“Have they a name?” asked Sanglant.
“Nay, my lord prince. My grandfather spoke of them, for he was a ship-master as well. He said they were just a legend.” He gestured, spitting on the deck and stamping his left foot, then recalled where he was and before whom he stood, and hastily drew the Circle of Unity at his chest as would any God-fearing man. “An evil omen, my lord prince.”
“Perhaps. Did your grandfather say whether such creatures had intelligence, or whether they were only dumb beasts?”
“They have cunning, my lord prince, and hunger. It was always said they would eat any man who fell overboard.”
“Yet did your grandfather or any man who sailed with him ever see such a man-fish?”
“Nay. They had only heard tales.”
Tales aplenty ran round their camp that evening when they lay up alongside the shore for the night in a stretch of marshy wilderness teeming with birds. From the deck Sanglant could see five ships, one ahead and four behind, as well as a few fires burning on the strand upriver, but only the foolhardy or the thick-skinned ventured to shore, where gnats and stinging flies swarmed. It was, if anything, hotter and stickier than it had been earlier in the day.
When Captain Fulk rowed back from the foremost galley and Bertha, Wichman, Druthmar, and Istvan arrived from up-river, rather fly-bitten, he called a council. Many old tales came to light but only after he had gone round his council to hear what each member had to say did he see Zacharias standing at the back of the gathering between Hathui and Wolfhere. The frater’s expression gave Sanglant pause.
“Have you something to say, Brother Zacharias?”
The frater stammered out a meaningless denial. “N-n-no, my lord prince. N-nothing.”
“Have you ever seen such a creature yourself?”
The hesitation betrayed him.
“Tell me,” he commanded.
Hathui bent closer to her brother and said a few words into his ear, too quietly even for Sanglant to hear above the whispering of the folk around him and the lap of water against the ship’s hull. The wind brought the smell of the marsh, heavy with decay.
“It was a dream, my lord prince, a vision. You know that I traveled for a time with your mother, who took me to a place she called the Palace of Coils.”
“The spiral gate!” muttered Wolfhere, but Zacharias paid him no heed as he went on.
“There I saw many visions, but it also seemed to me that for a short time I became such a creature as we saw today. I swam with my fellows, out in the salt sea, following a fleet of ships.”
Zacharias shuddered. “That’s all.”
He was lying; there was more, but Sanglant doubted he could coax it out of him. Perhaps Hathui could.
“That is all?”
“First we hear tales of a phoenix and now we see a merman,” remarked Lady Bertha with pleasure. Strife and difficulty amused her.
“It was damned ugly,” said Wichman. “I thought mermaids had great milky breasts huge enough to smother a man. This was a nasty fiend!”
Bertha smiled. “It’s said that in the end times all the ancient creatures of legend will crawl out of their hiding places to stalk the earth once again.”
“Now we shall see the truth of it,” said Sanglant, looking at Wolfhere as he spoke. The old Eagle made no reply as he crossed to the railing to stare at the scattering of fires along the shoreline.
They returned to their places, but no man washed in the river water. No one knew how close in to shore the merfolk could swim. As he did every night, Sanglant gave orders to bring the chained Bulkezu up from the hold to take the night air, under guard. Only a few men were fit for the task, since Bulkezu might in the middle of the night taunt them in his soft voice, which was his only weapon, trying to make them angry enough to get within his reach.
After Bulkezu was chained to the mast, Blessing crept up close to her father where he stood at the stem of the ship; she stared at the Quman chief. His chains clanked and rattled as he stretched, flexing his muscles, testing the limit and strength of the chains. Bulkezu never stopped testing those chains. He never despaired. Perhaps he was too crazy to do so. Perhaps he was too cunning, or too sane. It was the only way he had to keep up his strength.
“I would rather be dead than a prisoner like that,” Blessing whispered, leaning against her father and wrapping her arms around his waist. Her head came almost to his chest. “Wouldn’t it be more merciful to kill him? He must hate you.”
As I hated Bloodheart.
“No prisoner loves his jailer,” he said at last.
“Do you think if I’d jumped in the river that merman would have eaten me?”