boys bawled. "We know you're in there-where the devil else would you be?"

"Time to pay what you owe," another soldier added.

What Edward said then made Nell frown, not for the blasphemy but from fear of the soldiers outside. "Don't make them angry," she told him. "Say what you will, this isn't worth getting killed over."

He looked at her. "I'm afraid you're wrong," he said. "If Warwick thinks he can rob New Hastings, he'd best think again. The folk here will stand up to him. Maybe it should start with me. I've lived a full life. What have I got to look forward to? Slowness and sickness-not much more."

Nell grabbed his arm. "Don't talk like a fool. Slaying yourself is a mortal sin, and what else would you be doing if you tried to fight those-those…" She stopped. Whatever she wanted to say, it had to be hotter than the endearments that had burst from Edward's lips a moment before.

Bang! Bang! Bang! "You'd bloody well better open up in there, or somebody'll close your cursed coffin for you!" Warwick's bravo yelled. "This is your last chance, and you ought to thank us for it."

With a sigh, Edward walked to the door and unbarred it. One of the soldiers out there held a torch. He hadn't been kidding. But he dropped it in the mud of the walkway. It hissed and sizzled and went out. "You want something of me?" Edward inquired, his voice deceptively mild.

"Too bloody right we do," a soldier said. Radcliffe recognized him as one of the earl's sergeants. He had a list of what his overlord required. "You are assessed at two pounds, seven shillings, ninepence ha'penny. Give us the coin and we'll be on our way."

This was robbery even more naked and raw than Edward had looked for. "You must know I have not got it," he said. Oh, he'd buried some money in a safe place, but not that much. He didn't think anyone in New Hastings had that much ready cash. Trade on this side of the Atlantic was mostly barter. Nobody here needed much in the way of actual silver.

He wondered whether Warwick's men would kill him on the spot for refusing. But the sergeant seemed unfazed. Referring to his list again, he said, "His Lordship declares the following valuations for taxes collected in kind. One horse is to be reckoned at one pound. One cow is to be reckoned at fifteen shillings. One sheep or goat is to be reckoned at ten. One pig is to be reckoned at eight. One salted honker carcass is to be reckoned at four. One goose is to be reckoned at two. One duck is to be reckoned at one and sixpence. One hen is to be reckoned at one shilling. Salt cod is to be reckoned at a shilling for five pounds' weight."

"His Lordship has it all ciphered out, doesn't he?" Edward said. The values Warwick set on beasts weren't even unfair-or they wouldn't have been back in England, where there were so many more animals to take. That was clever of the nobleman-people couldn't say he was cheating them by cheapening their goods.

He was cheating them by taxing them at all, but that was a different story.

The sergeant nodded seriously. "Too right he does, friend. We'll take what we need to take to pay your tax bill, and not a bit more. You can watch whilst we do it."

"Honest thieves, you are," Edward said, only a little irony in his voice.

"That's us." The sergeant nodded once more. "Anybody who doesn't fancy his tax bill or the way we collect it, he's welcome to complain to the earl."

"Oh, that will do a lot of good," Edward said.

"Aye, belike." Warwick's sergeant chuckled-he knew how much good it was likely to do. He turned to the common soldiers. "Paul! Matt! John! Go to the barn and take what's due his Lordship."

"Right, Sergeant!" they chorused. It was nowhere close to right, but they neither knew nor cared about that. Off to the barn they went. They emerged with enough livestock to square Edward's scot…by their reckoning, anyhow.

"You're nothing but thieves!" Edward called to them from the path that led to the street. Nell called them something much less complimentary than that. They just laughed.

They laughed, that is, till someone hiding behind a squat barrel tree fifty yards away also shouted, "Thieves!" and let fly with a longbow. The arrow thrummed through the air and buried itself with a meaty chunk! in the middle of the sergeant's chest. He stood there staring at it for what seemed a very long time. When he opened his mouth to say something, only blood burst from between his lips. His knees buckled. He fell to the ground, where he kicked a few times and lay still.

The three common soldiers gaped, as astonished as the sergeant had been. Another arrow hissed toward them. It missed by the breadth of a hair, and slammed into a sheep's rump. The animal bawled in pain and bolted, more blood dripping in the dirt.

That seemed to snap the soldiers from their stunned spell. Two of them rushed toward the barrel tree. That was brave. If the archer kept his head, he could slaughter them before they got close enough to hurt him. They'd just seen that their byrnies weren't proof against his shafts, not at close range.

But he must have been as caught up in the madness of the moment as everyone else, for his next shot flew between the two of them. He had no time for another one-all he could do was run away. Run he did, with the armored men pounding after him but losing ground at every stride.

"Is that Richard?" Nell hissed to Edward. "If God is kind, you'll tell me that isn't Richard."

Edward could tell her nothing of the sort, for he also feared it was their younger son. If Warwick's troopers recognized him, too, that would bring trouble down on all the Radcliffes' heads.

But trouble was coming faster than recognizing Richard would bring it. The third soldier, the one who hadn't gone after the archer, stalked back towards Edward and Nell. He swung his sword up to slash with it. Rage twisting his face, he shouted, "You knew that murdering bugger lay in wait for us!"

"No," Edward said.

"Liar!" the man cried, and broke into a heavy trot.

"Run!" Edward told Nell. When she didn't, he shoved her toward the farmhouse. He looked around for a weapon then, or for anything that would let him defend himself. He snatched up an axe handle-no axehead attached, worse luck. "You've got me wrong," he told the soldier, who was now very close.

"Save your lies for the devils in hell-that's where you're going, all right," the soldier said, and aimed a cut at Edward that should have taken his head off.

Somehow, he turned it with the axe handle. Nell screamed like a scalded cat. Warwick's man swore. Absurdly, Edward wasted a moment wondering what good telling lies to devils would do. Wouldn't they know them when they heard them?

The soldier slashed again. Edward got the axe handle between himself and the blade once more, but it flew from his fingers. He stared at his hands as if they'd betrayed him-and so they had. That never would have happened twenty years earlier, or even ten.

But it had happened now, and he would have to live with it-though not for very long. "So long, old man!" the trooper shouted. He slashed once more. This time, the sword bit. Edward howled.

Next thing he knew, he was on the ground, with Warwick's soldier hacking at him as if he were a badly butchered sow. Nell grabbed the man's arm, but he knocked her aside. He swung up the sword again. It fell-right on Edward's neck.

So died the first Englishman to set foot on Atlantis, the founder of the first English settlement in the new land, not far from where the settlement began. It was in the year 1470, the sixty-ninth year of Edward Radcliffe's age, the tenth year of the reign of King Edward IV in England, and around New Hastings still the first year of the reign of Richard Neville, the Earl of Warwick. And the manner of his passing helped determine the Englishmen in those parts that Warwick's reign should reach no further.

"Like a dog!" Henry Radcliffe raged. "They cut him down like a dog on his own farm! I'll garter myself with Warwick's guts, the Devil damn me black if I don't."

"I never thought they would go after him," his brother said. "My idea was, I'd either kill them all or lead them a merry chase." His mouth twisted. "I didn't do either, not well enough."

"No, you didn't," Henry agreed. "And now we're all paying the price for it."

He and Richard crouched in the woods, somewhere west of Bredestown. They'd got their families away before Warwick's men could swoop down on them. Richard seemed utterly at home under the redwoods. He made little shelters of branches and twigs and bark, and by all appearances was as content in one of them as he would have been in front of his own hearth. He was as happy to eat honkers and fiddlehead ferns as he would have been with white bread and butter and fat mutton.

"We shouldn't pay the price. Warwick and his men should," Richard said.

"Well, yes. They should," Henry said. "The trouble is, they aren't. We're out here with the honkers and the oil thrushes and the cucumber slugs."

"Nothing wrong with them," Richard said.

"Nothing wrong with them, no," Henry replied. "But the bloody Earl of bloody Warwick, the man who bloody murdered our father, he's sleeping in a bloody soft bed back in New Hastings, and swiving Lucy Fenner in it whenever that strikes his fancy. And there's something bloody wrong with that."

"Oh, yes. There is," Richard said quietly. "And I aim to do something about it."

"You? By yourself?" Henry had trouble hiding his disbelief. "If not for you-" He broke off.

"If not for me, Father would still be alive. That's what you were going to say, isn't it?" Richard demanded. Henry might not have wanted to say it, but he nodded. Richard scowled at him. "Maybe you're right and maybe you're wrong, and maybe I'll have somewhat to say to you about that when this mess with Warwick is over. But that can wait-that has to wait. For now, I'll just ask you this: do you think Father would have wanted to live in a place where a noble could steal his beasts because the bastard called it taking taxes?"

"Well, no, but-"

"But me no buts," Richard broke in. "As soon as bloody Warwick tries to lift anyone else's chattels, he'll have a bigger rising on his hands-this is tinder in dry grass, whether he knows it or not. And if you think I can't do anything about him by myself-well, watch me, big brother. Just bloody watch me."

He slipped east, toward the seashore, toward the settlements, as the sun set that night. Henry couldn't watch him after that, because he moved with a swift, silent assurance the sailor had no hope of matching. Richard knew Henry scorned his trips through the woods. Henry was a seaman to his marrow, as their father had been. For him, dry land was a necessary nuisance.

Richard was different. Richard could slip through the woods so quietly, even the mouse-sized katydids went on chirping. Killing honkers was easy, but killing them before they knew you were there was anything but. Richard could do that. He thought he could also kill men before they knew he was there. He looked forward to it, in fact.

A nearly full moon gave him all the light he needed. Before long, he came to the camp Warwick's troopers had made just inside the forest. Several loudly unhappy men sat around a fire. "How are we supposed to catch those buggers?" one of them grumbled. "They could be anywhere by now."

"Too right they could," another soldier agreed. "Damn trees go on forever."

"We'll beat the bushes for a while, and then we'll go and tell his Lordship we had no luck," a third man said. "What else can we do?"

They all nodded. They were luckier than they dreamt. Richard Radcliffe could have potted a couple of them as easily as made no difference. But he had his heart set on harder game, more dangerous game. He went on. The foul-mouthed soldiers never knew he passed them over.

Things got harder when he came into settled country, but not much. Few people were out and about at night. Dogs barked, but never for long-he carried gobbets of honker meat to make them lose interest in him. One farmer swore at his hound for raising a ruckus. Otherwise, the night stayed still. Richard slid past Bredestown and down along the riverbank toward New Hastings.

Torches blazed on poles thrust into the ground around the house Warwick had taken for his own. Richard Radcliffe smiled a predatory smile. Warwick's men would have done better to leave it dark. That would have made it a tougher target. The light the torches threw didn't reach anywhere close to the edge of bowshot. And standing in that light blinded the sentries to whatever might be going on beyond its reach.

One of those sentries yawned. He said something to the man standing beside him. They both laughed. Richard took his place behind a pear tree whose trunk had grown man-thick in the fifteen years or so since it was planted. He strung the bow and fitted the leather wristguard to his left hand. Then, in one smooth motion, he fitted a shaft to the bowstring, drew, and let fly.

The arrow caught the soldier who'd yawned a few inches above his navel-the bright torchlight made aiming easier, too. The trooper did what any suddenly wounded man would do: he screamed and clutched at himself. As he crumpled, his friend stooped to give what help he could. Richard's second arrow punched through the man's neck. He let out a gurgling wail and fell beside the other guard.

Richard had a third shaft nocked and waiting. If the cries outside didn't bring Warwick out, what would? And when the noble showed himself…

But he didn't. Another soldier opened the door to see what had happened. Richard let fly at him, too. He must have had uncommonly quick reactions, for he jerked the door shut an instant before the arrow slammed into it. The shaft stood thrilling in the redwood planks.

If Richard had had some tow and a source of flame, he could have burnt the house with fire arrows. I should have thought of that, flashed through his mind. Remembering after the fact, sadly, was easier than getting the idea ahead of time.

He heard the back door open and shut. He couldn't see back there from where he crouched. Men spoke to one another in low voices. He couldn't catch what they were saying, but he didn't need to be Alexander the Great to figure it out.

Before long, he could hear boots thumping on the ground. He'd lost some of his night vision staring toward the torches. He couldn't see what Warwick's men-or maybe Warwick and his men-were doing. Again, though, he didn't need to be much of a general to know. They would work toward him, wait till he did something to show himself, and then close with him and finish him with swords and spears.

It was as good a plan as they could make under the circumstances. But it would work only if he waited around and let them get that close. That didn't look like the best thing he could do. The best thing he could do looked like disappearing now. So he did.

He had practice moving quietly. Maybe he wasn't quite quiet enough, or maybe one of them made a better woodsman than the rest. "There he goes, dammit!" somebody behind him called. "After him! He's heading west."

"No need to chase him," another voice said. This one was cold and calculating and deadly as a pitfall trap with a bottom full of upthrusting spears. If it wasn't the Earl of Warwick's voice, Richard would have been mightily surprised. It went on, "Make for the western edge of the cleared land beyond Bredestown, quick as you can. If you hurry, you can get there before him and keep him from sneaking into the woods."

Richard nodded to himself. Yes, that almost had to be Warwick. He thought fast, and he thought straight. They might be trouble if they interposed themselves between him and safety. They would be more trouble if he couldn't get back into the woods before daybreak, but he thought he could. Bredestown didn't lie that far upriver from New Hastings. Even after all these years, not much of Atlantis was settled.

He had to get away now. He took advantage of every bush and every copse of trees. Before long, his eyes adapted to the moonlight again, and he could see farther and more plainly. But Warwick's men would have the same edge, worse luck.

Barking dogs told where they were, or where they might be. No dog barked around Richard for long. He still had plenty of his meaty bribes left. Those convinced the hounds of New Hastings he was a splendid fellow.

Would Warwick have the wit to send someone into the woods to alert the unhappy men who'd gone after the younger Radcliffes? Richard's lips skinned back from his teeth in a savage grin. If one of the noble's men didn't warn them he was around, he'd let them know himself.

He didn't go up the Brede, as he'd come down it. That was the shortest way back to the wild country, which also made it the way Warwick's men were likeliest to take. All right-they were welcome to it. As long as he got into the trees before the sun rose, he was fine. He could lie up in a fern thicket and stay safe while they tramped by not ten feet from him.

He had to cross a meadow to get to the wild wood. Cows turned their heads to stare at him: people didn't belong out here at this time of night. Too right they don't, he thought. But he made it back among the pines and redwoods and ferns, back to the cool dampness of the forest, back to the spicy scents that seemed as good to him as the odor of baking bread and better by far than the smells of the livestock brought here from England.

The smell of burning wood led him to the fire Warwick's troopers had set to warm themselves. It had died into embers now. They lay rolled in blankets, all but one who yawned and nodded and hit himself in the thigh with his fist to stay awake. Warwick hadn't thought to warn them after all. He might be a good general, but he didn't remember everything.

Richard strung his bow. He shot the sentry first. He'd hoped for a clean, quiet kill, but the man let out a dreadful shriek when the arrow tore into his belly. The other soldiers sprang awake, grabbing for their weapons. Richard shot two of them, too, then slipped away.

He'd hurt Warwick tonight. He'd hurt him badly, but he hadn't killed him. Warwick was a man who would take a deal of killing.