by Fritz Leiber
‘I whiffed something myself once or twice already,’ Fren agreed, making a face. ‘Like rotten eggs?’
At his offer, she rode the empty bucket down, standing, her small-booted feet fitting with room to spare.
At the shaft the foul odour became stronger. Looking up at Rill and Skullick, she held her nose. They copied her gesture, nodding. As she neared the bottom, Mikkidu came backing out of the tunnel’s low entry lugging a full bucket and she stepped out away from him, preparatory to helping switch the hook from the empty bucket to the full one.
But as he swung it around, he pitched over it into her arms. Digging in her heels, she managed to prop the Mouser’s small lieutenant, snarling at him, ‘What’s the matter with you, Mik? Are you drunk?’
When he answered her groggily, ‘No, Lady,’ his eyes weaving, she pushed him against the wall, leaving him to recover his wits and balance, and hurried into the tunnel.
Here the stink was intense and she held her breath. A few fast scurrying steps brought her to the end, where the light of a leviathan-oil lamp burning blue and dim showed her Skor on his knees slumped forward against the rough face he’d been scraping, his shoulders slack, while beside him Klute lay prone on the rock floor, evidently having passed out as she’d tried to crawl away.
Cif took her under the armpits and half dragged, half carried her out of the tunnel. Mikkidu was rubbing his forehead. She called, ‘Skullick!’ but he was already climbing down by the pegs. Klute was writhing a little and mewling faintly with her eyes closed. Cif slung her over an arm, stepped into the empty bucket, and signaled Fren to hoist. The pulleys creaked. In passing she told Skullick, ‘Skor’s collapsed at the face. Fumes and foul air, get him out fast.’
At the top she passed Klute to Rill and Fren and then stepped out herself. The girl was muttering, ‘Can’t find my scoop.’ Rill told her, ‘Wake up, Klute. Try to breathe deeply,’ and remarked to Cif, ‘There was such a stench in the cave toward Darkfire.’
Cif nodded and turned back to watch Skullick drag Skor out of the tunnel. He called, ‘He’ll come out of it, Lady. His pulse is still there.’ Mikkidu seemed recovered, for he helped Skullick get a rope around the unconscious man’s chest so he could be hoisted up the shaft, and then climbed the pegs alongside to steady the dead-weight burden on its way.
When Fafhrd’s lieutenant was stretched out next to the shaft head, Cif took his pulse under the jaw, didn’t like its reedy feel, and directed Mikkidu to lift his shoulders and head (by its scanty red hair) while she straddled his lap, clasped him around with both arms, and fed him air from her own lips, alternating with brief tightenings of her hug.
When Skor’s pulse seemed stronger, she directed he be carried to the shelter tent and delegated Rill to keep close watch and continue her nursing as needed. Then she quizzed Mikkidu sharply.
‘You were going into and out of the tunnel, you must have noticed the fumes.’
‘I did, Lady,’ he replied, ‘and warned Skor. But he made light of them, being so concentrated on speeding the digging.’
‘Well, he was right about that, though imprudent,’ she said with weight. ‘The digging must continue at the face if we’re to have a chance of saving the Captain. Fresh air must be conveyed there in good supply. And speedily.’
‘Aye, Lady,’ Mikkidu agreed dubiously, ‘but how?’
‘I have had opportunity to think that matter through,’ she told him. ‘Mik, last autumn you were with the captains on their great snow-serpent hunt in the Death Lands that lie midway betwixt the volcanoes Darkfire and Hellglow?’
‘Who of us wasn’t, Lady?’ that one replied. ‘Aye, and busy for a fussy fortnight afterward flaying and curing the uncut hides.’
‘As I recall,’ she went on, ‘there were some forty perfect hides got in all.’
‘Two score and seven to be precise, Lady. All laid up at the barracks with camphor and cloves against the next trading voyage by one of the captains. They’d bring a fortune in Lankhmar.’
‘As I too thought.’ She nodded. ‘The dogcart is still here. I’ve a mind to send you back in it to fetch out those same hides. All of them.’
He stared at her puzzledly.
‘Are you aware,’ she asked him, ‘that each of those hides constitutes a wrist-wide, sound leather tube nine or ten cubits long? Three or four yards?’
‘Yes, Lady,’ he began, his brow still clouded, ‘but—’
‘Come on, I’ll go with you,’ she said with a merry grin, standing up from where they’d been sitting beside the fire. ‘For you’ll need someone to attend to the hides while you’re busy seeing to the unshipping of the great bellows at the smith-forge preparatory to its conveyance here.’
‘Lady,’ Mikkidu said, his face lightening up, ‘I do believe I get a glimmering of your intention.’
‘And so do I!’ was voiced admiringly by Skullick, who’d been listening in.
‘Good!’ Cif told the latter. ‘Then you can take charge here whilst I’m away.’
And she dragged Fafhrd’s ring off her thumb and gave it to Skullick.
21
Pshawri broke a pane of ice to free the waters of Last Spring for easy imbibing.
When he had lapped his fill he backed away, dancing his thanks in a solemn little jig such as no one had ever seen him foot. He was a secretive young man.
He ended his jig with a slow rotation widdershins, scanning his still, chill, hazy-white surroundings from right to left. Darkfire’s smoke plume was a smudge in the northern milk-sky. His gaze lingered studiously on the southwest and south, as though he expected pursuers there, and from the height to which he roved it, either flying ones or else very big and tall indeed.
He was at the boundary between the Moor and barren Lava Lands, though a dusting of snow hid the blackness of the latter, blurring the distinction.
He undid one button of his pouch hanging against his belly in front and carefully wormed out the bottle Afreyt had given him, mindful of the pouch’s precious contents, and drank off half the remnant of fortified sweet wine, toasting the smoke plume. Then he bore the bottle back to the spring, submerged it until it was almost full, recorked it and returned it to his pouch. After rebuttoning the latter, he felt it over with a gesture curiously reminiscent of a pregnant woman feeling for movement.
He sketched a second jig that included a stamping defiance toward the south-southwest, then turned and loped away north.
22
Toward evening the girl Fingers woke refreshed in the bed at Cif’s house she’d occupied night before last. She slid herself from under the blanket without waking Gale, slipped into one of the two robes of towelling lying across the foot, belted it, and wandered down to the large kitchen, where Afreyt, similarly clad, stood beside a narrow door of gray driftwood with a row of pegs and two small windows of horn in the wall alongside it. The pegs were empty save for two, whence hung a worn robe larger than her own and an iron-studded belt bearing sheathed dirk and smallax, with boots set below.
‘I bathe in steam,’ the tall lady said. ‘Will you join me?’
‘Gratefully, Lady,’ the girl replied. ‘You heap me with kindnesses I can never repay.’
‘My privilege,’ Afreyt replied. ‘In return you might tell me of Ilthmar and Tovilyis, where I’ve never been.’ Her violet eyes twinkled. ‘And scrub my back.’ She hung her robe, Fingers copying her, on an empty peg and led the way into a narrow chamber consisting of four wide driftwood steps and dimly lit by four small windows, and shut the door behind them. Beside it were a long-handled dipper and two buckets, the farther one filled with water, the near with round stones glowing dark red toward their centre and toasting Fingers’s calves and knees as she passed close to them. Afreyt poured two-and-a-half dippers of water into the hot rocks. There was an explosive sizzling and clouds of steam enveloped them. Afreyt seated herself on the third step, Fingers following suit, and noting or divining the girl’s looks of surprise and mild alarm at the increase in the moist heat,
remarked, ‘It teases the heart a little, does it not? Do not fear to inhale deeply. Move down a step if it’s uncomfortable,’ she advised.
‘It does indeed, Lady,’ Fingers agreed, but held her level.
‘Now tell me of foul filthy Ilthmar and its nasty rat god,’ Afreyt suggested. ‘In what figure is he shown or depicted?’
‘In that of a man, Lady, with a rat’s head and long tail. On ritual occasions his human priests wear a rat mask, carry a long snaky whip resembling a giant rat’s tail, and go naked or robed according to the nature of the rite.’
‘How is the relationship between humanity and the ratty kind rationalized?’ Afreyt inquired.
‘In olden times, when rats had their cities aboveground, they warred with and enslaved a race of giants. Ourselves, Lady, humankind. Then in the course of numerous revolts and repressions, the rats transferred their cities underground for privacy and to give them peace and quiet to perfect their culture, but maintaining secret dominion over their servant-slaves.’ The girl’s voice was thoughtful. Her left hand played with a ridgy white seashell embedded in the gray plank on which their sweat dripped. Beside it was a boreworm hole, into which she ran her little finger back and forth. It fitted nicely. She continued, ‘There’s a dark magic known only to the doubly initiated (which mother and I were not) whereby rats and their allies may switch size back and forth between rat and human. The rats’ prophets and chiefest allies amongst humankind are numbered among their saints, of whom the recentest to be canonized are St. Hisvin of Lankhmar and his daughter, St. Hisvet, Lankhmar Below being the chiefest city of the rats, although, unlike Ilthmar, the worship of the rat god is forbidden in Lankhmar Above.’
Afreyt handed Fingers a stiff-bristled brush and presented her back, on which the girl, kneeling, got to work industriously. The tall woman asked, ‘Have you seen representations in Ilthmar of this female saint?’
‘Aye, Lady, there’s a carving at her small shrine in the Rat’s dockside temple. (Rats were also the first mariners, teaching man the art.) She is depicted nude with her hair in one braid long as her slender self and with eight dainty rat dugs; two centred in small high breasts, the next pair low on her rib cage, two flanking her cord scar, and two close to either side her maiden mound above the leg crease.’
‘My, such a multiplicity of charms! One wonders whether to envy or despise.’ Afreyt chuckled.
‘Her cult’s a very popular one, Lady,’ the girl replied somewhat defensively as she scrubbed away. ‘She commands demons, it is believed, and has enjoyed the services of Queen Frixifrax of Arilia.’
Afreyt laughed. ‘Truth to tell, child, I would have been inclined to rate your whole rat tale nonsense, like half the stories fed us Rime Islers dwelling on the edge of things to awe and befool us, did it not fit so well with what Fafhrd has told me about his and Captain Mouser’s greatest adventure (though there were more than one of those, to hear them talk) during the last days of Overlord Glipkerio’s reign, when there was an incursion or eruption of armed rats into Lankhmar City, along with many other weird events, and involving the unscrupulous grain merchant Hisvin and his scandalous daughter Hisvet, both the rats’ allies and bearing the same names as the two saints in your own strange tale.’
‘I am grateful your Ladyship believes at least partly in my truthful account,’ Fingers replied a little huffily. ‘I may be overcredulous, Lady, but never a liar.’
Afreyt turned around smiling. ‘Don’t be so formal and serious,’ she chided merrily. ‘Give me the brush and turn your back.’
The girl complied, facing the two high horn windows to the outside, which were now whitening with the rising moon a day past full. Afreyt scraped the brush across a lump of green soap and set to work, saying, ‘During the twists and turns of that famous rat-man fracas in Lankhmar (it happed at least ten years ago—you’d have been still an infant at Tovilyis), the Gray Mouser had to pretend a great love for this Hisvet chit (so Fafhrd tells me), pursuing her through a series of magical size changes from Lankhmar Above down to Lankhmar Below and then back again. His true love then was a royal kitchen slave named Reetha, at least she was the one he ended up with. At that time Fafhrd’s consort was the Ghoulish warrior-maid Kreeshkra—a walking skeleton because Ghouls’ flesh’s invisible, their bones on view. Truly there are times when I don’t know if I can believe half of the things Fafhrd says, while the Mouser’s always a great liar—he boasts of it.’
‘I was told Ghouls ate people,’ Fingers observed, bracing her back against Afreyt’s brisk scrubbing. ‘And much later I heard about the latter-day rat war in Lankhmar. Friska told me about it in Ilthmar, after we’d moved there from Tovilyis, when she was warning me against believing everything the rat priests told us.’
‘Friska?’ Afreyt questioned, pausing in her scrubbing.
‘My mother’s name when she was a slave in Quarmall before she escaped to Tovilyis, where I was born. She hasn’t always used it afterward and I don’t think I’ve mentioned it until now.’
‘I see,’ Afreyt said absently, as though lost in sudden thought.
‘You’ve stopped doing my back,’ the girl observed.
‘Because it’s done,’ the other said. ‘It’s pink all over. Tell me, child, did your mother Friska escape from Quarmall all by herself?’
‘No, Lady, she had her friend Ivivis with her, whom I grew to calling aunt in Tovilyis,’ Fingers explained, turning back so she faced the narrow gray door again, its outlines visible once more through the thinning steam. ‘They were smuggled out of Quarmall by their lovers, two mercenary warriors quitting the service of Quarmal and his two sons. The cavern world of Quarmall’s no easy place to escape from, Lady, deep, secret, and mysterious. Fugitives are recaptured or die strangely. In the ports that rim the Inner Sea—Lankhmar, Ilthmar, Kvarch Nar, Ool Hrusp—it’s deemed as fabulous a place as this Rime Isle.’
‘What happened to the two mercenaries who were your mother’s and aunt’s lovers and worked their escape?’ Afreyt inquired.
‘Ivivis quarrelled with hers, and upon reaching Tovilyis, enlisted in the Guild of Free Women. My mother was nearing her time (my time, it was) and elected to stay with her friend. Her lover (my father) left her money and swore to return some day, but of course never did.’
There was a flurry of knocking and the narrow gray door opened and closed, admitting Gale, who peered around eagerly through the thinning steam.
‘Has Uncle Fafhrd flown back down from the sky?’ she demanded. ‘Why didn’t you wake me? Those are his things outside, Aunty Afreyt!’
‘Not yet,’ that lady told her, ‘but there have been messages of sorts from him, or so it seems. After you two were sleeping, May brought me Fafhrd’s belt, which she’d found hanging on a berry bush as though fallen from the sky. Her words, though she’d not heard your tale. I sent her and others hunting and went out myself, and there were soon discovered his two boots (one on a roof) and dirk and smallax, which had split the council hall’s weathercock.’
‘He cast them down to lighten ship when he got above the fog.’ Gale rushed to conclusions.
‘That’s the best guess I’ve heard,’ Afreyt said, reaching the dipper to Gale, handle first. ‘Renew the steam,’ she directed. ‘One cup.’
The girl obeyed. There was a gentler sizzling, and warm steam came billowing up around them again.
‘Maybe he’s waiting for tonight’s fog,’ the girl suggested. ‘I’m much more worried about Uncle Mouser.’
‘The digging goes on and another clue’s been unearthed—a sharpened iron tik (Lankhmar’s least coin) such as the Gray One habitually carries on his person. So Cif told me when she was here early afternoon to bathe and change, while you two were still asleep. There’d been some difficulty about the air, but your aunt took care of it.’
‘They’ll find him,’ Gale assured her.
‘I share both your hopes for both the Captains,’ Fingers put in, returning somewhat to formality.
‘Fafhrd will
be all right,’ Gale asserted confidently. ‘You see, I think he needs the fog to buoy him up, at least until he gets started stroking well, and the fog will be back before dawn. He’ll swim down then.’
‘Gale thinks her uncle can do anything,’ Afreyt explained, scrubbing her vigorously. ‘He’s her hero.’
‘He certainly is,’ the girl maintained aggressively. ‘And because he’s my uncle, there can’t be anything between us to spoil it when I’m fully grown up.’
‘Truly a hero has many lady loves: whores, innocents, princesses,’ Fingers observed in tones that were both earnest and worldly wise. ‘That’s one of the first things my mother told me.’
‘Friska?’ Afreyt checked.
‘Friska,’ Fingers confirmed, and then bethought herself of a compliment that would sustain the worldly mood which she enjoyed. ‘I must say, Lady, that I greatly admire the coolness and lack of jealousy with which you regard your lover’s previous attachments. For Captain Fafhrd is surely a hero—I suspected as much when he began so swiftly and resolutely to dig for his friend and set the rest of us all helping. I became completely certain when he took off so blithely into the sky on his friend’s service.’
‘I don’t know about all that,’ Afreyt replied, eyeing Fingers somewhat dubiously, ‘especially my coolness toward love rivals of whatever age or condition. Though it’s true Fafhrd’s had an awful many sweethearts, to hear him talk (the Mouser the same), and not only from those classes you mention, but really weird ones like the Ghouless Kreeshkra and that wholly invisible snowmount Princess Hirriwi and (for Mouse) that eight-tit slinky Hisvet—everything from demonesses to mermaids and shimmersprites.’ Warming to it, she continued, ‘But I think Cif and I are a match for them, at least in quality if not numbers. We’ve bedded gods ourselves—or at least arranged for their bedding,’ she added correctively and a bit guiltily, remembering.
