The first kayak foamed to a stop before him. He inside could weIl-nigh have been a merman too, or rather a sea-centaur, so much did he and his craft belong together. The hide that covered it was laced around his sealskin-clad waist; he could capsize, right himself, and get never a drop on his boots. A double-ended paddle sent him over the waves like a skimming cormorant. A harpoon lay lightly secured before him; the inflated bladder bobbed around.
For several heartbeats, he and the halflings regarded each other.
Tauno tried to peer past his astonishment and guage him as a man. He was youthful, even more powerfuIly built than most of his stocky brethren, handsome in a broad-featured, smaIl-eyed, coarsely black-maned fashion. Beneath grease and soot, his com-plexion was of an almost ivory hue, and bore the barest trace of whiskers. He recovered fast, and surprised the siblings by asking in accented Norse, “You castaways? Need help?”
“No, I thank you, but we belong here,” Tauno replied. The Danish he knew was sufficiently close to the tongue of the col-onists-closer, in fact, than to Hauau’s dialect-that he expected no trouble in understanding. He smiled, and roIled around to let the Inuk see him better.
In looks he might weIl have been a Norseman, long and thick-muscled, save for beardlessness, amber eyes, and the tinge of green in his shoulder-length hair. But no earth-born man could have rested at ease, naked off Greenland in fall. A headband, a belt to hold a pair of obsidian knives, and a narrow roll of oiled leather strapped to his shoulders beneath a spear whose head was of bone were his whole clothing.
Eyjan was likewise outfitted. She also smiled, and dazzled the Inuk.
“You. . . are-“ A protracted native word followed. It seemed to mean “creatures of magic.”
“We are your friends,” Tauno said in that language; it was his turn to speak haltingly. He gave the names of his sister and himself.
“This person is called Minik,” the young man responded. He was emboldened, more than his companions, who hovered ner-vously farther off. “Will you not come aboard the umiak and rest?”
“No—“ protested somebody else.
“They are not of the Neighbors,” Minik said.
Reluctant, the rest yielded. Such inhospitality was unheard of
among their race. It could not be due to fear of wizardry. They
did live in a world of spirits which must forever be appeased, but
here were simply two manlike beings who made no threat and
could surely relate wonders. Something terrible must have hap-
pened between them and the Vestri Bygd. And yet-
Eyjan noticed ftrst. “Tauno!” she exclaimed. “They’ve a white woman among them!”
He had been too alert to the harpoons to pay much heed to the boat he was approaching. Now he saw that about at its middle, staring dumfounded as the rest, knelt one who overtopped them; and above a thrown-back parka hood, her braids shone gold.
The merman’s children climbed over the side, careful not to upset the craft, more careful to squat in the bows prepared for a leap. The hull was ladend and bloody with a catch of auks. Tauno and Eyjan aimed their awareness at the single man there, a pas-senger in the stem, grizzled, wrinkled, and snag-toothed. He made signs at them, gasped, yelped, then grew abruptly calm and called out: “These bear no ills for us that I can smell.” And to them:
“This person is called Panigpak and said by some to be.an an-gakok”-a shaman, sorcerer, familiar of ghosts and demons, healer, foreseer, and, at need, wreaker of harm upon foes. For all his modesty, customary among his people, and for all the hriveling that age had brought upon him, he had an air of wild-nimal pride; Tauno thought of wolf and white bear.
The women squealed and chattered; a few cackled half terrified aughter; their eyes darted like black beetles above the high, wide heekbones. There drifted from them a secnt of fleshly heat and, lot unpleasantly, of smoke and oil and the urine wherein they vashed their hair. The men crowded their own craft around. They leld themselves a bit more reserved-just a bit.