The Merman's Children (14 page)

“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 learns 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

T
HE
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 odd-looking 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-and-black 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 care 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 timbers—did 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 storm 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 conformation 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 storm 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, formed 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.