The Merman's Children (15 page)

“Forward!” he roared. Planks thundered beneath his charge.

His trident lay in a cabin, but he had his thews. A pike thrust at him. He caught the shaft, wrenched it free, whirled the butt around, dashed a brain from the skull. Clubbing, stabbing, kicking, trampling, bellowing, he waded in among the foe. A man got behind him and lifted an ax to cleave his spine. Meiiva arrived, knife in her grasp, hauled back the fellow's chin and laid his throat open. Mermen who had been deckhands rallied, joined those twain, cast their might and deep-seated vitality against whetted steel. They cleared a space around one of the hatches. Vanimen called to the mermaids. They and their children poured forth, to the rails and overboard. For them, his little band stood off the humans.

On the castle of the galley, crossbowmen took aim.

The merfolk might well have won that battle—had war been in their tradition. They had no training, though, no skill at the slaughter of people they had never met before. Vanimen should not have bidden the swimmers stay. He realized that after the iron closed back in on him, and cried out for their help; but they heard him not through the din, and merely moved about, bewildered. Some took crossbow quarrels in their bodies, as the shooters noticed them.

Two or three on board died likewise. The Venetians there recovered formation, counterattacked, made a melee that smeared the deck with blood. Most of those they slew were females and young on the way out, but they got every merman on the hulk save for Vanimen.

Dimly, he felt himself pierced and slashed. Somehow—Meiiva beside him, striking out like an angry cat—he forced a path. Together they reached the side and sprang.

Salt water took him as once his mother had. He sank into cool green depths, his friends swarmed close, none but their dead were left behind, he had saved them from slavery, his task was done and now he could rest.…

No. The blood streamed out of him, dark to see, bitter to taste. Those were great wounds; he must go ashore where they could be properly stanched, or else join the slain. Likewise others, he saw through tides of murk. Female after female, child after child, had suffered hurt.

“Come,” he did or did not tell them.

They reached the mainland, coughed their lungs clear, and crept from their sea.

No doubt the Venetians too were shaken by the encounter. They kept to galley and hulk for an hour or more. Meanwhile, in their sight, the fugitives cared as best might be for the injured, with moss, cobwebs, woven grass that bound a gash tight.

Once more their lack of soldierliness betrayed that folk. They should have swum off as soon as treatment was done, despite certain loss of the most badly lacerated. Vanimen would have made them do so. But he lay half in a swoon and there was no proper second in command. The rest crouched where they were, frightened, desultorily talking, never agreeing to a single action.

The slavers observed and plucked up resolution. Weird though yonder beings were, they could be overcome, to sell for a much higher price than any Saracens or Circassians would fetch. The master of the galley was a bold man. He reached his decision and issued his orders.

Carefully but swiftly, he rowed toward land. Alarmed, a number of Liri people ran right and left, where they might re-enter the channel. Crossbow volleys sent them scuttling back, save for a couple who were killed. With determined leadership, the whole group could have won past. However, Vanimen was barely returning to wakefulness. It was patent that he could not swim any distance. Meiiva laid his arm across her shoulders, upheld his weight, and took him lurching inland, where forest offered concealment. For lack of any better example, the tribe milled after them. It was exactly what the Venetian had hoped for. If they scattered into the brush, many would elude him, but he would take many others. Ducats danced before his eyes.

The ground sloped sharply. Guided by his leadsman, he cast anchor just within the galley's draught and dropped the boarding bridge to a point higher up. Men who ran down it found themselves in water only to their stomachs, and hurried ashore. The prizes were vanishing under trees, among brakes and soughing shade. The hunters followed.

They might well have seized some of their quarry, to sell into mills or circuses or peculiar brothels or, maybe, fisher servitude like a falcon's in air. The rest would have escaped them and gone on to the fate that awaited. However, bad luck struck down on misjudgment—unless everything was the will of Heaven—and thwarted them.

Dwellers on the island had been watching. What those saw from afar was enough to alarm; they remembered piracy and war too well, too well. Word had flown on nimble feet and a hard-driven rowboat, to the Ban's harbor outpost and thence, on horseback, to his garrison in Shibenik. A warcraft glided forth; a troop quickstepped along shore.

When he saw that metal gleam into view, the slaver captain knew he had overreached himself. He had had no business in territorial waters of the Croatian kingdom. Since it was presently at peace with the Republic, he would never have gone against one of its ships. A clearly foreign vessel, clearly in distress, had been too big a temptation. Now he had better make off, and trust the Signory's embassy to deny that any Venetian could by any stretch of the imagination have transgressed in such wise.

A trumpet brought his men back. The Croatians for their part made no haste, after it grew evident that the stranger did not want a fight. They let him go. Their officers were curious as to what had attracted him in the first place. They set squads to beating the bush.

All this Vanimen learned much later, mostly from Father Tomislav, who in his turn deduced a good deal of it on the basis of what he heard. At the time Vanimen knew simply pain, faintness, and an uproar which sent his band groping ever further inland.

Water was their first need, more terrible for each hour that passed. Yet they dared not return at once to the sea, when armed humans ramped along its edge and blundered in their wake. Through leafy distances they smelled a river, but also a town upon it. That they must give a wide berth.

Unsuccessful and unprepared for a real effort, the pursuers soon gave up. It was but a tiny consolation to the merfolk. Led by Meiiva, since the king could do no more than stumble along if he had someone to lean on, they battled the woods, the always rising hills, their own thirst, hunger, exhaustion, dread, the burden of the wounded among them, the sobbing of their children. Stones, twigs, thorns cut tender webs; branches clutched; crows gibed. As wind died out, warmth and quiet lifted from the earth—heat and deafness, to these beings out of another world. Here were no tides or currents, waves or fresh breezes, food to catch or deeps to shelter in; here was just a directionless maze, the same and the same and the same. Barely could they pick a way onward.

Infinite though it seemed, the forest was a patch, whose verge the wanderers reached about nightfall. That was a fortunate time, letting them strike across farmland to find the stream. Vanimen mumbled that they should stay on paths, which hurt feet that were already bleeding but would not leave a trail like grainfields. Otherwise, the trek went easier than heretofore, in cool air under kindly stars. No buildings were near. The terrain climbed and climbed.

By midnight they sensed that more than a river lay ahead; there was a lake. Withered gullets contracted when trees appeared like black battlements over a ridge they mounted. Wildwood barred off the water. Strengthless as they now were, few of them could face another struggle through thickets: certainly not at night, when beings that wished them no good were likely a-prowl. Unnutar, whose nose was the keenest in the tribe, said that he snuffed a wrongness in the lake itself; something huge lurked there.

“We must soon drink, or we die,” Rinna whimpered.

“Be still,” snarled a mother whose babe lay fainted in her arms.

“Food also,” Meiiva said. Though her race needed much less nourishment on land than at home, none were used to going this many hours hungry. Scores of the group were reeling in weakness; children had drained away their tears pleading for any mouthful.

Vanimen strove to clear his mind. “Farmstead,” he croaked. “A well. Larder, granary, cows, pigs. We…outnumber the owners…scare them off…help ourselves, and quickly double back to the coast——”

“Aye!” rang Meiiva's voice. “Think, all of you. If we've seen no homes, then these acres belong to a large household, rich, well-fed; it can't be much farther off.” She took them on around the forest border.

After a couple of hours, they did smell water closer by, plus man and cattle. They had rounded the lake and reached the upper river that emptied into it. Indeed, two streams were flowing together, with settlement near that point. The merfolk broke into a shambling run. Eastward, false dawn tinged the sky.

Again ignorance ruined their cause. They knew so little of humankind, and that only in a corner of the North. They took it for given that cultivation would center on a single estate or, at most, a hamlet—not a sizeable village of serfs guarded by a castleful of men-at-arms. Some among them noticed, but had no chance to warn before madness laid hold of the rest. Like lemmings, the Liri people sought to the water and cast themselves in.

Dogs did not clamor, but showed instant fear. Soldiers yawning away the tail end of a night watch, came alert and shouted for comrades who were beginning to grumble out of the blankets. Even this early, it was possible to see what a wild gang were at the ford—but unclad and mostly unarmed. Ivan Subitj, zhupan at Skradin, kept his forces always on the ready. In minutes they were out of the gates. Pulsebeats later, horsemen had crossed a bridge, surrounded the strangers, urged back at lance point those who attempted flight. The riders were not many, but foot were on the way too.

Vanimen raised both hands. “Do likewise,” he told his folk, with the last remnants of intelligence that he could summon. “Yield. We are taken.”

V

N
OT
far north of Als, forest gave way to marsh. This ran for two or three leagues behind a road that was a mere track along the strand and little used, as much from fear of halfworld creatures as because habitation was sparse between here and the Skaw. Archdeacon Magnus had not been afraid to ride past with his entourage, but he was a crusader whom God made invincible against demons. Common folk had no such comfort.

There
Herning
dropped anchor, one chilly eventide. Eastward the Kattegat glimmered away till it lost itself in dusk. Westward the shore lay darkling. A last smear of sunset cast red across the water, broken by reeds, hummocks, gnarly willows. The land breeze smelled of mire and damp. A bittern boomed, a lapwing shrieked, an owl hooted, lonesome noises.

“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 Averorn 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 I owed you.”