by Fritz Leiber
And just think what rare delights—nay, what whole sets of ecstasies and blisses—this much gold would buy. How fortunate that metal was mindless slave of the man who held it!
He returned the coin, thonged shut the gold and its glow, stood up decisively, then looked back at the table top, near an edge of which the four silver coins still lay cozily flat.
While he regarded them, the grubby hand of a fat server who’d been wedged under the table by the indoor blizzard reached up and whisked them down.
With another shrug, the Mouser ambled rather grandly toward the doorway, whistling between his teeth a Mingol march.
Inside a sphere half again as tall as a man, a skinny old being was busy. On the interior of the sphere was depicted a world map of Nehwon, the seas in blackest blues, the lands in blackest greens and browns, yet all darkly agleam like blued, greened, and browned iron, creating the illusion that the sphere was a giant bubble rising forever through infinite murky, oily waters—as some Lankhmar philosophers assert is veriest truth about Nehwon-world itself. South of the Eastern Lands in the Great Equatorial Ocean there was even depicted a ring-shaped water wall a span across and three fingers high, such as those same philosophers say hides the sun from the half of Nehwon it is floating across, though no blinding solar disk now lay in the bottom of the liquid crater, but only a pale glow sufficient to light the sphere’s interior.
Where they were not hid by a loose, light robe, the old being’s four long, ever-active limbs were covered by short, stiff black hairs either grizzled or filmed with ice, while Its narrow face was nasty as a spider’s. Now It lifted Its leathery lips and nervously questing long-nailed fingers toward an area of the map where a tiny, gleaming black blotch south of blue and amidst brown signified Lankhmar City on the southron coast of the Inner Sea. Was it Its breath that showed frosty, or did Its will conjure up the white wisp that streaked across the black blotch? Whichever, the vapor vanished.
It muttered high-pitched in Mingolish, ‘They’re gone, the bitches. Khahkht sees each fly die, and sends Its shriveling breath where’er It will. Mingols harry, world unwary. Harlots fumble, heroes stumble. And now ’tis time, ’tis time, ’tis time to gin to build the frost monstreme.’
It opened a circular trap door in the South Polar Regions and lowered Itself out on a thin line.
Three days short of three moons later, the Mouser was thoroughly disgusted, bone weary, and very cold. His feet and toes were very, very cold inside fine, fur-lined boots, which slowly rose and fell under his soles as the frosty deck lifted and sank with the long, low swell. He stood by the short mainmast, from the long yard of which (longer than the boom) the loosely furled mainsail hung in frozen festoons. Beyond dimly discerned low prow and stern and mainyard top, vision was utterly blotted out by a fog of tiniest ice crystals, like cirrus cloud come down from Stardock heights, through which the light of an unseen gibbous moon, still almost full swollen, seeped out dark pearl gray. The windlessness and general stillness, contrary to all experience, seemed to make the cold bite deeper.
Yet the silence was not absolute. There was the faint wash and drip—perhaps even tiniest crackling of thinnest ice film—as the hull yielded to the swell. There were the resultant small creakings of the timbers and rigging of Flotsam. And beneath or beyond these, still fainter sounds lurked in the fringes of the inaudible. A part of the Mouser’s mind that worked without being paid attention strained ceaselessly to hear those last. He was of no mind to be surprised by a Mingol flotilla, or single craft even. Flotsam was transport, not warship, he repeatedly warned himself. Very strange some of those last real or fancied sounds were that came out of the frigid fog—shatterings of massive ice leagues away, the thump and splash of mighty oars even farther off, distant doleful shriekings, still more distant deep minatory growlings, and a laughter as of fiends beyond the rim of Nehwon. He thought of the invisible fliers that had troubled the snowy air halfway up Stardock when Fafhrd and he had climbed her, Nehwon’s loftiest peak.
The cold snapped that thought chain. The Mouser longed to stamp his feet, flail his hands cross-front against his sides, or—best!—warm himself with a great burst of anger, but he perversely held off, perhaps so ultimate relief would be greater, and set to analyze his disgusted weariness.
First off, there’d been the work of finding, winning, and mastering twelve fighter-thieves—a rare breed to begin with. And training ’em!—half of ’em had to be taught the art of the sling, and two (Mog help him!) swordsmanship. And the choosing of the likeliest two for corporals—Pshawri and Mikkidu, who were now sleeping snug below with the double squad, damn their hides!
Concurrent with that, there’d been the searching out of Old Ourph and gathering of his Mingol crew of four. A calculated risk, that. Would Mingol mariners fight fiercely ’gainst their own in the pinch? Mingols were ever deemed treacherous. Yet ’twas always good to have some of the enemy on your side, the better to understand ’em. And from them he might even get wider insight into the motives behind the present Mingol excursions naval.
Concurrent with that, the selection, hire, patching, and provisioning of Flotsam for its voyage.
And then the study needed! Beginning with poring over ancient charts filched from the library of the Lankhmar Starsmen and Navigators Guild, the refreshing of his knowledge of wind, waves, and celestial bodies. And the responsibility!! for no fewer than seventeen men, with no Fafhrd to share it and spell him while he slept—to lick ’em into shape, doctor their scurvies, probe underwater for ’em with boathook when they tumbled overboard (he’d almost lost thumb-footed Mikkidu that way the first day out), keep ’em in good spirits but in their places too, discipline ’em as required. (Come to think of it, that last was sometimes delight as well as duty. How quaintly Pshawri squealed when shrewdly thwacked with Cat’s Claw’s scabbard!—and soon would again, by Mog!)
Lastly, the near moon-long perilous voyage itself!!! Northwest from Lankhmar across the Inner Sea. Through a treacherous gap in the Curtain Wall (where Fafhrd had once sought sequined sea-queens) into the Outer Sea. Then a swift, broad reach north with the wind on their loadside until they sighted the black ramparts of No-Ombrulsk, which shared the latitude of sunken Simorgya. There he had nosed Flotsam due west, away from all land and almost into the teeth of the west wind, which blew a little on their steerside. After four days of that weary, close reach, they had arrived at the undistinguished patch of troubled ocean that marked Simorgya’s grave, according to the independent cipherings of the Mouser and Ourph, the one working from his stolen charts, the other counting knots in grimy Mingol calculating cords. Then a swift two-day broad reach north again, while air and sea grew rapidly colder, until by their reckonings they were half-journey to the latitude of the Claws. And now two days of dismal beating about in one place await for Fafhrd, with the cold increasing steadily until, this midnight, clear skies had given way to the ice fog in which Flotsam lay becalmed. Two days in which to wonder if Fafhrd would manage to find this spot, or even come at all. Two days in which to get bored with and maddened by his scared, rebellious crew and dozen soldier-thieves—all snoring warm below, Mog flog ’em! Two days to wonder why in Mog’s name he’d spent all but four of his Rime Isle doubloons on this insane voyage, on work for himself instead of on wine and women, rare books and art objects, in short on sweet bread and circuses for himself alone.
And finally, superlastly, the suspicion growing toward conviction that Fafhrd had never started out from Lankhmar at all!!! that he’d strode so nobly, so carkingly high-minded, out of the Silver Eel with his bag of gold—and instantly begun to spend it on those very same delights which the Mouser (inspired by Fafhrd’s seeming-good example) had denied himself.
In a pinnacle of exasperation, a mountaintop of rage, the Mouser seized the padded striker from its mainmast hook and smote the ship’s gong a blow mighty enough to shatter the gelid bronze. In fact, he was mildly surprised that Flotsam’s frosty deck wasn’t showered with sharp-edged froz
en shards of brown metal. Whereupon he smote it again and again and again, so that the gong swung like a signboard in a hurricane, and meanwhile he jumped up and down, adding to the general alarm the resounding thuds of his feet (and haply warming them).
The forward hatch was flung back from below and Pshawri shot up out of it like a jack-in-the-box, to scurry to the Mouser and stand before him mad-eyed. The corporal major was followed in a pouring rush by Mikkidu and the rest of the two squads, most of them half-naked. After them—and far more leisurely—came Gavs and the other Mingol crewman off watch, thonging their black hoods closely under their yellow chins, while Ourph came ghosting up behind his captain, though the two other Mingols properly kept to their stations at tiller and prow. The Mouser was vastly surprised. So his scabbard thwackings had actually done some good!
Measuredly beating the padded striker head in the cupped palm of his right hand, the Mouser observed, ‘Well, my small stealers’—(all of the thieves were in fact at least a finger-breadth shorter than the Gray One)—‘it appears you’ve missed a beating, barely,’ his face in a hideous grin as he closely surveyed the large areas of bare flesh exposed to the icy air.
He went on, ‘But now we must keep you warm—a sailorly necessity in this clime, for which each of you is responsible on pain of flogging, I’ll have you know.’ His grin became more hideous still. ‘To evade night ramming attack, man the sweeps!’
The ragged dozen poured past him to snatch up the long, slender oars from their rack between mainmast and mizzen, and drop their looms into the ten proper locks, and stand facing prow at the ready, feet braced against sweeping studs, oar handles against chests, blades poised overside in the fog. Pshawri’s squad was stationed steer-side, Mikkidu’s load-side, while major and minor corporals supervised fore and aft.
After a quick glance at Pshawri, to assure himself every man was at his station, the Mouser cried, ‘Flotsamers! One, two, three—sweep!’ and tapped the gong, which he steadied and damped by its edge gripped in his right hand. The ten sweepsmen dipped blades into the unseen salt water and thrust heavily forward against the tholes.
‘Recover!’ the Mouser growled slowly, then gave the gong another tap. The ship began to move forward and the wash of the swell became tiny slaps against the hull.
‘And now keep to it, you clownish, ill-clad cutpurses!’ he cried. ‘Master Mikkidu! Relieve me at the gong! Sir Pshawri, keep ’em sweepin’ evener!’ And as he handed the striker to the gasping corporal minor, he dipped his lips toward the cryptic wrinkled face of Ourph and whispered, ‘Send Trenchi and Gib below to fetch ’em their warm duds on deck.’
Then he allowed himself a sigh, generally pleased yet perversely dissatisfied because Pshawri hadn’t given him excuse to thwack him. Well, one couldn’t have everything. Odd to think of a Lankhmar second-story man and Thieves Guild malcontent turned promising soldier-sailor. Yet natural enough—there wasn’t that much difference between climbing walls and rigging.
Feeling warmer now, he thought more kindly of Fafhrd. Truly, the Northerner had not yet missed rendezvous; it was Flotsam, rather, that’d been early. Now was the time appointed. His face grew somber as he permitted himself the coldly realistic thought (of the sort no one likes) that it would indeed be miracle if he and Fafhrd did find each other in this watery waste, not to mention the icy fog. Still, Fafhrd was resourceful.
The ship grew silent again except for the brush and drip of the sweeps, the clink of the gong, and the small commotions as Pshawri briefly relieved oarsmen hurrying into the clothes the Mingols had fetched. The Mouser turned his attention to the part of his mind that kept watch on the fog’s hiddenmost sounds. Almost at once he turned questioningly toward Old Ourph. The dwarfish Mingol flapped his arms slowly up and down. Straining his ears, the Mouser nodded. Then the beat of approaching wings became generally audible. Something struck the icy rigging overhead and a white shape hurtled down. The Mouser threw up his right arm to fend it off and felt his wrist and forearm strongly gripped by something that heaved and twisted. After a moment of breathless fear, in which his left hand snatched at his dirk, he reached it out instead and touched the horny talons tight as gyves around his wrist, and found rolled around a scaly leg a small parchment, the threads of which he cut with sharpened thumbnail. Whereupon the large white hawk left his wrist and perched on the short, round rod from which the ship’s gong hung.
Then by flame of fat candle a Mingol crewman fetched after lighting it from the firebox, the Mouser read in Fafhrd’s huge script writ very small:
Ahoy, Little Man!—for ’tis unlike there’s vessel closer in this wavy wilderness. Burn a red flare and I’ll be there.
F.
And then in blacker but sloppier letters suggesting hurried afterthought:
Let’s feign mutual attack when we meet, to train our crews. Agreed!
The white flame, burning steady and bright in the still air, showed the Mouser’s delighted grin and also the added expression of incredulous outrage as he read the postscript. Northerners as a breed were battle-mad, and Fafhrd the feyest.
‘Gib, get quill and squid ink,’ he commanded. ‘Sir Pshawri, take slow-fire and a red flare to the mainmast top and burn it there. Yarely! But if you fire Flotsam, I’ll nail you to the burning deck!’
Some moments later, as the Mouser-enlisted small cat-burglar steadily mounted the rigging, though additionally encumbered by a boathook, his captain reversed the small parchment, spread it flat against the mast, and neatly inscribed on its back by light of candle, which Gib held along with the inkhorn:
Madman Most Welcome!—I’ll burn them one each bell. I do not agree. My crew is trained already.
M.
He shook the note to dry it, then gingerly wrapped it closely around the glaring hawk’s leg, just above talons and threaded it tight. As his fingers came away, the bird bated with a shriek and winged off into the fog without command. Fafhrd had at least his avian messengers well trained.
A red glare, surprisingly bright, sprang forth from the fog at the masthead and rose mysteriously a full ten cubits above the top. Then the Mouser saw that, for safety’s sake, his own and his ship’s, the little corporal major had fixed the flare to the boathook’s end and thrust it aloft, thereby also increasing the distance at which it could be seen—by at least a Lankhmar league, the Mouser hurriedly calculated. A sound thought, he had to admit, almost a brilliancy. He had Mikkidu reverse Flotsam’s course for practice, the steerside sweepsmen pulling water to swing the ship their way. He went to the prow to assure himself that the heavily muffled Mingol there was steadily scanning the fog ahead, next he returned to the stern, where Ourph stood by his tillerman, both equally thick-cloaked against the cold.
Then, as the red flare glowed on and the relative quiet of steady sweeping returned, the Mouser’s ears unwilled resumed their work of searching the fog for strange sounds, and he said softly to Ourph without looking at him, ‘Tell me now, Old One, what you really think about your restless nomad brotheren and why they’ve ta’en to ship instead of horse.’
‘They rush like lemmings, seeking death…for others,’ the ancient croaked reflectively. ‘Gallop the waves instead of flinty steppes. To strike down cities is their chiefest urge, whether by land or sea. Perhaps they flee the People of the Ax.’
‘I’ve heard of those,’ the Mouser responded doubtfully. ‘Think you they’d league with Stardock’s viewless fliers, who ride the icy airs above the world?’
‘I do not know. They’ll follow their clan wizards anywhere.’
The red flare died. Pshawri came down rather jauntily from the top and reported to his dread captain, who dismissed him with a glare which was unexpectedly terminated by a broad wink and the command to burn another flare at the next bell, or demihour. Then turning once more to Ourph, the Mouser spoke low: ‘Talking of wizards, do you know of Khahkht?’
The ancient let five heartbeats go by, then croaked, ‘Khahkht is Khahkht. It is no tribal sorcerer, ’tis sur
e. It dwells in farthest north within a dome—some say a floating globe—of blackest ice, from whence It watches the least deeds of men, devising evil every chance It gets, as when the stars are right—better say wrong—and all the Gods asleep. Mingols dread Khahkht and yet…whene’er they reach a grand climacteric they turn to It, beseech It ride ahead before their greatest, bloodiest centaurings. Ice is Its favored quarter, ice Its tool, and icy breath Its surest sign save blink.’
‘Blink?’ the Mouser asked uneasily.
‘Sunlight or moonlight shining back from ice,’ the Mingol replied. ‘Ice blink.’
A soft white flash paled for an instant the dark, pearly fog, and through it the Mouser heard the sound of oars—mightier strokes than those of Flotsam’s sweeps and set in a more ponderous rhythm, yet oars or sweeps indubitably, and swiftly growing louder. The Mouser’s face grew gladsome. He peered about uncertainly. Ourph’s pointing finger stabbed dead ahead. The Mouser nodded, and pitching his voice trumpet-shrill to carry, he hailed forward, ‘Fafhrd! Ahoy!’
There was a brief silence, broken only by the beat of Flotsam’s sweeps and of the oncoming oars, and then there came out of the fog the heart-quickening though still eerie cry, ‘Ahoy, small man! Mouser, well met in wildering waters! And now—on guard!’
The Mouser’s glad grin grew frantic. Did Fafhrd seriously intend to carry out in fog his fey suggestion of a feigned ships-battle? He looked with a wild questioning at Ourph, who shrugged hugely for one so small.
