Poul Anderson - The Merman's Children

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.

“Keep me alive and I might tell you,” Ingeborg answered merrily. She and Niels mocked the last rites as best they were able, while the sailors yelped laughter.

“Pax vobiscum,” she said finally, who had known clerics. “Dominus vobiscum.” She signed the kneeling youth. It gave her a chance to murmur to him: “God forgive us this, and forgive me that He is not the lord on whom I called. Niels, if we ever see each other beyond today, fare you well.”

“And you, Ingeborg.” He rose to his feet. “I am ready,” he said.

Ranild, puzzled, more than a bit uneasy, came toward him carrying the noose. And suddenly Ingeborg shrieked. “Ya—a—a—a-ah!” Her nails raked at Lave’s eyes. He lurched. “What the Devil?” he choked. Ingeborg clung to him, clawing, biting, yelling. Tyge dashed to help. Niels lowered his head, charged, and butted Ranild in the stomach. The captain went down on his arse. Niels kicked him in the ribs. Torben and Palle sprang from the bulwarks to grab the boy. Sivard gaped from above.

The dolphins had been swimming in their ring for so many hours in order that the crew might come to think no trouble was to be expected from the water and stop watching for it. Too late, the man in the crow’s nest cried warning.

Out from under the poopdeck burst Eyjan. Her knife flared in her grasp. Up from the sea came Tauno. He had emptied his lungs while he clung to the barnacled hull, hidden by the forecastle bulge. Now a dolphin rose beneath him. With fingers and toes, Tauno gripped the backfin, and the leap carried him halfway from water to gunwale. He caught the rail and vaulted inboard.

Palle started to turn around. The merman’s son snatched the pikeshaft lefthanded; his right hand slid dagger into Palle, who fell on the deck screaming and pumping blood like any slaughtered hog. Tauno rammed the butt of the pike into Torben’s midriff. The sailor staggered back.

Tauno slashed the rope on Niels’ wrists. He drew the second of the knives he carried. “Here,” he said. “This was Kennin’s.” Niels uttered a single yell of thanks to the Lord God of Hosts, and bounded after Torben.

Lave was having trouble yet with Ingeborg. Eyjan came from behind and drove her own blade in at the base of the skull. Before she could free the steel, Tyge jabbed his pike at her. With scornful ease, she ducked the thrust, got in beneath his guard and to him. What happened next does not bear telling. The merfolk did not make war, but they knew how to take an enemy apart.

At the masthead Sivard befouled himself and wailed for mercy.

Stunned though Torben was, Niels failed to dispatch him at once, making several passes before he could sink knife in gut; and then Torben did not die, he threshed bleeding and howling until Eyjan got around to cutting his throat; and Niels was sick. Meanwhile Ranild had regained his feet. His sword flew free; the cold light ran along it. He and Tauno moved about, searching for an opening.

“Whatever you do,” Tauno said to him, “you are a dead man.”

“If I die in the flesh,” Ranild gibed, “I will live without end while you’re naught but dung.”

Tauno stopped and raked fingers through his hair. “I don’t understand why that should be so,” he said. “Maybe your kind has more need of eternity.”

Ranild thought he saw a chance. He rushed in. Thus he took Tauno’s lure. He stabbed. The halfling was not there, had simply swayed aside from the point. Tauno chopped down on Ranild’s wrist with the edge of his left hand. The sword clattered loose. Tauno’s right hand struck home the knife. Ranild fell to the deck. The sun rose and all blood shone an impossibly bright red. Ranild’s wound was not mortal. He stared at Tauno above him and gasped, “Let me. . . confess to God. . . let me escape Hell.”

“Why should I?” Tauno said. “I have no soul.” He lifted the feebly struggling body and threw it overboard for the dogfish. Eyjan swarmed up the ratlines to make an end of Sivard’s noise.

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.