Arlen said, "Down to the beach, quick!"

They hurried. There might be hours before the newcomers arrived, what with the currently fickle wind and whether they tried exploring instead of heading straight for shore. When his party reached the nearest town, he called out, "The outsiders are coming! Listen to me as war-chief! I need messengers running to the chief and more to send word to high chief Voz right away."

He'd come to the village while most people were busy farming and cleaning. He got blank confusion from most of the residents. Somebody asked, "The who are coming?"

"Big ships from beyond the Roaring Storm!"

"I don't see anything," said one woman.

Arlen smacked his forehead. The hunters explained it better, that they'd been looking from high in the hills. Still, Arlen was talking about something clearly impossible and probably too dangerous to contemplate. It took several minutes of coaxing to get anybody moving in any useful way. It ended up being the hunters who made themselves the most useful, by dragging their friends to the beach. They began launching messenger boats and had somebody run across the new road to the chief's home.

"Thanks," Arlen said, and got to work. He gauged roughly the area where the ships might arrive -- they weren't yet in sight from sea level -- and built there, just offshore. Low tide would form a walking path to the fort he was making. Sixty feet wide and ringed with low walls against the sea, it'd hold several bare buildings with two stories of space for housing and storage and leisure.

He was arranging it how he'd like, enjoying the design he'd been vaguely planning for a while, but a crowd was watching. A kid asked, "What's all this for?"

Arlen said, "When people arrive from outside, it's very important that they stay right here for a couple of days and not visit other islands. So I want them to have a home."

"Why?"

"To keep everyone safe while we learn about them," Arlen said, and that wasn't the whole truth. Because there was a fair chance that Voz's healing abilities were going to be extremely useful soon after first contact.

#

Arlen had built a Potemkin village by the time the ships, two of them, were in plain view. He'd finished the fort and had someone watching from its rooftop. Then he put up a few outlying stone buildings for the actual town, then focused on changes that were lower to the ground. If he'd put up a giant tower at this point the outsiders might catch him doing it, and he wasn't eager to reveal what he could do, yet. So he went a little inland and built a little plaza, then a well-hidden entrance to a pit. Which connected to a tunnel. Which led beneath the beach through sturdy walls, and most of the way into the fort's basement. If he needed to get in there quickly, he could.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

The islanders were on the beach, staring as the giant ships emerged over the horizon, a direction that everyone knew to have nothing at all in it. Some of the men brought out their weapons and armor, and looked to Arlen.

Arlen said, "I think I know what will happen. There's no need to fight, yet."

"Outsiders," one man said.

Men stood on the ships, and Arlen thought he made out one with a spyglass. They were coming dead-on, but the hulls and triple masts suggested a people well versed in long sea voyages. What else could he do to prepare? He'd left a supply of iron ingots at the smithy, given swords to all who wanted them, gathered trinkets for a greeting ceremony, and sent word to the authorities who understood the situation worse but in whose hands the islands' fate ultimately should rest.

What he could do right now, was sit cross-legged on the beach and calm his mind, while all the fevered imagination of the islanders swirled around him.

The ships anchored a hundred yards or so offshore. One was the bigger sister, bearing more sails but tattered. Each lowered a boat into the water and came right for shore, the faster not waiting for the other.

"Pushed by water magic," said one keen-eyed scout on the beach. "How? They've never seen the spirits. How would they have the gift?"

"They might have their own," Arlen said. That answered one of his many questions. Magic didn't necessarily come from a supposedly divine patron.

The boats were crowded. Between them they brought a party of around twenty, all male, most dressed in metal breastplates and plumed helmets. And were those pistols worn along with their swords? The design puzzled him but he assumed so. Their clothing was billowy white and yellow. Three seeming officers led the way. The one from the larger ship was a man with a magnificent plate-and-chain top with stylized wings at the collar. The second boat brought someone lightly armored but in fine, fresh pleated clothing with silver chains. The third, sharing that boat, bore only a book in his yellow-robed arms. The group was mainly dark-haired and ruddy-skinned, squinting ahead at the unknown land.

"No ears, no tails!" said several watchers. They looked to Arlen, who'd hardly noticed at first that they weren't "normal" humans.

Arlen said, "Hey, maybe they'll get their own." That got a few chuckles anyway.

Arlen got up and approached. He felt everyone behind him keeping their distance. The boats thudded onto the beach. The nobly dressed man stirred but the lead captain shot him a look and he sat back down. So it was the leader who first waded ashore, leaving bootprints on the sand. He surveyed the frightened crowd and laid eyes on Arlen again, looking him up and down. These days Arlen was dressed about the same as anyone else, in light clothes of palm fiber under his armor. Only the basket of gifts beside him and his off-color, pale complexion clearly stood out.

The captain knelt, clasped his hands, and muttered. Then he gestured to one of the men in the boat behind him. That was the one who handed him a flag, which the captain stabbed into the beach.

Saw that coming from a universe away, thought Arlen.