New Found Land

by John Christopher

  He had wondered whether Lundiga would take advantage of their preoccupation and jump into the water to swim back: there was nothing that could be done about it if she did. But she simply sat staring into the night. The Vikings, on the other hand, were wasting no time; within seconds they were piling into the remaining longships and casting off. Visibility was excellent across the silvery bay; the moon, for which they had waited so impatiently, was an enemy now.

  “Pull!” Bos roared. “For your lives . . .”

  Heaving on his oar, Simon was aware of the hopelessness of it. There were three of them against dozens in the other two longships. The leading one was closing; within minutes it would be alongside, with Vikings pouring across. He envied Curtius the blood lust which had marked his last few moments; all he himself felt was the icy bite of fear.

  The men in the following ships were yelling in anticipation, but suddenly the tone changed. There were cries of bewilderment. Pulling on the oar, Simon thought he noticed something different about the longship nearest to them. Was it lower in the water? And the gap between them—it was no longer narrowing, but widening.

  The pursuing dragon’s head rose sharply, as though it were a wingless beast trying to fly. The cries changed to a clamour of despair. The head stood right up, for a moment blacking out the moon. Only for a moment; then, with a giant’s gurgle, it slid beneath the water.

  Astern of it, the second ship was also tilting. Simon said: “How did that happen?”

  “I’m not sure,” Brad said, “but I think I have an idea.”

  They had all stopped rowing. He looked across at Bos, whose teeth gleamed in a grin.

  “That little reconnaissance you insisted on making . . . it didn’t by any chance include coming down to the quay to loosen a timber or two?”

  “Leave nothing to chance,” Bos said. “It is the first thing a gladiator learns. Otherwise he does not live to learn anything else.”

  He released his oar and stood up, stretching out a hand. “A fair breeze, and from the right quarter. Let us get that sail up.”

  • • •

  Their first intention had been to head for the nearest point on the mainland, but once they were clear of the harbour and in open sea, Bos had another idea. The wind was from the northeast, filling the longship’s sail. Brad had said this coast was of great extent: why not aim for a point further south, out of winter’s grip?

  Brad at first argued against it, but when Simon strongly supported Bos he did not press his objection. Two to one was a clear majority anyway; Lundiga sat huddled and silent, paying little attention to her surroundings. It was understandable that the double shock, of seeing her father struck down in combat and of leaving the small island which was the only place she had known, should have subdued her.

  The others, too, once the initial excitement of the escape was over, were hit by the realization of Curtius’s death. It was a loss that affected all of them, but especially Bos. Curtius had been closer to him in age, and they had shared more of a common background; although born a barbarian, Bos had been captured and brought south at an early age. What had happened made him more deeply aware of the distance he had travelled from familiar places and people, leaving him bewildered and unhappy. Simon and Brad did their best to cheer him up, but to little effect. Of course, Bos believed they were heading towards their own country, while he was all the time going further away from his.

  At least the weather was good; the sun rose out of a calm sea and the wind stayed fair. Rowing was unnecessary, and they closed the shutters over the oar-ports. It would have all been very pleasant, Simon thought, but for the two melancholy ones on their hands. Having had small success with Bos, they turned their attentions to Lundiga. She seemed not to respond at first, and Simon gave up on it. Brad persisted, trying to divert her with talk of the wonderful land of California which was their eventual destination. Lack of response did not seem to bother him; in fact Simon had a feeling he was talking as much for his own satisfaction as hers.

  At any rate he went on and on with his account of the wonders of this earthly paradise, and it produced a sudden and unexpected result when Lundiga burst into laughter.

  “You are better than our Viking men,” she said, “with their stories of the whales they almost caught. Go on, little Bradus. I like hearing you talk.”

  When he protested that he was giving a true account, she shook her fur-hatted head, smiling, and said it was no shame to tell tall tales: all men did. The hat completed an outfit which had quite transformed her appearance. She had bound her breasts under the shapeless coat of skins they all wore, and had the look more of a husky boy than a girl. In the middle of the day, with the sun quite warm, Simon tried to persuade her at least to take the hat off, but she refused.

  “It is not proper.”

  Simon was tired of hearing the phrase, but he was beginning to understand the ironclad prejudices of the Viking women. Her infatuation with Brad might have persuaded her to come away with them, but that did not mean she was willing to relax tribal conventions. Quite the reverse, probably. Her amusement over Brad’s stories of California was a part of that outlook. She came from long generations of women who had cared for their drunken feckless menfolk with a mixture of affection and contempt.

  They kept a course of south-southwest, and were reasonably confident of holding to it. The sun rose and set in the right places, and by night the polestar was properly fixed in the starboard stern quarter. Bos’s guess was that they were covering something like two hundred miles in twenty-four hours. On the morning of the third day, the breeze had moderated and lost the last of its chilly edge. Simon saw a flash of distant silver which might have been a flying fish. They agreed they had come far enough south, and towards the end of the morning altered course to sail west.

  Land—Brad guessed South Carolina—became visible in late afternoon, a dark edge to the sun-speckled horizon which gradually broadened. They entered a flattened arc of bay, stretching limitlessly north and south. Beyond the beach there was scrub, with wooded land further back. Bos had the tiller and steered straight for the shore. They ground to a shuddering halt in shallow water just as the sun’s rim touched the tops of the trees.

  • • •

  They remained with the ship that night and set off inland next morning. They had landed at high tide and the longship was beached above the water level, which was reassuring. If the present exploration proved unpromising, it might be possible to retrace their steps and use it to find a different landfall.

  To start with, the going was easy, over fairly level ground covered with coarse grass and bushes. They had their first check after about three hours, when they reached a river. As it was flowing only slightly south of west, it made sense to follow it. After a couple of miles, though, it abruptly changed direction to due south. Simon was for staying with it, and Bos, who had perked up remarkably since they got back on dry land, agreed. But Brad pointed out that it seemed shallow enough to wade, and insisted on crossing. It was important not to get sidetracked from their westerly bearing.

  “Why?” Simon asked. “Because of California? What’s wrong with Florida? That’s meant to be an earthly paradise, too, isn’t it? Don’t those golden fruits as big as a man’s head you were telling Lundiga about grow there, too? And it’s a whole lot nearer.”

  Brad said: “When you have a plan, it’s important to stick to it. Otherwise you’re likely to end up aimlessly wandering.” He spoke almost peevishly.

  Lundiga immediately lent him her support, at the same time patting him indulgently. She called him “little Bradus” again, which made him wince. Ordinarily that would have amused Simon, but he was too incensed by Brad’s stubbornness.

  He said: “Look, we’ve covered about six miles from the coast. That leaves two thousand nine hundred and ninety-four to go, give or take a few hundred. The whole business is crazy.”

  Unexpectedly, Bos clapped a hand on Brad’s shoulder. “It is proper to love the land of on
e’s birth.” His face was briefly gloomy again. “My own is lost beyond recovery, but it is right for Bradus to seek his. We will go west with him.”

  Simon said in English: “He’s got that a bit wrong, hasn’t he? We were a lot nearer the land of your birth among the Algonquians.”

  Brad did not bother to reply, and Simon decided to let it go. Basically it didn’t matter a lot which way they went. He would have preferred staying dry, but sooner or later they were going to have rivers to cross: they would find neither bridges nor ferryman in these parts.

  The river was generally less than waist-high, even in the middle, but Simon managed to find a hole which submerged him up to his neck. The wet skins clung heavily as they continued their trek, reviving his annoyance with Brad. It was a point, though, which lost its importance within the hour when the sky, which had been rapidly clouding from the west, opened to soak them all.

  They settled for the night under a broad-branched evergreen which promised a degree of protection against the persisting rain. It fell some way short of providing a complete shield, and they were heavily dripped on as they chewed dried fish and stale cornbread. But at least it was rain, not snow, and the temperature was well above freezing. Tired from the day’s trudging, they slept heavily.

  On the third day they came out of woodland into a patch of what had plainly been cultivated land, though it was in the process of reverting to wilderness. That indicated an Indian village nearby, and they reached it soon after. Food was beginning to run short and they had not found anything edible since coming ashore: presumably there were fish in the rivers, but they had no means of catching them. They decided to take a chance on their reception from the Indians.

  The village consisted of about a score of small huts, which differed from the Algonquian tepees in being rectangular in shape. They were supported by poles at the corners and thatched with large dried leaves. A stream ran close by and small children, two girls and a boy, were playing by it; they looked at the newcomers with curiosity but without alarm. Adults appeared from the huts. The men wore coats of some kind of cloth, and the women dresses, or rather lengths of cloth with holes cut for the head and arms. Simon was more concerned with the expression on their faces, and he was relieved to see they looked amiable.

  They proved to be not just amiable, but actively hospitable. Food was offered before they asked—tortillas with spicy fillings and a sweet maize gruel served in small gourds. The Indians chattered round them while they ate, showing particular interest in Bos’s beard. These men, like the northern Indians, were facially practically hairless. The small dogs that sniffed around their feet were hairless, too.

  They were housed for the night in a hut which showed signs of recent use; Simon guessed the usual occupants had doubled up elsewhere to make room for them. In the morning they were given rations for the onward journey. Late on the day after that, they found another village, and thereafter were never more than two or three days’ travel from human habitation.

  These Indians were quite different from the unsmiling Algonquians. At one village, where they arrived soaked from a rainstorm, a complete change of clothes was provided for them. The cloth was woven from bark fibres but far more comfortable than the skins they had been wearing and which, with the temperature so much higher, they were glad to abandon.

  Lundiga, however, insisted on retaining both her fur hat and her boyish disguise. That helped him, Simon felt, in adjusting to her transparent devotion to Brad; she just didn’t look like a girl. Another factor was that the devotion had a protective, in fact patronizing, aspect which was funny to observe, and which Brad found increasingly infuriating. In the end, when she had addressed him as “little Bradus” once too often, his resentment boiled over and he abused her roundly. She looked hurt for a moment, and Bos, who had developed a sort of fatherly fondness for her, rebuked Brad for his unkindness, reminding him what they all owed to her.

  “And she is a nice girl, Bradus. You are lucky that such a nice girl is fond of you.”

  Brad looked sullen. Simon thought it best to conceal his amusement. Lundiga rapidly recovered, and continued with her attentions. No, Simon decided, he was well out of that one.

  They had no reason for keeping track of time, and he had no notion how long their leisurely progress had continued. Weeks certainly. They had grown accustomed to it: one day and one village was very like the next.

  Then, on a morning spitting rain, they came over a wooded crest to see flat country ahead. It was bare rock for the most part, studded with rocky protuberances. But there was something else that caught the eye and brought a shiver of excitement to the mind. About a mile away the landscape was divided by a narrow band that ran roughly east-west and very straight. Simon stared in amazement. There was no possibility of its being a natural phenomenon: what they were looking at was a highway.

  5

  THEY RAN THE FINAL HUNDRED yards. The road was about fifteen feet wide, with a base of large, shaped stones and a surface of compacted chippings.

  “This was not made by Romans,” Bos said. “The workmanship is not good enough.”

  There was disappointment in his voice. However impossible the notion of coming on a Roman road in this wild land, seeing a man-made highway after all this time of trackless woods must have been like a glimpse of home.

  Brad said: “No, certainly not Roman. It has to be Incan. They were the only people in America who built a road system.”

  “But weren’t the Incas in South America?” Simon asked.

  “Yes. They were centred around Peru, and the furthest north they reached was Ecuador. But that was a world where the Spaniards clobbered them in the early sixteenth century. A lot can happen in four hundred years. Things may have stayed static in Europe, but it looks as though they got moving over here. There’s one puzzling thing, though.”

  “What?”

  “The Spaniards destroyed two American cultures, not one. A little while before Pizarro conquered the Incas, Cortés was wiping out the Aztecs. And the Aztecs were in Mexico, which is a lot nearer. These two empires never actually made contact.”

  “In our world, they didn’t,” Simon said. “They must have done here, and I suppose they fought and the Incas won.”

  He could see Brad was ready for a prolonged speculation on the subject, which he felt he could do without.

  He said: “Anyway, what matters is that this is a road we’re standing on, and if it’s not quite up to Roman standards, it’s not bad either. So at any moment we might see a stagecoach rolling towards us with four vacant seats.”

  “No chance.”

  “Well, maybe not with empty seats. Maybe not a stagecoach even. I’d settle for a horse and cart.”

  “Not even that. There were no horses in the Americas till the Spaniards introduced them, after Columbus. And no wheels, for that matter. Although they had wheeled toys, for some reason they never thought of using wheels for transportation.”

  “But they did have roads? Just for pedestrians?”

  “Sure. The Romans basically built their roads for pedestrians—for the Roman infantry. Good roads mean you can move troops around fast.”

  “Well, we can take advantage of it,” Simon said. “It’s pointing west, too. California, here we come.”

  • • •

  They set out again, making very much better progress. The earlier rain had given way to sunshine, and a breeze which dried their clothes on them. Their spirits were high. Bos sang a gladiator’s song, and Simon joined in with him. It was Lundiga, walking, as she usually did, directly behind Brad, who noticed something unusual. She said: “Listen . . .”

  As soon as he stopped singing, Simon heard it: a faint rhythmic drumming behind them. Turning, he saw dots on the road, about three-quarters of a mile back. Although details could not be made out at that distance, he saw there were three of them and that they were mounted.

  To Brad he said: “So there aren’t any horses in this continent?”

 
Brad studied the figures, frowning. He said at last: “They’re not horses.”

  “Don’t be silly. What else can . . . ?” He broke off. The animals, he saw, walked with a strange swaying motion, and they had small heads set on long high necks.

  Brad said: “It’s known they were used as baggage animals, so I guess there’s no reason someone shouldn’t have thought to put a saddle on them. Those are llamas.”

  They waited by the roadside while the riders caught up with them. They were far more elaborately and colourfully dressed than the village Indians they had become accustomed to. The lead figure was particularly splendid; he had an ankle-length cloak of bright scarlet with swirls of green, while the other two were in darker red, striped with black. These also wore helmets, but the one in front had a framelike contraption on the back of his head which sprouted vivid sprays of feathers. The faces of all three were dark and insolent.

  When they were abreast, Bos called out a greeting. Since it was in Latin, they could scarcely have been expected to understand him, but the travellers did not even turn their heads. The helmeted couple had belts over their cloaks, with nasty-looking daggers tucked in them; they were probably a bodyguard to the third. Simon was glad Bos did not persist in trying to attract their attention; they looked pretty unpleasant.

  As they rode away, Bos spat on the ground.

  “A friendly lot.”

  “That must be the upper class,” Brad commented. “They obviously regard peasants like us as beneath notice.”

  Simon said: “I wonder which way to the nearest town? Do you think they’re starting their journey or finishing it?”

  “They could be halfway through,” Brad said. “But they’re going in the right direction, so we might as well follow.”

  • • •

  At first it looked like the peak of a distant mountain; later its symmetry identified it as a tower. Other buildings subsequently became visible crowding about its base: a city lay ahead. As they went on, there were cultivated fields on either side of the highway, and they met more traffic, both llama-riders and pedestrians; the latter were much more simply dressed, not very different from the village Indians.