Minik clutched his harpoon. Panigpak crouched deeper, secre-tive, into his furs. Women and kayaks edged back from the two in the bows. Infants sensed unease and wailed. “I think we’d best get out of here,” Tauno said at the comer of his mouth. Eyjan nodded. In twin arcs, the merman’s children dived over the side of the umiak and van-ished beneath restless bitter waters.
VIII
THE talk had revealed where Haakon’s garth lay on the great bight that sheltered the Vestri Bygd. The short gray day had turned to dusk when the halflings found it. That gloom hid them while they donned the garb rolled into their packs. It would hardly disguise what they were. Instead of cloth, which dampness would soon have rotted, the stuff was three-ply fishskin, rainbow-scaled, from Liri. Though brief, those tunics would not offend Christians as badly as nakedness did. Out of waterproof envilopes they took steel knives; however, they did not lay aside their rustfree weapons of stone and bone, and they bore their spears in their hands.
Thereafter they walked to the steading. Wind whined sharp-toothed; waves ground together the stones of the beach. Faerie sight brought more out of the murk than a human could see; but the view between hunchbacked hills was everywhere desolate. The settlement was not a town, it was homes scattered across many wild miles: for brief bleak summers made this land a niggard. Since grain often failed, grass, as pasture and hay for livestock, was the only crop the dwellers dared count on raising. Stubble, thin beneath their bare feet, told the wayfarers how scant the latest harvest had been. A paddock, fenced by bleached whale ribs, was large, must formerly have kept a fair number of beasts, but now held a few scrawny sheep and a couple of likewise wretched cows. A small inlet ended here, and three boats lay drawn aground. They were six-man skiffs, well-built, well suited to this country of countless winding fjords; but beneath the pungent tar that black-ened them Tauno descried how old their timbers were.
Ahead loomed the buildings, a house, a barn, and two sheds ringing a dirt courtyard. They were of dry-laid rock, moss-chinked, turf-decked, barely fit for the poorest fishermen in Den-mark. Peat-fire smoke drifted out of a roofhole. Gleams trickled through cracks in warped ancient shutters. Four hounds bounded clamorous from the door. They were big animals, wolf blood in them, and their leanness made them appear twice frightful. But when they caught the scent of the halflings, they tucked down their tails and slunk aside. ‘
The door opened. A tall man stood outlined black between the posts, a spear of his own at the ready. Several more gathered at his back. “Who comes?” he called distrustfully.
“Two of us,” Tauno answered from the dark. “Fear not if we look eerie. Our will toward you is good.”
A gasp arose as he and Eyjan stepped into the fireglow. oaths,
maybe a hurried prayer. The tall man crossed himself. “In Jesu
name, say what you are,” he demanded, shaken but undaunted.-
“We are not mortals,” Eyjan told him. The admission always scared less when it came from her sweetly curved lips. “Yet we can speak the name of Jesu Kristi as well as you, and mean no harm. We may even help, in return for an easy favor we hope you can grant us.”
The man drew a loud breath, sank his weapon, and trod for- ward. He was as gaunt as his dogs, and had never been stout; but: his hands were large and strong. His face was thin too, in cheeks, straight nose, tightly held mouth, plowshare chin, faded blue eyes, framed by gray hair and cropped gray beard. Beneath a long, plain woolen coat with hood thrown back could be seen stockings and sealskin shoon; nothing smelled well. A sword, which he must have belted on when he heard the noise, hung at his waist. To judge from the shape, it had been forged for a viking. Were they truly that backward here, or could they afford nothing new?
“Will you give us your names too, and name your tribe?” he ordered more than asked. Defiantly: “I am Haakon Arnorsson, and this is my steading Ulfsgaard.”