From where they crouched, and even in the dim light, Shef could see the prodigious back widening as Echegorgun took a deep breath, a deep breath like the indraft of a bellows. Then he blew.
No sound reached the men on the shore, but after a few moments the air seemed to buzz, to vibrate noiselessly. Was the surface of the sea shivering in sympathy? Shef could not tell, though he strained his one eye to see. He had no doubt that beneath the water some immense disturbance was taking place.
The blowing went on and on, Echegorgun breathing in continually and somehow blasting out at the same time. Shef was not sure, but he felt dimly that the “notes” Echegorgun was playing altered now and then, according to some unknown code. He remained motionless, feeling the chill of the high latitudes creeping up on him, feeling his muscles stiffen, the cold stone strike through his breeches. He did not dare to move. Echegorgun had said that at any disturbance he would break off. “Just one pebble rolling,” he had warned. “If the whale-folk were to think I was playing with them, even foreign whale-folk… I could never swim safely again.”
Beside him Cuthred too sat like a rock image. But then, barely perceptibly even from two feet, his eyes moved, his chin rose a trifle, pointing. Between the shore and the skerries, a fin rose. The straight-up, right-angle fin of the killer-whale, the orca. It was coming towards them, not quickly, deliberately. From time to time the head too rose, and a spout went up, white against the gray islands. The orca was taking a good look. Behind it, well behind it, the rest of the school followed.
Slowly the fin came closer. As it closed, Echegorgun’s breathing seemed to slacken, as if he were cutting down the underwater noise. He seemed to be blowing with a shorter, more varied rhythm. Finally the fin closed right up, the orca swimming along parallel with the shore, turning, cruising slowly back. Every time it turned it kept its eye on the strange gray creature standing waist-deep in the water. Shef felt his skin contracting at the thought of what might happen. A lunge of the jaws, a sweep of the tail, and Echegorgun would be off his feet and off the rock. Even his mighty frame would be no more than a bull-seal to the killer. Nothing was safe with them in the water, not the tusked walrus, nor the polar bear, not even the great whales which they tore to pieces while they were still alive.
Echegorgun put his tube carefully down on the rock behind him. Then, slowly, he sank down, submerging shoulders and head in the water, and began to swim out. The killer watched, giving him room. The men on shore could see little, only what showed above water. Yet it began to seem, after a while, as if Echegorgun was acting out some kind of pantomime. Sometimes he seemed to mimic a whale’s motion, sometimes a man swimming. Once it seemed to Shef as if he kicked his heels above the water, and rolled over violently: a boat turned upside down? The killer’s movements began to synchronize with his own, they swam up and down together, both moving at a fantastic speed for a human, a bare stroll for a whale.
And then the fin swung away, a great tail slapped the water twice, as if in farewell. The other fins cruising up and down offshore swung too, in unison. All together the school began to race down the sound at top speed, the whales arcing in and out of the water in a complex ballet, as if in exultation. They raced away to the south, towards Hrafnsey.
Echegorgun remained in the water till they were out of sight, cruising up and down with an easy overarm stroke, only skull and arms showing, with a faint flurry where his heels touched the surface. At a distance, just another seal. Finally he turned, swam into shore, heaved himself out, shook himself easily like a dog.
“Well,” he said in Norse. “Come out now, Thin Ones. I told them the one who wounded their leader was dead. They asked, and the one they followed? Dead too, I said. They were disappointed. It was easy to tell them there were more whale-foes in the ship. The great ship going into Hrafnsey now. They said they would find sport with it.”