by Fritz Leiber
‘Likely just broken bounds and got a drubbing,’ the Mouser called out, trotting after. ‘Mikkidu got a touch of the quarterstaff this morn for trying to pick an Isler’s pouch—and serve him right! I could not have whacked him more shrewdly myself.’
That evening Fafhrd strode north from Salthaven toward Gallows Hill (it was an honester name), resolutely not looking back at the town. The sun, set in the far southwest a short while ago, gave a soft violet tone to the clear sky and the pale knee-high heather through which he trod and even to the black slopes of the volcano Darkfire where yesterday’s lava had cooled. A chill breeze, barely perceptible, came from the glacier ahead. Nature was hushed. There was a feeling of immensity.
Gradually the cares of the day dropped away and his thoughts turned to the days of his youth, spent in similar clime—to Cold Corner with its tented slopes and great pines, its snow serpents and wolves, its witchwomen and ghosts. He remembered Nalgron his father and his mother Mor and even Mara, his first love. Nalgron had been an enemy of the gods, somewhat like these Rime Isle men (he was called the Legend Breaker) but more adventurous—he had been a great mountain climber, and in climbing one named White Fang had got his death. Fafhrd remembered an evening when his father had walked with him to the lip of Cloud Canyon and named to him the stars as they winked on in a sky similarly violet.
A small sound close by, perhaps that of a lemming moving off through the heather, broke his reverie. He was already mounting the gentle slope of the hill he sought. After a moment he continued to the top, stepping softly and keeping his distance from the gibbet and the area that lay immediately beneath its beam. He had a feeling of something uncanny close at hand and he scanned around in the silence.
On the northern slope of the hill there was a thick grove of gorse more than man-high, or bower rather, since there was a narrow avenue leading in, a door of shadows. The feeling of an uncanny presence deepened and he mastered a shiver.
As his eyes came away from the gorse, he saw Afreyt standing just uphill and to one side of the grove and looking at him steadily without greeting. The darkening violet of the sky gave its tone to her blue garb. For some reason he did not call out to her and now she lifted her narrow hand crosswise to her lips, enjoining silence. Then she looked toward the grove.
Slowly emerging from the shadow door were three slender girls barely past childhood. They seemed to be leading and looking up at someone Fafhrd could not make out at first. He blinked twice, widening his eyes, and saw it was the figure of a tall, pale-bearded man wearing a wide-brimmed hat that shadowed his eyes, and either very old or else enfeebled by sickness, for he took halting steps and though his back was straight he rested his hands heavily on the shoulders of two of the girls.
And then Fafhrd felt an icy chill, for the suspicion came to him that this was Nalgron, whose ghost he had not seen since he had left Cold Corner. And either the figure’s skin, beard and robe were alike strangely mottled, or else he was seeing the pale needle-clumps of the gorse through them.
But if it were a ghost, Nalgron’s or another’s, the girls showed no fear of it, rather a dutiful tenderness, and their shoulders bowed under its hands as they supported it along, as if its weight were real.
They slowly mounted the short distance to the hilltop, Afreyt silently following a few paces behind, until the figure stood directly beneath the end of the gallow’s beam.
There the old man or ghost seemed to gain strength (and perhaps greater substantiality too) for he took his hands from the girls’ shoulders and they retreated a little toward Afreyt, still looking up at him, and he lifted his face toward the sky, and Fafhrd saw that although he was a gaunt man at the end of middle age with strong and noble features not unlike Nalgron’s, he had thinner lips, their ends downturning like a knowing schoolmaster’s, and he wore a patch on his left eye.
He scanned around uncertainly, o’erpassing Fafhrd, who stood motionless and afraid, and then the old man turned north and lifted an arm in that direction and said in a hoarse voice that was like the soughing of the wind in thick branches, ‘The Widder-Mingol fleet comes on from the west. Two raiders harry ahead, make for Cold Harbor.’ Then he rapidly turned back his head through what seemed an impossibly great angle, as though his neck were broken yet somehow still serviceable, so that he looked straight at Fafhrd with his single eye, and said, ‘You must destroy them!’
Then he seemed to lose interest, and weakness seized him again, or perhaps a sort of sensuous languor after task completed, for he stepped a little more swiftly as he returned toward the bower, and when the girls came in around him, his resting hands seemed to fondle their young necks lasciviously as well as take support from their slim shoulders until the shadow door, darker now, swallowed them.
Fafhrd was so struck with this circumstance, despite his fear, that when Afreyt now came stepping toward him saying in a low but businesslike voice, ‘Didst mark that? Cold Harbor is Rime Isle’s other town, but far smaller, easy prey for even a single Mingol ship that takes it by surprise. It’s on the north coast, a day’s journey away, ice-locked save for these summer months. You must—’ his interrupting reply was ‘Think you the girls’ll be safe with him?’
She broke off, then answered shortly, ‘As with any man. Or male ghost. Or god.’
At that last word, Fafhrd looked at her sharply. She nodded and continued, ‘They’ll feed him and give him drink and bed him down. Doubtless he’ll play with their breasts a little and then sleep. He’s an old god and far from home, I think, and wearies easily, which is perhaps a blessing. In any case, they serve Rime Isle too and must run risks.’
Fafhrd considered that and then, clearing his throat, said, ‘Your pardon, Lady Afreyt, but your Rime Isle men, judging not only from Groniger but from others I’ve met, some of them councilmen, do not believe in any gods at all.’
She frowned. ‘That’s true enough. The old gods deserted Rime Isle long years ago and our folk have had to learn to fend for themselves in the cruel world—in this clime merciless. It’s bred hard-headedness.’
‘Yet,’ Fafhrd said, recalling something, ‘My gray friend judged Rime Isle to be a sort of rim-spot, where one might meet all manner of strange ships and men and gods from very far places.’
‘That’s true also,’ she said hurriedly. ‘And perhaps it’s favored the same hard-headedness: how, where there are so many ghosts about, to take account only of what the hand can firmly grasp and can be weighed in scales. Money and fish. It’s one way to go. But Cif and I have gone another—where phantoms throng, to learn to pick the useful and trustworthy ones from the flibbertigibbets and flimflammers—which is well for Rime Isle. For these two gods we’ve found—’
‘Two gods?’ Fafhrd questioned, raising his eyebrows. ‘Cif found one too? Or is another in the bower?’
‘It’s a long story,’ she said impatiently. ‘Much too long to tell now, when dire events press upon us thick and fast. We must be practical. Cold Harbor’s in dismal peril and—’
‘Again your pardon, Lady Afreyt,’ Fafhrd broke in, raising his voice a little. ‘But your mention of practicality reminds me of another matter upon which you and Cif appear to differ most sharply with your fellow councilmen. They know of no Mingol invasion, they say, and certainly nothing of you and Cif hiring us to help repel it—and you’ve asked us in your notes to keep that secret. Now, I’ve brought you the twelve berserkers you wanted—’
‘I know, I know,’ she said sharply, ‘and I’m pleased. But you were paid for that—and shall get further pay in Rime Isle gold as services are rendered. As for the council, the wizardries of Khahkht have lulled their suspicions—I doubt not that today’s fish-run is his work, tempting their cupidity.’
‘And my comrade and I have suffered from his wizardries too, I trow,’ Fafhrd said. ‘Nevertheless, you told us at the Silver Eel in Lankhmar that you spoke with the voice of Rime Isle, and now it appears that you speak only for Cif and yourself in a council of—what is it, twelve?�
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‘Did you expect your task to be all easy sailing?’ she flared at him. ‘Art unacquainted with set-backs and adverse gales in quests? Moreover, we do speak with the voice of Rime Isle, for Cif and I are the only councilpersons who have the old glory of Rime Isle at heart—and we are both full council members, I assure you, only daughters inheriting house, farms and council membership from fathers after (in Cif’s case) sons died. We played together as children in these hills, she and I, reviving Rime Isle’s greatness in our games. Or sometimes we’d be pirate queens and rape the Isle. But chiefly we’d imagine ourselves seizing power in the council, forcibly putting down all the other members—’
‘So much violence in little girls?’ Fafhrd couldn’t help putting in. ‘I think of little girls as gathering flowers and weaving garlands whilst fancying themselves little wives and mothers—’
‘—and put them all to the sword and cut their wives’ throats!’ Afreyt finished. ‘Oh, we gathered flowers too, sometimes.’
Fafhrd chuckled, then his voice grew grave. ‘And so you’ve inherited full council membership—Groniger always mentions you with respect, though I think he has suspicions of something between us—and now you’ve somehow discovered a stray old god or two whom you think you can trust not to betray you, or delude you with senile ravings, and he’s told you of a great two-pronged Mingol invasion of Rime Isle preparatory to world conquest, and on the strength of that you went to Lankhmar and hired the Mouser and me to be your mercenary captains, using your own fortunes for the purpose, I fancy—’
‘Cif is the council treasurer,’ she assured him with a meaningful crook of her lips. ‘She’s very good at figures and accounts—as I am with the pen and words, the council’s secretary.’
‘And yet you trust this god,’ Fafhrd pressed on, ‘this old god who loves gallows and seems to draw strength from them. Myself, I’m very suspicious of all old men and gods. In my experience they’re full of lechery and avarice—and have a long lifetime’s experience of evil to draw on in their twisty machinations.’
‘Agreed,’ Afreyt said. ‘But when all’s said and done, a god’s a god. Whatever nasty itches his old heart may have, whatever wicked thoughts of death and doom, he must first be true to his god’s nature: which is, to hear what we say and hold us to it, to speak truth to man about what’s going on in distant places, and to prophecy honestly—though he may try to trick us with words if we don’t listen to him very carefully.’
‘That does agree with my experience of the breed,’ Fafhrd admitted. ‘Tell me, why is this called the Hill of the Eight-Legged Horse?’
Without a blink at the change of subject, Afreyt replied, ‘Because it takes four men to carry a coffin or the laid-out corpse of one who’s been hanged—or died any other way. Four men—eight legs. You might have guessed.’
‘And what is this god’s name?’
Afreyt said: ‘Odin.’
Fafhrd had the strangest feeling at the gong-beat sound of that simple name—as if he were on the verge of recalling memories of another lifetime. Also, it had something of the tone of the gibberish spoken by Karl Treuherz, that strange other-worlder who had briefly come into the lives of Fafhrd and the Mouser astride the neck of a two-headed sea serpent whilst they were in the midst of their great adventure-war with the sapient rats of Lankhmar Below-Ground. Only a name—yet there was the feeling of walls between world disturbed.
At the same time he was looking into Afreyt’s wide eyes and noting that the irises were violet, rather than blue as they had seemed in the yellow torchlight of the Eel—and then wondering how he could see any violet at all in anything when that tone had some time ago faded entirely from the sky, which was now full night except that the moon a day past full had just now lifted above the eastern highland.
From beyond Afreyt a light voice called tranquilly, attuned to the night, ‘The god sleeps.’
One of the girls was standing before the mouth of the bower, a slim white shape in the moonlight, clad only in simple frock that was hardly more than a shift and left one shoulder bare. Fafhrd marvelled that she was not shivering in the chill night air. Her two companions were dimmer shapes behind her.
‘Did he give any trouble, Mara?’ Afreyt called. (Fafhrd felt a strange feeling at that name, too.)
‘Nothing new,’ the girl responded.
Afreyt said, ‘Well, put on your boots and hooded cloak—May and Gale, you also—and follow me and the foreign gentleman, out of earshot, to Salthaven. You’ll be able to visit the god at dawn, May, to bring him milk?’
‘I will.’
‘Your children?’ Fafhrd asked in a whisper.
Afreyt shook her head. ‘Cousins. Meanwhile,’ she said in a voice that was likewise low, but businesslike, ‘you and I will discuss your instant expedition with the berserks to Cold Harbor.’
Fafhrd nodded, although his eyebrows rose a little. There was a fugitive movement in the air overhead and he found himself thinking of his and the Mouser’s one-time loves, the invisible mountain-princesses Hirriwi and Keyaira, and of their night-riding brother, Prince Faroomfar.
The Gray Mouser saw his men fed and bedded down for the night in their dormitory ashore, not without some fatherly admonitions as to the desirability of prudent behavior in the home port of one’s employers. He briefly discussed the morrow’s work with Ourph and Pshawri. Then, with a final enigmatic scowl all around, he threw his cloak over his left shoulder, withdrew into the chilly evening, and strolled toward the Salt Herring.
Although he and Fafhrd had had a long refreshing sleep aboard the Flotsam (declining the shore quarters Groniger had offered them, though accepting for their men), it had been a long, exactingly busy, and so presumably tiring day—yet now, somewhat to his surprise, he felt new life stirring in him. But this new life invading him did not concern itself with his and Fafhrd’s many current problems and sage plans for future contingencies, but rather with a sense of just how preposterous it was that for the past three moons he should have been solemnly playing at being a captain of men, fire-breathing disciplinarian, prodigious navigator, and the outlandishly heroic rest of it. He, a thief, captaining thieves, drilling them into sailorly and warlike skills that would be of no use to them whatever when they went back to their old professions—ridiculous! All because a small woman with golden glints in her dark hair and in her green eyes had set him an unheard-of task. Really, most droll.
Moonlight striking almost horizontally left the narrow street in shadow but revealed the cross-set beams above the Salt Herring’s door. Where did they get so much wood in an island so far north? That question at least was answered for him when he pressed on inside. The tavern was built of the gray beams and planks of wrecked or dismantled ships—one wall still had a whaleback curve and he noted in another the borings and embedded shells of sea creatures.
A slow eyesweep around showed a half dozen oddly sorted mariners quietly drinking and two youngish Islers even more quietly playing chess with chunky stone pieces. He recalled having seen this morning with Groniger the one playing the black.
Without a word he marched toward the inner room, the low doorway to which was now half occupied by a brawny and warty old hag, sitting bowed over on a low stool, who looked the witch-mother of all unnatural giants and other monsters.
His Ilthmart host came up beside him, wiping his hands on the towel that was his apron and saying softly, ‘Flame Den’s taken for tonight—a private party. You’d only be courting trouble with Mother Grum. What’s your pleasure?’
The Mouser gave him a hard, silent look and marched on. Mother Grum glowered at him from under tangled brows. He glowered back. The Ilthmart shrugged.
Mother Grum moved back from her stool, bowing him into the inner room. He briefly turned his head, favoring the Ilthmart with a cold superior smile as he moved after her. One of the Islers, lifting a black rook to move it, swung his eyes sidewise to observe, though his head remained motionless and bent over the board as if in deepest thou
ght.
The inner room had a small fire in it, at any rate, to provide movement to entertain the eye. The large hearth was in the center of the room, a stone slab set almost waist high. A great copper flue (the Mouser wondered what ship’s bottom it had helped cover) came down to within a yard of it from out of the low ceiling, and into this flue the scant smoke twistingly flowed. Elsewhere in the room were a few small, scarred tables, chairs for them, and another doorway.
Sidewise together on the edge of the hearth sat two women who looked personable, but used by life. The Mouser had seen one of them earlier in the day (the late afternoon) and judged her a whore. Their somewhat provocative attire now, and the red stockings of one, were consonant with this theory.
The Mouser went to a table a quarter way around the fire from them, cast his cape over one chair and sat down in another, which commanded both doorways. He knit his fingers together and studied the flames impassively.
Mother Grum returned to her stool in the doorway, presenting her back to all three of them.
One of the two whorish-looking women stared into the fire and from time to time fed it with driftwood that sang and sometimes tinged the flames with green and blue and with thorny black twigs that spat and crackled and burned hot orange. The other wove cat’s cradles between the spread fingers of her outheld hands on a long loop of black twine. Now and then the Mouser looked aside from the fire at her severe angular creations.
Neither of the women took notice of the Mouser, but after a while the one feeding the fire stood up, brought a wine jar and two small tankards to his table, poured into one, and stood regarding him.
He took up the tankard, tasted a small mouthful, swallowed it, set down the tankard, and nodded curtly without looking at her.
She went back to her former occupation. Thereafter the Mouser took an occasional swallow of wine while studying and listening to the flames. What with their combination of crackling and singing, they were really quite vocal in that rather small, silent room—resembling an eager, rapid, youthful voice, by turns merry and malicious. Sometimes the Mouser could have sworn he heard words and phrases.
