On deck, Tauno watched land, water, sails pass by, drank deep
of the air, and said, “Finally we’re out of that stinkhole! None
too soon. I felt myself starting to rot,”
“Are we better off here?” Eyjan replied, “They cared for us,
yon two,”
“Aye, they’ve been staunch,”
“More than that. What they spent of themselves on us-where else can we find it, ever?”
“Among our own kind,”
“If those are as we remember them, And even if they
are-“ Eyjan’s voice trailed off, After a stillness, during which
the ship bore onward until the last spire in Copenhagen was lost
to sight, she finished: “This will be a long voyage, brother mine,”
As the days and weeks of it lengthened, Brynhild’s men grew aware of something uncanny about their passengers, Not only were Herr Carolus and Lady Sigrid curt-spoken, downright moody, given to hours on end of gazing across the waves or up at the stars, or to staying latched in their cubicles, with the com-mand that they desired no meat or drink brought them, No, a couple of mariners thought they had glimpsed one or the other slipping forth by night and overside, Nobody saw either of them climb back aboard; however, the owner had issued an odd standing order, that a rope ladder always be trailed aft for the sake of a hand who might fall into the sea-as if sailors could swim! Whether or not there was anything to this (Captain Asbern Ri-boldsen reminded his crew of what a notoriously superstitious and gullible lot their sort was), certainly the two never joined in com-mon prayer, but said they would liefer perfonn their devotions in private. Devotions to whom? The mutter went that here were a sorcerer and a witch.
Still, sureness about it was lacking. Carolus and Sigrid gave no outward offense, nor did any grave trouble arise for the ship. At the same time, foul winds and dead calms showed that nobody was hexing the weather. Moreover, Niels Jonsen and his partner were known as fine fellows who’d surely not beguile poor seamen into trafficking with evil. He had let the crew be warned that this was a singular voyage, unlike any that they had heard tell of, venturesome as a cast of dice in a Visby tavern. . . but with good pay, good pay.
Thus, however much folk puzzled, things went peacefully on the whole: down the North Sea, through the English Channel, around Britanny, down the Bay of Biscay and along the Iberian shores—with a wary lookout for Moorish cruisers from Africa-and throUgh the Gates of Hercules. Thereabouts Captain Asbern engaged a pilot to show the way onward. It helped much that Herr Carolus knew the language of that Majorcan adventurer (how?). And so, toward midsummer, the cog reached Dalmatia, and worked her way up that coast.
VI
WITH horses and servants engaged in Shibenik, Herr Carolus and Lady Sigrid took the road to Skradin. The satnik had sent a mes-sage ahead from town to castle, and the zhupan had dispatched a military escort for his distinguished visitors. The party made a brave sight as it wound into the mountains, metal agleam, plumes and cloak~ tossing in many colors, hoofs plopping, harness jin-gling, beneath cloudless heaven. Warmth baked strong, sweet odors out of the beasts, ripening fields of grain and hay on the right, greenwood tall on the left.
Nonetheless Tauno wrinkled his nose. “Faugh, the dust!” he said in Danish, which lent itself better than the Liri tongue to such matters. “My insides are turned to a.. . a brickyard. Can you believe merfolk would freely settle down ashore?”
Her palfrey beside his gelding, Eyjan gave him a stiff look out of the wimple that concealed her mane. “It may not have been freely,” she replied. “What did you find out?” As the man of them, he had necessarily done the talking, Panigpak’s gift hung inside his shirt. Eager to converse with such a stranger, the Croa-tians had left him no time until now for any real speech with her.
“Little,” he admitted. “I dared not press the question hard, you know, when it’s not our ostensible business. And I’m not skilled at slyly sucking his knowledge out of anybody. I could but remark in passing that I’d heard rumors and was curious. Folk shied away from the subject. That seemed to be less because they thought it uncanny than because those above them have discouraged mention of it.”