Read A Different Flesh Online

Authors: Harry Turtledove

A Different Flesh (3 page)

BOOK: A Different Flesh
12.69Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

A robin twittered among the leaves. So the colonists named the bird, at any rate, but it was not the redbreast of England. It was big and fat and stupid, its underparts the color of brick, not fire. It was, however, easy to kill, and quite tasty.

There were other sounds in the woods, too. Somewhere, far off, Wingfield heard the deep-throated barking cries of the sims. So did Henry Dale. He spat, deliberately, between his feet. “What men speak so?” he demanded. “Even captured and tamed—as much as one may tame the beasts—they do but point and gape and make dumb show, as a horse will, seeking to be led to manger.”

“Those calls have meaning to them,” Wingfield said.

“Oh, aye, belike. A wolf in a trap will howl so piteously it frightens its fellows away. Has he then a language?”

Having no good answer to that, Wingfield prudently kept silent.

As the two men walked, they looked for signs to betray the presence of small game. Dale, who was an able woodsman when amiable, spotted the fresh droppings that told of a woodchuck run. “A good place for a snare,” he said.

But even as he was preparing to cut a noose, his comrade found a track in the soft ground to the side of the run: the mark of a large, bare foot. “Leave be, Henry,” he advised. “The sims have been here before us.”

“What's that you say?” Dale came over to look at the footprint. One of the settlers might have made it, but they habitually went shod. With a disgusted grunt, Dale stowed away the twine. “Rot the bleeding blackguards! I'd wish their louse-ridden souls to hell, did I think God granted them any.”

“The Spaniards baptize them, 'tis said.”

“Good on them!” Dale said, which startled Wingfield until he continued, “A papist baptism, by Jesus, is the most certain highroad to hell of any I know.”

They walked on. Wingfield munched on late-ripening wild strawberries, larger and sweeter than any that grew in England. He spotted a woodchuck ambling from tussock to tussock. This time he aimed with special care, and his shot knocked the beast over. Dale grunted again, now in approval. He had bagged nothing more than a couple of songbirds.

They did find places to set several new snares: simple drag nooses, hanging snares made from slip nooses fastened to the ends of saplings, and fixed snares set near bushes. The latter were especially good for catching rabbits.

They also visited the snares already set. A horrible stench announced that one of those had taken a black-and-white New World polecat. Skinned and butchered to remove the scent glands, the beast made good eating. Wingfield and Dale tossed a copper penny to see who would have to carry it home. Wingfield lost.

Two traps had been sprung but held no game. There were fresh sim footprints around both. Dale's remakes were colorful and inventive.

The Englishmen headed back toward Jamestown not long after the sun began to wester. They took a route different from the one they had used on the way out: several traps remained to be checked.

A small, brown-and-white-striped ground squirrel scurried away from Wingfield's boot. It darted into a clump of cockleburs. A moment later, both hunters leaped back in surprise as the little animal was flung head-high, kicking in a noose, when a bent sapling suddenly sprang erect.

“Marry!” Dale said. “I don't recall setting a snare there.”

“Perhaps it was someone else. At all odds, good luck we happened along now.” Wingfield walked over to retrieve the ground squirrel which now hung limp. He frowned as he undid the noose from around its neck. “Who uses sinew for his traps?”

“No one I know,” Dale said. “Twine is far easier to work with.”

“Hmm.” Wingfield was examining the way the sinew was bound to the top of the sapling. It had not been tied at all, only wrapped around and around several twigs until firmly in place. “Have a look at this, will you, Henry?”

Dale looked, grunted, turned away. Wingfield's voice pursued him: “What animals make traps, Henry?”

“Aye, well, this is the first we've seen, in all the time we've been this side of the Atlantic. I take that to mean the sims but ape us, as a jackdaw will human speech, without having the divine spark of wit to devise any such thing for themselves. Damn and blast, man, if a dog learns to walk upon his hinder feet, is he then deserving of a seat in Parliament?”

“More than some who have them now,” Wingfield observed.

Both men laughed. Dale reached for the ground squirrel, tossed it into the bag with the rest of the game he carried. His crooked teeth flashed in a rare grin. “It does my heart good to rob the vermin this once, instead of the other way round.”

His good humor vanished when he and Wingfield returned to the settlement. They found not only Allan Cooper and the other three guards armed and armored, but also a double handful more men. That morning a sim had burst out of the woods, smashed in a goat's skull with a rock, flung the animal under an arm, and escaped before the startled Englishmen could do anything.

“I shot, but I missed,” Cooper raid morosely.

“It's a poor trade for a ground squirrel, Henry,” Wingfield remarked.

His hunting partner's scowl was midnight black. “The mangy pests grow too bold! Just the other night they slaughtered a hound outside the stockade, hacked it to pieces with their stones, and were eating the flesh raw when at last the sentry came round with his torch and spied them. He missed, too,” Dale finished, with a sidelong look at Cooper.

“And would you care to draw a conclusion from that?” the guard asked. His hand caressed the hilt of his rapier.

Henry Dale hesitated. As a gentleman, he was trained to the sword. But liverish temper or no, he was not a fool; Cooper had learned in a harsher school than his, and survived. At last Dale said, “I draw the same conclusion as would any man of sense: that our best course is to rid ourselves of these pestiferous sims forthwith, as wolves and other vicious creatures have long been hunted out of England.”

“I hold to war, Henry, on being attacked, but not to murder,” Cooper said. “Mind, we must seem as outlandish to them as they to us.”

“Killing a sim is no more murder than butchering a pig,” Dale retorted. The endless debate started up again.

Having no desire to join in another round, Wingfield took his share of the game back to his cabin. Anne was changing Joanna's soiled linen. She looked up with a wan smile. “There's no end to't.”

The baby kicked her legs and smiled toothlessly at her father. He felt his own tight expression soften.

He plucked the songbirds, skinned the polecat, set the hide aside to be tanned. He gutted the birds and tossed their little naked bodies into the stewpot whole. He threw the offal outside for the pigs or dogs to find. The black-and-white polecat required more skillful butchery, for it had to be cut into pieces after the scent glands were removed.

“Thank you, dear.” Anne rocked Joanna in her arms. “She's getting hungry—aren't you, sweet one? What say I feed you now, so you let us eat in peace afterwards. Can you tend to the stew, Edward?”

“Of course.” He stirred the bubbling contents of the pot with a wooden spoon. Now and again he tossed in a dash of dried, powdered herbs or a pinch of grayish sea-salt.

Joanna nursed lustily, then fell asleep. The stew began to smell savory. Anne was about to ladle it into bowls when the baby wet herself and started crying again. Her mother gave Wingfield a look of mingled amusement and despair.

“Go on with what you were about,” he told her. “I'll tend to Joanna.” Anne sighed gratefully. Wingfield tossed the soggy linen into the pile with the rest for tomorrow's washing. He found a dry cloth, wrapped the baby's loins, and set her in her cradle. Anne rocked it while they ate.

Joanna tolerated not being held, but showed no interest in going back to sleep. She squawked indignantly when Anne made the mistake of trying to turn her onto her belly, and remained irritated enough to stay awake even after her mother picked her up.

Her fussy cries rang loud in the small cabin. After a while, Wingfield thrust a torch into the fire. “Let's walk her about outside,” he suggested. “That often seems to calm her.”

Anne agreed at once. She rocked the baby in her arms while her husband held the torch high so they would not stumble in the darkness. With his free hand, he batted at the insects the torch drew.

The James River splashed against the low, swampy peninsula on which Jamestown sat, and murmured as it flowed by unimpeded to the south. Above it, on this clear, moonless night, the Milky Way glowed like pale mist among the stars of the Scorpion and the Archer. Elsewhere, but for silver points, the sky was black.

Even blacker against it loomed the forest to the north. Suddenly Wingfield felt how tiny was the circle of light his torch cast: as tiny as the mark the English had made on this vast new land. The comparison disturbed him.

From the edge of the forest came the cries of sims, calling back and forth. Wingfield wondered how much meaning lay behind them. Those bestial ululations could hardly be true speech—Henry Dale was right there—but they were much more varied, more complex, than a wolfpack's howls.

Anne shivered, though the night was warm. “Let us go back. I take fright, hearing them so close.”

“I mislike it also,” Wingfield said, turning round. “We are not yet here in numbers enough to keep them from drawing nigh as they wish. Be glad, though, you were still in dear England those first two years, when they thought us and ours some new sort of prey for their hunting.” He touched the knife on his belt. “We've taught them better than that, at any rate.”

“I've heard the tales,” Anne said quietly.

Wingfield nodded. As was the way of things, though, not all the tales got told. He had been one of the men who brought John Smith's body back for burial. He knew how little of it rested under its stone, awaiting the resurrection.

To his mind, the sims' man-eating habits gave strong cause to doubt they had souls. If one man devoured another's flesh, to whose body would that flesh return come the day of judgment? As far as he knew, no learned divine had yet solved that riddle.

Such profitless musings occupied him on the way back to the cabin. Once inside, Anne set Joanna back in the cradle. The baby sighed but stayed asleep; she probably would not rouse till the small hours of the morning.

The embers in the fireplace cast a dying red glow over the single room. Wingfield stripped off his clothes; in the sultry Virginia summer, nightwear was a positive nuisance.

Anne lay down beside him. He stroked her smooth shoulder. She turned toward him. Her eyes were enormous in the dim light. “Here it is, evening,” he said, at the same time as she was whispering, “This even, is it not?” They laughed until he silenced her with a kiss.

Afterwards, he felt his heart slow as he drifted toward slumber. He was hotter than he had been before, and did not mind at all; the warmth of the body was very different from that of the weather. He did not know why that was so, but it was. Anne was already breathing deeply and smoothly. He gave up thought and joined her.

He was never sure what exactly woke him, some hours later; he usually slept like a log till morning. Even Joanna's cries would not stir him, though Anne came out of bed at once for them. And this noise was far softer than any the baby made.

Maybe what roused him was the breeze from the open cabin door. His eyes opened. His hand went for his knife even before he consciously saw the two figures silhouetted in the doorway.
Thieves
, was his first thought. The colonists had so few goods from England that theft was always a problem, the threat of the whipping-post notwithstanding.

Then the breeze brought him the smell of the invaders. The Englishmen bathed seldom; they were often rank. But this was a thicker, almost cloying stench, as if skin and water had never made acquaintance. And the shape of those heads outlined against the night—

Ice ran through Wingfield. “Sims!” he cried, bounding to his feet.

Anne screamed. The sims shouted. One sprang at Wingfield. He saw its arm go back, as if to stab, and knew it must have one of its sharpened stones to hand. That could let out a life as easily as his own dagger.

He knocked the stroke aside with his left forearm, and felt his hand go numb; the sims were devilish strong. He thrust with his right and felt his blade bite flesh. The sim yammered. But the wound was not mortal. The sim grappled with him. They rolled over and over on the dirt floor, each grabbing for the other's weapon and using every fighting trick he knew. The sim might have had less skill than Wingfield, but was physically powerful enough to make up for it.

A tiny corner of Wingfield's awareness noticed the other sim scuttling toward the hearth. He heard Anne shriek, “Mother Mary, the baby!” Bold as a tigress, she leapt at the sim, her hands clawed, but it stretched her senseless with a backhand blow.

At almost the same moment, the sim Wingfield was battling tore its right arm free from the weakened grasp of his left. He could not ward off the blow it aimed, but partially deflected it so that the flat front of the stone, rather than the edge, met his forehead. The world flared for a moment, then grayed over.

He could not have been unconscious long. He was already aware of himself, and of the pounding anguish in his head, when someone forced a brandy bottle into his mouth. He choked and sputtered, spraying out most of the fiery liquid.

He tried to sit; hands supported his back and shoulders. He could not understand why the torch Caleb Lucas held was so blurred until he raised his arm to his eyes and wiped away blood.

Lucas offered the brandy again. This time Wingfield got it down. Healing warmth spread from his middle. Then he remembered what had happened with one sim while he fought the other, and he went cold again. “Anne!” he cried.

He looked about wildly, and moaned when he saw a blanket-covered form on the floor not far from him. “No, fear not, Edward, she is but stunned,” said Allan Cooper's wife Claire, a strong, steady woman a few years older than Anne. “We cast the bedding over her to hide her nakedness, no more.”

BOOK: A Different Flesh
12.69Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

The Dreamsnatcher by Abi Elphinstone
Mr. Darcy's Dream by Elizabeth Aston
The Queen and I by Russell Andresen
The Demon and the City by Liz Williams
The Last Summer by Judith Kinghorn
The Hero by Robyn Carr
A Brilliant Deception by Kim Foster
The Summer Girls by Mary Alice Monroe