Free Opening Atlantis by Harry Turtledove Page A

through the air, crashed down, and never moved again: he was all broken inside.
    The honker lumbered off, still going blatt! The cry got the other enormous birds moving. Fast as a horse could trot, they headed off into the undergrowth. Every stride knocked down more young, hopeful wheat and barley.
    Ann Drinkwater keened over her husband’s body. The rest of the settlers stared from the dead honkers to the damaged crops and back again. “Will they come again tomorrow?” Richard Radcliffe asked. “Will they come again this afternoon? How many of them will we have to kill before the rest decide they shouldn’t come?”
    Those were all good questions. Edward had answers to none of them. “We’ll butcher these dead ones,” he said. “We can smoke some of the meat, or salt it, or dry it. We can’t let it go to waste. After that—”
    â€œThey’re afraid of the damned eagles, if they aren’t afraid of us,” Henry said. “If we screech like them, maybe we can scare off the honkers.”
    â€œWe’d have a better chance if we could fly like them,” his brother said, and Edward judged Richard likely right.
    Numbly, the settlers got to work. Henry carried a pile of honker guts well away from the place where the creature had died. He made sure he included the kidneys, though they might have gone into a stew if he hadn’t.
    He waited in some nearby bushes, a hunting bow in his hand. Down from the sky to the offal spiraled…a vulture. Even the vultures here differed from the ones back in England. This one was almost all black, down to the skin on its head. Only the white patches near the base of the wings broke the monotony.
    Henry came out and shooed it away before it landed and stole the leavings. It flew off with big, indignant wingbeats. Edward watched it go before he realized it had a healthy fear of men. He wondered what that meant, and whether it meant anything.
    His son went back into cover. Henry had a hunter’s patience—or, more likely, a fisherman’s patience he was for once applying to life on land. And that patience got its reward when an eagle descended on the kidneys and fat much more swiftly and ferociously than the vulture had. Edward wasn’t too far away when it did: he was close enough to notice the coppery crest of feathers on top of the great bird’s head as it tore at the bait Henry had left for it.
    With a shout of triumph, Henry sprang up, let fly…and missed. He couldn’t have been more than eight or ten yards away, but he missed anyhow. The eagle might not have feared men, but a sharp stick whizzing past its head startled it. It launched itself into the air with a kidney in its beak.
    Henry said some things that were bound to cost him time in purgatory. He made as if to break the bow over his knee. “Don’t do that!” Edward called. “We haven’t got many, and we haven’t the time to make more without need, either. Besides, it’s a poor workman who blames his tools.”
    â€œI couldn’t hit water if I fell out of a boat.” Henry was still furious at himself.
    â€œThere, there,” his father soothed, as if he were still a little boy. “You’re a fine archer—for a fisherman.”
    â€œHa!” Henry made a noise that sounded like a laugh but wasn’t.
    â€œKeep at it,” Edward said. “It’s a good idea. If we don’t kill these cursed eagles, they’ll go on killing us.”
    â€œAnd the honkers, too,” Henry said. “They’re as bad as deer or unfenced cattle in the crops. How much did we lose today?”
    â€œI don’t know. Some. Not more than we can afford, though, I don’t think,” Edward answered. “And the eagles are more dangerous than honkers ever could be.”
    â€œTell it to poor Rob Drinkwater. Tell it to his widow and his orphaned brats.”
    â€œA horse or a mule can