“We’ve barely stocks on hand to last out the winter. But next year we die.”
“Or you go away,” Tauno said into his anguish. “Now I see what Bengta meant. You must leave, seek new homes to south-ward. I suppose the angakok will call off his beast if you do.”
“We’ll be go-betweens if you wish,” Eyjan offered.
Some of the men cursed, some shouted. Jonas drew his knife.
Haakon sat as though carved in flint, and stated: “No. Here are our homes. Our memories, our buried fathers, our freedom They’re not much better off in the south than we are here; they can take us in; but only as hirelings, miserably poor. No, I say. We’ll harry the Skraelings instead till they are gone.”
Once more he leaned forward, left fist clenched on knee, right hand raised crook-fingered like the talons of a Greenland falcon. “Thus we arrive at my bargain,” he told the merman’s children. “Let us take the boats out tomorrow. The tupilak will know, and come. While we fight it from the hulls, you attack from beneath. It can be slain-cut to pieces, at least. That story Bengta heard was of how a valiant man got rid of a tupilak. He invented the kayak, you see, to capsize on purpose and get at the thing’s underside. Belike that’s an old wives’ ‘tale in itself. Anyhow, no man of us has skill with those piddleboats. Still, it shows what the Skraelings believe is possible, and they ought to know; right?
“Help free us from our demon, and I’ll guide you to your people. Otherwise”-Haakon smiled stiffly- “I’d not be surprised if the creature took you for Norse and slew you. You are half of our breed. Be true to your race, and we will be true to you.”
Again was a windy hush. Tauno and Eyjan exchanged a look.
“No,” said the brother.
“What?” burst from Haakon. He tried to jeer: “Are you afraid?
When you’d have allies? Then flee these waters at dawn.”
“I think you lie to us,” Tauno said. “Not about your bloodiness toward the Inuit, nor about their revenge, no-but about those merfolk. It rings false.”
“I watched faces,” Eyjan put in. “Your own following doesn’t swallow that yarn.”
Jonas grabbed at his dagger. “Do you call my father a liar?”
“I call him a desperate man,” Tauno said. “However”-he
pointed to the crucifix above the high seat- “take that sign of your God between both hands, Haakon Amorsson. Kiss your God on the lips, and swear by your hope of going to Him after you die, that you have spoken entire truth to us, your guests. Then we will fare beside you.”
Haakon sat. He stared.
Eyjan rose. “Best wc go, Tauno,” she sighed. “Goodfolk,
we’re sorry. But why should we risk our lives for nothing, in a quarrel not ours and unjust to boot? I rede you to do what Bengta said, and leave this land of ill weird.”
Haakon leaped erect. His sword blazed forth. “Seize them!” he shouted.
Tauno’a knife sprang fre~. The sword whirred down and struck it from his grasp. Women and children screamed. But from fear of what might happen if the halflings escaped, the men boiled against them.
Two clung to either arm of Tauno, two to either leg. He banged them around. A club struck his head. He roared. The club thudded twice, thrice. Agony and shooting stars flashed across his world. He crumpled. Between raggedy-clad calves he glimpsed Eyjan. She had her back to the wall. Spears hemmed her in, the sword hovered aloft, Jonas laid steel at her throat. Tauno fell into noth-ingness.
IX
DAY broke as a sullen red glirnrner through clouds, a steel sheen on the murk and chop of the fjord. Wind blew whetted. Tauno wondered if the wind was always keening around this place. He awoke on the straw where he had been laid out, to see Haakon towering above him as a shadow. “Up!” called the chieftain, and men grumbled about in the house-dark, babies wailed, older chil-dren whimpered.
“Are you well?” Eyjan asked from across the room. Like him, she had spent the night on the floor, wrists and ankles bound, neck leashed to a roofpost.