The Merman's Children

by Poul Anderson

  But bind him they did. And they swarn to where his huge head throbbed and jerked, his beak snapped at the imprisoning strands, his arms squirmed like a snakepit under the mesh. Through the murk-mists they looked into those wide, conscious eyes. The kraken stopped his clamor. They heard only a rush of current, in and out of his gills. He glared unflinchingly at them.

  “Brave have you been,” said Tauno, “a fellow dweller in the sea. Therefore know that you are not being killed for gain.”

  He took the right eye, Kennin the left. They thrust their har-poons in to the shaft ends. When that did not halt the strugglings which followed, they used their second pair, and both of Eyjan’s. Kraken blood and kraken anguish drove them off.

  After a while it was over. Some of their weapons must have worked into the brain and slashed it.

  The siblings fled from A verorn to the sunlight. They sprang into air and saw the cog wallowing in billows that the fight in the deeps had raised. Tauno and Eyjan did not bother to unload their lungs, though air-breathing they would be lighter than the water. They kept afloat with gentle paddling, let the ocean soothe and croon to their aching bodies, and drank draught upon draught of being alive. It was young Kennin who shouted to those clustered white-faced at the bulwarks: “We did it! We slew the kraken! The treasure is ours!”

  At that, Niels ran up the ratlines, crowing like a cock, and Ingeborg burst into tears. The other sailors gave a cheer that was oddly short; thereafter they kept attention mainly on Ranild. Through the waves leaped the dolphins, twoscore of them, to hear the tale.

  Work remained. When the swimmers signed that they had rested enough, Ranild cast them a long weighted line with a sack and a hook at the end. They took it back under.

  Already the ghost-fish he had been too slow to catch were nibbling on the kraken. “Let’s do our task and be away from here as fast as we can,” said Tauno. His companions agreed. They liked not poking around a tomb.

  Yet for Margrete who had been Yria they did. Over and over they filled the bag with coin, plate, rings, crowns, ingots; over and over they hung on the hook a golden chest or horn or can-delabrum or god. A signal would not travel well along this length of rope; the crew simply hauled it in about every half hour. Tauno discovered he had better attach his lanthorn, for, although the sea above had quieted, Berning did drift around and the line never descended to the same place. Between times the merman’s children searched for new objects, or took a little ease, or fed themselves off the cheese and stockfish Ingeborg had laid in the sack.

  Until Tauno said wearily: “We were told several hundred pounds would be ample, and I swear we’ve lifted a ton. A greedy man is an unlucky man. Shall we begone?”

  “Oh, yes, oh, yes.” Eyjan peered into the glooms that bulked around their sphere of weak light. She shivered and huddled close to her elder brother. Rarely before had he seen her daunted.

  Kennin was not. “I begin to know why the landfolk are so fond of looting,” he said with a grin. “There’s fun in an endlessness of baubles as in an endlessness of ale or women.”

  “Not truly endless,” Tauno answered in his sober fashion.

  “Why, is it not endlessness if you have more of something

  than you can finish off in your lifetime, gold to spend, ale to drink, women-?” Kennin laughed.

  “Bear with him,” Eyjan said into Tauno’s ear. “He’s a boy.

  All Creation is opening for him.” .

  “I’m no oldster myself,” Tauno replied, “though the trolls know I feel like a mortal one.”

  They rid themselves of the remaining lanthorns, putting these in the last bagful. It would rise faster than was wise for them. Tauno gestured salute to unseen Averorn. “Sleep well,” he mur-mured; ‘~ay your rest be unbroken till the Weird of the World.”

  From cold, dark, and death, they passed into light and thence into air. The sun cast nearly level beams out of the west, whose sky was greenish; eastward, amidst royal blue, stood forth a white planet. Waves ran purple and black, filigreed with foam, though the breeze had stopped. Their rush and squelp were the lone sounds in that coolness, save for what was made by the lolloping dolphins.

  These wanted at once to know everything, but the siblings were too tired. They promised full news tomorrow, coughed the water from their lungs, and made for the cog. None waited at the rail save Herr Ranild. A rope ladder dangled down amidships.

  Tauno came first aboard. He stood dripping, shuddering a bit from exhaustion, and looked around. Ranild bore crossbow in crook of arm; his men gripped their pikes near the mast- The kraken was dead. Why this tautness among them? Where were Ingeborg and Niels?

  “Um-m-m . . . you’re satisfied?” Ranild rumbled in his whiskers.

  “We have plenty for our sister, and to make the lot of you

  rich,” Tauno said. His flesh dragged at him, chilled, bruised, worn out. The same ache and dullness were in his head. He felt he ought to be chanting his victory; no, that could wait, let him only rest now, only sleep.

  Eyjan climbed over the side. “Niels?” she called.

  A glance across the six who stood there sent the knife hissing

  from her scabbard. “Treachery-this soon?”

  “Kill them!” Ranild shouted.

  Kennin had just come off the ladder. He was still poised on

  the rail. As the sailors and their pikes surged forward, he yelled

  and pounced to the deck. None among those clumsy shafts had

  swiftness to halt him. Straight at Ranild’s throat he flew, blade

  burning in the sunset glow. ,

  Ranild lifted the crossbow and shot. Kennin crashed at his feet. The quarrel had gone through breastbone, heart, and back. Blood poured across the planks.

  It stabbed in Tauno: Ingeborg had warned of betrayal, but Ranild was too shrewd for her. He must have plotted with man after single man, in secret comers of the hold. The moment the swimmers went after their booty, he gave the word to seize her and Niels. And slay them? No, that might leave traces; bind them, gag them, lay them below decks, until the trusting halflings had returned.

  Eyjan’s quick understanding, Kennin’s ready action had upset the plan. The onrush of sailors was shaken and slowed. There was time for Eyjan and Tauno to dive overboard.

  A couple of pikes arced harmlessly after them. Ranild loomed at the rail, black across the evening. His guffaw boomed forth:

  “Maybe this’ll buy your passage home from the sharks!” And down to them he cast the body of Kennin.

  IX

  THE dolphins gathered.

  With them, after the manner of merfolk, Tauno and Eyjan left

  their brother. They had closed the eyes, folded the hands, and taken the knife-steel beginning to rust-that it might go on in use as something that had known him. Now it was right that he should make the last gift which was his to give, not to the conger eels but to those who had been his friends.

  The halflings withdrew a ways while the long blue-gray shapes surrounded Kennin-very quietly, very gently-and they sang across the sunset ocean that farewell which ends:

  Wide shall you wander, at one with the world, Ever the all of you eagerly errant:

  Spirit in sunlight and spindrift and sea-surge, Flesh in the fleetness of fish and of fowl, Back to the Bearer your bone and your blood-salt.

  Beloved:

  The sky take you.

  The sea take you.

  And we will remember you in the wind.

  “But oh, Tauno, Tauno!” Eyjan wept. “He was so young!”

  He held her close. The low waves rocked them. “Stark are the

  Noms,” Tauno said. “He made a good departure.”

  A dolphin came to them and asked in dolphin wise what more help they wished. It would not be hard to keep the ship hereabouts, as by smashing the rudder. Presently thirst would wreak justice.

  Tauno glanced at the cog, becalmed on the horizon, sail furled. “No,” he said, “they hold hostages. Nevertheless, something
must be done.”

  “I’ll cut open Herr Ranild’s belly,” Eyjan said, “And tie the end of his gut to the mast, and chase him around the mast till he’s lashed to it.”

  “I hardly think him worth that much trouble,” Tauno replied. “Dangerous is he, though. To attack the ship herself, with the dolphins or by swimming beneath and prying strake from strake, is no trick. To seize her, on the other hand, may be impossible. Yet must we try, for Yria, Ingeborg, and Niels. Come, we’d better take food—our cousins will catch us some-and rest. Our strength has been spent.”

  ---A while after midnight he awoke refreshed. Grief had not drained from him; however, the keenness for rescue and revenge filled most of his being.

  Eyjan slept on, awash in a cloud of her hair. Strange how innocent, almost childlike her face had become, lips half parted and long lashes down over cheekbones. Around her were the guardian dolphins. Tauno kissed her in the hollow where throat met breast, and swam softly away.

  It was a light night of Northern summer. Overhead, heaven stood aglow, a twilight wherein the stars looked small and tender. The waters glimmered, barely moving, a lap-lap-lap of wavelets above the deeper half-heard march of the tide. The air was hushed, cool, and damp.

  Tauno came to Berning. He circled her with the stealthiness of a shark. Nobody seemed to be at the helm, but a man stood at either side of the main deck, pike agleam, and a third was in the crow’s nest. Lanthorns were left dark so as not to dazzle their eyes. That meant three below. They were standing watch and watch. Ranild was taking no chances with his foes.

  Or was he? The rail amidships lay scarcely more than a fathom

  above the water. One might find means to climb-

  And maybe kill a man or two before the racket fetched every-

  body else. Useless, that. Vanimen’s children had beaten the whole

  crew erenow; but that had been when no sailor carried more than

  a knife, and none really looked for a battle, and anyhow—once

  Oluv was out of the way-it had been no death-fight.

  Also, Kennin was gone.

  With naught save his upper countenance raised forth, Tauno waited for whatever might happen.

  At length he heard a footfall, and the man who blotted the starboard sky called, “Well, well, do you pant for us already?”

  “You’re on watch, remember,” came Ingeborg’s voice—how dragging, how utterly empty! “I could grit my teeth and seduce you if I thought the skipper would flog you for leaving your post; but so such luck. No, I left that sty in the hold for a breath of air, forgetting that here also are horrible swine.”

  “Have a care, harlot. You know we can’t risk you alive for a witness, but there are ways and ways to die.”

  “And if you get too saucy, we may not keep you till the last night out,” said the man on the larboard side. “That gold’lI buy me more whores than I can handle, so why bother with Cod-Ingeborg?”

  “Aye, piss on her,” said the man aloft, and tried to. She fled~ weeping under the poop. Laughter bayed at her heels. “c.

  Tauno stiffened for a moment. Then, ducking silently below, he swam to the rudder.

  Its barnacles were rough and its weeds were slimy in his grasp. He lifted himself with more slowness and care than he had used in scouting the kraken’s den. Because of sheer the tiller was about eight feet overhead, in that cavern made by the upper deck. Tauno caught the post with both hands, curved his chine, and got toes in between post and hull, resting on a bracket. In a smooth motion, not stopping to wince as the bronze dug into his flesh, he rose to where he could crook fingers on the after rail; and thus he chinned himself up.

  “What was that?” cried a sailor on the twilit main deck.

  Tauno waited. The water dripped off him no louder than wave-

  lets patted the hull. It felt cold.

  “Ah, a damned dolphin or something,” said another man.

  “Beard of Christ, I’ll be glad to leave this creepy spot!”

  “What’s the second thing you’ll do ashore?” A coarse three-way gabbing began. Tauno reached Ingeborg. She had drawn one breath when she saw him athwart silvery-dark heaven. Afterward she stood most quiet, save for the wild flutterings of her heart.

  He caught her to him in the lightlessness under the poop. Even then he marked the rounded firmness of her, the warm fragrance, the hair that tickled his lips laid close to her ear. But he whispered merely: “How goes it on board? Is Niels alive?”

  “Until tomorrow.” She could not respond with quite the stead-iness that Eyjan would have shown; but she did well. “They tied and gagged us both, you know. Me they’ll keep a while-did you hear? They’re not so vile that Niels has any use for them. He lies bound yet, of course. They talked about what to do with him while he lis~ned. Finally they decided the be~t sport would be to watch him sprattle from the yardarm tomorrow morning.” Her nails dug into his arm. “Were I not a Christian woman, how good to spring overboard into your sea!”

  He missed her meaning. “Don’t. I couldn’t help you; if naught else, you’d die of chill. . . . Let me think, let me think. . . . Ah.”

  “What?” He could sense how she warned herself not to hope.

  “Can you pass a word to Njels?”

  “Maybe when he’s hilled forth. They’ll surely make me come

  along.”

  “Well. . . if you can without being overheard, tell him to lift his heart and be ready to fight.” Tauno pondered a minute. “We need to pull eyes away from the water. When they’re about to put the rope around Niels’ neck, let him struggle as much as he’s able. And you too: rush in, scratch, bite, kick, scream.”

  “Do you think-do you believe-really-Anything, I’ll do anything. God is merciful, that He. . . He lets me die in battle at your side, Tauno.”

  “Not that! Don’t risk yourself. If a knife is drawn at you, yield, beg to be spared. And take shelter from the fighting. I don’t need your corpse, Ingeborg. I need you.”

  “Tauno, Tauno.” Her mouth sought his.

  “I must go,” he breathed in her ear. “Until tomorrow.”

  He went back to the sea as cautiously as he had left it. Because

  his embrace had wet her ragged gown, Ingeborg thought best to

  stay where she was while it dried. She wouldn’t be getting to

  sleep anyway. She fell on her knees. “Glory to God in the highest,”

  she stammered. “Hail, Mary, full of grace—oh, you’re a woman,

  you’ll understand-the Lord is with you-“

  “Hey, in there!” a sailor shouted. “Stow that jabber! Think you’re a nun?”

  “How’d you like me for a divine bridegroom?” called the masthead lookout.

  Ingeborg’s voice fell silent; her soul did not. And erelong the watchers’ heed went elsewhere. Dolphins came to the ship, a couple of dozen, and circled and circled. In the pale night their wake boiled after them, eerily quiet; their backfins .stood forth like sharp weapons; the beaks grinned, the little eyes rolled with a wicked mirth.

  The men called Ranild from his bunk. He scowled and tugged his beard. “I like this not,” he mumbled. “Cock of Peter, how I wish we’d skewered .those last two fishfolk! They plot evil, be sure of that. . . . Well, I doubt they’ll try sinking the cog, for how then shall they carry the gold? Not to speak of their friend the bitch.”

  “Should we maybe keep Niels too?” Sivard wondered.

  “Um-m-m. . . no. Show the bastards we’re in earnest. Cry over

  the waters that Cod-Ingeborg can look for worse than hanging if they plague us further. “ Ranild licked and lifted a finger. “I feel a breath of wind,” he said. “We can belike start off about dawn, when Niels is finished with the yardarm.” He drew his shortsword and shook it at the moving ring of dolphins. “Do you hear? Skulk back into your sea-caves, soulless things! A Christian man is bound for home!”

  ---The night wore on. The dolphins did nothing more than patrol around the ship. At last
Ranild decided they could do no more, that his foes had sent them in the hollow hope they might learn something, or in hollower spite.

  The breeze freshened. Waves grew choppy and smote louder against the hull, which rocked. Across the wan stars, inexplicable, passed a flight of wild swans.

  Those stars faded out at the early summer daybreak. Eastward the sky turned white; westward it remained silver-blue, bearing a ghostly moon. The crests of waves ran molten with light; their troughs were purple and black; the sea overall shimmered and sparkled in a green like the green of certain alchemical flames. It whooshed and cast spray. Wind whittered through the shrouds.

  Up the forward ladder from the hold, men prodded Niels at pike point. His hands were tied behind him, which made the climbing hard. Twice he fell, to their blustery glee. His garments were foul and bloodstained, but his blowing hair and downy beard caught the shiningness of the still unseen sun. He braced legs wide against the role of the ship and drank deep of the wet wild air.

  Torben and Palle kept watch at the bulwarks, Sivard aloft. Lave and Tyge guarded the prisoner. Ingeborg stood aside, her face blank, her eyes smoldering. Niels looked squarely at Ranild, who bore the noose of a rope passed over the yardarm. “Since we have no priest,” the boy asked, “will you let me say one more Our Father?”

  “Why?” the skipper drawled. ,

  Ingeborg trod near. “Maybe I can shrive you,” she said.

  “Hey?” Ranild was startled. After a moment, he and his men

  snickered. “Why, indeed, indeed.”

  He waved Lave and Tyge back, and himself withdrew toward the bows. Niels stood hurt and astounded. “Go on,” Ranild called through the wind and wave-rush. “Let’s see a good show. You’ll live as long as you can play-act it, Niels.”

  “No!” the captive shouted. “Ingeborg, how could you?”

  She caught him by the forelock, drew his countenance down

  to hers in spite of his withstanding, and whispered. They saw him grow taut, they saw how he kindled. “What’d you say?” Ranild demanded.