Christopher Cartwright
Atlantis Stolen
Thanks very much to Cheryl my editor, and Kris, my beta-reader!
Prologue
The barren winter landscape was desolate in its beauty. While the sun approached its zenith, it did little to stop the cold stinging his weather-worn face while he worked. Albert Olsen filled his bucket with another shovel of sludge and then turned to climb the slippery crest of the muddy bank. Once on the ridge, he didn’t have far to walk before he could dump its contents down the other side.
From there, Olsen saw the other islands.
A strange mixture of mud and ice stood surrounded by a river whose partially frozen mouth looked as wide as an ocean when it thawed. Not that he paid much attention to any of it as he returned to fill yet another bucket.
It was strenuous and tediously boring work, but it needed to be done so the boats could survive. And if they didn’t, the little outcrop certainly wouldn’t.
So the sea canals needed to be built.
They had begun as small ditches used to drain the marshland so basic farming could meet the needs of the settlement. But protecting the ships had warranted the effort to widen and deepen them to accommodate small boats, or ships at high tide.
Wrapped in a pair of thick animal hides, fur hat, and boots, even a day’s shoveling did little to allay his cold. The sort of cold that sunk into your bones and didn’t come out again long into the spring. Not that it bothered him much. He’d spent the last four winters working at the post, laboring for the master engineer. In another year, he would have repaid his obligation and would be allowed to return home.
He dumped another bucket over the ridge.
He’d seen that view for the past four years. He would leave after completing his obligatory service to his master, Hank Worthington, who’d been hired to build large amounts of the government’s sea structures and buildings. At the age of 22, Olsen had earned enough money that he could now afford to return home and marry Frajia Clausen, the girl from his childhood dreams — that was, if she’d kept her promise.
If they let me leave.
Young laborers were hard to come by, and the council of traders would offer tremendous rewards to those who would stay on. If not, they would threaten tremendous suffering if one refused.
Olsen returned down the steep slope of the soon to be complete canal, sliding on its damp dark sides. Sticking his shovel back into the wet soil, he continued as he’d been doing for the past few weeks. He worked with a team of thirty other men — although how it could be called a team, he didn’t know, as there was little order to the process. Each man dug, hauled, and dumped the soil by himself.
Next to him, Felix Brandt worked.
Although, again, he wondered if that were the right word. An older man, whom he’d guessed couldn’t be any younger than 50, worked so slowly that Olsen sometimes wondered whether the man even wanted the project complete.
Olsen continued this process of filling his bucket, carrying it up the slippery edge of the canal, and then dumping it until he’d lost count of the trips he’d performed that morning. With irritation, he noticed he could easily count two or sometimes even three trips, for every one that Felix achieved.
He’d never liked the man.
It didn’t make sense, why someone his age would want to come to such a place for work. Not that he’d ever given much thought about what sort of work an old man like Felix would be well suited to. After his last bucket, Olsen paused his efforts, just long enough to walk down the dike to the edge of the river bank, so that he could fill his cup with the icy cold water.
When the main river thawed, the attacks would begin again.
That’s what this was all about. Hastily building, preparing, and guarding the trading post so that it could beat their attackers again, as it had done last summer, and the summer before that. The wall had been strengthened earlier in the winter, and the canals now lengthened to protect the boats. And the settlement would continue to beat them, until they lost, or someone finally discovered what he’d learned the first day he came to the island — that it’s a muddy swamp, in the middle of nowhere, of little value.
The naiveté made him want to laugh. Not that it was his problem. He would be leaving soon enough. He took another drink of the water. It was so cold it stung at his throat while he drank, making him cough.
“You’re slowing down, Albert.” Felix dropped his bucket and climbed down to meet him at the river’s edge. “Are you wearying in your old age?”
“No, just waiting for you to catch up,” he replied.
“You may have to wait all day and tomorrow most likely. I’m more than twice your age, you know.”
And Albert did know, too.
Felix slowly filled his leather bota bag. Even that, Olsen noticed, seemed to take an unusually long time. The man was slow in every task he performed. Not because he was stupid, or incompetent, but as though he simply couldn’t see the point of any urgency in what he was doing.
The man seemed to be biding his time and merely waiting.
But for what?
Albert wondered why Brandt, for a man who was still laboring at his age, hadn’t felt more urgency to achieve something, anything, before he was incapable of sustaining himself.
“They tell me you’re leaving soon,” Felix said as he sat down by the river’s edge to drink his water.
“Yes, when the river thaws, I will look for the next passage home.”
“It will be difficult with our current arrangement to obtain passage on a ship. After all, no one seems to be playing very well with others currently.”
Albert smiled, unsure if he was being reprimanded for the way he’d avoided the man. “I’m patient. I’ll find my way home.”
“Why do you want to return so soon?”
“Soon? I’ve been here five winters already. Why wouldn’t I want to leave it?”
“It seems like a nice enough island as any. Is there something waiting for you back home, though?”
Albert found himself answering before he even considered why the strange old man was interested. “There’s a girl. Frajia Clausen, more perfect than anyone or anything I’ve ever seen. And she promised to wait for me.”
“That’s very nice. That’s a worthy reason to leave this place.” Felix smiled, a nearly condescending one, and then said, “But have you seen all that this world has to offer? There are some things, I dare say, far more beautiful than that girl of yours…”
Albert picked up his bucket, ready to return to the canal before he lost his ability to refrain from striking Felix. “If you’d ever met a girl like this, you too, would be quite certain there was no need to see every precious thing this land has to offer before determining that she was the most precious.”
Felix smiled. There was something unctuous and slimy about it. “Of course, of course… I’m an old man, and foolish at such matters as love. I’ll tell you what I will do for you…”
Albert paused at the top of the dike. “What you will do for me?”
“I own a ship, and I have to return to Amsterdam next year. She’s in the north canal. In the summer I too have to return home. You may come with me.”
Albert stared at the old, worthless man, suddenly realizing his mistake. Brandt wasn’t a slow working laborer. Instead, he was a wealthy landowner, who had paid for the building of the canals. He was too stunned to speak.
“Would you like that?” Felix asked.
“Yes sir, thank you very much sir. That’s very kind.”
“Good. Now, shall we finish this canal?”
Albert nodded and returned to the canal, ready to continue. Despite commencing work several weeks ago, today it would finally be flooded. At its bottom, a small trickle of water, no more than a few inches high could be seen, having seeped into the otherwise dry canal.