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.
Book 2
Selkie
I
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.
Sensing trouble on its way, the travelers who were in the sea made haste to return. The ship could not hold them all, but their help might be needed. Vanimen saw them glimpsewise, fair fonDS among billows that fought them. Nearby lifted the backfin of his orca, loyal beast.
Meiiva climbed the ladder to join him. Braided, her blue mane did not fly wildly as did his golden, and she had wrapped a cloak from a clothes chest around her slenderness. She must bring her lips against his ear to say: “The helmsman asked me to tell you he fears he can’t keep her head to the waves as you ordered, once the real blow sets in. The tiller is like an eel in his hands. Could we do something to the sail?”
“Reef it,” Vanimen decided. “Run before the stonn,”
“But that’s from. . . northwest. . . . Haven’t we had woe aplenty with foul winds, calms, and contrary currents since we left the Shetlands behind us, not to lose the distance we’ve made?”
“Better that than lose the ship. Oh, a human skipper might well broach a wiser scheme. We, though, we’ve gained a little seamanship in these over-many days, but indeed it is little. I can only guess at what might work to save us.”
He laid palm above brow to squint into the blast. “This I need not guess at,” he added. “I’ve known too many weathers through the centuries. That is no gale which will exhaust itself overnight. No, it’s a monster out of Greenland and the boreal ice beyond. We’ll be in its jaws for longer than I want to think of.”
“This is not the season for such. . . is it?”
“No, not commonly, though I’ve watched a gathering cold breed ever more bergs and floes and storms during the past few hundred years. Call this a freak, and us unlucky.”
Within himself, Vanimen wondered. The watchman he slew to gain his vessel, a man who deserved no such fate, had cursed him first. . . and called on the Most High and his own saint. . . . The king had never told anyone. He did not believe he ever would.
If they sank- His glance went to the main deck and lingered. Most of them would die, the lovely mermaids who gave and took so much joy, the children who had yet to learn what joy truly was. He himself might win to some alien shore, but what use in that? Enough. Let him do whatever was in his might. No matter how long a life you might win for yourself, who in the end escaped the nets of Ran?
Vanimen sent a boy to summon the strongest males up the Jacob’s ladder. Meanwhile he rehearsed in his mind what commands to give. At least his tribe had learned quick obedience to their captain, a thing altogether new in the history of the race. But they had not learned many mariner skills. His own were scarcely superior.
The call for help was none too soon. Shortening sail proved a wild battle in the swiftly rising wind. Cloth and lines flayed blood out of crew while the hulk staggered prey to surge after surge. No few passengers were washed overside. One babe perished, skull smashed against a bollard. While death was familiar to the merfolk, Vanimen would not soon forget that sight, or the mother’s face as she gathered the ruin in her arms and plunged into a sea that might be kindlier.
That was a dangerous thing to suppose, Vanimen knew. The water embraced a person, gave shelter from sun and weather, brought forth nourishment; but it sucked warmth from the body that only huge eating could replace, and in its reaches laired killers untold. He caused lines to be trailed from the deck, to which swimmers might cling for a time of rest if they could not corne aboard. This might also help prevent them getting lost from the ship.
By then, the full storm was almost upon her. Vanimen sought the aftercastle. In the stern below the poop, two mermen stood at the helm. That watch was less arduous now that they were simply letting the wind take them whither it listed. He gave them advice, promised relief in due course, and turned away. Built into either side were a pair of tiny cabins, starboard for the captain, larboard for his officers. On this voyage they were seldom used, for merfolk found them confining. He wanted a while away from the elements. He opened the door of the master’s.