Read Online The Merman's Children by Poul Anderson - Free Book Online

Jutland’s long hills slide by. It was a clear day; the sun cast dazzling glitter across gray-green-blue whitecaps. Wind skirled, rigging thrummed, timbers creaked as the cog’s cutwater surged with a bone in its teeth. Overhead, gulls mewed and made a snowstorm of wings. A smell of salt and tar blew around.
    â€œYou!” Ranild barked. “Make yourselves decent!”
    Kennin gave him a look of dislike. Those had been hard hours of bargaining, in a back room of an evil inn; and merfolk were not used to a tongue like Ranild’s, rougher than a lynx’s. “Who are you to speak of decency?” Kennin snapped.
    â€œEase off,” Tauno muttered. He regarded the skipper with no more love but somewhat more coolness. Not tall, Ranild was thick of chest and arm. Black hair, never washed and scanty on top, framed a coarse broken-nosed pale-eyed countenance; snag teeth showed through a beard that spilled halfway down the tub belly. He was dressed like his crew, save that he bore a short sword as well as a knife and floppy boots rather than shoes or bare feet.
    â€œWhat’s the matter?” Tauno asked. “You, Ranild, may like to wear clothes till they rot off you. Why should we?”
    â€œHerr Ranild, merman!” The shipmaster clapped hand on hilt. “My folk were Junkers when yours dwelt among the flatfish—I’m noble yet, the Fiend thunder me! It’s my vessel, I laid out the costs of this faring, you’ll by Ged’s bones do what I tell you or swing from the yardarm!”
    Eyjan’s dagger whipped out, to gleam near his gullet. “Unless we hang you by those louse-nest whiskers,” she said.
    The sailors reached for knives and belaying pins. Ingeborg pushed between Eyjan and Ranild. “What are we doing?” she cried. “At each other’s throats already? You’ll not get the gold without the merfolk, Herr Ranild, nor they get it without your help. Hold back, in Jesu name!”
    They withdrew a little on either side, still glowering. Ingeborg went on quietly: “I think I know what’s wrong. Herr Ranild, these children of the clean sea have been rubbed raw by days in a town where hogs root in the streets, by nights in a room full of stink and bedbugs. Nevertheless, you, Tauno, Eyjan, Kennin, should’ve listened to a rede well meant if not so well spoken.”
    â€œWhat is that?” Tauno asked.
    Ingeborg flushed; her eyes dropped and her fingers wrestled. She said quieter yet: “Remember the agreement. Herr Ranild wanted you, Eyjan, to go below for him and his men. You would not. I said I…would do that, and thus we came to terms. Now you are very fair, Eyjan, fairer than any mortal girl can be. It’s not right for you to flaunt your loveliness before those who may only stare. Our voyage is into deadly danger. We can’t afford strife.”
    The halfling bit her lip. “I had not thought of that,” she admitted. Flaring: “But rather than wear those barn-rug rags when we’ve no need of disguise, I’ll kill the crew and we four will man this ship ourselves.”
    Ranild opened his mouth. Tauno forestalled him: “That’s empty talk, sister mine. See here, we can stand the horrible things till we pass Als. There we’ll dive down to where Liri was, fetch garments fit to use—and cleanse the filth of these off us on the way.”
    Thus peace was made. Men kept leering at Eyjan, for the rainbow-hued tunic of three-ply fishskin that she donned after going underwater showed cleft of breasts and hardly reached past her hips. But they had Ingeborg to take below.
    The human clothes had been from that woman, who walked alone through rover-haunted woods to Hadsund, got Ranild interested, and met the siblings on the shore of Mariager Fjord to guide them to him. Once the bargain was handselled, he had to persuade his men to go along. Gaunt, surly, ash-pale Oluv Ovesen, the second in