The Swords of Lankhmar

by Fritz Leiber

  When Fafhrd had begun his short climb, the Street of the Gods had been empty at this end, though from the open doors of its gorgeous temples—the temples of the Gods in Lankhmar—had spilled yellow light and come the mournful sound of many litanies, mixed with the sharper accents of impromptu prayers and beseechings.

  But now the street was churning with white-faced folk, while others were still rushing screaming from temple doorways. Fafhrd still couldn't see what they were running from, and once more he thought of an army of invisibles—after all, he had only to imagine Ghouls with invisible bones—but then he noted that most of the shriekers and churners were looking downward toward their feet and the cobbles. He recollected the eerie pattering which had sent him running away from Silver Street. He remembered what Ningauble had asserted about the huge numbers and hidden source of the army besieging Lankhmar. And he recalled that Clam had been sunk and Squid captured by rats working chiefly alone. A wild suspicion swiftly bloomed in him.

  Meanwhile some of the temple refugees had thrown themselves to their knees in front of the dingy fane on which he stood, and were bumping their heads on the cobbles and lower steps and uttering frenzied petitions for aid. As usual, Lankhmar was appealing to her own grim, private gods only in a moment of direst need, when all else failed. While a bold few directly below Fafhrd had mounted the dark porch and were beating on and dragging at the ancient portals.

  There came a loud creaking and groaning and a sound of rending. For a moment Fafhrd thought that those below him, having broken in, were going to rush inside. But then he saw them hurrying back down the steps in attitudes of dread and prostrating themselves like the others.

  The great doors had opened until there was a hand's breadth between them. Then through that narrow gap there issued from the temple a torchlit procession of tiny figures which advanced and ranged themselves along the forward edge of the porch.

  They were two score or so of large rats walking erect and wearing black togas. Four of them carried lance-tall torches flaming brightly white-blue at their tips. The others each carried something that Fafhrd, staring down eagle-eyed, could not quite discern—a little black staff?—There were three whites among them, the rest black.

  A hush fell on the Street of the Gods, as if at some secret signal the humans tormenters had ceased their persecutions.

  The black-togaed rats cried out shrilly in unison, so that even Fafhrd heard them clearly, “We have slain your gods, O Lankhmarts! We are your gods now, O folk of Lankhmar. Submit yourselves to our worldly brothers and you will not be harmed. Hark to their commands. Your gods are dead, O Lankhmars! We are your gods!”

  The humans who had abased themselves continued to do so and to bump their heads. Others of the crowd imitated them.

  Fafhrd thought for a moment of seeking something to hurl down on that dreadful little black-clad line which had cowed humanity. But the nasty notion came to him that if the Mouser had been reduced to a fraction of himself and able to live far under the deepest cellar, what could it mean but that the Mouser had been transformed into a rat by wicked magic, Hisvin's most likely? In slaying any rat, he might slay his comrade.

  He decided to stick to Ningauble's instructions. He began to climb the belfry with great reaches and pulls of his long arms and doublings and straightenings of his still longer legs.

  The black kitten, coming around a far corner of the same temple, bugged his little eyes at the horrid tableaux of black-togaed rats. He was tempted to flee, yet moved never a muscle as a soldier who knows he has a duty to perform, though has forgotten or not yet learned the nature of that duty.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Glipkerio sat fidgeting on the edge of his seashell-shaped couch of gold. His light battle-ax lay forgot on the blue floor beside him. From a low table he took up a delicate silver wand of authority tipped with a bronze starfish—it was one of several dozen lying there—and sought to play with it nervously. But he was too nervous for that. Within moments it shot out of his hands and clattered musically on the blue floor-tiles a dozen feet away. He knotted his wand-long fingers together tightly, and rocked in agitation.

  The Blue Audience Chamber was lit only by a few guttering, soot-runneled candles. The central curtains had been raised, but this doubling of the room's length only added to its gloom. The stairway going up into the blue minaret was a spiral of shadows. Beyond the dark archways leading to the porch, the great gray spindle balancing atop the copper chute gleamed mysteriously in the moonlight. A narrow silver ladder led up to its manhole, which stood open.

  The candles cast on the blue-tiled inner wall several monstrous shadows of a bulbous figure seeming to bear two heads, the one atop the other. It was made by Samanda, who stood watching Glipkerio with stolid intentness, as one watches a lunatic up to tricks.

  Finally Glipkerio, whose own gaze never ceased to twitch about at floor level, especially at the foot of blue curtains masking arched blue doorways, began to mumble, softly at first, then louder and louder, “I can't stand it any more. Armed rats loose in the palace. Guardsmen gone. Hairs in my throat. That horrid girl. That indecent hairy jumping jack with the Mouser's face. No butler or maid to answer my bell. Not even a page to trim the candles. And Hisvin hasn't come. Hisvin's not coming! I've no one. All's lost!. I can't stand it. I'm leaving! World, adieu! Nehwon, good-bye! I seek a happier universe!"

  And with that warning, he dashed toward the porch—a streak of black toga from which a lone last pansy petal fluttered down.

  Samanda, clumping after him heavily, caught him before he could climb the silver ladder, largely because he couldn't get his hands unknotted to grip the rungs. She gasped him round with a huge arm and led him back toward the audience couch, meanwhile straightening and unslipping his fingers for him and saying, “Now, now, no boat trips tonight, little master. It's on dry land we stay, your own dear palace. Only think: tomorrow, when this nonsense is past, we'll have such lovely whippings. Meanwhile to guard you, pet, you've me, who am worth a regiment. Stick to Samanda!”

  As if taking her at her literal word, Glipkerio, who had been confusedly pulling away, suddenly threw his arms around her neck and almost managed to seat himself upon her great belly.

  A blue curtain had billowed wide, but it was only Glipkerio's niece Elakeria in a gray silk dress that threatened momently to burst at the seams. The plump and lascivious girl had grown fatter than ever the past few days from stuffing herself with sweets to assuage her grief at her mother's broken neck and the crucifixion of her pet marmoset, and even more to still her fears for herself. But at the moment a weak anger seemed to be doing the work of honey and sugar.

  “Uncle!” she cried. “You must do something at once! The guardsmen are gone. Neither my maid nor page answered my bell, and when I went to fetch them, I found that insolent Reetha—wasn't she to be whipped?—inciting all the pages and maids to revolt against you, or do something equally violent. And in the crook of her left arm sat a living gray-clad doll waving a cruel little sword—surely it was he who crucified Kwe-Kwe!—urging further enormities. I stole away unseen.”

  “Revolt, eh?” Samanda scowled, setting Glipkerio aside and unsnapping whip and truncheon from her belt. “Elakeria, look out for Uncle here. You know, boat trips,” she added in a hoarse whisper, tapping her temple significantly. “Meanwhile I'll give those naked sluts and minions a counter-revolution they'll not forget.”

  “Don't leave me!” Glipkerio implored, throwing himself at her neck and lap again. “Now that Hisvin's forgot me, you're my only protection.”

  A clock struck the quarter hour. Blue drapes parted and Hisvin came in with measured steps instead of his customary scuttling. “For good or ill, I come upon my instant,” he said. He wore his black cap and toga and over the latter a belt from which hung ink-pot, quill-case, and a pouch of scrolls. Hisvet and Frix came close after him, in sober silken black robes and stoles. The blue drapes closed behind them. All three black-framed faces were grave.

  H
isvin paced toward Glipkerio, who somewhat shamed into composure by the orderly behavior of the newcomers was standing beanpole tall on his own two gold-sandaled feet, had adjusted a little the disordered folds of his toga, and straightened around his golden ringlets the string of limp vegetable matter which was all that was left of his pansy wreath.

  “Oh most glorious overlord,” Hisvin intoned solemnly, “I bring you the worst news"—Glipkerio paled and began again to shake—"and the best.” Glipkerio recovered somewhat. “The worst first. The star whose coming made the heavens right has winked out, like a candle puffed on by a black demon, its fires extinguished by the black swells of the ocean of the sky. In short, she's sunk without a trace and so I cannot speak my spell against the rats. Furthermore, it is my sad duty to inform you that the rats have already, for all practical purposes, conquered Lankhmar. All your soldiery is being decimated in the South Barracks. All the temples have been invaded and the very Gods of Lankhmar slain without warning in their dry, spicy beds. The rats only pause, out of a certain courtesy which I will explain, before capturing your palace over your head.”

  “Then all's lost,” Glipkerio quavered chalk-pale and turning his head added peevishly, “I told you so, Samanda! Naught remains for me but the last voyage. World, adieu! Nehwon, farewell! I seek a happier—”

  But this time his lunge toward the porch was stopped at once by his plump niece and stout palace mistress, hemming him close on either side.

  “Now hear the best,” Hisvin continued in livelier accents. “At great personal peril I have put myself in touch with the rats. It transpires that they have an excellent civilization, finer in many respects than man's—in fact, they have been secretly guiding the interests and growth of man for some time—oh ‘tis a cozy, sweet civilization these wise rodents enjoy and ‘twill delight your sense of fitness when you know it better! At all events the rats, now loving me well—ah, what fine diplomacies I've worked for you, dear master!—have entrusted me with their surrender terms, which are unexpectedly generous!”

  He snatched from his pouch one of the scrolls in it, and saying, “I'll summarize,” read: “...hostilities to cease at once ... by Glipkerio's command transmitted by his agents bearing his wands of authority ... Fires to be extinguished and damage to Lankhmar repaired by Lankhmarts under direction of ... et cetera. Damage to ratly tunnels, arcades, pleasances, privies, and other rooms to be repaired by humans. ‘Suitably reduced in size’ should go in there. All soldiers disarmed, bound, confined ... and so forth. All cats, dogs, ferrets, and other vermin ... well, naturally. All ships and all Lankhmarts abroad ... that's clear enough. Ah, here's the spot! Listen now. Thereafter each Lankhmart to go about his customary business, free in all his actions and possessions—free, you hear that?—subject only to the commands of his personal rat or rats, who shall crouch upon his shoulder or otherwise dispose themselves on or within his clothing, as they shall see fit, and share his bed. But your rats,” he went on swiftly, pointing to Glipkerio, who had gone very pale and whose body and limbs had begun again their twitchings and his features their tics, “your rats shall, out of deference to your high position, not be rats at all!—but rather my daughter Hisvet and, temporarily, her maid Frix, who shall attend you day and night, watch and watch, granting your every wish on the trifling condition that you obey their every command. What could be fairer, my dear master?”

  But Glipkerio had already gone once more into his, “World, adieu! Nehwon, farewell! I seek a—” meanwhile straining toward the porch and convulsing up and down in his efforts to be free of Samanda's and Elakeria's restraining arms. Of a sudden, however, he stopped still, cried, “Of course I'll sign!” and grabbed for the parchment. Hisvin eagerly led him to his audience couch and the table, meanwhile readying his writing equipment.

  But here a difficulty developed. Glipkerio was shaking so that he could hardly hold pen, let alone write. His first effort with the quill sent a comet's tail of inkdrops across the clothing of those around him and Hisvin's leathery face. All efforts to guide his hand, first by gentleness, then by main force, failed.

  Hisvin snapped his fingers in desperate impatience, then pointed a sudden finger at his daughter. She produced a flute from her black silken robe and began to pipe a sweet yet drowsy melody. Samanda and Elakeria held Glipkerio face down on his couch, the one at his shoulders, the other at his ankles, while Frix, kneeling with one knee on the small of his back began with her fingertips to stroke his spine from skull to tail in time to Hisvet's music, favoring her left hand with its bandaged palm.

  Glipkerio continued to convulse upward at regular intervals, but gradually the violence of these earthquakes of the body decreased and Frix was able to transfer some of her rhythmic strokings to his flailing arms.

  Hisvin, hard a-pace and snapping his fingers again, his shadows marching like those of giant rats moving confusedly and size-changingly against each other across the blue tiles, demanded suddenly on noting the wands of authority, “Where are your pages you promised to have here?”

  Glipkerio responded dully, “In their quarters. In revolt. You stole my guards who would have controlled them. Where are your Mingols?”

  Hisvin stopped dead in his pacing and frowned. His gaze went questioningly toward the unmoving blue door-drapes through which he had entered.

  Fafhrd, breathing a little heavily, drew himself up into one of the belfry's eight windows and sat on its sill and scanned the bells.

  There were eight in all and all large: five of bronze, three of browned-iron, coated with the sea-pale verdigris and earth-dark rust of eons. Any ropes had rotted away, centuries ago for all he knew. Below them was dark emptiness spanned by four narrow flat-topped stone arches. He tried one of them with his foot. It held.

  He set the smallest bell, a bronze one, swinging. There was no sound except for a dismal creaking.

  He first peered, then felt up inside the bell. The clapper was gone, its supporting link rusted away.

  All the other bells’ clappers were likewise gone, presumably fallen to the bottom of the tower.

  He prepared to use his ax to beat out the alarum, but then he saw one of the fallen clappers lying on a stone arch.

  He lifted it with both hands, like a somewhat ponderous club, and moving about recklessly on the arches, struck each bell in turn. Rust showered him from the iron ones.

  Their massed clangor sounded louder than mountainside thunder when lightning strikes from a cloud close by. The bells were the least musical Fafhrd had ever heard. Some made swelling beats together, which periodically tortured the ear. They must have been shaped and cast by a master of discord. The brazen bells shrieked, clanged, clashed, roared, twanged, jangled, and screamingly wrangled. The iron bells groaned rusty-throated, sobbed like leviathan, throbbed as the heart of universal death, and rolled like a black swell striking a smooth rock coast. They exactly suited the Gods of Lankhmar, from what Fafhrd had heard of the latter.

  The metallic uproar began to fade somewhat and he realized that he was becoming deafened. Nevertheless he kept on until he had struck each bell three times. Then he peered out the window by which he had entered.

  His first impression was that half the human crowd was looking straight at him. Then he realized it must be the noise of the bells which had turned upward those moonlit faces.

  There were many more kneelers before the temple now. Other Lankhmarts were pouring up the Street of the Gods from the east, as if being driven.

  The erect, black-togaed rats still stood in the same tiny line below him, auraed by grim authority despite their size, and now they were flanked by two squads of armored rats, each bearing a small weapon which puzzled Fafhrd, straining his eyes, until he recalled the tiny crossbows which had been used aboard Squid.

  The reverberations of the bells had died away, or sunk too low for his deafened ears to note, but then he began to hear, faintly at first, murmuring and cries of hopeless horror from below.

  Gazing across the crowd again,
he saw black rats climbing unresisting up some of the kneeling figures, while many, of the others already had something black squatting on their right shoulders.

  There came from directly below a creaking and groaning and rending. The ancient doors of the temple of the Gods of Lankhmar were thrust wide open.

  The white faces that had been gazing upward now stared at the porch.

  The black-togaed rats and their soldiery faced around.

  There strode four abreast from the wide-open doorway a company of fearfully thin brown figures, black-togaed too. Each bore a black staff. The brown was of three sorts: aged linen mummy-banding, brittle parchment-like skin stretched tight over naught but skeleton, and naked old brown bones themselves.

  The crossbow-rats loosed a volley. The skeletal brown striders came on without pause. The black-togaed rats stood their ground, squeaking imperiously. Another useless volley from the tiny crossbows. Then, like so many rapiers, black staffs thrust out. Each rat they touched shriveled where he stood, nor moved again. Other rats came scurrying in from the crowd and were similarly slain. The brown company advanced at an even pace, like doom on the march.

  There were screams then and the human crowd before the temple began to melt, racing down side streets and even dashing back into the temples from which they had fled. Predictably, the folk of Lankhmar were more afraid of their own gods come to their rescue than of their foes.

  Himself somewhat aghast at what his ringing had roused, Fafhrd climbed down the belfry, telling himself that he must dodge the eerie battle below and seek out the Mouser in Glipkerio's vast palace.