The Merman's Children

I

Vanimen, who had been the Liri king and was now the captain of a nameless ship-since he had thought Pretiosissimus Sanguis boded ill-bound for an unknown shore, stood in her bows and peered. Folk aboard saw how his great fonD was stiff and his face grim.

Aft of him the sail rattled, spilling wind. The hull creaked aloud, yawed in the waves that already had it rolling and pitching, took a sheet of spray across the main deck. The passengers who crowded there, mostly females and young, jostled together. Angry cries rose from among them.

Vanimen ignored that. His gaze swept around the waters. Those ran gray as iron, white as sleet, in ever higher crests, beneath tattered, murky clouds. The wind hooted, shrilled in rigging, strained, smote, struck icicle fangs into flesh. Rain-squalls walked the horizon. Ahead, a cavern of purple-black had swallowed the afternoon sun. Gaping wider by the minute, it flared with lightnings, whose thunders toned across leagues.

Sensing trouble on its way, the travelers who were in the sea made haste to return. The ship could not hold them all, but their help might be needed. Vanimen saw them glimpsewise, fair fonDS among billows that fought them. Nearby lifted the backfin of his orca, loyal beast.

Meiiva climbed the ladder to join him. Braided, her blue mane did not fly wildly as did his golden, and she had wrapped a cloak from a clothes chest around her slenderness. She must bring her lips against his ear to say: “The helmsman asked me to tell you he fears he can’t keep her head to the waves as you ordered, once the real blow sets in. The tiller is like an eel in his hands. Could we do something to the sail?”

“Reef it,” Vanimen decided. “Run before the stonn,”

“But that’s from. . . northwest. . . . Haven’t we had woe aplenty with foul winds, calms, and contrary currents since we left the Shetlands behind us, not to lose the distance we’ve made?”

“Better that than lose the ship. Oh, a human skipper might well broach a wiser scheme. We, though, we’ve gained a little seamanship in these over-many days, but indeed it is little. I can only guess at what might work to save us.”

He laid palm above brow to squint into the blast. “This I need not guess at,” he added. “I’ve known too many weathers through the centuries. That is no gale which will exhaust itself overnight. No, it’s a monster out of Greenland and the boreal ice beyond. We’ll be in its jaws for longer than I want to think of.”

“This is not the season for such. . . is it?”

“No, not commonly, though I’ve watched a gathering cold breed ever more bergs and floes and storms during the past few hundred years. Call this a freak, and us unlucky.”

Within himself, Vanimen wondered. The watchman he slew to gain his vessel, a man who deserved no such fate, had cursed him first. . . and called on the Most High and his own saint. . . . The king had never told anyone. He did not believe he ever would.

If they sank- His glance went to the main deck and lingered. Most of them would die, the lovely mermaids who gave and took so much joy, the children who had yet to learn what joy truly was. He himself might win to some alien shore, but what use in that? Enough. Let him do whatever was in his might. No matter how long a life you might win for yourself, who in the end escaped the nets of Ran?

Vanimen sent a boy to summon the strongest males up the Jacob’s ladder. Meanwhile he rehearsed in his mind what commands to give. At least his tribe had learned quick obedience to their captain, a thing altogether new in the history of the race. But they had not learned many mariner skills. His own were scarcely superior.

The call for help was none too soon. Shortening sail proved a wild battle in the swiftly rising wind. Cloth and lines flayed blood out of crew while the hulk staggered prey to surge after surge. No few passengers were washed overside. One babe perished, skull smashed against a bollard. While death was familiar to the merfolk, Vanimen would not soon forget that sight, or the mother’s face as she gathered the ruin in her arms and plunged into a sea that might be kindlier.

That was a dangerous thing to suppose, Vanimen knew. The water embraced a person, gave shelter from sun and weather, brought forth nourishment; but it sucked warmth from the body that only huge eating could replace, and in its reaches laired killers untold. He caused lines to be trailed from the deck, to which swimmers might cling for a time of rest if they could not corne aboard. This might also help prevent them getting lost from the ship.

By then, the full storm was almost upon her. Vanimen sought the aftercastle. In the stern below the poop, two mermen stood at the helm. That watch was less arduous now that they were simply letting the wind take them whither it listed. He gave them advice, promised relief in due course, and turned away. Built into either side were a pair of tiny cabins, starboard for the captain, larboard for his officers. On this voyage they were seldom used, for merfolk found them confining. He wanted a while away from the elements. He opened the door of the master’s.

A lamp swung from a chain, guttered, cast dull light and trollshaped shadows and rank smoke. Who had kindled it-? A moan brought his glance to the bunk. The girl Raxi and the youth Haiko were making love.

To interrupt would be bad manners. Vanimen waited, braced against the crazy lurching and swaying around him, frostily amused at what agility their act required of them here. Above the head of the bunk was a crucifix; above the foot, where a man could regard it as he lay, was a painting of the Virgin, crude, dimly seen, yet somehow infinitely tender. The images had not turned their backs-this was not the church he had dared enter, seeking for Agnete—but he felt anew his strangeness to everything they were. He felt his aloneness.

The rutting couple finished, with a shared cry. Presently they noticed Vanimen. Haiko grew abashed; Raxi grinned, waved, and eased out from beneath her partner.

“Why are you in my berth?” Vanimen demanded through windhowl, thunder-crash, wave-roar, timber-groan.

“The others are full,” Raxi answered. “We knew not you’d come, nor thought you’d mind.” Did Haiko flush? “It. . . it would be unwise to. . . do this in the water,” he mumbled. “We might lose sight of the hull. But we may soon be dead.”

Raxi sat up and reached out her arms. In the narrow space, she touched Vanimen. “Will you be next?” she invited. “I’d like that.”

“No!” he heard himself snap. “Get out! Both of you!”

They did, with hurt looks. The door closed behind them, leaving him altogether solitary. Through foul gloom he stared into the eyes of the Holy Mother and wondered why he had been angered. What had those two done that was wrong. . . in her very sight? They were soulless; they could not sin, any more than an animal could. Nor could he.

“Is that not true?” he asked aloud. There was no answer.

Day and night, day and night, day and night, until counting drowned in weariness, the storm drove the ship before it.

Afterward hardly any of that span abode in memory. It was nothing but chaos, struggle, half-perceived pain, and loss. Sharpest in Vanimen’s heart was that his orca disappeared. Maybe it got stunned into bewilderment and drifted elsewhere, as several merfolk did. He saw it no more.

Somehow he and his people kept their vessel afloat, though in the end she was leaking so badly that the pumps could never stop. Somehow they outlived the tempest. In all else it had its will of them—

-until it was finished.

The hulk lay outside the Gates of Hercules. Vanimen recognized those dim blue masses on the world-rim, Spain and Africa, from a time past when he had adventured south. The seas still ran heavy, but azure and green beneath a sky washed utterly pure; glitter danced along every movement. Warmth spilled from the sun, calling forth odors of tar to mingle with salt and flavor the breeze. A throb and a murmur went through planks, ears, bones: a song of peace.

No craft had thus far ventured out of port. Insatiably curious, dolphins flocked about this one. Vanimen left on deck a crowd as gaunt and shaky as himself. He dived, struck, went below, rose anew to continue breathing air. His flesh felt each ripple through the cleanliness that upbore him. He addressed the dolphins.

What could they tell him of the Midworld Sea? On his earlier faring he had not swum much beyond a great lionlike rock in the straits. Christendom had prevailed hereabouts for long and long; little or naught of Faerie seemed to remain. Today was different for him. His ship would never cross the ocean. He would be lucky if she made another thousand leagues before foundering, and that would have to be through waters more mild than stretched westward. Did any refuge exist to which she might bring the Liri folk?

The dolphins chattered among themselves. They sent messengers off, a-leap in prismatic spray, to seek additional counsel. It took time. Meanwhile the people rested, hunted, regained strength. By fortune, a dead calm fell and lasted a considerable period; hence no humans sailed near to inquire who this might be.

An answer of sorts emerged. Most lands inside the Gates doubtless would be inhospitable. Fishermen were too plentiful and, the Church aside, would not welcome fish hunters. The African coast might be better, save that mankind there was of a faith which kindled still more zeal against Faerie than Christendom generally did.

But. . . a certain shore on the eastern marge of a narrow sea was otherwise. The dolphins had trouble explaining. They knew merely that nothing like merfolk dwelt yonder, yet Faerie was not wiped out as it had been in, say, Spain. No, to judge from glimpses and encounters the dolphins had had, that country teemed with nonhuman beings. Were the mortals more tolerant than elsewhere? Who knew?

Much shipping went back and forth in those parts, as well as trawling. Nevertheless, food ought to be ample for a few score settlers. The coast was rugged, too, often heavily wooded, rich in islands; surely someplace was a site for New Liri.

Vanimen’s pulse thudded. He made himself be patient, asking and asking. The dolphins could describe more or less what the men looked like that they had observed, how they dressed, what kind of sacred or magical objects they carried. (Many had come to grief at sea; the dolphins occasionally helped swimmers reach land, and always studied the drowned with interest.) It was hard to understand the accounts. These creatures did not think or even see quite like him. Slowly, he puzzled out a portion. More helpful was their relation of what mortals said. They had a range and keenness of hearing, an exact memory for what they heard, such as were given to no life elsewhere.

Vanimen joined what he got from them to what he had garnered on his travels or from men he had known. A few of the latterdecades or centuries down in dust-were educated, eager both to learn and to teach, willing to take him for what he was if word about it did not get around... King Svein Estridsen, Bishop Absalon. . . .

That seaboard, on the far side of Italy, was called Dalmatia. Nowadays it was part of a realm called Hrvatska, or Croatia in the Latin tongue. The folk were akin to the Rus, but of Catholic belief. Nor did the dolphins know of anything among them like the northern rousalkai. That was as much as Vanimen could piece together.

Perhaps what waited yonder was the final working out of a curse. But perhaps not. And had the merfolk much to choose from?

II

The storm overtook the cog Herning on her journey back to Denmark. That had already been a hard passage through hostile winds. She could tack, awkwardly and never pointing close, but this was a matter of straining at sheets and braces to reset, while tightly keeping the helm lest she lose steerage way or go worse out of control. In these airs, it must be done again and again, day or night, with scant warning or none.

Ingeborg could just cook and keep house, work amply rough. Eyjan had the strength to stand watches and help at lines and tiller; she brought fresh fish aboard, aided by several dolphins whose curiosity kept them nearby; she navigated in mennaid wise. Mainly the undennanned craft depended on Tauno’s muscles. Yet heregretting now that none of the original crew had been spared, dangerous though that would have been afloat and at home-could not have been the sole deckhand. He needed the lesser might of Niels, as well as the boy’s redes.

It was not that Niels was experienced, even as much as a fisher lad his age. He had only been on a few short trips before this one. But he was quick to learn, eager to ask; he dreamed of a berth on a better vessel and maybe, maybe, in a far tomorrow, if God willed, a captaincy of his own. What shipmates could or would not explain, he got from other men when in port, his friendly manner making them glad to oblige him. In this present peril, he observed more keenly than ever, and from this he also learned, fast.

Thus, too busy to notice it, he found himself skipper. If he had any thoughts to spare before tumbling into what little sleep offered itself, they were of Eyjan. She readily smiled at him. A few times she gave him a quick hug or kiss, when something had gone well, and his spirit soared on gull wings to the sun. But there had been no further lovemaking-scant moments for it, and belike the merman’s children with no heart for it, so soon after their brother’s death.

Early on, Niels decided to work north. In the neighborhood of Iceland they should get a favoring current, and improve the chance of a wind fair for their goal. Indeed, erelong they were making good speed. Cheer lightened weariness.

Then the tempest smote.

Darkness raved. Ingeborg knew day must be aloft-in Heaven, if no place else, where the Lord sat in judgment on sinners—for she was not altogether blind. Nonetheless, vision barely reached the length of the hull.

She had no duties left on deck; any fire in the clay hearth upon ; it was doused at once and food became a swallow of salt flesh, , dry cheese, stockfish, sodden flatbread, wormy biscuit. At last, however, the gloom and stench of the hold grew unendurable, and she groped her way topside. Wind and hail harried her into what shelter was beneath the poop. There she waited alone, since the helm was lashed and Niels slumbered exhausted below.

When the weather first turned menacing, he had had a sea anchor built and cast out and the sail struck. To run before the blast could all too well mean piling into a reef or island of the many that ring northern Scotland... unless a following billow came over the stem and broke the vessel asunder. His device would keep her bow on, for the least possible damage, and he could ray for an end to the blow before she drifted to her doom. Meanwhile, he and his crew would not be idle. They must man the pumps for hours each day as seams opened, they must hasten to make repairs or make things fast afresh when the waters hammered and hauled, they must maintain what lookout they were able against the dread sight of breakers.

Time had gone on, measureless as a nightmare.

Ingeborg took hold of the tiller to steady herself against wild leaps and plunges. The gale struck inward, plastered the drenched garments to her skin, dragged at her like a river in spate. She was drowned in its clamor, in the earthquake rumble of waves and their roars when they burst, in cold that bit through her very numbness.

Straining ahead, she saw the mast reel across murk, amidst hail and scud. Its top whipped. Though the yard was down, secured on deck, how long could wood and rope take that strain? Combers boomed ahead, onrushing mountains, black and iron-gray under the jaggedness of their crests. Spray she’eted when they passed the bow; the hull shuddered. Brawling onward, they loomed above the rails. Often and often Berning did not respond soon enough to her tether, and fury cataracted across her main deck. Hatch coarnings sprung, the hold had become swamp-wet.

Through driving spindrift and ice, Ingeborg made out Tauno and Eyjan, shadowy at the forecastle. They seemed to be in converse. (How?) Abruptly Ingeborg choked on a scream. Tauno had vaulted overboard.

But he is the son of a merman! she swore to herself. He can live in that. Yes, he’s spoken of a nether, eternal peace. .. . Mary, ward him. . . . .

Eyjan came aft, which brought her into clearer view. Nude save for headband and knife belt, she seemed free of chill. Rather, her red locks, heavy with water, made the single touch of warmth inside a hidden horizon. The pitching of the craft did not trouble her panther gait.

She entered the aftercastle. “Ah, Ingeborg,” she greeted, now sufficiently close to be heard. “I spied you clambering out-for a breath of air, however bitter, no?” She reached the woman and stopped. Through hands cupped between mouth and ear, her tones were more distinct. “Let me keep you company. It’s my watch, but I can as well sense danger from here-maybe better, without that cursed hail stinging me.”

Ingeborg lifted a palm from the tiller to screen her own voice: “Tauno, where has he gone?”

The cleanly molded visage starkened. “To ask the dolphins if they can find help for us.”

Ingeborg gasped. “God have mercy! Do we need it that much?”

Eyjan nodded. “We’re nigh to land. He and I have felt how the sea is shoaling when we’ve ventured into it. Its pulse-aye, we’ve caught the first echoes of surf. And the weather shows no sign of letting up.”

Ingeborg stared into the gray eyes. “At least, if we’re wrecked, he can live—” She realized she had whispered.

Perhaps Eyjan guessed. “Oh, poor dear!” she cried. “Can I give you comfort?” Her tall form stepped between the woman and the wind. She held out her arms. Ingeborg released the helm and stumbled into that embrace. It upbore her against lunge and roll, heat flowed from softness of breasts and live play of muscles, she could cling as if to the mother she half remembered.

Talk went easier, too. “Fear not, beloved friend,” Eyjan murmured. “If we see shipwreck before us, Tauno and I will take you and Niels on our backs, well clear of breakers. We’ll bring you ashore at a safe place, and afterward fetch aid from your own kind.”

“But the gold will be lost.” Ingeborg felt the grasp around her tighten. “He couldn’t likely get another ship, could he? Everything he fared after and staked his life for; everything it means to himand he could still die. Could he not? Eyjan, I beg you, don’t. . . you two. . . risk yourselves for us—”

Agnete’s daughter held her close and crooned to her while she wept.

Tauno came back with word that the dolphins were in search. They knew of a creature that might be able to help, could they find him. Little more had they said, because they themselves understood little. They were unsure whether the being would understand them in his turn or be willing.

That was all Tauno related, for he had barely returned when the forestay parted. The end of it, lashing back, passed an inch from Eyjan’s neck. Appalled, he chased after it, caught and fought it as if it were a bad beast, got it hitched to the mast: where he saw that that was beginning to crack. Eyjan resisted when he would bend on a new stay. He could fall down onto the deck, to death or the slower death of crippling. Let him pump instead, if he could not take a moment’s ease.

Night fell, the short light night of Northern summer gone tombblack and age-long.

Morning brought dusk again. Spindrift hazed the world; a wrack flew low overhead. The seas were massive as before, but choppier, foam-white, turbulence waxing in them as they neared the shallows and the rocks beyond. Anchor or no, the cog reeled like a man who has taken a sledgehammer in his temple.

Tauno and Eyjan had spent the darkest hours topside and we still on watch, a-strain after signs of ground. The gale had drained strength from them at last; they huddled in each other’s arms against its cold and violence. Once be wondered aloud if power remained for him to keep a mortal’s face above water.

“Maybe we cannot,” Eyjan replied through shrieks and rumbles. “If things come to swimming, do you take Ingeborg and I Niels.”

“Why?” Tauno asked, dully surprised. “He weighs more than she does.”

“That makes small difference afloat, you know,” she told him, “and if they must die, they would liefest it were thus.”

He did not pursue the question; and presently they both forgot it.

A shape had appeared alongside. Glimpsed among waves, whenever the cog dipped her larboard rail, it was that of a large gray seal. They had wondered why such an animal would accompany them. Afterward they believed that already they had snuffed an odor of strangeness, though the storm confused every sense too much for them to mark this at the time.

Suddenly Herning stood well-nigh on her beam ends. A wave climbed aboard. Upon it, amidst it, rode the seal. The ship rolled back and forth toward a more even keel. Water torrented through her scuppers. The seal stayed behind. He raised himself on front flippers... change boiled through his flesh... a man” crouched there.

He rose to confront the stupefied siblings. They saw he was huge, a head above Tauno, so broad and thick that he seemed squat. Hair and beard grew sleek over his head, gray in color, as was the woolliness which everywhere covered his otherwise naked form. The skin beneath was pale. He reeked of fish. His face was hideous, save for the eyes—Iow and cragged of brow, flat of nose, gape-mouthed, the heavy jaw chinless. Those eyes, though, shone between lashes a queen might envy: big, softly golden brown, without whites: unhuman. .

Tauno had clapped hand to knife. Stiffly, he let go the hilt and raised his arm. “Welcome, if you come in friendship,” he said in the Liri tongue.

The stranger answered with a deep, barking tone but with mortal words. “Dolphins tauld that wha’ drew me. Could be a woman here, to reck by their chatter. You’re no true woman or man, from your smell, nor true merfolk, from your looks. Wha’, then, and who?”

The speech he used was intelligible, akin to Danish. Norse settlers had come to the islands off Scotland in Viking times; most of those places remained under the Norse crown; the tongue of the ancestors lived on in a western version, side by side with Gaelic.

“We’re in sharp need,” Eyjan said. “Can you help us?”

The reply cut straight through every storm-noise: “Maybe, if I will. Small mercy ha’ I known for mysel’. Ha’ ye more aboard?”

“Yes.” Tauno lifted the nearest hatch and shouted a summons to Niels and Ingeborg, who slept.

They scrambled up within heartbeats, alarm stretching their countenances. When they saw the newcomer, they halted, drew breath, unthinkingly linked hands.

The were-seal’s glance fell on Ingeborg and stayed. Step by step, he crossed the deck toward her. She and Niels stood fast, apart from their struggle not to fall. She paled and the youth stiffened as his hairy fingers, with nails like claws, reached forth to stroke her cheek. The mark of desire rose before them.

And yet he was gentle, merely touched her, joined gazes only while his lips trembled upward in shyness. Thereupon he turned back to the siblings and said, “Aye, I’ll help, for her sake. Thank this lady, the three 0’ ye. Hoo could I let her droon?” Hauau, he named himself, and told that he dwelt on Sule Skerry. Few of his kind were left; maybe he was the last. (That was believable, since no one in Liri had ever heard of them.) From earliest days, men had hated the selkie race and hunted it down.

Hauau thought that might be because its members raided the nets of fishers, like their kin the true seals but with human skill and cunning. He was not sure, for he had been alone since he was a pup, with just a dim recollection of his mother and what she sang to him. He had escaped after men arrived in a boat, cornered her, and cut her apart. It seemed to him he had heard them calling on Odin; be that as it may, the thing happened long ago.

This came out in scattered words, as did the story of the travelers. Foremost was the toil of surviving. Herning could no more be let drift; lee shores were too close. Besides a stay snapped, with need for replacement, the mast was now badly cracked and must be reinforced. A pair of extra spars fetched from below, lashed tight, should serve. . . . ,

Hauau’s strength was enormous. He held Tauno and Niels on his shoulders while they worked on the pole. Without him, worn as they were, belike they could never have raised the yard and its sodden sail, nor hauled hard enough on the sheets to keep mastery. Forsooth, were he not there to do a triple share of pumping, the hull would have filled.

Still more astonishing was his seamanship. Having explained to his companions what each order he gave would mean, and drilled them in this, he took the helm when they saw surf rage upon clustered rocks. Battered, leaky, sluggish, the cog nonetheless came alive in his hands. It was very near, but they did claw off that trap, and the next and the next. They stayed afloat, they even won back sea room.

As if realizing it could not have them, the storm departed.

III

“Aye, well can I see ye harne,” Hauau growled. “But first we maun caulk, sprung as this old tub is, or she’ll nae last half the coorse.”

Bast for that purpose was stowed aboard. Ordinarily the ship would have been careened, but Tauno’s crew lacked the needful manpower, besides not daring to lie ashore. Worse than the alienness of Faerie folk, the gold would rouse murder against them. Siblings and selkie could work beneath the waterline, hammering fiber into manifold leaks. Best would have been to tar it on the outside. Since this was impossible, Ingeborg s~ed fire anew on the cooking hearth and kept hot a kettleful of pitch for Niels, who applied it inboard. After a pair of hard days, the task was done. Herning still required occasional pumping, her entire hull remained badly weakened, but Hauau deemed her close enough to seaworthy.

When his fellows had enjoyed a long sleep and broken their fast, he gathered them on deck. It was a quiet morning above mirror-bright water. Gulls cruised air which was blue, with a few clouds as white as their wings, and growing warm. On the horizon off the starboard bow lay a streak of solidity, Ireland.

Tauno and Eyjan sprawled their big fair bodies naked on the planks. Ingeborg was likewise unclad, her filthy raiment soaking overside at the end of a line. So was Niels’, but he kept a cloak tightly around himself, and would not sit. Whenever his glance touched the female forms, flame and snow chased each other through the down on his cheeks.

Hauau hulked in front of them, his hugeness grotesque athwart the day. The hoarse tones coughed from him: “I think we’d be rash tae try beating back aroon’ Scotland and across the North ISea. The vessel wants nursing every fathom o’ the way. Best we pass doon through the Irish Sea, aroon’ through the English Chan nel, and thence past Friesland tae Denmark. ’Tis nae doot a lengthier passage, but belike milder. Too, coasting, should worst come tae worst, we’ll know we can get the humans tae shore alive.”

“Can you pilot?” Tauno asked. “We’re none of us familiar with these parts.”

“Aye, that I can, and warn ye as well wha’ kinds 0’ ship tae steer clear 0’ when we spy their topmasts. The King 0’ England has captains wha’ be harder tae deal wi’ than pirates.”

Eyjan stirred. Her gaze upon the selkie grew intent. “You’ve saved us from wreck, you’ll bring us to haven,” she said low.

“What reward shall be yours?” Hauau’s chest swelled, he struggled to speak, it broke forth in a bellow: “Ingeborg!”

“What?” the woman cried. She raised knees in front of breasts, clutched them with her left arm, traced the Cross with a right hand that shook.

The were-seal half reached toward her. He also shivered. “Whilst we, we sail,” he stammered. “Only whilst we sail. I’ll be gentle, I promise. Och, ’tis been lang alane—”

She looked from him, to Tauno. The halfling’s face drew into bleak lines. “You’ve done too much for us that we should force you,” he said.

Silence grew while she stared at him.

Hauau stirred at last. His shoulders slumped. “Aye, grumly am I,” he mumbled. “I’d stay on anyhoo, but I couldna stand tae see-Farewell. I think ye can mak’ hame wi’oot me. Fare ever well.” He moved toward the rail.

Ingeborg sprang up. “No, wait,” she called, and ran to him. He stopped, agape. She took the great clawed hand in hers. “I’m sorry,” she said; her voice wavered and tears stood in her eyes. “I was just startled, do you understand? Of course I—”

He barked wild laughter and caught her in a bear hug. She wailed for pain. He let go. “Forgi’ me,” he begged. “I forgot. I’ll be gentle, I will.” .

Niels stepped forward, bleached about the nostrils. “No, Ingeborg, don’t,” he said. “We’ve sin aplenty on our souls—and you—”

Her own laughter clattered. “Why, you know what I am,” she retorted. “Here is naught really new. . . is there?”

Eyjan rose, took Niels by the shoulder, whispered into the tangled blond locks that hid his ears. He gasped. Tauno found his feet. He and Hauau locked eyes. “You will treat her kindly,” he said, fingers on the haft of his knife.

Nights were lengthening and darkening as summer wore on, but this one was clear, countlessly starry, ample light for Faerie vision. Herning sailed before a breeze that made the channel blink with wavelets. It rustled and gurgled along the bows; now and then an edge of sail flapped, a block rattled, a timber creakedsmall sounds, lost in the hush-until Hauau roared in the forepeak.

Later he came forth beside Ingeborg, to stand looking outward. Tauno had the helm, Eyjan was in the crow’s nest, but neither paid them any open heed. “I thank ye, lass,” the selkie said humbly.

“You did that already,” the woman replied, with a nod at the darkness under the foredeck.

“I canna do it again?”

“No need. A bargain is a bargain.” He continued to gaze across the water. His grip closed hard on the rail. “Ye dinna like me at all?”

“I meant not that,” she protested. Inch by inch, she moved a hand until it lay across his. “You’re our rescuer and, yes, you are better to me than many I remember. But we are of, well, sundered kin, mortal and, and other. What closeness can ever be between us?”

“I’ve watched your een upon Tauno.”

In haste, Ingeborg asked, “Why didn’t you try Eyjan? She’s beautiful where I’m plain, she’s of your halfworld, and I think she might enjoy-not that I regret, Hauau, sweet.”

“Ye’ll grow used tae the smell,” he promised bitterly.

“But why will you have me?”

He stood long mute. Finally he turned to her, fists clenched, and said: “Because ye be in truth a woman and nae fay.”

She raised her glance toward his. The stiffness began to leave her body. “My folk slew yours,” she said as if in confessional.

“That was hundreds 0’ years agone. We’re well-nigh forgotten on land, and the auld grudge wi’ us. I dwell in peace, afar on Sule Skerry-wind, waves, gulls the ainly speakers, limpets and barnacles the ainly neighbors-at peace, save for storm and shark, whilst winter follows winter—but sometimes it grows dreegh, d’ye ken?”

“Bare rock, bare sea, sky without Heaven. . . . Oh, Hauau!” Ingeborg laid her cheek on his breast. He stroked her with clumsy care.

“But why have you not sought elsewhere?” she wondered after his heart had tolled threescore slow beats.

“I did when younger, wide aboot, and many’s the kittle thing I did see. But by and large, wha’ Faerie people I met wad ha’ small part 0’ me. They saw me as ugly and looked na deeper, for tae them, naught lies below the skin.”

Ingeborg lifted her head. “That’s not true. Not of every halfworlder, at least. Tauno- Tauno and Eyjan—”

“Aye, so it do seem. ’Tis good o’them tae provide for their sister. Natheless. . . in humans like you is more. I canna name it. A warmth, a, a way 0’ loving. . . is it that ye know ye maun dee and therefore cleave tegither the wee span ye hae, or is it a spark 0’ eternity. . . a soul? I dinna ken. I know nobbut that in some men, and in more women, I hae felt it, like a fire on a cauld night. . . . Ye hae it, Ingeborg, bright and strong as e’er I cheered mysel’ by. Reckon yoursel’ lucky in your sorrows, for that ye can love as much as ye do.”

“I?” she asked, astounded. “A whore? No, you’re wrong. What can you tell about mankind?”

“More than ye might think,” he said gravely. “Frae time tae time I hae entered your world, and not always been cast right oot; for though I be bad tae see and smell, I’m a strong, steady worker. Hoo else might I hae learned the tongue or the sailor’s craft? I’ve had feres amang men, and certain women hae made me welcome in their hames, and a few-can ye believe?—a very few hae gi’en me love.”

“I see why they would,” she breathed.

Pain twisted his visage. “Na wedded love. Hoo could a monster like me hae a kirkly wedding? ’Tis been but for short whiles. Langer amang men, aye; we’d make voyage after voyage. In the end I maun leave them too, O’coorse, syne they were growing old and I na. Tens o’years wad pass on my skerry ere I had courage tae seek out mortals again. ’Twas langer yet if there had been a woman’s kiss.”

“Must I too hurt you, then?” Ingeborg stood on tiptoe and drew his neck downward. Mouth met mouth.

“’Twill be worth it, dear,” he said. “Wha’ dreams I’ll weave in the clouds, wha’ songs the wind will sing 0’ ye! And every calm, starlit night will bring back this, till the day 0’ my weird,”

“But you will be so alone,”

He tried to ease her: “ ‘Tis as well, When my death comes, ’twill be because 0’ a woman.”

She stood back. “What?”

“Och, naught.” He pointed aft. “See hoo shining wheels the Wain 0’ Carl,”

“No, Hauau,” she urged, and shivered beneath the cloak she had cast over her before leaving the forepeak. “Say forth, I beg you.” She paused; he gnawed his lip. “We’ll be, . . mates, . . for this journey. I’ve seen more witchiness of late than I dare dwell upon. Another mystery, that may touch me—” He sighed, shook his head, and answered, “Nay, na ye, Ingeborg, fear na that. I. . . by mysel’ the most 0’ my life, brooding over the deeps. , . hae gained a measure 0’ the second sight. I foreknow summat 0’ my fate.”

“And?”

“The hour will come when a mortal woman bears me a son; and later I will tak’ him awa’ wi’ me, lest they bum him for a demon’s get; and she’ll wed a man wha’ shall slay us both,”

“No, no, no,”

He folded his arms, “I’m na afeared. Sad for the bairn, aye. Yet in those days Faerie will be a last thin glimmer ere it fades oot fore’ er. Thus I can believe ’tis a mercy for him; and myself, I’ll be at one wi’ the waters.”

Ingeborg wept, quite quietly, under the stars. He did not venture to touch her,

“I am barren,” she gulped.

He nodded. “I know full well ye’re nae my doom. Your ain fate—” His teeth snapped air, After a moment: “Ye’re weary frae all ye hae suffered. Come, let me tak’ ye below tae sleep.”

It was still dark when the hourglass called time for a change of watch, though dawn was not far off, The crew had agreed that two Faerie folk should always be on duty at night, and laid out a scheme of shifts, On this occasion Hauau took over steering and Tauno went aloft.

Eyjan, freed, swung lithely down a hatch to the quarters rigged in the hold. Enough light for her came from the constellations framed in that opening; had the hatch been on, she could have found her way by touch, odor, a mermaid’s sense of direction and place. Niels and Ingeborg slumbered on pallets side by side, he stretched out, she curled like an infant; an arm across her eyes. Eyjan squatted beside the youth, stroked his hair, said low into his ear: “Come, sluggard. It’s our time now.”

“Oh. . . oh.” He jerked to wakefulness. Before he could speak aloud, she stopped his lips with hers.

“Softly,” she cautioned. “Disturb not that poor woman. Here, I’ll guide you.” She took his hand. Rapturous, he followed her to ladder and deck.

Westward the stars glittered, but eastward a horned moon had risen and the sky beneath was turning argent. The sea shimmered ever more bright; Eyjan stood -forth against shadow as if a lamp glowed cool from within her. Wind had freshened, it strummed on the rigging and bellied out the sail, Herning heeled over a bit, aquiver. Waves whooshed.

Niels halted. “Eyjan,” he cried, “you’re too fair, your beauty burns me.”

“Soft, soft,” she said, with a hasty glance up the mast. “This way, to the forepeak.” She danced ahead, he bumbled after.

Blackness no longer dwelt under the bow deck: instead, a twilight wherein he could see her clearly, till she cast her body against his and he was caught in the whirlwind of her kiss. Trumpets, drums, and exploding flames burst loose in him. “Get those stupid clothes off,” she soon commanded, and plucked at them herself.

—They lay resting for the next passage. “I love you,” he said into the fragrance of her hair. “With my very soul, I love you.”

“Hush,” she warned. “You’re a man-yes, a man, however young—and christened.”

“I care not!”

“You will. You must.” Eyjan leaned on an elbow to look down at his countenance. Most gently, her free hand descended on his breast. “You have an immortal spirit to ward. Need has made us shipmates, but I’d not be the means of your ruin, darling friend.”

Blinded by sudden anguish, he groped at her bosom and gasped, “I can’t leave you. Never can I. And you-you’d not leave me, would you? Say you won’t!” She calmed him with kisses and embraces till he could listen to her: “We’ll not fret about the morrow, Niels. What can that do save spoil the today that is ours? No more talk of love.” She chuckled. “Rather, good, honest lust. You’re a most rousing fellow, did you know?”

“I, I care for you—”

“And I for you. We’ll share in many ways, at work, at talk, at song, at gaze over sea and sky. . . close comrades. . . .” Again she laughed, deep in her throat. “At this hour, though, we’ve else to do, and I feel that you-how marvelous.”

—In the crow’s nest, Tauno heard the noises they made. His mouth grew tight; he beat fist into palm, over and over.

Easy weather prevailed, and Herning limped south faster than might have been awaited. When she passed near craft plying between England and the Pale, Hauau, clad like a man, shouted in the English language that she was whatever he and Niels deemed would be plausible at a given encounter. Since they were clearly on no mission of war or robbery, that sufficed. Once they did heave to and wait for night in order to steal past a royal ship which Hauau took a near look at in his seal form. She could have stopped them on suspicion of spying or smuggling.

On a cloudy eventide Tauno came back with a fine big salmon in his grip. He swung himself up the rope ladder that trailed from the waist and cast the fish onto the planks. “Ho, ho!” boomed the selkie from the dark in the aftercastle where he steered. “Will ye cut me a chunk o’ that the noo”

Tauno nodded and brought it to him. In the dull light of a lanthom which illuminated the floating compass needle, Hauau bulked less human-looking than by day. He snatched the raw meat and tore at it greedily. The siblings did not care for cooked fish either, and Ingeborg prepared it only for Niels and herself. Yet a touch of disgust passed across Tauno’s face before he could check it.

Hauau noticed. “Wha’ ails ye?” he asked.

Tauno shrugged. “Naught.”

“Nay, summat, and tae do wi’ me, I’m thinking. Spit it oot. We canna afford tae let angers rankle.”

“Why, I’ve no plaint against you.” Tauno’s voice remained sullen. “If you must know my fancy, I’ll say that we were more mannerly about our eating in Liri.” Hauau studied him a moment before he said in chosen words: “Ye’d na let that itch, save tae tak’ your mind off a pain. Wba’s the matter, lad?”

“Naught, I told you!” Tauno snapped, and turned to go.

“Hold,” the selkie called out. Tauno did.

“Is it that there’s nae wench for ye, when Niels and I hae ’em?” Hauau probed. “I believe Ingeborg wad mak’ ye welcome, and sure I’d na begrudge ye the pleasure.”

“D0 you imagine she—” Tauno broke off. This time he did leave.

Dusk was thickening outside. A dim shape slid down a shroud and reached deck with a thump. Tauno trod close. Niels must strain to see, but the halfling easily recognized confusion upon the other.

“What were you doing there?” he demanded.

“Why, why, Eyjan has the crow’s nest, you know,” Niels replied in a voice that trembled the least bit. “We were talking till she warned I’d better leave while I can make out what’s around me.”

Tauno nodded. “Yes, you’d miss no chance of her company, would you?”

He stared onward. Niels caught him by the wrist. “Tauno . . . sir. . . I pray you, hear me,” the youth pleaded.

The Liri prince halted. “Well?” he said after a partial minute.

Niels swallowed. “You’ve grown aloof. Cold to me-to everybody, it seems, but most to me. Why? Have I wronged you in any way’? I’d not do that for the world, Tauno.”

“What makes you suppose you could do me harm, landling?”

“Well, your sister-your sister and I—”

“Huh! She’s a free being. I’m not such a fool as to judge her.”

Niels reached out in the gloaming that separated him from Tauno. “I love her,” he said.

“How can you? We’re soulless, she and I, remember?”

“You can’t be! She... she’s so wonderful, so wonderful. I want to marry her... if not in sight of man, then sight of God . . . abide with her, cherish her, till death comes for me. Tauno, I’d be a good husband. I’d provide well for her, and the children. My share of the gold, I know how to make that fruitful-Will you speak to her, Tauno? She’ll not let me talk of it, but will you, for my sake—and hers? Why, she could be saved, even—” The babble strangled as the halfling took Niels by the arms and shook him, back and forth till teeth rattled. “Hold your mouth,” Tauno snarled. “Not another word, or I’ll smite you flat. Enjoy your little romp while it lasts. That’s what it is to her, you understand, a romp, the latest of dozens. Naught else. Be glad for what she has a whim to lend you, and pester us not with your whining. Do you hear me?”

“Yes, forgive me, I’m sorry,” sobbed Niels. When Tauno let go, he sank to the deck.

The merman’s son loomed above him for a span, though it was aloft that his glance sought. Nothing stirred yonder save a windtossed lock of hair. He opened his lips to form speech in the Liri tongue, but closed them.

Slow resolve came over him. “Stay topside, Niels, till I say you may come below,” he ordered.

Swiftly, then, he sought a hatch. He did not trouble to put cover on coaming, which would have muffled sounds. Straight to Ingeborg’s pallet he went and roused her.

Rain blew soft from Ireland and blurred the world into dove color. It whispered louder than the breeze as it struck the waves and dimpled them. Through coolness and damp, each breath one drew carried a ghost of green fields.

A masthead lookout being useless, Tauno and Eyjan swam ahead, scouts. The cog was dim in their sight; they were together by themselves for the first time in a long stretch. At the pace of sailing today, they moved easily, well able to converse.

“You were cruel to Niels,” she said.

He chopped a splash out of the water. “You heard us?”

“Of course.”

“What have you told him?”

“That you were in a bad mood and he must not take it to heart. He was grieving. Speak kindly to him, Tauno. He worships you.”

“And adores you. Young dolt!”

“Well, I am his first, his very first, did you know?” Eyjan smiled. “He leams quickly and well. Let him gladden many more in his life after we’ve parted.”

Tauno scowled. “I hope he’ll not brood over you till he mislays what wits were ever his. He and Ingeborg-who else have we to deal for us on Yria’s behalf? You and I could scarcely pass ourselves off as earthfolk, let alone Danish subjects.”

“Yes, we’ve spoken about that, he and I.” Eyjan was likewise worried. “At least he knows he must be careful, him a mere sailor finding his way through laws that are meant to bind him fast in his lot.” Earnestly: “I’ve hopes, though’, for he is clever, and with depth in him for growth.” Her tone sank, “On that account, maybe he’ll not ease me out of his breast as he should—” Briskly:

“Well, besides, he’ll have Ingeborg’s counsel, and she’s seen every kind of man, I suppose,”

“She’s a strong creature,” Tauno agreed without eagerness.

Eyjan swirled herself to a sideways position, that she might regard him. “I thought you were fonder of her than that,”

Tauno jerked a nod. “I like her, aye.”

“And her, about you- There in the crow’s nest, I could hear from down in the hold the joy wherewith she awakened to you. She was never loud, but I still heard.” Eyjan winced and paused before she went on: “Next day we talked, she and I, Woman talk. She wondered, against all reason, if we might settle near her—the gold would buy a shoreside place—and not fare off afar in quest of our people, When I told her this was impossible, she looked away from me. Afterward she looked back and chattered on, very lightly. But I had been watching her shoulders and hands.” Eyjan sighed. “Indeed it is not well for mortals to have doings with Faerie,”

“Nor for us,” Tauno rasped,

“True. Poor Ingeborg. And yet how could we abide as the last two merfolk in Denmark? Can we not find our father, we must seek to join a different tribe. Hard enough will it be for us to search across the world.”

“Yes, , . hard,” Tauno said. They stared at each other. He went pale, she flushed. Abruptly he dived, and did not broach for an hour.

Herning rounded Wales, passed by the white cliffs of England, followed the Lowlands on toward home,

IV

The ship of the Liri people had come better than halfway up the Dalmatian coast when the slavers espied her.

At first none of them, not even Vanimen, feared evil. On their passage from the Gates of Hercules they had spoken many vessels; these were busy waters. Since he took care to keep well away from land, nobody challenged them. Likewise he ordered that everyone on deck wear clothes by day, taken out of sailors’ chests, and that swimmers be submerged until after dark. The Northern craft, plainly storm-battered, drew curiosity and sometimes-he thought-offers of help. He would gesture off those who steered nigh and shout in what Latin he had that nothing was needed, he was bound for a nearby port. It served, though he wasn’t sure whether that was because his language was near enough to the vernaculars or because skippers grew leery of as ragged and oddlooking a gang as they saw. Notwithstanding, the presence of females and young, whom he purposely had in view, said they were not pirates; hence no warcraft lay alongside.

Had that happened, they would have abandoned ship. He was reluctant to do so otherwise. Despite her poor condition, slowness, clumsiness, incessant labor at the pumps, she remained their shelter—and a disguise, in a narrow sea divided between Christian and Mussulman with naught of Faerie surviving. Therefore he drove her onward, day and night, day and night. When wind failed, and the sun was down or humans absent, he had his folk tow. Thus she made better speed than any mortal crew could have gotten out of her. Still, the weeks grew weary before she entered the Adriatic mouth. Without the waves to seek for hunt, frolic, renewal, the wanderers might well have perished of despair.

Now travel became even more creeping and cautious, because they must hug the eastern shores in order that parties be readily able to search these out. Such a route much raised the likelihood of being investigated by a naval patrol of whoever ruled on land. Just the same, hearts lightened, song broke forth, for here was lovely country, steep, full of woods, rich in fish. Vanimen would keep sailing while he was able, unless he found the perfect place first, but having to flee the hulk should not be catastrophic.

So he thought.

Indeed the halfworld lived yet along this littoral, and surely too in the mountains which reared behind it. Swimming thither, emerging on a strand, he sensed magic as a thrill in his blood, after the barrenness through which he had lately fared; he glimpsed creatures shy or sinister which were not of ordinary flesh. Strange they were to him, and when they did not flit off as though in dread, they threatened and he withdrew. But they were his kin in a way that Agnete had finally known she could never be.

Some spots had been interdicted by exorcism. He cast what questioning spells lay in his power and learned that for the most part this had happened in recent years. A new faith seemed to have appeared among men, or rather a new sect-since he observed naught but the Cross anywhere—which disdained the easygoing ways of earlier Christians. Oftener he simply observed too much cultivation, or a thriving town, which by its mere presence would ban a colony. Well, the dolphins had told him he must seek further north.

As he did, he began to come on the multitudinous islands they had bespoken, and no eternal curses laid by priests. The creed that actively hated everything smacking of joy in life-for after all, Vanimen reflected, that was what the Faerie races who would fain be friends to men brought them, no doubt at peril to their souls but nevertheless joy—the new creed must not have penetrated this far. Somewhere here, he dared to hope, lay the goal of his dreams.

Wryness added: It had better. The hull was coming apart beneath him. No longer could pumps hold the water at bay. Daily deeper sunken, crankier, less movable by any wind, his ship would soon be altogether useless.. True, then his band could search onward by themselves. . . .

Thus matters stood when the slavers found her.

It was a day to keep fishers at home and merchants at wharfs. Ever strengthening, squalls blew from the west, whistle, whitecaps, rain-spatters out of flying gray overhead. Vanimen tried to work clear of the lee shore, but recognized anon that there was no way. Forward of him, across a pair of riotous miles, he descried a substantial island, close in against the mainland. He gauged he could make the channel between, which would give shelter. Roofs warned of human habitation, but that couldn’t be helped and they were not many.

He placed himself on the poop deck, where he could stand lookout and shout commands to a crew that had gained a little skill. Naked for action, they scampered about or poised taut for the next duty. Much larger was the tale of females and young whom he sent below to avoid their becoming a hindrance. Those could have joined the swimmers, as a few like them had done; but most mothers feared what riptides and undertows might do to snatch their infants from them, among the rocks of these unknown shoals.

Another craft came over the vague horizon while the merfolk were making their preparations. She was a galley, lean, red-andblack painted, her sail furled and she spider-walking on oars. The figurehead glimmered gilt through spume, a winged lion. From this and her course, Vanimen guessed, out of his scanty information, that she was Venetian, homeward bound. Puzzlement creased his brow; she was no cargo carrier—and would have been in convoy were that the case—but seemed too capacious for a man-of-war.

He cut off his wondering and gave himself to the rescue of his own vessel. It took experience and wit, as well as an inborn feeling for the elements, to guess what orders he should give helmsman and deckhands. Therefore, in the following hour, he paid the stranger small heed. . . until Meiiva, who had been on watch in the bows, breasted the wind and joined him.

She tugged his elbow, pointed, and said above shrillness: “Look, will you? They’re veering to meet us.”

He saw she spoke truth. “When we’ve naught for hiding our nature!” he exlaimed. After a moment wherein he stood braced against more than rolling and pitching, he decided: “If we scurried to don clothes, it might well seem odder than if we stay as we are. Let’s trust they’ll suppose we’ve simply chosen to be unencumbered; we’ve seen sailors naked ourselves, you recall, since we passed the straits out of the ocean. Likeliest the master only wants to ask who we are. He’ll hardly draw so close that he can tell we’re not his kind-too dangerous in this weather—and wet hair won’t unmistakably proclaim that it’s blue or green- Pass word among the deckhands to have a ~are how they act.”

When Meiiva returned to him, the galley was straight upwind and Vanimen wrinkling his nose. “Phew!” he said. “Can you smell? She reeks of dirt, sweat, aye, of misery. What devilment does she bear?”

She squinted. “I see a number who wear metal, and I see weapons,” she replied. “But who are those in rags, huddled amidships?”

That became clear when the distance between had shortened. Men, women, children, dark-skinned, heavy-featured, were chained at wrists and ankles. They stood, sat, slumped, shuddered with cold, sought what tiny comfort was in each other’s nearness, beneath the pikes of lighter-complexioned guards. Unease gripped Vanimen. “I think I know,” he told Meiiva. “Slaves.”

“What?” She had never met the human word.

“Slaves. People taken captive, sold and bought and forced to toil, like the beasts you’ve watched drawing plow and cart. I’ve heard of the practice from men I’ve talked with. No doubt yonder vessel is returning from a raid on southerly foreigners.” Vanimen spat to leeward, wishing he could do it oppositely.

Meiiva winced. “Is that true?”

“Aye.”

“And yet the Maker of Stars favors their breed above all else in this world?”

“I cannot understand, either... Hoy, they’re hailing us.”

No real speech could cross the barriers of wind and language. A lean man, smooth-shaven, in corselet and wildly plumed helmet, peered until Vanimen’s skin crawled. At last, however, the galley fell off and the Liri king gusted a breath of relief.

By now the island loomed dead ahead, with nasty surges at its foot. His whole attention was required to maneuver the hulk into the safety of the channel. Right rudder! Heave the yard about! Pole out the starboard clew! Feel violence go through timbersdid the keel grate on something?-suddenly she finds calm, but that means loss of steerage way—

Incredibly, the ship came to rest.

Vanimen stared back and forth. They were in a strip of water which merely chopped. Shores rose on either hand like walls. The stonn hooted, but save for sparse, vicious raindrops was blocked off; air felt less raw here than outside. The mainland was wooded behind a strip of beach. Trees and ruggedness half hid a cluster of buildings on the island. No people or dogs were in sight. Nor was other bottom, whose presence he had awaited and planned against.

He turned his mer-senses upon the water itself, and found its saltiness was thinned. A bit further north, a river must flow from the continent into the sea. No doubt the estuary contained a harbor, which he guessed was fair-sized; pieces of trash and globs of tar bobbed in his view. That would be where humans docked. The confonnation of land hid it from him, and him from it.

He felt certain the blow would end before nightfall. Then the quest could continue. Meanwhile- He sagged back against the taffrail. Meanwhile, here was peace. Let there be sleep. The need for it took him like a billow.

Meiiva screamed.

Vanimen slammed awake. Around a cliff came the galley. Her oars churned a stonn of their own. She was upon the hulk ere the menfolk below were out of the hatches. Their king had an instant to remember that he captained a ship whereon a man he murdered had cursed him.

Grapnels bit fast. A boarding bridge thunked down. Over it, armed and armored, boiled the Venetians. They had sent their merchandise to the hold and were after more.

When they suddenly noticed the strangeness of these victims, web feet, hues of hair, eldritch features, several of them recoiled. They cried out, crossed themselves, made as if to stampede back. Tougher ones bellowed, swung swords on high, urged the attack onward. Their chief whipped a crucifix from about his neck and raised it next to his own blade. That gave courage. The prey were naked, nearly all unarmed, mostly female or small.

Under bawled commands, the raiders deployed, fonned a line, advanced to box Vanimen’s followers in the stern. Weapons, helms, mail-no mere strength could stand before that. Nor did merfolk know aught of war. Those on deck retreated in horror; those who had not emerged ducked back down into the hold.

Swimmers came to the surface and raged around. “Don’t!” the king shouted as they sought to climb the rope ladder. “It’s death or worse!”

Easy would be to join them and escape. He saw the first passengers jump from deck. But, leaped through him, but what of those who were trapped below? Already the enemy surrounded the hatches.

He himself would embrace oncoming spearheads before he went into fetters, a market, the dust and dung, whippings and longings that would be his existence as a slave. Or he might be made a show. . . once when ashore he had seen a bear, weeping pus around the ring in its nose, dancing without hope at the end of a chain while onlookers laughed. . . . Did those who trusted him not have a right to the selfsame choice?

And they bore too much of Liri; the sea-wives loose in the water were too few to keep the tribe alive.

He was their king.

“Forward!” he roared. Planks thundered beneath his charge.

His trident lay in a cabin, but he had his thews. A pike thrust at him. He caught the shaft, wrenched it free, whirled the butt around, dashed a brain from the skull. Clubbing, stabbing, kicking, trampling, bellowing, he waded in among the foe. A man got behind him and lifted an ax to cleave his spine. Meiiva arrived, knife in her grasp, hauled back the fellow’s chin and laid his throat open. Mermen who had been deckhands rallied, joined those twain, cast their might and deep-seated vitality against whetted steel. They cleared a space around one of the hatches. Vanimen called to the mermaids. They and their children poured forth, to the rails and overboard. For them, his little band stood off the humans.

On the castle of the galley, crossbowmen took aim.

The merfolk might well have won that battle-had war been in their tradition. They had no training, though, no skill at the slaughter of people they had never met before. Vanimen should not have bidden the swimme,rs stay. He realized that after the iron closed back in on him, and cried out for their help; but they heard him not through the din, and merely moved about, bewildered. Some took crossbow quarrels in their bodies, as the shooters noticed them.

Two or three on board died likewise. The Venetians there recovered formation, counterattacked, made a melee that smeare the deck with blood. Most of those they slew were females and young on the way out, but they got every merman on the hulk save for Vanimen.

Dimly, he felt himself pierced and slashed. Somehow-Meiiva beside him, striking out like an angry cat-he forced a path. Together they reached the side and sprang.

Salt water took him as once his mother had. He sank into cool green depths, his friends swanned close, none but their dead were left behind, he had saved them from slavery, his task was done and now he could rest. . . .

No. The blood streamed out of him, dark to see, bitter to taste. Those were great wounds; he must go ashore where they could be properly stanched, or else join the slain. Likewise others, he saw through tides of murk. Female after female, child after child, had suffered hurt.

“Come,” he did or did not tell them.

They reached the mainland, coughed their lungs clear, and crept from their sea.

No doubt the Venetians too were shaken by the encounter. They kept to galley and hulk for an hour or more. Meanwhile, in their sight, the fugitives cared as best might be for the injured, with moss, cobwebs, woven grass that bound a gash tight.

Once more their lack of soldierliness betrayed that folk. They should have swum off as soon as treatment was done, despite certain loss of the most badly lacerated. Vanimen would have made them do so. But he lay half in a swoon and there was no proper second in command. The rest crouched where they were, frightened, desultorily talking, never agreeing to a single action.

The slavers observed and plucked up resolution. Weird though yonder beings were, they could be overcome, to sell for a much higher price than any Saracens or Circassians would fetch. The master of the galley was a bold man. He reached his decision and issued his orders.

Carefully but swiftly, he rowed toward land. Alanned, a number of Liri people ran right and left, where they might re-enter the channel. Crossbow volleys sent them scuttling back, save for a couple who were killed. With detennined leadership, the whole group could have won past. However, Vanimen was barely returning to wakefulness. It was patent that he could not swim any distance. Meiiva laid his arm across her shoulders, upheld his weight, and took him lurching inland, where forest offered concealment. For lack of any better example, the tribe milled after them. It was exactly what the Venetian had hoped for. If they scattered into the brush, many would elude him, but he would take many others. Ducats danced before his eyes.

The ground sloped sharply. Guided by his leadsman, he cast anchor just within the galley’s draught and dropped the boarding bridge to a point higher up. Men who ran down it found themselves in water only to their stomachs, and hurried ashore. The prizes were vanishing under trees, among brakes and soughing shade. The hunters followed.

They might well have seized some of their quarry, to sell into mills or circuses or peculiar brothels or, maybe, fisher servitude like a falcon’s in air. The rest would have escaped them and gone on to the fate that awaited. However, bad luck struck down on misjudgment-unless everything was the will of Heaven—and thwarted them.

Dwellers on the island had been watching. What those saw from afar was enough to alarm; they remembered piracy and war too well, too well. Word had flown on nimble feet and a harddriven rowboat, to the Ban’s harbor outpost and thence, on horseback, to his garrison in Shibenik. A warcraft glided forth; a troop quickstepped along shore.

When he saw that metal gleam into view, the slaver captain knew he had overreached himself. He had had no business in territorial waters of the Croatian kingdom. Since it was presently at peace with the Republic, he would never have gone against one of its ships. A clearly foreign vessel, clearly in distress, had been too big a temptation. Now he had better make off, and trust the Signory’s embassy to deny that any Venetian could by any stretch of the imagination have transgressed in such wise.

A trumpet brought his men back. The Croatians for their part made no haste, after it grew evident that the stranger did not want a fight. They let him go. Their officers were curious as to what had attracted him in the first place. They set squads to beating the bush. All this Vanimen learned much later, mostly from Father Tomislav, who in his turn deduced a good deal of it on the basis of what he heard. At the time Vanimen knew simply pain, faintness, and an uproar which sent his band groping ever further inland.

Water was their first need, more terrible for each hour that passed. Yet they dared not return at once to the sea, when armed humans ramped along its edge and blundered in their wake. Through leafy distances they smelled a river, but also a town upon it. That they must give a wide berth.

Unsuccessful and unprepared for a real effort, the pursuers soon gave up. It was but a tiny consolation to the merfolk. Led by Meiiva, since the king could do no more than stumble along if he had someone to lean on, they battled the woods, the always rising hills, their own thirst, hunger, exhaustion, dread, the burden of the wounded among them, the sobbing of their children. Stones, twigs, thorns cut tender webs; branches clutched; crows gibed. As wind died out, warmth and quiet lifted from the earth-heat and deafness, to these beings out of another world. Here were no tides or currents, waves or fresh breezes, food to catch or deeps to shelter in; here was just a directionless maze, the same and the same and the same. Barely could they pick a way onward.

Infinite though it seemed, the forest was a patch, whose verge the wanderers reached about nightfall. That was a fortunate time, letting them strike across farmland to find the stream. Vanimen mumbled that they should stay on paths, which hurt feet that were already bleeding but would not leave a trail like grainfields. Otherwise, the trek went easier than heretofore, in cool air under kindly stars. No buildings were near. The terrain climbed and climbed.

By midnight they sensed that more than a river lay ahead; there was a lake. Withered gullets contracted when trees appeared like black battlements over a ridge they mounted. Wildwood barred off the water. Strengthless as they now were, few of them could face another struggle through thickets: certainly not at night, when beings that wished them no good were likely a-prowl. Unnutar, whose nose was the keenest in the tribe, said that he snuffed wrongness in the lake itself; something huge lurked there.

“We must soon drink, or we die,” Rinna whimpered.

“Be still,” snarled a mother whose babe lay fainted in her arms.

“Food also,” Meiiva said. Though her race needed much less, nourishment on land than at home, none were used to going this many hours hungry. Scores of the group were reeling in weakness; children had drained away their tears pleading for any mouthful.

Vanimen strove to clear his mind. “Farmstead,” he croaked. “A well. Larder, granary, cows, pigs. We . . . outnumber the owners . . . scare them off. . . help ourselves, and quickly double back to the coast—”

“Aye!” rang Meiiva’s voice. “Think, all of you. If we’ve seen no homes, then these acres belong to a large household, rich, well-fed; it can’t be much farther off.” She took them on around the forest border.

After a couple of hours, they did smell water closer by, plus man and cattle. They had rounded the lake and reached the upper river that emptied into it. Indeed, two streams were flowing together, with settlement near that point. The merfolk broke into a shambling run. Eastward, false dawn tinged the sky.

Again ignorance ruined their cause. They knew so little of humankind, and that only in a corner of the North. Theyiook it for given that cultivation would center on a single estate or, at most, a hamlet-not a sizeable village of serfs guarded by a castleful of men-at-arms. Some among them noticed, but had no chance to warn before madness laid hold of the rest. Like lemmings, the Liri people sought to the water and cast themselves in.

Dogs did not clamor, but showed instant fear. Soldiers yawning away the tail end of a night watch, came alert and shouted for comrades who were beginning to grumble out of the blankets. Even this early, it was possible to see what a wild gang were at the ford—but unclad and mostly unarmed. Ivan Subitj, zhupan at Skradin, kept his forces always on the ready. In minutes they were out of the gates. Pulsebeats later, horsemen had crossed a bridge, surrounded the strangers, urged back at lance point those who attempted flight. The riders were not many, but foot were on the way too.

Vanimen raised both hands. “Do likewise,” he told his folk, with the last remnants of intelligence that he could summon. “Yield. We are taken.”

V

Not far north of Als, forest gave way to marsh. This ran for two or three leagues behind a road that was a mere track along the strand and little used, as much from fear of halfworld creatures as because habitation was sparse between here and the Skaw. Archdeacon Magnus had not been afraid to ride past with his entourage, but he was a crusader whom God made invincible against demons. Common folk had no such comfort.

There Herning dropped anchor, one chilly eventide. Eastward the Kattegat glimmered away till it lost itself in dusk. Westward the shore lay darkling. A last smear of sunset cast red across the water, broken by reeds, hummocks, gnarly willows. The land breeze smelled of mire and damp. A bittern boomed, a lapwing shrieked, an owl hooted, lonesome noises.

“Strange to end our quest here,” Ingeborg murmured.

“No, we do not,” Eyjan said. “Here we begin.”

Niels blessed himself, for the place was eerie in truth, and like every dweller thereabouts he had heard stories. . . nicors, elves? . . . did he truly see a will-o’-the-wisp dance blue yonder, for luring men to doom? He wondered if the holy sign would avail him, after all his heathen doings. His hand groped for Eyjan’s, but she had moved aside, starting work.

First she, Tauno, and Hauau aided their shipmates to land. Then for hours they went back and forth, fetching the gold of A verorn from the deck where they had lately restowed it. Niels and Ingeborg kept watch, to warn of unlikely human arrivals-though an outlaw or two might perhaps lair nearby—or visitants less welcome. Naught happened. They shared a cloak and soon a standing embrace against the cold; they shivered together through the night.

Dawn saw the unloading finished, but no sun. Thick mists had arisen, the world was a dripping dankness, drenched with silence. Tauno and Eyjan, who knew the marsh well, had foreseen that; they had indeed held the cog out a whole day after making landfall, till they could count on this veil. Hauau felt as easy in fog as they did. Guided by these companions, youth and woman splashed wearily, wretchedly, to help in the next part of the task.

The gold must be hidden. Tauno remembered a lightning-blasted tree that was readily findable from the road. A measured number of paces due west of it was a pool, shallow, scummy, as if created to keep secrets. A platted mat of withes, which would last for years underwater, kept mud at the bottom from swallowing what the wanderers laid down. Transport went faster than before, with the added hands; besides, a person could carry more afoot than swimming, and whatever the stuff weighed, it filled a rather small space altogether.

Still, haste was necessary. Often this caused a bearer to crumple soft metal into a less awkward shape. Seeing Tauno thus wreck the spiderweb fragility of a tiara, Ingeborg mused sadly, “What lover once gave that to his lady, what craftsman wrought it with love of his own? There went the last glimpse of their lives.”

“We’ve lives to live now,” he snapped. “You’ll have to melt most of this down anyhow, or cut it in small pieces, won’t you? Besides, their souls endure, and doubtless remember.”

“In some gray place outside of time,” Eyjan said. “They were not Christian.”

“Yes, I suppose we’re luckier,” Tauno answered. He went on picking things up. Even close by, he seemed unreal in the fog. Ingeborg winced, began to draw the Cross, stopped her finger and likewise returned to work.

Toward noon, slowly freshening airs tattered the vapors and drove them seaward. Light reached earth in spearcasts, which more and more often left rents to show the blue beyond. It grew warmer. Waves clucked on the beach.

Their labor completed, the party ate cold rations and drank sour wine brought from the ship-hardly a farewell banquet, there beside the road, but the best they had. Afterward Tauno drew Niels out of earshot.

They stood for a mute moment, nude halfling towering above slim, ill-clad human, Tauno stern, Niels tired and timid. Finally the Liri prince found words: “If I have used you ill, I beg your pardon. You deserved better of me. I tried, in the later part of our voyage, but-well, I’d overmuch on my mind, and could forget what lowed you.”

Niels raised his eyes from the ground and said in a kind of desperation, “That’s nothing, Tauno. It’s my debt to you that is immeasurable.”

A grim smile: “For what, my friend? That you faced hardship and peril of life again and again in a cause that was not yours? That you have worse before you?”

“How? Wealth; everything it means, an end to want and toil and groveling for my kinfolk-Margrete, Yria, of course, but will I not be amply rewarded as well ?”

“Hm. I’m not learned in earthling ways, but I can guess what odds are against you; and if you fail, men will give you an ending far more terrible than any the ocean or its monsters could. Have you thought about this, Niels?” Tauno demanded. “Truly thought about it? I ask on Yria’s account, lest she be dragged down too; but also on yours.”

Steadiness came over the young man. “Yes, I have,” he said. “You know whom it is that in my heart I serve. Well, I would not serve her badly, so I’ve spent every free hour makjng plans. Ingeborg will be my ftrst counselor, she’s more worldly-wise, but she’ll not be the only one. What happens lies with God, yet I am hopeful.” He drew breath. “You know, don’t you, that rashness would destroy us? We must make sure of every step ere we take it.”

“Aye. When might you be done? In a year?”

Niels frowned and plucked at his wispy beard. “I would guess longer. Surely for me to establish myself—but that’s not what you want to hear about, is it? Yria. . . if all goes well. . . we might have her ransomed in a year. It depends on what allies we can find, you see. . . . Oh, say that a twelvemonth hence we’ll know better how things are going.”

Tauno nodded. “As you like, Eyjan and I will return then for news.”

Niels’ mouth fell open. “You’ll be gone that long?”

“Why should we linger, when we’d fain be searching for our people?”

Niels gulped hard. His hands wrestled. In a while he could ask: “Where will you seek?”

“West,” said Tauno, more softly than heretofore. “Toward Greenland. Hauau and I spoke of this, one moonlit night in the sea. He has foreknowledge. About me it was hazy; but he did say there was a whisper in his skull, that somewhere thither, a part of my fate lies waiting.”

Sunlight blinked upon him, to turn /tis head amber. As if that recalled him to the everyday, he shrugged and finished, “It’s a reasonable direction. We may learn something helpful along the way, as at Iceland.”

“You’ll not lead Eyjan into danger, will you?” Niels implored.

Tauno rapped forth a laugh. “She’s hard to keep out of it.” After regarding the countenance before him, he added, “Let’s not borrow trouble. Enough comes as a free gift. Let’s plan how we may meet again.”

Niels threw himself into that matter as if escaping. Talk went back and forth. The siblings must needs inform him when they arrived, and thereafter wait for him to come. This was a bad spot for them to do so. It had little cover ashore; if Alsmen in fishing boats glimpsed them, that would awaken dangerous gossip. For his part, Niels would be taking ample risks whenever he came back to raise more gold. Best that otherwise he do nothing overly remarkable in neighborhoods where he was known—and he was bound to become noticed throughout the kingdom.

They decided on the island of Bornholm, away off in the Baltic Sea. Tauno knew and liked the place, which had but few clusters of settlement. Niels had been to that fief of the Lund archbishopric too, on an earlier trip, and there met an old salt, crusty and trusty, who owned a boat in Sandvig. Let the merman’s children seek him out, passing themselves off as human foreigners, and give him a carefully worded message. For payment—they had both donned golden arm coils, off which bits could be sliced-he should be willing to go to Denmark, track Niels down, and deliver the report.

“Next year, if we are alive-aye!” said Tauno. He and his comrade handselled it.

Ingeborg and Hauau stood among wet swirls that an unseen sun turned silvery. The Kattegat leaped at their feet.

“I maun be awa’ the noo, ere the weather breaks and reveals us,” he told her. The scheme was for him to steer Herning well out, then turn the cog loose, to smash beyond recognition on a Norse or Swedish coast where nobody knew her anyway. Meanwhile a gray seal would be swimming toward Sule Skerry. She embraced him, forgetful of the fishy stench that rubbed off on her gown. “Will I ever see you again?” she asked through tears.

Surprise made fluid the heavy features, the blocky, shaggy frame. “Och, lass, why’d ye wish that?”

“Because you, you are good,” she stammered. “Kind, caring-How many care, in this world. . . or beyond?”

“Wha’ gowk yon halfling be,” Hauau sighed. “But nay, Ingeborg, seas will sunder us.”

“You could come back sometime. If everything goes well I’ll have me an island or a strip of beach to dwell on—”

He clasped her by the waist and looked long into her eyes. “Are ye that lanely?”

“You are.”

“And ye think we might tegither—” He shook his head. “Nay, my jo. Ye hae your ain doom, I hae mine.”

“B-before those claim us—”

“Nay, I said.” He fell quiet. Mist blew by, waters murmured.

At last, slowly, as if each word were a burden: “Wha’ I hae found dear in ye is your mortal womanness. But my second sightoch, I dinna ken, for ’tis all blurred, yet-o’ a sudden I grow frightened 0’ ye. Such strangeness blaws doon the wind, oot 0’ your tomorrow.”

He let her go and trod backward. “Forgi” me,” he mumbled, his palms raised as though in defense. “I shouldna hae spoken. Farewell, Ingeborg.” He turned and walked from her.

“Whilst I beget my son,” he called through a drifting curtain of mist, “I will be thinking 0’ ye.”

She heard him wade outward. She heard him swim. When the fog had lifted, the ship was on the horizon.

There could be no real leavetaking. Persons had done what they were able, two by two, before the anchor sank. Niels and Ingeborg gazed north until the last sight of their lovers was lost among waves. Heaven stood open; rays from the west made waters blaze; distant and black winged a flight of cormorants. He shook himself. “Well,” he said, “if we want to reach Als before dark, best we start off.” They meant to sleep that night in her hut. If it had been tom down during her absence, maybe Father Knud would share his roof. In the morning they must confront the terrestrial world, but at least that could begin among folk who knew them.

Ingeborg fell into step. Sand scrunched underfoot. “Remember,” she said, “at first, let me carry most of the speech. You’re not used to lies.”

He grimaced. “Especially lies to those who trust me.”

“Whereas a whore is faithless.”

So harsh was her tone that he broke stride and swung his head-stiffly, in his weariness-around for a glance at her. She stared straight down their path. “I meant no harm,” he blurted.

“I know,” she said as if by rote. “However, do curb your tongue until you’re out of this dream you’re awash in, and have your judgment back.”

He flushed. “Yes, I miss Eyjan, that’s a loss which flenses, but—oh—”

She relented, reached up to stroke his hair as they walked, said mildly, “Later you, the man of us, will take the lead. It’s only that I know men in Hadsund who I think will aid us for a pinch of gold, without asking many questions. . . and tell us somewhat about men of power whom we’ll approach afterward. We’ve talked of this erenow.”

“Indeed. ”

“Nevertheless, best we keep sure that we’re in full understanding, you and I.” Her laughter was brittle. “Has Faerie ever held anything more outlandish than our intent?”

They trudged on south.