A rower aft in Haakon’ s boat yammered his terror. Steinkil leaned to cuff him, then doggedly returned to his oar. They closed from behind. Haakon braced his legs wide and hacked with a bill.
Tauno knew he sought to tear the walrus skin, let out the stuffing
of hay and rotten corpses-
The flukes of a killer whale lashed back, up from roiled water, down on the prow. Wood splintered. Haakon tumbled. Tauno dived.
He needed a split minute to empty his lungs, let in the brine, and change his body over to undersea breathing. The icy green currents around him dimmed and shortened vision-he saw churned chaos above and ahead-battle clamor crashed blow after blow on his eardrums. The currents were tainted by the iron smell and taste of human gore. The dead man sank past, slowly twirling on his way to the eels.
“We’ll Keep the thing busy as long as we can, while you hit from below,” Haakon had said. “That won’t be very long.”
Ready, Tauno gripped a blade between his teeth and surged forward. Attacking, he lost both fear and self. There was no Tauno, no tupilak, no band of men; there was a fight.
The hulls were shadows, breaking and re-forming, on the splin-tery bright ceiling of his green world. Clearer was the tupilak, the curve of its paunch. . . he saw how thongs stitched it together, he caught an ooze of mildew and moldered flesh. Claws scythed on the rear flippers. Tauno swooped inward.
The knife was now in his. hand. His legs drove him past as he cut. A long gap in the seam followed the blade. He swung beyond reach of a foot that swatted at him.
Arcing back in a stream of bubbles, he saw some bones of sailors drop out. Mindless, the tupilak raged yet against the Norse.
He glimpsed how the tail battered, and the noise shook him. In again-hold underwater breath against graveyard foulness, slice away from the seam, grab that comer, heave the flap of skin wide-a slash caught him along the ribs, he lost his knife, he barely kicked free.
The beast sounded. The shark snout turned about in search. Paddles and tail sent the gross form toward him. He thought fleetingly that had those been Inuit in the boats, they’d have known to sink many harpoons in the body, trailing bladders to hamper it. Well, at best the man-eater was slow and awkward. He could swim rings around it. To get close, however, was. . . something that must be done.
The maw flapped hollow about a skeleton that, yes, seemed to be coming apart here and there. But feet and tail still drove, jaws still clashed. Tauno got onto the back, where nothing could reach him. He clamped thighs tight, though barnacles chewed them. He drew a second blade, and worked.
He could not reach clear around that bulk. But when he let go, the tail threshed feebly, half severed. Dizziness passed in dark rags before his eyes. He must withdraw for a short rest.
Did a dim knowledge stir in the tupilak, or was it driven to fulfill the curse? It lumbered back to the boats.
If it sank those, whether or not it outlasted them, would Eyjan’s captors ever let her go? He heard the mass ram on strakes, and rose for a look through air.
The second skiff drifted awash, helpless till the four crewmen left could bailout the hull and retrieve their floating oars. The tupilak struck again and again on Haakon’s vessel, whose stem was broken and whose planks were being torn free of the ribs. Neck and head reached in after prey. Where was the sheriff? His son Jonas hewed bravely with an ax-likewise, beside him, Steinkil. As Tauno watched, Steinkil stumbled into the teeth. They shut. Blood geysered. He reeled back, clasping the wrist where his right hand had been.
Haakon stood forth. He must have been knocked out. Crimson smeared his own face and breast, the last bright hue under wolf-gray heaven. Somehow he spied Tauno, yards away. “Do you want help, merman?” he shouted.
From under a thwart, he lifted the boat’s anchor, wooden-shanked but with ring, stock, and flukes of iron from former days, made fast by a leather cable to what remained of the stempost. Jonas had drawn back when Steinkil was crippled. The other two. cowered behind him. Haakon staggered aft. The jagged mouth yawned ready. He brought the anchor on high, crashed it down. A fluke put out the right eye and caught in the socket.