by Fritz Leiber
And then of a sudden it was as if Black Racer had struck a wall. Fafhrd and Mouser were thrown to the deck and when they had madly struggled to their feet they found to their utter astonishment that their leopard-boat was floating in calm water, while in the distance lightning and thunder played, almost inaudible and unseen to their numbed ears and half-blinded eyes. There were no stars and moon, only thick night. There were no shimmer-sprights. Their sail was split to ribbons, the faint lightning showed. Under his hand Fafhrd felt a looseness in the tiller, as if the whole steering assemblage had been strained to breaking point and only survived by miracle.
The Mouser said, ‘She lists a little to stern and steerside, don’t you think? She’s taking water, I trow. Perhaps there’s stuff shifted below. Man we the pump. Later we can bend on a new sail.’
So they fell to and for some hours worked together silently as in many old times, nursing the leopard-boat and making all new, by light of two lanterns Fafhrd rigged from the mast that burned purest leviathan-oil, for the storm had entirely gone with its lightnings and the dark clouds pressed down.
As the cloud ceiling did, indeed, over all Nehwon that night (and day on other side). Over the subsequent months and years reports drifted in of the Great Dark, as it came mostly to be called, that had shrouded all Nehwon for a space of hours, so that it was never truly known whether the moon had monstrously traveled halfway round the world that time to battle with the sun and then back again to her appointed spot, or no, though there were scattered but persistent disquieting rumors of such a dread journeying glimpsed through fugitive gaps in the cloud-cover, and even that the sun himself had briefly moved to war with her.
After long while Fafhrd said quietly as they took a break from their labors, ‘It’s lonely without the shimmer-sprights, don’t you think?’
The Mouser said, ‘Agreed. I wonder if they’d ever have led us to treasure, or ever so intended? Or would have led us, or one of us, somewhere, either your spright, or mine?’
‘I still firmly believe there were four sprights,’ Fafhrd said. ‘So either pair of twins might have led us somewhere together without parting us.’
‘No, there were only two sprights,’ the Mouser said, ‘and they were set on leading us in very different directions, antipodean, off from each other.’ And when Fafhrd did not reply he said after a time, ‘Part of me wishes I’d gone with my fiery girl to find what’s like to dwell in paradise bathed by the splendid sun.’
Fafhrd said, ‘Part of me wishes I’d followed my melancholy maid to dwell in the pale moon, spending the summer months mayhap in Shadowland.’ Then, after a silent space, ‘But man was not meant for paradise, I trow, whether of warmth or coolth. No, never, never, never, never.’
‘Never shares a big bed with once,’ the Mouser said.
While they were speaking it had grown light. The clouds had all lifted. The new sail shone. The leviathan lamps burned wanly, their clear beam almost invisible against the paling sky. Then in the farthest distance north the two adventurers made out the loom of a great aurochs couchant, unmistakable sign of the southernmost headland of the Eastern Lands.
‘We’ve weathered Lankhmar continent in a single day and night,’ the Mouser said.
A breeze sprang up from the south, stirring the still air. They set course north up the long Sea of the East.
VII
The Frost Monstreme
‘I am tired, Gray Mouser, of these little brushes with Death,’ Fafhrd the Northerner said, lifting his dinted, livid goblet and taking a measured sup of sweet ferment of grape laced with bitter brandy.
‘Want a big one?’ his comrade scoffed, drinking likewise.
Fafhrd considered that, while his gaze traveled slowly yet without stop all the way round the tavern, whose sign was a tarnished and serpentine silver fish. ‘Perhaps,’ he said.
‘It’s a dull night,’ the other agreed.
True indeed, the interior of the Silver Eel presented a tavern visage as leaden-hued as its wine cups. The hour was halfway between midnight and dawn, the light dim without being murky, the air dank yet not chill, the other drinkers like moody statues, the faces of the barkeep and his bully and servers paralyzed in expressions of petulant discontent, as if Time herself had stopped.
Outside, the city of Lankhmar was silent as a necropolis, while beyond that the world of Nehwon had been at peace—unwar, rather—for a full year. Even the Mingols of the vasty Steppes weren’t raiding south on their small, tough horses.
Yet the effect of all this was not calm, but an unfocused uneasiness, a restlessness that had not yet resulted in the least movement, as if it were the prelude to an excruciating flash of cold lightning transfixing every tiniest detail of life.
This atmosphere affected the feelings and thoughts of the tall, brown-tunicked barbarian and his short, gray-cloaked friend.
‘Dull indeed,’ Fafhrd said. ‘I long for some grand emprise!’
‘Those are the dreams of untutored youth. Is that why you’ve shaved your beard?—to match your dreams? Both barefaced lies!’ the Mouser asked, and answered.
‘Why have you let yours grow these three days?’ Fafhrd countered.
‘I am but resting the skin of my face for a full tweaking of its hairs. And you’ve lost weight. A wishfully youthful fever?’
‘Not that, or any ill or care. Of late you’re lighter, too. We are changing the luxuriant musculature of young manhood for a suppler, hardier, more enduring structure suited to great mid-life trials and venturings.’
‘We’ve had enough of those,’ the Mouser asserted. ‘Thrice around Nehwon, at the least.’
Fafhrd shook his head morosely. ‘We’ve never really lived. We’ve not owned land. We’ve not led men.’
‘Fafhrd, you’re gloomy-drunk!’ the Mouser chortled. ‘Would you be a farmer? Have you forgot a captain is the prisoner of his command? Here, drink yourself sober, or at least glad.’
The Northerner let his cup be refilled from two jars, but did not change his mood. Staring unhappily, he continued, ‘We’ve neither homes nor wives.’
‘Fafhrd, you need a wench!’
‘Who spoke of wenches?’ the other protested. ‘I mean women. I had brave Kreeshkra, but she’s gone back to her beloved Ghouls. While your pert Reetha prefers the hairless land of Eevamarensee.’
The Mouser interjected sotto voce, ‘I also had imperious, insolent Hisvet, and you her brave, dramatic queen-slave Frix.’
Fafhrd went on, ‘Once, long ago, there were Friska and Ivivis, but they were Quarmall’s slaves and then became free women at Tovilysis. Before them were Keyaira, Hirriwi, but they were princesses, invisibles, loves of one long, long night, daughters of dread Oomforafor and sib of murderous Faroomfar. Long before all of those, in Land of Youth, there were fair Ivrian and slender Vlana. But they were girls, those lovely in-betweens (or actresses, those mysteries), and now they dwell with Death in Shadowland. So I’m but half a man. I need a mate. And so do you, perchance.’
‘Fafhrd, you’re mad! You prate of world-spanning wild adventures and then babble of what would make them impossible: wife, home, henchmen, duties. One dull night without girl or fight, and your brains go soft. Repeat, you’re mad.’
Fafhrd reinspected the tavern and its stodgy inmates. ‘It stays dull, doesn’t it,’ he remarked, ‘as if not one nostril had twitched or ear wiggled since I last looked. And yet it is a calm I do not trust. I feel an icy chill. Mouser—’
That one was looking past him. With little sound, or none at all, two slender persons had just entered the Silver Eel and paused appraisingly inside the lead-weighted iron-woven curtains that kept out fog and could turn sword thrusts. The one was tall and rangy as a man, blue-eyed, thin-cheeked, wide-mouthed, clad in jerkin and trousers of blue and long cloak of gray. The other was wiry and supple-seeming as a cat, green-eyed, compact of feature, short thick lips compressed, clothed similarly save the hues were rust red and brown. They were neither young nor yet near middle age. T
heir smooth unridged brows, tranquil eyes, evenly curving jaws, and long cheek-molding hair—here silvery yellow, there black shot with darkest brown (in turn gold-shotten, or were those golden wires braided in?)—proclaimed them feminine.
That last attribute broke the congealed midnight trances of the assembled dullards, a half dozen of whom converged on the newcomers, calling low invitations and trailing throaty laughs. The two moved forward as if to hasten the encounter, with gaze unwaveringly ahead.
And then—without an instant, pause or any collision, except someone recoiled slightly as if his instep had been trod on and someone else gasped faintly as if his short ribs had encountered a firm elbow—the two were past the six. It was as if they had simply walked through them, as a man would walk through smoke with no more fuss than the wrinkling of a nostril. Behind them, the ignored smoke fumed and wove a bit.
Now there were in their way the Gray Mouser and Fafhrd, who had both risen and whose hands still indicated the hilts of their scabbarded swords without touching them.
‘Ladies—’ the Mouser began.
‘Will you take wine—?’ Fafhrd continued.
‘Strengthened against night’s chill,’ the Mouser concluded, sketching a bow, while Fafhrd courteously indicated the four-chaired table from which they’d just risen.
The slender women halted and surveyed them without haste.
‘We might,’ the smaller purred.
‘Provided you let Rime Isle pay for the drinks,’ the taller concluded in tones bright and swift as running snow water.
At the words ‘Rime Isle,’ the faces of the two men grew thoughtful and wondering, as if in another universe someone had said Atlantis or El Dorado or Ultima Thule. Nevertheless they nodded agreement and drew back chairs for the women.
‘Rime Isle,’ Fafhrd repeated conjuringly, as the Mouser did the honors with cups and jars. ‘As a child in the Cold Waste and later in my adolescent piratings, I’ve heard it and Salthaven City whispered of. Legend says the Claws point at it—those thin, stony peninsulas that tip Nehwonland’s last northwest corner.’
‘For once legend speaks true,’ the electrum-haired woman in blue and gray said softly yet crisply, ‘Rime Isle exists today. Salthaven, too.’
‘Come,’ said the Mouser with a smile, ceremoniously handing her her cup, ‘it’s said Rime Isle’s no more real than Simorgya.’
‘And is Simorgya unreal?’ she asked, accepting it.
‘No,’ he admitted with a somewhat startled, reminiscent look. ‘I once watched it from a very small ship when it was briefly risen from the deeps of the Outer Sea. My more venturesome friend’—he nodded toward Fafhrd—‘trod its wet shale for a short space to see some madmen dance with devilfish which had the aspect of black fur cloaks awrithe.’
‘North of Simorgya, westward from the Claws,’ briskly said the red- and brown-clad woman with black hair shot with glistening dark bronze and gold. Her right hand holding steady in the air her brimming wine cup where she’d just received it, she dipped her left beneath the table and swiftly slapped it down on the arabesquery of circle-stained oak, then lifted it abruptly to reveal four small rounds gleaming pale as moons. ‘You agreed Rime Isle would pay.’
With nods abstracted yet polite, the Mouser and Fafhrd each took up one of the coins and closely studied it.
‘By the teats of Titchubi,’ the former breathed, ‘this is no sou marque, black dog, no chien noir.’
‘Rime Isle silver?’ Fafhrd asked softly, lifting his gaze, eyebrows a-rise, from the face of the coin toward that of the taller woman.
Her gaze met his squarely. There was the hint of a smile at the ends of her long lips, back in her cheeks. She said sincerely yet banteringly, ‘Which never tarnishes.’
He said, ‘The obverse shows a vast sea monster menacing out of the depths.’
She said, ‘Only a great whale blowing after a deep sound.’
The Mouser said to the other woman, ‘Whilst the reverse depicts a ship-shaped, league-long square rock rising from miles-long swells.’
She said, ‘Only an iceberg hardly half that size.’
Fafhrd said, ‘Well, drink we what this bright, alien coinage has bought. I am Fafhrd, the Gray Mouser he.’
The tall woman said, ‘And I Afreyt, my comrade Cif.’
After deep draughts, they put down their cups. Afreyt with a sharp double tap of pewter on oak. ‘And now to business,’ she said cliptly, with the faintest of frowns at Fafhrd (it was arguable if there was any frown at all) as he reached for the wine jars. ‘We speak with the voice of Rime Isle—’
‘And dispurse her golden monies,’ Cif added, her green eyes glinting with yellow flecks. Then, flatly, ‘Rime Isle is straitly menaced.’
Her voice going low, Afreyt asked, ‘Hast ever heard of the Sea Mingols?’ and, when Fafhrd nodded, shifted her gaze to the Mouser, saying, ‘Most Southrons misdoubt their sheer existence, deeming every Mingol a lubber when off his horse, whether on land or sea.’
‘Not I’ he answered. ‘I’ve sailed with Mingol crew. There’s one, now old, named Ourph—’
‘And I’ve met Mingol pirates,’ Fafhrd said. ‘Their ships are few, each dire. Arrow-toothed water rats—Sea Mingols, as you say.’
‘That’s good,’ Cif told them both. ‘Then you’ll more like believe me when I tell you that in response to the eldritch prophecy, “Who seizes Nehwon’s crown, shall win her all—”’
‘For crown, read north polar coasts,’ Afreyt interjected.
‘And supremely abetted by the Wizard of Ice, Khahkht, whose very name’s a frozen cough—’
‘Perchance the evilest being ever to exist—’ Afreyt supplemented, her eyes a sapphire moon shining frosty through two narrowed, crosswise window slits.
‘The Mingols have ta’en ship to harry Nehwon’s northmost coasts in two great fleets, one following the sun, the other—the Widdershin Mingols—going against it—’
‘For a few dire ships, believe armadas,’ Afreyt put in, still gazing chiefly at Fafhrd (just as Cif favored the Mouser), and then took up the main tale with, ‘Till Sunwise and Widdershins meet at Rime Isle, overwhelm her, and fan out south to rape the world!’
‘A dismal prospect,’ Fafhrd commented, setting down the brandy jar with which he’d laced the wine he’d poured for all.
‘At least an overlively one,’ the Mouser chimed in. ‘Mingols are tireless raptors.’
Cif leaned forward, chin up. Her green eyes flamed. ‘So Rime Isle is the chosen battleground. Chosen by Fate, by cold Khahkht, and the Gods. The place to stop the Steppe horde turned sea raiders.’
Without moving, Afreyt grew taller in her chair, her blue gaze flashing back and forth between Fafhrd and his comrade, ‘So Rime Isle arms, and musters men, and hires mercenaries. The last’s my work and Cif’s. We need two heroes, each to find twelve men like himself and bring them to Rime Isle in the space of three short moons. You are the twain!’
‘You mean there’s any other one man in Nehwon like me—let alone a dozen?’ the Mouser asked incredulously.
‘It’s an expensive task, at very least,’ Fafhrd said judiciously.
Her biceps swelling slightly under the close-fitting rust-red cloth, Cif brought up from beneath the table two tight-packed pouches big as oranges and set one down before each man. The small thuds and swiftly damped chinkings were most satisfying sounds.
‘Here are your funds!’
The Mouser’s eyes widened, though he did not yet touch his globular sack. ‘Rime Isle must need heroes sorely. And heroines?—if I might make suggestion.’
‘That has been taken care of,’ Cif said firmly.
Fafhrd’s middle finger feather-brushed his bag and came away.
Afreyt said, ‘Drink we.’
As the goblets lifted, there came from all around a tiny tinkling as of faery hells; a minute draft, icy chill, stole past from the door; and the air itself grew very faintly translucent, very slightly softening and pearling all things seen�
��all of which portents grew light-swift by incredible tiger leaps into a stunning, sense-raping clangor of bells big as temple domes and thick as battlements, an ear-splittingly roaring and whining polar wind that robbed away all heat in a trice and blew out flat the iron-and-lead-weighted door drapes and sent the inhabitants of the Silver Eel sailing and tumbling, and an ice fog thick as milk, through which Cif could be heard to cry, ‘’Tis icy breath of Khahkht!’ and Afreyt, ‘It’s tracked us down!’ before pandemonium drowned out all else.
Fafhrd and the Mouser each desperately gripped moneybag with one hand and with the other, table, glad it was bolted down to stop its use in brawls.
The gale and the tumult died and the fog faded, not quite as swiftly as it all had come. They unclenched their hands, wiped ice crystals from brows and eyes, lit lamps, and looked around.
The place was a bloodless shambles, silent too as death until the frightened moaning began, the cries of pain and wonder. They scanned the long room, first from their tables, then afoot. Their slender tablemates were not among the slowly recovering victims.
The Mouser intoned, somewhat airily, ‘Were such folk here as we’ve been searching for? Or have we drunk some drug that—’
He broke off. Fafhrd had taken up his fat little moneybag and headed for the door. ‘Where away?’ Mouser called.
Fafhrd stopped and turned. He called back unsmiling, ‘North of the Trollsteps, to hire my twelve berserks. Doubtless you’ll find your dozen swordsmen-thieves in warmer clime. In three moons less three days, we rendezvous at sea midway between Simorgya and Rime Isle. Till then, fare well.’
The Mouser watched him out, shrugged, rummaged up a cup and the brandy jar overset but unbroken, bedewed by the magic blast. The liquor that hadn’t spilled made a gratifyingly large slug. He fingered his moneybag a moment, then teased open the hard knot in its thong. Inside, the leather had a faint amber glow. ‘A golden orange indeed,’ he said happily, unmindful of the forms mewling and crawling and otherwise crippling around him, and plucked out one of the packed yellow coins. Reverse, a smoking volcano, possibly snow-clad; obverse, a great cliff rising from the sea and looking not quite like ice or any ordinary rock. What drollery! He gazed again at the iron-curtained doorway. What a huge fool, he thought, to take seriously a quite impossible task set by vanished females most likely dead or at best sorceled beyond reach! Or to make rendezvous at distant date in uncharted ocean betwixt a sunken land and a fabulous one—Fafhrd’s geography was even more hopeful than his usual highly imaginative wont.
