Eyjan came aft, which brought her into clearer view. Nude save for headband and knife belt, she seemed free of chill. Rather, her red locks, heavy with water, made the single touch of warmth inside a hidden horizon. The pitching of the craft did not trouble her panther gait.
She entered the aftercastle. “Ah, Ingeborg,” she greeted, now sufficiently close to be heard. “I spied you clambering out-for a breath of air, however bitter, no?” She reached the woman and stopped. Through hands cupped between mouth and ear, her tones were more distinct. “Let me keep you company. It’s my watch, but I can as well sense danger from here-maybe better, without that cursed hail stinging me.”
Ingeborg lifted a palm from the tiller to screen her own voice:
“Tauno, where has he gone?”
The cleanly molded visage starkened. “To ask the dolphins if they can find help for us.”
Ingeborg gasped. “God have mercy! Do we need it that much?”
Eyjan nodded. “We’re nigh to land. He and I have felt how
the sea is shoaling when we’ve ventured into it. Its pulse-aye, we’ve caught the first echoes of surf. And the weather shows no sign of letting up.”
Ingeborg stared into the gray eyes. “At least, if we’re wrecked, he can live-“ She realized she had whispered.
Perhaps Eyjan guessed. “Oh, poor dear!” she cried. “Can I give you comfort?”
Her tall form stepped between the woman and the wind. She held out her arms. Ingeborg released the helm and stumbled into that embrace. It upbore her against lunge and roll, heat flowed from softness of breasts and live play of muscles, she could cling as if to the mother she half remembered.
Talk went easier, too. “Fear not, beloved friend,” Eyjan mur-mured. “If we see shipwreck before us, Tauno and I will take you and Niels on our backs, well clear of breakers. We’ll bring you ashore at a safe place, and afterward fetch aid from your own kind.”
“But the gold will be lost.” Ingeborg felt the grasp around her
tighten. “He couldn’t likely get another ship, could he? Everything
he fared after and staked his life for; everything it means to him-
and he could still die. Could he not? Eyjan, I beg you, don’t. . . you
two. . . risk yourselves for us-“
Agnete’s daughter held her close and crooned to her while she wept.
Tauno came back with word that the dolphins were in search. They knew of a creature that might be able to help, could they find him. Little more had they said, because they themselves understood little. They were unsure whether the being would un-derstand them in his turn or be willing.
That was all Tauno related, for he had barely returned when the forestay parted. The end of it, lashing back, passed an inch from Eyjan’s neck. Appalled, he chased after it, caught and fought it as if it were a bad beast, got it hitched to the mast: where he saw that that was beginning to crack. Eyjan resisted when he would bend on a new stay. He could fall down onto the deck, to death or the slower death of crippling. Let him pump instead, if he could not take a moment’s ease.
Night fell, the short light night of Northern summer gone tomb-black and age-long.
Morning brought dusk again. Spindrift hazed the world; a wrack flew low overhead. The seas were massive as before, but choppier, foam-white, turbulence waxing in them as they neared the shallows and the rocks beyond. Anchor or no, the cog reeled like a man who has taken a sledgehammer in his temple.
Tauno and Eyjan had spent the darkest hours topside and we still on watch, a-strain after signs of ground. The gale had drained strength from them at last; they huddled in each other’s arms against its cold and violence. Once be wondered aloud if power remained for him to keep a mortal’s face above water.
“Maybe we cannot,” Eyjan replied through shrieks and rum-bles. “If things come to swimming, do you take Ingeborg and I Niels.”
“Why?” Tauno asked, dully surprised. “He weighs more than she does.”
“That makes small difference afloat, you know,” she told him, “and if they must die, they would liefest it were thus.”