He switched the view; there were fish drying racks with the catch on them, and more fires-very low smol dering ones, giving off a dense haze that clung to the ground.
That must be to smoke 'em, he thought.
Ten or twelve acres around the hamlet were planted, amid haggled-off stumps that showed how the land had been cleared. Lush growth hid the soil; there were corn stalks wound with beans, pumpkin vines, tomatoes, the tops of potatoes, turnips and more. A buzzing midden a thousand yards away looked to be mostly oyster-shell; when the wind backed and shifted they got a powerful whiff from it. Otherwise the community seemed pretty tidy; there was even a paddock fenced with split rails, though no stock in it he could see.
"I don't think this bunch are wild men," he said. "Not the usual kind at least. How many do you think, Singh?"
"Forty. Sixty if they pack close in those houses," Singh said. "Perhaps twenty fighting men at most, counting boys."
His sister gave him a look, and he cleared his throat and went on: "And perhaps some strong women. That would be as many as could row those boats, as well. You are right, Captain. That is not a wild-man den. Those are people."
Ingolf nodded. "Doesn't mean they're friendly people, necessarily."
He focused on the edge of the woods. "Looks to me like they cleared out when they saw us coming in, but they're watching from there."
Decision firmed. "We'll go in, but cautious. Get one of the anchors and some line."
Two hundred yards from shore they dropped it; it splashed in and sank away to the bottom twenty feet below, and he could see the puff of sand as it struck through the clear water. Then they jerked the heavy rope to see that the flukes had set, and paid out line as they sculled the sailboat closer to shore. He halted them when the bow just touched bottom; that way they could snatch themselves out fast if they had to, pulling up the line. They dropped another anchor and secured it with a slipknot; he took a deep breath.
"Let's go."
The water was cold on his skin as he jumped in and waded ashore, filling his boots. The long shadows of twi light went ahead of them. The others followed, holding their bows above their heads to keep the wet off; then the Sikhs went on first while Kuttner and he covered them as they looked in each of the long huts in turn.
When they came back Singh handed him a leather pouch. The deerskin was well tanned, butter-supple, and worked with a design of porcupine quills and shell beads, with bits of plastic and old glass added.
"That's good tanning," he said, sniffing at it; the rich mellow scent of leather was strong, along with smoke and some herb it had held once. "Brain and bark, I think."
Singh nodded. "There are three or four families in each of the houses, Captain, from the bedrolls. The tools are mostly from before the Change, but look at this."
It was a hoe, with a skillfully shaped handle; the head was a large shell, probably adequate in this light sandy soil.
"Right." Another deep breath. "Let's talk to them."
He walked beyond the buildings. They all held up open hands, yelling about their peaceableness and wav ing come on. Eventually people did, moving out of the thick brush along the forest edge with a skill that made him blink. A dozen men in hide breechclouts led, aged from early teens to their forties; their hair was shaved on either side of the head and gathered up into a standing roach, with a pigtail behind, and they held light javelins settled in the groove of a yard-long throwing stick ending in a hook. They had steel knives, too, and hatchets.
Behind them came an older man in similar dress, and a woman in a buckskin tunic that reached to her knees; as they got closer he saw that her braided hair was gray streaked yellow, and she was the man's age or nearly, looking a bit older because she'd lost most of her teeth. He was Injun, though of no tribe Ingolf knew, with ruddy light brown skin and flattish features, stocky and looking very strong for his size, with thick scarred forearms.
Hmmm, he thought, looking at the younger folk again. A couple looked like white men, a couple like Injuns, and the rest mixed. Nothing odd there; I've seen enough blue eyed Sioux out west, and redheaded Anishinabe up north. People had shifted around a lot, right after the Change, and settled where they could.
The woman looked at him steadily. When she spoke, it was as if the English language came haltingly to her, the sound a little rusty; and there was a trace of an accent he didn't recognize, one that turned are to aaah.
"You are… not…"
The man beside her was probably her husband; he spoke himself, in a complex-sounding language full of quick-rising, slow falling sounds, then made a crook-fingered grabbing gesture with his right hand.
"The Eaters of Men," she said, probably translating; it sounded that way, not quite English phrasing.
The other locals lowered their weapons, a few smiling at the strangers.
"No, we're not, ma'am. We're from the Midwest-Wisconsin, me. We're
… explorers."
Suddenly tears were running down her face. "Oh, it's been so long!"
"… came out here from Innsmouth three weeks after the Day," said the woman who'd been Juanita Johnson once, and now thought of herself as Sun Hair. "The Emergency Committee had cut the ration to just one little bowl a day at the Distribution Center and there was fighting every day with the refugees…"
The Day? She must mean the Change, Ingolf thought, nodding.
"My father and mother, my uncle John and aunt Sally and Mr. Granger and Lindy, the Smiths, and us kids… I was fifteen. Things were already very bad, and the rumors…"
She licked her lips again, then took Ingolf's bowl and reached out to spoon more fish stew into it with a wooden ladle; the cauldron was made from the bottom half of an aluminum trash barrel. It was good stew, full of chunks of white cod meat and scallops and vegetables. The firelight shone on the faces-the warriors closest, and the two-score of women and children behind. He caught glimpses of a naked toddler huddled up against her mother, of another younger one at the breast. They murmured among themselves; mostly the odd-sounding language, but in it were English words he caught or half caught.
It was cooler now that the sun was down, not chilly but close enough to it that the fire's warmth felt grateful on his skin. A couple of the older people had cloaks or blankets around their shoulders, made of glossy pelts.
"Later we realized they must be true. A few times in the years after that, boats came here… hunting… and we had to run or fight. Dad and Uncle John loaded ev erything we could find, the tools and seed and the three goats from Uncle John's place we'd hidden from the Committee, and we headed out. I don't know where Dad was really hoping for-he talked about going north to Maine. But there was a storm, and we were cast ashore here; we managed to get most of our stuff out but the boat was wrecked."
She frowned. "I haven't thought about it for a long time… I knew about Nantucket. I'd been there. This isn't Nantucket. It looks a little like it, but the trees… and the people. They're the… we're the…"
Another word in that language; she smiled and thumped her forehead with the heel of her hand.
"The People. Or the Sea-Land People. They're In dians, and they'd never heard of white men. Or metal, or growing corn, or… or anything. They said nobody had-they used to visit the mainland before the Day, only they say it was all forest too, and relatives of theirs lived there, not cities and things. Then there was a dome of fire, colored fire, and when it went away they were here. When my family got here they were sick; someone had already come here and left… I think it was chicken pox. Most of the People died of it. There'd been about a hundred, but only two dozen lived."