“Strange to end our quest here,” Ingeborg murmured.
“No, we do not,” Eyjan said. “Here we begin.”
Niels blessed himself, for the place was eerie in truth, and like every dweller thereabouts he had heard stories. . . nicors, elves? . . . did he truly see a will-o’-the-wisp dance blue yonder, for luring men to doom? He wondered if the holy sign would avail him, after all his heathen doings. His hand groped for Eyjan’s, but she had moved aside, starting work.
First she, Tauno, and Hauau aided their shipmates to land. Then for hours they went back and forth, fetching the gold of A verorn from the deck where they had lately restowed it. Niels and Ingeborg kept watch, to warn of unlikely human arrivals-though an outlaw or two might perhaps lair nearby—or visitants less welcome. Naught happened. They shared a cloak and soon a standing embrace against the cold; they shivered together through the night.
Dawn saw the unloading finished, but no sun. Thick mists had arisen, the world was a dripping dankness, drenched with silence. Tauno and Eyjan, who knew the marsh well, had foreseen that; they had indeed held the cog out a whole day after making landfall, till they could count on this veil. Hauau felt as easy in fog as they did. Guided by these companions, youth and woman splashed wearily, wretchedly, to help in the next part of the task.
The gold must be hidden. Tauno remembered a lightning-blasted tree that was readily findable from the road. A measured number of paces due west of it was a pool, shallow, scummy, as if created to keep secrets. A platted mat of withes, which would last for years underwater, kept mud at the bottom from swallowing what the wanderers laid down. Transport went faster than before, with the added hands; besides, a person could carry more afoot than swimming, and whatever the stuff weighed, it filled a rather small space altogether.
Still, haste was necessary. Often this caused a bearer to crumple soft metal into a less awkward shape. Seeing Tauno thus wreck the spiderweb fragility of a tiara, Ingeborg mused sadly, “What lover once gave that to his lady, what craftsman wrought it with love of his own? There went the last glimpse of their lives.”
“We’ve lives to live now,” he snapped. “You’ll have to melt most of this down anyhow, or cut it in small pieces, won’t you? Besides, their souls endure, and doubtless remember.”
“In some gray place outside of time,” Eyjan said. “They were not Christian.”
“Yes, I suppose we’re luckier,” Tauno answered. He went on picking things up. Even close by, he seemed unreal in the fog. Ingeborg winced, began to draw the Cross, stopped her finger and likewise returned to work.
Toward noon, slowly freshening airs tattered the vapors and drove them seaward. Light reached earth in spearcasts, which more and more often left rents to show the blue beyond. It grew warmer. Waves clucked on the beach.
Their labor completed, the party ate cold rations and drank sour wine brought from the ship-hardly a farewell banquet, there beside the road, but the best they had. Afterward Tauno drew Niels out of earshot.
They stood for a mute moment, nude halfling towering above slim, ill-clad human, Tauno stern, Niels tired and timid. Finally the Liri prince found words: “If I have used you ill, I beg your pardon. You deserved better of me. I tried, in the later part of our voyage, but-well, I’d overmuch on my mind, and could forget what lowed you.”
Niels raised his eyes from the ground and said in a kind of desperation, “That’s nothing, Tauno. It’s my debt to you that is immeasurable.”
A grim smile: “For what, my friend? That you faced hardship and peril of life again and again in a cause that was not yours? That you have worse before you?”
“How? Wealth; everything it means, an end to want and toil and groveling for my kinfolk-Margrete, Yria, of course, but will I not be amply rewarded as well ?”
“Hm. I’m not learned in earthling ways, but I can guess what odds are against you; and if you fail, men will give you an ending far more terrible than any the ocean or its monsters could. Have you thought about this, Niels?” Tauno demanded. “Truly thought about it? I ask on Yria’s account, lest she be dragged down too; but also on yours.”
Steadiness came over the young man. “Yes, I have,” he said. “You know whom it is that in my heart I serve. Well, I would not serve her badly, so I’ve spent every free hour makjng plans. Ingeborg will be my ftrst counselor, she’s more worldly-wise, but she’ll not be the only one. What happens lies with God, yet I am hopeful.” He drew breath. “You know, don’t you, that rashness would destroy us? We must make sure of every step ere we take it.”
“Aye. When might you be done? In a year?”
Niels frowned and plucked at his wispy beard. “I would guess longer. Surely for me to establish myself—but that’s not what you want to hear about, is it? Yria. . . if all goes well. . . we might have her ransomed in a year. It depends on what allies we can find, you see. . . . Oh, say that a twelvemonth hence we’ll know better how things are going.”
Tauno nodded. “As you like, Eyjan and I will return then for news.”
Niels’ mouth fell open. “You’ll be gone that long?”
“Why should we linger, when we’d fain be searching for our people?”
Niels gulped hard. His hands wrestled. In a while he could ask: “Where will you seek?”
“West,” said Tauno, more softly than heretofore. “Toward Greenland. Hauau and I spoke of this, one moonlit night in the sea. He has foreknowledge. About me it was hazy; but he did say there was a whisper in his skull, that somewhere thither, a part of my fate lies waiting.”
Sunlight blinked upon him, to turn /tis head amber. As if that recalled him to the everyday, he shrugged and finished, “It’s a reasonable direction. We may learn something helpful along the way, as at Iceland.”
“You’ll not lead Eyjan into danger, will you?” Niels implored.
Tauno rapped forth a laugh. “She’s hard to keep out of it.” After regarding the countenance before him, he added, “Let’s not borrow trouble. Enough comes as a free gift. Let’s plan how we may meet again.”
Niels threw himself into that matter as if escaping. Talk went back and forth. The siblings must needs inform him when they arrived, and thereafter wait for him to come. This was a bad spot for them to do so. It had little cover ashore; if Alsmen in fishing boats glimpsed them, that would awaken dangerous gossip. For his part, Niels would be taking ample risks whenever he came back to raise more gold. Best that otherwise he do nothing overly remarkable in neighborhoods where he was known—and he was bound to become noticed throughout the kingdom.
They decided on the island of Bornholm, away off in the Baltic Sea. Tauno knew and liked the place, which had but few clusters of settlement. Niels had been to that fief of the Lund archbishopric too, on an earlier trip, and there met an old salt, crusty and trusty, who owned a boat in Sandvig. Let the merman’s children seek him out, passing themselves off as human foreigners, and give him a carefully worded message. For payment—they had both donned golden arm coils, off which bits could be sliced-he should be willing to go to Denmark, track Niels down, and deliver the report.
“Next year, if we are alive-aye!” said Tauno. He and his comrade handselled it.
Ingeborg and Hauau stood among wet swirls that an unseen sun turned silvery. The Kattegat leaped at their feet.
“I maun be awa’ the noo, ere the weather breaks and reveals us,” he told her. The scheme was for him to steer Herning well out, then turn the cog loose, to smash beyond recognition on a Norse or Swedish coast where nobody knew her anyway. Meanwhile a gray seal would be swimming toward Sule Skerry. She embraced him, forgetful of the fishy stench that rubbed off on her gown. “Will I ever see you again?” she asked through tears.
Surprise made fluid the heavy features, the blocky, shaggy frame. “Och, lass, why’d ye wish that?”