The Merman's Children (19 page)

The youth found his feet. Aksel raised an arm. “I bade you wait,” he said. “Or must I call my apprentices to seize you?”

“Never will they!” Niels yelled.

Ingeborg hushed him. “What have you in mind?” she asked quite coolly.

“Why, this,” Aksel answered with his ongoing smile. “I suspect you're guilty either of piracy or of stealing royal property. Certain it is that you've not so much as wondered what tax may be due on your gains. Now, you are paupers and without families of your own, but God has called me to a higher station in life; I've more, far more to lose. Why should I risk ruin…for anything less than the entire hoard?”

When they stood moveless, he added, “I'd give you something, of course.”

They stayed mute. He scowled. “Very well,” he said, and slapped the table. “Be clear in your minds that I did
not
offer to become your accomplice. I just put a question to see how you'd behave. My duty is to report this matter—no, not to the sheriff; direct to the baron. Meanwhile, I can't let you escape, can I?

“Think well, you twain. I've heard that Junker Falkvor's executioner is more skillful than most. He'll get your whole tale out of what is left of you, for his lord.”

“And you'll have a nice reward, no doubt,” the woman fleered.

“That is the cautious course for me,” Aksel pursued. “I'd be sorry to follow it, for I've happy memories of you, Ingeborg, and your comrade has a whole life before him. Therefore sit down, and let me try bringing you to reason.”

“Niels,” Ingeborg said.

Her friend understood. His knife came forth, of terrifying size in that dim room.

“We are going,” he said. “You'll take us out. If we have any trouble, you'll die first. Up!”

Abruptly blanched, Aksel rose. This was no longer a boy who confronted him. Niels sheathed the blade but kept him close by. Ingeborg dropped the ring down her bosom.

They left the house as three. In an alley some distance off, Niels released Aksel. After the trader had stumbled into the street, Ingeborg's bitterness broke loose: “I thought he was the least bad of the lot. Where in Christendom is mercy?”

“Best we move on ere he raises hue and cry,” Niels warned.

They made a devious way to the waterfront on Mariager Fjord. A small ship lay awaiting the tide, to depart for ports along the Sound. They had already engaged passage on her deck and brought aboard what would be needful for them. It had seemed a wise precaution. Since they had additionally paid the captain for a night's worth of drinking their health, he let them rest in his compartment until he sailed.

III

A
FULL
moon stood aloft in a frosty ring. Few stars shone through its brightness, that turned hoar the treetops around the lake and tinged each wavelet with silver. A breeze bore autumn's chill and rattled leaves which were dying.

The vodianoi rose from the bottom and swam toward shore. He grew old when the moon waned, young when it waxed; this night he was in the flush of power and hunger. The bulk of three war horses, his body, on which grew moss and trailing weeds, was like a man's save for thick tail, long-toed feet, webbed and taloned forepaws. The face was flattened, with bristles around its cavern of a mouth. Eyes glowed red as coals.

When belly touched ground, he stopped. Through the murk below the trees there reached him a sound of brush being parted and footfalls drawing near. Whatever humans wanted here after dark, maybe one of them would be careless enough to wade out. The vodianoi moved no more than a rock. The argent ripples he had raised faded away.

A shape flitted out of shadow, to poise on the grass at the water's edge: upright, slim, white as the moon. Laughter trilled. “Oh, you silly! Let me show how to lurk.” Wind-swift, it swarmed into an oak nearby. “Let me feed you.” Acorns flew, to bounce off the monster's hide.

He grunted thunder-deep wrath. These past three years the vilja had teased him. He had even wallowed onto land a few painful yards, seeking to catch her, gaining naught but her mirth. Soon she must leave the wood, to spend winter beneath lake and stream, but that availed not the vodianoi. Though cold made her dreamy, she never grew too unaware or too slow for him. Besides, when she was not actually rousing him to fury, he knew in his dim-witted fashion that it was unlikely he could harm such a wraith. The only good thing was that in that season she merely greeted him, like a sleepwalker, when they met.

“I know,” she called. “You hope you'll grab you a fine, juicy man. Well, you shan't.” With a gesture, she raised a whirly little wind around him. “They're mine, those travelers.” Her mood swung about. The wind died away. “But why do they fare at night?” she asked herself in a tone of bewilderment. “And they bring no fire to see by. Men would bring fire—would they not? I can't remember.…”

She hugged her knees where she sat on high, rocked back and forth, let her hair blow cloudy-pale on a breeze that hardly stirred the locks of those who approached. All at once she cried, “They are
not
men—most of them—not really,” and climbed higher to be hidden.

The vodianoi hissed after her, hunched back down, and waited.

The mermen came out of the forest. They numbered a score, led by Vanimen, naked save for knife belts but carrying fish spears and hooped nets. Ivan Subitj was among the half-dozen humans who were along to observe. Guided through gloom by companions with Faerie sight, they had made stumbling progress, and blinked as if dazed when suddenly moonlight spilled across them.

“Yonder he is!” Vanimen called. “Already we've found him. I thought an absence of flame would aid us in that.”

Ivan peered. “A boulder?” he asked.

“No, look close, espy those ember eyes.” Vanimen raised steel and shouted in his own tongue.

The mermen splashed out. Bellowing in glee, fangs agleam, the vodianoi threshed after the nearest. The fleet creature eluded him. He chased another, and failed.

Now he and they were swimming. The mermen closed in, jeered, pricked with their forks. The vodianoi dived. They followed.

For a minute, water roiled and spouted.

Silence fell, the lake rocked back toward calm, heaven again dreamed its icy dreams. A soldier's voice was lost in that immensity: “The fight's gone too deep for us to see.”

“If it is a fight,” a companion said. “That thing's immortal till Judgment. Iron won't bite on it. What hope have those hunters of yours, lord, witchy though they be?”

“Their headman has told me of several things he can try,” Ivan answered. He was not one to confide in underlings. “Which is best, he must find out.”

“Unless it slays his band,” a third man said. “What then?”

“Then we must abide here till dawn, when we can find our way home,” the zhupan stated. “The beast can't catch us ashore.”

“There's other things as might.” The second trooper stared around him. Moonbeams glimmered in his eyeballs, making them blank.

Ivan raised a cross he wore around his neck. A crystal covered a hollow theren. “This carries a fingerbone of St. Martin,” he said. “Pray like true Christians, and no power of darkness can harm us.”

“Your son Mihajlo thought different,” a soldier dared mutter.

The zhupan heard, and struck him on the cheek. The slap woke an echo. “Hold your tongue, you oaf!” Men signed themselves, thinking dissension boded ill.

Slow hours passed. Frost deepened. Those who waited shivered, stamped feet, tucked hands in armpits. Breath smoked from them. Something white stirred restlessly at the top of a great oak, but nobody cared to peer closely after it.

The moon was sinking when a cry tore out of their throats. A blackness had broken the glade. A hideous shape moved toward them. It halted some distance off, near enough that they could see the mermen tread water to ring the vodianoi in.

Vanimen entered the shallows, stood up, walked to the humans. Wetness dripped from him like mercury. Pride blazed forth like the sun that was coming. “Victory is ours,” he proclaimed.

“God be praised!” Ivan jubilated. After a moment, warrior hardheadedness returned. “Are you sure? What did you do? What's to happen next?”

Vanimen folded arms across his mighty chest and laughed. “We could kill him, aye. But on this very night of his greatest strength, we could outswim him. Our weapons gave pain. None of us did he seize, the while we tormented him till it grew beyond bearing. Also, we showed him how we take fish. In that, he cannot match us either. We can snatch them before he does, scare them off, leave him famished.

“At least we made him know, with the help of a spell for understanding, that we would do this as long as needful. Best he spare his own anguish and depart forthwith. We'll escort him up the river, past your town, and let him go on thence, into unpeopled highlands. He'll grieve you no more.”

Ivan embraced him. Men cheered. Mermen responded lustily from the water. The vodianoi brooded.

“Follow along the edge,” Vanimen advised. “We'll keep in sight of you.” He turned to rejoin his folk.

The white shape flitted down through withering leaves. Many came along when it sprang from a lower branch to earth. “Ah, no,” it sang, “would you drive the poor old ugly hence? This is his home. The lake will be lonely without him, a wonder will be gone, and who shall I play with?”

Vanimen saw the form dance over glittery grass, the form of a naked maiden, lovely to behold but colorless, seeming almost transparent. No mist of breath left nostrils or lips.
“Rousalka!”
he bawled, and fled into the lake.

The being stopped. “Who are you?” she asked the zhupan in her thin, sweet voice. “Should I remember you?”

Sweat studded Ivan's skin, he shuddered, yet it was with hatred and rage rather than fear that he advanced. “Demon, ghost, foul thief of souls!” he shrilled. “Begone! Back to your grave, back to your hell!”

He slashed with his sword. Somehow it did not strike. The vilja lifted her hands. “Why are you angry? Be not angry,” she begged. “Stay. You are so warm, I am so alone.”

Ivan dropped his blade and raised his cross. “In the name of the Holy Trinity, and St. Martin whose banner St. Stefan bore into battle, go.”

The vilja whirled about and ran into the wood. She left less mark by far in the hoarfrost than a woman would have done. They heard her sobbing, then that turned into laughter, then there was no more trace of her.

Bells pealed rejoicing till all Skradin rang. No person worked, save to prepare a festival that began in the afternoon and continued past sunset.

The sight had been awesome for those who were awake before dawn, when the vodianoi passed by under guard of the mermen. It was as if, for a moment, the world—castle, church, town, houses, fields, ordered hours and the cycle that went measured from Easter to Easter—had parted like a veil, men glimpsed what it had hidden from them, and that was no snug Heaven but ancient, unending wildness.

By early daylight, when Vanimen's hunters returned with the zhupan and his band, fright was forgotten. Talk aroused of starting fishery. True, the deep forest was still a chancy place to enter, and would not be cleared away for generations. Yet logging proceeded, year by year; plowland stretched outward, homes multiplied; cultivation had tamed a sizeable arc of the lakeside. The monster gone, it should be safe to launch boats from that part, if one did not row too near the wooded marge.

The zhupan confirmed the good news. He had seen the vodianoi leave his conquerors and make a slow way on upstream, panting, sometimes able to swim, sometimes groping over rocks that bruised, till lost from sight. The creature moved brokenly. Belike doom would overtake him long before Judgment; hopelessness might well make him lay down his bones to rest.

Father Petar conducted a Mass of thanksgiving, with a somewhat sour face. Thereafter, merriment began. Presently the nearest meadow surged with folk in their holiday garb, embroidered vests, flowing blouses, wide-sweeping skirts for the revealing of an ankle in the dance. An ox roasted over a bonfire, kettles steamed forth savory smells above lesser flames, barrels gurgled out beer, mead, wine. Bagpipes, flutes, horns, drums, single-stringed fiddles resounded through the babble.

Freely among the peasants moved the Liri folk. Ivan Subitj had taken it on himself to release them. He had no fret about their breaking parole and fleeing. Friendship laved them today and their morrow looked full of hope. For decency's sake he had arranged that they be clad, though this must for the most part be in borrowed clothes that were old and fitted poorly. That meant little to them, especially in their happiness at being back together. Anyhow, garments were readily shed when male and female had left the village and found a bush or a tree-screened riverbank.

The noisiest, cheeriest celebrant was Father Tomislav. He had come hither with Vanimen after Ivan approved the merman's idea, and only with difficulty had he been restrained from joining the expedition. Now, when men linked hands around a cauldron to dance the kolo, his vigor sent whipcracks through their circle. “Hai, hop! Swing a leg! Leap like David before the Lord! Ah, there, my dears,”—to pretty girls as he whirled by them—“just you wait till we and you make a line!”

Vanimen and Meiiva had repaid long separation. They entered the meadow when the kolo was ending. Luka, son of Ivan, pushed through the crowd to greet them. He was a slender lad, whose bright outfit was in scant accord with his thoughtful mien. From the beginning he had been greatly taken by the merfolk, eager to learn about them, ever arguing for their better treatment. After Vanimen's exploit, he approached them with adoration.

“Hail,” he said through the racket around. “You look somber. You should be joyous. Can I help you in any way?”

“Thank you, but I think not,” The Liri king replied.

“What's wrong?”