The Merman's Children (24 page)

And yet their forebears had not been badly off. There was a high seat for lord and lady, richly carved though the paint was gone, that had doubtless come from Norway. Above it gleamed a crucifix of gilt bronze. Well-wrought cedar chests stood about. However rotted and smoke-stained, tapestries had once been beautiful. Weapons and tools racked between them remained good to see. It was all more than these few dwellers could use. Tauno whispered to Eyjan, “I reckon the family and retainers used to live in a better house, a real hall, but moved out when it got too hard to keep warm for a handful, and built this hovel.”

She nodded. “Aye. They'd not have used the lamps tonight, had we not come. I think they keep the fat against a famine they await.” She shivered. “Hu, a lightless Greenland winter! Drowned Averorn was more blithe.”

Haakon took the high seat and, with manners elsewhere long out of date, beckoned his visitors to sit on the bench opposite. He ordered beer brought. It was weak and sour, but came in silver goblets. He explained he was a widower. (From her behavior toward him, they guessed the child was his which bulged the belly of a young slattern.) Three sons and a daughter were alive—he believed; the oldest lad had gotten a berth on a ship bound back to Oslo, and not been heard of for years. The second was married and on a small farm. The third, Jonas, was still here, a wiry pointy-nosed youth with lank pale hair who regarded Tauno in fox wariness and Eyjan in ill-hidden lust. The rest were poor kin and hirelings, who worked for room and board.

“As for my daughter——”

Bodies stirred and mumbled among thick, moving shadows. Eyes gleamed white, fear could be smelled and felt in the smoke. Haakon's voice, which had been firm, barked forth: “What can you tell of her?”

“What can you tell of merfolk?” Tauno retorted.

The Norseman curbed his wits. “Something…maybe.”

It gasped and choked through the dimness. “I doubt that,” Eyjan breathed in her brother's ear. “I think he lies.”

“I fear you're right,” he answered as low. “But let's play his game. We've a mystery here.”

Aloud: “We found her at sea, not far hence, amidst Inuit—Skraelings, do you call them? She and her baby looked well.” They looked better than anybody here, he thought. Belike Haakon had seen to it that she got ample food while growing, because he wanted her to bear him strong grandsons or because he loved her. “I warn you, though, you'll not like what she told us to tell you. Bear in mind, this was none of our doing. We were on hand for a very brief time, and we don't even understand what she meant by her words.”

The father's knuckles stood white around his swordhilt. Jonas his son, seated on the bench next to him, likewise grasped dagger.

“Well?” Haakon snapped.

“I am sorry. She cursed you. She said everybody should depart this country, lest you die of a—a tupilak, whatever that is—which a magician of theirs has made to punish a sin of yours.”

Jonas sprang to his feet. “Have they taken her soul out of the body they took?” he shrieked through a hubbub.

Did Haakon groan? He gave no other sign of his wound. “Be still!” he required. The uproar waxed. He rose, drew his sword, brandished it and said flatly: “Sit down. Hold your mouths. Whoever does not will soon be one less to feed through the winter.”

Quiet fell, save for the wind piping around walls and snuffing at the door. Haakon sheathed blade and lowered his spare frame. “I have an offer for you two,” he said, word by word. “A fair trade. You've told us you're half human, but can breathe underwater as well as a real merman, and swim almost as well. By your weapons, I ween you can fight there too.”

Tauno nodded.

“And you ought not to fear sorcery, being of the Outworld yourselves,” Haakon went on.

Eyjan stiffened. Jonas said in haste, “Oh, he doesn't mean
you
are evil.”

“No,” Haakon agreed. “In truth, I've a bargain to strike with you.” He leaned forward. “See here. There is indeed…a flock of what must be merfolk…around an island to the west. I saw them shortly before, before our woes began. I was out fishing. Sturli and Mikkel were along,” he added to the astounded household, “but you remember that the tupilak got them afterward. We were…alarmed at what we saw, unsure what Christian men should do, and felt we'd best hold our peace till we could ask a priest. I mean a wise priest, not Sira Sigurd of this parish, who can't read a line and who garbles the Mass. I know he does; I've been to church in the Ostri Bygd and heeded what was done and sung. And surely he's failed to pray us free of the tupilak. Folk around here are sliding fast into ignorance, cut off as we mostly have been——” His features writhed. “Aye, sliding into heathendom.”

He needed a minute to regain his calm. “Well,” he said. “We meant to seek counsel from the bishop at Gardar, and meanwhile keep still about the sight lest we stampede somebody into foolishness or worse. But then the tupilak came, and we—I never had the chance to go.” He caught the eyes of his guests. “Of course, I can't swear those beings are your kin. But they are latecomers, so it seems reasonable, no? I doubt you could find the island by yourselves. The waters are vast between here and Markland. You'd at least have a long, perilous search, twice perilous because of the tupilak. I can steer by stars and sunstone and take you straight there. But…none from the Vestri Bygd can put to sea and live, unless the tupilak be destroyed.”

“Tell us,” Eyjan urged from the bottom of her throat.

Haakon sat back, tossed off his beer, signaled for more all around, and spoke rapidly:

“Best I begin at the beginning. The beginning, when men first found and settled Greenland. They went farther on in those days—failed to abide in Vinland, good though that was said to be, but for a long time afterward would voyage to Markland and fetch timber for this nearly treeless country of ours. And each year ships came from abroad to barter iron and linen and such-like wares for our skins, furs, eiderdown, whalebone, walrus ivory, narwhal tusk——”

Tauno could not entirely quench a grin. He had seen that last sold in Europe as a unicorn's horn.

Haakon frowned but continued: “We Greenlanders were never wealthy, but we flourished, our numbers waxed, until the landhungry moved north and started this third of our settlements. But then the weather worsened, slowly at first, afterward ever faster—summer's cold and autumn's hail letting us garner scant harvest any more; storms, fogs, and icebergs at sea. Fewer and fewer ships arrived, because of the danger and because of upheavals at home. Now years may well go by between two cargoes from outside. Without that which we must have to live and work, and cannot win from our home-acres, we grow more poor, more backward, less able to cope. And…the Skraelings are moving in.”

“They're peaceful, are they not?” Eyjan asked softly.

Haakon spat an oath, Jonas onto the floor. “They're troll-sly,” the older one growled. “By their witchcraft they can live where Christians cannot; but it brings God's anger down on Greenland.”

“How can you speak well of a breed so hideous, a lovely girl like you?” Jonas added. He tried a smile in her direction.

Haakon's palm chopped the air. “As for my house,” he said, “the tale is quickly told. For twenty-odd years, a Skraeling pack has camped, hunted, and fished a short ways north of the Bygd. They would come to trade with us, and Norsemen would less often visit them. I thought ill of this, but had no way to forbid it, when they offered what we needed. Yet they were luring our folk into sin—foremost our young men, for their women have no shame, will spread legs for anybody with their husbands' knowledge and consent…and some youths also sought to learn Skraeling tricks of the chase, Skraeling arts like making huts of snow and training dogs to pull sleds——”

Pain sawed in his tone: “Four years ago, I married my daughter off to Sven Egilsson. He was a likely lad, and they—abode happily together, I suppose, though his holding was meager, out at the very edge of the Bygd, closer to Skraelings than to any but one or two Christian families. They had two children who lived, a boy and girl, and a carl to help with the work.

“Last summer, want smote us in earnest. Hay harvest failed, we must butcher most of our livestock, and nevertheless would have starved save for what we could draw from the sea. A frightful winter followed. After a blizzard which raged for days—no, for an unguessable part of the nearly sunless night which is winter here—I could not but lead men north to see how Bengta fared. We found Sven, my grandson Dag, and the carl dead, under skimpy cairns, for the earth was frozen too hard to dig a grave in. Bengta and little Hallfrid were gone. The place was bare of fuel. Traces—sled tracks, dog droppings—bespoke a Skraeling who had come and taken them.

“Mad with grief and wrath, I led my men to the stone huts where those creatures den in winter. We found most were away, hunting, gadding about, I know not what. Bengta too. Those who were left said she had come of her free will, bringing her live child—come with a male of theirs, come to his vile couch, though he already had a mate——We slaughtered them. We spared a single crone to pass word that in spring we'd hunt down the rest like the vermin they are, did they not return our stolen girls.”

Shadows closed in as the fire waned. Dank chill gnawed and gnawed. Eyjan asked mutedly, into Haakon's labored breathing:

“Did you never think they might have spoken truth? There were no marks of violence on the bodies, were there? I'd say hunger and cold, when supplies gave out, were the murderers, or else an illness such as your sort brings on itself by living in filth. Then Minik—the Inuk, the man—he went yonder, anxious about her, and she took refuge with him. I daresay they'd long been friends.”

“Aye,” Haakon confessed. “She was ever much taken by the Skraelings, prattled words of theirs as early as she did Norse, hearkened to their tales when they came here, the dear, trusting lass…Well, he could have brought her to me, couldn't he? I'd have rewarded him. No, he must have borne her off by might. Later—what you heard in the boat is proof—that damned old witch-man cast a spell on her. God have mercy! She's as lost and enwebbed as any traveler lured into an elfhill—lost from her kin, lost from her salvation, she and my granddaughter both—unless we can regain them——”

“What happened next?” Tauno asked in a while.

“They abandoned that ground, of course, and shifted to somewhere else in the wilderness. Early this spring, hunters of ours came on one of theirs and fetched him bound to me. I hung him over a slow fire to make him tell where they were, but he would not. So I let him go free—save for an eye, to prove I meant what I said—and bade him tell them that unless they sent me my daughter and granddaughter, and for my justice the nithings who defiled her, no man in the Bygd will rest until every last troll of them is slain; for all of us have women to ward.

“A few days afterward, the tupilak came.”

“And what is that?” Tauno wondered. His spine prickled.

Haakon grimaced. “When she was a child, Bengta passed on to me a story about a tupilak that she had from the Skraelings. I thought it was a mere bogy tale that might give her nightmares. Then
she
consoled
me
and promised not. Oh, she was the most loving daughter a man could have, until——

“Well. A tupilak is a sea monster made by witchcraft. The warlock builds a frame, stretches a walrus hide across, stuffs the whole with hay and sews it up, adds fangs and claws and—and sings over it. Then it moves, seeks the water, preys on his enemies. This tupilak attacks white men. It staves in a skiff, or capsizes it, or crawls over the side. Spears, arrows, axes, nothing avails against a thing that has no blood, that is not really alive. It eats the crew….What few escaped bear witness.

“This whole summer, we've been forbidden the sea. We cannot fish, seal, fowl and gather eggs on the rookery islands; we cannot send word to the Ostri Bygd for help. Men set out overland. We've heard naught. Maybe the Skraelings got them, though like as not, they simply lost their way and starved in that gashed and frozen desert. The southerners are used to not hearing from us for long at a time; in any case, they have troubles of their own; and if they did send a boat or two, the tupilak waylaid those.

“We've barely stocks on hand to last out the winter. But next year we die.”

“Or you go away,” Tauno said into his anguish. “Now I see what Bengta meant. You must leave, seek new homes to southward. I suppose the angakok will call off his beast if you do.”

“We'll be go-betweens if you wish,” Eyjan offered.

Some of the men cursed, some shouted. Jonas drew his knife. Haakon sat as though carved in flint, and stated: “No. Here are our homes. Our memories, our buried fathers, our freedom They're not much better off in the south than we are here; they can take us in; but only as hirelings, miserably poor. No, I say. We'll harry the Skraelings instead till they are gone.”

Once more he leaned forward, left fist clenched on knee, right hand raised crook-fingered like the talons of a Greenland falcon. “Thus we arrive at my bargain,” he told the merman's children. “Let us take the boats out tomorrow. The tupilak will know, and come. While we fight it from the hulls, you attack from beneath. It can be slain—cut to pieces, at least. That story Bengta heard was of how a valiant man got rid of a tupilak. He invented the kayak, you see, to capsize on purpose and get at the thing's underside. Belike that's an old wives' tale in itself. Anyhow, no man of us has skill with those piddleboats. Still, it shows what the Skraelings believe is possible, and they ought to know; right?

“Help free us from our demon, and I'll guide you to your people. Otherwise”—Haakon smiled stiffly—“I'd not be surprised if the creature took you for Norse and slew you. You are half of our breed. Be true to your race, and we will be true to you.”