The Merman's Children by Poul Anderson Page B

threshed bleeding and howling until Eyjan got around to cutting his throat; and Niels was sick. Meanwhile Ranild had regained his feet. His sword flew free; the cold light ran along it. He and Tauno moved about, searching for an opening.
    â€œWhatever you do,” Tauno said to him, “you are a dead man.”
    â€œIf I die in the flesh,” Ranild gibed, “I will live without end while you’re naught but dung.”
    Tauno stopped and raked fingers through his hair. “I don’t understand why that should be so,” he said. “Maybe your kind has more need of eternity.”
    Ranild thought he saw a chance. He rushed in. Thus he took Tauno’s lure. He stabbed. The halfling was not there, had simply swayed aside from the point. Tauno chopped down on Ranild’s wrist with the edge of his left hand. The sword clattered loose. Tauno’s right hand struck home the knife. Ranild fell to the deck. The sun rose and all blood shone an impossibly bright red.
    Ranild’s wound was not mortal. He stared at Tauno above him and gasped, “Let me…confess to God…let me escape Hell.”
    â€œWhy should I?” Tauno said. “I have no soul.” He lifted the feebly struggling body and threw it overboard for the dogfish. Eyjan swarmed up the ratlines to make an end of Sivard’s noise.

Book Two
    SELKIE

I
    V ANIMEN , who had been the Liri king and was now the captain of a nameless ship—since he had thought Pretiosissimus Sanguis boded ill—bound for an unknown shore, stood in her bows and peered. Folk aboard saw how his great form was stiff and his face grim.
    Aft of him the sail rattled, spilling wind. The hull creaked aloud, yawed in the waves that already had it rolling and pitching, took a sheet of spray across the main deck. The passengers who crowded there, mostly females and young, jostled together. Angry cries rose from among them.
    Vanimen ignored that. His gaze swept around the waters. Those ran gray as iron, white as sleet, in ever higher crests, beneath tattered, murky clouds. The wind hooted, shrilled in rigging, strained, smote, struck icicle fangs into flesh. Rain-squalls walked the horizon. Ahead, a cavern of purple-black had swallowed the afternoon sun. Gaping wider by the minute, it flared with lightnings, whose thunders toned across leagues.
    Sensing trouble on its way, the travelers who were in the sea made haste to return. The ship could not hold them all, but their help might be needed. Vanimen saw them glimpsewise, fair forms among billows that fought them. Nearby lifted the backfin of his orca, loyal beast.
    Meiiva climbed the ladder to join him. Braided, her blue mane did not fly wildly as did his golden, and she had wrapped a cloak from a clothes chest around her slenderness. She must bring her lips against his ear to say: “The helmsman asked me to tell you he fears he can’t keep her head to the waves as you ordered, once the real blow sets in. The tiller is like an eel in his hands. Could we do something to the sail?”
    â€œReef it,” Vanimen decided. “Run before the storm.”
    â€œBut that’s from…northwest Haven’t we had woe aplenty with foul winds, calms, and contrary currents since we left the Shetlands behind us, not to lose the distance we’ve made?”
    â€œBetter that than lose the ship. Oh, a human skipper might well broach a wiser scheme. We, though, we’ve gained a little seamanship in these over-many days, but indeed it is little. I can only guess at what might work to save us.”
    He laid palm above brow to squint into the blast. “This I need not guess at,” he added. “I’ve known too many weathers through the centuries. That is no gale which will exhaust itself overnight. No, it’s a monster out of Greenland and the boreal ice beyond. We’ll be in its jaws for longer than I want to think of.”
    â€œThis is not the season for