by Fritz Leiber
‘I’ll not have the barbarian on my ship!’ Lukeen rasped, still squinting from the pain of his clout.
‘I’d scorn to board such a tricked-out rowboat or oar-worm,’ Fafhrd shot back at him, voicing the common barbarian contempt for galleys.
‘Also,’ the Mouser cut in again, loudly, with an admonitory gesture at Fafhrd, ‘it is my duty as a friend to warn you, Slinoor, that in your reckless threats against the White Shadows and the Demoiselle herself, you risk incurring the heaviest displeasure not only of our overlord but also of the most powerful grain-merchant in Lankhmar.’
Slinoor answered most simply, ‘I think only of the City and the grain fleet. You know that,’ but Lukeen, fuming, spat out a ‘Hah!’ and said scornfully, ‘The Gray Fool has not grasped that it is Hisvet’s very father Hisvin who is behind the rat-sinkings, since he thereby grows rich with the extra nation’s-ransoms of grain he sells Glipkerio!’
‘Quiet, Lukeen!’ Slinoor commanded apprehensively. ‘This dubious guesswork of yours has no place here.’
‘Guesswork? Mine?’ Lukeen exploded. ‘It was your suggestion, Slinoor—Yes, and that Hisvin plots Glipkerio’s overthrow—Aye, and even that he’s in league with the Mingols! Let’s speak truth for once!’
‘Then speak it for yourself alone, Commander,’ Slinoor said most sober-sharply. ‘I fear the blow’s disordered your brain. Gray Mouser, you’re a man of sense,’ he appealed. ‘Can you not understand my one overriding concern? We’re alone with mass murder on the high seas. We must take measures against it. Oh, will none of you show some simple wit?’
‘La, and I will, Ship’s Master, since you ask it,’ Hisvet said brightly, rising to her knees on the sea-bed as she turned toward Slinoor. Sunlight striking through a louver shimmered on her silver hair and gleamed from the silver ring confining it. ‘I’m but a girl, unused to problems of war and rapine, yet I have an all-explaining simple thought that I have waited in vain to hear voiced by one of you gentlemen, wise in the ways of violence.
‘Last night a ship was slain. You hang the crime on rats—small beasties which would leave a sinking ship in any case, which often have a few whites among them, and which only by the wildest stretch of imagination are picturable as killing an entire crew and vanishing their bodies. To fill the great gaps in this weird theory you make me a sinister rat-queen, who can work black miracles, and now even, it seems, create my poor doting daddy an all-powerful rat-emperor.
‘Yet this morning you met a ship’s murderer if there ever was one and let him go honking off unchallenged. La, but the man-demon even confessed he’d been seeking a multi-headed monster that would snatch living men from a ship’s deck and devour them. Surely he lied when he said his this-world foundling ate small fry only, for it struck at me to devour me—and might earlier have snapped up any of you, except it was sated!
‘For what is more likely than that the two-head long-neck dragon ate all Clam’s sailors off her deck, snaking them out of the forecastle and hold, if they fled there, like sweetmeats from a compartmented comfit-box, and then scratched holes in Clam’s planking? Or perhaps more likely still, that Clam tore out her bottom on the Dragon Rocks in the fog and at the same time met the sea-dragon? These are sober possibilities, gentlemen, apparent even to a soft girl and asking no mind-stretch at all.’
This startling speech brought forth an excited medley of reactions. Simultaneously the Mouser applauded, ‘A gem of princess-wit, Demoiselle; oh you’d make a rare strategist.’ Fafhrd said stoutly, ‘Most lucid, Little Mistress, yet Karl Treuherz seemed to me an honest demon.’ Frix told them proudly, ‘My mistress outthinks you all.’ The mate at the door goggled at Hisvet and made the sign of the starfish. Lukeen snarled, ‘She conveniently forgets the black cutter,’ while Slinoor cried them all down with, ‘Rat-queen you say jestingly? Rat-queen you are!’
As the others grew silent at that dire accusation, Slinoor gazing grimly fearful at Hisvet, continued rapidly, ‘The Demoiselle has recalled to me by her speech the worst point against her. Karl Treuherz said his dragon, living by the Rat Rocks, ate only rats. It made no move to gobble us several men, though it had every chance, yet when Hisvet appeared it struck at her at once. It knew her true race.’
Slinoor’s voice went shudderingly low. ‘Thirteen rats with the minds of men rule the whole rat race. That’s ancient wisdom from Lankhmar’s wisest seers. Eleven are these silver-furred silent sharpies, hearing our every word. The twelfth celebrates in the black cutter his conquest of Clam. The thirteenth’—and he pointed finger—‘is the silver-haired, red-eyed Demoiselle herself!’
Lukeen slithered to his feet at that, crying, ‘Oh most shrewdly reasoned, Slinoor! And why does she wear such modest shrouding garb except to hide further evidence of the dread kinship? Let me but strip off that cloaking ermine smock and I’ll show you a white-furred body and ten small black dugs instead of proper maiden breasts!’
As he came snaking around the table toward Hisvet, Fafhrd sprang up, also cautiously, and pinned Lukeen’s arms to his sides in a bear-hug, calling, ‘Nay, and you touch her, you die!’
Meantime Frix cried, ‘The dragon was sated with Clam’s crew, as my mistress told you. It wanted no more coarse-fibered men, but eagerly seized at my dainty-fleshed darling for a dessert mouthful!’
Lukeen wrenched around until his black eyes glared into Fafhrd’s green ones inches away. ‘Oh most foul barbarian!’ he grated. ‘I forego rank and dignity and challenge you this instant to a bout of quarterstaves on middeck. I’ll prove Hisvet’s taint on you by trial of battle. That is, if you dare face civilized combat, you great stinking ape!’ And he spat full in Fafhrd’s taunting face.
Fafhrd’s only reaction was to smile a great smile through the spittle running gummily down his cheek, while maintaining his grip of Lukeen and wary lookout for a bite at his own nose.
Thereafter, challenge having been given and accepted, there was naught for even the head-shaking, heaven-glancing Slinoor to do but hurry preparation for the combat or duel, so that it might be fought before sunset and leave some daylight for taking sober measures for the fleet’s safety in the approaching dark of night.
As Slinoor, the Mouser and mate came around them, Fafhrd released Lukeen, who scornfully averting his gaze instantly went on deck to summon a squad of his marines from Shark to second him and see fair play. Slinoor conferred with his mate and other officers. The Mouser, after a word with Fafhrd, slipped forward and could be seen gossiping industriously with Squid’s bosun and the common members of her crew down to cook and cabin boy. Occasionally something might have passed rapidly from the Mouser’s hand to that of the sailor with whom he spoke.
(1) ‘Goddam monster!’ German is a language completely unknown in Nehwon.
(2) ‘Thank God!’
(3) Literally, in German, ‘Hagenbeck’s Time garden,’ apparently derived from Tiergarten, which means animal-garden, or zoo.
(4) It was: ‘I am so very sorry! But thank you, thank you so nicely!’
4
Despite Slinoor’s urging, the sun was dropping down the western sky before Squid’s gongsman beat the rapid brassy tattoo that signalized the imminence of combat. The sky was clear to the west and overhead, but the sinister fog-bank still rested a Lankhmar league (twenty bowshots) to the east, paralleling the northward course of the fleet and looking almost as solid and dazzling as a glacier wall in the sun’s crosswise rays. Most mysteriously neither hot sun nor west wind dissipated it.
Black-suited, brown-mailed and brown-helmeted marines facing aft made a wall across Squid to either side of the mainmast. They held their spears horizontal and crosswise at arm’s-length down, making an additional low fence. Black-tunicked sailors peered between their shoulders and boots, or sat with their own brown legs a-dangle on the larboard side of the foredeck, where the great sail did not cut off their view. A few perched in the rigging.
The damaged rail had been stripped away from the break in the afterdeck and there aroun
d the bare aftermast sat the three judges: Slinoor, the Mouser, and Lukeen’s sergeant. Around them, mostly to larboard of the two helmsmen, were grouped Squid’s officers and certain officers of the other ship on whose presence the Mouser had stubbornly insisted, though it had meant time-consuming ferrying by ship’s boat.
Hisvet and Frix were in the cabin with the door shut. The Demoiselle had wanted to watch the duel through the open door or even from the afterdeck, but Lukeen had protested that this would make it easier for her to work an evil spell on him, and the judges had ruled for Lukeen. However the grille was open and now and again the sun’s rays twinkled on a peering eye or silvered fingernail.
Between the dark spear-wall of marines and the afterdeck stretched a great square of white oaken deck, empty save for the crane-fittings and like fixed gear and level except for the main hatch, which made a central square of deck a hand’s span above the rest. Each corner of the larger square was marked off by a black-chalked quarter circle. Either contestant stepping inside a quarter circle after the duel began (or springing on the rail or grasping the rigging or falling over the side) would at once forfeit the match.
In the forward larboard quarter circle stood Lukeen in black shirt and hose, still wearing his gold-banded starfish emblem. By him was his second, his own hawkfaced lieutenant. With his right hand Lukeen gripped his quarter-staff, a heavy wand of close-grained oak as tall as himself and thick as Hisvet’s wrist. Raising it above his head he twirled it till it hummed. He smiled fiendishly.
In the after starboard quarter circle, next to the cabin door, were Fafhrd and his second, the mate of Carp, a grossly fat man with a touch of the Mingol in his sallow features. The Mouser could not be judge and second both, and he and Fafhrd had diced more than once with Carp’s mate in the old days at Lankhmar—losing money to him, too, which at least indicated that he might be resourceful.
Fafhrd took from him now his own quarterstaff, gripping it cross-handed near one end. He made a few slow practice passes with it through the air, then handed it back to Carp’s mate and stripped off his jerkin.
Lukeen’s marines sniggered to each other at the Northerner handling a quarterstaff as if it were a two-handed broadsword, but when Fafhrd bared his hairy chest Squid’s sailors set up a rousing cheer and when Lukeen commented loudly to his second, ‘What did I tell you? A great hairy-pelted ape, beyond question,’ and spun his staff again, the sailors booed him lustily.
‘Strange,’ Slinoor commented in a low voice. ‘I had thought Lukeen to be popular among the sailors.’
Lukeen’s sergeant looked around incredulously at that re-mark. The Mouser only shrugged. Slinoor continued to him, ‘If the sailors knew your comrade fought on the side of rats, they’d not cheer him.’ The Mouser only smiled.
The gong sounded again.
Slinoor rose and spoke loudly: ‘A bout at quarterstaves with no breathing spells! Commander Lukeen seeks to prove on the overlord’s mercenary Fafhrd certain allegations against a Demoiselle of Lankhmar. First man struck senseless or at mercy of his foe loses. Prepare!’
The ship’s boys went skipping across the middeck, scattering handfuls of white sand.
Sitting, Slinoor remarked to the Mouser, ‘A pox of this footling duel! It delays our action against Hisvet and the rats. Lukeen was a fool to bridle at the barbarian. Still, when he’s drubbed him, there’ll be time enough.’
The Mouser lifted an eyebrow. Slinoor said lightly, ‘Oh didn’t you know? Lukeen will win; that’s certain,’ while the sergeant, nodding soberly, confirmed, ‘The Commander’s a master of staves. ’Tis no game for barbarians.’
The gong sounded a third time.
Lukeen sprang nimbly across the chalk and onto the hatch, crying, ‘Ho, hairy ape! Art ready to double-kiss the oak?—first my staff, then the deck?’
Fafhrd came shambling out, gripping his wand most awkwardly and responding, ‘Your spit has poisoned my left eye, Lukeen, but I see some civilized target with my right.’
Lukeen dashed at him joyously then, feinting at elbow and head, then rapidly striking with the other end of his staff at Fafhrd’s knee to tumble or lame him.
Fafhrd, abruptly switching to conventional stance and grip, parried the blow and swung a lightning riposte at Lukeen’s jaw.
Lukeen got his staff up in time so that the blow hit only his cheek glancingly, but he was unsettled by it and thereafter Fafhrd was upon him, driving him back in a hail of barely-parried blows while the sailors cheered.
Slinoor and the sergeant gaped wide-eyed, but the Mouser only knotted his fingers, muttering, ‘Not so fast, Fafhrd.’
Then, as Fafhrd prepared to end it all, he stumbled, stepping off the hatch, which changed his swift blow to the head into a slow blow at the ankles. Lukeen leaped up so that Fafhrd’s staff passed under his feet, and while he was still in the air rapped Fafhrd on the head.
The sailors groaned. The marines cheered once, growlingly.
The unfooted blow was not of the heaviest, nonetheless it three-quarters stunned Fafhrd and now it was his turn to be driven back under a pelting shower of swipes. For several moments there was no sound but the rutch of soft-soled boots on sanded oak and the rapid dry musical bong of staff meeting staff.
When Fafhrd came suddenly to his full senses he was falling away from a wicked swing. A glimpse of black by his heel told him that his next inevitable backward step would carry him inside his own quarter circle.
Swift as thought he thrust far behind him with his staff. Its end struck deck, then stopped against the cabin wall, and Fafhrd heaved himself forward with it, away from the chalk line, ducking and lunging to the side to escape Lukeen’s blows while his staff could not protect him.
The sailors screamed with excitement. The judges and officers on the afterdeck kneeled like dice-players, peering over the edge.
Fafhrd had to lift his left arm to guard his head. He took a blow on the elbow and his left arm dropped limp to his side. Thereafter he had to handle his staff like a broad-sword indeed, swinging it one-handed in whistling parries and strokes.
Lukeen hung back, playing more cautiously now, knowing Fafhrd’s one wrist must tire sooner than his two. He’d aim a few rapid blows at Fafhrd, then prance back.
Barely parrying the third of these attacks, Fafhrd riposted recklessly, not with a proper swinging blow, but simply gripping the end of his staff and lunging. The combined length of Fafhrd and his staff overtook Lukeen’s retreat and the tip of Fafhrd’s staff poked him low in the chest, just on the nerve spot.
Lukeen’s jaw dropped, his mouth stayed open wide, and he wavered. Fafhrd smartly rapped his staff out of his fingers and as it clattered down, toppled Lukeen to the deck with a second almost casual prod.
The sailors cheered themselves hoarse. The marines growled surlily and one cried, ‘Foul!’ Lukeen’s second knelt by him, glaring at Fafhrd. Carp’s mate danced a ponderous jig up to Fafhrd and wafted the wand out of his hands. On the afterdeck Squid’s officers were glum, though those of the other grain ships seemed strangely jubilant. The Mouser gripped Slinoor’s elbow, urging, ‘Cry Fafhrd victor,’ while the sergeant frowned prodigiously, hand to temple, saying, ‘Well, there’s nothing I know of in the rules…’
At that moment the cabin door opened and Hisvet stepped out, wearing a long scarlet, scarlet-hooded silk robe.
The Mouser, sensing climax, sprang to starboard, where Squid’s gong hung, snatched the striker from the gongsman and clanged it wildly.
Squid grew silent. Then there were pointings and questioning cries as Hisvet was seen. She put a silver recorder to her lips and began to dance dreamily toward Fafhrd, softly whistling with her recorder a high haunting tune of seven notes in a minor key. From somewhere tiny tuned bells accompanied it tinklingly. Then Hisvet swung to one side, facing Fafhrd as she moved around him, and the questioning cries changed to ones of wonder and astonishment and the sailors came crowding as far aft as they could and swinging through the rigging, as the procession be
came visible that Hisvet headed.
It consisted of eleven white rats walking in single file on their hind legs and wearing little scarlet robes and caps. The first four carried in each forepaw clusters of tiny silver bells which they shook rhythmically. The next five bore on their shoulders, hanging down between them a little, a double length of looped gleaming silver chain—they were very like five sailors lugging an anchor chain. The last two each bore slantwise a slim silver wand as tall as himself as he walked erect, tail curving high.
The first four halted side by side in rank facing Fafhrd and tinkling their bells to Hisvet’s piping.
The next five marched on steadily to Fafhrd’s right foot. There their leader paused, looked up at Fafhrd’s face with upraised paw, and squeaked three times. Then, gripping his end of the chain in one paw, he used his other three to climb Fafhrd’s boot. Imitated by his four fellows, he then carefully climbed Fafhrd’s trousers and hairy chest.
Fafhrd stared down at the mounting chain and scarlet-robed rats without moving a muscle, except to frown faintly as tiny paws unavoidably tweaked clumps of his chest-hair.
The first rat mounted to Fafhrd’s right shoulder and moved behind his back to his left shoulder, the four other rats following in order and never letting slip the chain.
When all five rats were standing on Fafhrd’s shoulders, they lifted one strand of the silver chain and brought it forward over his head, most dextrously. Meanwhile he was looking straight ahead at Hisvet, who had completely circled him and now stood piping behind the bell-tinklers.
The five rats dropped the strand so that the chain hung in a gleaming oval down Fafhrd’s chest. At the same instant each rat lifted his scarlet cap high above his head as his foreleg would reach.
Someone cried, ‘Victor!’
The five rats swung down their caps and again lifted them high, and as if from one throat all the sailors and most of the marines and officers cried in a great shout: ‘Victor!’
