Silent, they took their seats. Oars creaked in tholes, splashed in water, which clucked back against planks and made the skiffs pitch. Spindrift spread salt on lips. Meadows of home fell away aft; the fjord broadened, dark and foam-streaked, between sheer cliffs. Against the overcast wheeled a flock of black guillemot. Their cries were lost in the sinister singing of wind. The sun was a dull and heatless wheel, barely above the mountains; it was as if cold radiated from their snows and the glacier beyond.
Each man had an oar, Tauno also. He sat by Haakon in the bows. Before him were .Jonas and Steinkil; the remaining pair in this craft were grubby drawfs whose names he did not know or care about. The second boat paced them, several fathoms to star-board. He leaned into his work, glad of the chance to limber and warm up, dismal though the task was. Erelong Haakon said, “Go easier, Tauno. You’re outpulling us.”
“Strong as a bear, ha?” Steinkil flung over his shoulder. “Well, could be I’d liefer have a bear aboard.”
“Tease him not,” said Jonas unexpectedly. “Tauno, I. . . I’m sorry. Believe we’ll keep troth with you. My father is a man of honor. I try to be.”
“As with my sister last night?” gibed the halfling.
Haakon missed a stroke. “What’s this?”
Jonas cast Tauno a pleading glance. The latter took swift
thought and said, “Oh, anybody could see how he hankered.” He felt no real anger at the attempted ravishment. Such matters meant little to him or Eyjan; if she’d had fewer partners than he, it was because she was two years younger; she knew the small spell that kept her from conceiving against her wish. He himself would happily tumble Jonas’ sister Bengta, should that unlikely chance come-the more so when he and his own sister had had ever worse trouble holding back from each other on their long journey, for the sake of their mother who had abhorred that. . . . Besides, they could lose naught by his making the younker look pitifully grateful.
“Mortal sin,” Haakon growled. “Put that desire from you, boy.
Confess and-ask lax Sira Sigurd to set you a real penance.”
“Blame him not,” Steinkil urged. “She’s the fairest sight I’ve ever seen, and brazenly clad.”
“A vessel of Hell.” Haakon’s words came ragged. “Beware, beware. We’re losing our Faith in our loneliness. I shudder to think where our descendants will end, unless we- When we’ve finished with the tupilak-when we have, I say-I will go after my daughter What made her do it?” he almost screamed. “Forsake God-her blood, her kind-aye, a house around her, woven clothes on her back, white man’s food and drink and tools and ways, everything we’ve fought through lifetimes to keep-play whore to the wild man who violated her, huddle in a snow hut and devour raw meat- What power of Satan could make her do it?”
He saw how they stared from the other skiff, clamped his lips, and rowed.
They had been an hour under way, and begun to hear thunder where open sea surfed on headlands, when their enemy found them.
A man in the next boat howled. Tauno saw foam around a huge brown bulk. It struck yonder hull, which boomed and lurched. “Fend it off!” Haakon bellowed. “Use your spears! Pull, you cravens! Get us over there!”
He and Tauno shipped their oars and crouched on their feet. The halfling reached low, took from the bilge a belt bearing three sheath knives which he had asked for, and buckled it on. Not yet did he go overboard. He watched what they neared, his eyesight gone diamond sharp, ears keen to every splash and bang and curse and prayer, nostrils drinking deep of the wind to feed lungs and slugging heart. His will shrank at what he saw, until Eyjan’s image made him rally.
The tupilak had hooked a flipper, whereon were a bear’s claws, across a rail. Its weight was less than a live animal’s, but the boat was still canted so that men must struggle to keep afoot and aboard. Two shafts were stuck in the wrinkled hide—they wagged in horrible foolishness-and the broken halves of two more from earlier combats. No blood ran thence. .ht.t the end of a long, whip-ping neck, the head of a shark gaped and glassily glared. The limb jerked, the boat rocked, a man fell against the jaws, they sheared. Now blood spurted and bowels trailed. The wind blew away the steam off their warmth.