Length, Draft and Language 1353 words, Draft 2.0
Brief Summary (not more than 300 words) A playwright/actor agrees to work for a dangerous spymaster and to spy against a magician in an alternate Elizabethan England.
Sub Genre & Keywords - fantasy, dark fantasy, espionage, alternate history, elizabethan
Known Issues – I honestly have no idea...
Critique Requested – Is the information and description parsed out properly? Do the characters come across as three dimensional? Is the dialogue okay?
Critique Tolerance - 7--burn me, as long as you're specific.
Experience & Goals - Second draft, trying to get this published. Third novel I’ve finished but first I’ve taken to second draft stage
Anything else? Disclaimers (violence, strong language in the whole novel, strong language in this one)
The Reckoning
Gull Town Harbour
Near London
9th Bell of the Afternoon
30th of Summersbyre, 1341
Struggling away beyond the distant hills, the sun cast a last feeble glow on the forest, its light drained of all power by the autumn sky. The party of fifteen rode out from beneath the trees, two horses dragging an ancient wagon that carried two men while the rest walked along beside. Most of them shook with anxiety, casting wary looks back at the shadowy forest. The gloom seemed to stretch out after them, as if to drag them back into its enchanted bosom. It was the end of summer, the seventienth since magic returned to the world.
The men had been travelling the Iron Road for months, travelling from one city to the next, stopping off at the regular wayposts that had been set up in the Wyrding Wood to protect travellers. From London north to Oxford, then further north all the way to Newcastle. Two months of stifling heat beneath the stuffy forest, with hardly a sign of human life in between cities. Few were foolish enough to travel the Iron Road unless they had no choice.
But now they were home. The smell of the sea had reached them from miles away and as they had crested the Chilterns ten miles away, they had looked down across the fir ocean below, all the way to the dancing lights of the city. London, Capital of England and one of the Seven Cities that survived the Great Change. Home.
A cold snap in the air brought tears to Chris’ eyes as he looked out across the Slate Sea. Waves slapped against the beach, carried along by the rising wind. The stench of London straddled the wind, the stink of too many men and women in too small a place. Even across the waves it carried, the smell of manure and rotting meat, blood and piss and sweat. Chris took a deep breath, savouring it as if it were the sweet smell of baking bread.
“Smells like heaven, aye?”
He turned and grinned at Bill Kemp, his best friend and the troop’s comic. Bill stared past him at the city, smile plastered on his face like the village idiot.
“No, it smells like a whorehouse.”
“And you think heaven smells any worse?”
They stood there for a moment, eyes drinking in the sight. From where they were, they could see the ever-shifting decks of the Dregs, leading to the blood glass barrier of the Seawall. Above the Seawall, the only visible landmarks were the brooding pinnacles of the Tower of London. The whole city was just beginning to shine with her diadem of night lights, slowly flickering into existence as the sun set in the west.
“Come on, let’s get going,” Bill said after another moment.
They followed the rest of the troop away from the coast, along the dirt track that led to Gulltown. Chris walked slowly, his blue eyes darting from the sea to the city and back again. The wind ruffled his long brown hair, throwing it back in his face. He blinked, cursing that he had lost his cap on the road. A stray gust of wind had caught it up and off into the Wood. Not far, but far enough. Not even he was fool enough to venture off the Iron Road.
There were few people in the streets as they came into Gull Town. Out here, so close to the Wood, no alchemycal marvel could light their way. A few oil lamps hung from the eaves of the larger houses, carving most of the main street into shadows of black and grey. That was probably for the best: “The man who can look at a Gull Town street and not feel the slightest twinge of dread is no man at all,” quoth one London saying.
Gull Town had grown from a tiny village into London’s chief link to the mainland. It had been built by those lucky few who survived the Change and were able to flee to the capital. By the time they reached there, however, they had been so touched by the fae magic that they were barely even human at all. Like the Dregs that surrounded Armacand herself, the people of Gull Town had been refused passage to the city within and they had done the best they could outside. They had built houses of what stone they could find, trying to recapture the normality they craved.
Chris passed a house and paused for a moment. He couldn’t tell what it had once been. Twisted like a stalactyte, the rock moulded into shapes that were anything but natural. It had an almost bewitching weirdness, with skeletal towers that looked like skeletal arms beseeching the heavens for forgiveness. Whatever colour the stone had once been, now it was the colour of coursing blood, red and brilliant and terrible.
Magic. Magic pusling through the very soil on which they had built their homes. Breathing in what stone they were able to quarry. The buildings themselves had come alive, twisting themselves into whatever shapes they wanted. Twisting those that lived there as well.
“Chris! Come on.”
Shaking himself from his reverie, Chris hurried to catch up. He cast one last look behind him at the bewitched house and swore he saw a figure vanish into the shadows on the rooftop. He turned away, a shiver running down his spine.
They turned off the main street, heading back towards the harbour. Here, so close to the sea, the buildings seemed almost normal, as if the magic was being kept at bay by the presence of the water. When Chris caught up, he saw the rest of the band stopped in front of a tavern on the harbour front. As he got closer, he saw a prancing green goat painted on the herald board outside. The goat had three eyes and four horns. Gull Town humour, he supposed.
Oaksgrave had clambered down off the wagon and was haggling with the owner for the price of a few rooms for the night. James, Chris’ brother, stood at his side, face stony as he stared at the scarf wrapped around the barkeep’s forehead. Chris turned away from them and leaned against the wagon.
“Ten bits Oaksgrave gets us the room for less than half a dozen crowns.”
Bill winced. “Not again, Luclowe. You got me last time, I’m not going to fall for it again.”
“Oh come on. What you got to lose?”
“My shirt!”
“Asshole.”
“Dickweed.”
The band had split in two now that they had stopped, same as it did every night. Chris glanced at the seasonal players, six men they had hired for the summer months. They stood in a huddle on the other side of the wagon, staring out across the channel, down the harbour or down at their feet. Anywhere but at the nine shareholders they had been travelling with for the past few months.
“What do you think they’ll do now?”
“Who cares,” Bill said with a snort. “Probably go back to hoeing turnips or to suckling noblemen’s cocks.”
Chris laughed. “What I wouldn’t give to show them all what I think of them...”
“Oh come on, Chris. Leave ‘em be. We’ll be shot of them by tomorrow.”
“Sooner the better. Walking around like they were proper actors. You know I caught Wattle reading the Prince’s lines from Keeping the Crown while we were in Newcastle. Thought he was a proper Edward Alleyn.”
They looked over at the part-timers again, muttering low enough that they could not hear. Tensions between the two groups had been high throughout the tour, in particular between Chris and a certain Dick Wattle. Chris sneered at the man’s back, leering at him.
“You know what? I think it’s about time Master Wattle was brought down a peg or two.”
Bill smiled. “What did you have in mind?”
Chris grinned and motioned his friend closer. “Here’s what I’m thinking...”
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