First she, Tauno, and Hauau aided their shipmates to land. Then for hours they went back and forth, fetching the gold of A verorn from the deck where they had lately restowed it. Niels and Ingeborg kept watch, to warn of unlikely human arrivals-though an outlaw or two might perhaps lair nearby-r visitants less welcome. Naught hap-pened. They shared a cloak and soon a standing embrace against the cold; they shivered together through the night.
Dawn saw the unloading finished, but no sun. Thick mists had arisen, the world was a dripping dankness, drenched with silence. Tauno and Eyjan, who knew the marsh well, had foreseen that; they had indeed held the cog out a whole day after making landfall, till they could count on this veil. Hauau felt as easy in fog as they did. Guided by these companions, youth and woman splashed wearily, wretchedly, to help in the next part of the task.
The gold must be hidden. Tauno remembered a lightning-blasted tree that was readily findable from the road. A measured number of paces due west of it was a pool, shallow, scummy, as if created to keep secrets. A platted mat of withes, which would last for years under-water, kept mud at the bottom from swallowing what the wanderers laid down. Transport went faster than before, with the added hands; besides, a person could carry more afoot than swimming, and what-ever the stuff weighed, it filled a rather small space altogether.
Still, haste was necessary. Often this caused a bearer to crumple soft metal into a less awkward shape. Seeing Tauno thus wreck the spiderweb fragility of a tiara, Ingeborg mused sadly, “What lover once gave that to his lady, what craftsman wrought it with love of his own? There went the last glimpse of their lives.”
“We’ve lives to live now,” he snapped. “You’ll have to melt most of this down anyhow, or cut it in small pieces, won’t you? Besides, their souls endure, and doubtless remember.”
“In some gray place outside of time,” Eyjan said. “They were not Christian.”
“Yes, I suppose we’re luckier,” Tauno answered. He went on picking things up. Even close by, he seemed unreal in the fog. Inge-borg winced, began to draw the Cross, stopped her finger and like-wise returned to work.
Toward noon, slowly freshening airs tattered the vapors and drove them seaward. Light reached earth in spearcasts, which more and more often left rents to show the blue beyond .It grew warmer. Waves clucked on the beach.
Their labor completed, the party ate cold rations and drank sour wine brought from the ship-hardly a farewell banquet, there beside the road, but the best they had. Afterward Tauno drew Niels out of earshot.
They stood for a mute moment, nude halfling towering above slim, ill-clad human, Tauno stern, Niels tired and timid. Finally the Liri prince found words: “If I have used you ill, I beg your pardon. You deserved better of me. I tried, in the later part of our voyage, but-well, I’d overmuch on my mind, and could forget what lowed you.”
Niels raised his eyes from the ground and said in a kind of desper-ation, “That’s nothing, Tauno. It’s my debt to you that is immeasur-able.”
A grim smile: “For what, my friend? That you faced hardship and peril of life again and again in a cause that was not yours? That you have worse before you?”
“How? Wealth; everything it means, an end to want and toil and groveling for my kinfolk-Margrete, Yria, of course, but will I not be amply rewarded as well ?”
“Hm. I’m not learned in earthling ways, but I can guess what odds are against you; and if you fail, men will give you an ending far more terrible than any the ocean or its monsters could. Have you thought about this, Niels?” Tauno demanded. “Truly thought about it? I ask on Yria’s account, lest she be dragged down too; but also on yours.”
Steadiness came over the young man. “Yes, I have,” he said. “You know whom it is that in my heart I serve. Well, I would not serve her badly, so I’ve spent every free hour makjng plans. Ingeborg will be my ftrst counselor, she’s more worldly-wise, but she’ll not be the only one. What happens lies with God, yet I am hopeful.” He drew breath. “You know, don’t you, that rashness would destroy us? We must make sure of every step ere we take it.”