Work remained. When the swimmers signed that they had rested enough, Ranild cast them a long weighted line with a sack and a hook at the end. They took it back under.
Already the ghost-fish he had been too slow to catch were nibbling on the kraken. “Let’s do our task and be away from here as fast as we can,” said Tauno. His companions agreed. They liked not poking around a tomb.
Yet for Margrete who had been Yria they did. Over and over they filled the bag with coin, plate, rings, crowns, ingots; over and over they hung on the hook a golden chest or horn or can-delabrum or god. A signal would not travel well along this length of rope; the crew simply hauled it in about every half hour. Tauno discovered he had better attach his lanthorn, for, although the sea above had quieted, Berning did drift around and the line never descended to the same place. Between times the merman’s children searched for new objects, or took a little ease, or fed themselves off the cheese and stockfish Ingeborg had laid in the sack.
Until Tauno said wearily: “We were told several hundred pounds would be ample, and I swear we’ve lifted a ton. A greedy man is an unlucky man. Shall we begone?”
“Oh, yes, oh, yes.” Eyjan peered into the glooms that bulked around their sphere of weak light. She shivered and huddled close to her elder brother. Rarely before had he seen her daunted.
Kennin was not. “I begin to know why the landfolk are so fond of looting,” he said with a grin. “There’s fun in an endlessness of baubles as in an endlessness of ale or women.”
“Not truly endless,” Tauno answered in his sober fashion.
“Why, is it not endlessness if you have more of something
than you can finish off in your lifetime, gold to spend, ale to drink, women-?” Kennin laughed.
“Bear with him,” Eyjan said into Tauno’s ear. “He’s a boy.
All Creation is opening for him.” .
“I’m no oldster myself,” Tauno replied, “though the trolls know I feel like a mortal one.”
They rid themselves of the remaining lanthorns, putting these in the last bagful. It would rise faster than was wise for them. Tauno gestured salute to unseen Averorn. “Sleep well,” he mur-mured; ‘~ay your rest be unbroken till the Weird of the World.”
From cold, dark, and death, they passed into light and thence into air. The sun cast nearly level beams out of the west, whose sky was greenish; eastward, amidst royal blue, stood forth a white planet. Waves ran purple and black, filigreed with foam, though the breeze had stopped. Their rush and squelp were the lone sounds in that coolness, save for what was made by the lolloping dolphins.
These wanted at once to know everything, but the siblings were too tired. They promised full news tomorrow, coughed the water from their lungs, and made for the cog. None waited at the rail save Herr Ranild. A rope ladder dangled down amidships.
Tauno came first aboard. He stood dripping, shuddering a bit from exhaustion, and looked around. Ranild bore crossbow in crook of arm; his men gripped their pikes near the mast- The kraken was dead. Why this tautness among them? Where were Ingeborg and Niels?
“Um-m-m . . . you’re satisfied?” Ranild rumbled in his whiskers.
“We have plenty for our sister, and to make the lot of you
rich,” Tauno said. His flesh dragged at him, chilled, bruised, worn out. The same ache and dullness were in his head. He felt he ought to be chanting his victory; no, that could wait, let him only rest now, only sleep.
Eyjan climbed over the side. “Niels?” she called.
A glance across the six who stood there sent the knife hissing
from her scabbard. “Treachery-this soon?”
“Kill them!” Ranild shouted.
Kennin had just come off the ladder. He was still poised on
the rail. As the sailors and their pikes surged forward, he yelled
and pounced to the deck. None among those clumsy shafts had
swiftness to halt him. Straight at Ranild’s throat he flew, blade
burning in the sunset glow. ,