“Oh, yes, oh, yes.” Eyjan peered into the glooms that bulked around their sphere of weak light. She shivered and huddled close to her elder brother. Rarely before had he seen her daunted.
Kennin was not. “I begin to know why the landfolk are so fond of looting,” he said with a grin. “There’s fun in an endlessness of baubles as in an endlessness of ale or women.”
“Not truly endless,” Tauno answered in his sober fashion.
“Why, is it not endlessness if you have more of something than you can finish off in your lifetime, gold to spend, ale to drink, women-?” Kennin laughed.
“Bear with him,” Eyjan said into Tauno’s ear. “He’s a boy. All Creation is opening for him.”
“I’m no oldster myself,” Tauno replied, “though the trolls know I feel like a mortal one.”
They rid themselves of the remaining lanthorns, putting these in the last bagful. It would rise faster than was wise for them. Tauno gestured salute to unseen Averorn. “Sleep well,” he murmured; “May your rest be unbroken till the Weird of the World.”
From cold, dark, and death, they passed into light and thence into air. The sun cast nearly level beams out of the west, whose sky was greenish; eastward, amidst royal blue, stood forth a white planet. Waves ran purple and black, filigreed with foam, though the breeze had stopped. Their rush and squelp were the lone sounds in that coolness, save for what was made by the lolloping dolphins.
These wanted at once to know everything, but the siblings were too tired. They promised full news tomorrow, coughed the water from their lungs, and made for the cog. None waited at the rail save Herr Ranild. A rope ladder dangled down amidships.
Tauno came first aboard. He stood dripping, shuddering a bit from exhaustion, and looked around. Ranild bore crossbow in crook of arm; his men gripped their pikes near the mast- The kraken was dead. Why this tautness among them? Where were Ingeborg and Niels?
“Um-m-m . . . you’re satisfied?” Ranild rumbled in his whiskers.
“We have plenty for our sister, and to make the lot of you rich,” Tauno said. His flesh dragged at him, chilled, bruised, worn out. The same ache and dullness were in his head. He felt he ought to be chanting his victory; no, that could wait, let him only rest now, only sleep.
Eyjan climbed over the side. “Niels?” she called.
A glance across the six who stood there sent the knife hissing from her scabbard. “Treachery-this soon?”
“Kill them!” Ranild shouted.
Kennin had just come off the ladder. He was still poised on the rail. As the sailors and their pikes surged forward, he yelled and pounced to the deck. None among those clumsy shafts had swiftness to halt him. Straight at Ranild’s throat he flew, blade burning in the sunset glow. ,
Ranild lifted the crossbow and shot. Kennin crashed at his feet. The quarrel had gone through breastbone, heart, and back. Blood poured across the planks.
It stabbed in Tauno: Ingeborg had warned of betrayal, but Ranild was too shrewd for her. He must have plotted with man after single man, in secret comers of the hold. The moment the swimmers went after their booty, he gave the word to seize her and Niels. And slay them? No, that might leave traces; bind them, gag them, lay them below decks, until the trusting halflings had returned.
Eyjan’s quick understanding, Kennin’s ready action had upset the plan. The onrush of sailors was shaken and slowed. There was time for Eyjan and Tauno to dive overboard.
A couple of pikes arced harmlessly after them. Ranild loomed at the rail, black across the evening. His guffaw boomed forth: “Maybe this’ll buy your passage home from the sharks!” And down to them he cast the body of Kennin.
IX
The dolphins gathered.
With them, after the manner of merfolk, Tauno and Eyjan left their brother. They had closed the eyes, folded the hands, and taken the knife-steel beginning to rust-that it might go on in use as something that had known him. Now it was right that he should make the last gift which was his to give, not to the conger eels but to those who had been his friends.
The halflings withdrew a ways while the long blue-gray shapes surrounded Kennin-very quietly, very gently—and they sang across the sunset ocean that farewell which ends:
“But oh, Tauno, Tauno!” Eyjan wept. “He was so young!”
He held her close. The low waves rocked them. “Stark are the Noms,” Tauno said. “He made a good departure.”
A dolphin came to them and asked in dolphin wise what more help they wished. It would not be hard to keep the ship hereabouts, as by smashing the rudder. Presently thirst would wreak justice.
Tauno glanced at the cog, becalmed on the horizon, sail furled. “No,” he said, “they hold hostages. Nevertheless, something must be done.”
“I’ll cut open Herr Ranild’s belly,” Eyjan said, “And tie the end of his gut to the mast, and chase him around the mast till he’s lashed to it.”
“I hardly think him worth that much trouble,” Tauno replied. “Dangerous is he, though. To attack the ship herself, with the dolphins or by swimming beneath and prying strake from strake, is no trick. To seize her, on the other hand, may be impossible. Yet must we try, for Yria, Ingeborg, and Niels. Come, we’d better take food—our cousins will catch us some—and rest. Our strength has been spent.”
—A while after midnight he awoke refreshed. Grief had not drained from him; however, the keenness for rescue and revenge filled most of his being.
Eyjan slept on, awash in a cloud of her hair. Strange how innocent, almost childlike her face had become, lips half parted and long lashes down over cheekbones. Around her were the guardian dolphins. Tauno kissed her in the hollow where throat met breast, and swam softly away.
It was a light night of Northern summer. Overhead, heaven stood aglow, a twilight wherein the stars looked small and tender. The waters glimmered, barely moving, a lap-lap-lap of wavelets above the deeper half-heard march of the tide. The air was hushed, cool, and damp.
Tauno came to Berning. He circled her with the stealthiness of a shark. Nobody seemed to be at the helm, but a man stood at either side of the main deck, pike agleam, and a third was in the crow’s nest. Lanthorns were left dark so as not to dazzle their eyes. That meant three below. They were standing watch and watch. Ranild was taking no chances with his foes.
Or was he? The rail amidships lay scarcely more than a fathom above the water. One might find means to climb—And maybe kill a man or two before the racket fetched everybody else. Useless, that. Vanimen’s children had beaten the whole crew erenow; but that had been when no sailor carried more than a knife, and none really looked for a battle, and anyhow—once
Oluv was out of the way-it had been no death-fight. Also, Kennin was gone.
With naught save his upper countenance raised forth, Tauno waited for whatever might happen.
At length he heard a footfall, and the man who blotted the starboard sky called, “Well, well, do you pant for us already?”
“You’re on watch, remember,” came Ingeborg’s voice—how dragging, how utterly empty! “I could grit my teeth and seduce you if I thought the skipper would flog you for leaving your post; but so such luck. No, I left that sty in the hold for a breath of air, forgetting that here also are horrible swine.”
“Have a care, harlot. You know we can’t risk you alive for a witness, but there are ways and ways to die.”
“And if you get too saucy, we may not keep you till the last night out,” said the man on the larboard side. “That gold’ll buy me more whores than I can handle, so why bother with Cod-Ingeborg?”