by Fritz Leiber
Aboard Flotsam, the Mouser was giving like directions to Ourph. He was cheered by sight of Fafhrd’s flares matching his own. though he did not need their testimony. Now he longed for talk with Fafhrd. Which would be soon. The gap of black water between ships was narrowing rapidly. He wasted a moment musing whether mere chance or else some goddess had steered his comrade’s arrow aside from his heart. He thought of Cif.
Aboard both ships, almost in unison, Pshawri and Mannimark cried out fearfully, ‘Ship close astern!’
Out of the torn and darkening fog bank, driving with preternatural rapidity into the teeth of the gale on a course to smash them both, there had silently come a craft monstrous in size and aspect. It might well have remained unseen until collision, save that the weird rays of the rising black sun striking its loadside engendered there a horrid, pale reflection, not natural white light at all, but a loathly, colorless luminescence—a white to make the flesh crawl, a cave-toad, fish-belly white. And if the substance making the reflection had any texture at all, it was that of ridged and crinkled gray horn—dead men’s fingernails.
The leprous Hel-glow showed the demonic craft to have thrice the freeboard of any natural ship. Its towering prow and sides were craggy and jagged, as if it were cast entire of ice in a titanic rough mold left over from the Age of Chaos, or else hacked by jinn into crude ship-likeness from a giant berg broken off from glacier vast. And it was driven by banks of oars long and twitchy as insect legs or limbs of myriapod, yet big as jointed yards or masts, as they sent it scuttling monstrously across black ocean vast. And from its lofty deck, as if hurled by demon ballistas, catapults, and mangonels, there now came hurtling down around Flotsam and Sea Hawk great blocks of ice which sent up black, watery volcanoes. While from the jagged top of its foremast—pale, big, and twisted as a thunder-blasted pine long dead—there shot out two thin beams of blackest black, like rays of anti-sun but more intense, which smote the Gray Mouser and Fafhrd each in the chest with deep-striking chill and sick, spreading dizziness and weakening of will.
Nevertheless they each managed to give rapid, stinging commands, and the two ships turned away in time’s nick from each other and the oared deathberg striking between them. Flotsam had had only to turn further into the wind and so come round smoothly and swiftly. But Sea Hawk perforce must jibe. Its sail shivered a space, then filled abruptly on the other side with noise like thunder crack, but the stout Ool Krut canvas did not split. Both ships scudded north before the gale.
Behind them the eldritch bergship slowed and turned with supernatural celerity, spider-walked by its strange oars, and came in monstrous pursuit, gigantically oared on. And although no word was voiced or sign given by the pursued—almost as if by taking no notice of it, the menacing tangle of ghostly white evil astern could be made not to be—a collective shudder nevertheless went through the crews and captains of the sailing galley and the long-yarded two-master.
With that began a time of trial and tension, a Reign of Terror, an Eternal Night, such as no one amongst them had ever known before. First, there was the darkness, which grew greater the higher the anti-sun climbed in the black heavens. Even candle flames below and the cook fires sheltered from the blast grew blue and dim. While the pustulant white glow hunting them had this quality: that its light illumined nothing it fell on, but rather darkened it, as if it carried the essence of the antilight along with it, as if it existed solely to make visible the terror of the bergship. Although the bergship was real as death and ever inching nearer, that eerie light sometimes seemed to Fafhrd and the Mouser most akin to the glows seen crawling on the inside of closed eyelids in darkness absolute.
Second, there was the cold that was a part of the anti-sunlight and struck deep with it, that penetrated every cranny of Sea Hawk and Flotsam, that had to be fought with both protective huddlings and violent movement, and also with drink and food warmed very slowly and with difficulty over the enfeebled flames—a cold that could paralyze both mind and body, and then kill.
Third, there was the potent silence that came with the unnatural dark and cold, the silence that made almost inaudible the constant creakings of rigging and wood, that muffled all foot-stampings and sideflailings against the cold, that turned all speech to whispers and changed the pandemonium of the great gale itself driving them north to the soft roaring of a seashell held forever to the ear.
And then there was that great gale itself, no whit weaker that it had no great noise—the gale that blew icy spume over the stern, the murderous gale that had always to be struggled against and kept watch on (gripping with fingers and thumbs like gyves to hopefully firm handholds when a man was anywhere on deck or above), the gale near hurricane force that was driving them ever north at an unprecedented pace. None of them had ever before sailed before such a wind, even in the Mouser’s and Fafhrd’s and Ourph’s first passage of the Outer Sea. Any of them would have long since hove to with bare masts and likely sea anchor, save for the menace of the bergship behind.
Last, there was that monstrous craft itself, deathberg or bergship, ever gaining on them, its leggy oars ever more strongly plied. Rarely, a jagged ice block crashed in black sea beside them. Rarely, a black ray teased at hero’s heart. But those were but cackling reminders. The monster craft’s main menace: it did nothing (save close the distance to its fleeing foes). The monster-craft’s intent: grapple and board! (or so it seemed).
Each on his ship, Fafhrd and Mouser fought weariness and chill; insane desire to sleep; strange, fleeting dreads. Once Fafhrd fancied unseen fliers battling overhead, as if in fabulous aerial extension of the sea war of his and Mouser’s craft ’gainst iceship huge. Once Mouser seemed to see black sails of two great fleets. Both masters cheered their men, kept them alive.
Sometimes Sea Hawk and Flotsam were far apart in their parallel flight north, quite out of sight and hail. Sometimes they came together enough to see glints of each other. And once so close their captains could trade words.
Fafhrd hailed in bursts (they were whispers in Mouser’s ears), ‘Ho, Small One! Heard you Stardock’s fliers? Our mountain princesses…fighting with Faroomfar?’
The Mouser shouted back, ‘My ears are frostbit. Have you sighted…other foe ships…besides monstreme?’
Fafhrd: Monstreme? What’s that?
Mouser: That ill astern. My word’s analogous…to bireme…quadrireme. Monstreme!—rowed by monsters.
Fafhrd: A monstreme in full gale. An awful thought! (He looked astern at it.)
Mouser: Monstreme in monsoon…would be awfuler.
Fafhrd: Let’s not waste breath. When will we raise Rime Isle?
Mouser: I had forgot we had a destination. What time think you?
Fafhrd: First bell in second dogwatch. Sunset season.
Mouser: It should get lighter…when this black sun sets.
Fafhrd: It ought to. Damn the double dark!
Mouser: Damn the dimidiate halved white astern! What’s its game?
Fafhrd: Freeze fast to us, I wot. Then kill by cold, else board us.
Mouser: That’s great, I must say. They should hire you.
So their shouts trailed off—a joy at first, but soon a tiredness. And they had their men to care for. Besides, it was too risky, ships so close.
There passed a weary and nightmarish time. Then to the north, where nought had changed all the black day of plunging into it, Fafhrd marked a dark red glow. Long while he doubted it, deemed it some fever in his frozen skull. He noted Afreyt’s slender face bobbing among his thoughts. At his side Skor asked him, ‘Captain, is that a distant fire dead ahead? Our lost sun about to rise in north?’ At last Fafhrd believed in the red glow.
Aboard Flotsam, the Mouser, racked by the poisons of exhaustion and barely aware, heard Fafhrd whisper, ‘Mouser, ahoy. Look ahead. What do you see?’ He realized it was a mighty shout diminished by black silence and the gale, and that Sea Hawk had come close again. He could see glints from the shields affixed along her side, while astern the mons
treme was close too, looming like a leprously opalescent cliff arock. Then he looked ahead.
After a bit, ‘A red light,’ he wheezed, then forced himself to bellow the same words alee, adding, ‘Tell me what is it. And then let me sleep.’
‘Rime Isle, I trow,’ Fafhrd replied across the gap.
‘Are they burning her down?’ the Mouser asked.
The answer came back faintly and eerily. ‘Remember…on the gold pieces…a volcano?’
The Mouser didn’t believe he’d heard aright his comrade’s next cry after that one, until he’d made him repeat it. Then, ‘Sir Pshawri!’ he called sharply, and when that one came limping up, hand to bandaged head, he ordered, ‘Heave bucket overside on line and haul it up. I want waves’ sample. Swiftly, you repulsive cripple!’
Somewhat later, Pshawri’s eyebrows rose as his captain took the sloshing bucket he proffered and set it to his lips and uptilted it, next handed it back to Pshawri, swished around his teeth the sample he’d taken into his mouth, made a face, and spat to lee.
The fluid was far less icy than the Mouser had expected, almost tepid—and saltier than the water of the Sea of Monsters, which lies just west of the Parched Mountains that hide the Shadowland. He wondered for a mad moment if they’d been magicked to that vast, dead lake. ’Twould fit with monstreme. He thought of Cif.
There was impact. The deck tilted and did not rock back. Pshawri dropped the bucket and screamed.
The monstreme had thrust between the smaller ships and instantly frozen to them with its figurehead (living or dead?) of sea monster hacked or born of ice, its jaws agape betwixt their masts, while from the lofty deck high overhead there pealed down Fafhrd’s laughter, monstrously multiplied.
The monstreme visibly shrank.
At one stride went the dark. From the low west the true sun burst forth, warmly lighting the bay in which they lay and striking an infinitude of golden gleams from the great, white, crystalline cliff to steerside, down which streaming water rushed in a thousand streams and runnels. A league or so beyond it rose a conical mountain down whose sides flowed glaring scarlet and from whose jaggedly truncated summit brilliant vermilion flames streamed toward the zenith, their dark smoke carried off northeastward by the wind.
Pointing at it with outthrown arm, Fafhrd called, ‘See, Mouser, the red glow.’
Straight ahead, nearer than the cliff and drifting steadily still nearer, was a town or small unwalled city of low buildings hugging gentle hills, its waterfront one long low wharf, where a few ships were docked and a small crowd was assembled quietly. While to the west, rounding out the bay, there were more cliffs, the nearer bare dark rock, the farther robed in snow.
Facing the city, Fafhrd said, ‘Salthaven.’
Studying the steaming, streaming, glittering white cliff and fiery peak beyond, the Mouser remembered the two scenes on his golden coins, all spent. This reminded him of the four silver coins he’d not been able to spend because they’d been snatched from his table at the Eel by the battered server, and of the two scenes on their faces: an iceberg and a monster. He turned round.
The monstreme was gone. Or rather, its last dissolving shards were sinking into the tranquil waters of the bay without sound or commotion, save that a little steam was rising.
Half-hurled, half-self-magicked from the monstreme’s bridge, where It had been gazing out in triumph over the welter of dire, frigid forms on the decks below, Its mind obsessed with evil, back into Its cramped black sphere, Khahkht cursed in voice like Fafhrd’s which midway became again a croak, ‘Damn to the depths of Hell Rime Isle’s strange gods! Their day will come, their dooms! Which now devise I whilst I snugly sleep…’ It whipped the lid off the water-walled sun and spoke a spell that rotated the sphere until the sun was topmost, the Great Subequatorial Desert nethermost. It briefly fanned the former hot and then curled up in the latter and closed Its eyes, muttering, ‘…for even Khahkht is cold.’
While on tall Stardock, Great Oomforafor listened to the news of the defeat, or setback rather, and of his dear daughters’ further treacheries, as told him by his furious, bedraggled son Prince Faroomfar, who’d been hurled back much as Khahkht.
As the Mouser turned back to the great white cliff, he realized that it must be made entire of salt—hence the seaport’s name—and that the hot, volcanic waters coursing down it were dissolving it, which did much to account for the warm saltiness of ocean hereabouts and the swift melting of the frost monstreme. The last made all of magic ice, he mused, both stronger and weaker than the ordinary—as magic itself than life.
Fafhrd and he, looking toward the long wharf as they experienced sweetest relief and their ships drew steadily closer to it, saw two slender figures of different heights standing somewhat apart from the other seaside welcomers, who by that token and their proud attitudes and quietly rich garb—blue-gray the one, rust-red the other—must be individuals high in the councils of Rime Isle.
VIII
Rime Isle
Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser supervised the mooring of Sea Hawk and Flotsam by bow and stern lines made fast round great wooden bollards, then sprang nimbly ashore, feeling unutterably weary, yet knowing that as captains they should not show it. They made their way to each other, embraced, then turned to face the crowd of Rime Isle men who had witnessed their dramatic arrival standing in a semicircle around the length of dock where their battered and salt-crusted ships were now moored.
Beyond the crowd stretched the houses of Salthaven port—small, stout and earth-hugging, as befitted this most northerly clime—in hues of weathered blue and green and a violet that was almost gray, except for those in the immediate neighborhood, which seemed rather squalid, where they were all angry reds and plague yellow.
Beyond Salthaven the low rolling land went off, gray-green with moss and heather, until it met the gray-white wall of a great glacier, and beyond that the old ice stretched until it met in turn the abrupt slopes of an active and erupting volcano, although the red glow of its lava and the black volume of its flamy smoke seemed to have diminished since they first glimpsed it from their ships.
The foremost of the crowd were all large, burly, quiet-faced men, booted, trousered, and smocked as fishers. Most of them bore quarterstaves, handling them as if they knew well how to use these formidable weapons. They curiously yet composedly eyed the twain and their ships, the Mouser’s broad-beamed and somewhat lubberly trader Flotsam with its small Mingol crew and squad of disciplined (a wonder!) thieves, Fafhrd’s trimmer galley Sea Hawk with its contingent of disciplined (if that can be imagined at all) berserkers. On the dock near the bollards where they’d made fast were Fafhrd’s lieutenant Skor, the Mouser’s—Pshawri—and two other crew members.
It was the quietness and composure of the crowd that puzzled and now began even to nettle the Mouser and Fafhrd. Here they’d sailed all this distance and survived almost unimaginable black hurricane-dangers to help save Rime Isle from a vast invasion of maddened and piratical Sea-Mingols bent on world-conquest, and there was no gladness to be seen anywhere, only stolidly appraising looks. There should be cheering and dancing and some northerly equivalent of maidens throwing flowers! True, the two steaming cauldrons of chowder borne on a shoulder-yoke by one of the fishermen seemed to betoken thoughtful welcome—but they hadn’t yet been offered any!
The mouth-watering aroma of the fish-stew now reached the nostrils of the crewmen lining the sides of the two vessels in various attitudes of extreme weariness and dejection—for they were at least half as spent as their captains and had no urge to conceal it—and their eyes slowly brightened and their jaws began to work sympathetically. Behind them the sun-dancing snug harbor, so recently black-skyed, was full of small ships riding at anchor, local fishing craft chiefly with the lovely lines of porpoises, but near at hand several that were clearly from afar, including a small trading galleon of the Eastern Lands and (wonder!) a Keshite junk, and one or two modest yet unfamiliar craft that had the disquieting look of
coming from seas beyond Nehwon’s. (Just as there was a scatter of sailors from far-off ports in the crowd, peering here and there from between the tall Rime Islanders.)
And now the Rime Isler nearest the Twain walked silently toward them, flanked a pace behind by two others. He stopped a bare yard away, but still did not speak. In fact, he still did not seem so much to be looking at them as past them at their ships and crews, while working out some abstruse reckoning in his head. All three men were quite as tall as Fafhrd and his berserkers.
Fafhrd and the Mouser retained their dignity with some difficulty. Never did to speak first when the other man was supposed to be your debtor.
Finally the other seemed to terminate his calculations and he spoke, using the Low Lankhmarese that is the trade jargon of the northern world.
‘I am Groniger, harbor master of Salthaven. I estimate your ships will be a good week repairing and revictualling. We will feed and board your crew ashore in the traders’ quarter.’ He gestured toward the squalid red and yellow buildings.
‘Thank you,’ Fafhrd said gravely, while the Mouser echoed coolly, ‘Indeed, yes.’ Hardly an enthusiastic welcome, but still one.
Groniger thrust out his hand, palm uppermost. ‘The charge,’ he said loudly, ‘will be five gold pieces for the galley, seven for the tub. Payment in advance.’
Fafhrd’s and the Mouser’s jaws dropped. The latter could not contain his indignation, captain’s dignity or no.
‘But we’re your sworn allies,’ he protested, ‘come here as promised, through perils manifold, to be your mercenaries and help save you from the locust-swarm invasion of the raptorial Sea-Mingols counseled and led by evilest Khahkht, the Wizard of Ice.’
Groniger’s eyebrows lifted. ‘What invasion?’ he queried. ‘The Sea-Mingols are our friends. They buy our fish. They may be pirates to others, but never to Rime Isle ships. Khahkht is an old wives’ tale, not to be credited by men of sense.’
