“I know,” Ingeborg said. “Best I go along, to dicker and keep an eye open on your behalf.”
He started. “Would you indeed?” After a moment: “You shall have a full share in the booty, dear friend. You too shall be free.”
“If we live; otherwise, what matter? But Tauno, Tauno, think
not I offer this out of lust for wealth-“
“I must speak with Eyjan and Kennin, of course—we must
plan-we must talk further with you-nonetheless-“
“Indeed, Tauno, indeed, indeed. Tomorrow, forever, you shall have what you will from me. Tonight, though, I ask one thing, that you stop this fretting, cast off that veil which covers your eyes, and let us be only Tauno and Ingeborg. See, I’ve drawn off my gown for you.”
VII
WHEN the black cog Herning stood out of Mariager Fjord, she caught a wind that filled her sail and sent her northward at a good clip. On deck, Tauno, Eyjan, and Kennin shed the human clothe&-foul, enclosing rags!-that had disguised them during their days of chaffer with Ranild Espensen Grib. A lickerish shout lifted from six of the eight men, at sight of Eyjan white in the sunlight, clad only in dagger belt and tossing bronze mane. They were a shaggy, flea-bitten lot, those men, scarred from fights, their leather jackets, wadmal shirts and breeks ripe with old grease stains.
The seventh was a lad of eighteen winters, Niels Jonsen. He had come to Hadsund a couple of years before, seeking deckhand work to help care for widowed mother and younger siblings on a tiny tenant farm. Not long ago, the ship whereon he served had been wrecked-by God’s mercy without loss of life-and he could get no other new berth than this. He was a good-looking boy, slender, flaxen-haired, blue-eyed, with straightforwardly shaped fresh features. Now he blinked away tears. “How beautiful she is,” he whispered.
The eighth was the captain. He scowled and came down off the poopdeck that sheltered the man at the tiller. (There was also a deck over the bows, through which the forepost jutted. Below and between these reached the main deck, with mast, two hatches, tackle, cooking-hearth, and what cargo -was carried topside. Among this last were a red granite boulder, three feet through and about a ton in weight; and a dozen extra anchors; and much cable.)
Ranild went to the halflings, where they and Ingeborg stood on the port side watching Jutland’s long hills slide by. It was a clear day; the sun cast dazzling glitter across gray-green-blue whitecaps. Wind skirled, rigging thrummed, timbers creaked as the cog’s cutwater surged with a bone in its teeth. Overhead, gulls mewed and made a snowstorm of wings. A smell of salt and tar blew around.
“You!” Ranild barked. “Make yourselves decent!”
Kennin gave him a look of dislike. Those had been hard hours
of bargaining, in a back room of an evil inn; and merfolk were not used to a tongue like Ranild’s, rougher than a lynx’s. “Who are you to speak of decency?” Kennin snapped.
“Ease off,” Tauno muttered. He regarded the skipper with no more love but somewhat more coolness. Not tall, Ranild was thick of chest and arm. Black hair, never washed and scanty on top, framed a coarse broken-nosed pale-eyed countenance; snag teeth showed through a beard that spilled halfway down the tub belly. He was dressed like his crew, save that he bore a short sword as well as a knife and floppy boots rather than shoes or bare feet.
“What’s the matter?” Tauno asked. “You, Ranild, may like to wear clothes till they rot off you. Why should we?”
“Herr Ranild, merman!” The shipmaster clapped hand on hilt. “My folk were Junkers when yours dwelt among the fIatfish—I’m noble yet, the Fiend thunder me! It’s my vessel, I laid out the costs of this faring, you’ll by God’s bones do what I tell you or swing from the yardarm!”
Eyjan’s dagger whipped out, to gleam near his gullet. “Unless we hang you by those louse-nest whiskers,” she said.
The sailors reached for knives and belaying pins. Ingeborg pushed between Eyjan and Ranild. “What are we doing?” she cried. “At each other’s throats already? You’ll not get the gold without the merfolk, Herr Ranild, nor they get it without your help. Hold back, in Jesu name!”