The Unfinished Land

The Scout’s Tale

AS EVENING FELL, Maggie carried her lantern under the covered walkway, ignoring the painted beams every twenty feet, as she always did. Still, scalp tingling, she glanced up and saw several with sailing ships, and two illustrating drakes and their offshore breeding rocks. One showed glistening shadows fighting with armored men.

Maggie picked up her pace.

The world outside their isle had been in obvious turmoil for over a thousand years, with pilgrims, refugees, sailors, and wanderers seeking new lands and the hope of new lives, as well as new histories. Zodiako had once been half its present size, with a quarter the population. In the last century, as measured so imperfectly here, many hundreds had arrived on the southwestern shore and found their way into Maggie’s town, and not just fishermen but freebooters—some English, some Portuguese, a few Dutch. Earlier there had been Norse and Danish voyagers—her people—and earlier still, brown, sun-kissed folk from the far Pacific and Asia, who had soon built great canoes and fled to other islands in the ring of Tir Na Nog, islands more friendly to their needs.

But most of those visitors had arrived before Maggie’s time, and according to those who knew and had lived here even then, the migrations had not been nearly so large and frequent. Now, apparently, hundreds of explorers, unsure of whether their motivation was discovery or wealth, were finding ways around the unmapped regions of the greater world, and arriving more and more often on their isle’s shores by the dozens of vessels every year.

The Eaters disposed of most of them, and since these new arrivals were not protected, and were not explicitly part of Hel’s pact, there was nothing the townspeople could do.

At the end of the covered walkway, the parliament building, made of shaped and cut lava, rose ten yards above a green quadrangle dotted with trees brought from other lands. Trees native to this isle were not much suited to servitude or town life, or any sort of domestication. While trees from the lively woods might not just walk away, as some thought, when early builders had tried to make use of them, before they were cut down, they often died of themselves and took on unpleasant forms, as if they had once been people—and who knew? A thousand years or more before, some of the townspeople might have become trees, and that could happen again, anytime… Who could judge? Crafters could imagine anything.

Stepping up to a side entrance, a thick oaken gate mounted in the stone wall, she took a steel key out of the satchel. She inserted it into a great black lock and opened the gate to a hall that ended on steps that led up to the nave of the temple and another locked door that went left to her room in a far basement corner, where drakish matters were discussed. Her chief scout, Anutha, gone for days now, had her own key and had entered a short time earlier—no doubt after rounds at the smallest of the town’s three taverns. Maggie could hear her singing in rugged sweet tones, words she did not quite understand, perhaps in Shelta or Zigrany, languages she knew Anutha was familiar with from her contacts with Travelers.

She opened the door and swung it wide. Anutha sat on a bench behind Maggie’s hewn desk. The scout was thin, in her middle years, but very strong and fit, with short-cut gray hair. Her regular garb was a jerkin and pants of black and brown leather, with shiny gray nymph-shell greaves. She looked up as the door opened, eyes both bleary and weary.

“Good life, Anutha,” Maggie greeted.

“Back to you, doubled,” the scout said.

“What report?” Even three paces away, Maggie could smell the mead on the scout’s breath, like a beehive souring in the rain. Now was not the best time to hand her Kule’s jug. She needed a coherent report. Maggie knew this rugged, dedicated woman had the best eyes of any, but she always looked tired, as if the world’s sights had long since worn down her enthusiasm.

“You have brought something for me, no? Or am I too drunk already? Give it here… please.”

Maggie reluctantly opened her bag and handed her Kule’s jug. Anutha popped the cork, and took a long swig, followed by a shrug and a grimace. She let her chin drop, belched, and raised a hand. “Sorry.”

Maggie pulled up another bench and sat across from her. “Visitors?”

Anutha nodded. “Dangerously many, and well armed, but they have already attracted Hel’s defenses.”

“Eaters?”

“Both from the Ravine and the wastes south of Agni Most Foul. Not the most prosperous nor honest clan, but not servants to the Ostmen, either.”

The Ostmen was an old name for those who now followed the Sister Queens on the far eastern shore.

“The Ravine dwellers passed through town late last night,” Maggie said. “They stabled their horses here. Some had recently been to the wastes. A young boy was injured.”

“I noticed folks were nervous,” Anutha said, and belched again. “Or guilty. Why were Eaters visiting the wastes? Perhaps they were actually going to the Crafter cities. I wonder what business would call them there?”

Maggie shook her head. “What drew them to the beach?” she asked.

“Spaniards in a ship of war, a big one, badly mauled. Some sort of great sea battle, and recent, too.”

“Sailors?”

“And soldiers. They seemed to have been long at sea before being caught in the gyre. Smelled shitty, tired, many wounded but still full of fight. Two leaders with cruel bearing—ambitious. One a highborn son of privilege, th’other a fat seagoer used to running ships.”

“A general of war and an admiral,” Maggie said.

Anutha took another pull from the jug and looked at her with heavy-lidded eyes. “Also an old man and a half-grown English boy. They are with your blunters. No sign they have finished their work on the drakes, I am afraid.”

“Then wild drakes might make an appearance soon.”

Anutha raised the bottle and took another swallow.

“How many paired defenders have we on watch?” Maggie asked.

“Seven for the town. Among the blunters, only two have met their drakes.”

Maggie clapped her hand on her knee. “The Crafters’ plan spins on. I have heard that in the southern waters, a virgin island queen fights a southern king—her brother-in-law, if rumors lead to truth.” This Maggie had heard from an English sailor five years ago. That sailor had not followed town’s ritual, had refused the town’s hospitality, had tried to build a boat—and had been adopted by an unpacted Eater. The sailor had faded over a few days, losing all his time; nothing she could do against such foolish will. But he had wanted to get home. And now he was in that windowless house where all that are human will dwell soon enough.

“You have sources beyond the island,” Anutha said, after another ripe belch. “Why do you need me?”

“Sailors arrive with tales. Some survive, for a time,” Maggie said. “But you are more dependable. Usually.”

The scout looked woozily around the small room. “They should all just get married and make babies. Stories end happier that way.”

“It would seem Elizabeth, a virgin queen, is unsuited to making babies,” Maggie said. “Besides, her half sister married the southern king. No babies, and it did not end well.”

“As we have heard,” Anutha said. “Until I saw an opening, I kept to the lively woods, away from the Spanish.”

“And the Eaters?”

“The ones from the Ravine arrived the first night, right after a wild drake snatched up a dog.”

Maggie closed her eyes.

“Those from the Ravine gathered quite a few years, I think. But some on the beach were protected. An Eater wench of only a few centuries approached the young boy. Upon Calybo’s orders, she seemed to study and claim him.” Anutha looked hard at Maggie. “Calybo was there. He favored the old man.”

“You recognized the old man?”

Anutha nodded. “I say, that first night, he could have been a faded, wizened copy of Widsith.”

Maggie’s interest rose. Calybo was rarely seen along these shores, but had always attended to Widsith when the Pilgrim returned…

“That interests you,” Anutha said.

Maggie did not answer, but her face betrayed her.

Anutha leaned back and lifted Kule’s jug. “If it is Widsith… Hath he betrayed the island? Was it he guided the Spanish to the gyre?”

“Did he seem favored by the general or the master?”

“No. He was kept in a cage, along with the boy. Dana and the blunters were clapped in another cage. Shall we tell Maeve?”

Soon they would have to bring the old man and the boy to Maeve for confirmation. And if the Pilgrim had returned, he would very likely find favor from Calybo and Guldreth, and the Travelers would carry his reports to the Crafters. What was the boy to him? To anybody on the island? Maggie tried to puzzle out all the implications. “Not until we are certain.”

“Am I to go out there again?”

“Of course,” Maggie said.

“To fetch the blunters.”

“To help them break free. Wild drakes will be a danger until they are all back at their labors.”

Anutha lifted her short sword, a Roman sword, she proudly claimed. The scout’s eyes glittered. “May I kill Spaniards, with town’s blessing?” Anutha’s mother and father had been Jews, persecuted by a Spanish queen, how long ago, Maggie was not sure—time not running the same outside the island. But many decades. “Long have they hated such as I. I would do it with pleasure.”

Maggie crossed herself. It was said the Crafters could not see you for minutes after you paid homage to the Lord. Whether she believed that or not, she did not want to be seen allowing or commanding murder. “Kill only in defense,” she instructed. “And raise no alarms. We are still vulnerable.”

“War’s coming soon whatever we do,” Anutha said. “I am sure the Sister Queens will find use for men of cruel bearing, if the Spanish survive the Eaters—and if they are allowed to move east.”

“Who can predict the unwinding of Crafter tales?” In all her years, Maggie had never clearly anticipated when Crafters might feel the need to unleash strife and violence, but it was said that several of the most powerful paid particular attention to murder and war. It brought out their coldness and fury in a way all in Zodiako might soon feel. The Sister Queens’ long war in the east against King Annwyn, and his defeat, now putting their conquests at a pause, was rich with story and incident, it being the amusement of both Queens and Crafters to complicate island lives with violence and change.

“Well, it is certain that the Travelers have been uneasy,” Anutha said. “Many trods wither and fade. And year after year, less word from the Crafter cities.”

The Sister Queens held sway over regions that lay a thousand miles from Zodiako, if one followed the coast—the only way a sane human would go, unless they were guided by Travelers. Travelers on any of the islands that made up the polar ring of Tir Na Nog could draw their own roads, straight or devious, using the talents and permissions bestowed on them by the Crafters in payment for their words and songlines.

Anutha was right. They both could feel it. A simple life was a sweet life. Life in Zodiako had been sweet, she surmised, for far too long. Or something else was happening. That tingling in her scalp, while she was passing under the painted beams…

Maggie, with failing legs, a dead husband, and three foolish children, dreaded such prospects—but looked forward to tales of the outer world, perhaps to new books. She longed to fill her life with books! Only four had come her way in the last ten seasons.

So perhaps she wished for the same things.

Anutha handed back the jug and rose awkwardly from the chair. “No time for rest,” she said.

“Never again,” Maggie said under her breath as the scout departed, with a slight weave in her step. Maggie knew she would be sober by the edge of the village. She closed the door, then, at the sounds of shouting, swung it wide. Making her way outside the great stone building, she watched men and women running, and stopped a young man with a scythe to ask why.

“Men with swords!” he cried. “Swords and guns!”