Poul Anderson - The Merman's Children

Tauno shook his head. His eyelids squinched together. “No. . . she bears the same blood as I... it’s not a restful blood. . . she’s shy and gentle, but she was born to the freedom of the world’s wide seas. . . if holiness curdles in her, during a lifetime among whisker-chinned crones, what of her chances at Heaven?”

“I know not, I know not..”

“An unforced choice, at least. To buy it, a boatload of gold. A couple of wretched tons, to buy Yria’s welfare.”

“Tons! Why—I hadn’t thought-less than that, surely. A few hundred pounds ought to be ample.” Eagerness touched Ingeborg. “Do you suppose you could find that much?”

“Hm. . . wait. Wait. Let me hark back—” Tauno sat bolt upright. “Yes!” he shouted. “I do know!”

“Where? How?”

With the mercury quickness of Faerie, he became a planner. “Long ago was a city of men on an island in midocean,” he said, not loud but shiveringly, while he stared into the shadows. “Great it was, and gorged with riches. Its god was a kraken. They cast down weighted offerings to him-treasure, that he cared not about, but with it kine, horses, condemned evildoers; and these the kraken could eat. He need not snatch aught else than a whale now and then—or a ship, to devour its crew, and over the centuries he and his priests had learned the signals which told him that such-andsuch vessels were unwanted at Averorn. . . . So the kraken grew sluggish, and appeared not for generations of men; nor was there any need, since outsiders dared no longer attack.

“In time the islanders themselves came to doubt he was more than a fable. Meanwhile a new folk had arisen on the mainland. Their traders came, bearing not goods alone, but gods who didn’t want costly sacrifices. The people of Averorn flocked to these new gods. The temple of the kraken stood empty, its fires burned out, its priests died and were not replaced. Finally the king of the city ordered an end to the rites that kept him fed.

“After one year, dreadful in his hunger, the kraken rose from the sea bottom; and he sank the harbored ships, and his arms reached inland to knock down toers and pluck forth prey. Belike he also had power over quake and volcano-for the island was whelmed, it foundered and is forgotten by all humankind.”

“Why, that is wonderful!” Ingeborg clapped her hands, not thinking at once of the small children who had gone down with the city. “Oh, I’m so glad!”

“It’s not that wonderful,” Tauno said. “The merfolk remember Averorn because the kraken lairs there yet. They give it a wide berth.”

“I—I see. You must, though, bear some hope if you—”

“Yes. Worth trying. Look you, woman: Men cannot go undersea. Merfolk have no ships, nor metal weapons that don’t soon corrode away. Never have the races worked together. If they didmaybe—”

Ingeborg was a long time quiet before she said, almost not to be heard, “And maybe you’d be slain.”

“Yes, yes. What is that? Everybody’s born fey. My people stand close—they must—and a single life is of no high account among us. How could I range off to the ends of the world, knowing I had not done what I might for my little sister Yria who looks like my mother?” Tauno gnawed his lip. “But the ship, how to get the ship and crew?”

They talked back and forth, she trying to steer him from his course, he growing more set in it. At last she gave in. “I may be able to show you what you want,” she said.

“What? How?”

“You understand the fishing craft of Als are too cockleshell for what you have in mind. Nor could you hire a ship from a respectable owner, you being soulless and your venture being mad. However, there is a cog, not large but still a cog, that works out of Hadsund, the town some miles hence at the end of Mariager Fjord. I go to Hadsund on market days, and thus have come to know her men. She’s a cargo tramp, has fared as widely north as Finland, east as Wendland, west as Iceland. In such outlying parts, the crew have not been above a bit of piracy when it looked safe. They’re a gang of ruffians, and their skipper, the owner, is the worst. He came of a good family near Heming, but his father chose the wrong side in the strife between kings’ sons, and thus Herr Ranild Grib has nothing left to him besides this ship. And he swears bitterly at the Hansa, whose fleets are pushing him out of what business he could formerly get.

“It may be he’s desperate enough to league with you.”

Tauno considered. “Maybe,” he said. “Um-m-m. . . we merfolk are not wont to betray and kill our own kind, as men with souls are. I can fight; I would not fear to meet anyone with any weapon or none; still, where it comes to haggling and to being wary of a shipmate, that might be hard for us three siblings.”

“I know,” Ingeborg said. “Best I go along, to dicker and keep an eye open on your behalf.”

He started. “Would you indeed?” After a moment: “You shall have a full share in the booty, dear friend. You too shall be free.”

“If we live; otherwise, what matter? But Tauno, Tauno, think not I offer this out of lust for wealth—”

“I must speak with Eyjan and Kennin, of course—we must plan—we must talk further with you-nonetheless—”

“Indeed, Tauno, indeed, indeed. Tomorrow, forever, you shall have what you will from me. Tonight, though, I ask one thing, that you stop this fretting, cast off that veil which covers your eyes, and let us be only Tauno and Ingeborg. See, I’ve drawn off my gown for you.”

When the black cog Herning stood out of Mariager Fjord, she caught a wind that filled her sail and sent her northward at a good clip. On deck, Tauno, Eyjan, and Kennin shed the human clothes—foul, enclosing rags!-that had disguised them during their days of chaffer with Ranild Espensen Grib. A lickerish shout lifted from six of the eight men, at sight of Eyjan white in the sunlight, clad only in dagger belt and tossing bronze mane. They were a shaggy, flea-bitten lot, those men, scarred from fights, their leather jackets, wadmal shirts and breeks ripe with old grease stains.

The seventh was a lad of eighteen winters, Niels Jonsen. He had come to Hadsund a couple of years before, seeking deckhand work to help care for widowed mother and younger siblings on a tiny tenant farm. Not long ago, the ship whereon he served had been wrecked-by God’s mercy without loss of life—and he could get no other new berth than this. He was a good-looking boy, slender, flaxen-haired, blue-eyed, with straightforwardly shaped fresh features. Now he blinked away tears. “How beautiful she is,” he whispered.

The eighth was the captain. He scowled and came down off the poopdeck that sheltered the man at the tiller. (There was also a deck over the bows, through which the forepost jutted. Below and between these reached the main deck, with mast, two hatches, tackle, cooking-hearth, and what cargo -was carried topside. Among this last were a red granite boulder, three feet through and about a ton in weight; and a dozen extra anchors; and much cable.)

Ranild went to the halflings, where they and Ingeborg stood on the port side watching Jutland’s long hills slide by. It was a clear day; the sun cast dazzling glitter across gray-green-blue whitecaps. Wind skirled, rigging thrummed, timbers creaked as the cog’s cutwater surged with a bone in its teeth. Overhead, gulls mewed and made a snowstorm of wings. A smell of salt and tar blew around.

“You!” Ranild barked. “Make yourselves decent!”

Kennin gave him a look of dislike. Those had been hard hours of bargaining, in a back room of an evil inn; and merfolk were not used to a tongue like Ranild’s, rougher than a lynx’s. “Who are you to speak of decency?” Kennin snapped.