The Merman's Children

by Poul Anderson

  The singing language went back and forth. Often Panigpak put a question straight to the halflings, aided at need by the Norse-woman. The facts emerged piecemeal. No, these Inuit knew noth-ing of any advent. However, they spent most of their time ashore, hunting, and seldom went far out at sea-never as far as the white men, who in days gone by had sailed beyond the horizon to fetch lumber (Bengta spoke of a place she called Markland) and were still wont to take their skiffs on recklessly long journeys in sum-mer. (They huddled at home throughout the winter, which was when the Inuit traveled-by dog-hauled sleds, overland or across the ice along the coasts.) Hence they in the Bygd might have ken of happenings on some island of which poor ignorant people in kayaks could say naught. Were that so, surely Bengta’s father would know, he being the mightiest man in the settlement.

  Tauno and Eyjan could not miss the horror wherewith the name of Haakon Amorsson was uttered. His own daughter flinched, and her voice harshened.

  Just the same- “Well, we had better go to see him,” Eyjan murmured. “Shall we carry a message from you, Bengta?”

  The girl’s will broke. Tears burst forth. “Bring him my curse!” she screamed. “Tell him... all of them. . . leave this land... before the tupilak dooms them. . . that our angakok put on them for his misdeeds!”

  Minik clutched his harpoon. Panigpak crouched deeper, secre-tive, into his furs. Women and kayaks edged back from the two in the bows. Infants sensed unease and wailed. “I think we’d best get out of here,” Tauno said at the comer of his mouth. Eyjan nodded. In twin arcs, the merman’s children dived over the side of the umiak and van-ished beneath restless bitter waters.

  VIII

  THE talk had revealed where Haakon’s garth lay on the great bight that sheltered the Vestri Bygd. The short gray day had turned to dusk when the halflings found it. That gloom hid them while they donned the garb rolled into their packs. It would hardly disguise what they were. Instead of cloth, which dampness would soon have rotted, the stuff was three-ply fishskin, rainbow-scaled, from Liri. Though brief, those tunics would not offend Christians as badly as nakedness did. Out of waterproof envilopes they took steel knives; however, they did not lay aside their rustfree weapons of stone and bone, and they bore their spears in their hands.

  Thereafter they walked to the steading. Wind whined sharp-toothed; waves ground together the stones of the beach. Faerie sight brought more out of the murk than a human could see; but the view between hunchbacked hills was everywhere desolate. The settlement was not a town, it was homes scattered across many wild miles: for brief bleak summers made this land a niggard. Since grain often failed, grass, as pasture and hay for livestock, was the only crop the dwellers dared count on raising. Stubble, thin beneath their bare feet, told the wayfarers how scant the latest harvest had been. A paddock, fenced by bleached whale ribs, was large, must formerly have kept a fair number of beasts, but now held a few scrawny sheep and a couple of likewise wretched cows. A small inlet ended here, and three boats lay drawn aground. They were six-man skiffs, well-built, well suited to this country of countless winding fjords; but beneath the pungent tar that black-ened them Tauno descried how old their timbers were.

  Ahead loomed the buildings, a house, a barn, and two sheds ringing a dirt courtyard. They were of dry-laid rock, moss-chinked, turf-decked, barely fit for the poorest fishermen in Den-mark. Peat-fire smoke drifted out of a roofhole. Gleams trickled through cracks in warped ancient shutters. Four hounds bounded clamorous from the door. They were big animals, wolf blood in them, and their leanness made them appear twice frightful. But when they caught the scent of the halflings, they tucked down their tails and slunk aside. ‘

  The door opened. A tall man stood outlined black between the posts, a spear of his own at the ready. Several more gathered at his back. “Who comes?” he called distrustfully.

  “Two of us,” Tauno answered from the dark. “Fear not if we look eerie. Our will toward you is good.”

  A gasp arose as he and Eyjan stepped into the fireglow. oaths,

  maybe a hurried prayer. The tall man crossed himself. “In Jesu

  name, say what you are,” he demanded, shaken but undaunted.-

  “We are not mortals,” Eyjan told him. The admission always scared less when it came from her sweetly curved lips. “Yet we can speak the name of Jesu Kristi as well as you, and mean no harm. We may even help, in return for an easy favor we hope you can grant us.”

  The man drew a loud breath, sank his weapon, and trod for- ward. He was as gaunt as his dogs, and had never been stout; but: his hands were large and strong. His face was thin too, in cheeks, straight nose, tightly held mouth, plowshare chin, faded blue eyes, framed by gray hair and cropped gray beard. Beneath a long, plain woolen coat with hood thrown back could be seen stockings and sealskin shoon; nothing smelled well. A sword, which he must have belted on when he heard the noise, hung at his waist. To judge from the shape, it had been forged for a viking. Were they truly that backward here, or could they afford nothing new?

  “Will you give us your names too, and name your tribe?” he ordered more than asked. Defiantly: “I am Haakon Arnorsson, and this is my steading Ulfsgaard.”

  “We knew that,” Eyjan said, “since we inquired who the chief man is in these parts.” In about the same words as she had used to his daughter, she told of the quest up to yesterday-save for merely relating that Liri had become barren, not that the cause of the flight there from was an exorcism. Meanwhile the men of the household got courage to shuffle nigh, and the women and children to jam the doorway. Most were younger than Haakon, and stunted by a lifetime of ill feeding; some hobbled on bowed legs or in unmistakable pain from rheumatism and deformed bones. The night made them shiver in their patched garments. A stench welled from the house which the eye-smarting smoke could not altogether blanket, sourness of bathless bodies that must live packed in a narrow space.

  “Can you tell us anything?” Eyjan finished. “’Ye will pay. . . not gold off these rings of ours, unless you wish it, but more fish and sea-game than I think you’d catch for yourselves.”

  Haakon brooded. The wind moaned, the folk whispered and made signs in the air, not all of the Cross. At last he flung his head on high and snapped: “Where did you learn of me? From the Skraelings, no?”

  “The what?”

  “The Skraelings. Our ugly, stumpy heathen, who’ve been drift-

  ing into Greenland from the west these past hundred years.” A snarl: “Drifting in together with frosty summers, smitten fields, God’s curse on us-that I think their own warlocks brought down!”

  Tauno braced muscles and mind. “Aye,” he answered. “We met a party of them, and your daughter Bengta, Haakon. Will you trade your knowledge for news of how she is?”

  An outcry lifted. Haakon showed teeth in his beard and sucked air in between them. Then he stamped spearbutt on earth and roared, “Enough! Be still, you whelps!” When he had his silence, he said quietly, “Come within and we’ll talk.” Eyjan plucked Tauno’s elbow. “Should we?” she questioned in the mer-language. “Outdoors, we can escape from an onset. Between walls, they can trap us.”

  “A needful risk,” her brother decided. To Haakon: “Do you bid us be your guests? Will you hold us peace-holy while we are beneath your roof?”

  H aakon traced the Cross. “By God and St. Olaf I swear that, if you plight your own hann1essness.”

  “On our honor, we do,” they said, the nearest thing to an oath that Faerie folk knew. They had found that Christians took it as mockery if soulless beings like them called on the sacred.

  Haakon led them over his threshold. Eyjan well-nigh gagged at the full stink, and Tauno wrinkled his nose. The Inuit were not dainty, but the ripeness in their quarters betokened health and abundance. Here—

  A miserly peat fife, in a pit on the clay floor, gave the sole light until Haakon commanded that a few soapstone lamps be filled with blubber and kindled. Thereafter his poverty became clear. The house had but a single roo
m. People had been readying for sleep; straw pallets were spread on the platform benches which lined the walls, in a shut-bed that must ,be the master’s, and on the ground for the lowly. The entire number was about thirty. So must they lie among each other’s snores, after listening to whatever hasty lovemaking any couple had strength for. An end of the chamber held a rude kitchen. Smoked meat and stockfish hung from the rafters, flatbread on poles in between, and were grue-somely little when the wind was blowing winter in.

  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 beau-tiful. 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 ~at 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 under-water 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 house-hold, “but you remember that the tupilalC 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 heath-endom.”

  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 fool-ishness 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 irQn 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 land-hungry 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 back-ward, 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.r />
  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’ knowl-

  edge and consent. . . and some youths also sought to learn Skrael-

  ing 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. Mter a blizzard which raged for days—no, for an ungues sable 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.”