Poul Anderson - The Merman's Children

With horses and servants engaged in Shibenik, Herr Carolus and Lady Sigrid took the road to Skradin. The satnik had sent a message ahead from town to castle, and the zhupan had dispatched a military escort for his distinguished visitors. The party made a brave sight as it wound into the mountains, metal agleam, plumes and cloaks tossing in many colors, hoofs plopping, harness jingling, beneath cloudless heaven. Warmth baked strong, sweet odors out of the beasts, ripening fields of grain and hay on the right, greenwood tall on the left.

Nonetheless Tauno wrinkled his nose. “Faugh, the dust!” he said in Danish, which lent itself better than the Liri tongue to such matters. “My insides are turned to a.. . a brickyard. Can you believe merfolk would freely settle down ashore?”

Her palfrey beside his gelding, Eyjan gave him a stiff look out of the wimple that concealed her mane. “It may not have been freely,” she replied. “What did you find out?” As the man of them, he had necessarily done the talking, Panigpak’s gift hung inside his shirt. Eager to converse with such a stranger, the Croatians had left him no time until now for any real speech with her.

“Little,” he admitted. “I dared not press the question hard, you know, when it’s not our ostensible business. And I’m not skilled at slyly sucking his knowledge out of anybody. I could but remark in passing that I’d heard rumors and was curious. Folk shied away from the subject. That seemed to be less because they thought it uncanny than because those above them have discouraged mention of it.”

“But you did confirm that merfolk are living there where we are bound?”

“Aye, and also that sometimes they come down to the coast by two or threes, and swim about. That would be needful for their health, of course, but it’s said they do useful tasks like charting shoals and finding out where fishing is best. Lately, as well, a number of males have departed on ships, in the service of the duke or whatever his title is here. A war is starting up; I’m not clear as to why or who the enemy is.” Tauno shrugged. “Our host to be can doubtless tell us more.”

Eyjan regarded him closely. “Under that sour mien, brother, she murmured, “you’re a-tremble to meet them again.”

“Are you not?” he asked, surprised. “It’s been a weary search”-voice and eyes dropped-“and this latest voyage the loneliest part of it all.”

Her own gaze grew troubled and she averted it. “Yes. On” Herning, and later in Denmark, we had two who loved us.”

“But our own people—”

“Wait and see.” She would say no more. Tauno felt downright relieved when the captain of the guards drew close and engaged him in respectfully fascinated colloquy.

Though the birdflight distance between Shibenik and Skradin was not great, the road twisted far to avoid the woods, and departure had been somewhat belated. Thus the sun was low when folk reached the village, its rays golden through cool air, shadows huge before it. Riding along a street toward the castle, the merman’s children glanced about with heart-quickened interest. Houses were wooden, roofed with turf or thatch, as in the North; but the style of them, and the gaudy paint on most, was foreign, as was the onion-domed church at one end. Humans who paused; to stare at the procession were often tall and blond, but mainly round of skull and high of cheekbones, their garb of a cut and ornamentation never seen at home. They appeared well fed, and they did not cringe from the soldiers but their men offered cheerful hails. As elsewhere in Dalmatia, women kept meek in the background, several of them more heavily burdened than was common in Brynhild’s country.

Abruptly Tauno stiffened in the saddle. His stare went from; a shawl-wrapped face, across whose brow stole a greenish curl, to bare, webbed feet below the skirt. “Raxi!” he bawled, and jerked on the reins.

“Tauno, is it you, Tauno?” the person cried in their olden language. Then she shrank back, crossing herself over and over as the Hrvatskan words poured from her: “No, God have mercy, Jesus have mercy, I mustn’t, Mary help me—” She whirled about and ran stumblingly around a comer, out of his view.

Tauno made as if to leap down after her. Eyjan seized him by the wrist. “Hold, you fool,” she snapped.

He shook himself, caught his breath, fell still, clucked his horse back into motion. “Aye, they are a startling sight,” the guards captain said. “But fear them not, my lord. They’re good Christians now, good neighbors, loyal subjects of the King. Why, I’m thinking I might marry a daughter of my own to some young fellow among them.”

Beside Ivan Subitj to welcome his guests was a priest, not the zhupan’s chaplain but a robust, rough-clad graybeard introduced as Father Tomislav. While a repast was being prepared, and Lady Sigrid resting in the chamber lent her, these two discoursed privately with Herr Carolus.

That was high in the watchtower, where a room commanded a splendid overlook across the countryside. Westward the sun had dropped under the forest which hid the lake. Light still tinged wings of swallows and bats which darted around a violet sky. Thin mists were rising to sheen across the fields. Closer gleamed the conjoining rivers, farther to northward and eastward the Svilaja peaks. It had grown very quiet outside.

Dusk softened Ivan’s mutilated face, but there was iron in his voice as he stiffened on his bench and ended a time of amenities: “I sent for Tomislav, Gospodar Carolus, because he of everyone knows most about the merfolk-maybe more than they do themselves—and I understood from reports brought me that you were inquiring about them.”

“That was kind of you, sir,” Tauno replied uneasily. He wet his lips with a sip of wine. “You needn’t have gone to so much trouble or, or keep so close a watch on me; but thank you.”

“Naught is too much for a nobleman from abroad who may be establishing connections among us. Maybe, though, you’d like to tell me, Gospodar-since it doesn’t seem nigh your purposewhy you are this interested in the merfolk?” Like a whipcrack: “I can’t imagine why else you’d have come to this offside place.”

Tauno’s free hand found comfort in the hilt of his knife. “Well, we do have a race of the same kind in Northern waters.”

“Bah!” burst from Tomislav. “Stop that nonsense, both of you. Ivan, your manners are abominable. If you suspect this wight is a Venetian spy, say it forth like an honest man.”

“Oh, no, oh, no,” protested the zhupan hastily. “However, we do have a new war, and in the past couple of years we’ve met such weirdness—My duty is to be careful, Gospodar Carolus. And truth to tell, you haven’t sounded as if you knew these Hrvatskan kin of yours as well as you might, considering how perfectly you speak their language.”

“Does that make him hostile?” snorted the priest. “Look here, not only have the merfolk worked no evil, they do vital service. And surely the coming of that many pure Christian souls makes God smile on our land.” His tone changed, fell to a near whisper beneath which lay a sob. Tauno saw tears start forth. Yet joy welled up from the depths: “If you want a sign on that, Ivan, why, remember the vilja is gone. This spring she came not out of the waters to haunt the woods. Nobody has found one trace of her. If... if she really was the phantom of...a suicide...under judgment. . . then God must have pardoned her and taken her home to Paradise—and why else but that He was pleased at the salvation of the merfolk?”

His heart a lump within him, Tauno asked slowly, “So it’s true what people seem to believe, that they were baptized and lost all memory of what they had been?”